Leftovers

• Ness Labs ☛ How to get in the flow: five simple steps

  Creative flow emerges when the mind is both challenged and absorbed in a task. Whether you’re drawing, coding, composing music, or solving complex problems, this state can be accessed when attention is undivided, and the activity resonates personally.

• Mike Haynes ☛ Minifeed

  Minifeed is a new aggregator from Rakhim that pulls updates from the small web into a personalized reader. It’s a cool idea—and one I’ve kind of kicked around before. That said, there are a few things about it that I think could be better and some challenges it might have as it grows.

• Michael Burkhardt ☛ Fail Cakes

  I tried.

• NYPost ☛ Mike Tyson gives macabre answer to question about his legacy

  “I don’t believe in the word legacy. I just think it’s another word for ego,” he said. “Legacy doesn’t mean nothing. That’s just some word everyone grabbed onto. … It means absolutely nothing to me. I’m just passing through. I’m gonna die and it’s going to be over. Who cares about legacy after that?

  “What a big ego. I want people to think I’m this, I’m great. No, I’m nothing. We’re just dead. We’re dust, we’re absolutely nothing. Our legacy is nothing.”

• The Atlantic ☛ The Rise of the Troll

  The Atlantic has examined trolling as an internet behavior for decades. (First, a minute for definitions: Trolling is a centuries-old term for a common fishing technique that involves slowly dragging a line through the water to lure fish into taking the bait, which The Atlantic has also written about. That word is a possible etymological ancestor of trolling in the modern parlance.) In a 2006 story about the evolution of Wikipedia, the writer and historian Marshall Poe recounted the tactics of a prominent early user known as “The Cunctator” (Latin for “procrastinator” or “delayer”), who pushed for a no-hierarchy, no-constraints version of the site. “Cunc,” as he was known, spammed pages, left inflammatory comments, and, most notably, baited the Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger into a prolonged edit war. (Sanger left Wikipedia in 2002, later citing its takeover by “trolls.”)

• Science

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Scientists are finally ready to talk about the 'mystery mollusk'

    Over the past 20 years, the team has used the institute’s underwater technology to gather more information on the sea slug. They named the creature Bathydevius caudactylus. Scientists have seen the animal 150 more times and just published their findings in the December 2024 edition of the journal Deep-Sea Research Part I.

  • Fabian “ryg” Giesen ☛ MRSSE

    For BC6H encoding in Oodle Texture, we needed a sensible error metric to use in the encoder core. BC6H is HDR which is more challenging than LDR data since we need to handle vast differences in magnitude.

  • IT Wire ☛ Gorilla Glass vs. Tempered Glass: What Is the Difference?

    Gorilla Glass is a brand of chemically strengthened glass developed by Corning Inc. Known for its high durability and scratch resistance, Gorilla Glass is made with a specialized process that strengthens the surface and makes it harder to scratch or crack. The manufacturing process uses an ion-exchange method, where larger ions replace smaller ones on the glass surface. This technique creates a strong compression layer, which makes Gorilla Glass tougher and more resistant to damage from everyday use.

    Since its launch in 2007, Gorilla Glass has gone through several generations, each of which has improved its strength, scratch resistance, and thinness. Today, it’s used widely in smartphones, tablets, and even some laptops and wearable devices. Its lightweight and sleek design has made it a popular choice among manufacturers.

  • Wired ☛ NATO’s Tech Scouts Are Fortifying Europe for a World With Donald Trump

    Space Forge wants to send satellites equipped with tiny clean rooms into space, where they’ll grow semiconductor crystals before transporting them safely back to Earth.

• Career/Education

  • Michał Sapka ☛ My old computer books

    That’s one the reasons I’ve never seen a Macintosh. Most of us had either, a PC or Commodore. Lucky ones had Amigas. And with them, a new wave of computer related press and books flooded the market.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post – Driving Change in Ukrainian Scholarly Publishing: An Interview with Ganna Kharlamova

    Editor’s Note: Today’s post is an interview of Ganna Kharlamova, conducted by Frances Pinter. Ganna is Professor in the Department of Economic Cybernetics, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (TSNUK). She is also Director of the Coordination Center for the Publishing of Scientific Journals and Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Regional Chapter of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE). Frances is Director of Academic Relations at Central European University Press and Amsterdam University Press. She is also the founder of SUPRR (Supporting Ukrainian Publishing Resilience and Recovery).

    I’ve characterized you and your colleagues as ‘changemakers’, the ones who are committed to changing the way scholarly communications and especially publishing are conducted in Ukraine. Could you outline how it has been operating?

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Building A Reproduction Apple I

    If you think of Apple today, you probably think of an iPhone or a Mac. But the original Apple I was a simple PC board and required a little effort to start up a working system. [Artem] has an Apple I reproduction PCB, and decided to build it on camera so we could watch.

  • Hackaday ☛ Landscape Motif Makes This E-Ink Weather Display Easy To Understand

    True weather geeks will disagree, but there might be a better way to know how to dress for the day than divining what the weather will likely be from the current readings for temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind. Sure, the data will give you a good idea of where the weather is heading, but perhaps a quick visual summary such as the one offered by this pictorial landscape weather display is a better way to get out the door in the morning.

  • Hackaday ☛ Laser Sound Visualizations Are Not Hard To Make

    You might think that visualizing music with lasers would be a complicated and difficult affair. In fact, it’s remarkably simple if you want it to be, and [byte_thrasher] shows us just how easy it can be.

  • Lee Peterson ☛ My Photography gear

    I’ve gotten more and more into photography over the last few years and thought I’d post how I’m taking them and my workflow.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Hackaday ☛ Open Cardiography Signal Measuring Device

    Much of the world’s medical equipment is made by a handful of monopolistic megacorps, but [Milos Rasic] built an open cardiography signal measuring device for his master’s thesis.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Why Health Insurance Regulators Have Failed to Curb Ghost Networks

  • Federal News Network ☛ Military suicides went up again in 2023

    The number of suicides among military personnel increased again in 2023, according to the Defense Department’s annual report on suicide released Thursday. The long-term trend of rising military suicides has been a persistent issue that the Pentagon said it plans to address with additional funding in 2025.

    In 2023, 523 service members died by suicide, an increase from 493 suicide deaths in 2022. The number of active duty service members who died by suicide went up from 331 deaths in 2022 to 363 in 2023.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Go Stare at the Ocean

    And after you’ve stared for a while, sit down and think about how you’re going to pick yourself back up again. I’m not asking you to pick yourself back up again.

    Yet.

    Just asking you to make a plan about how you’ll do so.

  • LabX Media Group ☛ A Sea Snail Toxin Could Inspire New Diabetes Drugs

    These findings inspired Ho Yan Yeung, a postdoctoral researcher in Helena Safavi-Hemami’s group at the University of Utah, to investigate whether cone snails produced other toxins that mimic fish hormones. While con-insulin quickly lowered blood sugar, Yeung hypothesized that another cone snail version of a glucose-regulating hormone was needed to maintain a longer-lasting effect: keeping blood sugar low to prevent the fish from escaping. One hormone that could serve this function is somatostatin, which acts as a brake to prevent blood sugar from rising to normal levels.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ The time is ripe to support urban agriculture: Experts urge Congress to fund new iteration of Farm Bill

    Built on the expertise and experiences of urban agriculturalists, along with research from the University of Michigan, the brief urges Congress to fully fund the Department of Agriculture's Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production for the first time in the office's six-year history.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Press Gazette ☛ News Corp adds Google-powered Hey Hi (AI) summaries to Factiva search results

    Factiva general manager Traci Mabrey says only consenting publishers will appear in Hey Hi (AI) results.

  • The Verge ☛ Microsoft Edge is trying to forcefully get your Chrome tabs again

    Earlier this year Microsoft’s Edge browser automatically started up on my PC and imported my Chrome tabs without consent. Microsoft refused to explain why this behavior had occurred, and then quietly addressed the problem in a Microsoft Edge update. Microsoft hasn’t given up on trying to get your Chrome data though, as a new update is rolling out that automatically starts Edge and offers to import your Chrome tabs.

