Leftovers

• Dan Q ☛ 99 Days of Blogging

  I didn’t set out with the aim of getting to a hundred4, as I might well manage tomorrow, but after a while I began to think it a real possibility. In particular, when a few different factors came together: [...]

• Barry Sampson ☛ Hell No

  Right now, I do not feel "hell yeah" about having a personal blog and saying no to it feels remarkably easy. So, goodbye blog.

• Tracy Durnell ☛ What is the impact of online writing?

  Blog posts, microblog posts, email newsletters, social media posts, comments — these are self-published pieces of writing by regular people, most of whom are not getting paid to write. Most people would have had limited access to this type of writing fifty years ago, when self-published writing was zines and, like, church newsletters. Before the internet made self-publishing easy, most people’s exposure to writing by other regular people would have been letters from people they knew and letters to the editor.

  It turns out it is extremely compelling to read thoughts by other regular people, even strangers. To hear from people who live in other parts of the world. To learn from people’s varied experiences. To connect with others who share our interests.

• Lou Plummer ☛ The Worst Thing You've Ever Done, Grace and Forgiveness

  I took to social media to vent, as one does. I guy who knows me and The Old Man asked me a question that stuck with me about the whole situation. Is it fair to judge someone solely for the worst thing they have ever done? Is it? Society does it routinely in criminal justice cases. Sure, they take some mitigating circumstances into account, but if you mess up bad enough, you are going to prison despite your otherwise saintly life. I knew more than one person serving a life sentence when I worked in the correctional system who had but a single yet horrible conviction.

• Kevin Wammer ☛ Has Everything Been Thought Before?

  Whatever you have to say, your experience, your knowledge, and your idiosyncrasies make your thoughts uniquely yours.

  So even if it has been said before, it hasn’t been said by you.

• Science

  • India Times ☛ ‘Shameful if Chinese astronauts on moon before US’

    The technical issues related to the Artemis-1 mission, [NASA]’s unmanned flight to the moon, launched on Nov 16, 2022. During the high-speed re-entry on Dec 11, 2022, at 25,000 mph, the spacecraft’s heatshield suffered an unexpected damage and [NASA] is still trying to solve the problem.

• Career/Education

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Has 'wokeness' killed the English literature degree?

    “The issue is not woke itself, but rather why English literature should have become vulnerable to American identitarian extremism in a way other subjects have not,” she says. “In the past, some of the brighter students might read English and then do a law conversion that also gave them serious professional, analytical and critical skills. English is now regarded as a gap year that allows students to explore themselves for three years. The subject has been intellectually evacuated.”

• Hardware

  • Chris Aldrich ☛ On the Value of Typewriters

    A reply to someone who was worried they overpaid for their typewriter.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CBC ☛ 2024-11-24 [Older] This Saskatoon pharmacist makes $100 luxury chocolate bars in her garage

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-11-25 [Older] At Decisive Plastics Treaty Talks, Greenpeace Africa warns world leaders: “We are watching”

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-11-23 [Older] As Fast Fashion's Waste Pollutes Africa's Environment, Designers in Ghana Are Finding a Solution

  • CBC ☛ Farming in Canada is changing. Young people say they can't get a foothold

    "I talk to young farmers all the time who want to start farms, who dream of farming … but they just don't see how it's possible or how it's viable," said Maxwell, a small vegetable farmer and president of the youth branch of the National Farmers Union.

    "Anyone that wasn't born on a farm or born into some kind of wealth can't get into the game right now," she told The Current's Matt Galloway.

  • TruthOut ☛ Parents Are Being Asked to Pay the Cost of Delivering Their Babies in Advance

    On online baby message boards and other social media forums, pregnant women say they are being asked by their providers to pay out-of-pocket fees earlier than expected. The practice is legal, but patient advocacy groups call it unethical. Medical providers argue that asking for payment up front ensures they get compensated for their services.

  • Wired ☛ Chocolate Has a Sustainability Problem. Science Thinks It's Found the Answer

    Traditional chocolate recipes combine fermented cocoa beans with refined sugar—usually made from sugar beets—to create the confectionary’s characteristic rich, sweet flavor. However, the Swiss team, led by emeritus ETH professor Erich Windhab, looked beyond the bean to see what might be possible when you consider the much larger cocoa pod as a whole.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Terence Eden ☛ A few thoughts on domain verification for social media

    Both Mastodon and BlueSky have the concept of "self-verification". Rather than trust a central authority to assess your notability and then bless your account (as Twitter used to do), they let anyone self-attest using Domain Verification0.

