GNU/Linux

• Linux Made Simple ☛ 2024-12-08 [Older] Linux Weekly Roundup #306

Leftovers

• 404 Media ☛ Traffic Camera 'Selfie' Creator Holds Cease and Desist Letter in Front of Traffic Cam

  Artist Morry Kolman made a website called Traffic Cam Photobooth that lets people take “selfies” using publicly-available feeds from traffic cameras. The New York City Department of Transportation sent him a cease and desist letter demanding he cut it out. In response, he kept the site online and held the letter up to a traffic camera, according to Kolman’s posts on social media.

• Task And Purpose ☛ She left the Navy in 2004, now vying to be an Army Golden Knight

  To become a Golden Knight, soldiers have to be airborne qualified or willing to go to Army Airborne School. They also have to perform at least 100 military or civilian free-fall jumps before they submit an application. Kossman already has 1,280 parachute jumps under her belt.

• The Telegraph UK ☛ Tolkien vs the counter-culture: Jagger, McCartney and the animated Lord of the Rings

  An anime adaptation of the epic fantasy has fans up in arms – but for trippy strangeness, nothing can beat Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 cartoon

• New Eastern Europe ☛ “Fascism is an offer, a promise of profit…”

  Interview with Daniel Schulz, a German journalist and author of Wir waren wie Brüder (We Were Like Brothers). Interviewer: Martina Napolitano.

• [Old] Thomas Günther ☛ Finally owning my web

  Since I made the plan to “own my web” last year, I’ve been collecting article drafts and learnings. Stay tuned as I share them here, one post at a time.

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ Google Says It Appears to Have Accessed Parallel Universes

    "Willow’s performance on this benchmark is astonishing," Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven wrote in a blog post announcing the chip. "It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years."

    "This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe," he argued. "It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch."

  • CBC ☛ Heads up! It's time for the Geminid meteor shower, one of the best shows of the year

    With the Geminid meteor shower, Gemini rises around 7 p.m. local time, allowing those who may not want to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to catch a glimpse of some meteors.

    However, this year, the moon will be almost 97 per cent illuminated and fairly high in the sky early in the evening, which means you'll only be able to see the brightest of the Geminids.

• Career/Education

  • Project Censored ☛ 2024-12-05 [Older] Tribal Colleges Remain Underfunded Decades After Congressional Commitment To Indigenous Higher Ed

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post: The Perennial Question of Librarian Credentialing

    Librarians wrestle with the question of what it means to be a “professional librarian.” Which persons — possessed of which qualifications and which “terminal degrees” — should and should not bear the title? The question has existed as long as university libraries have existed, but the rapidly and radically evolving nature of library work — coupled with the ever-expanding boundaries of the academic library’s remit — make the question newly difficult and newly controversial. Indeed, it would be challenging to name a debate among academic librarians more perennially contentious or important than that of credentialing.

  • Marcus Buffett ☛ Treat Your Onboarding Users Like Toddlers

    One of the biggest realizations I’ve had when building Chessbook is that onboarding a user is really hard. A user that’s coming in from some generic marketing, or from a blog post they found, or from organic search… well, the closest mental model is that they’re precocious toddlers.

  • Annie Mueller ☛ Expect obstacles

    Obstacles don’t exist to stop you from reaching your goal. They exist because the world exists. Because there is stuff in the world. Because between you (today) and you (tomorrow) are 24 hours of anything-can-happen.

  • Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ☛ Adult skills in literacy and numeracy declining or stagnating in most OECD countries | OECD

    Literacy and numeracy skills among adults have largely declined or stagnated over the past decade in most OECD countries, according to the second OECD Survey of Adult Skills. Declines have been even larger and more widespread among low-educated adults.

    The Survey measured the skills of around 160 000 16-65 year-olds across 31 countries*. Twenty-seven of these countries took part in the first Survey in 2013. It also looked at how literacy, numeracy and problem solving is used at work. It aims to provide evidence of how developing and using skills improves employment prospects and quality of life as well as boosting economic growth.

  • The Hindu ☛ Govt. reveals more info about ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ | Explained

    The story so far: On November 25, the Indian government announced the launch of its ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ (ONOS) plan to improve access to expensive research journals to the country’s public education and research institutes. The announcement was accompanied with scant details and broached widespread criticism from the research community, especially over what was perceived to be its disproportionate expense and lack of support for open-access publishing. On December 11, government officials conducted a press conference in New Delhi that addressed many of these concerns.

• Hardware

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Why materials science is key to unlocking the next frontier of AI development

    At this inflection point, a complex, global ecosystem—from foundries and designers to highly specialized equipment manufacturers and materials solutions providers like Merck—is working together more closely than ever before to find the answers. All have a role to play, and the role of materials extends far, far beyond the silicon that makes up the wafer.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ LG stops making Blu-ray players, marking the end of an era — limited units remain while inventory lasts

    After Samsung and Sony's departure from physical media, LG was one of the last major manufacturers of Blu-ray players. The pace of innovation slowed down, as did the frequency of newer models, and to no one's surprise, LG has decided to exit the Blu-ray market, per reports. LG's latest offerings - the UBK80 and UBK90 UHD players were launched in 2018, dating almost six years back. Panasonic remains one of the last bastions guarding Blu-ray media, but its future remains uncertain as the industry transitions to online streaming.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • BNN ☛ Keros Plunges After Dosing Halted in Lung Drug Trial on Safety

    Keros Therapeutics Inc. shares plunged after the biotech company halted dosing for some patients in a mid-stage trial of its lung disorder drug over side effect concerns.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Forever chemical’ found in mineral water from several European countries

    Mineral water from several European nations has been found for the first time to be contaminated with TFA, a type of PFAS “forever chemical” that is a reproductive toxicant accumulating at alarming levels across the globe.

