Bonum Certa Men Certa

Leftover Links 06/09/2023: University of Michigan Admits It Got Cracked (Microsoft TCO)



  • Leftovers

    • Chris Coyier$38,000

      That’s what WordPress.com is asking for web hosting, domain ownership, and support for a hundred years. They are essentially saying they’ll be helping your anointed heir with the /wp-admin/ password after you die.

    • CoryDoctorowPluralistic: Naomi Klein's "Doppelganger" (05 September 2023)

      Wolf's politics were always more Sheryl Sandberg than bell hooks (or Emma Goldman). While Klein talked about capitalism and class and solidarity, Wolf wanted to "empower" individual women to thrive in a market system that would always produce millions of losers for every winner. Fundamentally: Klein is a leftist, Wolf was a liberal.

    • Science

    • Education

      • FuturismProfessor Caught Using ChatGPT When Scientific Paper Was Full of Errors

        As Retraction Watch reports, Natural History Museum of Denmark myriapodologist Henrik Enghoff suspected the authors of the paper from China and Africa used OpenAI's ChatGPT to dig up academic references — and as it turns out, his hunch was right.

        The offending paper was initially taken down by Preprints.org, a preprint archive run by the academic publisher MDPI, in June after Enghoff's colleague, the University of Copenhagen's David Richard Nash, notified editors of the errors.

        Now, the paper has seemingly resurfaced online, hallucinated references and all, on a different preprint platform called Research Square.

      • RlangSpatial Data Science Using R in Berlin, Germany

        The Berlin R User Group fosters a diverse and vibrant R community in Berlin. Rafael Camargo shared some insights from his experience regarding the potential of R and some anecdotes for organizers of RUGs. The Berlin RUG is currently looking for sponsors to host their physical events, and companies interested in hosting the group can contact Rafael.

      • APNICEvent Wrap: National Conference on Information Technology

        The event welcomed 200 participants to discuss the theme: Enhancing National and Regional Economies through Sustainable and Equitable Technology. View the agenda for more information on the topics discussed.

      • New York TimesAmericans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That?

        A decade later, Americans’ feelings about higher education have turned sharply negative. The percentage of young adults who said that a college degree is very important fell to 41 percent from 74 percent. Only about a third of Americans now say they have a lot of confidence in higher education. Among young Americans in Generation Z, 45 percent say that a high school diploma is all you need today to “ensure financial security.” And in contrast to the college-focused parents of a decade ago, now almost half of American parents say they’d prefer that their children not enroll in a four-year college.

      • Pro PublicaIdaho Created a $25M Fund to Fix Schools. Why Is Nobody Using It?

        As a member of the school board in the remote Central Idaho town of Salmon, Josh Tolman worried that an earthquake would turn the elementary and middle schools to rubble. The foundations of the schools were crumbling. The floors buckled. The district canceled school whenever a few inches of snow fell for fear the roofs would cave in.

        But Tolman and the school district were in a bind: They couldn’t convince enough voters to support a tax increase that would allow the district to build a new facility. The school board ran six bond elections in seven years. But even though 53% of the community supported the bond in one of their first attempts in 2006, it wasn’t enough. Idaho is one of two states that require two-thirds of voters to support a bond for it to pass.

    • Hardware

      • Silicon AngleHuawei’s latest smartphone showcases China’s chip manufacturing breakthrough

        Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. has teamed up with China’s leading chipmaking firm, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., to build an advanced, seven-nanometer processor that sits at the heart of its latest flagship smartphone.

      • Tom's HardwareU.S. Aims to 'Choke' China's Military Advances with Chip Sanctions

        U.S. denies China advanced supercomputer chip exports amid military concerns.

      • TechdirtFoxconn’s Shriveled Wisconsin Subsidy Scam Stumbles Forth With Sale Of Two Key Buildings

        In 2017 the Wisconsin GOP, with Donald Trump and Paul Ryan at the head of the parade, struck what they claimed was an incredible deal with Foxconn to bring thousands of high paying jobs to the state. The project, which Trump dubbed the “the eighth wonder of the world,” provided the former president with several years’ worth of endless free marketing for his “job creation” skills.

