Leftovers

• Make Tech Easier ☛ 2024-11-19 [Older] How to Automatically Skip Sponsored Sections in a YouTube Video

• Vox ☛ 2024-11-21 [Older] John Green’s crusade to make the world “suck less”

• James G ☛ Advent of Patterns

  In 2021 and 2023, I challenged myself to publish a blog post on a specific theme every day from December 1st to December 24th. The 2021 theme was Advent of Bloggers, in which I discussed a blog I liked in each post. In 2023, I wrote my Advent of Technical Writing series, in which I published a post a day about technical writing.

• Howard Oakley ☛ Interiors by Design: Nordic flair

  In the middle of the nineteenth century, as cities across Europe were growing rapidly, the Arts and Crafts Movement spread from its origins in England to bring a new wave of interest in furniture and other features of domestic interiors. This article shows some paintings of interiors by Nordic artists of that period, giving insight into changes in design taking place across the countries of northern Europe.

• Wouter Groeneveld ☛ I Made My Own Top 100 Page

  The biggest problem I now face is that most of these entries are not yet reviewed on the site! That’s because I only started methodically collecting screenshots and logging my plays five years ago. Given the combined How Long To Beat hours I’m staring at, this will likely be a multi-year project to take on.

• Server

  • Netcraft ☛ November 2024 Web Server Survey [Ed: Microsoft is now in only 2 of the 5 tables; over time Microsoft slips out of visibility in more categories.]

    In the November 2024 survey we received responses from 1,141,129,846 sites across 272,032,056 domains and 13,114,233 web-facing computers. This reflects an increase of 10.1 million sites, 277,239 domains, and 110,998 web-facing computers.

    Clownflare experienced the largest gain of 2.6 million sites (+1.96%) this month, and now accounts for 11.8% (0.12pp) of sites seen by Netcraft. Surveillance Giant Google made the next largest gain of 1.4 million sites (+2.39%).

    nginx experienced the largest loss of 6.6 million sites (-2.92%) this month, reducing its market share to 19.3% (-0.75pp). Abusive Monopolist Microsoft suffered the next largest loss, down by 634,406 sites (-3.24%).

• Science

  • The R Graph Gallery ☛ The R Graph Gallery – Help and inspiration for R charts

    The R Graph Gallery boasts the most extensive compilation of R-generated graphs on the web.

    Featuring over 400 examples, our collection is meticulously organized into nearly 50 chart types, following the data-to-viz classification. Each example comes with reproducible code and a detailed explanation of its functionality.

    We begin each chart type with a foundational tutorial that outlines its core structure and purpose. Once you've grasped the basics, our step-by-step guides offer insights into elementary customizations. This ensures that your charts not only visualize data effectively but also resonate with your unique requirements.

• Career/Education

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Books Briefing: How Gen Z Came to See Books as a Waste of Time

    An alarming phenomenon has sprung up over the past few years: Many students are arriving at college unprepared to read entire books. That’s a broad statement to make, but I spoke with 33 professors at some of the country’s top universities, and over and over, they told me the same story. As I noted in my recent article on the topic, a Columbia professor said his students are overwhelmed at the thought of reading multiple books a semester; a professor at the University of Virginia told me that his students shut down when they’re confronted with ideas they don’t understand. Criticizing young people’s literacy is a pastime that stretches back centuries, but in the past decade, something seems to have noticeably shifted. Most of the professors I spoke with said they’ve seen a generational change in how their students engage with literature.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ China sets new rules on fully foreign-owned hospitals in 9 regions

    Action plan maps out clear conditions, requirements, procedures for sector

  • Habib Cham ☛ Navigating Social Media Flame Wars

    Why the anxiety, anger, and aggression towards other networks? Why the detestation, hostility, and querulous attitude?

    A lot of wasted energy!

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Instagram actively helping spread of self-harm among teenagers, study finds

    The aim of the study was to test Meta’s claim that it had significantly improved its processes for removing harmful content, which it says now uses artificial intelligence (AI). The tech company claims to remove about 99% of harmful content before it is reported.

    But Digitalt Ansvar (Digital Accountability), an organisation that promotes responsible digital development, found that in the month-long experiment not a single image was removed.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • India Times ☛ Italian watchdog warns publisher GEDI against sharing data with OpenAI

    GEDI, owned by the Agnelli family's holding company Exor , announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI in September to bring Italian-language content from the publisher's portfolio of news outlets to users of the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence startup.