    The finding is startling because mineral water should be pristine and insulated from manmade chemicals. The contamination is thought to stem from the heavy application of pesticides containing TFA, or compounds that turn into it in the environment, which are used throughout the world.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 1 in 5 people have genital herpes says latest WHO report

    Updated World Health Organization (WHO) estimates show 1 in 5 people aged under 50 have genital herpes.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Nebraska Supreme Court to consider medical cannabis petition signatures challenge

    Pillen proclaimed the success of both measures Thursday, affirming the overwhelming support that the Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana campaign received at the ballot box to legalize (Initiative Measure 437) and regulate (Initiative Measure 438) the drug. Both measures are now law in the state of Nebraska.

    Measure 437, which will legalize up to 5 ounces of medical marijuana with a licensed health care practitioner’s written recommendation, passed with 71% voter approval. The medical recommendation must state the potential benefits of cannabis outweigh the potential harms.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Ruling blocks undocumented immigrants from using health insurance under ACA

    U.S. District Court Judge Dan Traynor on Monday granted a request from a coalition of Republican attorneys general to suspend a new federal rule from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services allowing immigrants protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to access health care through the Affordable Care Act.

  • Science News ☛ U.S. hospitals continue to shut down labor and delivery services

    Researchers tallied losses and gains of labor and delivery units at close to 5,000 U.S. hospitals from 2010 to 2022. The losses prevailed. More than half of rural hospitals and more than one-third of urban hospitals did not offer obstetric services in 2022, researchers report December 4 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That’s worse than in 2010, when 43 percent of rural hospitals and 30 percent of urban hospitals lacked these services.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Bernie Sanders: A Mass Movement Can Beat Health CEO Greed

    It’s clear in the aftermath of the murder, allegedly carried out by twenty-six-year-old Luigi Mangione, that people across the political spectrum are outraged at insurance companies’ greed and the system’s inability to provide adequate care for Americans. But without a mass movement around Medicare for All helmed by strong political leadership, it is difficult to imagine how people’s rage and despair can be channeled into lasting change.

    Senator Bernie Sanders spoke with Jacobin contributor Chandler Dandridge about the reaction to Thompson’s murder, the cruelty of the for-profit health care system, the case for Medicare for All, how to promote unity among working-class voters, and the need for Democratic Party leaders to say which side they are on.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Health Insurers’ Profits Are Reaching New Heights

    The top five health insurers have raked in over $371 billion in profits since ACA passed. Over 40% of that went to the parent company of CEO Brian Thompson’s UnitedHealthcare, UnitedHealth Group — which denies nearly one in three claims from its policyholders.

  • New York Times ☛ Ev Williams, Twitter and Medium Founder, Unveils New Social App

    But he was lonely. He had gotten divorced and moved cross-country twice in a few years. Before his 50th birthday in 2022, he realized he had “underinvested” in his friendships, he said. Post-pandemic, he did not even know where many of his friends were living.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Too Much Screen Time Harms Preschoolers' Sleep, Behavior

    Worse, kids can wind up in a downward spiral, with screen time and poor sleep feeding off each other.

    “Our results suggest the presence of a positive feedback loop, wherein increased screen time and sleep disturbances exacerbate each other through cyclic reinforcement, heightening the risk of hyperactive attention problems, anxiety and depression,” said researcher Dr. Bowen Xiao, an expert in children’s socio-emotional functioning and developmental psychopathology with Carleton University in Canada.

  • New York Times ☛ Let’s Talk About Pornography. No, Seriously.

    The aim: to teach adolescents that the explicit content they encounter is unrealistic, misleading about many sexual relations and, as a result, potentially harmful. The approach does not condone the content or encourage its use, Dr. Willoughby emphasized, but acknowledges its ubiquity and unrealistic, hard-core nature. Long gone are the days of nude magazines that left much to the imagination.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ What happens when 13-year-olds ditch their phones

    It was a three-week process, involving setting the children regular cognitive tests on a computer, fitting them with an electroencephalography cap to monitor their brain activity, and sleep analysis via smartwatches.

    It was filmed as a two-part documentary, Swiped: The School that Banned Smartphones, for Channel 4, the last episode of which airs tonight. The researchers and film-makers both hope that the findings of the study will be a catalyst for the Government to work towards a nationwide ban on smartphones for children under the age of 14.

  • NDTV ☛ Luigi Mangione Was Charged With Murder - Then Donations Started Pouring In

    Most of the messages on the crowd-sourced fundraising site GiveSendGo reflect a deep frustration shared by many Americans over the US healthcare system.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Business Insider ☛ Read the memo Calendly's CEO sent to employees announcing 70 job cuts

  • TechCrunch ☛ Yahoo cybersecurity team sees layoffs, outsourcing of ‘red team,’ under new CTO

    Yahoo laid off around 25% of its cybersecurity team — known as The Paranoids — over the last year, TechCrunch has learned.

    Overall, the company has laid off or lost through attrition 40 to 50 people from a total of 200 employees in the cybersecurity team since the start of 2024, according to multiple current and former Yahoo employees who spoke to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity. (Yahoo is TechCrunch’s parent company.)

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Google debuts Android XR operating system for VR and AR devices

    Google LLC today debuted Android XR, a new operating system for virtual reality and augmented devices.

    The software will initially ship with headsets. Down the road, Google will also enable hardware partners to integrate Android XR into smart glasses. The search giant has already developed several prototype glasses internally as part of an initiative called Project Astra.

