Leftovers

• Tedium ☛ Why Christmas Nostalgia is So Effective

  Today in Tedium: Every year, I have a tradition that I’ve followed pretty religiously for … at this point, 20 years. (Damn, dude.) Whether in its original form or in its Mystery Science Theater 3000 send-up, I’ll watch the junk-culture film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, despite knowing that the movie is perhaps one of the worst of all time. There’s something about the film that warms my soul in a small way—the fact that the movie was clearly made on loosest of shoestring budgets, that it was clearly never designed to stand the test of time—that makes me keep going back to it. It’s a dumb movie with bad sets and Pia Zadora, but it’s one that survives to the modern day against the odds. Like a lot of holiday movies and cultural things, it may be the film’s sheer disposability that makes it stick around. Let me explain how and why Christmas keeps junk culture alive. — Ernie @ Tedium

• India Times ☛ YouTube to content creators in India: We will ‘ban’ such videos

  YouTube is cracking down on clickbait in India. The platform will remove videos with misleading titles and thumbnails. The new rules focus on news and current events. Creators will have time to adapt to the guidelines. Enforcement begins with new uploads. YouTube aims to improve user experience and combat misinformation.

• Futurism ☛ Florida Man in Trouble for Shooting Walmart Drone With 9mm Handgun

  On November 27, Winn agreed to submit a restitution order — an "admission of wrongdoing," his attorney contends, but not a guilty plea. A court ordered him to pay the $5,000 in damages to the drone company, which he's now paid off, according to First Coast.

• Lou Plummer ☛ The Joys of Being a Grownup

  Of course, commensurate with freedom comes responsibility, but I'm feeling hedonistic tonight, so I am concentrating on the freedom aspect of it. The true freedom doesn't come until your kids are out of the house and self-supporting. In fact, I would say that true freedom doesn't really occur until near the end of your days as a wage slave.

• Terence Eden ☛ The art of the Pre-Show and Post-Show

  I suppose, in part, this is because people usually want to rush to catch a train home (although some theatres are experimenting with earlier start times). But, also, do the audience want this? Do you think a show is a one-off event that only exists from curtain-up to curtain-down? Is the catharsis of applause enough to send you back into the real world? Should we return to the tradition of the Shakespearean Jig at the end of a performance?

  Theatres are competing for attention with every other entertainment experience. They are a premium product - a single ticket is often the same cost as several years of NetFlix - and the experience needs to much more than just get in, sit down, get out.

• Dana Byerly ☛ Year in nothing to review - Dana Byerly

  Hello strangers. It’s been four years since I started this site. Each year I’ve done a Year in Review post on the anniversary of the site launch in September. I missed that milestone this year and will attempt to make up for it now.

• Science

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Domain Seizures and German ISP Blockade Add to Libgen's Troubles

    Library Genesis (LibGen) is one of the oldest shadow libraries on the Internet, offering free access to millions of books and academic papers for which people would otherwise have to pay.

    The site’s origins reportedly trace back to the Soviet Union’s underground publishing culture ‘samizdat,’ which was used to bypass state censorship in the last century.

  • The Hindu ☛ ‘Today, mathematics is not only necessary in daily life but pervasive’

    Initially I was focused only on algebra, and primarily representation theory, my PhD area. Then my wife Amruta Joshi, who did her master’s in computer science at Stanford and later her PhD from UCLA, encouraged me to follow Stanford’s spirit of interdisciplinary research. Thus I started to explore other areas.

    In the process, I met Bala Rajaratnam, a statistics faculty at Stanford. We wrote a grant which enabled me to move to Stanford. Bala encouraged me to continue pursuing my research in representation theory, but he also wanted me to work with him in statistics. He was interested in data analysis, so he cared about analysing sample covariance matrices. Because nowadays there is “big data”, the covariance matrices one would obtain are enormous in size and they have poor properties. One would want to improve their properties without losing the covariance structure.

    In the language of mathematics, covariance matrices can be called positive semi-definite matrices, and what one wants is to find what kind of operations can be performed on them that would still preserve the positive semi-definiteness. Bala was interested in the applied aspects of the problem and I was interested in the theoretical aspects. Later, we were joined by a postdoc, Dominique Guillot. The three of us soon got good research momentum and wrote several papers together. Bala was very supportive and he said that we would write pure maths papers and he would do his statistics research on the side with his other collaborators. That is how I slowly got into matrix analysis.

  • Axios ☛ NASA Parker Solar Probe to make Sun mission history: Closest human-made object goal

    Why it matters: "No human-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will truly be returning data from uncharted territory," said Nick Pinkine, Parker Solar Probe mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland in a statement.

  • Wired ☛ A Spacecraft Is About to Fly Into the Sun’s Atmosphere for the First Time

    However, the smallish probe—it masses less than a metric ton, and its scientific payload is only about 110 pounds (50 kg)—is about to make its star turn. Quite literally. On Christmas Eve, the Parker Solar Probe will make its closest approach yet to the sun. It will come within just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) of the solar surface, flying into the solar atmosphere for the first time.

    Yeah, it's going to get pretty hot. Scientists estimate that the probe’s heat shield will endure temperatures in excess of 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,371 C) on Christmas Eve, which is pretty much the polar opposite of the North Pole.

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-13 [Older] US Updates a Science and Technology Pact With China to Reflect Growing Rivalry and Security Threats

• Career/Education

  • The Hill ☛ Growing literacy issues for older students and adults in US

    Learning to read can become exponentially more difficult for older students and adults who have fallen behind, creating grave concerns as the number of individuals struggling with literacy into high school and adulthood is increasing.

    Data released in recent months shows K-12 schools are seeing more older students who cannot read at their grade level, coupled with an international study showing an increase in U.S. adults who cannot read past simple sentences.