    What does that mean?

  • Futurism ☛ Startup Mocked for Charging $5,000 to "Edit" Book Manuscripts Using AI

    Oh, and then there's the issue of Spines embarrassing itself publicly.

    "A great example of how no one can find actual uses for LLMs that aren't scams for grifts," short story writer Lincoln Michel wrote of the flap on X-formerly-Twitter. "Quite literally the LAST thing publishing needs is... AI regurgitations."

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Meet the underpaid workers in Nairobi, Kenya, who power OpenAI

    AI companies want you to think their AI will magically replace all those annoying human employees. In reality, AI runs on low-paid labor — lots of it. Actual people are needed to tag and label photos and classify text.

    60 Minutes did a great show on this last Sunday. Kenyan classifiers have been working for two years to expose what’s going on behind the curtain.

  • Allen Pike ☛ It's Good for Apple, and Okay for You

    The first big wave of Apple Intelligence features are arriving shortly, with iOS 18.2. For the last month, a beta has been available, offering a peek into this new AI-powered future. I’ve been curious what Apple’s ML teams have been cooking, especially given the industry-leading security and privacy commitments they’ve made, so I checked them out.

  • Chris Ferris ☛ How AWS needs to change - Chris Farris

    In previous posts, I took AWS to task for not making the customer’s security Job Zero. This offended some sensibilities, so let me lay out my 95 13 Thesis against the current AWS Culture and how it is neither Customer-Obsessed, nor makes security job zero.

    How AWS needs to change.

  • Windows TCO

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Ransomware in the Digital Realm

      The morning of May 7, 2021—a day that should have been like any other—suddenly turned catastrophic for countless Americans. The reason? A major fuel pipeline fell victim to a ransomware attack. The US Colonial Pipeline, which supplies nearly 45% of fuel to the East Coast was disrupted, leaving gas stations running out of fuel and millions searching for answers as the nation grappled with the sudden crisis.

      This attack was far from an ordinary cyberattack rather it openly jeopardized America’s national security. DarkSide, a cybercriminal group was behind this attack. They managed to deal a devastating blow to the company temporarily halting its operations.

      The key question here is, “What is ransomware, and why is it posing as a modern security crisis?”

• Defence/Aggression

  • HRW ☛ 2024-11-25 [Older] Confronting South Africa’s Crisis of Gender-Based Violence

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-11-21 [Older] Mob justice a growing problem in some African countries

  • University of Michigan ☛ Here's what we can learn from foreign interference in the 2024 presidential election

    Just look at Trump’s first term in office: He cozied up to Putin, Kim Jong Un and other authoritarian leaders. He ended the Iran nuclear deal with no alternative and unleashed Iran’s militias. The U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump and almost removed him from office because he attempted to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into revealing information about his political opponent, President Joe Biden. In Israel, his administration moved the embassy to Jerusalem and did not resist Israel’s expansionist efforts in the West Bank, inflaming tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Death Toll in Pakistan Sectarian Clashes Now Over 130, Official Says

    A Pakistani government team mediated a seven-day ceasefire deal between the rival groups last Sunday. Armed Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims have engaged in tribal and sectarian rivalry for decades over land and other local disputes in Kurram.

    Provincial authorities put the death toll at 97, with 43 people killed in the initial attack when gunmen opened fire on mostly Shia drivers and the rest killed in retaliatory clashes.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Georgia protests enter fourth night as opposition grows to freeze on EU talks

    The crisis has deepened since Thursday’s announcement that the government would freeze EU talks for four years, when thousands of pro-EU demonstrators faced off against police armed with teargas and water cannon.

    Georgia’s pro-western president, Salome Zourabichvili, called for pressure to be brought on the constitutional court to annul October’s elections won by Georgian Dream. Both the opposition and Zourabichvili say the poll was rigged.