  • Wired ☛ OnlyFans Models Are Using AI Impersonators to Keep Up With Their DMs

    Of course, a single creator with thousands of ongoing DM conversations has only so many hours in a day. To manage the deluge of amorous messages, it’s become commonplace to outsource the conversations to “chatters” paid to sub in for the actual talent.

    These chatters used to mainly be contractors from the Philippines, Pakistan, India, and other countries with substantially lower wage expectations than the US. But, increasingly, human chatters are getting replaced by AI-generated stand-ins.

  • Macworld ☛ Apple is about to switch to its own Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip

    The new Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, code-named Proxima, will first appear in refreshed HomePod Mini and Apple TV devices, but should also show up in the iPhone 17 later in the year. Macs will get the new chip starting in 2026, according to the report.

  • Dr Drang ☛ Thinking about AI

    I’m still not sure how to think about AI. While some aspects of it seem useful, I’m not sure I care about them. The few times I’ve tried it out on topics of interest to me, using both ChatGPT and Perplexity it’s failed.

  • Drew Breunig ☛ Pipelines & Prompt Optimization with DSPy

    I stumbled across DSPy while looking for a framework to build a small agent (I wanted to try out some new techniques to make my weather site more interesting) and found its approach to prompting interesting. From their site, “DSPy is the framework for programming—rather than prompting—language models.”

    And it’s true: you spend much, much less time prompting when you use DSPy to build LLM-powered applications. Because you let DSPy handle that bit for you.

  • Aman Mittal ☛ Block unwanted external links using Google Search Console's Disavow

    When managing a docs site SEO, you might encounter situations when external websites link to incorrect or non-existent pages from your site. These unwanted backlinks can impact your site’s search performance and create unnecessary 5xx errors.

  • Niall Murphy ☛ LLMs won't save us

    But I thought it was appropriate, as someone who straddles the two domains of AI and production engineering/SRE/DevOps/whatever we’re calling it today, to go into why I think this technology, as important, as useful, and as cosmically powerful as it is, today has fundamental limits to success, that (particularly in the domain of incident management) LLMs are dangerous to use, and that - as the title implies - that LLMs won’t save us. In other words, when we need them the most is when they are most likely to abandon us.

    The rest of this article outlines the difference between these two world views, applies a critical lens to their positions, and tries to present a synthesis.

  • Michigan News ☛ Do you or your kids play Fortnite? You might be eligible for payment in massive settlement - mlive.com

    The payments will be made to players of Fortnite related to in-game purchases that may not have been authorized. The FTC accused Epic Games -- the maker of Fortnite -- of unlawfully charging players for unwanted purchases, while also allowing children to make unauthorized charges without their parents’ permission. The FTC also accused the company of blocking some users who disputed wrongful charges from accessing their purchased content.

  • India Times ☛ Google unveils AI agent that can use websites on its own

    Google's new prototype, called Mariner, is based on Gemini 2.0, which the company also unveiled Wednesday. Gemini is the core technology that underpins many of the company's AI products and research experiments. Versions of the system will power the company's chatbot of the same name and AI Overviews, a Google search tool that directly answers user questions.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Rodents-Montreal ☛ [Understanding the Terrapin Attack Against SSH]

      This file is still a work-in-progress.

      Terrapin is an attack against ssh's binary packet protocol. It is a prefix truncation attack, that is, it permits deleting some initial subset of the supposedly-protected data. It posits an attacker with full control over the octet stream between the peers, able to inspect, delay, delete, modify, and insert octets at will. This is the strongest type of attacker normally considered as a crypto opponent, but it also is the kind of attacker ssh is intended to be able to protect against.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • NBC ☛ 2024-12-05 [Older] U.S. Officials Urge Americans to Use Encrypted Apps, for Texting and Calls, in Wake of Chinese Infiltration of Our Unencrypted Telecom Network [Ed: The cost of one's own back doors]

    • EDRI ☛ Subject: Joint letter calling for the EU digital security agenda to promote fundamental rights and support a safe digital ecosystem

      We, the undersigned professional associations, media and human rights organisations, trade unions and technology companies, are writing to you to underline the necessity of an EU digital security agenda that both ensures justice, accountability and the respect of fundamental rights, and supports the development of a safe digital ecosystem.

    • EPIC ☛ EPIC, Coalition Urge EU Council to Reconsider Proposals That Would Undermine Encryption

      The High-Level Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement, also known as HLG Going Dark, presented its final report and recommendations for an agenda of maximal access to personal data. This group consisted of high-level representatives from member states, the EU Commission, relevant EU bodies and agencies, and the EU Counterterrorism Coordinator. Their suggestions include new data retention rules across the EU and would mainstream law enforcement “backdoor” access in technologies and undermine encryption. Similar privileged access was recently exploited by the Salt Typhoon hacking campaign, resulting in the FBI urging all Americans to use encrypted messaging.

      The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has already provided feedback to HLG Going Dark, stating its concern that weakening encryption could run afoul of fundamental human rights and undermine cybersecurity, observing that the HLG’s proposals do not reflect technological reality, and highlighting a lack of transparency, accountability, and representation beyond law enforcement interests within the HLG. The coalition emphasizes and expands on the dangers of the HLG’s magical thinking and proposes a better policy alternative in its open letter published on December 11, 2024.

    • EDRI ☛ Shedding light: We address the flawed Going Dark Report

      Formally the HLG is called “High Level Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement”, but it is usually referred to as HLG or in the context of “Going Dark”, because of the way the HLG has framed their work. Going Dark is the false claim that there is a lack of access to data despite unprecedented surveillance powers in the hands of law enforcement agencies.