  • Bjoern Brembs ☛ By their actions you shall know them

    A unique opportunity now presents itself, one that was unavailable during the decline of FriendFeed or MySpace. Universities, in particular, stand to benefit from this alternative: the Fediverse. The Fediverse offers an avenue to translate their mission statements into tangible action, in particular for institutions committed to “creating systematic spaces for learning and experience to promote sustainable development,” are aware that “their credibility is measured by how exemplary sustainable solutions are implemented within their sphere of responsibility,” uphold “openness, transparency, and participation” as fundamental principles, ensure “equality of opportunity as well as freedom from discrimination at all levels,” consider the “plurality of worldviews and ways of life,” and maintain a “critical distance from political and societal power” (quotes from the mission statements of some Berlin universities). These same principles inspired universities and public institutions over 30 years ago to develop the decentralized Internet and email, technologies that remain resistant to take-over by private entities still today. Since 2018, the Fediverse has operated on similar principles of decentralization, utilizing public protocols to enable communication between independent servers. Among its many services, Mastodon is especially relevant for universities.

  • Sean Goedecke ☛ Why some engineers get trusted with high-impact work

    It’s fun and rewarding to work on critical tasks. But there’s only so much important work to go around. Worse still, the chances to work on these projects are unevenly distributed, because often this work is done by hand-picked teams. I’ve been on a fair few of those. What gets an engineer put on that list?

  • Lou Plummer ☛ My Internet Culture War of 2024

    Here's what I said — Elon Musk took actions yesterday that cancelled Hurricane Helene relief for Western North Carolina.

    I got lots of support because as I said, most MAGAts long ago should have ignored me because of the vitriol I throw in their direction. Surprisingly, though, there were still plenty of offended people who Meta thought needed to read Lou Plummer's take on the Washington cesspool today.

    Their posts were just about all the same: [...]

  • Bob Monsour ☛ Trying to develop a new reading habit

    On a couple of occasions over the past year or so, I have read the book early. I have found that in these instances, I have had more time to consider the story and develop more insights into the story and the characters. It has helped me to be more thoughtfully engaged in the discussion.

    So, I'm trying something new. My typical morning routine, post shower, is to eat breakfast, make a cup of cofee, and then head over to my computer to check email, catch up on news, and peruse social media sites.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Futurism ☛ There's a Scandal Growing About That Paper About How Black Spatulas Are Killing You

    It's certainly possible that we're being exposed to these flame retardants from other sources besides kitchenware, accumulating to dangerous levels in our bodies over time. So if you're worried, there's no harm in ditching these black spatulas that do appear to contain the chemicals. But the alarmist response, it's safe to say, was overblown.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Social media firms to be forced to 'drive out' under-age users

    Ofcom estimates as many as 60 per cent of eight to 11-year olds have social media profiles – equivalent to 1.6 million children in the UK – despite major sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat having minimum age limits of 13. A third of five to seven-year olds are said to use social media unsupervised.

  • VOA News ☛ Albanian PM says TikTok ban was not 'rushed reaction to a single incident'

    Authorities have held 1,300 meetings with teachers and parents since the November stabbing death of a teenager by another teen after a quarrel that started on social media apps. Ninety percent of them approve of the ban on TikTok.

    "The ban on TikTok for one year in Albania is not a rushed reaction to a single incident, but a carefully considered decision made in consultation with parent communities in schools across the country," said Rama.

  • India Times ☛ Albanian PM dismisses TikTok's 'urgent' query on ban

    Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama on Sunday dismissed TikTok's response to the country's ban of the platform, insisting the government action was "not a rushed reaction to a single incident".

    On Saturday, Rama announced Albania was shutting down TikTok from early 2025. In a statement released within hours, a TikTok spokesman said: "We are seeking urgent clarity from the Albanian government."

  • India Times ☛ Albania shuts down TikTok at least for a year: PM

    During a meeting in Tirana with Albanian teachers, parents and psychologists Rama said that "TikTok is the thug of the neighbourhood."

    "We are going to chase this thug out of our neighbourhood for one year," Rama said.

  • [Old] Defector ☛ Beyond Belief

    For one thing, it was true well before Donald Trump won a second term in office. While the depravities and abstractions of all that bad information were necessary conditions for that outcome, they are also a market's response to a depraved and abstracted—and precarious, and cruel, and crumbling—daily reality. Everywhere, in every way, American culture works to prise people apart and keep them confused and worried and mean; this is much easier to do when people think of themselves only as themselves, and not as part of any greater community or project, which is why America's reactionaries have so dedicated themselves to tearing down or splitting up those kinds of communities and projects. This is a good way to keep people working and shopping and pliable, but it is also corrosive and lonely. No one really seems to like it, or to know what to do about that. Living this way, and being vulnerable in all the ways everyone is always so vulnerable, is an atomizing and deranging thing, and it has created a culture and a country that is atomized and deranged as a result.

  • Wired ☛ To Improve Your Gut Microbiome, Spend More Time in Nature

    I was first introduced to this emerging area of science by Professor Gretchen Daily from Stanford University. She mentioned a Finnish research project that showed how letting kindergarten-aged children play in a yard that contained “dirt” from the forest floor resulted in a significant positive impact on their gut microbiome. Seventy-nine young children took part, all living in urban environments and spending the majority of their days at different daycare centers around Finland. The only difference between them was that these daycare centers had three different types of outdoor spaces.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Veteran suicides stayed even in 2022 despite efforts to stop deaths - Task & Purpose

    Despite a major push by the military and Department of Veterans Affairs to address and reduce suicide among former service members in 2022, the number of veteran suicides that year did not drop.

  • The Age AU ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] ‘My insecurity quickly turned into full-blown rock-lord megalomania’

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-15 [Older] Inspired by family member with dementia, N.S. teen creates automated pill dispenser

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • The Age AU ☛ 2024-12-15 [Older] The high-end Chinese phones taking on Apple, Google and Samsung

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-10 [Older] Fortnite Players 'Tricked' Into Unwanted Purchases Are Starting to Get Refunds. Here's How to Apply

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-14 [Older] Trump Hosts Apple CEO at Mar-A-Lago as Big Tech Leaders Continue Outreach to President-Elect

  • John Gruber ☛ 2024-12-13 [Older] ★ The Information Suggests, in an Aside, That Apple Scrapped Work on a Quad-Max/Double-Ultra M-Series Chip

  • MacRumors ☛ 2024-12-14 [Older] iGeneration Reports Apple Will Stop Selling Lightning-Port iPhones in the EU This Month

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Humanity’s fate can’t be left to algorithms

    The UN Secretary-General on Thursday urged the Security Council to act decisively to establish international guardrails for artificial intelligence (AI), warning that delays could heighten risks to global peace and security.

