Leftovers

• Tedium ☛ Leaning Towers

  Considering recent innovations in cell phone towers, which have been shrinking in the 5G era. Are they still NIMBY targets? Are we still trying to hide them with fake trees?

  Earlier this week, I got an email about an old piece that brought me joy. It was about one of the tedious topics I hit in my first year, when I was still trying to figure out what Tedium would end up being, but it still had some shape. (For one thing, it was half the length of a modern Tedium issue.) The email complimented the topic of the old piece, about the controversy and unpopularity of cell towers, suggesting that, despite its age, the subject still had some value. (If I get a nice email about this piece, I would love to revisit it. I feel like I took my shot too early on.) A lot has happened since I originally wrote it—the 3G network has been effectively dismantled, and 5G is basically a given in most places. Has the unsightly cell tower gotten any easier to hide? Today’s Tedium tries to find out.

• People Magazine ☛ Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar's Santo Tequila Trucks Hijacked in 'Double Heist.' Now $1M Worth of Tequila Is Missing (Exclusive)

  Johanson then discovered that the loads had been "illegally double brokered" to different carriers, according to the report.

  "We believe the GPS tracking signal we were monitoring was spoofed by a GPS emulator application used by the criminals," reads the report.

  "This is the strangest thing I've ever seen in the spirits industry over 25 years. I've never seen anything like this," Butkus tells PEOPLE. "Two of our trucks, four days apart, to be stolen, it's so out of the ordinary, out of the norm, that we're wondering why our trucks may have been targeted."

• New Yorker ☛ Why N.S.A. Rules Say No to Smartphones, No to Texting, Yes to Podcasts

  Brian Fassler was invited to try out for the host job when he was auditioning for a voice-over on an internal N.S.A. video. He came to the agency after the small local bank he worked for was bought by a larger one. “My job went away,” he said. The podcast’s devotees know Fassler from his conversation with Vinh Nguyen, the N.S.A.’s Chief Responsible AI Officer, in an episode titled “AI and the Future of National Security.” Nguyen, in describing the ways in which the N.S.A. monitors the military plans of foreign leaders, said, “What we found was that A.I. can be embedded through the entire intelligence-analyst workflow.”

• Terence Eden ☛ 2024 – A Year In Review (special mid-life crisis edition)

  It's my birthday! Therefore it marks the end of another year of me hurtling around Earth's yellow sun. So, as is customary, here's my year in review.

• Science

  • [Old] Daniel Holden ☛ Cubic Interpolation of Quaternions

    Whenever the subject of cubic interpolation and splines comes up it would be wrong of me not to recommend the absolute master-class that is Freya Holmer's spline videos - watching these should give you a great intuition not just about the process we are going to go through in this article, but about splines in general.

  • Daniel Estévez ☛ Hera telemetry

    In my previous post I spoke about the recording I made of the X-band telemetry signal of Hera with the Allen Telescope Array shortly after it was launched. Despite the lack of publicly available accurate ephemerides at the time of launch, I managed to track the spacecraft by hand and decode a good amount of telemetry frames. In this post I will do an in-depth analysis of the telemetry.

  • The Conversation ☛ Apophis: a new European space mission could get up close with a large asteroid that’s set to brush by Earth

    Luckily, Apophis won’t hit Earth in 2029. Instead, it will pass by Earth safely at a distance of 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometres), about one-twelfth the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Nevertheless, this is a very close pass by such a big object, and Apophis will be visible with the naked eye.

    [NASA] and the European Space Agency have seized this rare opportunity to send separate robotic spacecraft to rendezvous with Apophis and learn more about it. Their missions could help inform efforts to deflect an asteroid that threatens Earth, should we need to in future.

  • [Old] EarthSky ☛ Asteroid Apophis to sweep close 5 years from tomorrow

    Five years from tomorrow – on Friday, April 13, 2029 – a relatively large and extremely infamous asteroid named 99942 Apophis will zoom past Earth. It’ll be easily visible to the eye. Many astronomers will study it. But Apophis will not strike us in 2029. For a time, initial observations suggested that if Apophis passed through a region of space only half a mile wide (about 800 meters) – dubbed a “keyhole” by astronomers – at the 2029 pass, then it might strike us exactly seven years later, on April 13, 2036. But, by 2006, that idea was disproven.

  • [Old] The Planetary Society ☛ Asteroid Apophis: Will It Hit Earth? Your…

    Apophis is a near-Earth asteroid, meaning its orbit around the Sun brings it within 1.3 times the distance between the Sun and Earth. Its full name is Apophis 99942. After Apophis was discovered in 2004, the asteroid was given a 2.7% chance of hitting Earth in 2029, causing a great deal of media attention. It also for a time had a small chance of hitting Earth in 2036. Additional observations have shown it will not hit Earth in 2029 or in 2036.

    Nevertheless, in 2029 Apophis will come closer to Earth than our geostationary communications satellites, likely sparking a great deal of public interest. The Planetary Society has submitted recommendations to the U.S. scientific community that identify science and outreach opportunities. We also present these recommendations at workshops and conferences.

• Career/Education

  • Neil Selwyn ☛ Full list of CSET2025 meetings (February 2025) – Critical Studies of EDUCATION & TECHNOLOGY

    CSET is short-hand for critical studies of education and technology … CSET2025 is a series of academic meetings being held around world during the same week (February 17th and 21st, week 8 of 2025) on the common theme: ‘Problematising education and digital technology’.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Completing The UE1’s Paper Tape Reader And First Squiggles

    On today’s installment of UE1 vacuum tube computer construction, we join [David Lovett] once more on the Usagi Electric farm, as he determines just how much work remains before the project can be called done. When we last left off, the paper tape reader had been motorized, with the paper tape being pulled through smoothly in front of the photodiodes. This left [David] with the task to create a PCB to wire up these photodiodes, put an amplification circuit together (with tubes, of course) to amplify the signal from said photodiodes, and add some lighting (two 1-watt incandescents) to shine through the paper tape holes. All of this is now in place, but does it work?

  • PC Mag ☛ Nvidia's Delayed Blackwell AI Chips Are Overheating in Servers

    Nvidia's upcoming Blackwell GPUs for AI computing may face further delays because they're prone to overheating when connected to each other on server racks, The Information reports.

    The issue has reportedly been traced to the server rack Nvidia designed for Blackwell—which can connect up to 72 GPUs at a time. Nvidia has repeatedly redesigned the racks, which could delay GPU server shipments and the opening of new data centers for Google, Microsoft, or Meta.