  • IT Pro Today ☛ What Comes After HoloLens 2? Exploring Microsoft’s AR/VR Future

    In October, Microsoft stated it would discontinue its HoloLens 2 headsets, with no immediate replacement planned. The company has hinted vaguely at what might come next, leaving the future of HoloLens uncertain. In some ways, there have been signs pointing to HoloLens’ demise for quite a while. My experiences have made me wonder if Microsoft may soon phase out the device.

    For the past two years, I have been developing a HoloLens-based experiment that I will eventually take to space. The photograph below, taken just a couple of weeks ago, shows me suited up and wearing a HoloLens as I prepare to perform a test aboard a Virgin Galactic simulator.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ OpenAI, Google, Anthropic admit they can’t scale up their chatbots any further

    Once you’ve trained your large language model on the entire written output of humanity, where do you go?

  • CBS ☛ Google AI chatbot responds with a threatening message: "Human … Please die."

    A grad student in Michigan received a threatening response during a chat with Google's AI chatbot Gemini.

    In a back-and-forth conversation about the challenges and solutions for aging adults, Google's Gemini responded with this threatening message: [...]

  • India Times ☛ 'Please die': Students alarmed by AI chatbot's threatening message

    During a discussion about elderly care solutions, Gemini delivered an alarming message, "This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please."

  • Futurism ☛ Google's Gemini Chatbot Explodes at User, Calling Them "Stain on the Universe" and Begging Them To "Please Die"

    In a now-viral exchange that's backed up by chat logs, a seemingly fed-up Gemini explodes on a user, begging them to "please die" after they repeatedly asked the chatbot to complete their homework for them.

    "This is for you, human," the chatbot said, per the transcript. "You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe."

    "Please die," Gemini continued. "Please."

  • Futurism ☛ Facebook Adds Bot to Mushroom Foraging Group That Urges Members to Eat Deadly Fungus

    Named "FungiFriend," the chatbot was injected by Facebook's platform into the popular Northeast Mushroom Identification and Discussion group and included a bearded, psychedelic-looking wizard as its avatar. When one user asked the bot how to cook Sarcosphaera coronaria — a violet-hued mushroom that was thought to be edible before a bunch of people died from eating it in Europe — the chatbot recklessly claimed that enthusiasts like to sauté this "edible but rare" fungus in butter, add it to stews, or pickle it.

    This dangerous chatbot was brought to 404's attention via Rick Claypool, a research director with the consumer protection group Public Citizen who also happens to be an avid forager who's warned about "mushroom misinformation" before.

  • Futurism ☛ Twitter Is Getting Absolutely Destroyed as Users Flee to Rivals Run by People Who Haven't Lost Their Minds

    Twitter-turned-X alternative Bluesky is absolutely buzzing these days.

    The platform saw a major influx of well over a million new users in the week following the presidential election, growing from just 9 million users in September to 15 million.

    Bluesky even became the number one free app on Apple's App Store this week, beating out Meta's Threads — which is also spiking in apparent user count, though in a slightly more dubious fashion.

  • EFF ☛ "Why Is It So Expensive To Repair My Devices?"

    Device repair doesn’t need to be expensive, but companies have made repair a way to siphon more money from your pocket to theirs. It doesn’t need to be this way, and with our new site—Digital Rights Bytes—we lay out how we got here and what we can do to fix this issue.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Telegraph is launching an AI-driven newsroom tool every month

    The tools include newsroom workflow aides, consumer-facing AI services and internal data discovery tools. They are packaged together in an internal tool called Pulse AI so staff have a one-stop shop for the new services.

    The Telegraph‘s director of technology Dylan Jacques told Press Gazette’s Future of Media Explained podcast he had found it more valuable to “learn through doing” instead of getting bogged down in policy questions over AI.

  • The Washington Post ☛ GM’s self-driving unit Cruise pays $500,000 for a false crash report

    Self-driving car developer and GM subsidiary Cruise admitted Thursday to withholding key details about a horrific 2023 crash “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence” a federal investigation, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of California. The company will pay $500,000 to resolve the criminal charges.

  • Rob Knight ☛ Unorganised Thoughts about Bluesky

    These thoughts about Bluesky are unorganised and mostly off-the-cuff so make of that what you will.

    The API, even just for posting, strikes me as very strange. I, as the developer, have to mark which things are hashtags, mentions, and links unlike Twitter, Mastodon, and basically every other network. If I want link previews I have to do that too.

  • Rob Knight ☛ More Unorganised Thoughts about Bluesky

    I got a lot of feedback from my last post which fell into two categories: either about the technical implementations or why someone is using Bluesky over other options. As soon as my sent my previous post Bluesky started having outages which has made looking into the feedback interesting to say the least but they've been adding obscene amounts of users every second today.

  • Riccardo Mori ☛ Spotify and logins

    But back in October I was checking a few things on my fourth-generation iPod touch running iOS 6, and since I wanted to take some screenshots of Spotify’s older interface, I opened the app and (predictably, I’ll admit) I couldn’t log in or load anything. Apparently, Spotify took this as some kind of ‘suspicious activity’ and unilaterally decided to reset my account password and force me to create a new one.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Slop on Spotify

    The great ensloppening of the internet continues — except, in the case of Spotify, this is a repeat problem.

  • The Verge ☛ Not even Spotify is safe from AI slop

    “It was super weird,” says Marcos Mena, Standards’ lead songwriter and guitarist. “I thought, ‘Oh, this is something Spotify will take care of.’” After all, Standards has a verified artist page. But when a fake album was posted on September 26th, it didn’t budge. Mena emailed Spotify to tell them there’d been a mistake. The streamer responded two weeks later, on October 8th: “It looks like the content is mapped correctly to the artist’s page. If you require further assistance, please contact your music provider. Please do not reply to this message.” As of November 8th, the fake Standards album was still right there under the band’s verified, blue-checked name. It was finally removed by November 11th.

    “That was upsetting to me, because if you have ears, you can definitely hear it’s not our music,” Mena told me. “It’s definitely a bummer because we did have a new album come out this year, and I feel like it’s detracting from that.” What if someone came to a concert where Standards was opening for another band, went to Spotify to check out more tunes, and got the fake album instead?

  • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ Selfishness in AI

    Apple Intelligence’s hook takes this crazy dynamic to the deepest levels of affection — in this case, the heart of a family. The daughters’ lame but heartfelt gifts suddenly become just lame. Intention doesn’t matter. Apple’s ideal customer is heartless.

    The scene isn’t weird if you look at it from a corporate angle that companies like Apple usually try to hide behind “branding,” “storytelling,” and other marketing manipulation tricks. The bottom line is to sell.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Are automated license plate readers in your city? How to find out

      Will Freeman wants people to know they’re being tracked.

      His desire to shed light on the proliferation of license plate readers in his neighborhood in Huntsville, Ala., this year spurred an idea for a crowdsourced database where people across the world can upload the locations of the readers. The database, called DeFlock, also provides users with the option to list who manufactured the cameras for greater transparency.

    • Techdirt ☛ Criminals Are Still Using Bogus Law Enforcement Subpoenas To Obtain Users’ Info

      The FBI has a long history of abusing its subpoena power, crafting National Security Letters to obtain information it thinks it might not be able to acquire if it allowed a court to review the request. In fact, FBI investigators have been known to send out NSLs demanding the same info requested by their rejected warrant applications.

      Most companies don’t have the time or personnel to vet every subpoena they receive to ensure it’s legitimate and only demanding info or data that can be legally obtained without a warrant. As long as it originates from a law enforcement email address or has some sort of cop shop logo on it, they’ll probably comply.

    • The Record ☛ 1,400 Pegasus spyware infections detailed in WhatsApp’s lawsuit filings

      The documents also show that despite the hundreds of infections, WhatsApp’s security team repeatedly defeated Pegasus intrusions. Alleged victims included journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats and senior foreign government officials. Pegasus is “zero-click” spyware, meaning the devices were infected without the users interacting directly with a malicious link or other source.

      An unredacted WhatsApp motion for summary judgment asserts that NSO admits that it developed and sold the spyware used to infect the WhatsApp users’ devices and specifically relied on a zero-click installation vector called “Eden.”

    • Tim Bray ☛ Privacy, Why?