  • dwaves.de ☛ Youtuber claims Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Chaffbot o3 (HIGH TUNED) has reached AGI capabilities – hilarious educational video about and what could go wrong in Hey Hi (AI) research – PyTorch vs TensorFlow?

  • Digital Music News ☛ Apple Raked in $18 Billion in AirPods Sales for 2023

    Apple’s AirPods are the best-selling wireless earbuds on the market and account for around 34.4% of the wireless earbud market in the United States alone. They’re also the top choice worldwide for anyone in the market for true wireless sound (TWS), accounting for 19% of global market share for the hearables segment. The only other brand that comes close on a global scale is Sony (17%), Samsung (16%), BOSE (10%), Sennheiser (5%), LG (4%), and Jabra (2%).

  • Wired ☛ The Race to Translate Animal Sounds Into Human Language

    Massive datasets are now coming online, as recorders can be left in the field, listening to the calls of gibbons in the jungle or birds in the forest, 24/7, across long periods of time. There were occasions when such massive datasets were impossible to manage manually. Now, new automatic detection algorithms based on convolutional neural networks can race through thousands of hours of recordings, picking out the animal sounds and clustering them into different types, according to their natural acoustic characteristics.

  • Drew Breunig ☛ On Synthetic Data: How It’s Improving & Shaping LLMs

    This has many benefits. Distilling content down, concentrating its knowledge, allows you produce smarter, smaller models. Extracting reasoning instructures teaches models how to build up evidence, enabling new “reasoning” models.

    But synthetic data isn’t a silver bullet. The nature of synthetic data makes it better for some jobs and weaker for others, especially those that can’t be tested at scale. And an increasing reliance on synthetic data for training LLMs is making them better at quantitative tasks (like coding and math) but not delivering similar results for other use cases.

  • Futurism ☛ With Utter Self-Seriousness, Maker of Oreos Admits It's Using AI To Create New Flavors, Even Though Machines Cannot Taste

    Used in more than 70 of the company's products, the company says the machine learning tool is different from generative AI tools like ChatGPT and more akin to the drug discovery algorithms used by pharmaceutical companies to find and test new medications rapidly. Thus far the tool, created with the help of the software consultant Fourkind, has created products like the "Gluten Free Golden Oreo" and updated Chips Ahoy's classic recipe, per the WSJ.

  • Futurism ☛ A New School Will Teach Children Use AI Instead of Human Teachers

    The establishment, Unbound School, is part of a network of charter schools that also operate in Texas and Florida under the name Alpha School. Using its buzzword-laden "2 Hour Learning" model, it promises to teach kids at twice the pace of classrooms led by those stodgy old pedagogues.

    Perhaps just as disarming as its credulous reliance on AI to intellectually nurture children at a critical stage of their development — the school is initially teaching kids in fourth through eighth grade — is the institution's eagerness to totally do away with flesh and blood teachers.

  • KJZZ Radio ☛ New Arizona charter school will use AI in place of human teachers

    The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools’ approved an application for an AI-based virtual academy on Monday.

    Unbound Academy, which also operates in Texas and Florida under the name Alpha Schools, claims that kids can learn twice as much using a two-hour learning plan that gets customized by an AI program instead of a traditional human teacher in front of a classroom.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • India Times ☛ Palantir, Anduril join forces with tech groups to bid for Pentagon contracts: reports

      Data analytics firm Palantir Technologies and defense tech company Anduril Industries are in talks with about a dozen competitors to form a consortium that will jointly bid for U.S. government work, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

      The consortium, which could announce agreements with other tech groups as early as January, is expected to include SpaceX, OpenAI, autonomous shipbuilder Saronic and artificial intelligence data group Scale AI, the newspaper said, citing several people with knowledge of the matter.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Report: Palantir and Anduril join forces to try to secure US government defense contracts

      The data analytics company Palantir Technologies Inc. reportedly is holding talks with the defense industry tech startup Anduril Industries Inc. on the creation of an alliance to win more work from the U.S. government.

      According to the Financial Times, Palantir’s and Anduril’s consortium may also include companies such as SpaceX Corp. and OpenAI, as well as the artificial intelligence data startup Scale AI Inc. and the autonomous shipbuilding company Saronic Technologies Inc. The idea is that they’ll jointly bid for U.S. government contracts.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Apple reportedly eyes home security market with face-scanning smart doorbell

      Apple Inc. is reportedly developing a number of smart home devices, including a previously unreported smart doorbell that could allow users to unlock their homes by scanning their faces.

      The claims come from the usually reliable Apple analyst Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, who believes that Apple is planning a number of home-related announcements and updates through 2025.

    • Nicolas Fränkel ☛ An example of HACS: Adaptive Lighting

      In the previous post of this focus, we replaced Philips Hue automation with the one from Home Assistant. One significant gap we noticed was that Home Assistant doesn’t automatically adjust the brightness according to the time of the day, a feature Philips Hue offers. In this post, we are going to address this gap.

      The first step when wanting to add a feature to Home Assistant is to browse through available integrations. While there was no out-of-the-box integration, I discovered an alternative: HACS.

    • Michigan Advance ☛ As ‘smart cities’ tools grow nationwide, so do privacy and ethical concerns

      “As this technology becomes increasingly denser in our communities, and at a certain point you have like three of them on every block, it becomes the equivalent to tracking everybody by using GPS,” Stanley said. “That raises not only policy issues, but also constitutional issues.”