  • India Times ☛ Australian social media ban started with call to act by politican's wife

    Even a 2023 recommendation by the U.S. surgeon general to put health warnings on social media, blaming it for what he called a teenage mental health crisis, could not help lawmakers from Florida to France navigate resistance on grounds of free speech, privacy and the limits of age-checking technology.

    The spark that ended the stalemate was when the wife of the leader of Australia's second-smallest state read The Anxious Generation, a 2024 bestseller criticising social media by U.S. social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and told her husband to take action.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Children carry out surge of contract killings as Swedish [sic] gangs [sic] exploit loophole in the law

    Social media has played a major role in the crime surge, with gang handlers posting contracts on online message boards as if they were pick-up missions in a video game.

    [...]

    Critics say those measures are a sticking plaster for much deeper issues: gang [sic] grooming on social media, a lack of integration in Swedish society and a failure to address the international nature of the gangs [sic].

  • France24 ☛ Global arms sales surge 4% in 2023 amid Ukraine, Gaza wars and Asian tensions

    Global arms sales rose 4.2% to $632 billion in 2023, driven by conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and Asian tensions, SIPRI reported. Russian and Middle Eastern firms saw notable growth after recovering from 2022 supply challenges, as arms makers ramped up production to meet surging demand.

  • France24 ☛ Lebanon’s uneasy truce, Trumponomics, Merkel’s Memoir, Sudan ‘The Invisible Crisis’

    This week, the guests gathered around Gavin LEE discuss the fragile ceasefire that was agreed between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah; how Donald Trump plans on launching a new tariff war with America's neighbours; and what is happening in Sudan, where war is still raging, despite focus being displaced towards Ukraine and the Middle East. And as a Black Friday special deal, our set of experts also dive into Angela Merkel's legacy book.

  • France24 ☛ Iran pledges support for Syria's Assad as rebels advance after taking Aleppo

    Russian air strikes targeted Syrian insurgents on Sunday and Iran pledged to “firmly support” the regime in Damascus as the Syrian army scrambled to stem a rebel advance south of Aleppo that has dealt a huge blow to President Bashar al-Assad.

  • New York Times ☛ Syria’s Rebels Struck When Assad’s Allies Were Weakened and Distracted

    Diminished support for the Syrian government from Iran, Hezbollah and Russia enabled opposition forces to take the initiative and seize new territory.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • France24 ☛ 'Record turnout' in Romania's parliamentary election

      Romanians flocked to the polls on Sunday (December 1) to elect a new parliament with the far right tipped to gain ground, potentially heralding a shift in the foreign policy of the NATO country bordering Ukraine. The parliamentary vote comes at a time of political turmoil sparked when a top court ordered a recount of the first round of the November 24 presidential election. FRANCE 24's Maria Gerth-Niculescu tells us more.

    • RFERL ☛ Ruling Social Democrats Take Early Lead, But Romanian Election Outcome Unsure

      Romania's ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) appears to have taken an early lead in pivotal parliamentary elections, which could determine the fate of the country’s pro-Western policies, including its future assistance to Ukraine.

    • France24 ☛ Romanians return to the polls amid political turmoil

      Romanians returned to the polls on Sunday (December 1) to elect a new parliament, with the far right tipped to win, potentially heralding a shift in the foreign policy of the NATO country bordering Ukraine. The parliamentary poll comes at a time of political turmoil, sparked when a top court ordered a recount of the first round of the separate presidential election on November 24. FRANCE 24's Andrew Hilliar gives us his analysis.

    • France24 ☛ Romanians head to the polls in parliamentary elections amid political turmoil

      Romanians returned to the polls on Sunday (December 1) to elect a new parliament, with the far right tipped to win, potentially heralding a shift in the foreign policy of the NATO country bordering Ukraine. The parliamentary poll comes at a time of political turmoil, sparked when a top court ordered a recount of the first round of the separate presidential election on November 24. FRANCE 24's Maria Gerth-Niculescu tells us more.

    • France24 ☛ Human rights groups slam US decision to send landmines to Ukraine

      A US offer to give Ukraine anti-personnel mines to help battle Russia's invasion has drawn criticism from human rights groups.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Drones Target Kyiv Overnight; 3 Killed In Southern City

      Russia launched dozens of attack drones at the Ukrainian capital, officials said, in the latest of a series of air strikes that have battered Kyiv and its power grid.