      This causes two problems: First, people worry that they’re being unreasonable or paranoid or something (they’re not). Second, we lack the right rhetoric (in the formal sense; language aimed at convincing others) for the occasions when we find ourselves talking to the unworried, or to law-enforcement officials, or to the public servants minding the legal framework that empowers the watchers.

      The reason I’m writing this is to shoot holes in the “If you haven’t done anything wrong, don’t worry” story. Because it’s deeply broken and we need to refute it efficiently if we’re going to make any progress.

    • The Record ☛ US agencies confirm Beijing-linked telecom breach involving call records of politicians, wiretaps

      U.S. law enforcement agencies confirmed on Wednesday previous reports that hackers connected to the People's Republic of China (PRC) breached the systems of commercial telecommunications infrastructure in order to steal the call record data of prominent politicians.

      The FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a statement that an investigation that began in late October has revealed a “broad and significant cyber espionage campaign.”

    • The Verge ☛ Snapchat will let parents request their teen’s real-time location

      The timing of of these features’ arrival feels a bit unfortunate for Snap, considering its app’s controversial appearance in the news of late related to privacy and safety concerns. An ongoing lawsuit from New Mexico’s attorney general Raúl Torrez alleges that Snapchat knowingly ignored warnings and evidence that the platform is being used to target and exploit minors with soliciting tactics for “sextortion” and “sexploitation” activities.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Hungarian Parliament votes to extend state of emergency

    Hungary’s parliament extended the country's state of emergency by 180 days, citing the ongoing war in neighboring Ukraine and associated economic and humanitarian impacts. The legislation passed with a significant majority ( the ruling party FIdesz has a two-thirds supermajority), grants the government emergency powers "to manage challenges linked to the war". 

    The extension highlights the ongoing tension and economic strain felt across the region as Hungary continues to adjust its policies in response to unfolding events. The state of emergency has been in place since May 2022, giving Viktor Orbán the power to issue decrees suspending the enforcement of certain laws and taking other extraordinary measures.

  • France24 ☛ Tipping point: How drug trafficking became a ‘national cause’ in France

    France is grappling with an alarming surge in drug-related violence, from grisly murders in Marseille to deadly clashes in smaller towns. As criminal networks thrive, the government has declared the fight against trafficking a "national cause" – but experts warn the crisis may be spiralling beyond the control of law enforcement.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia Threatens Draft Dodgers With Travel Restrictions, Fines by Text Message - The Moscow Times

    These SMS notifications emphasize recent amendments to the Military Duty Law, which parliament revised to impose severe controls on conscripts ignoring summonses. The new measures include restrictions on international travel, property ownership, loan eligibility and business registration.

    The notifications instruct recipients to report to a conscription office on Ugreshskaya Ulitsa in southeast Moscow.

  • NL Times ☛ Police expect over 1,000 explosive attacks this year; No fatalities a "small miracle"

    The number of explosive attacks increased from 212 in 2021 to a massive 1,017 last year. So far this year, there have been 923 attacks. Over 70 percent of attacks took place in the Randstad, and more than a third in the cities of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and The Hague.

  • The Nation ☛ Donald Trump Is Waging a Shock-and-Awe War Against His Own Senate

    While Gaetz doesn’t have anything like Cohn’s ruthless animal cunning and genuine evil genius, the nominee shows every sign of being an utterly subservient loyalist who will turn the weapons of the legal system against Trump’s enemies. Indeed, Gaetz has already shown a firm conviction that the law is merely a tool of political warfare. In 2018, Gaetz called for Jeff Sessions to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Gaetz has also said, “We’re proud of the work we did on January 6”—a reference to the 2021 attack on the Capitol.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Ukraine's UN ambassador: America can't be great if it allows Russia to win war in Ukraine

    “I hope it is very clear to the Americans that if America wants to be great, America cannot let Putin win the war,” the career diplomat said. “Are you ready to face the Americans losing the major war in Europe?”

    On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of State reported North Korean troops joined Russian forces in combat against Ukrainian units.

  • SBS ☛ Social media giants face legal duty to protect Australians from online harm

    The government is preparing to implement a ban on children under 16 from using social media , with legislation to be introduced to parliament later in November.

    The digital duty of care was a key recommendation of a review of the Online Safety Act, which was handed to the federal government in October and has yet to be publicly released.

    The statutory review of the online safety laws was brought forward by a year.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Australia's plan to ban children from social media proves popular and problematic

    The Australian government’s plan to ban children from social media platforms including X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram until their 16th birthdays is politically popular. The opposition party says it would have done the same after winning elections due within months if the government hadn’t moved first.

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ TikTok makes AI driven ad tool available globally

    TikTok on Thursday began letting all marketers on its platform use an artificial intelligence-powered tool for generating marketing clips, becoming the latest platform to let advertisers tap into the technology.

    The news came with word that Getty Images will make its stockpile of pictures and video available to TikTok's AI‑powered video generation tool -- called Symphony Creative Studio.

  • The Hill ☛ Proud Boys leader convicted of sedition intends to ask Trump for pardon

    Joe Biggs, a Florida Proud Boy and onetime correspondent for the far-right website “InfoWars,” is serving a 17-year prison term after a jury last year found him guilty of sedition and other serious felonies. His lawyer, Norm Pattis, has written a letter requesting clemency from the former and future president but said it has not yet been sent.

  • India Times ☛ TikTok launches AI-powered video platform to advertisers globally

    Earlier this year at the TikTok World Product Summit, the social media platform unveiled a new creative content suite called 'Symphony' with an aim to help businesses, creators and agencies customize high-quality and engaging content tailored to their brands.

  • EcoWatch ☛ Planet on Track to Warm 2.7°C by 2100 Under Current Policies: Report

    A new report from Climate Action Tracker (CAT) — released on Thursday at the United Nations COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan — has found that, under current policies, the world is on track toward 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Meaning of the First World War

    World War I gave rise to a heated century-long debate about its causes. In Disputing Disaster, Perry Anderson surveys this wide-ranging field and makes the case that the Great War cannot be understood without considering the role of imperialism.

  • IT Wire ☛ Social media ban to put TikTok security concerns under microscope

    The crux of the TikTok dilemma lies in the delicate balance between furthering innovation and protecting security interests. Governments worldwide are struggling with the possible implications of Chinese-owned technology companies operating within their borders. TikTok has become a symbol of the broader challenges posed by globalised technology in an increasingly divided world. At its core, the issue stems from the platform's data collection practices, which are reportedly more extensive than necessary for its primary functions. This data gold mine, combined with TikTok's ties to China through its parent company ByteDance, raises alarming questions about potential backdoors and data exfiltration risks.

  • RFERL ☛ UN Nuclear Chief Warns During Iran Visit Window On Talks May Be Closing

    Rafael Grossi, head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has urged Iran and its global partners to achieve "concrete, tangible, and visible results" in talks over Tehran's nuclear program as the return of Donald Trump to the White House may mean the window for diplomacy is closing.

  • Defence Web ☛ Mozambique’s last stand for democracy? - defenceWeb

    The country is facing its worst-ever post-election violence, with the opposition leading deadly nationwide protests against what domestic observer groups have called highly fraudulent polls. International observers also noted irregularities and a lack of credibility in the electoral process.

  • Wired ☛ Teen Behind Hundreds of Swatting Attacks Pleads Guilty to Federal Charges

    In perhaps the largest swatting case to ever be prosecuted, an 18-year-old from Lancaster, California, has pleaded guilty to federal charges stemming from a nationwide spree of hundreds of shooting and bomb threat hoaxes that sent police scrambling to high schools, courthouses, and the homes of law enforcement officials.

  • Techdirt ☛ Ohio Law Enforcement Officer Tells Democrats He Won’t Render Aid To Them, Blames Posts On His Sleep Medication

    You simply can’t do that. You’re not allowed to pick and choose which calls for aid you respond to based on your political beliefs. And even if these might have been empty words, you definitely can’t say that, not if you’re a public servant. Sure, Rodgers may have been inspired by his personal hero, Donald Trump, who threatened to deny federal funding to “Democrat cities,” but the former president/incoming president wasn’t in the right when he said those things either.