      The residents of St. Helena, in Napa Valley, likely aren’t upset that the technology was used for its intended purpose to help find the perpetrator of a crime, Hari Balakrishnan, a computer science and AI researcher and professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of the August arrest.

      “I might posit that we should move from what is the data being collected to what is being done with the data?” he said. “By whom and for what purpose?”

    • The Hindu ☛ Pegasus spyware case verdict in U.S.: Will Supreme Court conduct further inquiry, asks Surjewala

      Congress general secretary Randeep Surjewala on Sunday (December 22, 2024) claimed that the Pegasus spyware case verdict in the U.S. proved how 300 WhatsApp numbers of Indians were targeted and asked if the Supreme Court would now conduct a further inquiry in view of the judgment.

      Mr. Surjewala shared a media report which said that, for the first time, a court in the US had held Israel's NSO Group liable for its intrusive spyware Pegasus.

    • The Hill ☛ Online data privacy concerns in the era of AI

      Efforts to regulate the use of private information are not new. There are reams of legal texts on data governance and the right to privacy. The Privacy Act of 1974, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act are the main federal laws, with 20 states currently having some form of local data or privacy protection law.

      Online service providers in the U.S. are generally protected from intermediary liability under Section 230 of the Federal Communications Act of 1934 as updated, as long as they take “reasonable steps” to delete or prevent access to illegal or unauthorized content. No such obligations are imposed on non-U.S. companies.

    • Nick Heer ☛ U.S. Judge Rules NSO Group Is Liable for Spyware Delivered via WhatsApp

      Apple dropped its similar suit against NSO Group in September on the grounds it believed it would be unable to compel the production of evidence. But the judge in WhatsApp’s case, Phyllis J. Hamilton, was correctly furious (PDF) about NSO Group’s behaviour: [...]

• Defence/Aggression

  • Futurism ☛ There's a Major Problem With the Nuclear War Bunkers The Rich Are Buying

    "Bunkers are, in fact, not a tool to survive a nuclear war, but a tool to allow a population to psychologically endure the possibility of a nuclear war," explained Alicia Sanders-Zakre of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ China says US ‘playing with fire’ after latest military aid for Taiwan

    Taiwan is a democratic island of 23 million people that the Chinese government claims as its territory and says must come under its control. U.S. military sales and assistance aim to help Taiwan defend itself and deter China from launching an attack.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ German defense minister warns of Russian 'hybrid warfare'

    A hybrid attack is a comprehensive cyber assault that uses multiple methods to infiltrate and compromise a target's IT systems, networks, or devices.

    Pistorius' comments follow a warning by German spy chiefs over an increased Kremlin threat in October.

  • The Hill ☛ Chris Matthews blasts Elon Musk for tanking House CR: 'Elephant in a china shop'

    “Along comes Musk with all his trillions of dollars, basically, doesn’t know anything about civics. The House is divided. You have to make a deal. He doesn’t understand that,” Matthews fumed.

    “He’s thrown this whole thing up in the air and it’s going to have, probably, a government shutdown tonight because of him personally.”

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Other voices: Putin’s weaker than he looks. Seize the opportunity – Twin Cities

    Granted, economic constraints alone won’t force Putin to end the war anytime soon. They do, however, reflect an advantage that Western nations should press. The combined economies of the U.S. and Europe are more than 20 times larger than Russia’s. Showing continued resolve to outspend Putin would help bring him to the negotiating table and offer crucial leverage. Such a commitment — combined with continued supplies of sophisticated weaponry and toughened sanctions — would maximize the chances of a reasonable deal.

  • New York Times ☛ Niger Buckles Under Relentless Jihadist Fire

    In the West African nation of Niger, killings by insurgents have surged since the military seized power in a coup, expelled U.S. and European troops and stopped negotiations with Islamist groups.

  • CS Monitor ☛ How Elon Musk helped to bring bipartisan budget deal to a halt

    Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, is proving his outsized influence on American politics. His railings against Congress’ bipartisan budget deal contributed to killing the stopgap measure designed to prevent a partial government shutdown.

  • CS Monitor ☛ House rejects spending deal pushed by Trump as shutdown looms

    A new spending plan put forth by Donald Trump, and pushed by Elon Musk, was resoundingly rejected by House Democrats and a few dozen Republicans. The debate in the House chamber grew heated as lawmakers blamed each other for the mess.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ What next for Romania after its recent electoral chaos?

    The result of the annulled first round of the presidential election was a massive shock: Calin Georgescu, an extreme right-wing independent with fundamentalist Christian Orthodox, pro-Russian, esoteric views, who was largely unknown in Romania before the election, came out of nowhere to win the poll.

    Georgescu condemns anything "Western" as damaging, glorifies the Romanian fascists of the interwar years and has called for Romania's withdrawal from both the EU and NATO.

    Shortly before the election, Georgescu's videos suddenly spread like wildfire on TikTok, which is why he is often described as the "TikTok" candidate.

  • RTL ☛ Controversial app: Albania announces shutdown of TikTok for at least a year

    "We are going to chase this thug out of our neighbourhood for one year", Rama told a meeting with Albanian teachers, parents and psychologists in Tirana.

    The government would launch programmes to "serve the education of students and help parents follow their children's journey", he added.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Albania to Close TikTok for a Year Blaming It for Promoting Violence Among Children

    Albanian authorities held 1,300 meetings with teachers and parents following the stabbing death of a teenager in mid-November by another teen after a quarrel that started on TikTok.

  • VOA News ☛ Albania to shut down TikTok for 1 year, says platform promotes violence among children

    Prime Minister Edi Rama, speaking at a meeting with teachers and parents, said TikTok "would be fully closed for all. ... There will be no TikTok in the Republic of Albania." Rama said the shutdown would begin sometime next year.