    In August, a previous report suggested that a "design flaw" had caused the Blackwell GPUs' launch to be delayed by months. It's unclear whether this flaw is the server rack design issue. Nvidia announced Blackwell in March and initially said the GPUs could ship as soon as Q2 2024 before it encountered challenges.

  • AMD's layoffs: trimming resources or deeper cuts?

    Despite recording over US$1 billion in profits during the third quarter of 2023 and thriving in the AI market with double-digit growth, AMD recently announced a 4% workforce reduction, affecting approximately 1,000 of its 26,000 employees.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Hindustan Times ☛ UK vet killed himself over ‘rich’ clients putting pets down ‘to save money’

    She also recalled a remark by his late son, “When I’ve got somebody saying they won’t pay to help their animal and they’re sitting there with a brand new car outside, and other people who were really struggling [financially] would do anything to save their animals, but there was nothing they could do because it was already too late,” adding, “He was finding that destroying.”

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Cities, states say they’ll need more help to replace millions of lead pipes

    “It took us close to 100 years to get all of these lead service lines in the ground, and the EPA is asking us to get them out in 10 years,” said Tom Dobbins, CEO of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, an advocacy group for publicly owned water systems. “The [Biden] administration grossly underestimated the cost. Obviously, if the federal government doesn’t provide the funding for this, the ratepayers will have to pay for this. That exacerbates certain communities’ affordability issues.”

  • The Nation ☛ How Wisconsin Lost Control of the Strange Disease Killing Its Deer

    “Available data indicate that the incidence of CWD in cervids is increasing and that the potential exists for transmission to humans and subsequent human disease,” wrote the renowned epidemiologist Michael Osterholm and his colleagues in a 2019 paper. “Given the long incubation period of prion-associated conditions, improving public health measures now to prevent human exposure to CWD prions and to further understand the potential risk to humans may reduce the likelihood of a [mad cow]-like event in the years to come.”

    To help prepare for the possibility of a spillover, Osterholm and other experts, with support from the Minnesota Legislature, have initiated a “contingency planning project.” The federal government is a different story: To date, there is no comprehensive national strategy to tackle CWD as a potential public health threat.

  • [Old] Newsweek ☛ Cancer Warning As Pesticides As Bad As Smoking, Scientists Claim - Newsweek

    In a new study, published in the journal Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society, researchers from Colorado's Rocky Vista University used nationwide population data to evaluate the association between pesticide exposure and the risk of developing various cancers.

    The researchers looked at 69 different pesticides in their analysis, arguing that, in the real world, people are unlikely to be exposed to a single pesticide but rather a "cocktail" of different chemicals, specific to the land use in their region.

    After accounting for other potentially confounding variables, like smoking rates and socioeconomic status, the researchers found that living in communities with heavy agricultural production and pesticide exposure was associated with the development of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, leukemia and cancers of the bladder, colon, lung and pancreas.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Cocoa, Green Tea Might Counter Effects of 'Stress Eating' Fatty Foods

    Drinking cocoa that’s high in healthy flavanols along with a fatty meal can counteract some of the impact of fats on the body, particularly the blood vessels, researchers found.

    “Flavanols are a type of compound that occur in different fruits, vegetables, tea and nuts including berries and unprocessed cocoa,” said lead investigator Rosalind Baynham, a research fellow with the University of Birmingham in the U.K. "Flavanols are known to have health benefits, particularly for regulating blood pressure and protecting cardiovascular health.”

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ The ‘Penicillin Girls’ Made One of the World’s Most Life-Saving Discoveries Possible

    Confusingly, while one technician at the Peoria lab, Mary Hunt, also bore this nickname, in fact, the true Moldy Mary was probably an anonymous Peoria woman who handed an old cantaloupe to a lab guard, in one of history’s most underrated gifts. What’s certain: Thanks to a funky cantaloupe’s exceptional ability to produce penicillin—six times the amount of Fleming’s mold—the mass-production of antibiotics was finally possible. Penicillin has since saved more than 80 million lives.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Kev Quirk ☛ My Sony Ear Buds Are Dead

    Two and a half years ago, almost to the day, I bought my Sony WF-1000XM4 ear buds, but now they won't hold a charge, so I'm on the hunt for new ones.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft starts boiling the Copilot frog

    Some time back, this columnist noted the stark disparity between the hype of the metaverse in business and the stark, soulless hyper-corporate experience. Line-of-business virtual reality has two saving graces over corporate AI. It can't just appear on the desktop overnight and poke its fingers into everything involved in the daily IT experience. Thus it can't generate millions in licensing at the tick of a box. VR is losing its backers huge amounts of money that can't be disguised or avoided, but corporate AI is far more insidious.

    As is the dystopia it is creating. Look at the key features by which Microsoft 365 Copilot is being sold.

  • Futurism ☛ Barbers Alarmed When Customers Start Asking for AI-Generated Haircuts

    Dean Allan, the owner of a beauty salon in Edmonton, Alberta tells the CBC that it's becoming more and more common for clients to instead show him an image generated by a machine learning model.

    "Usually it's got a sheen," Allan told the broadcaster. "It's thicker than the average person's hair."

  • Wired ☛ Why the US Government Banned Investments in Some Chinese AI Startups

    Late last month, the US Treasury Department finalized new restrictions limiting what kinds of Chinese tech startups US venture capital firms can invest in for national security reasons. When they go into effect in January, the long-awaited measures will stop American VCs and other investors from pouring money into cutting-edge Chinese AI models. After president-elect Trump takes office a few weeks later, his administration may expand the rules and make them even tougher.

  • The Nation ☛ Is It Possible to Suspend Disbelief at Ayad Akhtar’s AI Play?

    Midway through Ayad Akhtar’s new play McNeal, a deepfake appears of Robert Downey Jr., who stars as the title character. The image is as unsettling as it is underwhelming—it fails to provoke a suspension of disbelief. Yet the animation (manufactured by the studio AGBO) is not entirely out of place in a work that often seems more like a simulacrum of a play than the red-blooded real thing.

  • CBC ☛ AI-generated images creating unrealistic expectations, hairdressers say

    The hair salon isn't the only unexpected place artificial intelligence is shifting things, it's also changing the way people ask for custom cake decorations.

    Olivia Hua, owner of Cake Couture in west Edmonton, said she's also seeing an increase of AI-generated requests. And they can get weird.

  • Rlang ☛ Using LLM agents to review tutorials ‘in character’ as learners

    Part of the Epiverse-TRACE initiative involves development of training materials that span early, middle and late stage outbreak analysis and modelling tasks. To ensure that our tutorials are accessible to target audiences, we have developed a series of learner personas to inform the design of learning materials. These personas include the following: [...]