  • YLE ☛ Niinistö presents report on civilian and defence readiness to European Parliament

    In the white paper, published in late October, he suggested a series of measures that EU countries should take to improve their preparedness for various types of crises. Niinistö called on the EU to earmark at least 20 percent of its total budget for security and crisis preparedness activities.

    He urged the Union take a more proactive approach to preparedness and comprehensive security rather than just reacting to shock events, as the world becomes more crisis-prone and less predictable.

  • CBC ☛ Federal government departments have green light to advertise on TikTok — despite security concerns

    It was the latest red flag raised by government officials about the app, which is owned by a Chinese company. In May, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) suggested TikTok is a threat to users' data security, and in February 2023, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada launched an investigation into TikTok's privacy policies. That same month, Ottawa banned the social media platform from all government devices due to privacy and security concerns.

    Nevertheless, the federal government hasn't barred its departments from continuing to use the app to run taxpayer-funded ad campaigns.

  • Axios ☛ What to know about TikTok's future under Trump

    State of play: Under a bipartisan law that passed in April, TikTok would be banned by January in the U.S. unless its China-based parent company ByteDance sold it. The deadline could be extended 100 days if a sale was underway.

    • The Justice Department and TikTok have asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for a ruling by early December in order to seek a review from the Supreme Court before the law's mid-January deadline to sell.

  • New York Times ☛ France-Israel Soccer Match is Overshadowed by Amsterdam Attack

    After the recent violence around an Israeli team’s game in Amsterdam, French leaders insisted on proceeding under security with a France-Israel match, and on showing up, themselves.

  • France24 ☛ France-Israel match taking place against 'very difficult political, social backdrop'

    Israel faces France in a Nations League football match in Paris on Thursday surrounded by a huge security operation to prevent a repetition of the attacks on Israeli fans in Amsterdam last week. The security context has clearly impacted the attendance, with only around 13,000 spectators expected at the game in a venue that holds up to 80,000. For in-depth analysis and a deeper perspective,

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Taiwan will continue to strengthen military capability, official says in signal to Donald Trump

    By Joy Chiang Taiwan will keep strengthening its military capabilities, a senior security official said, in an apparent signal to US President-elect Donald Trump that the island is serious about shoring up its own defences.

  • China to probe marital, neighbor disputes in wake of car attack

    Chinese officials will be watching for signs of marital troubles and community disputes in wake of car attack.

  • CBC ☛ 2024-11-09 [Older] Newfoundland waters were a U-boat hunting ground, and that legacy has not been forgotten

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Russia’s new demographic strategy will promote ‘family values’ in advertising and award grandparents of large families — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Nearly all defendants’ names disappear from website of Russian court handling speech-related ‘terrorism’ cases — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Delayed subsidies put more than 200 Russian domestic airline routes at risk of closure — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ New Russian draft law would block ‘foreign agents’ from accessing earnings in Russia, allow transferring funds to the state — Meduza

    • European Commission ☛ Commission paves the way for release of the second regular payment to Ukraine of close to €4.1 billion under the Ukraine Facility

      European Commission Press release Brussels, 14 Nov 2024 Today, the Commission has given a positive assessment for the second regular payment of close to €4.1 billion under the EU's Ukraine Facility, to support Ukraine's macro-financial stability and the functioning of its public administration.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Ukrainian civil society leaders call for extension of Nord Stream 2 sanctions

      Representatives of Ukraine’s civil society have penned an appeal to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee calling for the extension of United States sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Freezing the front lines in Ukraine would condemn millions to Russian occupation

      Donald Trump's election win is fueling speculation of a possible peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, but any attempt to freeze the front lines would condemn millions of Ukrainians to the horrors of Russian occupation, writes Mercedes Sapuppo.

    • France24 ☛ Russian assault on Ukraine's Kupiansk mounts pressure on northeastern front

      Russian infantry managed briefly to advance into the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk on Wednesday before being repelled by Kyiv's army, local authorities said Thursday. The city, an important railway hub, was taken by Russia in the early days of Moscow's invasion then retaken by Ukraine in a counteroffensive months later.

    • US vows ‘firm response’ to North Korea for sending troops to Russia

      The US and South Korea confirmed North Korean forces have been engaged in combat against Ukraine in Russia's Kursk.

    • RFERL ☛ Wounded Russian Soldiers Flee Unit To Escape Return To Combat

      More than a dozen wounded Russian contract soldiers who had fought in Ukraine reportedly fled a military unit near the city of Novosibirsk in southern Siberia after they were told they were being sent back to the battlefield despite their injuries.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukraine Repels Russian Assault On Kupyansk As Shelling Kills Civilians

      Ukraine's military says it has repelled a Russian assault on the town of Kupyansk, in the northeastern Kharkiv region, rejecting claims by Moscow that it had gained a foothold in the strategically important transport hub, as Russian attacks continued to make victims among civilians.

    • The Straits Times ☛ North Korea’s Kim going for high-risk, high-return gamble by joining Ukraine war

      He is eyeing hard currency and military technologies from Russia, and more bargaining power with the US.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Trump’s win gives South Korea second thoughts about arms for Ukraine

      The decision that could have a big impact on the direction of the war. 

    • CS Monitor ☛ Ukraine’s Pokrovsk was about to fall to Russia 2 months ago. It’s hanging on.

      The story of the grinding Russian-Ukrainian land battle is one of an imbalance of forces and supplies, mostly in Russia’s favor. Yet Ukraine finds ways to defy the odds, at least for a while.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Trump leaves European allies fearing for their future

      Donald Trump is set on weakening Western support for Ukraine and weakening Europe’s economy with tariffs. Can the continent withstand a dual assault?

    • NYPost ☛ Citigroup probed by feds over ties to sanctioned Russian billionaire Suleiman Kerimov: report

      Kerimov was sanctioned by the US in 2014 and 2018 in response to Russia's actions in Syria and Ukraine.

    • Meduza ☛ Russia and U.S. could conduct prisoner swap in February, says lawyer of dual citizen jailed for donating to Ukraine — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Zelensky says Ukrainian authorities developing ‘resilience plan’ to guide country through war — Meduza

    • JURIST ☛ Georgia opposition withdraws from ‘illegitimate’ parliament amid electoral integrity controversy

      The two largest Georgian opposition coalitions, Coalition 4 Change (C4C) and United National Movement (UNM), announced Tuesday their rejection of mandates from the disputed October 26 election.

    • NYPost ☛ Hvaldimir unmasked: Identity of ‘Russian spy whale’ finally revealed in BillBC documentary

      The world-famous beluga whale thought to have been trained as a Russian spy and later found dead under fishy circumstances is now starring in his own documentary — which reveals his true identity.

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Get a load of this little brat’: Meet Øneheart, the small-town Russian teenager more popular on Spotify than Tchaikovsky — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ FSB arrests Russian teenager for allegedly attempting to sabotage Trans-Siberian Railway — Meduza

    • JURIST ☛ Detained Belarus activist resurfaces after months of no contact with family

      The Viasna Human Rights Center, a human rights organization based in Belarus, reported Tuesday that imprisoned Belarusian activist Maryia Kalesnikava resurfaced after more than 18 months without contact. Kalesnikava met her father in the prison hospital. Kalesnikava a known opposition activist in Belarus, was the head of presidential candidate Viktar Babaryka’s 2020 campaign team.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ Unauthorized Disclosure: Andy Worthington

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Emporia State University violated open records law, Kansas AG's office finds after 18-month review

    The Kansas Attorney General’s Office determined Emporia State University violated state law last year by failing to promptly respond to an open records request from Kansas Reflector.

    However, the Attorney General’s Office dismissed other parts of a complaint filed by Kansas Reflector regarding the $700 fee ESU charged to produce a list of employees who received a unique bonus on a single day. And the attorney who handled the request, Amber Smith, didn’t answer questions about why it took the office 18 months to review the complaint.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Insurers say bear that damaged luxury cars was actually a person in a costume

    In what's dubbed "Operation Bear Claw," the California Insurance Department said four Los Angeles residents were arrested Wednesday, accused of defrauding three insurance companies out of nearly $142,000 by claiming a bear had caused damage to their vehicles.