  • France24 ☛ Albania to shut down TikTok for one year after fatal school stabbing

    Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama on Saturday announced the shutdown of TikTok for at least one year from 2025. The decision comes after a 14-year-old student was stabbed to death by a classmate last month in a fight that had started on social media.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Albania to ban TikTok for a year after fatal youth stabbing

    Prime Minister Edi Rama made the announcement on Saturday following a meeting with parents' groups and teachers from across the country. He cited a growing concern over the influence of social media on children

    "We are going to chase this thug out of our neighborhood for one year," Rama said during the meeting.

    "In China, TikTok promotes how students can take courses, how to protect nature, how to keep traditions," he said, referring to the company's home market. "On the TikTok outside China we see only scum and mud. Why do we need this? The problem is not the children but our entire society."

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Albania bans TikTok for a year after fatal stabbing of teenager last month

    Edi Rama, the prime minister, confirmed the ban, part of a broader plan to make schools safer, after meeting parents’ groups and teachers from across the country.

    “For one year, we’ll be completely shutting it down for everyone. There will be no TikTok in Albania,” Rama said.

  • France24 ☛ At least 20 killed in suspected Islamist attacks on villages in central Mali

    Mali since 2012 has faced attacks from groups linked to Al-Qaeda and Islamic State, as well as by separatist movements and criminal gangs. Last weekend seven people were killed during attacks in the centre of the country.

  • France24 ☛ Magdeburg: Germany mourns victims of deadly Christmas market attack

    Germans on December 21 mourned the victims of an apparent attack in which authorities say a doctor drove into a busy outdoor Christmas market, killing five people, injuring 200 others and shaking the public’s sense of security at what would otherwise be a time of joy.

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-10 [Older] Japanese Survivor of Atomic Bomb Recalls Its Horrors in Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ North Korea has lost 1,100 soldiers in Russia-Ukraine war, preparing to send more troops, says Seoul — Meduza

    • LRT ☛ Europe needs a security council – opinion

      The creation of a European Security Council could be the right answer to growing uncertainty on the continent and beyond. Such a new format would be a signal to both allies and adversaries that Europe takes its own security seriously. Francis Shin writes for the New Eastern Europe magazine, partners of LRT English.

• Environment

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-12-15 [Older] CBAM has major flaws – but there is a way to save Europe’s climate policy

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-14 [Older] Quebec City toboggan slide to be refrigerated to counter effects of climate change

  • New Yorker ☛ 2024-12-14 [Older] The International Court of Justice Takes On Climate Change

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-14 [Older] Young Activists Take on a Government Agency in a Florida Climate Lawsuit

  • TruthOut ☛ 2024-12-13 [Older] Millions of Taxpayer Dollars Have Subsidized Project 2025 and Climate Denial

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2024-12-13 [Older] Climate Change Trial at The Hague

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-13 [Older] Landmark climate hearings conclude at world's top court

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-13 [Older] Saudi Arabia's Plans to Host the Men's World Cup 2034 Will Be Harmful for the Climate, Experts Say

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-13 [Older] Hearings Are Done: Now the Wait Begins for Verdict on Closely-Watched Climate Case at UN’s Top Court

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-12-12 [Older] Global Governance Actions to Climate Change: In Challenge of Mass Migration

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-12 [Older] Climate-vulnerable nations say they deserve better credit ratings

  • The Age AU ☛ 2024-12-12 [Older] Rare glimpse at stunning reef beside Woodside’s gas-drilling ambitions

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-12 [Older] New Jersey, Home to Many Oil and Gas Producers, Eyes Fees to Fight Climate Change

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] Leaf Blowers: An Invisible Source of Climate Chaos and Harm to Human and Environmental Health

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] ‘Tis the Season to Talk Climate Collapse, Nuclear Colonialism, and Freeing Leonard Peltier

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] Climate change: Extreme heat a death threat to young people

  • Truthdig ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] Does Talking About Climate ‘Tipping Points’ Inspire Action, or Defeat?

  • Vox ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] This critical ecosystem helped keep climate change in check. Now it’s making things worse.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2024-12-10 [Older] Climate Apartheid

  • TruthOut ☛ 2024-12-10 [Older] Report: Climate Crisis Accounts for a Third of Weather-Related Insurance Claims

  • University of Michigan ☛ 2024-12-10 [Older] An inside look at how U-M NuRAM researchers are addressing climate change

  • University of Michigan ☛ 2024-12-10 [Older] UMich leads the way on climate research in transboundary water regions

  • Truthdig ☛ 2024-12-09 [Older] How Exxon and Atlas Network Worked to Block Global Climate Action

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Atlantic ☛ The Hysterical [Cryptocurrency] Bubble Somehow Became Respectable

      Similarly, bitcoin was designed to facilitate decentralized person-to-person transactions, but most bitcoin trading, at least in the West, now takes place on centralized exchanges. Again, in its liberatory promise, bitcoin was supposed to not just be independent of traditional financial institutions and government, but also enable alternatives to them. Yet the big engine of the price boom of the past two years has been bitcoin’s integration into the conventional investment industry (through such vehicles as exchange-traded funds, or ETFs), increased purchases by institutional investors and corporations, and now the prospect of legitimization by the government itself. That may include government buying of bitcoin—though exactly why Uncle Sam would want to own such a volatile asset is a question no one has yet answered persuasively.

    • Wired ☛ The Electric Explorer’s Nightmare Launch Shows Everything Ford Gets Right and Wrong About EVs

      That technology-sharing deal with VW turns out to be both a blessing and a curse. It means the Explorer has the same underpinnings as some of its rivals: the Volkswagen ID.4, Skoda Enyaq, and Audi Q4 e-tron. But cleverly drawing heavily on Ford’s American heritage, the Explorer has an angular, bold front end to go with its SUV proportions. It's boxy in a good way. Rugged looking. Despite being on same platform, at less than 4.5 meters long, it's 10 centimeters shorter than an ID.4, which is odd, and shows that some compromises were made for this design over the VW.