      • HackadayClean Up Your Resin-Printing Rinse With Dialysis

        There’s a lot to like about resin 3D printing. The detail, the smooth surface finish, the mechanical simplicity of the printer itself compared to an FDM printer. But there are downsides, too, not least of which is the toxic waste that resin printing generates. What’s one to do with all that resin-tainted alcohol left over from curing prints?

      • HackadayFinally, A Machine To Organize Resistors!

        Perhaps it’s a side-effect of getting older, but it seems like reading the color bands on blue metal-film resistors is harder than it was on the old brown carbon ones. So often the multimeter has to come out to check, but it’s annoying. Thus we rather like [Mike]’s Resistorganizer, which automates the process of keeping track of the components.

      • HackadaySpooky Noise Box Has Post-Halloween Potential

        There’s more than one way to scare people on Halloween. Sure, there’s always the low-brow jump scare, but that will generally just annoy the person and possibly cause a heart attack. No, what you need is a sustained soundscape of hellish audio. And where does one find hellish audio? Well, you make your own with a spooky-sounds noise box.

      • CNX SoftwareUsing SenseCAP T1000 LoRaWAN GPS Tracker for cattle tracking

        SenseCAP T1000 is a credit-size GPS tracker using LoRaWAN low-power long-range connectivity. Smart Agriculture is one specific application that can leverage IoT and LoRaWAN to analyze and manage soil, crops, and water, but also to track the location of livestock. This is an important aspect of farming, and we’ll use the SenseCAP T1000 LoRaWAN GPS tracker to track cattle in this article/review. SenseCAP T1000 unboxing The package contains the€  SenseCAP T1000 GPS Tracker device, which is about the size of a credit card, and a charging cable.

      • Ruben SchadeAnother Am386 30-pin SIMM replacement

        I’ve been messing with some shadow memory settings on my working Am386 machine again, but in the process it exposed another memory issue. I think. Get it, because it’s about memory, and I’m feigning memory loss about a… shaddup.

        View all posts about my Am386 machine

        Uncovering another flaky SIMM was a relief in a way, because it exposed some instability and errant behavior I’d been experiencing of late. Drivers and TSRs would fail to load for no reason, and Windows 3.1 bluescreened with even more regularity than I remembered.

        I used MemTest86 to track down the failed module, and tried my best to save it with more isopropyl alcohol and contact cleaner, but I think it was a gone. I’ve put it in my small drawer of dubious computer parts for a future time when I might have more skills to fix things. It joins the other module I removed in July:

      • Alan PopeAlan Pope: Every cellphone I have owned

        Time for a listicle!

      • Tom's HardwareTSMC's Troubled Arizona Fab Gets Vote of Confidence From AMD

        AMD set to use TSMC's Arizona fab despite delays as it needs geographic diversity.

      • Jeff GeerlingTesting 10 GbE throughput on Windows - iperf3 is outdated [Ed: Microsoft is technically behind]

        Recently I upgraded my AMD-based PC on a livestream, and I installed an Innodisk EGPL-T101 10 Gbps M.2 NIC (link to Innodisk product page).

        Under Linux, I could get through 9.4 Gbps using iperf3 between the PC and my Mac Studio. But under Windows, I could only get up to about 4.5 Gbps (tested around 1h 27m into the stream)!

      • Intel Foundry Services and Tower Semiconductor Announce New US Foundry Agreement

        Intel Foundry Services (IFS) and Tower Semiconductor (Nasdaq: TSEM), a leading foundry for analog semiconductor solutions, today announced an agreement where Intel will provide foundry services and 300mm manufacturing capacity to help Tower serve its customers globally. Under the agreement, Tower will utilize Intel’s advanced manufacturing facility in New Mexico. Tower will invest up to $300 million to acquire and own equipment and other fixed assets to be installed in the New Mexico facility, providing a new capacity corridor of over 600,000 photo layers per month for Tower’s future growth, enabling capacity to support forecasted customer demand for 300mm advanced analog processing.

    • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

    • Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

      • WinBuzzerGizmodo Replaces Spanish Staff with AI Translation [Ed: Machine translations are decades old; now they just add buzzwords to cause a panic.]
      • FuturismGannett Sports Writer on Botched AI-Generated Sports Articles: "Embarrassing"

        For young athletes, there are few moments as exciting as when they first see their name in the newspaper — preferably for a goal scored, or a save made, and extra points if a local reporter asks for a quote.