• Environment

  • EcoWatch ☛ ‘Fossil Fuels Are Still Winning’ as Carbon Emissions Reach Record Highs in 2024

    The most recent Global Carbon Budget report has found that the world’s carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels reached a record high in 2024, pushing the planet further off track from avoiding the most destructive impacts of global heating.

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Negligence, Climate Denial, Inadequate Warnings Contributed to Valencia Tragedy

    Three weeks after catastrophic flash flooding left 220 dead and scores missing in Spain, personal negligence, climate denial, and emergency warning systems unfit for an overheating world are looming large as factors behind the high death count.

  • DeSmog ☛ Governments Must Tackle Climate Disinformation, Experts Urge

    Governments around the world must take “immediate and decisive action” to tackle climate disinformation, scientists and campaign groups have urged as talks at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan enter their fourth day.

    A coalition of 55 climate information integrity groups and 42 leading climate scientists and experts have signed an open letter urging countries to counter the risk of false and misleading claims that are wrecking efforts to slow climate change.

  • TruthOut ☛ COP29 Leader Caught on Tape Pushing Oil and Gas Deals

    The U.N. climate summit known as COP29 is underway in Baku, Azerbaijan, where negotiators are trying to make progress on reducing emissions and preventing the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Many activists, however, have criticized the decision to hold the talks in an authoritarian petrostate. The host country is also facing accusations that it is using the climate talks for business, after the head of the talks, Elnur Soltanov, was caught in a secret recording promoting oil and gas deals. That sting was organized by the group Global Witness, which put forward a fake investor. “In exchange for just the promise of sponsorship money, that got us to the heart of the COP29,” says Lela Stanley, an investigator at Global Witness. “We need the U.N. to ban petro interests from sitting at the table, from influencing the COP.”

  • Axios ☛ Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels hit record high this year

    Why it matters: A peak in global emissions is necessary in the near-term, followed by steep reductions to net zero by 2050, to avoid potentially catastrophic consequences from human-caused global warming.

  • CS Monitor ☛ African women activists protest COP29, seeking reparations and a say

    African women activists are protesting the ongoing U.N. COP29 climate summit by attending a “counter-COP” to share the harmful impacts of mining on women and children. They seek reparations and a greater say in the extraction of minerals from their continent.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Cop summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, say leading climate policy experts

    This year’s talks, known as Cop29, are nearing their halfway mark in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku.

    Azerbaijan is a controversial host for the conference, as it is a major fossil fuel producer, with oil and gas making up half of its exports. Last year’s conference was also held in a petrostate, the United Arab Emirates, and the president of that edition, Sultan Al Jaber, kept his main job of heading the country’s national oil company, Adnoc.

  • YLE ☛ COP29: Finland again promises more climate funding while slashing contributions

    In his speech at the UN Climate Conference, President Stubb promised more money for island nations threatened by rising sea levels, even though Finland is cutting its climate funding.

  • teleSUR ☛ COP29: GSLTF Proposes Climate Taxes on Cryptocurrencies, Plastics, and the Ultra-Rich - teleSUR English

    On Thursday, the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force (GSLTF) published its progress report at COP29, presenting proposals for new taxes on cryptocurrencies, plastics, and the ultra-wealthy to help close the global climate financing gap. These new “solidarity levies” would be used to finance climate action and development efforts and would also affect aviation, fossil fuels, and financial transactions.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ COP29: Carbon emissions hit high as climate action stagnates

    With no new national climate targets or net zero emissions pledged in 2024, current policies continue to set the world on a path toward 2.7°C of warming, said CAT in its annual global update.

    The three year stand-still in temperature projections reinforces a "critical disconnect between the reality of climate change and the urgency that governments are giving to the policies to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions," stated CAT.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ What’s on the table at this year’s UN climate conference

    The UN COP meetings are an annual chance for nearly 200 nations to get together to discuss (and hopefully act on) climate change. Greatest hits from the talks include the Paris Agreement, a 2015 global accord that set a goal to limit global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preindustrial levels.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Positech Games ☛ Solar Farm month#1: First ever earnings! How to earn £669 an hour. Maybe. (kinda)

      OMG its actually happened, I have been sent an invoice (well a statement really I guess) for the sale of my solar power for the first time. The spoiler is that its about what I expected, but that doesn’t stop me breaking it down in extreme detail!

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 5 Hong Kong men arrested over using electric bicycles and scooters

      “Police reiterate that electric mobility devices should not be used on the same roads as regular vehicles and are not suitable for pedestrian walkways or bicycle paths,” police said in a Chinese statement on Wednesday.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Germany’s car industry is losing its famous Vorsprung – and it can’t all be blamed on Trump and tariffs

      However, the sense of superiority that Germans developed over the years has produced some spectacular failures. In the 1980s, Mercedes, then called Daimler-Benz, went on a billion-dollar spree to turn the automaker into a diversified technology group. After that strategy faltered, the company took over the US automaker Chrysler, hoping to forge a truly global player. The subsequent collapse of the merger was blamed on “cultural differences”, a euphemism for German arrogance: the Daimler executives thought they knew better than their US counterparts. Arrogance played a role, too, in the scandal over Volkswagen’s sophisticated but disastrous attempts to hide the illegal emissions levels of its cars.

    • The Atlantic ☛ What [cryptocurrency] wants from Trump

      Over the years, the cryptocurrency industry has made many lofty promises, but any meaningful application for the technology—besides for scams and crimes—has largely failed to materialize. Still, the technology is closer than ever to its mainstream moment: [Cryptocurrency]-aligned PACs funneled a staggering sum into House and Senate races to elect candidates the industry deemed pro-crypto, and President-Elect Donald Trump has championed the industry. [Cryptocurrency], whose death is often prophesied, will live to see another day.

    • Bridge Michigan ☛ Michigan House OKs tax breaks to lure Google, Microsoft data server farms

      The legislation, SB 4906, is part of a two-bill package to exempt large data centers from sales and use taxes on their equipment through at least 2050.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Science Alert ☛ Ancient Rocks in The Amazon Reveal a Glimpse of The Spirit Realm

      A crossing between worlds.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ The threat from wildfires is growing. The US needs a unified response

      Congress should create a modern, centralized wildfire intelligence system that can serve firefighters nationwide.

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ See Staggering Photos of the World's Largest Coral, Newly Discovered by Scientists in the Pacific Ocean

      At about 112 feet wide, 105 feet long and 18 feet tall, the coral is enormous. It’s so big that scientists initially thought it was a shipwreck. They also had to measure the organism in stages, because their underwater measuring tapes were not long enough to capture its colossal size in one go.

  • Overpopulation

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Decline in West African coastal fish stocks threatens food security and livelihoods

      New research, recently published in the journal Marine Policy, documents changes in the catches of small-scale fisheries, highlighting a significant decline not only in the volume of catches, but also in the size of fish for key local species.

      Scientists compiled official catch landing data and combined it with local ecological knowledge from local fishermen and fishmongers on Maio island, in Cabo Verde, designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 2020.

• Finance

  • Game Rant ☛ Thunderful Announces Additional Layoffs After Missing Revenue Targets

    The developer and publisher behind the popular SteamWorld series, Thunderful, has announced a restructuring program that will result in a number of layoffs within the company. Unfortunately for all those involved, this is the second occurrence of such an event within a year. Thunderful Group, a Swedish video game company founded in December 2019, is responsible for releasing titles like SteamWorld Heist 2, The Gunk, and Lost in Random.

  • SFGate ☛ Sweeping layoff by Nvidia rival AMD includes dozens at Bay Area headquarters

    Advanced Micro Devices, a massive Santa Clara tech company that designs incredibly complex computer chips, is laying off 4% of its staff. The sweeping cut includes at least 129 California workers.

    AMD finished 2023 with about 26,000 employees, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, so the 4% cut is likely to hit about 1,000 total workers. Rumors of the layoffs started circulating on internet message boards on Tuesday, and AMD first confirmed the percentage to the outlet Wccftech that afternoon.

  • In Light of a Mixed Q3 Report, AMD Announces Job Cuts

    After Intel’s big move to restructure its workforce, AMD has announced job cuts at its organization as well. The AMD layoffs will see the workforce sliced by 4%, a move that should help the company focus its resources on “its largest growth opportunities.”