      Speaking of Going Dark: The HLG report was created behind closed-doors and without meaningful participation of civil society. Despite painting themselves as “an inclusive forum for all relevant stakeholders”, the HLG would only simulate an openness to the involvement of digital policy experts after public pressure. Previously the HLG had restricted EDRi and other civil society organisations from participating and exclusively met with law enforcement agencies and like-minded industry actors instead. This biased composition and opaque procedure of the HLG is unfortunately also reflected in the problematic outcomes of this group.

    • Techdirt ☛ Cheap Phone Scanner Shows Lots Of People Are Still Being Targeted By NSO Group Spyware

      What’s a little more surprising is that it might not take a dedicated team of security researchers to uncover a Pegasus infection. These have been notoriously difficult to identify, especially when the malware is deployed in its preferred zero-click form, which means infections don’t require risky clicks by potential targets. And those targets are many and varied: they range from legitimate targets, like terrorists and other criminals, to others that have put NSO Group in the international headlines crosshairs: journalists, opposition leaders, dissidents, lawyers, diplomats, and the occasional ex-wife of UAE royalty.

    • The Local DK ☛ Denmark updates digital ID MitID to guard against scammers

      A new update for the MitID app will be launched today in an effort to bolster anti-fraud protections. The app is a near-essential platform used in Denmark to log on to public and state services and complete online payments.

      The update means users can now only transfer the app to a new device using a QR code, and only if the two devices are physically next to each other.

      The Danish Agency for Digital Government (Digitaliseringsstyrelsen), which is responsible for MitID, describes the new measure as a "proximity check." It is designed to enable users to transfer MitID to a new device, such as when purchasing a new phone.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Taiwan says China carrying out huge maritime drills

    Taiwanese forces were on high alert in anticipation of Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army staging war games in response to Taiwan President Lai Ching-te’s visits to the United States last week.

  • The Scotsman ☛ Why Donald Trump’s election could hasten the end of US dollar dominance

    Indeed, the US dollar is used in more than 50 per cent of foreign trade invoices, and over 80 per cent of all foreign exchange transactions worldwide. However, it is possible that Trump’s “America First” foreign policy could serve to hasten the end of the US dollar’s dominance.

  • Digital Music News ☛ U.S. Gov't Opposes TikTok Injunction Push Amid Heated Ban Battle

    With the unprecedented TikTok ban battle going down to the wire to say the least, the government has laid out its opposition to deviating from the current deadline.

    “[TikTok and ByteDance] are not entitled, however, to an injunction against an Act of Congress when the only court to consider their constitutional challenge has rejected it,” the response reads in part. “The Supreme Court can decide for itself whether the statute must be enjoined, as petitioners previously contemplated.”

  • VOA News ☛ ByteDance seeks to delay US TikTok ban, putting hope on Trump administration

    As the deadline approaches for ByteDance to divest from TikTok or face a ban in the United States, the Chinese company made an appeal Monday to U.S. courts to extend the date of the ultimatum until after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

    The current deadline requires ByteDance to divest from TikTok by Jan. 19, 2025, a day before Trump is sworn into office.

  • India Times ☛ US asks court to reject TikTok's bid to stave off law that could ban the app

    TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia pending a review by the US Supreme Court. They warned that without court action the law will "shut down TikTok - one of the nation's most popular speech platforms - for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users."

    The Justice Department said the court should not delay the law's effective date arguing "continued Chinese control of the TikTok application poses a continuing threat to national security."

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Russian And Palestinian Hacktivists Uniting Against France

    The Holy League alliance is also noteworthy because it comes amid the ouster of Russian-backed Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad, a revolution supported by pro-Islamic groups. “This alliance highlights a pragmatic convergence of interests, where shared objectives in destabilizing common adversaries outweigh ideological differences,” Cyble noted.

    “This political turmoil has created a vulnerable environment, providing hacktivist groups with an opportunity to sow chaos, disrupt public order by disrupting public and critical infrastructure, and amplify uncertainty within the nation,” Cyble wrote.

  • Inside Towers ☛ NATO May Use Aquatic Drones to Protect Undersea Internet Cables

    NATO is preparing to deploy unmanned surface vessels (USVs) in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas to safeguard vital undersea internet cables and infrastructure. According to reporting from DefenseNews, these autonomous boats will act as a persistent surveillance network, operating like a “street-lighting” system at sea by continually monitoring activity both on and below the water’s surface.

    The alliance aims to use a fleet of unmanned boats equipped with cameras and sensors to detect and deter potential threats to undersea cables. Admiral Pierre Vandier, speaking to DefenseNews, indicated that current technology makes such a maritime security concept feasible.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Meet the Billionaire Nepo Babies Benefiting from Trump Tax Scam

    “The vast wealth inherited by centuries-old billionaire families is staggering. While these heirs and their billions go undertaxed, enormous sums are squandered on lavish mansions, private jets, and vanity projects instead of funding crucial public investments," said David Kass, ATF's Executive Director. "In 2024, these billionaire families used their enormous wealth to make record-breaking political contributions to secure a GOP trifecta. Now, Trump and his allies in Congress are doing their donors' bidding by rigging the system in their favor and pushing a $4 trillion giveaway to wealthy elites and giant corporations—all while advocating for cuts to vital programs that working and middle-class Americans depend on."

  • US News And World Report ☛ Trump’s Billionaire Brigade Is Headed to Washington. Should That Be Worrying?

    The president-elect has tapped at least nine billionaires for his administration, raising questions about financial conflicts of interest and the GOP’s commitment to the middle class.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ NATO chief warns Putin wants confrontation with Europe after Ukraine

    He listed a series of recent “hostile actions” by Russia against NATO allies, including cyberattacks, assassinations, an explosion at a Czech ammunition depot, the jamming of radars in the Baltic region to disrupt air traffic and the “weaponization” of migrants to destabilize Europe.