        That dynamic is now on the line at Gannett, the publisher of USA Today and many other regional newspapers, where it was forced to pause the publication of abysmally low quality AI-generated articles about high school sports.

        We were curious: how would a sports writer at a Gannett publication feel about the AI articles? So we asked one, though we're keeping them anonymous and not sharing which newsroom they work at to protect their job.

      • Digital Music NewsQueen’s Brian May Goes Full Dystopian on AI

        Queen’s Brian May becomes the latest musician to voice concerns over generative AI and the future of the music industry: “We might look back on 2023 as the last year when humans really dominated the music scene.”

        In a recent interview with Guitar Player, Queen’s Brian May admitted his apprehension about potential authorship issues as society strides forth into the era of generative AI. The seasoned musician is also a scientist with a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Imperial College London — so he acknowledges that AI will bring great benefit, especially its capacity for problem-solving. But May believes we will soon see more implications generative AI creates for the music industry.

      • The Register UKYou patched yet? Years-old Microsoft security holes still hot targets for cyber-crooks

        It's generally accepted that security flaws in Microsoft's products are a top magnet for crooks and fraudsters: its sprawling empire of hardware and software is a target-rich ecosystem in that there is a wide range of bugs to exploit, and a huge number of vulnerable organizations and users.

        And so we can believe it when Qualys yesterday said 15 of the 20 most-exploited software vulnerabilities it has observed are in Microsoft's code.

      • Krebs On SecurityExperts Fear Crooks are Cracking Keys Stolen in LastPass Breach

        In November 2022, the password manager service LastPass disclosed a breach in which hackers stole password vaults containing both encrypted and plaintext data for more than 25 million users. Since then, a steady trickle of six-figure cryptocurrency heists targeting security-conscious people throughout the tech industry has led some security experts to conclude that crooks likely have succeeded at cracking open some of the stolen LastPass vaults.

      • Wladimir PalantA year after the disastrous breach, LastPass has not improved

        In September last year, a breach at LastPass’ parent company GoTo (formerly LogMeIn) culminated in attackers siphoning out all data from their servers. The criticism from the security community has been massive. This was not so much because of the breach itself, such things happen, but because of the many obvious ways in which LastPass made matters worse: taking months to notify users, failing to provide useful mitigation instructions, downplaying the severity of the attack, ignoring technical issues which have been publicized years ago and made the attackers’ job much easier. The list goes on.

        Now this has been almost a year ago. LastPass promised to improve, both as far as their communication goes and on the technical side of things. So let’s take a look at whether they managed to deliver.

        TL;DR: They didn’t. So far I failed to find evidence of any improvements whatsoever.

      • Security WeekNorfolk Southern Says a Software Defect — Not a Hacker — Forced It to Park Its Trains This Week

        Norfolk Southern believes a software defect — not a hacker — was the cause of the widespread computer outage that forced the railroad to park all of its trains for most of a day earlier this week.

      • TediumArt Fights Back

        A comic artist took a journalistic dive into the knotty debates around generative AI—and found artists worried about the people even more than the tech.

      • The Register UKThe Anti Defamation League is Musk's latest excuse for Twitter's tanking ad revenue

        In December, the ADL said it noticed an increase in antisemitic content on the social network, as well as the "return of extremists of all kinds to the platform [that] has the potential to supercharge the spread of extremist content." The ADL further noted the return of what it said were "extremists and conspiracy theorists" emboldened by Twitter's content amnesty policies, and further alleged that X wasn't enforcing its own rules against antisemetic content.

      • Reason'Free Speech Absolutist' Elon Musk Threatens Anti-Defamation League With Defamation Lawsuit

        Plus: The doubling of the deficit, young Americans souring on college, and more...

      • TechdirtHey Elon: The ADL Convincing Advertisers To Run Away From Your Site Is Part Of The Free Speech You Pretend To Support

        Not this shit again.

      • Vice Media GroupTwitter Users Are Warning Each Other About Its Junk Ads With Community Notes

        Users are warning each other about misleading ads on Twitter as Musk lashes out over declining revenue.

      • Vice Media GroupMusk Melts Down Over Ad Revenue, Amplifies Conspiracies, Threatens Lawsuit In Typical Weekend

        A weekend meltdown full of conspiracies and threats is now a routine occurrence for the billionaire Twitter owner.