    After the company revealed its Q3 earnings report last month, its share fell by 13%. While its stock price is still 3.9% higher than where it was when the year began, AMD’s performance is still not stable enough for its, and its investors, liking. Reports suggest that AMD’s restructuring efforts are linked to future AI acquisitions but the company has not confirmed this outright.

  • GeekWire ☛ Gilead Sciences to close Seattle office; shutdown impacts 72 employees

    Biopharma giant Gilead Sciences will shut down its office in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood, the company confirmed to GeekWire on Wednesday. A filing with the Washington state employment security department revealed the closure, which affects 72 workers.

  • [News] Intel Israel Reportedly Sees Departure of Over 1,000 Employees amid Major Layoffs

    Following the massive layoff in Oregon, U.S., which impacted around 1,300 employees, Intel has also started layoffs in Israel. According to a report by local media outlet Globes, over 1,000 Israeli employees have left Intel, the country’s largest private employer.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • JURIST ☛ US Supreme Court denies request from former Trump chief of staff to move election interference case to federal court

    The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear the final appeal of former Trump administration chief of staff Mark Meadows to transfer his charges in the Georgia election interference case to federal court. Meadows argued in his request to the court that his previous appeals were erroneously rejected.

  • New York Times ☛ Nonprofits Vow a New Resistance. Will Donors Pay Up?

    Groups that used lawsuits and protests to stymie the first Trump administration will face longer odds this time. The courts are more conservative, and patrons are dejected.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China, Philippines spar over new maritime laws, baseline drawings in South China Sea

    China's ambassador is summoned over Beijing's drawing of baselines around the disputed Scarborough Shoal.

  • FAIR ☛ How Trump Will Seek Revenge on the Press

    “Revenge—it’s a big part of Trump’s life,” Mother Jones‘ David Corn (10/19/16) wrote just before Trump was elected to the presidency the first time: [...]

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Trump lobbied to scrutinize AI rules

    BSA represents OpenAI, Microsoft, and other leading tech companies hoping to influence Washington and international policymakers as they chart a path forward on regulating AI. For his part, Trump has vowed to undo outgoing President Joe Biden’s landmark executive order, signaling his White House will impose fewer rules on the fast-moving technology.

  • [Old] BigCommerce Pty Ltd ☛ What is astroturfing, and why your business should avoid it | BigCommerce

    The term "astroturfing" is a play on the term "grassroots movement," since the grass is fake. Astroturfing has been attempted by online businesses who present a product as being highly desired and sought out by a certain customer base via company-sponsored message board posts, blogs or articles when there is no evidence to support such an assertion.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ TSMC reportedly delays Fab 21 opening ceremony in Arizona until January

    TSMC has reportedly delayed the opening ceremony of its Fab 21 near Phoenix, Arizona, from December 6 to sometime in late January or even February after Donald Trump takes office, report DigiTimes and China Times, as noticed by Dan Nystedt. The decision means that the ceremony will unlikely be attended by the U.S. current President Joe Biden, or members of his administration.

  • Google ☛ Emerging Threats: Cybersecurity Forecast 2025 | Google Cloud Blog

    Every November, we start sharing forward-looking insights on threats and other cybersecurity topics to help organizations and defenders prepare for the year ahead. The Cybersecurity Forecast 2025 report, available today, plays a big role in helping us accomplish this mission.

    This year’s report draws on insights directly from Google Cloud's security leaders, as well as dozens of analysts, researchers, responders, reverse engineers, and other experts on the frontlines of the latest and largest attacks.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ HackerOne urges U.S. to advocate for research protections in UN cybercrime treaty

    HackerOne has expressed serious concerns over the recently proposed UN Convention Against Cybercrime, which the company says lacks strong protections for good-faith security researchers.

    In an open letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and United States Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power, Ilona Cohen, chief legal and policy officer for HackerOne, highlighted the role independent security has in the industry, and laments the treaty’s failure to align with U.S. policies that shield good-faith efforts from prosecution.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ The UN cybercrime convention threatens security research. The US should do something about it

    The treaty’s provisions related to security research conflict with best practices encouraged by the U.S. government and federal policies that protect good-faith security research from prosecution. Despite these and other concerns, the treaty is expected to receive final approval from the General Assembly by the end of the year.

    Though this treaty will not directly alter existing computer crime laws, nations with less-developed cybercrime laws may pass regulations that mirror the text of the UN’s convention, and authoritarian governments may use the flawed text of the convention to justify suppression and censorship of security researchers and others.

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Infocalypse Won

    People have been lied to before going to the polls. Climate denial (“weather control machines”) being the big one out of hundreds, the big one missing I mean, the one that’s for me the biggest and most devastating of many shocks.

  • New Yorker ☛ How Elon Musk Rebranded Trump

    X happens to be cratering financially—Fidelity, one of its stakeholders, recently estimated its value at around nine billion dollars, a far cry from the forty-four billion dollars Musk paid for it—yet it is poised to become a fulcrum of the second Trump Administration. For one thing, as Eric Newcomer, the proprietor of a Silicon Valley venture-capital newsletter, told me, “Tech is still addicted to X.” This election has been called the “podcast election,” for the influence of Rogan and his ilk, but it should perhaps be thought of more specifically as the digital-multimedia election, a race waged via podcasts on YouTube, talking heads on TikTok, and audio live streams on X (where Trump appeared with Musk in August). Whereas platforms such as YouTube and TikTok take pains to appear neutral, X under Musk has become a partisan, ideological arena. Despite his professed obsession with free speech and his protestations that X is a “public square,” the platform is now more weighted toward Republicans than Democrats. New users are recommended politicized accounts to follow, and Musk’s own torrent of posts is unavoidable, including plenty of boosterish Donald Trump memes. Noting how Facebook was blamed for misinformation in elections past, including in Trump’s victory in 2016, Newcomer told me, “X is so much more overt.” It is as if Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News was not only brazenly biased toward Trump’s campaign but was also publicly strategizing with it. Trump, who relentlessly threatens and smears the mainstream media, created his own social-media platform, Truth Social. It failed to achieve much traction, but no matter: X is the new hub for his true believers. The day after the election, Musk posted, “You are the media now.”

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • VOA News ☛ Putin attempts whitewashing Russian atrocities in Africa

      The Russian disinformation operations “pop up repressive regimes and harm civilians,” the ADF said. Russia connected to 40% of all disinformation campaigns across the African continent, AFD reported, describing these operations as “cognitive warfare” run by the Russian defense ministry.

      Russia identifies and inflames local grievances to use them to its advantage, the ADF said. The Kremlin exploits Africa’s history of colonialism to whitewash Russia’s own account of civilian massacres, human rights violations and other atrocities committed in Africa.

    • VOA News ☛ Reporters Without Borders sues X

      Since none of the posts in question have been removed, RSF opted to sue the company in French courts “for its complicity in disseminating false information, misrepresentation and identity theft,” the group said in a statement.

      “Is X’s deliberate unwillingness to fight disinformation punishable by law? Does it make the company complicit in the pollution of public debate?” the statement said. “With the new case brought forth by RSF, the French courts now have the opportunity to address these pressing questions, establish X’s legal obligations and hold it to account.”

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ US-based staff of Taiwan chip giant TSMC sue firm over discrimination

    The suit alleges that the world’s largest contract manufacturer of chips — used in everything from Apple iPhones to Nvidia’s AI hardware — unfairly favors Asian staff in terms of hiring, firing and working standards.

    Initially filed in August, the suit was refiled last week as a class action case with 13 plaintiffs named.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Anti-War Theater Director Jailed 8 Years Over Social Media Posts Calling for Putin’s Death - The Moscow Times

    Berezhinskaya accused Russian soldiers of killing civilians and destroying cities in the first months following the full-scale invasion of February 2022. Referring to Putin, she wrote: “Destroy that bastard. Wipe him off the face of the Earth.”

  • RFERL ☛ Russian Theater Director Gets 8 Years Over Anti-Putin Posts

    Russian officials have increasingly used charges such as discrediting the country's armed forces or distributing false information about the military to stifle any dissent voiced regarding Moscow's aggression against Ukraine since the full-scale invasion was launched in February 2022.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Beverly Hills substitute teacher says she was fired over anti-Trump posts

    A substitute teacher at Beverly Hills High School says she was fired due to posts she shared on Facebook criticizing Donald Trump and condemning the behavior of students at a MAGA rally on campus, where Black students reported being harassed.