    “These attacks are not just isolated incidents. They are the result of a coordinated campaign to destabilize our societies and discourage us from supporting Ukraine,” he said. “They circumvent our deterrence and bring the front line to our front doors.”

  • EPIC ☛ EPIC Urges Northern District of California to Reject NetChoice’s Request to Enjoin California Law to Regulate Addictive Feeds for Minors – EPIC – Electronic Privacy Information Center

    California passed SB 976 to regulate minors’ access to “addictive feeds,” which present a user with whatever content will increase the user’s usage of a website or platform. Many platforms offer addictive feeds that surveil users’ behavior, build profiles of them, and then show the users whatever content that similarly profiled users engaged with. This boosts the companies’ revenues, but reduces user’s choice over the materials they see and leads to mental and physical harms to children.

    NetChoice claims the law is unconstitutional because providing addictive feeds is an expressive act, as is the age assurance that platforms would have to perform to ensure the law only applies to minors. EPIC’s brief explains why NetChoice’s challenge should fail for three different reasons.

  • LRT ☛ EU allows countries bordering Russia, Belarus to restrict migrants’ asylum rights

    The European Union said on Wednesday that member states bordering Russia and Belarus could restrict migrants’ right [sic] to asylum in cases where Moscow and Minsk use them as instruments.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ EU: 11-year-old is only survivor from capsized migrant boat

    "We assume that she is the only survivor of the shipwreck and that the other 44 people drowned," said CompassCollective, which assists in migrant rescue missions in the Mediterranean Sea.

  • The Register UK ☛ British Army tries out drone-destroying laser

    In that instance, the 15-kilowatt infrared laser was found to be capable of "neutralizing" targets at distances greater than 1 km. In both tests, the weapon was mounted on a Wolfhound, a six-wheel armored truck operated by the army as part of its Tactical Support Vehicles (TSV) group.

  • The Age AU ☛ 2024-12-07 [Older] After the fire: Heavy security at synagogues as community voices sorrow, frustration

• Environment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-04 [Older] What is desertification and why does it matter?

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Unprecedented risk’ to life on Earth: Scientists call for halt on ‘mirror life’ microbe research

    The international group of Nobel laureates and other experts warn that mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could become established in the environment and slip past the immune defences of natural organisms, putting humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections.

    Although a viable mirror microbe would probably take at least a decade to build, a new risk assessment raised such serious concerns about the organisms that the 38-strong group urged scientists to stop work towards the goal and asked funders to make clear they will no longer support the research.

  • YLE ☛ Finland first in world to ban cargo ships from dumping wastewater

    The new law, set to take effect in July, will make Finland the world's first country to implement such comprehensive wastewater regulations.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Vox: Arts funding is an outrage! Averting AI doom is much more effective altruism – Pivot to AI

    It won’t cost money to stop AI from going out of control. In fact, we can save money — just stop setting fire to money for AI. This also helps the climate at a negative cost.

  • New York Times ☛ Ocean Heat Killed Half the Common Murres Around Alaska

    Since then, scientists have been piecing together what happened to the birds, along with other species in the northeast Pacific that suddenly died or disappeared. It became clear that the culprit was an record-breaking marine heat wave, a mass of warm water that would come to be known as the Blob. New findings on its effect on murres, published on Thursday in the journal Science, are a stark sign of the perils facing ecosystems in a warming world.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Trump’s Ludicrous Billionaire Polluter Exemption Plan Deserves Ridicule, But His Probable Abuse of National Security Exemptions Deserves Attention

    “The President has no authority whatsoever to waive statutory public health and safety protections based upon a dollar value of capital investment. Trump’s claim deserves ridicule for being so outlandishly illegal and wrong, and it will not come to pass, no matter what Trump fantasizes.

    “However, the statement does highlight Trump’s utter disregard for protecting the environment or human health and the imminent peril that he and his cronies will push policies that jeopardize health, safety and planetary well-being.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Gloats as Trump Announces Billionaires Will Be Exempt From Normal Environmental Rules

    On Tuesday, president-elect Donald Trump announced in a Truth Social post that any "person or company" investing $1 billion or more in the US would "receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental [sic] approvals."

  • EcoWatch ☛ New Microplastics Water Filter Made With Cotton and Squid Bone Could Be 99.9% Effective, Scientists Report

    The study, published in the journal Science Advances, explored the development of a foam filter made with cellulose, from cotton plants, and chitin, a type of natural biopolymer found in the exoskeletons of arthropods and mollusks, as well as in some cell walls of fungi and algae, according to Science Direct. Both cellulose and chitin are considered “two of the most abundant polysaccharides found in nature,” according to the study, and they are already used frequently for removing larger pollutants from wastewater.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-04 [Older] What’s at stake for the US as China blocks mineral exports?

    • Defence Web ☛ 2024-12-06 [Older] Police making headway in fight against illicit mining – Masemola

    • The Register UK ☛ Google goes solar as grid can't power its future datacenters

      Google's response is a deal with solar energy firm Intersect Power, and financier TPG Rise Climate, to build industrial parks next to renewable energy generation facilities that Porat wrote will be "purpose-built and right-sized for the datacenter." Google will build datacenters at those parks – meaning they have a long-term customer from day one – and believes it can build bit barns faster under this arrangement.

    • The Scotsman ☛ 'Too dangerous': Anger at plans for 168-container battery storage site 70m from Scottish schools

      Concerns have been raised over plans to build a large battery storage site on a 12-hectare field less than 100m from a school campus.

      Midlothian councillors were this week asked for their views on the proposals for a battery energy storage system (BESS) on land behind Dalkeith schools’ campus, which has around 2,500 children and young people on its rolls.