  • The Hill ☛ What is Bluesky, the 'up-and-coming' social platform seen as X alternative

    One of Dorsey’s goals is to make Bluesky interoperable so that account holders can interact with users on other platforms like TikTok or X, according to the Associated Press.

  • The Atlantic ☛ What Breaking Up Google’s Search Monopoly Could Do to AI

    That ecosystem advantage, perhaps more so than the talent of their research teams, is what makes Google, Apple, Meta, and other corporate behemoths formidable in the AI wars. Their AI-powered assistants seamlessly integrate across their personal and enterprise software, gadgets, and social-media platforms. And “this is why a recent proposal from the Department of Justice is so significant,” I wrote on Tuesday. “The government wants to break up Google’s monopoly over the search market, but its proposed remedies may in fact do more to shape the future of AI.” Making it harder for Google to give its own products preferential treatment might not actually drive people away from the company’s search engine—but it could make them second-guess Gemini. The DOJ’s requests might be under the auspices of search, I wrote, but they “are really shots at Google’s expansive empire.”

  • Lou Plummer ☛ The Old Technology Debate

    I am long past considering the type of computer one uses as criteria for evaluating their worthiness as a human being. It's just a machine. People who are fighting religious wars over computing platforms need to get a life. They are stuck in another decade. Having said that, I don't see a compelling reason to use Windows outside the specialty enterprise applications I mentioned earlier or just because one is familiar with the platform. I think a legitimate argument can be made for the superiority of Apple's operating systems and the apps that run on them by most knowledgeable people.

  • Howard Oakley ☛ A brief history of Mac memory and its management – The Eclectic Light Company

    With the advent of Apple silicon Macs came the greatest change in memory management and use since the release of Mac OS X twenty years earlier: instead of having separate physical memory for devices like GPUs, M-series chips use Unified Memory, one pool for use by CPU cores, GPU, and much else apart from the Secure Enclave. Unfortunately, that has also brought RAM to be integrated into the M-series chip carrier, even in those fitted to the Mac Pro.

    Macs have thus returned to one of the problems of the original 128K of forty years ago, and once again their memory can’t be upgraded.

  • Simon Willison ☛ 0xfreysa/agent

    Effectively this was a prompt injection challenge with a financial incentive.

    I'm pretty skeptical of these challenges if they are based around a hidden prompt, but in this case the Freysa system and prompt and source code were available for anyone to inspect.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ How to get a handle on generative AI governance

    This overreaction to the risks of genAI is problematic for two reasons: First, it prevents organizations from building successful gen AI strategies. Second, it simply doesn’t work. Employees will find a way around such limitations, perhaps by using their phones or accessing gen AI from home – a repeat of the familiar “bring your own device” problem we now call “BYO LLM.”

    The way out of this conundrum is straightforward: Implement AI governance – not to slow down innovation, but rather to remove roadblocks to adoption of gen AI in ways that are safe, legal and compliant with corporate policies.

  • Axios ☛ ChatGPT at two: OpenAI's chatbot has yet to change our lives

    The big picture: OpenAI's ChatGPT turns two years old today. Outside a handful of specific fields, it's hard to make the case that it has transformed the world the way its promoters promise. But the possibilities its power unlocks — both good and bad — have come into sharp view.

  • [Repeat] Press Gazette ☛ Guardian audience editor says Bluesky already delivering more traffic than X

    The same day Earley posted about The Guardian’s Bluesky traffic Matt Karolian, the vice president of platforms at The Boston Globe, made similar remarks disclosing that the US newsbrand was seeing three times more traffic from Bluesky than Threads.

  • El País ☛ Two years of ChatGPT: From utter amazement to the ‘trough of disillusionment’

    Today, we find ourselves in what the consultancy firm Gartner refers to as the “trough of disillusionment”: the initial euphoria led to inflated expectations, and the inability to meet them immediately caused interest to wane. This is a natural phase in the lifecycle of technological trends, and, according to Gartner, the slope of expectations will rise again within a few years, though more moderately than the first surge.

  • PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ ICYMI: New Spear-Phishing Attacks From Russian Hackers

    Comic Sans has turned 30, and it's done being your punch line, according to an article from FastCompany. For three whole decades, Comic Sans cowered at your reproaches and winced at your jokes. It barely flinched when Google's practical joke made sure that searching for “Helvetica” would render all results in Comic Sans. Or when CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, made it the butt of an April Fool's joke three years later. It even sat quietly while people gathered signatures for its demise. But Comic Sans has just hit the big 3-0 — and it's ready for its second act.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Why I regret using 23andMe: I gave up my DNA just to find out I’m British

      23andMe is facing implosion. As the once-promising genetic testing company flounders – losing 98% of its $6bn value, all its independent board members, nearly half its staff – many of its 15 million customers are scrambling to delete their DNA data from the company’s archives. I am one of them.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-19 [Older] Venezuela: US recognizes Gonzalez as 'president-elect'

  • The North Lines IN ☛ Terrorists minimise internal communication, pose challenges to security forces: BSF Official

    Srinagar, Nov 30: Terrorists have cut down on communications amongst themselves which is posing a huge challenge to the security forces in tracking them down, a senior BSF officer said here on Saturday.

  • India Times ☛ Foreign terrorists communicate minimally, pose challenges: IG BSF

    There is a decline in local recruitment of terrorists and a surge in involvement of foreign operatives, the IG said. “Foreign terrorists are becoming a significant concern. They have strengthened their security protocols and communicate minimally, which presents challenges. However, with collaboration among security agencies, we are adapting our strategies continuously to counter these threats,” he added.

  • India Times ☛ Social media companies slam Australia's under-16 ban

    Social media giants on Friday hit out at a landmark Australian law banning them from signing up under-16s, describing it as a rush job littered with "many unanswered questions". A Snapchat spokesperson said the company had raised "serious concerns" about the law and that "many unanswered questions" remained about how it would work.

  • The Atlantic ☛ How Biden Made a Mess of Ukraine

    I struggle to think of another time when unexpected events offered a U.S. president more favorable conditions to remake the geopolitical landscape. For years, American strategists have discussed reorienting U.S. military forces away from Europe, where they serve primarily to guard democratic nations against Moscow’s military aggression, and toward the Indo-Pacific region in order to deter a fast-growing China. If the U.S. had helped Ukraine win in 2022—which is to say, liberate its own internationally recognized territory—and then join NATO, it would also have protected the security of countries to Ukraine’s west. The presence of a militarily powerful Ukraine in NATO would have moved the balance of forces within Europe decisively in favor of democratic nations and restored global confidence in American leadership, which the Afghanistan debacle had undermined. The United States could then have drawn down its military footprint in Europe and focused its energies on Asia. The world would have been much safer and stabler.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Factbox-What Happens After Romania's Parliamentary Election?

    Romania's legislature comprises the lower house and the senate. The Senate has 133 seats and the lower house 323. Romanians will elect lawmakers for both chambers on Sunday.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Trump's picks have strong ties to Project 2025

    His critics say the selections show that his disavowal of Project 2025 was merely a campaign ploy to pacify voters who viewed the plan as too far right.

  • VOA News ☛ Polish leader visits defensive fortifications on border with Russia

    Poland's government and army began building the system dubbed East Shield this year. It will eventually include approximately 800 kilometers (500 miles) along the Polish borders with Russia and Belarus, at a time when Western officials accuse Russia of waging hybrid attacks against the West that include sabotage, the weaponization of migration, disinformation and other hostile measures.

  • RFERL ☛ Ukrainian President Says NATO Membership Can End 'Hot Phase' Of War

    Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and has been occupying 20 percent of Ukrainian territory since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ America’s blind spot: How the US is sleepwalking beneath a bubbling ‘axis of evil’

    Meanwhile, years of hopeful rhetoric in the echo chamber of the White House have pulled the wool over the eyes of US foreign policy. The alliance between American adversaries is no longer a distant phenomenon, but a complementary strategy to beat the West. This means that the US can no longer afford to romanticise its liberal agenda and continue to underestimate the growing strength of China and Russia.

    This does not mean that America should revert to the unilateralism of Bush and Trump. Indeed, such blindness has only worsened the US’s preparedness for the real threat. Rather, America should grapple with the implications of dismissing this threat and amend the sporadic and inefficient features of post-Bush foreign policy. The polarising nature of Biden and Trump’s presidencies spurred a lack of internal and international consensus. This failed to confront the impending dominance of China and Russia to fulfil their agenda and instead allowed an ‘axis of evil’ to proliferate. The gulf created by Washington discord has been filled by a network of cooperation between American adversaries. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has given China momentum for spreading its own autocracy. Russia and Iran’s reciprocal military supply of drones and lethal weapons have bolstered Iran’s defence capabilities against Western strikes. The fruits of this exchange have manifested in Russia’s use of Iranian Shaded-136 drones to strike Ukraine, whilst Iranian air defences recently destroyed by Israel were Russian-made.