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Coca-Cola’s new AI-generated Christmas ad is as bad as you’d expect

    Critical and popular response has been as bad as it deserved. Everyone thinks the ad looks cheap and like a brand on the skids.

  • The Verge ☛ Google now lets you manage all of your old Nest Cams from the Home app

    Google has been slowly making it possible to bring Nest cams into Home over the past year and change. When you transfer your Nest Cam IQ cameras over to Home, you’ll be able to “review video history in event and timeline views, access camera settings, and more without switching between the Nest and Google Home apps,” Google says. From Home, Google also lets you view live streams from cameras in your favorites tab and set up automations.

  • RFERL ☛ 'Mirror Politics' And Deepfakes: How Authoritarians Are Honing Their Disinformation Game

    In an interview with RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service, Kartte talks about the tactics authoritarian regimes such as Russia use to spread disinformation globally, highlighting recent malign efforts in Moldova during its presidential election and referendum on integration into the European Union.

    RFE/RL: You've detailed how suspected Russian actors allegedly bribed politicians, bought votes, and spread deepfake videos targeting Moldovan President Maia Sandu during the recent vote and referendum. Sandu herself called it an "unprecedented attack on democracy." Could you discuss some of the specifics of this Kremlin-backed campaign?

  • Peta Pixel ☛ Apple Smells Blood in the Water

    When Apple shuttered development of Aperture, there were rumors it did so because it entered into a gentleman’s agreement with Adobe to give Lightroom the space it needed to take over the photography software industry. That worked, and Adobe applications ran great on Apple computers.

    Then a few years ago, Adobe started courting Windows aggressively. The company showed up at Microsoft events, touted its performance on Windows, and pushed harder into the PC space. Just this year, Adobe and Microsoft further cozied up to each other with a partnership with Microsoft Advertising. Full tinfoil hat speculation here, but Apple saw this as a betrayal of its agreement the decade prior. Adobe was a regular part of Apple’s WWDC events for years but hasn’t been on stage since 2018. Over the past few years where Adobe has struggled to win in the war of public perception, Apple has ramped up its efforts to return to form.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ South Africa Wits University unveils pan-African AI center

    South Africa’s Wits University is set to unveil its first dedicated artificial intelligence institute this week to help drive the technology’s development across the continent. It comes amid growing concerns that AI may widen the existing digital divide between wealthy countries and poorer nations.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Inside Towers ☛ FBI and CISA: China-Backed Hackers Breached U.S. Networks - Inside Towers

      The U.S. government has uncovered what it says is a significant cyber espionage campaign allegedly conducted by China-linked hackers, targeting American commercial telecom infrastructure. The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reported that the hackers compromised networks at multiple telecommunications companies, stealing customer call records and compromising private communications of certain individuals, including those involved in government or political activity, reports Mobile World Live.

    • The Lawfare Institute ☛ CALEA Was a National Security Disaster Waiting to Happen

      The damage from such an exploit cannot be overstated. During 2011 testimony before Congress, I noted: [...]

    • [Old] Dark Reading ☛ Sat Typhoon APT Subverts Law Enforcement Wiretapping

      In addition to the wiretapping connections, the sources said Salt Typhoon also had access to more general Internet traffic flowing through the provider networks, and that the cyberattackers went after a handful of targets outside the US as well. The APT could have had access for months, they added.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ NCSC Warns Of Fraud Risks As Black Friday Approaches

      According to recent data from Action Fraud, UK consumers lost over £11.5 million to online scams during the holiday period last year, with the vast majority of these incidents linked to fraudulent purchases made during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This represents an alarming increase of nearly £1 million compared to the previous year. The statistics underline the growing sophistication of scammers, including Black Friday hackers who are exploiting online shopping platforms to target unsuspecting shoppers.

      Cybersecurity experts have highlighted how fraudsters are using advanced techniques, including artificial intelligence (AI), to craft highly convincing scams. These AI-driven attacks can be difficult to detect, making it even more crucial for shoppers to be vigilant during the Black Friday sale. Fraudsters may use fake websites, social media ads, or phishing emails to lure victims into entering sensitive personal and financial information.

    • [Old] Stuart Schechter ☛ Before You Turn On Two-Factor Authentication… | Mildly-Aggrieved (not mad!) Scientist

      Many online accounts allow you to supplement your password with a second form of identification, which can prevent some prevalent attacks. The second factors you can use to identify yourself include authenticator apps on your phone, which generate codes that change every 30 seconds, and security keys, small pieces of hardware similar in size and shape to USB drives. Since innovations that can actually improve the security of your online accounts are rare, there has been a great deal of well-deserved enthusiasm for two-factor authentication (as well as for password managers, which make it easy to use a different random password for every one of your online accounts.) These are technologies more people should be using.

      However, in trying to persuade users to adopt second factors, advocates sometimes forget to disclose that all security measures have trade-offs . As second factors reduce the risk of some attacks, they also introduce new risks. One risk is that you could be locked out of your account when you lose your second factor, which may be when you need it the most. Another is that if you expect second factors to protect you from those attacks that they can not prevent, you may become more vulnerable to the those attacks.

      Before you require a second factor to login to your accounts, you should understand the risks, have a recovery plan for when you lose your second factor(s), and know the tricks attackers may use to defeat two-factor authentication.

    • [Old] Stuart Schechter ☛ Before You Use a Password Manager

      In this article, I’ll start by examining the benefits and risks of using a password manager. It’s hard to overstate the importance of protecting the data in your password manager, and having a recovery strategy for that data, so I’ll cover that next. I’ll then present a low-risk approach to experimenting with using a password manager, which will help you understand the tough choices you’ll need to make before using it for your most-important passwords. I’ll close with a handy list of the most important decisions you’ll need to make when using a password manager.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • India Times ☛ elon musk: Elon Musk asked people to upload their health data, X users obliged

      "This is very personal information, and you don't exactly know what Grok is going to do with it," said Bradley Malin, a professor of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University who has studied machine learning in health care.

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ No illegality in ban on mobile phones at polling booths: HC

      The bench said no right is vested in any person to only show their document for verification on their phones via digital lockers.

    • The Hindu ☛ No illegality in mobile phones ban at polling booths: Mumbai High Court

      The PIL had urged the HC to direct the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the State Election Commission to allow voters to carry phones and to show their identity proof through the DigiLocker app introduced by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology.

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ Israeli strike on Beirut kills Hezbollah spokesman

    An Israeli strike on a building in central Beirut on Sunday killed Hezbollah's media relations chief Mohammad Afif, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters, though there was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah. More information with FRANCE 24 correspondent in Beirut, Rawad Taha.