    • Maine Morning Star ☛ Public can comment on plan outlining Maine’s path to 100% clean energy by 2040

      Similar to the state’s updated climate action plan, key components to meeting the clean energy goal Gov. Janet Mills set in 2023 are electric vehicles and high efficiency heat pumps. But swapping in those technologies will increase the demand for electricity, so the clean energy plan said it is “essential to decarbonize the electricity supply.”

      Most of Maine’s clean electricity needs in 2040 can be met with the state’s current and planned renewable energy resources, including the three gigawatts of offshore wind the state is committed to seeing developed in the Gulf of Maine also by 2040.

    • VOA News ☛ France adds first nuclear reactor in 25 years to grid

      France connected the Flamanville 3 nuclear reactor to its grid on Saturday morning, state-run operator EDF said, in the first addition to the country's nuclear power network in 25 years.

      The reactor, which began operating in September ahead of the grid connection, is going online 12 years later than originally planned and at a cost of about $13 billion — four times the original budget.

    • Wired ☛ Why Can’t You Switch Seats in an Empty Airplane?

      It's the last flight of the day and the plane is pretty empty. So you’re thinking, maaaybe you’ll just move up a few rows, where there’s a nice window seat with a view that’s not obstructed by the wing.

      Not so fast, buster. The flight attendant says that's a no-go. You have to stay in your assigned seat or you’ll mess up the weight distribution of the plane. Really? Would moving one normal-size human make a difference? Yeah, you know where this is going: Answering this question requires a bunch of awesome physics. So let's get to it!

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-12-15 [Older] Inconsistency of Indonesia’s current Energy Transition Policy

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-12-14 [Older] The Global Nuclear Landscape: Energy, Non-proliferation and Disarmament – Book Review

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ 2024-12-13 [Older] A desert state takes center stage in Mexico’s clean energy plans

    • The Local DK ☛ 2024-12-12 [Older] How Danish wind energy giant Ørsted got blown off course

    • CBC ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] Ford threatens to cut off Ontario's energy supply to U.S. if Trump follows through on tariffs

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] German President Steinmeier in Nigeria for energy talks

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2024-12-10 [Older] Can Recycling Save the Green Energy Revolution?

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2024-12-15 [Older] Senators spar over bill banning horse export to Japan, animal advocates fear time is running out

    • BIA Net ☛ 2024-12-14 [Older] Milleyha: Migratory birds' gateway to Turkey threatened by earthquake debris

    • Science Alert ☛ Whales Can Live Up to Twice as Long as We Thought, Scientists Say

      Southern right whales have lifespans that reach well past 100 years, and 10% may live past 130 years, according to our new research published in the journal Science Advances.

      Some of these whales may live to 150. This lifespan is almost double the 70-80 years they are conventionally believed to live.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Tortoises are bouncing back thanks to Marine base conservation effort

      Officially it’s called the Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site, and since it was established in 2005 it has helped scientists learn how to protect a species that’s threatened by human encroachment, disease and climate change.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ 'Gitmo' in the Mojave: How the Marines are saving endangered tortoises

      The Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site at the Twentynine Palms Marine base shelters the young reptiles until their shells are tough enough to withstand raven attacks.

  • Overpopulation

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] Arizona AG Sues Saudi Firm Over 'Excessive' Groundwater Pumping, Saying It's a Public Nuisance

    • New Statesman ☛ Building Britain’s water security

      One issue identified by several participants was that the UK has not completed a single reservoir in the last 30 years, despite ongoing steady population rise. Reservoirs are an essential component of ensuring water security. They provide security and flexibility by balancing water supply with water demand. Water can be stored and subsequently abstracted from the reservoir when needed and available.

• Finance

  • International Business Times ☛ 2024-12-15 [Older] Social Security Recipients May Face Delays as GOP Cuts Put 2,000 Jobs at Risk

  • Scheerpost ☛ 2024-12-09 [Older] Ellen Brown: How to Escape the Federal Debt Trap

  • NL Times ☛ 2024-12-14 [Older] Dutch banks call for stronger support to fund circular economy entrepreneurs

  • Seth Godin ☛ The thought that counts | Seth's Blog

    It’s a good grift.

    Surveys show that the buyer spends about 21% less per gift than they do when they actually buy something, while the recipients of the gift find themselves spending 61% more than the value of the card when they actually redeem it for money. Most of all, the retailer comes out ahead–far fewer returns, lots of never redeemed cards, better cash flow and new customer accounts when people do show up to eventually buy.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Broadcom CEO Hock Tan claims he has no interest in buying Intel

    Tan said that the company is working on increasing its market share in an AI chip sector that’s currently dominated by Nvidia Corp. “That is driving a lot of my resources, a lot of my focus,” he said, explaining he hasn’t been asked to bid for Intel either.

  • Manton Reece ☛ I support the mad king

    In many ways, the missions of Automattic and Micro.blog are aligned. We all make software to help people write, post photos, publish podcasts, and communicate on the open web.

    It’s less clear what WP Engine stands for because it is no longer run by one of its founders, Jason Cohen, someone who had a public personality and clear voice. It’s owned by private equity and the leadership has kept silent. As far as I can tell, Heather Brunner, WP Engine’s CEO, does not blog, and neither does the top leadership at Silver Lake. In other words, they do not use their company’s own product.

  • The Hill ☛ Silicon Valley's tech leaders cozy up through Trump's inaugural fund

    Hefty donations from tech companies and leaders to President-elect Trump’s inaugural fund are a sign of Silicon Valley’s shifting relationship with the incoming leader after past tensions.

    While inaugural donations by companies are nothing new, observers suggest the cash, coupled with meetings at Mar-a-Lago, signal several leading technology businesses are trying to improve their standing with the president-elect.

  • The Nation ☛ My 2025 Project: Starting a New Column, “Hiding in Plain Sight”

    Seven years later, with tech titans accumulating wealth at an insane trot and inserting themselves in ever-more-nefarious ways into the political process, I finally got around to reading it. It’s a marvelously eye-opening history of the first decades of Silicon Valley’s explosive growth. It chronicles how the high-tech innovators of the 1960s and ’70s, and their counterparts a generation later, went from being iconoclastic, rebellious figures to eventually morphing into economic titans. Their companies are some of the largest and most powerful on earth, and they, as individuals, are among the very richest humans ever to have walked the planet.