  • RTL ☛ Jihadist rebels: Syria war monitor says rebels control most of Aleppo

    Jihadist-led rebels seized Aleppo's airport and dozens of nearby towns on Saturday after overrunning most of Syria's second city, a war monitor said.

    Damascus ally Moscow responded with its first air strikes on Aleppo since 2016 as the jihadists and their Turkish-backed allies pressed a lightning offensive they launched on Wednesday as a ceasefire took effect in neighbouring Lebanon.

  • The Age AU ☛ Social media ban: How Australia will implement age-assessment technology

    Since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would pursue a world-leading social media ban for under-16s, one question has dogged his government: how will it work?

    Tony Allen, who leads the company that will trial technologies for the Australian government, says there are three key options to assess users’ age that his company will be probing as it comes up with a toolkit for social media platforms.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ What is hybrid warfare?

    Another objective of hybrid warfare is trying to influence public opinion in a given target country. Falsehoods and pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian narratives are disseminated to this end, whether on social media platforms through troll factories, or via Russian foreign media outlets.

    In early 2024, Germany's Foreign Ministry uncovered a Russian "Doppelganger" disinformation campaign. It involved 50,000 fake social media user accounts spreading falsehoods and pro-Russian opinions on social networks while linking to fake news outlets spreading Russian propaganda. Some of the sites appeared deceptively similar to well-known news sites.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ New Trump budget chief wrote Project 2025's agenda for empowering the presidency

    OMB is responsible for releasing the president’s budget request every year, but also manages much of the executive branch by overseeing departments’ performance, reviewing the vast majority of federal regulations and coordinating how the various agencies communicate with Congress.

  • VOA News ☛ Icebreaker deal would challenge Russian supremacy in Arctic

    Under the arrangement whimsically labeled the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort, or ICE Pact, the three nations have agreed to share research, knowledge and capabilities in building a still unspecified number of icebreakers capable of enforcing each nation's sovereignty in an ocean that has become increasingly navigable because of climate change.

  • AntiWar ☛ Ultimate Irony Comes as Taliban Asks Russia's Help To Evade US Sanctions, Closing 50-year Loop of Violence - Antiwar.com

    It was said at the time that Operation Cyclone was the most successful covert operation in CIA history. It involved sending over $2 billion in weapons to Muslim rebels in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan between 1982 and 1987.

    Today, as the Taliban gradually rebuilds the nation according to Islamic law, they have asked Russia to help their government circumvent the imposition of Western sanctions on their economy.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Killer instinct: How one man taught US soldiers to fight dirty in WWII

    D’Eliscu was just one of the many martial artists the United States had pressed into service during World War II to hone the hand-to-hand combat abilities of American soldiers.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Most in Germany want Australia-style social media ban: poll

    A large majority of German citizens are in favor of banning social media use for under-16s, as is soon to happen in Australia under a new law, a survey published on Saturday has shown.

    The support for the ban reflects the view of most of the some 2,000 people surveyed that social media is likely or certain to have a harmful impact on children and adolescents.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Germany accuses Turkish man of spying for Ankara

    German authorities suspect he was helping Turkish police and intelligence agencies to track supposed supporters of Fethullah Gulen, the recently-deceased US-based cleric and rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused of being the mastermind behind a failed coup attempt in 2016.

  • SBS ☛ Amid fresh war concerns, Finland says it 'needs Australia more than ever'

    While the Winter War of 1939 saw Finland secure peace, it also lost 9 per cent of its territory to Russia.

  • Axios ☛ Trump eliminates threats from within by neutering watchdogs

    Breaking it down: Trump and his allies have telegraphed unprecedented steps to put loyalists in roles that have historically been apolitical.

  • Defence Web ☛ Africa seen as “greatest global generator of jihadi violence” - defenceWeb

    Africa, according to a recently published research paper, has the “overall notorious reputation of being the greatest global generator of jihadi violence”.

