Leftovers

• France24 ☛ Jake Paul beats 58-year-old Mike Tyson as expecting crowd booed, wanting more action

  The boos from a crowd wanting more action were growing again when Jake Paul dropped his gloves before the final bell, and bowed toward 58-year-old Mike Tyson. Details with Emily Boyle.

• Ruben Schade ☛ My dream multi-function home office machine

  We’ve all seen those multi-function devices people use in small offices and when working from home. They’ve been invaluable to me over the years, but they’ve always lacked a certain Je ne sais quoi.

  This would be my dream device:

• Standards/Consortia

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Accessibility is still an uphill battle

    I overheard a few techbros having a conversation next to me at this coffee shop. It was easy, they weren’t using their indoor voices:

    Dude A: Day one seems to all be about accessibility. They have workshops and…

    Dude B: Well that’s a massive wank. Day two?

  • Hackaday ☛ Ethernet From First Principles

    For someone programming in a high-level language like Python, or even for people who interact primarily with their operating system and the software running on it, it can seem like the computer hardware is largely divorced from the work. Yes, the computer has to be physically present to do something like write a Hackaday article, but most of us will not understand the Assembly language, machine code, or transistor layout well enough to build up to what makes a browser run. [Francis Stokes] is a different breed, though, continually probing these mysterious low-level regions of our computerized world where he was recently able to send an Ethernet packet from scratch.

• Science

  • New York Times ☛ Leonids Meteor Shower: When and How to Watch Its Peak

    The event produces some of the year’s fastest meteors, although the nearly full moon may make them challenging to spot.

  • Science Alert ☛ A Physicist Says 'Paradox-Free' Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible

    "The maths checks out."

  • Science Alert ☛ Cannabis Really Can Induce Sleep, And Now We Know Why

    The first evidence of its kind.

  • Science Alert ☛ Where Have All The Triplets Gone? The Mystery Explained

    There's been a sharp decline.

  • Science Alert ☛ The Radical Plan to Build a Spaceship to Carry Humans For Generations

    This is really far out.

  • Science Alert ☛ 'Brain Training' May Not Work, But There Is a Way to Boost Your Cognition

    The evidence is in.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Say This One Particular Diet May Slow The Decline of The Brain

    Blood sugar is the key.

  • Science Alert ☛ Algae That Can Cause Memory Loss Found Lurking in Seafood

    A neurotoxin you don't want to eat.

  • Science Alert ☛ Ancient Humans Were Apex Predators For 2 Million Years, Study Discovers

    The real paleo diet was rich in mammoth.

  • New Yorker ☛ The Lizard King of Long Island

    Jon Sperling secretly spread a non-native species across the Northeast. “It’s insane what this guy was doing,” a biologist said.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Ruben Schade ☛ In search of the perfect soap

    Don’t worry, this isn’t a post about an overengineered access protocol I last talked about a decade ago. Or… is it?

    In 1978, Michael Franks began his search for the perfect shampoo. My mum heard a friend play that song on their turntable in the 1980s, and it began a lifelong obsession with the singer/songwriter and his works. She passed this onto me, both in musical tastes, and in my middle name. While my favourite song remains Tiger in the Rain, this song about shampoo continues to tickle me all these years later. Michael penned this, a producer gave it the green light, and it was released to the world. Wonderful.

  • NYPost ☛ The negative seed oil hype is all wrong, experts say — the problem is American ‘overconsumption’

    Never mind the canola contrarians, the peanut pooh-poohers and the grapeseed gloom-and-doomers, say the pros.

  • New York Times ☛ Ten Newborns Die in India Hospital Fire

    The deadly episode was reportedly caused by a short circuit. Hospital fires are not uncommon in India, which lags in fire preparedness and building safety.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Cloudbooklet ☛ Google Gemini Hey Hi (AI) Chatbot Abuses Student with ‘Please Die’

    Did Surveillance Giant Google Gemini Hey Hi (AI) chatbot cross the line? The Hey Hi (AI) reportedly told a student to die sparking concerns.

  • Hackaday ☛ Playing Chess Against LLMs And The Mystery Of Instruct Models

    At first glance, trying to play chess against a large language model (LLM) seems like a daft idea, as its weighted nodes have, at most, been trained on some chess-adjacent texts. It has no concept of board state, stratagems, or even whatever a ‘rook’ or ‘knight’ piece is. This daftness is indeed demonstrated by [Dynomight] in a recent blog post (Substack version), where the Stockfish chess AI is pitted against a range of LLMs, from a small Llama model to GPT-3.5. Although the outcomes (see featured image) are largely as you’d expect, there is one surprise: the gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct model, which seems quite capable of giving Stockfish a run for its money, albeit on Stockfish’s lower settings.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Gemini Hey Hi (AI) tells the user to die — the answer appears out of nowhere as the user was asking Gemini's help with his homework

    Google's Gemini Hey Hi (AI) just threatened a user asking for help with their homework.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New York Times ☛ Israel Strikes Near Beirut as Two Medics Killed in South Lebanon

    Israel’s bombing campaign has complicated U.S. diplomacy to stop the Israel-Hezbollah war.

  • France24 ☛ Israeli strikes hit Lebanon and Gaza

    Israeli strikes killed at least 11 people across Lebanon on Friday — including a mother, father and their three kids in a home — as rescue workers called off their search for survivors a day after an Israeli strike on a civil defense center killed 14 emergency workers and volunteers. Details with Ethan Hajj and Charlotte Hughes.