  • New York Times ☛ Airstrikes Hit Central Beirut for First Time in Weeks

    The attacks came as Israel’s military has been pounding an area just outside the Lebanese capital with some of the heaviest waves of bombardment in months.

  • France24 ☛ Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strikes across Gaza

    Dozens of Palestinians were killed or injured in an Israeli strike on a multi-storey residential building housing at least six families in northern Gaza's Beit Lahiya town on Sunday, medics and residents said. Details by Camille Knight.

  • New York Times ☛ Israeli Strikes in Central and Northern Gaza Kill More Than 30 People

    As Israel’s military wages a renewed offensive in the northern part of the enclave, Al Bureij and Nuseirat in central Gaza came under attack.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Trump’s popular vote total drops as he confirms plan to use military for mass deportations: Live updates

    As final votes are tallied from the November 5 election, Trump’s share of the popular vote has fallen below 50 percent and his mandate does not appear as sweeping as was first thought.

  • India Times ☛ Sam Altman: OpenAI's Sam Altman becomes latest tech executive involved in San Francisco government

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has joined a growing list of former tech leaders taking roles in San Francisco's government following this month's election. San Francisco Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie named Altman, the head of the artificial-intelligence company behind ChatGPT, as one of seven co-chairs of his transition team, the campaign announced on Monday.

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Parent ByteDance Valuation Hits A Whopping $300 Billion

    ByteDance informed investors in recent days that it was looking to perform a share buy back valued at $180 per share. The move is one that gives liquidity to investors and early employees—but also results in a $300 billion valuation for the company and its many social media arms. Just recently, TikTok announced integration with Lemon8, an Instagram competitor created by ByteDance.

  • The Register UK ☛ Teen swatter-for-hire admits to hundreds of hoax calls

    According to the US Department of Justice, Filion targeted religious and educational institutions, government officials, and numerous individuals across the United States. He placed most of the calls between 2022 and 2024, making many when aged just 16.

    Filion’s actions are commonly known as “swatting” - a term that refers to calling emergency services to report a fake emergency of sufficient seriousness that it has the potential to result in the deployment of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams.

  • YLE ☛ Finland issues crisis preparedness guide for households

    The online guide offers a list of situations and scenarios including epidemics, cybersecurity events, wildfires, payment system disruptions, acts of terrorism, water outages and many more. Then, it delves into further information about ways to prepare for those scenarios.

  • The Register UK ☛ Sweden dishes out updated crisis and war-survival guide

    The "If crisis or war comes" [PDF] guide received its first update in six years and its distribution to every Swedish household begins today. Citing factors such as war, terrorism, cyberattacks, and increasingly extreme weather events, the 32-page guide was commissioned by the government and calls for unity to secure the country's independence.

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Judge to rule on throwing out Trump hush money conviction

    If Merchan throws out the case on that basis, there will be no sentencing of Trump, 78.

    If he does not, Trump's legal team would almost certainly seek to oppose or delay any sentencing, insisting it would interfere with Trump's role as commander-in-chief once he is sworn in on January 20.

  • New York Times ☛ Looters Strip Aid From About 100 Trucks in Gaza, U.N. Agency Says

    The agency, known as UNRWA, said in a statement on Monday that the convoy of 109 trucks had been driving from the Kerem Shalom border crossing in southern Gaza when it was looted on Saturday. Most of the trucks were lost, some of the drivers were reportedly shot, and some vehicles sustained extensive damage, the agency said.

    Only 11 trucks made it to their destination, said Louise Wateridge, an UNRWA spokeswoman currently in Gaza. Attackers shot the trucks’ tires out in order to stop and loot some of the vehicles, she said, and the agency is still waiting to hear how many casualties there were, and what types of injuries convoy members sustained.

  • The Hill ☛ Vivek Ramaswamy: 'We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright'

    Tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who accepted a role alongside Elon Musk in President-elect Trump’s incoming administration to lead the new “Department [sic] of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), said “certain agencies” are expected to be “deleted outright.”

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Column: Trump's outlandish Cabinet picks part of a bigger power grab

    At first glance, President-elect Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet nominees — Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are an odd list of ideologues and eccentrics chosen for political loyalty more than any substantive qualifications.

    But there’s a more important and potentially more dangerous factor that ties their nominations together: They are foot soldiers in a power grab that, if it succeeds, would weaken the institutional guardrails that limit the president’s powers and concentrate more authority in Trump’s hands.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ World’s 1.5C climate target ‘deader than a doornail’, experts say

    Scientists say goal to keep world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is not going to happen despite talks at Cop29 in Baku

  • NPR ☛ Countries agreed to try to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Is that still possible?

    But several new analyses, scientific studies, and international reports suggest the goal of keeping warming to below 1.5 C is becoming further away from possible. This is an outcome of countries delaying, walking back, or failing to implement ambitious efforts to cut fossil fuel emissions — moves that would most effectively stave off further warming, according to many scientific analyses.

  • Bert Hubert ☛ We don't know why people are voting like that, and the results are terrible

    Here is a list of recent and not so recent pieces which all attempt to explain things. Notably a lot of this revolves around what Harris supposedly did wrong, and NOT around how the population voted for outright trash. Most of these articles do not face up to the nasty fact that people are very ready to vote for a self-declared wannabe dictator who wants to deport millions of people and make life hell for huge swathes of the population. Seems too important to miss. But, here goes: [...]

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Veterans involved in Jan. 6 riot expect Trump to keep pardon promise

    Of the approximately 1,400 people who have faced charges for their involvement in the Capitol breach, 222 have military backgrounds, according to data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. That number includes two veterans convicted of orchestrating the attack, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers leader Stuart Rhodes. Tarrio was sentenced to 17 years in prison, and Rhodes received 22 years.

    Both far-right extremist groups targeted veterans for recruitment, experts have said. Twenty-one of the veterans and service members charged for their roles on Jan. 6 were part of the Oath Keepers, and 27 were Proud Boys members, according to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Federal News Network ☛ Army targets mission command data as it refines data stewardship roles

      As the U.S. Army is refining data stewardship practices by clearly defining who is responsible for the management of data across the service, the current focus is on mission command data as no single entity within the Army has clear ownership over that data.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Imposing neutrality on Ukraine will not stop Putin or bring peace to Europe

      Ukrainians have already learned the hard way that neutrality does not protect them against Russian aggression. The country officially embraced non-aligned status during the 2010-2014 presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, but this didn’t prevent Moscow from seeking to reassert full control over Ukraine. Initially, Russia’s efforts focused on orchestrating Ukraine’s economic reintegration through membership of the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union. When this sparked a popular backlash that led to the fall of the Yanukovych regime, Putin opted to use force and began the military invasion of Ukraine.