    Statistics, the Middle East Africa Research Institute (MEARI) maintains, paint “a worrying picture of the upward trajectory of jihadi terrorism in an increasingly volatile African theatre of operations”.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ The map that shows Russia’s ‘secret war’ with the West has now begun

    Yet isolated is not what they were. Nor are the dozens of other worrying incidents that could be grouped with them. Taken together, the conclusion becomes unavoidable: that over the last 12 months, as the West has continued to support Ukraine’s war efforts, Russia has dramatically escalated its acts of sabotage across Europe and beyond, sowing a greater sense of instability on the continent than at any time since the Cold War.

  • France24 ☛ Hamas releases hostage video as Israeli strike kills Gaza aid workers

    Hamas's armed wing published a video Saturday of an American-Israeli hostage held in Gaza, in which he pleads for US President-elect Donald Trump to secure his release. Earlier, the US-based charity World Central Kitchen paused its Gaza operations after three aid workers were killed in an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis that the Israeli military said targeted a "terrorist" involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks.

  • New York Times ☛ Israel Strikes Sites in Lebanon Amid Fragile Cease-Fire

    As the truce appeared to largely hold, a deal appeared far away in Gaza, where an Israeli strike killed dozens, according to a rescue group.

  • New York Times ☛ Israel Accuses World Central Kitchen Worker of Role in Oct. 7 Attack

    The Israeli military said it killed the worker in a strike in Gaza on Saturday. “To the best of our knowledge, no WCK team members are affiliated with Hamas,” a spokeswoman for the aid group said.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-20 [Older] Turkey: What's behind Erdogan's outreach to Kurds?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-22 [Older] Turkey fires pro-Kurdish mayors, citing 'terrorism'

  • ANF News ☛ 2024-11-21 [Older] US imposes sanctions on senior Hamas officials, 3 of whom are based in Turkey

  • HRW ☛ 2024-11-22 [Older] SADC: Denounce Security Force Violence in Mozambique

  • HRW ☛ 2024-11-24 [Older] Mozambique: Security Force Crackdown Kills, Injures Children

  • The Straits Times ☛ Taiwan’s President to rally tiny Pacific allies to counter China

    China says that Taiwanese leaders’ stopovers in the US violate Washington diplomatic understandings with Beijing.

  • New York Times ☛ Taiwan’s President Visits Pacific Islands to Counter China’s Influence

    Lai Ching-te is looking to shore up support from three island nations that are among a dwindling number to keep diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-23 [Older] Trump Picks Alex Wong for Deputy National Security Adviser

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-23 [Older] NATO Head and Trump Meet in Florida for Talks on Global Security

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-23 [Older] NATO chief Rutte talks security with Trump in Florida

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-23 [Older] Philippine president's security raised after VP death threat

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-23 [Older] Philippines Boosts Security After VP's Assassination Threat Against President

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-23 [Older] Powerful Israeli Airstrike in Central Beirut Kills 20, Lebanese Health Ministry Says

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-24 [Older] Gunman Shot Dead, 3 Police Injured, Shooting Near Israeli Embassy in Jordan Over, Security Source Says

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-11-25 [Older] 5th Generation War: A War Without Borders and its Impact on Global Security

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-21 [Older] China Willing to Maintain Communication on Submarine Infrastructure Security

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-21 [Older] Security Guard at US Embassy in Oslo Arrested for Espionage

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-21 [Older] Southeast Asian Defense Chiefs Discuss Regional Security With US, China and Other Partner Nations

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ As Trump’s lead in popular vote shrinks, does he have a 'mandate'?

    In the last 75 years, only three other presidents had popular-vote margins that were smaller than Trump’s.

• Environment

  • The Straits Times ☛ Floods displace close to 139,000 people in Malaysia with death toll at 4

    The number surpassed the 118,000 displaced during floods in 2014, and officials feared it could rise further.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Death toll rises to 12 as Thailand and Malaysia face worst floods in decades

    Tens of thousands of people were evacuated due to rising water levels.

  • VOA News ☛ What to know about plastic pollution crisis as treaty talks conclude

    Their meeting is scheduled to conclude Sunday or early Monday in Busan, South Korea, where many environmental organizations have flocked to push for a treaty to address the volume of production and toxic chemicals used in plastic products.

    Greenpeace said it escalated its pressure Saturday by sending four international activists to Daesan, South Korea, who boarded a tanker headed into port to load chemicals used to make plastics.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Why is a global treaty on plastic pollution dividing the world?

    That is the question that the delegates from 175 countries are trying to answer this week in Busan, South Korea, where the fifth and final round of negotiations are underway for a United Nations-led treaty that would regulate the full life cycle of plastic, including production, design and disposal.