  • India Times ☛ Iran to open 'hijab removal treatment clinic' for women who oppose mandates

    “It won’t be a clinic, it will be a prison. We are struggling to make ends meet and have power outages, but a piece of cloth is what this state is worried about. If there was a time for all of us to come back to the streets, it’s now or they’ll lock us all up,” said one Iranian woman, as quoted by the Guardian.

    The announcement followed reports of a university student, arrested for removing her clothing on campus after allegedly facing harassment by security guards for hijab violations, being transferred to a psychiatric hospital.

  • VOA News ☛ VOA’s Persian Service ‘heartbroken’ at former colleague’s suicide in Tehran

    Sanjari had been jailed in Iran for his activism before and after his work in the United States. He spoke publicly about how he suffered psychological harm from solitary confinement and other ill treatment by Iranian authorities.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • VOA News ☛ Wife of jailed Azerbaijani journalist calls for his release

    Mehralizada works at the Azerbaijani Service of VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. His case underscores the state of press freedom in Azerbaijan.

    “Azerbaijan has long been one of the world’s worst violators of human rights in general and press freedom in particular,” Gulnoza Said, Europe and Central Asia program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, told VOA.

  • NBC ☛ The Onion wins Alex Jones' Infowars in bankruptcy auction

    The Onion, the satirical news company that repeatedly spoofed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, has won the bankruptcy auction for control over his media empire — most notably Infowars, the far-right, conspiracy-minded website that served as Jones’ primary online platform.

  • NPR ☛ The Onion wins auction for Alex Jones' media company

    "Our clients knew that true accountability meant an end to Infowars and an end to Jones' ability to spread lies, pain and fear at scale," said Chris Mattei, attorney for the Connecticut plaintiffs.

    The sale, which still needs to be approved by a bankruptcy court, includes Jones' studio equipment, his lucrative online nutritional supplement store, domain names, customer lists and some of Jones' social media accounts, though not his X account.

  • VOA News ☛ Satirical news site The Onion buys Alex Jones' Infowars with help from Sandy Hook families

    The satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for Alex Jones' Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than $1 billion in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax, the families announced Thursday.

  • The Onion ☛ Here’s Why I Decided To Buy ‘InfoWars’

    Today we celebrate a new addition to the Global Tetrahedron LLC family of brands. And let me say, I really do see it as a family. Much like family members, our brands are abstract nodes of wealth, interchangeable assets for their patriarch to absorb and discard according to the opaque whims of the market. And just like family members, our brands regard one another with mutual suspicion and malice.

    All told, the decision to acquire InfoWars was an easy one for the Global Tetrahedron executive board.

  • Associated Press ☛ The Onion buys Alex Jones' Infowars with help from Sandy Hook families

    The Onion, a Chicago-based satirical site that manages to persuade people to believe the absurd, confirmed the sale in a column on its website.

    “No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds,” said the satirical post. “And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.”

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia to stop publishing on X as users flee

    Leading Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia said it will stop publishing content on X because the platform has become an “echo chamber” for “conspiracy theories and disinformation.” The announcement came a day after The Guardian made its departure.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ The Guardian quits X citing racism and conspiracy theories

    The role of X and other platforms came under the spotlight in Britain this year when far-right and racist violence broke out after online posts falsely claimed that an attack in the northern English town of Southport, where three young girls were killed, was the work of an Islamist migrant.

  • TruthOut ☛ Here Are 5 Media-Related Actions We Can All Take Before Inauguration Day

    Nevertheless, there are things we can do! Taking action on the media front is key, and anyone reading this piece can find a lane in which to participate. Here, we offer five steps that media makers, readers, viewers and listeners can take over the next couple of months to meet the moment, come January.

  • CPJ ☛ Egypt sentences detained journalist to 20 years; accused of threatening 2nd journalist

    “It is disgraceful that Egyptian authorities sentenced Yasser Abu Al-Ela to 20 years in absentia on terrorism and false news charges while he is already detained in an Egyptian prison for a separate case. This highlights the utter lack of due process in Egypt’s legal system, offering no protection for detained journalists,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “The ongoing threats and harassment against press freedom advocate Rasha Azab serve as yet another stark reminder of the heavy price that those who defend press freedom in Egypt are forced to pay every day.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Penalties for industrial accidents ‘too lenient’ to have deterrent effect, Hong Kong labour rights concern group says

    Hong Kong authorities should file appeals against “lenient penalties” in cases of occupational safety violations, a labour rights group has said after the city saw three fatal industrial incidents in five days.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ TSMC sued for race and citizenship discrimination at its Arizona facilities

    TSMC has been accused of preferring Taiwanese employees at its Arizona facilities in a class-action lawsuit.

  • Harvard University ☛ Many in Native communities applaud U.S. apology over boarding schools

    “Apologies have not exactly been forthcoming from the federal and state governments and the churches, and the various entities that have enacted some of these programs on any people over the years. Any time that there’s recognition of those histories, I think it’s really important,” he said. “For many Native people, the moments where the rituals of formal American diplomacy are actually visible is also recognition of Native nationhood and of Native continuities and futurities.”

  • Techdirt ☛ Good News: Canada Passes Major New ‘Right To Repair’ Reforms

    The world might be going to hell, but at least activists’ efforts to protect consumers’ rights to affordable and easy tech repair continue to gain steam.

    Most recently in Canada, where the country’s Copyright Act was amended by two different bills allowing the circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs) if done for the purposes of “maintaining or repairing a product, including any related diagnosing,” and “to make the program or a device in which it is embedded interoperable with any other computer program, device or component.”

  • Netzpolitik ☛ Interview with Pornhub Executive: „There’s been calls to outlaw pornography“

    After years of criticism, Pornhub wants to do things differently – and is even granting interviews. Pornhub executive Alex Kekesi explains the reasons behind this shift, why the platform is at odds with the EU, and how Trump’s supporters aim to ban porn.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Fight to Unionize US Call Center Workers

    In the US, the past 40 years have seen the explosive growth of a new call center workforce, which now employs nearly 4 million people. Despite vigorous organizing efforts, the sector remains largely nonunion.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Return-to-office mandates hurt diversity, research suggests

    The debate over whether flexible work or strict office mandates are better for productivity and collaboration continues to heat up as more companies roll back pandemic-era flexibility. Amazon became the first Big Tech company to require five days in office in September, joining other major firms such as UPS and Goldman Sachs. JPMorgan Chase, Boeing, Dell and The Washington Post also announced plans to require some employees return to the office five days a week. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The number of people who work fully on-site has increased just 4 percent in October this year from the same period last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  • Martin Hähne ☛ Shift To Europe

    But not only big tech, also many smaller and medium-sized tech companies are based in the US and many of the tools that we use are US-based. And apart from us giving money and data to these US-based companies and therefore their economy, we as non-US customers don’t matter in the same way as US-based customers. Also do our laws clearly not matter as much. And our values also don’t matter in the same way.

  • NPR ☛ Oklahoma City cop is investigated for slamming 70-year-old man to the ground

    In an update earlier this month, the daughter shared that Vu was still in the hospital and was on a feeding tube and suffering from memory loss.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ How the Taliban are erasing Afghanistan’s women – photo essay

    In just over three years, Afghan women have been banned from nearly every aspect of public life: schools, universities, most workplaces – even parks and bathhouses. From Kandahar, the birthplace and political headquarters of the Taliban, the group’s leaders have dictated that women must cover their faces in public, always be accompanied by a man and never let their voices be heard in public.

    As foreign women, we still carried the rare privilege of freedom of movement (although I doubt we could now travel as we did at the beginning of this year), which has nearly disappeared for the 14 million Afghan women and girls across the country. Meeting women while ensuring their security was a daily challenge.

  • El País ☛ The AI sexualization of the Vatican’s mascot and the limits of Rule 34: Everything on the internet can be ‘pornified’

    “Women are the canaries in the mine when it comes to AI abuse. It’s not just going to be the 14-year-old girl or Taylor Swift, it’s going to be the politicians, the world leaders, the elections. We are too few and too late, but we can still try to mitigate the disaster that is unfolding,” warns Mary Anne Franks, a professor of Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law at George Washington University and president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative.