      • CCIANew Research: Hate Speech Hurts Social Media Sites, Brands, and the Digital Economy

        U.S. policymakers are increasingly considering “must-carry” laws for the internet, which would require digital intermediaries...

      • Neowin Zoom's CEO thinks the US government should look into Microsoft's bundling of Teams

        Last week, Microsoft announced it would offer its Teams online conferencing and collaboration service as a stand-alone product in much of Europe starting on October 1. This was in response to the European Commission's announcement that it was launching an investigation into whether or not Microsoft's bundling of Teams with Microsoft 365 was an anti-competitive move.

        Now, the head of the company that offers a competing product to Teams believes that a similar investigation should happen in the US as well.

        Bloomberg reports that Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, during a presentation at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference, was asked about Microsoft breaking off Teams from Microsoft 365 in Europe. Yuan stated, "You should ask this question to the FTC as well”.

      • Windows TCO

    • Security

      • OSTechNixHow To Prevent SSH Brute Force Attacks Using Fail2ban In Linux

        Linux is a popular operating system for servers and other devices. It is known for its stability, security, and flexibility. However, no operating system is immune to attack. One of the most common types of attacks against Linux servers is a brute-force attack. In this step-by-step guide, we'll show you how to install and configure fail2ban on a Linux system and how to prevent SSH brute force attacks with Fail2ban.

      • Bruce SchneierInconsistencies in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS)

        Interesting research:

        Shedding Light on CVSS Scoring Inconsistencies: A User-Centric Study on Evaluating Widespread Security Vulnerabilities

        Abstract: The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) is a popular method for evaluating the severity of vulnerabilities in vulnerability management. In the evaluation process, a numeric score between 0 and 10 is calculated, 10 being the most severe (critical) value. The goal of CVSS is to provide comparable scores across different evaluators. However, previous works indicate that CVSS might not reach this goal: If a vulnerability is evaluated by several analysts, their scores often differ. [...]

      • Security WeekDevelopers Warned of Malicious PyPI, NPM, Ruby Packages Targeting Macs

        Malicious packages uploaded to PyPI, NPM, and Ruby repositories are targeting macOS users with information stealing malware.

      • Security WeekUnited Airlines Says the Outage That Held Up Departing Flights Was Not a Cybersecurity Issue

        United Airlines flights were halted nationwide on Sept. 5, because of an “equipment outage,” according to the FAA.

      • IT WireThree Australian firms latest to be hit by Alphv ransomware gang

        While Core Desktop has not yet made any public statement about the attacks, the ABC claimed to have seen a letter sent by the company to its clients saying it had become of the intrusion on 22 August.

        The three companies that were attacked are pathology services provider TissuPath, real estate agent Barry Plant and strata management firm Strata Plan.

      • Security Week7 Million Users Possibly Impacted by Freecycle Data Breach

        Freecycle.org is prompting millions of users to reset their passwords after their credentials were compromised in a data breach.

      • Security Week9 Vulnerabilities Patched in SEL Power System Management Products

        Nine vulnerabilities patched in SEL electric power management products, adding to the 19 other flaws fixed earlier this year.

      • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

        • Cendyne NagaBreaking Into Secure Facilities With OSDP

          Facilities like hospitals, banks, data centers, airports, power and natural gas plants, and government institutions secure their properties with authorization hardware built to use the Open Supervised Device Protocol (OSDP). Unfortunately, there are both design weaknesses and poor practices which can be realistically exploited in the real world. OSDP advertises itself as an encrypted protocol, yet many installations use unencrypted modes. While it has defenses against trivial replay attacks, it has such a small counter inside that with enough samples one could replay communications on the wire. It also uses a truncated Message Authentication Code (MAC), which exposes OSDP systems to brute-force attacks. And lastly, OSDP is by design easy to misuse: installers can leave the controller perpetually in "install" mode which allows any device to ask for secret credentials for another device without any encryption on a shared communication line.

        • David RosenthalMicrosoft Keys

          Below the fold I update this sorry state of affairs, which I first started cataloging a decade ago.

          The technology used to secure Internet communication, for example via TLS, the basis for the HTTPS protocol, and for protecting the software supply chain, is based on public key encryption. For example, to start an HTTPS connection between Alice and Bob using Diffie-Hellman-Merkle key exchange, they each use their private key and the other's public key to compute aa shared secret key used to encrypt the communication.