    • The Local SE ☛ Sweden releases updated version of 'If Crisis or War Comes' booklet

      The booklet "If Crisis or War Comes", sent by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), contains information about how to prepare for emergencies such as war, natural disasters, or cyber attacks.

      It is an updated version of a pamphlet that Sweden has issued five times since World War II.

    • The Korea Times ☛ Sweden, Finland urge residents to be ready for war

      Sweden on Monday began sending some five million pamphlets to residents urging them to prepare for the possibility of war, as neighbouring Finland launched a new preparedness website.

    • LRT ☛ Undersea cable between Lithuania and Sweden damaged – Telia

      “The cable was cut on Sunday morning, at around 10:00. The systems immediately reported that we had lost the connection. Further investigation and clarification took place, and it turned out that it was damaged,” Andrius Šemeškevičius, the company’s chief technology officer, told LRT TV on Monday evening.

      This followed earlier Finnish media reports about an unexplained failure of an undersea cable between Finland and Germany.

    • YLE ☛ Telecoms cable break reported between Finland and Germany

      All telecommunications running on the submarine cable have been cut off. A cybersecurity expert tells Yle that the cable break is likely to be intentional.

    • [Old] Jerusalem Post ☛ Swedish Jewish youth leader: 'I’m afraid someone will harm me'

      Despite previous successful efforts to combat antisemitism in Malmö, a city that has been the symbol of antisemitism, and the trend of Jews leaving their city because of extreme Islamists, “there is now a tangible fear that these advances may be undone,” the SVT.se report said. They also mentioned social media footage showing locals celebrating the Hamas attack which has “further shocked and scared the Jewish residents.”

    • New York Times ☛ Monday Briefing: Ukraine Can Hit Russia With U.S. Long-Range Weapons

      Plus, World of Warcraft turned 20.

    • Meduza ☛ Turkey’s president to urge G20 leaders to endorse plan to freeze Ukraine War — Bloomberg — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Missile hits apartment building in Ukraine’s Sumy, killing 10, including children — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ Putin Opponents March To Russian Embassy In Berlin, Condemn War

      Nearly 2,000 exiled Russians and other opponents of President Vladimir Putin and his unprovoked war against Ukraine marched to the Russian Embassy in Berlin on November 17, with leading activist Yulia Navalnaya declaring that “Putin is a murderer.”

    • Meduza ☛ Biden authorizes Ukraine to use long-range ATACMS missiles to strike Russia’s Kursk region — The New York Times — Meduza

• Environment

  • DeSmog ☛ World’s Biggest Meatpacker JBS Wants Public Money to Fight Climate Change

  • DeSmog ☛ Meat, Dairy and Pesticide Lobbyists Return in High Numbers to Climate Summit

  • The Revelator ☛ Salmon Have Returned Above the Klamath River Dams. Now What?

  • EcoWatch ☛ Is It Still Possible to Limit Warming to 1.5°C?

    The 1.5 degrees Celsius target was set in the Paris Agreement, an international treaty negotiated at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in 2015 and signed in 2016. The target was set to avoid catastrophic impacts of climate change, such as more frequent and intense events like flooding, hurricanes, droughts, heat waves and wildfires.

  • NYPost ☛ India’s capital chokes as air pollution levels hit 50 times the safe limit

    The smoke is then blown into cities, where auto emissions add to the pollution.

    Emissions from industries and the burning of coal to produce electricity are also linked to the pollution, which has been steadily ticking up in recent weeks.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Researchers call for recognition of tire particles as a distinct environmental threat

    Accounting for nearly one-third of all microplastics, TPs differ significantly from conventional microplastics in size, chemical complexity, and behavior in ecosystems. Researchers are now advocating for the reclassification of TPs as a standalone category of environmental concern.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Ocean warming and acidification threaten key ocean plankton groups, study warns

    According to a recent study published in Nature, many planktonic foraminifera species may face unprecedented environmental conditions by the end of this century, potentially surpassing their survival thresholds. Planktonic foraminifera are single-celled organisms living in seawater, many of which carry a calcium carbonate shell. In tropical regions, the changing environmental conditions could trigger further extinctions, impacting marine ecosystems and the ocean's carbon storage capacity.

  • Science Alert ☛ 'Bad Omen': Ancient Pyramid in Mexico Collapsed Into Pile of Rubble

    The pyramid was once one of the best-preserved monuments of the Michoacán Kingdom civilization. It is located at Ihuatzio, a remarkably preserved archaeological site that contains one other pyramid, a tower or fortress, and some tombs.

    It was first occupied 1,100 years ago by indigenous Nahuatl-speaking groups. Later, it became the headquarters of the P'urhépechas people, the only empire the Aztecs couldn't conquer. The culture still thrives to this day.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hackaday ☛ US’s UFO-Hunting Aerial Surveillance System Detailed In Report

      Formerly known as Unidentified Flying Objects, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) is a category of observations that are exactly what the UAP label suggests. This topic concerns the US military very much, as a big part of national security involves knowing everything that appears in the skies. This is the reason for the development of a new sensor suite by the Pentagon called GREMLIN. Recently, a new report has provided more details about what this system actually does.

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ A Federal Agent’s Laptop Held the Keys to Seize $3.6 Billion in Stolen Bitcoin. Here’s How it Ended Up at the Smithsonian

      Instead of collecting the currency itself, I acquired a handful of objects that reflect how people were making the digital into something tangible and engaging with this new form of money beyond simply transacting. I collected a copy of Bitcoin magazine (a print magazine for a virtual currency), two “physical” Bitcoins that had a hologram on the back containing private keys (ours had the holograms removed before donation), and two pieces of 3D-printed Bitcoin jewelry. Known as the “Bitcoin engagement ring,” a silver ring with a small stylized “B,” and the “Bitcoin bling,” a gold necklace with an oversized “B,” each contains a QR code that links to a digital wallet and shows how much money the owner has stored there. The Bitcoin engagement ring was a particularly significant acquisition because, by offering a creative alternative to a diamond engagement ring, it represented a rejection of conventional practices, much like the cryptocurrency itself.

• Finance

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ MND Perspectives: Will Mexico benefit from nearshoring?

    Our subscriber-only podcast asks: Will unprecedented foreign investment bring prosperity for Mexicans, or will it simply siphon wealth from the country elsewhere?