  • The Conversation ☛ Tech firms like to make cancelling subscriptions infuriatingly hard – but regulators are starting to crack down

    But things may be about to change. “Dark patterns” – the online systems designed to keep you subscribed to a service or app – are coming under increasing levels of scrutiny.

    On October 16 2024, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) introduced a new regulation, known as the “click to cancel” rule, which will make it much easier for people to end their online subscriptions.

  • Greece ☛ High-tech overhaul for law enforcement

    A key component of the program is the acquisition of 2,000 body cameras for frontline police officers. These body cams, which will be attached to officers’ uniforms and their patrol vehicles, are expected to improve transparency and accountability. A competition for the cameras, valued at €7 million, will soon be under way. This move follows a 2020 pilot initiative, although large-scale implementation had been delayed until now.

  • Seth Godin ☛ Unforced errors

    When you built that automated phone tree to save a few dollars on customer service, you were choosing to lose some of your best customers. When you planned a lazy and boring menu for the group meeting at your hotel, you chose to send a message of carelessness. And when you ask under-appreciated and poorly-trained staff to step up and be the face of your organization, you’re risking your future.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Public Knowledge ☛ Consumer Groups File Brief Supporting Streaming Sports Competition

    The groups argue that allowing "Venu" to proceed will raise prices for consumers.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Wired ☛ These Guys Hacked AirPods to Give Their Grandmas Hearing Aids

    When Apple released a software update at the start of November that enabled its new hearing aid features in AirPods Pro 2 earbuds, Rithwik Jayasimha immediately went out with his dad to buy a pair for his grandma. “We came back home, we took them out of the case, and I was looking for the feature and it was just missing,” Jayasimha says. India, where Jayasimha and his family live, is not one of the many countries where Apple’s hearing aid features are available. “It was a huge bummer,” Jayasimha says.

    Instead of abandoning the headphones, Jayasimha and two friends, Arnav Bansal and Rithvik Vibhu—both of whom say they have grandmas who use hearing aids as well—hacked a way to bypass Apple’s location restrictions and enable their hearing aids in Bangalore.

  • Vox ☛ Who will win Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul on Netflix?

    One might reasonably wonder what chance the internet’s most obnoxious star, a cruiserweight, stands against Tyson; one might also reasonably wonder how a 58-year-old, no matter how practiced, could beat a man 31 years younger. But to overfocus on the mechanics of boxing or of athleticism in general is to miss the point. If all audiences wanted to see was the world’s best boxers fighting each other, well, those matches would probably enjoy much more hype. Instead, the lion’s share of the attention goes to the rash of influencers-turned-boxers who concoct feuds with each other and solve them with their fists.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• India Times ☛ EU slaps Meta with a nearly 800 million euro fine for engaging in 'abusive' Marketplace practices

  The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, issued the 797.72 million euro ($841 million) penalty after its long-running investigation found that the company abused its dominant position and engaged in anti-competitive behaviour.

  The commission had accused Meta of distorting competition by tying its online classified ad business to its social network, automatically exposing Facebook users to Marketplace "whether they want it or not" and shutting out competitors.

• Silicon Angle ☛ EU issues €797M antitrust fine to Meta over Facebook Marketplace

  The European Union today issued a fine of €797.72 million, or about $840 million, to Meta Platforms Inc. over the way it operates its Facebook Marketplace e-commerce service.

  Officials have also ordered the company to change some of its business practices.

• VOA News ☛ EU fines Meta $840 million over abusive practices benefiting Facebook Marketplace

  The European Commission on Thursday fined Meta Platforms $840.24 million over abusive practices benefiting Facebook Marketplace, it said in a statement, confirming an earlier report by Reuters.

  "The European Commission has fined Meta ... for breaching EU antitrust rules by tying its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and by imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers," the European Commission said.

• The Washington Post ☛ EU fines Meta $800 million for ‘abusive practices’ on Facebook Marketplace

  The European Commission fined Meta $840 million Thursday over allegations that it unlawfully used its signature social control media platform to power its classified-ads service, Facebook Marketplace.

• The Washington Post ☛ The FTC is preparing to investigate Microsoft’s cloud business

  The Federal Trade Commission is planning to launch an investigation into Microsoft’s cloud software business over alleged anticompetitive practices, as the Democratic-led agency tries to cement a legacy of aggressive regulation during President Joe Biden’s final weeks in office.

• The Register UK ☛ Apple's iCloud hit with £3 billion overcharging claim

  Anyone who has had to deal with an iPhone sending multiple reminders about the device being unable to create a backup due to insufficient iCloud capacity – and wearily signed up to iCloud to stop the warnings – will be very familiar with these tactics.

  Apple has faced allegations elsewhere regarding some sharp practices over its iCloud storage – namely that it operates a near monopoly, with third parties not given the same access as the fruit cart, and that customers are encouraged to sign up for iCloud over alternatives.

• International Business Times ☛ Are UK Apple Customers Being Overcharged For iCloud? £3 Billion Lawsuit Says 'Yes'

  Akman also noted that the case centres on Apple's possible abuse of a dominant position. If Which? can demonstrate that Apple's practices led to excessive charges for UK consumers, then the Competition Appeal Tribunal could award compensation. Akman added, "The remedies can be wide-ranging and would normally require the company in question to terminate any violation which the court has found."

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Federal Circuit Summarily Affirms Invalidity of Geolocation Patent Under Section 101

      Sitting by designation in Delaware District Court, Federal Circuit Senior Judge William Bryson found claims 1-10 of GeoComply's U.S. Patent No. 9,413,805 ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101.  On appeal, the Federal Circuit has now affirmed that judgment -- albeit in a Rule 36 summary affirmance. GeoComply Sols. Inc. v. Xpoint Servs. LLC, No. 23-1578 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 13, 2024). The inventor, Anna Sainsbury, co-founded GeoComply in 2011 and has served as CEO for most of the past 13 years.  GeoComply processes billions of transactions annually - mostly for the online gaming (casino) industry.  The successful defendant in this case - Xpoint - is a key competitor.

• Trademarks

  • New York Times ☛ Oakland Airport Can’t Use San Francisco in Its Name, Judge Rules

    The airport’s name, San Francisco Bay Oakland International, suggested that the “lower rated airport” was associated with San Francisco, a federal judge said in a temporary order.

  • Techdirt ☛ Ukraine Denied EU Trademark For ‘Russian Warship, Go Fuck Yourself’

    But what was a moment of defiant heroism quickly morphed into people making business decisions. First it was the Ukrainian soldier who sought to trademark the phrase, stating that he’d become aware of merchandise using his words and would seek licensing arrangements once granted the mark. That isn’t how trademark law works, of course. Then Kyiv stepped in, petitioning for a trademark on the phrase in the EU.

    And the EU has correctly refused to issue the trademark, with its central premise being that the phrase wasn’t widely used by Ukraine in commerce, but as a political rallying cry.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Men Arrested in Magis TV Piracy Raids Also Face Malicious Software Charges

    Police raids in Colombia and Ecuador this week against people involved in the sale and supply of illegal streaming service Magis TV, have an unusual component. In addition to the usual charges relating to the distribution of unlicensed streams, initial reports suggest that cybersecurity crimes relating to the functionality of the Magis TV software will also feature among the charges.

  • Creative Commons ☛ Top Questions about Open Culture Answered in Five Short Videos

    The series features insights from CC staff and facilitators from the CC Certificate Course on Open Culture. Thank you for your participation in making this series a success!

  • Pivot to AI ☛ ProQuest is quietly trying to license academic books to feed an AI

    We’ve heard from authors that ProQuest has been contacting their publishers seeking deals to ingest content for AI training.

    The publishers have told the authors there might be money in this — though presumably a vanishingly small amount.

  • The Register UK ☛ Academic papers retracted due to ... software licensing?

    An academic journal has retracted two papers because it determined their authors used unlicensed software.

    As noted by Retraction Watch, Elsevier's Ain Shams Engineering Journal withdrew two papers exploring dam failures after complaints from Flow Science, the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based maker of a computational fluid dynamics application called FLOW-3D.