  • The Local SE ☛ Stockholm ban on petrol, diesel cars put on hold

    A ban on combustion engine vehicles in Stockholm's city centre has been put on hold, a government agency said Friday, just a month before the ban would come into effect.

  • Hidde de Vries ☛ Turn off AI features by default (to reduce their climate impact)

    Generative AI features have a large climate impact and water consumption. We can weigh that impact against those features' benefits, but what if they are left unused? If lots of people don't in fact use the thing? That seems like lots of avoidable waste. Which matters, we're in a climate emergency and we're dangerously far from that 1.5 degrees target.

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : Zambia Appeals For Humanitarian Assistance

    Minister of Information and Media Cornelius Mweetwa appealed for humanitarian assistance stressing that Zambia has not been spared from the effects of the El Nino.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Data centers drain Ireland’s power grid, add their own fossil fuel-powered generators – Pivot to AI

    To get around the moratorium, many data centers are turning to natural gas and backup generators. The generators use gas oil — also known as red diesel — though some use biofuels.

    The Journal estimates that 135,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide has been emitted from these generators over the last five years.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-18 [Older] German political instability stalls DB's punctuality drive

    • The Straits Times ☛ 78,000 notices issued to motorcyclists in Malaysia for riding without licence, other offences

      The operation aimed to enforce compliance with the Road Transport Act and its regulations.

    • Anil Dash ☛ Lessons learned from burning things.

      Depending on the species, and the dimensions, each log in your fire might represent the equivalent of a full years' growth for that tree. All of its effort to capture the energy of the sun, for the entirety of an orbit around that star, reduced to the fuel in your hand, and gone before your eyes. Maybe that's something to observe, and to practice being grateful for.

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Bitcoin Tulips

      Because irony is dead, a Dutch tulip farmer is heating their greenhouse with Bitcoin mining: [...]

    • International Business Times ☛ Wealthy California Teens Die in Fiery Tesla Crash One Month After Similar Tragedy in Toronto

      Emergency responders in both California and Toronto have noted the complexities of managing electric vehicle fires. According to fire officials, such fires require significantly more water to extinguish compared to gasoline-powered vehicle fires. In the Toronto crash, a battery cell from the Tesla was ejected during the collision and had to be removed and secured to prevent further combustion.

    • Crooked Timber ☛ The AI boom in electricity demand: a multiply recycled myth

      I posted this piece in RenewEconomy a couple of months ago. It didn’t convince the commenters then, and I don’t expect it to be any different here, but I’m putting it on the record anyway.

    • Positech Games ☛ First full solar month stats

      So thats 34.2 MWh, or to put it in rooftop-solar or home-energy terms, 34,248kwh of lovely renewable green solar power! Not bad I think for a pretty wet, cloudy November in the UK. June in the Sahara desert would be different…

    • Observer Research Foundation ☛ Digital transformation in the maritime industry

      Digital technologies and data-driven solutions are transforming the maritime sector. This shift towards digitalisation aims to enhance efficiency, improve decision-making, and optimise overall performance across various aspects of the industry.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ South Africa could still be a power player in EV manufacturing

      Despite years of load shedding, bouts of political unrest and government’s delay in setting a policy direction to guide the automotive sector as it moves to new energy vehicles (NEVs), South Africa remains an attractive destination for manufacturers to invest in productive plant capacity.

  • Overpopulation

    • BIA Net ☛ 2024-11-21 [Older] Bursa, Turkey's fourth-largest city, could run out of water in 40 days

    • CBC ☛ If I can't afford a house, can I afford a second kid?

      We rent a two-bedroom high-rise apartment in the Lower Mainland of B.C., and while it's nice for now, we both know that little kids don't stay little forever and that sooner or later we would need to start looking for more space.

      That question — can we afford it — weighs heavily on me.

• Finance

  • International Business Times ☛ 2024-11-20 [Older] More US States Won't Tax Social Security Benefits In 2025: Is Your State One Of Them?

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-25 [Older] Nicaraguan Lawmakers Pass Bill Forcing Local Banks to Ignore Foreign Sanctions

  • The Local DK ☛ 2024-11-25 [Older] Danish banks urged to step in to prevent online fraud

  • NYPost ☛ China claims to have unearthed the largest gold deposit in the world —worth $83B

    More than 1,000 tons of gold reserves and ore veins were allegedly discovered by the Hunan Provincial Geological Institute.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Register UK ☛ Four years of Trumpian crypto regulation: What might we see?