  • NYPost ☛ TikTok parent ByteDance’s valuation hits $300 billion, sources say

    TikTok's parent company ByteDance is valuing itself at about $300 billion, after it recently approached investors about a share buyback program, according to two people familiar with the matter and a document viewed by Reuters.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Pakistan discusses $7 billion bailout reform agenda with IMF in unusual talks

    ISLAMABAD - Pakistan discussed its $7 billion bailout reform agenda with the International Monetary Fund during an unscheduled staff visit last week, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said on Sunday, suggesting no new taxes are to be imposed.

  • Forbes ☛ From Small Sins To Privilege Abuse, Companies Introduce Sneaky Layoffs

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

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

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

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Why Elon Musk wanted to merge Substack with Twitter

    The New York Times reported that Musk suggested the acquisition during a phone call with Substack chief executive Chris Best in April of that year. Musk entered the implementation of the change with the opinion that the blogging platform, which operates based on subscription, would be used in conjunction with Twitter’s paid-service, the Twitter Blue that the business mogul has been aggressively marketing.

    Musk even offered Best a chief executive position in the proposed merged company. But at this, Best turned it down, which indicates the inclination of Substack for independence. Shortly after the discussion, Substack shifted its focus more deeply into the political sphere.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Why Influencers Like Jake Paul Are Taking Over Boxing

    Paul, currently the biggest star in the crossover boxing space, has been somewhat of an unlikely voice for fighter welfare. He has antagonized UFC promoter Dana White by pointing out the organization’s appalling pay practices. Paul’s callouts of former UFC stars far past their prime — many never formidable fighters to begin with and some almost as old as Tyson — have become a staple of crossover boxing. One of the reasons these fighters have agreed to these bouts with Paul, despite the risks of brain damage, is the potential payouts they stand to make boxing him, which often far exceed anything they’ve been able to earn inside the Octagon. For Paul, the level of pure boxing talent he’d have to contend with is generally very low in the sport of MMA — given the fighters have to train a number of other disciplines like muay thai, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and wrestling — yet the name value of the fighters is fairly high. It’s a match made in heaven where the fighters get their paydays and Paul gets more combat sport cache.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Elon Musk's xAI reportedly shifts $6 billion AI server order from troubled Supermicro to its rivals

    Dell and Supermicro used to supply Musk’s companies, including xAI and Tesla. Musk even appeared publicly with Supermicro’s CEO, Charles Liang, who revealed that xAI had made substantial purchases of Supermicro’s liquid-cooled AI servers. However, after the U.S. Department of Justice began to probe Supermicro for accounting manipulations and alleged export violations to China and Russia and its stock plummeted 35% in one day, UDN says Musk’s companies decided to shift orders away from the troubled company.

  • Queensland University of Technology ☛ A computational analysis of potential algorithmic bias on platform X during the 2024 US election

    Overall, the results imply that while some aspects of engagement on the platform appear to have been enhanced broadly, specific visibility advantages may have been selectively applied, raising important questions about the potential impact of algorithmic adjustments on public discourse and the ‘neutrality’ of social media platforms as information carriers.

  • Arduino ☛ Alumnus Software joins Arduino’s System Integrators Partnership Program

    We are thrilled to announce that Alumnus Software, based in India and the United States, has joined our System Integrators Partnership Program (SIPP) at the Gold level. With over 20 years of expertise in embedded software, IoT applications, and Edge AI development, Alumnus has a strong track record of building custom embedded systems and data-driven IoT applications for industries ranging from automotive and healthcare to industrial automation and consumer electronics.

  • New Yorker ☛ Why Is Elon Musk Really Embracing Donald Trump?

    Musk has claimed publicly that he has never asked Trump for any favors, and that Trump has not offered him any. Despite spreading misinformation on X, his social-media platform, and heavily financing the campaign of someone who plotted an autogolpe, he has also denied being a political extremist. After the Mar-a-Lago video surfaced, Musk wrote on X that he was the “ ‘George Soros’ of the middle.” In other words, he has portrayed himself as someone who entered the political arena to make the world a better place.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Ranked choice voting faces cloudy future after election setbacks

    Ranked choice voting, which allows voters to rank political candidates by preference, is used statewide in Alaska and Maine and in major U.S. localities such as New York City and San Francisco.

    But voters in Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon rejected ballot measures that would have adopted ranked choice voting for packed races. In Missouri, voters approved a ballot measure banning the approach statewide and locally, except for a grandfather clause for St. Louis municipal elections.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • El País ☛ Romanesque churches’ explicitly sexual carvings were ‘the nobility’s political propaganda’

      What is going on is “pure political propaganda by the nobility to legitimize the dynasty,” explains Mellén, who offers documented sources on the construction of the churches throughout her book. It was, she says, about conveying a message: “We have the right to rule you because we are the descendants of a lineage.”

    • New York Times ☛ How Tulsi Gabbard Became a Favorite of Russia’s State Media

      Her selection to be the director of national intelligence has raised alarms among national security officials, not only because of her lack of experience in intelligence but also because she has embraced a worldview that mirrors disinformation straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook.

    • The Verge ☛ A study found that X’s algorithm now loves two things: Republicans and Elon Musk

      Elon Musk’s X may have tweaked its algorithm to boost his account, along with those of other conservative-leaning users, starting around the time he announced his support of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. That’s according to a new study published by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which found that Musk’s posts in particular were suddenly much more popular.

      The study’s authors — QUT associate professor in digital media Timothy Graham and Monash University communications and media studies professor Mark Andrejevic — first looked at Musk’s engagement before and after his July endorsement of Trump. They report that starting around July 13th, Musks’ posts received 138 percent more views and 238 percent more retweets than before that date.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • BIA Net ☛ Exhibit sheds light on censorship and self-censorship in art in Turkey

    The exhibition focuses on challenges faced by political prisoners and dissident artists in Turkey.

  • The Verge ☛ Dozens of states ask Congress to un-doom the Kids Online Safety Act

    Moving the bill forward at all would be an uphill battle. KOSA (along with a related bill dubbed COPPA 2.0) passed the Senate nearly unanimously in July, but this lockstep bipartisan support broke down in the House, where a committee passed it to the House floor reluctantly with numerous complaints and promised amendments. Among other provisions, KOSA would establish that large social media platforms bear a legal “duty of care” for children. But amid lobbying against the bill from tech companies, both Republican and Democratic critics argue it could easily become a vehicle for censoring content their opponents dub harmful — including LGBTQ posts for Democrats and anti-abortion content for Republicans.