    I wish that I’d read Berlin’s book years ago. It helped me gain a deeper understanding of the cultural and political forces that have burst forth from Silicon Valley in recent times, and the self-confidence cum hubris that defines so many of the valley’s elites. These technological whiz kids take no prisoners and tend to have a remarkable lack of introspection. They believe they are entitled to rule the universe, and they have cultivated an extraordinary system in order to get there: of bulldozing their way into what they see as the future with little to no concern for the collateral damage.

  • The Verge ☛ The US finalizes CHIPS Act funding for Samsung and Texas Instruments

    The US Commerce Department has awarded Samsung and Texas Instruments with a combined over $6 billion in “direct funding under the CHIPS Incentives Program’s Funding Opportunity for Commercial Fabrication,” according to a pair of announcements published on Friday.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Systemic solutions needed to counter spread of science misinformation, says new report

      Lazer, a member of NASEM's Committee on Understanding and Addressing Misinformation About Science, helped evaluate how misinformation spreads and conceptualized ways to limit its harm.

      "Misinformation undermines choice, individual agency and democracy," he says.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Project Censored ☛ 2024-12-12 [Older] Exposing Gaps in Corporate Control over News

  • Truthdig ☛ 2024-12-12 [Older] Censors in the White House

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-13 [Older] Saudi Arabia Banned Film for 35 Years. the Red Sea Festival Is Just One Sign of the Industry's Rise

  • HRW ☛ 2024-12-13 [Older] Saudi Arabia: Hosting UN Internet Conference Amid Crackdown

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-12 [Older] Saudi Rights Activist Says 2034 World Cup Visitors Will Live in 'A Bubble' and Not See Real Life

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-12 [Older] FIFA's Club World Cup TV deal: Are the Saudis pulling strings?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] World Cup 2034: Saudi Arabia's human rights failures ignored

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] Saudi Arabia to host 2034 Men's World Cup

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] Soccer-Saudi Arabia's Human Rights Record Under Fire After World Cup Bid Win

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2024-12-10 [Older] FIFA’s Cooked Findings: Saudi Arabia’s World Cup Bid

  • ANF News ☛ Kurdish language teacher imprisoned in Iran

    Haji Barzeh, a Kurdish language teacher from Piranshahr, and a member of the Bayan Kurdish Language Institute, was sent to Naqadeh Prison on 18 December to serve a five-month prison sentence, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported.

  • Antipope ☛ Storm cloud approaching rapidly

    This, from Techcrunch, seems like a good summary of a bad situation facing this blog: Death Of A Forum: How The UK's Online Safety Act Is Killing Communities.

    This blog is just that: my personal blog, with comments.

  • Russ Garrett ☛ Online Safety Act Notes for Small Sites

    The UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) was passed into law in 2023 and is now being implemented, with the first parts of it going into effect in March 2025. The guidance provided is rather impenetrable, so I’ve decided to write my own summary here.

    If you run a small site, you might be interested in joining Promising Trouble’s mailing list – they are trying to get some more solid guidance for small sites out of Ofcom.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • BIA Net ☛ Journalism amid male-state violence: Keep writing!

    Journalism has been a profession plagued by intense human rights violations and pressures in both Turkey and Kurdistan for many years. In times of political turmoil, economic crises, and war, dozens of journalists who embraced the role and mission that the profession entails have been murdered, imprisoned, or subjected to torture. These pressures, which reached their peak in the 1990s, continue to this day, even after 30 years.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Silencing the Truth: The Global Fight to Protect Journalists

    Journalists play a vital role in keeping societies informed and holding power to account, yet their safety and freedom are increasingly under attack. From Afghanistan to Gaza and beyond, those who dare to report the truth often face grave risks. This alarming reality demands immediate and decisive global action to safeguard press freedoms and protect the individuals who dedicate their lives to the truth.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • TruthOut ☛ 2024-12-12 [Older] Family Separations Are Continuing at the Border in the Name of National Security

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-12 [Older] Alberta unveils U.S. border security plan with sheriffs, dogs and drones

  • HRW ☛ 2024-12-13 [Older] UN Security Council Recommits to Protecting People with Disabilities

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-14 [Older] YouTube Singer Arrested in Iran After Performing an Online Concert While Not Wearing a Hijab

  • Project Censored ☛ 2024-12-09 [Older] Alabama School District Fires Superintendent Who Made Strides to Accommodate Immigrant Students

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-10 [Older] UN COP16 summit tackles forced migration and insecurity

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-11 [Older] Sheriff in Georgia Promises to Pay Security Company $1.4 Million After Jail Walkouts

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ 2024-12-12 [Older] Sheinbaum blames US for Sinaloa’s wave of violence: Wednesday’s mañanera recapped

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-13 [Older] UN Security Council Criticizes Taliban Ban on Afghan Women's Medical Education

  • Vox ☛ An American public housing success story | Vox

    But the county got creative with how it could provide public housing: It set aside a fund to finance and develop housing projects. And while the county partners with private developers, its investment makes it a majority owner of a given project. As the New York Times put it, the county, as an owner, becomes “a kind of benevolent investor that trades profits for lower rents.”

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Proud to be a blockhead

    Making art is not an "economically rational" activity. Neither is attempting to persuade other people to your point of view. These activities are not merely intrinsically satisfying, they are also necessary, at least for many of us. The long, stupid fight about copyright that started in the Napster era has rarely acknowledged this, nor has it grappled with the implications of it. On the one hand, you have copyright maximalists who say totally absurd things like, "If you don't pay for art, no one will make art, and art will disappear." This is one of those radioactively false statements whose falsity is so glaring that it can be seen from orbit.