• Finance

  • The Atlantic ☛ Shopping Shouldn’t Be Instantaneous

    Returns have gotten only more common since then, but today’s stores have found ways to free themselves of some of the logistical and financial burden. Amanda Mull reported last year that many brands were beginning to charge customers return fees or require that they cover return-shipping costs. (ASOS, H&M, and Zara are among the latest popular stores tacking on a return fee for some customers.) “Convenience is always expensive for someone,” she wrote. “For much of the internet era, the individual buyer hasn’t been footing the bill, but slowly, that has begun to change.”

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ Voice AI startup Vapi raises $20 million in Bessemer, Y Combinator-backed round

    The fundraise valued Vapi at $130 million, according to a source familiar with the matter.

  • India Times ☛ Malaysia launches national AI office for policy, regulation

    The Southeast Asian country has secured billions of dollars in investment in the past year from global tech firms seeking to build critical infrastructure to cater to growing demand for their cloud and AI services. "This is another historical moment in our digital transformation journey," prime minister Anwar Ibrahim said at the launch of the new office.

  • TMZ ☛ Paris Hilton's Stop Child Abuse Bill Passes U.S. Senate Unanimously

    Not only that, but Hilton’s "Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act" passed unanimously with all 100 senators on board -- making it an absolute win for legislation deeply personal to her after she bravely shared her own painful experiences of abuse at a young age.

  • New York Times ☛ Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Donates $1 Million to Trump’s Inaugural Fund

    Meta said on Wednesday that it had donated $1 million to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inaugural fund, in the latest move by Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, to foster a positive rapport with Mr. Trump.

  • Axios ☛ Meta gave $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund

    The donation comes two weeks after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg went to Mar-a-Lago to dine with Trump, with whom he previously had a fractious relationship.

    State of play: "Neither Zuckerberg nor Meta donated to Trump's inaugural fund in 2017 or to President Biden's fund in 2021," per the Wall Street Journal, citing public records, which first reported on the donation Wednesday.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Mark Zuckerberg gives Donald Trump $1m despite president-elect threatening to jail him for life

    Mark Zuckerberg has handed $1m (£790,000) to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, just months after the president-elect threatened to imprison him for life.

    The billionaire Facebook founder made the donation ahead of a private dinner with Mr Trump at his Mar-A-Lago club last month in a sign of thawing relations between the pair.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Vox ☛ The Onion’s attempt to buy Alex Jones’ Infowars, explained

      At stake in this case is the future control of Infowars, which was started by far-right commentator Alex Jones. The site has spread false information and conspiracy theories about a wide range of subjects, including the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Depending on next steps, The Onion could still successfully complete its acquisition, Jones could find a way to effectively retain control of the site, or the trustee overseeing the case could decide on another option altogether.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Project Censored ☛ 2024-12-06 [Older] Censored News, Media Framing, and the Threat of HR 9495: A Conversation with Project Censored

  • Project Censored ☛ 2024-12-03 [Older] #25. Israel-Linked Group Attempts to Censor Pro-Palestinian Artists on Spotify

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Syrian anti-Assad activist and 35 others laid to rest in Damascus after torture

    The bodies of over 30 people were found in a hospital morgue in the Damascus suburb of Harasta, many of them bearing signs of torture.

  • Spiegel ☛ Daughter of Iranian Activist Jamshid Sharmahd: "It Is a Terrorist Regime, Not a State" - DER SPIEGEL

    Jamshid Sharmahd fled his homeland after the Iranian Revolution in 1978/1979. The family lived in Hannover until 2003 before then moving to the U.S. A German citizen, Sharmahd was kidnapped on a 2020 business trip during a layover in Dubai and sentenced to death by a "Revolutionary Court” in Tehran. He died on October 28.

  • Techdirt ☛ Attacker Has Techdirt Reclassified As Phishing Site, Proving Masnick’s Impossibility Law Once Again

    Here on Techdirt, we write a lot about content moderation and even did a whole big series of content moderation case studies. However, here’s an interesting one that involves Techdirt itself from a couple weeks ago. It’s also a perfect example of Masnick’s Impossibility Theorem in action and a reminder of how the never-ending flood of spam and scams provides cover for bad actors to sneak through abusive reports.

  • VOA News ☛ Democracy tested in Eastern Europe amid accusations of Russian meddling

    The legislation was dubbed the “Russian law” by its opponents, after similar laws long used by President Vladimir Putin’s government to silence political opposition and free media.

    The protests evolved into a battle for Georgia’s future: to be aligned with the West or with Russia. It is a fight that continues to this day on the streets of Tbilisi.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • VOA News ☛ Trump names Kari Lake as choice for VOA director

    U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday he plans to have Kari Lake, a politician and former Arizona journalist, appointed head of the international government-funded broadcaster Voice of America.

    Trump announced on his social media platform Truth Social that Lake would be appointed director of VOA. Lake is a close political ally of the president-elect and a former anchor for a Fox News television station in Phoenix, Arizona.

  • Techdirt ☛ Ken Paxton’s Subpoena To 404 Media Shows How MAGA World Is Already Harassing Journalists

    You ain’t seen nothing yet regarding how some MAGA politicians are going to harass and attack journalists. This week, it was revealed that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (who already has a history of trying to punish speech he dislikes) had issued a subpoena to 404 Media, an independent, journalist-owned-and-run news site that we link to frequently, in a blatant attempt to intimidate and harass them for their reporting.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: A Democratic media strategy to save journalism and the nation

    The right has an extremely well-funded media ecosystem of high-paid bullshitters backed by algorithm-gaming SEO dickheads. This system isn't necessarily supposed to turn a profit or even break even: the point of Prageru isn't to score ad revenue, it's to ensure that anyone who googles "what the fuck causes inflation" gets 25 minutes of relatable, upbeat, cheerfully sociopathic Austrian economics jammed into their eyeballs. Far right news isn't a for-profit concern, it's a loss-leader for oligarch-friendly policies. It's a steal: a million bucks' worth of news buys America's ultra-rich a billion dollars' worth of tax-cuts and the right to maim their workers and poison their customers for profit.