    Shortly after Trump's election victory, Bitcoin advocates from the non-profit Satoshi Action Fund sent out an email congratulating the industry, while CEO Dennis Porter talked up legislative priorities alongside the promise that "our team will have direct lines to senior government officials" in the coming years.

  • European Commission ☛ Technical description of important and critical products with digital elements

    The Cyber Resilience Act requires the Commission to specify the technical description of the categories of important and critical products with digital elements listed in Annex III and IV to the Regulation. Such products may be subject to more stringent conformity assessment procedures, as set out in Article 32.

    [...]

    Planned for Third quarter 2025

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • New Statesman ☛ There is no place for blasphemy laws in the Labour party

    That Tahir Ali, a backbench Labour MP for Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley, could stand up in the House of Commons and openly demand the reintroduction of blasphemy laws to “prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions” was disgraceful enough. What was even worse was Keir Starmer’s pedestrian response that “desecration is awful” and that his government was “committed to tackling all forms of hatred and division”, rather than bluntly answering the question with a simple and firm no. Blasphemy laws have no place in a liberal democracy – as we claim to be – and his party shouldn’t countenance them.

  • Defence Web ☛ CSIR-developed fingerprint recognition device rolled out at prisons - defenceWeb

    The devices have been rolled out to DCS facilities, the CSIR said in its 2023/24 annual report, explaining that the DCS is using the scanner to compare the fingerprints of a person brought to a correctional facility from court to those on the warrant of detention form.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russian Lawyer Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison for Criticizing Ukraine Invasion - The Moscow Times

    A Russian court on Thursday sentenced Dmitry Talantov, a prominent lawyer who once defended jailed journalist Ivan Safronov, to seven years in prison for criticizing Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on social media.

  • RFA ☛ North Korea bans 2 South Korean dishes

    Both dishes -- budae-jjigae, a spicy stew that sometimes includes instant ramen noodles, hot dogs and whatever happens to be on hand, and tteokbokki, steamed rice cakes covered in a spicy sauce -- have been very popular in South Korea for decades.

  • RFERL ☛ Jailed Former Moscow Anti-War Lawmaker Gorinov Handed New Prison Sentence

    In his closing statement, Gorinov, one of the most prominent jailed dissidents left in the country after a major prisoner swap with the West earlier this year, accused Russia of committing a "bloody slaughter" in Ukraine.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • China jails journalist Dong Yuyu for 7 years for ‘spying’

    Dong's jailing comes after his arrest while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat in 2022.

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. Condemns China’s Harsh Sentence for a Prominent Journalist

    The sentencing of Dong Yuyu, a former Harvard Nieman fellow, signals that officials consider some exchanges between Chinese citizens and foreigners to be espionage.

  • The Korea Times ☛ China sentences journalist detained at meal with Japanese diplomat to 7 years for espionage

    Dong Yuyu, a commentator and editor, was taken away by police while meeting a Japanese diplomat at a restaurant in February 2022. He has been in police custody since then.

    The Beijing Number 2 Intermediate People's Court read the verdict but did not share a copy with Dong's lawyers or family. No announcement was available on the court's website or its Weibo account.

  • New Yorker ☛ Stopping the Press: The Threats to the Media Posed by the Second Trump Term

    After spending years painting the media as the “enemy of the people,” Donald Trump is ready to intensify his battle against the journalists who cover him.

  • [Repeat] Press Gazette ☛ Dylan Jones steps down two months after taking London Standard weekly

    Jones, a former editor of British GQ, will be succeeded by Anna van Praagh, the Standard’s chief content officer, who will be acting editor until a permanent successor is chosen. Jones will stay on as editor at large and “write frequently” for the title.

  • ANF News ☛ Two journalists remanded in custody

    The writers and journalists detained in the operations in several cities included Erdoğan Alayumat (journalist), Tuğce Yılmaz (journalist), Bilge Aksu (journalist), Ahmet Sünbül (journalist), Roza Metina (Mesopotamia Women Journalists Association (MKG) President), Bilal Seçkin (journalist), Mehmet Ücar (journalist), Suzan Demir (journalist), Ardın Diren (translator-director), Doğan Güzel (cartoonist), Hicri İzgören (writer), Ömer Barasi (translator-writer), Suzan Demir (journalist) and Baver Yoldaş (publishing house coordinator).