  • New York Times ☛ Young Gazans Reach Global Audiences With Videos of Everyday Life in War

    Displaced young Palestinians are chronicling their wartime routines on Fentanylware (TikTok) and Instagram, allowing their followers abroad to see a more personal side of the conflict.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China hopes Japan will ‘properly handle’ history and Taiwan issues: Pooh-tin to Ishiba

    Ishiba told Pooh-tin that he wanted to build a “constructive and stable” relationship.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Internet cut during protests in India’s violence-hit Manipur state

    Protesters were besieging politicians' homes over deadly inter-ethnic violence in the restive state.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • RFERL ☛ Putin Not Interested In Negotiations, Only In Ending His Own Isolation, Zelenskiy Says

      Russian President Vladimir Putin "is not interested in holding negotiations to end the war but wants to hold talks with foreign leaders to put an end to his international isolation," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on November 16.

    • New York Times ☛ Bitter Infighting Divides Russian Opposition

      Accusations of betrayal have already tarnished the movement once led by Aleksei Navalny. Now, the election of Donald J. Trump, a Putin admirer, further complicates the opposition efforts.

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • France24 ☛ South Africa: volunteers seek help to illegal miners trapped in disused mine

      In South Africa, hundreds of illegal miners remain underground at an abandoned goldmine. The gouverment has rejected calls for the miners to be allowed to leave the deep shaft underground without being arrested. Volunteer rescue workers have been calling for an end to the police operation, arguing their lives are at risk. For more information, FRANCE 24's Gavin Lee is joined by Mathapelo Diale, secretary at Mining Affected Communities United in Action and Duncan Money, consultant historian and researcher on the mining industry, both in Johannesburg.

• Finance

  • China's young unemployed 'pretending' to work in libraries, cafes

    Some create a routine where none exists by studying or applying for jobs in public spaces

  • The Straits Times ☛ IMF, Pakistan wrap up unscheduled talks on $7 billion bailout

    WASHINGTON - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Friday it held constructive talks with authorities in Pakistan on economic policy and reform efforts to reduce vulnerabilities during an unscheduled staff visit.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • JURIST ☛ South Korea court sentences opposition leader to prison for violating election laws

    The Seoul Central District Court on Friday sentenced opposition figure Lee Jae-myung to a suspended one year in prison for making false statements before the 2022 presidential elections, according to a statement published by South Korean member of Parliament Lee So-young.

  • JURIST ☛ Florida AG sues FEMA over alleged discrimination in hurricane relief efforts

    Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Deanne Criswell and former FEMA supervisor Marn’i Washington, alleging civil rights violations in the federal agency’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Off Guardian ☛ WATCH: How to Verify a Quote – #SolutionsWatch

      How do you tell truth from fiction when it comes to unsourced online information? This week on #SolutionsWatch, James answers a question about how to verify a quotation by showing you step-by-step how to start sourcing information online for yourself!

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • JURIST ☛ US antisemitism bill sparks free speech concerns

    The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent a letter to the US Senate on Thursday, warning the legislative body that the passage of the Antisemitism Awareness Act may infringe on the right to free speech.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • France24 ☛ Activist Greta Thunberg urges release of Armenians in Azerbaijan

    Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg Friday urged the release of political prisoners held by COP29 summit host Azerbaijan, including detainees from its neighbour and rival Armenia whom she described as "hostages". Story by Emily Boyle.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Hackaday ☛ World’s First Virtual Meeting: 5,100 Engineers Phoned In

    Would you believe that the first large-scale virtual meeting happened as early as 1916? More than a century before Zoom meetings became just another weekday burden, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) pulled off an unprecedented feat: connecting 5,100 engineers across eight cities through an elaborate telephone network. Intrigued? The IEEE, the successor of the AIEE, just published an article about it.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • New York Times ☛ Netflix Livestream Outages Reported During Mike Tyson-Jake Paul Fight

    Users across the U.S. reported being unable to load the high-profile boxing match.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Netflix’s Tyson-Paul boxing show spikes views, crashes service

    “We crashed the site,” said Paul, after claiming victory over 58-year-old Tyson. “This is the biggest event. Over 120 million people on Netflix.”

  • NYPost ☛ Netflix reveals stunning viewership number for Jake Paul-Mike Tyson bout despite brutal buffering

    All of the buffering complaints didn’t prevent DRM spreader Netflix users from tuning into Jake Paul’s victory by unanimous decision against Mike Tyson on Friday.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Half-Life 2 gets a major 20th Anniversary Update and bundles Lost Coast with episodes —the game is now free on Steam until November 18

    Half-Life 2 gets a 20th Anniversary update that bundles the Episodes and Lost Coast into the main game while making several across-the-board additions and improvements to in-game visuals, though not to the level of a full port to a new engine.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• KOL445 | Audio: Is Intellectual Property Legitimate? Three Essays

  Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 445.

  The show "Axioms of Liberty" has an episode about my IP writing, including readings of three early pieces: First, one of my earliest writings, Stephan Kinsella, "Letter on Intellectual Property Rights," IOS Journal 5, no. 2 (June 1995), pp. 12-13, and followed by David Kelley's response. Next, “Is Intellectual Property Legitimate?”, first published in the Pennsylvania Bar Association Intellectual Property Newsletter 1 (Winter 1998): 3 and republished in the Federalist Society’s Intellectual Property Practice Group Newsletter, vol. 3, Issue 3 (Winter 2000). And finally, "In Defense of Napster and Against the Second Homesteading Rule," LewRockwell.com (Sept. 4, 2000). I am not sure who this podcaster is, but he has my gratitude.

• Patents

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ USPTO Timeliness Slipping: Patent Term Adjustment Data Shows Growing Examination Delays

    The USPTO has two traditional functions: (1) quality examination to ensure applications satisfy the demanding statutory requirements of patentability; and (2) timely and efficient processing of those applications. Recent data suggests the Office is struggling with the second of these mandates, as reflected in a sharp uptick in Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) awards. [Charts below]