    • LRT ☛ What exactly happened at Chernobyl during the Russian invasion?

      From February 24th to March 31st 2022, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the entire exclusion zone were under occupation by Russian troops. Although the area was cleared up fairly quickly after the withdrawal of the aggressor’s troops, the effects of the occupation are still being felt.

    • University of Michigan ☛ Here’s what we can learn from foreign interference in the 2024 presidential election

      In the final days of the 2024 election, our foreign adversaries were hard at work influencing voters and disrupting electoral procedures. Russian email domains spread bomb threats to polling places in multiple states, and Russian state actors produced fake media to undermine the legitimacy of the election.

    • RFERL ☛ Moscow Bars, Nightclubs Raided Amid Crackdown On LGBT Community

      Moscow police on November 30 raided several bars and nightclubs in the capital as part of the government’s crackdown on “LGBTQ+ propaganda,” state media reported.

    • The Straits Times ☛ German foreign minister criticises Beijing’s support for Russia ahead of China visit

      Ms Baerbock said Germany stands up for its interests just as much as China stands up for its own.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Pentagon-funded study on extremism in the military relied on old data

    But The Associated Press has found that the study, “Prohibited Extremist Activities in the U.S. Department of Defense” conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses, relied on old data, misleading analyses and ignored evidence that pointed to the opposite conclusion.

    In fact, the AP found that the IDA report’s authors did not use newer data that was offered to it, and instead based one of its foundational conclusions on Jan. 6 arrest figures that were more than two years out of date by the time of the report’s public release.

    As a result, the report grossly undercounted the number of military and veterans arrested for the Jan. 6 attack and provided a misleading picture of the severity of the growing problem, the AP has found.

  • Futurism ☛ Tesla Factories Caught Spewing Toxins Into Air, River, Sewer

    As detailed in public records obtained by the Wall Street Journal, the Elon Musk-led company also allowed a massive casting furnace to spew toxins into the air after its door refused to shut.

    These environmental problems continued to be a problem for months. While Tesla bosses were aware of them, they forced employees to come up with short-term fixes, according to the report, all in an effort to avoid slowing down production.

• Environment

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Desertification talks open in Saudi Arabia as experts fire warning

    UN talks aimed at halting the degradation and desertification of vast swathes of land start in Saudi Arabia on Monday after scientists fired a stark warning over unsustainable farming and deforestation.

  • CBC ☛ No global treaty reached on cutting plastic production, talks to resume next year

    They are at an impasse over whether the treaty should reduce the total plastic on Earth and put global, legally binding controls on toxic chemicals used to make plastics.

    The UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting in Busan, South Korea, was supposed to be the fifth and final round of negotiations, to produce the first legally binding treaty on plastics pollution, including in the oceans, by the end of 2024. But with time running out early Monday, negotiators plan to resume the talks next year.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Linking Lincoln and Omaha with a hike-bike trail enters a new phase

      Construction of a long-sought recreation trail to connect Lincoln and Omaha moved a step closer following the final approval of a route through rural Cass County.

      On a 14-4 vote, the Lower Platte South Natural Resources District, headquartered in Lincoln, approved a route for a 10-mile segment of trail that will connect the existing Mo-Pac Trail, which ends in Wabash, with the Lied Bridge that spans the Platte River.

    • New Yorker ☛ What You Can Do with an Electric Volkswagen Bus

      Volkswagen bus fans like me have been waiting for this thing—the plug-in electric Buzz—for a quarter century. VW first teased a reboot of the bus in 2001, three years after it introduced the rebooted Beetle. The electric VW bus finally came out in Europe in 2022, and I wrote a long piece about it for the magazine. Now that a slightly bigger version is making its début in the United States, Volkswagen sent me one, for a week-long test drive.

    • LRT ☛ What exactly happened at Chernobyl during the Russian invasion?