  • uni Northwestern ☛ Haunted By Ghost Papers

    Cut to 2023: Pothier had been an editor at the Boston Globe for 22 years, and the Old Colony Memorial, like dozens of Massachusetts community papers, had become a “ghost paper” — that is, a newspaper that nominally continues to exist but has been stripped of most or all local news reporting. Over the past several years, the Gannett chain, which had taken ownership of the Old Colony Memorial and dozens of other community papers and assembled them under the Wicket Local umbrella, has gutted or shuttered numerous Massachusetts local weeklies.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ FOIA reform clears committee, moves to House floor for further consideration

    Under the current state law, the Legislature, the governor and the lieutenant governor are exempt from FOIA, however Moss and McBroom’s bills would bring an end to that exemption and require both the House speaker and Senate majority leader to designate a FOIA coordinator in each of their chambers to process public records requests.

  • CPJ ☛ Guatemala issues arrest warrant for exiled journalist Juan Luis Font

    “Guatemalan authorities must end their baseless pursuit of journalist Juan Luis Font, drop all criminal proceedings against him, and ensure he can return home to work safely and without fear of retaliation,” said Cristina Zahar, CPJ’s Latin America program coordinator, in São Paulo. “Using the justice system to persecute journalists is a blatant tactic of intimidation that undermines press freedom and democratic principles.”

  • [Repeat] RFERL ☛ 'Escalating Crackdown' In Azerbaijan Draws U.S. Criticism

    The United States has demanded that the government of Azerbaijan immediately release a group of detained human rights activists, journalists, and civil society figures being held in what is seen as an "escalating crackdown" on civil society and press freedom in Azerbaijan.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • New Statesman ☛ Causing a stink: reflections on my viral PhD

    My thesis explores how the literature of the past century records and critically engages with the importance of smell in society. I examine why certain writers use smell to characterise harmful attitudes towards objects of disgust or desire. Over the course of the thesis, I discuss how smell can create gender, class, sexual, racial, and even species power dynamics, although many of these identity categories prove to be interrelated in literature. We tend to think about discrimination and prejudice as primarily visual phenomena, but all of the senses are heavily influenced by culture, and the strong emotional reactions produced by smell make it particularly politically charged.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Elon Musk calls homelessness a ‘lie’ and ‘propaganda’ — and Trump is listening

    Influential billionaires and right-wing think tanks have been advancing legislation that criminalizes homelessness in Congress and at the Supreme Court, “and they all share this backwards, incorrect view that if we punish people enough, they will choose not to be poor”, according to Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director with the National Homelessness Law Center.

  • The Local DK ☛ Why you'll soon be able to get a rental contract in English for your home in Denmark

    An English translation of the authorised template for rental contracts is to be made available for the first time by Denmark’s Ministry of Housing and Social affairs.

  • VOA News ☛ As tourists discover Finland's Santa Claus Village, some locals call for rules to control the masses

    Local critics of mass tourism say many apartment buildings in Rovaniemi's city center are also used for accommodation services during peak season and are thus no longer available for residential use. They say the proliferation of short-term rentals has driven up prices, squeezed out long-term residents, and turned its city center into a "transient space for tourists."

  • The Conversation ☛ Swedish academics suffer widespread threat and harassment – most of it from their own colleagues and students

    Although most of it was apparently benign, a large proportion was misogynistic and hateful – including death threats. It highlights the hazards for academics engaging with the public, especially on topics with a political dimension, and even more so while being female.

    But how common is this type of incident? Should academics avoid engaging the public? Our team at the Swedish secretariat for gender research has just published a report about experiences of threats, violence and harassment in Swedish universities which sheds some light on these questions. Notably we found that much of the abuse academics experienced came from within the university sector, rather than as a result of public engagement.

  • Techdirt ☛ Another Study Confirms NYC’s Shotspotter Deployment Was A Waste Of Money

    Then it all started falling apart. Lots of cop shops and the cities that oversaw them assumed the system worked because SpotShotter’s (now known as “SoundThinking”) salespeople and PR people assured them that the system worked. But when cities decided to look into ShotSpotter tech themselves, they came to the opposite conclusion: that they were wasting money on tech that not only didn’t reliable spot (gun)shots, but also tied up limited law enforcement resources chasing down loud noises that rarely resulted in the discovery of evidence, much less successful prosecutions.

  • CPJ ☛ Bypassing the ‘Taliban firewall’: How an exile newsroom reports on Afghan women

    More than three years later, the two journalists run the agency from exile in the United States. To get out the news, they rely on the reporting of 15 female journalists hired in 10 provinces to replace the staff who fled. As the Taliban has become increasingly hostile to women journalists and the exile press, the newsroom takes extreme security precautions. Zoom meetings take place with a strict “cameras off” policy so that the women won’t be compromised if they recognize each other on the street.

  • The Register UK ☛ ACLU condemns police use of AI to draft reports

    The American Civil Liberties Union published a report this week detailing its concerns with law enforcement tech provider Axon's Draft One, a ChatGPT-based system that translates body camera recordings into drafts of police reports that officers need only edit and flesh out to ostensibly save them time spent on desk work.