      • Privacy/Surveillance

        • The Register UKMozilla calls cars from 25 automakers 'data privacy nightmares on wheels'

          The foundation, the Firefox browser maker’s netizen-rights org, assessed the privacy policies and practices of 25 automakers and found all failed its consumer privacy tests and thereby earned its Privacy Not Included (PNI) warning label.

          In research published Tuesday, the org warned that car manufacturers may collect and commercially exploit much more than location history, driving habits, in-car browser histories, and music preferences. Instead, some makers may handle deeply personal data, such as – depending on the privacy policy – sexual activity, immigration status, race, facial expressions, weight, health, and even genetic information, the Mozilla team found.

        • [Repeat] OpenRightsGroupOnline Safety Bill: US and UK campaigners warn of dangers of age verification

          “The Online Safety Bill could present websites like Wikipedia, Tik Tok and Twitter with the choice of blocking content to ensure their platforms are suitable for children or forcing users to verify their age. The first would lead to a huge restriction in the content we can all see, create and share. The second would pose a threat to our privacy and security.

          “Keeping children safe online is a worthy goal but we need to ensure that we do not restrict children’s right to information by banning them from large swathes of the [Internet], or expose them to intrusive age assurance.

        • Sedishj Authority for Privacy ProtectionAdministrative fine of SEK 35 million against Trygg-Hansa

          Trygg-Hansa's security flaws have meant that information about 650,000 customers has been accessible to unauthorized persons via the internet. The Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY) is now issuing an administrative fine of SEK 35 million against the company.

        • EFFMontana’s New Genetic Privacy Law Caps Off Ten Years of Innovative State Privacy Protections

          2013 is a good starting point for this story. That year, Montana passed a law requiring police to get a warrant before they could obtain location information generated by electronic devices. At the time, there were no state or federal laws that explicitly protected this data. And the police were already getting and using location data in thousands of criminal cases across the country every year.

          Montana’s straightforward law went into effect two and a half years before California’s landmark privacy law, CalECPA, codified similar protections for location data—and five years before the Supreme Court, in Carpenter v. United States, explicitly recognized the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant for access to cell site location information.

          Montana may have only a little more than a million residents, but since 2013, it has passed a significant number of other important privacy laws. These run the gamut from prohibiting government face surveillance and limiting face recognition, to providing Montana consumers with explicit privacy rights in their online data€ and preventing energy utilities from selling or sharing individual advanced meter energy data without consumer consent. In 2021, Montana expressly restricted familial searches of government-maintained DNA databases and became one of only two states to require a warrant to search consumer DNA databases like genetic genealogy sites. Also in 2021, Montana residents overwhelmingly supported (by 80%) a constitutional amendment that added electronic data and communications to the state constitution’s search and seizure protections.

        • EFFDigital Rights Updates with EFFector 35.11

          Learn more about all of the latest news by reading the full newsletter here, or you can listen to the audio version below!

        • TechdirtTechdirt Podcast Episode 364: Thinking About Decentralization

          We’ve got a another cross-post episode for you this week, on a subject near and dear to our hearts: protocols over platforms, and restoring decentralization online. Mike recently joined Danny O’Brien on the DWeb Decoded podcast to talk all about these topics, as well as tell a little story about Danny’s role in the founding of Techdirt, and you can listen to the whole conversation here on this week’s episode.

        • TechdirtApple Irritates Interest Groups, Law Enforcement With Its (Reasonable) Refusal To Restart Its Client-Side Scanning Program

          After years of irritating the DOJ with its refusal to compromise encryption, Apple suddenly went the other way after receiving criticism over its perceived inability to stop the distribution of CSAM (child sexual abuse material) via its devices and services.

        • TechdirtNYPD’s New Labor Day Tradition Involves Drone Surveillance Of People’s Private Parties And Property

          Never let it be said the NYPD doesn’t know how to have a good time. The question remains as to whether it’s possible for the NYPD to allow others to have a good time.

    • Defence/Aggression

    • Environment

      • The Straits TimesStorms from Typhoon Haikui drench China's Fujian province

        The typhoon lost strength and became a tropical storm after its landfall around 5am.