      From February 24th to March 31st 2022, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the entire exclusion zone were under occupation by Russian troops. Although the area was cleared up fairly quickly after the withdrawal of the aggressor’s troops, the effects of the occupation are still being felt.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2024-11-23 [Older] Amid big-box stores and industrial zones, salmon are returning to Metro Vancouver streams

• Finance

  • CBC ☛ 2024-11-24 [Older] Canada's post-secondary industry predicts a storm ahead, as budget cuts shrink courses, staff

  • CBC ☛ 2024-11-24 [Older] The bat-ridden ruins of this abandoned Newfoundland amusement park could be all yours for $55,000

  • The Guardian UK ☛ The rich will pay up when prodded. So let’s make tax-collecting great again

    What do we want? More tax inspectors. When do we want them? Ideally a few years back, but now will do. Maybe not the most exciting protest song, but it does it for me.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Biden administration leaves ‘foundational’ tech legacy, technologists say

    Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which aimed to strengthen domestic semiconductor manufacturing, supply chains and the innovation economy with a $53 billion investment, is a major piece of his legacy, Franklin said. The bill centered on worker and community investments, and prioritized small businesses and underrepresented communities, with a goal of economic growth in the U.S., and especially in communities that needed support.

  • India Times ☛ Elon Musk asks US court to block OpenAI's for-profit conversion

    Elon Musk has again asked a US court to stop ChatGPT-maker OpenAI from converting into a for-profit enterprise, CNBC reported Saturday.

    Attorneys representing the billionaire and his AI startup, xAI, filed the injunction Friday, the financial news site reported.

  • IT Wire ☛ Nokia to replace Huawei at Deutsche Telekom in large-scale O-RAN rollout

    Telecommunications equipment vendor Nokia has won a deal with German telco Deutsche Telekom (DT) which will see it replace Chinese vendor Huawei at more than 3,000 sites to support the operator’s multi-vendor Open RAN network scale-up in Germany.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Trump and allies blur the lines between politician and influencer

    The Boxbollen video highlights how some of the biggest names in President-elect Donald Trump’s orbit have capitalized on their social media fame in the run-up to his second White House term. By assembling a crew of advisers not from the ranks of career bureaucrats but from a hodgepodge of right-wing [Internet] personalities and Fox News hosts, Trump has built America’s first influencer administration, potentially transforming how Washington reaches everyday Americans — and giving rise to new forms of conflict of interest.

  • An Coimisiún Toghcháin ☛ Ireland’s voting system - Electoral Commission

    PR-STV is a candidate-based system. This means voters can choose to vote for as many, or as few candidates as they like, in order of their preference.

    The voter’s first preference vote – the candidate they give their number 1 vote to – is most important and is always counted. A voter’s second (and further preferences) may be counted if their preferred candidate is eliminated at the end of a round of counting, or is elected with a surplus. These are known as transfers. Please see the How to vote and How your vote is counted sections for more information.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  "" ☛ https://www.jurist.org/news/2024/11/nigeria-crackdown-on-protests-violates-fundamental-rights-amnesty-international/ | Source: JURIST

  • JURIST ☛ Nigeria crackdown on protests violates fundamental rights: Amnesty International

    The organization accused Nigerian authorities of threatening protestors, seeking court orders to limit protest venues, arresting individuals arbitrarily, torturing detainees, and firing on protesters with intent to kill. Authorities have also charged multiple protesters with treason, including 29 minors who may face the death penalty.

  "" ☛ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/29/georgia-russians-emigres-fled/ | Source: The Washington Post

  • The Washington Post ☛ A changed Georgia is no longer a haven for Russia’s political exiles

    As the war in Ukraine has progressed, the ruling Georgian Dream party has pivoted toward Moscow and started a crackdown of its own in ways that were all too familiar to the Russian political émigrés who once saw it as a place of safety.

  • RFERL ☛ Iranian Rapper Previously Sentenced To Death Released From Prison

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Putin may have wanted Skripal dead over what he knew, UK officials believe

    A leading intelligence official on Russia has said he took “at face value” Skripal’s assertions that secrets he knew about how Putin may have made money led to the nerve agent attack on him in Salisbury.

    An inquiry into the poisonings has heard that Foreign Office experts concluded Putin personally ordered the attack as it was inconceivable that such an audacious action would have been carried out without his say-so. A central remaining question has been why Russian agents were sent to Salisbury to kill Skripal.

  • El País ☛ Texas’ war on porn

    This law has sparked a conflict between those who argue that it infringes on freedom of expression and privacy, and the conservative state government, which has begun imposing million-dollar fines on offending companies.