  • RFERL ☛ At Georgian Protests, Journalists Say They're Being Targeted And Beaten

    Multiple employees of TV Pirveli -- which like Formula, has aired programs critical of the government -- were also attacked. Nodar Meladze, head of news at TV Pirveli, said that Georgian security forces deliberately prevented journalists from working and attempted to shut down broadcasts.

    "I have been the head of news for many years, and this is the first protest where operators and journalists were treated with such cruelty," Meladze said. "'I know you are a journalist,'" he said a member of the security forces told him before they attacked him.

  • JURIST ☛ China court sentences journalist to seven years imprisonment for espionage

    Dong’s family called the verdict a “grave injustice” to Dong, his family, and “to every freethinking Chinese journalist and every ordinary Chinese committed to friendly engagement with the world.” The family said the court classified Japanese diplomats with whom Dong met “as agents of an ‘espionage organization.” The court thus allowed the Chinese government to consider foreign embassies within China as “espionage organization[s].”

  • [Repeat] Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China jails journalist Dong Yuyu for 7 years on spy charges

    Dong’s work has been published in the Chinese editions of The New York Times and the Financial Times.

    He won the prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 2006-2007.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • TruthOut ☛ Amazon Workers in Over 30 Countries Take Coordinated Action on Black Friday

    Dubbed “Make Amazon Pay,” the campaign is set to last from November 29 to December 2 and will include strikes and protests across six continents, according to the group — and is timed to disrupt Black Friday (or “Make Amazon Pay Day”) and Cyber Monday, two of the busiest online shopping days of the year.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Taliban overhaul Afghanistan's education system

    The Islamist Taliban rulers have banned girls from attending school beyond sixth grade and women from going to university. They have also removed all topics related to human rights and women's rights from school and university curricula, saying issues related to equality, liberty, elections and democracy contradict Taliban ideology.

    They are not stopping there. Inclusive and non-discriminatory educational approaches, which are particularly important in Afghanistan due to its many ethnic and religious minorities, are also being scrapped.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Saudi Arabia 2034 World Cup bid 'medium risk' for human rights: FIFA

    Saudi Arabia's bid to host the 2034 World Cup was considered "medium risk" for human rights by FIFA.

  • JURIST ☛ Saudi Arabia detentions spark international concerns over freedom of expression

    Amnesty International urged Saudi Arabia on Thursday to release individuals who have been detained “solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression online.” Amnesty International stated that the releases must occur before the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which Saudi Arabia will host from December 15 to 19.

  • New York Times ☛ Opinion | Our Messed-Up Dating Culture Gave Us Donald Trump. Let Me Explain.

    Hundreds of years after the Brothers Grimm published their version of that classic rags-to-riches story, our cultural narratives still reflect the idea that a woman’s status can be elevated by marrying a more successful man — and a man’s diminished by pairing with a more successful woman. Now that women are pulling ahead, the fairy tale has become increasingly unattainable. This development is causing both men and women to backslide to old gender stereotypes and creating a hostile division between them that provides fuel for the exploding manosphere. With so much turmoil in our collective love lives, it’s little wonder Americans are experiencing surging loneliness, declining birthrates and — as evidenced by Donald Trump’s popularity with young men — a cascade of resentment that threatens to reshape our democracy.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• IP Kat ☛ 2024-11-24 [Older] Arusha Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants finally enters into force

• Patents

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-22 [Older] Samsung Ordered to Pay $118 Million for Infringing Netlist Patents

  • 2024-11-25 [Older] USPTO Institutes Additional Fees for Large Information Disclosure Statement Filings

• Trademarks

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-11-23 [Older] Hot n Cold ruling from Australian Federal Court partially overturns Katy Perry trade mark decision

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-11-24 [Older] [Guest post] EU General Court invalidates Chiquita trade mark for bananas as it considers it devoid of distinctive character

• Copyrights

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-11-24 [Older] Weak Protection of Musicians’ Rights and Indonesian Music Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Nintendo Wants Reddit to Expose r/SwitchPirates Users in 'Pirate Shop' Lawsuit

    As part of an ongoing piracy lawsuit, Nintendo has filed a motion to subpoena Reddit, Discord, and other online platforms for information related to the alleged operator of several pirate shops. The game giant seeks information on the defendant, who previously served as a moderator of the SwitchPirates subreddit, and suggests that Reddit may be able to identify additional 'pirates'.