    Given the importance of police reports to investigations and prosecutions and the unreliability already noted in other forms of law enforcement AI, the ACLU has little faith that Draft One will avoid leading to potential civil rights violations and civil liberty issues.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Woody Allen puts cook on chopping block over Army training, chef says

    Allen and Previn knew Fajardo would need time off for military training exercises when they and their home manager hired him as their full-time chef in June 2024 at an annual salary of $85,000, the complaint said. But he was fired the following month, soon after returning from a training that lasted a day longer than expected, it said.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Advancing Women’s Rights as a Catalyst for Economic Growth in Central Asia

    What enables men across Central Asia to commit violence against their partners with impunity? Why do women often accept this behavior? Addressing these questions requires a deeper exploration of the social norms and gender stereotypes towards women’s roles that prevail in societies in the region. Understanding these deeply rooted dynamics is key to effectively challenging and changing behaviors that perpetuate violence and inequality.

  • Techdirt ☛ Appeals Court: Permanently Injuring A 13-Year-Old Because He Wouldn’t Take His Hand Out Of His Pockets Isn’t A Rights Violation

    But this is America. More specifically, this is Florida. So, rather than pretend to type up a report, a sheriff’s deputy decided this was exactly the sort of crime he should be expending his considerably limited resources on. Not only did he rush to the sound of middle finger deployment, he decided the only narrative that mattered was the one told by the parent, which (at this point in the pleadings) was just a bunch of lies.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • VOA News ☛ Australia to charge tech companies for news content if they do not pay

    The platforms at risk will be significant social media platforms and search engines with an Australian-based revenue in excess of $160 million, he said.

    The charge will be offset for any commercial agreements that are voluntarily entered into between the platforms and news media businesses, Jones said.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump FCC Commissioners, Cable Lobby, Use Lazy Soup And Coffee Metaphors To Defend Shitty Broadband Usage Caps

    As we recently noted, the Biden FCC has announced that it is finally “taking a look at” broadband usage caps. We’ve noted for decades how such limits are completely artificial, technically unnecessary constructs that exist specifically so your local telecom monopoly can rip you off. They don’t “manage congestion” or anything else; they exist exclusively to price gouge captive broadband customers trapped in markets without broadband competition (read: most of you).

    It’s embarrassing (and a clear sign of corruption) that U.S. regulators haven’t taken aim earlier.

  • The Register UK ☛ FCC throws open 6 GHz band to unlicensed low-power gizmos

    The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it has adopted extra rules to allow very low-power device operation across the entire 1,200 MHz of the 6 GHz band, from 5.925 to 7.125 GHz, within the US.

    The agency had already opened up 850 MHz of the band to small mobile devices a year ago, and has now decided to open up the remaining 350 MHz.

  • RIPE ☛ Navigating Network Measurements - Research, Risks and Reliability

    Measuring the Internet is a delicate process and without the proper setup, things can get pretty out of hand pretty quickly. The measurement.network is a RIPE NCC Community Projects Fund supported project that helps researchers run network measurements without breaking things.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Scotsman ☛ Dodgy Firestick crackdown: how do police detect them?

    The term ‘jailbroken’ simply refers to installing software that allows you to circumvent any restrictions placed by the maker of a device - such as an Amazon Fire Stick. It is not illegal per say to jailbreak a device, but it can be against the law to use one if you are doing anything illegal with it.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• IP Kat ☛ 2024-12-08 [Older] CJEU rules on vertical direct effect of InfoSoc Directive and allows national courts to disapply incorrect national transpositions

• Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China probes US chip giant Nvidia for 'violating' anti-monopoly law

  Beijing’s state administration for market regulation, the authority on antitrust issues, launched the probe “in accordance with the law,” according to a statement shared online.

  Nvidia is also suspected of violating commitments it made in 2020, the statement said, when it acquired Israeli data center firm Mellanox.

• India Times ☛ US Supreme Court tosses case involving securities fraud suit against Nvidia

  The Supreme Court opted not resolve the underlying legal dispute, determining that the case should not have been granted. Its action leaves the lower court's decision in place. The plaintiffs accused Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang of violating a 1934 federal law called the Securities Exchange Act by making statements in 2017 and 2018 that falsely downplayed how much of Nvidia's revenue growth came from crypto-related purchases.

• India Times ☛ Why did Google ask FTC to nix Microsoft-OpenAI pact

  Google has urged the Federal Trade Commission to intervene in Microsoft's exclusive cloud deal with OpenAI, citing potential cost increases for customers. This complaint is part of a wider FTC investigation. The tech giants have clashed publicly before, with previous disputes involving data privacy and online freedom.

• Trademarks

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-12-08 [Older] Italian language trade marks raise tough questions again in Australia

  • IP Kat ☛ 2024-12-07 [Older] Challenging Nestlé’s fitness for trade mark: Can belated evidence lead to invalidation?

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ French Piracy Blocking Order Goes Global, DNS Service Quad9 Vows to Fight

    Applicant Canal+ argued that the alternative DNS resolvers allowed people to bypass the “regular” blocking measures implemented by internet providers. In their view, DNS blocking is proportionate and necessary to prevent piracy.

    Canal+ didn’t stop at this initial order. As reported last month, several follow-up orders were issued to target yet more domains, gradually expanding the scope. While that was ongoing, new proceedings against other DNS resolvers were launched as well.

  • Wired ☛ Harvard Is Releasing a Massive Free AI Training Dataset Funded by OpenAI and Microsoft

    Burton Davis, Microsoft’s vice president and deputy general counsel for intellectual [sic] property [sic], emphasized that the company’s support for the project was in line with its broader beliefs about the value of creating “pools of accessible data” for AI startups to use that are “managed in the public’s interest.” In other words, Microsoft isn’t necessarily planning to swap out all of the AI training data it has used in its own models with public domain alternatives like the books in the new Harvard database. “We use publicly available data for the purposes of training our models,” Davis says.