    HB 1181 was passed in May 2023 with 133 votes in favor, two abstentions, 13 absences, and a single vote against. Despite appeals from civil rights groups and major companies affected by the law, it went into effect in September of the same year, following a ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that declared the law did not violate constitutional rights. By February of the following year, the sanctions began to arrive.

  • India Times ☛ Internet users in Pakistan face slow [Internet] speed, limited access to online platforms

    Furthermore, the Pakistan government has carried out multiple tests of its [Internet] firewall this year, which has reduced the speed of internet and caused digital disruptions in the past. Presently, the cause of the slowdown of the [Internet] speed remains unclear and authorities have not given a reason for the ongoing issue.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • RFERL ☛ RFE/RL Journalist Arrested, Beaten During Protests In Georgian Capital, Lawyer Says

    "When they discovered he was a journalist at RFE/RL, they became more aggressive and began beating him. He was then thrown into a minivan with other detainees and beaten for about an hour," Chkadua alleged.

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

    A court in Beijing on Friday handed down a seven-year jail term to prominent journalist and columnist Dong Yuyu after finding him guilty of “espionage” in a trial behind closed doors that ended in July 2023, his family and press associations said.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • CBC ☛ 2024-11-24 [Older] Second Cup cuts ties with Montreal franchisee, closes cafés over antisemitic remarks and gesture

  • CBC ☛ 2024-11-23 [Older] Vancouver Police Board vice-chair resigns following social media comments on immigration

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ 2024-11-20 [Older] Can a Social Network Sue a Company for Not Advertising?

  • CBC ☛ 2024-11-24 [Older] I'm fluent in Spanish. But I deliberately speak Spanglish because it's truer to who I am

  • The Hill ☛ Alex Padilla: State law enforcement has 'no obligation' to assist ICE

    “I think there’s an important distinction here,” Padilla replied. “No state government, not Texas, not California, not any state in the nation has a constitutional authority to impose federal immigration law that is the responsibility of the federal government.”

    He noted that some states, such as Texas, are pushing to find a way to assist ICE, but “there’s no obligation to do so.”

  • El País ☛ Fred Kudjo Kuwornu, filmmaker: ‘The study of slavery monopolizes everything and creates a prejudice that in Europe there were only enslaved Africans’

    We Were Here — which was presented at this year’s Venice Biennale — challenges the widespread notion that Black people in Europe at the time were solely slaves or servants, as Kuwornu explains in a videoconference interview. Without ignoring the atrocities committed during slavery, the documentary highlights more diverse Black figures, including princes, ambassadors, artists, merchants, and religious figures — many of whom Kuwornu argues have been overlooked in dominant historical accounts.

  • El País ☛ Private prisons in US stand to cash in from Trump’s mass deportation plan

    This is how investors interpreted it: in the summer, when the assassination attempt on Trump took place, the two main American private prison corporations, GEO Group and CoreCivic, rose on the stock market because it was understood that the shooting strengthened the Republican candidate and brought him closer to victory. Once the polls closed and it became clear that the results were good news for the Republicans, the explosion came: shares in the two companies shot up, closing the first post-election session with gains of 42% and 29% respectively.

  • NDTV ☛ Indian YouTuber Shares Video Of "Zombie-Like People" Walking On San Francisco Streets

    Bengaluru-based YouTuber Ishan Sharma, who is known for his candid critiques, recently shared a worrisome video showing what he described as "zombie-like people" wandering in the streets of San Francisco, US. Taking to X, Mr Sharma highlighted issues such as homelessness, drug addiction and public safety plaguing the city in recent years. "This is San Francisco. The tech capital of America. Home to the world's brightest minds. And the biggest tech companies," he wrote in his post while sharing the disturbing video.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Rest of World ☛ New data shows the number of new mobile internet users is stalling

    When Facebook hit 1 billion users in 2012, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that when it comes to getting another billion users, “The big thing is obviously going to be mobile.” In an interview at the time, Zuckerberg told Bloomberg, “As more phones become smartphones, it’s just this massive opportunity.”

    Clearly, he was correct. A recent survey from Global System for Mobile Communications Association Intelligence (GSMA), the research wing of a U.K.-based organization that represents mobile operators around the world, found that 4.6 billion people across the globe are now connected to mobile internet — or roughly 57% of the world’s population.