  • RFERL ☛ Iranian Activist Ronaghi Temporarily Detained After Tehran Protest, Family Says

    Iranian rights activist Hossein Ronaghi was held for several hours after being detained following a sit-in protest in central Tehran, his family said on November 18. [...]

  • RFERL ☛ PEN Urges UN Rights Council To Aid Imprisoned Iranian Nobel Laureate

    [...] She is currently serving a 12-year sentence in Tehran's Evin prison for "spreading propaganda," allegations that she, her family, and supporters reject.

  • Meduza ☛ Man climbs Moscow billboard with sign reading, ‘Putin, where are you, bitch, make room for me’

    The authorities eventually arrested the activist and used special equipment to tear down his poster.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ ‘Putin, Where Are You, B****?’: Moscow Police Arrest Man Protesting Atop Billboard

    A masked man was arrested after staging an anti-Putin protest atop a billboard in central Moscow, Russian media reported Monday, a rare act of public defiance in a country gripped by wartime censorship and repression.

  • India Times ☛ Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Activists: 45 pro-democracy activists sentenced to prison in Hong Kong's national security trial

    45 pro-democracy activists sentenced to prison in Hong Kong's national security trial

    After a 118-day trial, 14 activists were found guilty in May, while the other 31 pleaded guilty. These sentences are having a major impact on Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Publisher of raided Kansas newspaper delivers advice to journalists: 'Make democracy great again'

    The editor of the Kansas newspaper raided by police last year has a message for journalists struggling with their sense of purpose.

    Go on the offensive.

    Eric Meyer, editor and publisher of the Marion County Record, delivered remarks Friday as he was inducted alongside his mother, Joan, into the Kansas Press Association Newspaper Hall of Fame.

  • The Strategist ☛ Information, facts, journalism and security

    And let me stress, self-education through reading and viewing material online is a perfectly legitimate pursuit. But it doesn’t mean believing everything you read, nor selecting your own preferred facts, nor wrapping yourself in a comforting bubble of online fellow travellers who agree with you and validate your views.

    What’s at stake here is that democracy, and in my view the functioning of society more broadly, depends on how we, as participants, recognise facts in a sea of information, and how we sort and prioritise those facts into an understanding of the world that we can use as a basis for action—including how to vote and how to perform all the other functions that engaged citizens perform in a democracy.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • HSBC restructuring a chance to rescue UK’s Hong Kongers from transnational repression

    HSBC restructuring is a chance to rescue UK’s Hong Kongers from transnational repression.

  • EFF ☛ On Alaa Abd El Fattah’s 43rd Birthday, the Fight For His Release Continues

    Last November, an international counsel team acting on behalf of Alaa’s family filed an urgent appeal to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. EFF joined 33 other organizations in supporting the submission and urging the UNWGAD promptly to issue its opinion on the matter. Last week, we signed another letter urging the UNWGAD once again to issue an opinion.

    Despite his ongoing incarceration, Alaa’s writing and his activism have continued to be honored worldwide. In October, he was announced as the joint winner of the PEN Pinter Prize alongside celebrated writer Arundhati Roy. His 2021 collection of essays, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, has been re-released as part of Fitzcarraldo Editions’ First Decade Collection. Alaa is also the 2023 winner of PEN Canada’s One Humanity Award and the 2022 winner of EFF’s own EFF Award for Democratic Reform Advocacy.

    EFF once again calls for Alaa Abd El Fattah’s immediate and unconditional release and urges the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to promptly issue its opinion on his incarceration. We further urge the British government to take action to secure his release.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Accused of violating labor rights, Amazon and SpaceX attack US labor board in court

    “The NLRB routinely exercises authority to prosecute alleged violators of federal labor law, define the legal standards that govern the prosecutions, and weigh the facts necessary to find a violation — with only limited judicial review by Article III courts,” SpaceX attorneys wrote in a court filing.

    The bureau said Amazon had violated worker rights when the company refused to negotiate with the Amazon Labor Union. The union was formed in 2022 at the JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island, the only Amazon warehouse to make such a decision.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Crackdown on subscription traps could save consumers £14 a month

    So-called ‘subscription traps’ are where consumers are misled into signing up for a subscription through a “free trial” or reduced price offer.

    If the consumer does not cancel the trial within a set amount of time, they are often automatically transferred to a costly subscription payment plan.

  • Axios ☛ Trump confirms he will declare national emergency to carry out mass deportations

    The big picture: There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Trump's mass deportations are expected to impact roughly 20 million families across the country.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Segregation Academies Get Millions From School Voucher Programs

    Private schools across the South that were established for white children during desegregation are now benefiting from tens of millions in taxpayer dollars flowing from rapidly expanding voucher-style programs, a ProPublica analysis found.

  • 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: [...]

  • NPR ☛ Accused of violating worker rights, SpaceX and Amazon go after labor board

    A ruling in favor of the companies could make it much harder for workers to form unions and take collective action in pursuit of better wages and working conditions.

    That would be an enormous setback for labor groups, who have enjoyed unprecedented support from the Biden administration, and a win for companies that have spent considerable amounts of resources over the past four years trying to keep unions out of their workplaces.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • RTL ☛ A new age: Germany, Finland warn of 'hybrid warfare' after sea cable cut

    Finnish network operator Cinia said earlier that the cable between Finland and Germany, both members of the NATO military alliance, had been cut for unknown reasons.

    The fault was detected in the undersea cable C-Lion1, Cinia said in a statement, adding that all services provided by the cable were down.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Trump Taps Brendan Carr to Lead the FCC

    Before winning the election, Trump said he wanted the FCC to strip broadcasters like NBC and CBS of their licensing for what he called ‘unfair coverage.’ Just days before the election, Trump lawyer Edward Andrew Paltzik issued a letter to The New York Times and Penguin Random House that demanded $10 billion in damages over publishing articles that are critical of Trump. Trump has also sued CBS News, alleging in a lawsuit that the network’s interview with Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes was edited and constituted ‘election interference.’

  • The Register UK ☛ We already know Brendan Carr's plans for the FCC

    The "censorship cartel" has been one of Carr's main themes for years. It refers to the idea that Big Tech companies are suppressing conservative voices and censoring views with which they don't agree. Days before the announcement of his appointment, Carr also published an open letter to the bosses of Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, declaring they had "played central roles in the censorship cartel," by employing the services of fact-checking site NewsGuard.

    Carr wants to revisit Section 230 – the legislative provision that guarantees platforms immunity from litigation over most illegal content posted to their platforms.