    But on the other hand, you know who knows this fact very well? The corporations that pay creative workers. Movie studios, record labels, publishers, games studios: they all know that they are in possession of a workforce that has to make art, and will continue to do so, paycheck or not, until someone pokes their eyes out or breaks their fingers. People make art because it matters to them, and this trait makes workers terribly exploitable. As Fobazi Ettarh writes in her seminal paper on "vocational awe," workers who care about their jobs are at a huge disadvantage in labor markets. Teachers, librarians, nurses, and yes, artists, are all motivated by a sense of mission that often trumps their own self-interest and well-being and their bosses know it: [...]

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia’s Top Islamic Authority Permits Men to Marry Multiple Women

    Russia’s top Islamic authority issued a ruling that allows men to have multiple wives, the state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported Thursday, citing Moscow’s head Mufti.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Congress authorizes free Wi-Fi for troops in barracks - Task & Purpose

    Troops living in barracks will be getting free Internet in the near future, after Congress approved the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.

    The sweeping $895.2 billion defense bill includes authorization from Congress for the military to roll out high-speed wireless Internet access for troops living in unaccompanied barracks.

  • The Korea Times ☛ Monthly 5G traffic set to surpass 1 million TB for first time this month

    The monthly mobile data traffic running on fifth-generation (5G) networks is expected to surpass 1 million terabytes for the first time this month, industry officials said Sunday, as news viewership soared following President Yoon Suk Yeol's surprise martial law declaration.

    Should it exceed the 1 million TB mark, it would be the first time since Korea rolled out the world's first commercial 5G network in April 2019 with the nation's three carriers — SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Engineers enable quantum communication over existing fiber optic cables — new research shows data transmission using quantum teleportation is possible in parallel with a classical network at specific wavelengths

    Engineers at Northwestern University have successfully achieved quantum communication in parallel with classical channels by identifying specific wavelengths with minimal interference from classical signals (Source: northwestern.edu). This breakthrough lays the groundwork for quantum communication by leveraging existing infrastructure and sending quantum data alongside classical data. The researchers managed quantum teleportation over a 30.2km fiber optic cable carrying 400 Gbps of classical traffic.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • International Business Times ☛ 2024-12-15 [Older] YouTube TV Price Surge: Why Costs Are Rising and the Best Budget-Friendly Alternatives

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Silicon Angle ☛ Google tries to persuade judge in antitrust case not to force the sale of its Chrome browser

  Google LLC has proposed putting limits on its search partnerships in order to resolve antitrust violations in its search business, as an alternative to the U.S. Department of Justice’s suggestion that it sell its Chrome browser.

  Google Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland detailed the company’s remedies proposal in a blog post Friday. It comes in response to a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in August that it’s running an illegal monopoly across the search engine and search advertising markets.

• The Register UK ☛ Don't expect massive M&A changes under Trump, say experts

  Under the Biden administration, the perception of heightened regulatory scrutiny and antitrust enforcement has fueled dissatisfaction among the tech elite. Even some who supported Vice President Kamala Harris's failed presidential bid wanted Chair Lina Khan out of the FTC.

  "There's been a lot of reporting done that the current FTC is, for lack of a better term, more aggressive in finding objections to proposed transactions that historically would not have faced the same degree of scrutiny," Andrew Luh, partner and chair of M&A practice at Silicon Valley law firm Gunderson Dettmer told The Register in an interview.

• Wired ☛ Google Says It Won't Force Gemini on Partners in Antitrust Remedy Proposal

  If Google’s generative AI Gemini Assistant chatbot is to surpass OpenAI’s ChatGPT in popularity in the coming years, it may have to do so without some of the promotional partnerships that helped thrust Google search front and center into Americans’ lives.

  In a US federal court filing on Friday, Google proposed a series of restrictions that for three years would bar the company from requiring its device manufacturer, browser, and wireless carrier licensees to distribute Gemini to their US users. Google also would give those partners more flexibility in how they set their default search provider for their users.

• Patents

  • 2024-12-09 [Older] An American (and Entirely Unnecessary) Tragedy [Ed: Patent extremists protest the ousting of patent maximalists whose sight of the system was meant to benefit the litigation 'industry']

  • 2024-12-10 [Older] Yes, Patent Center Really is that Bad [Ed: Yes, patent system technically a mess; but it profits from its own mess]

  • JURIST ☛ Trade-dispute panel finds Mexico import restrictions on US genetically modified corn violate USMCA

    The conflict stems from a presidential decree published by Mexico in February 2023. The decree established an immediate ban on the use of genetically engineered corn in dough and tortillas, and instructed Mexican government agencies to gradually end the use of genetically engineered corn in animal feed and other products.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Arm will seek a retrial against Qualcomm

    Yesterday, Qualcomm won its legal battle against Arm over allegations that it violated licensing agreements related to its Snapdragon X processors that feature Oryon cores originally developed by Nuvia for data center processors under a different license agreement from Arm.

• Copyrights

  • The Register UK ☛ Make illegally trained LLMs public domain as punishment

    In my earlier article, and my cease-and-desist letter to OpenAI, I stated that such models should be deleted.

    Essentially, global technology corporations have decided, rightly or wrongly, the law can be ignored in their pursuit of wealth and power.

    Household names and startups have, and still are, scraping the internet and media to train their models, typically without paying for it and while arguing they are doing nothing wrong. Unsurprisingly, a number of them have been fined or are settling out of court after being accused of breaking rules covering not just copyright but also online safety, privacy, and data protection. Big Tech has brought private litigation and watchdog scrutiny upon it, and potentially engendered new laws to fill in any regulatory gaps.

    But for them, it's just a cost of business.

  • The Independent UK ☛ OpenAI whistleblower found dead at home aged 26

    Balaji later shifted to organizing the huge datasets of online writings and other media used to train GPT-4, the fourth generation of OpenAI's flagship large language model and a basis for the company's famous chatbot. It was that work that eventually caused Balaji to question the technology he helped build, especially after newspapers, novelists and others began suing OpenAI and other AI companies for copyright infringement.

    He first raised his concerns with The New York Times, which reported them in an October profile of Balaji.