  • [Old] arXiv ☛ It’s Time to Replace TCP in the Datacenter [PDF]

    In spite of its long and successful history, TCP is a poor transport protocol for modern datacenters. Every significant element of TCP, from its stream orientation to its expectation of in-order packet delivery, is wrong for the datacenter. It is time to recognize that TCP’s problems are too fundamental and interrelated to be fixed; the only way to harness the full performance potential of modern networks is to introduce a new transport protocol into the datacenter. Homa demonstrates that it is possible to create a transport protocol that avoids all of TCP’s problems. Although Homa is not API-compatible with TCP, it should be possible to bring it into widespread usage by integrating it with RPC frameworks.

  • RIPE ☛ Distinguishing the Internet’s Core From What Is Built on Top

    The Internet is not social media, nor the web, nor your favourite app. In fact, it’s not even the digital economy or the communication tools we’ve all come to rely on. The Internet is something deeper, a foundational network of networks that has quietly powered the digital age for over 40 years.

  • APNIC ☛ War story: RPKI is working as intended

    To be very forward, this really is a story about something that turned out to be no problem at all. But sometimes boring stories deserve to be told. To provide context for this one, we have to go back to February 2008.

    Back then — through no fault of their own — one of the world’s most popular video-sharing platforms suffered a disastrous multi-hour outage, interrupting millions of video viewings. The impact was so significant that even mainstream media reported extensively on what was essentially an arcane routing incident. But, nowadays we’re hearing less and less about incidents like these, even though the Internet is bigger than ever.

    Recently, Fastly was the target of a BGP hijack, similar to what happened in 2008, but this time barely anyone noticed. Why is that? Something has changed. In this article, I’ll delve into one of the Internet’s most remarkable, yet untold, success stories.

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Revises Satellite System Spectrum Sharing Rules - Inside Towers

    The FCC voted to revise its satellite spectrum sharing rules to promote market entry, regulatory certainty, and spectrum efficiency. The Report and Order (R&O) released Friday refines the Commission’s non-geostationary satellite orbit, fixed-satellite service (NGSO FSS) spectrum sharing regime.

    FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel says the changes “allow first movers to enjoy the advantage they’ve earned by daring to think big and take on risk, while also opening our skies to more competition.”

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • NYPost ☛ Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight mocked by ‘SNL’ after DRM spreader Netflix borefest

    Criticism of the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul bout came from all corners.

  • India Times ☛ 65 million viewers: Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul bout gives a KO punch

    Netflix Inc's foray into live sports streaming with the boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul drew a massive global audience that peaked at 65 million viewers but resulted in thousands of complaints from viewers about connection problems and frozen screens. "We crashed the site," said Paul after claiming victory over the 58-yr-old Tyson. "This is the biggest event."

    In an internal company memo seen by Bloomberg News, chief technology officer Elizabeth Stone said the bout drew a maximum of 65 million viewers at any one time, rivaling some of the most-watched sporting events.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Reuters ☛ US FTC plans to investigate Microsoft's cloud business

  The agency is examining allegations that the software giant is potentially abusing its market power in productivity software by imposing punitive licensing terms to prevent customers from moving their data from its Azure cloud service to other competitive platforms, the sources said.

• Digital Music News ☛ Swifties Are Suing Ticketmaster Over Price Gouging

  Swift fans first brought their federal case against Ticketmaster in December 2022 in the wake of botched ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

  Issues with the ticketing website left fans waiting for hours to secure tickets that should have been available to them under an early access program; many were ultimately left empty-handed. But even as fans waited, tickets began to emerge on Ticketmaster’s own resale marketplace at inflated prices, though Live Nation disputes this. That debacle led to a hearing in the US Senate on consolidation in the ticketing industry, with the US Department of Justice filing an antitrust lawsuit in May with the hopes of breaking up Ticketmaster and Live Nation.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • The Guardian UK ☛ If you can’t trust the voice of David Attenborough, what can you trust?

      The world’s best-loved naturalist has had his voice cloned – and misused – by AI. Soon, we won’t believe anything we hear unless we are in the same room as the speaker

    • Variety ☛ David Attenborough 'Profoundly Disturbed' by AI Replica of His Voice

      In a BBC News segment on Sunday, an AI recreation of the famous British broadcaster’s voice speaking about his new series “Asia” was played next to a real recording, with little to no difference between the two. BBC researchers had found the AI-generated Attenborough on a website, and said there were several that claimed to clone his voice.

      In response, the 98-year-old sent the following statement to BBC News: “Having spent a lifetime trying to speak what I believe to be the truth, I am profoundly disturbed to find that these days, my identity is being stolen by others and greatly object to them using it to say whatever they wish.”

• Copyrights

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Musk's concerns over Surveillance Giant Google DeepMind 'AI Dictatorship' revealed in emails from 2016 — communications released during the recent Proprietary Chaffbot Company court case

    Elon Musk's lawsuit against Proprietary Chaffbot Company has revealed a lot of juicy emails detailing the thoughts of the nonprofit's leadership.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Apple Opposes Legal Quest to Reinstate 'Parasitic' Streaming App Musi

    Last month, the company behind music streaming app Musi sued Apple for breach of contract, following the removal of its app from the App Store. Musi hoped for a swift reinstatement through a preliminary injunction, but Apple believes the court should deny the request. The tech giant argues that the delisting is allowed under its developer contract, stressing that the removal was not an impulsive decision.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Telegram Issues Piracy Warning as IPTV Tool 'Cristal Azul' Shut Down By Police

    Spanish police have shut down Cristal Azul, a popular Kodi add-on with an estimated 78,000 users. As sports rightsholders claim the fraudulent access cost them €42 million, in piracy circles the shutdown is being linked to a change of policy at Telegram. A direct warning that personal details could be handed over by Telegram coincides with some piracy groups abandoning the platform.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Hollywood AI Database

    I can now say with absolute confidence that many AI systems have been trained on TV and film writers’ work. Not just on The Godfather and Alf, but on more than 53,000 other movies and 85,000 other TV episodes: Dialogue from all of it is included in an AI-training data set that has been used by Apple, Anthropic, Meta, Nvidia, Salesforce, Bloomberg, and other companies. I recently downloaded this data set, which I saw referenced in papers about the development of various large language models (or LLMs). It includes writing from every film nominated for Best Picture from 1950 to 2016, at least 616 episodes of The Simpsons, 170 episodes of Seinfeld, 45 episodes of Twin Peaks, and every episode of The Wire, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad. It even includes prewritten “live” dialogue from Golden Globes and Academy Awards broadcasts. If a chatbot can mimic a crime-show mobster or a sitcom alien—or, more pressingly, if it can piece together whole shows that might otherwise require a room of writers—data like this are part of the reason why.