      • TruthdigWhy the United States Undercounts Climate-Driven Deaths

        Maricopa County’s enhanced heat surveillance system, which essentially counts each heat-related death by hand, is something of a state-level gold standard. Even so, the system only gives the county a concrete lower bound. That’s valuable, Parks said, because the county is able to know at least how many heat-related deaths occurred in a given year. But it’s almost guaranteed to be an underestimate. “The perception that that’s the true number is really rather pervasive,” he said. “It’s a very conservative estimate.” That even a rigorous system like Maricopa County’s cannot provide a full accounting illuminates the challenges of counting climate-related deaths nationwide.

      • US News And World ReportPanama Canal Water Levels at Historic Lows, Restrictions to Remain

        Experts have warned about maritime trade disruptions ahead of what is shaping up to be an even drier period next year. They argue that a potential early start to Panama's dry season and hotter-than-average temperatures could increase evaporation and result in near-record low water levels by April.

      • ReutersFocus: Historic drought, hot seas slow Panama Canal shipping

        More than 14,000 ships crossed the canal in 2022. Container ships are the most common users of the Panama Canal and transport more than 40% of consumer goods traded between Northeast Asia and the U.S. East Coast.

      • France24Cyclone kills at least 21 in southern Brazil, more flooding expected

        Torrential rain and winds caused by an extratropical cyclone have left at least 21 people dead in southern Brazil, officials said Tuesday, warning more flooding may be coming.

      • France24At least seven dead in flooding in Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria

        Fierce rainstorms battered neighboring Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria on Tuesday, triggering flooding that caused at least seven deaths, including two holidaymakers swept away by a torrent that raged through a campsite in northwestern Turkey.

      • Energy/Transportation

        • RFAChina’s average coal power emissions rise by a third, report says

          Australia, South Korea and China are top coal electricity polluters per capita.

        • New York TimesChinese Cars Star at Munich Auto Show, Underscoring German Economic Woes

          China, an electric-vehicle juggernaut, will have at least seven brands on display, while Germany’s automakers are now a drag on their home economy.

        • Ruben SchadeBanning electric scooters

          Jason from NotJustBikes, and Alan Fisher from the Armchair Urbanist did a great podcast episode last March about micro-mobility devices like e-bikes and scooters.

          The Big Problem with Small Vechiles

        • DeSmogClimate Science Denial Looms Large in GB News Linked ‘ARC’ Venture

          “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”. This Martin Luther King quote was used by Conservative peer Baroness Stroud to introduce the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), which launched in March.€ 

          Set up by the owners of GB News and involving “senior leaders from politics, media, culture, business, and academia”, ARC claims that it will address the six “fundamental issues of our time”, including “energy and resources” and “environmental stewardship”.€ 

        • DeSmogJordan Peterson Generates Millions of YouTube Hits for Climate Crisis Deniers

          Fringe climate crisis deniers who claim that the earth is “cooling” and greenhouse emissions are good for “biological productivity” are getting exposed to millions more people than they normally would on YouTube thanks to conservative influencer Jordan Peterson.€ 

          That’s according to viewership data newly reviewed by DeSmog, which reveals a massive visibility boost for public figures who’ve been active in the climate denial movement for years but whose ideas — such as the claim that plants are growing much better due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — are now rarely taken seriously by most legacy media outlets.€ € 

        • The Straits TimesDespite green energy boom, dash for coal clouds China’s climate goals

          China’s energy policies have a huge impact on the pace of global climate change.

        • New York TimesA $700 Million Bonanza for the Winners of [Cryptocurrency]’s Collapse: Lawyers

          Lawyers, accountants, consultants, cryptocurrency analysts and other professionals have racked up more than $700 million in fees since last year from the bankruptcies of five major [cryptocurrency] firms, including the digital currency exchange FTX, according to a New York Times analysis of court records. That sum is likely to grow significantly as the cases unfold over the coming months.

        • Common Dreams500 Groups Endorse NYC March to End Fossil Fuels

          Groups including the NAACP, Sierra Club, and Sunrise Movement have signed on to support the march and its demands for Pres. Biden to take bold action on fossil fuels in the wake of a deadly, record-breaking summer of extreme heat and climate disasters. They join the key groups organizing the march, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Popular Democracy, Climate Organizing Hub, Food & Water Watch, Fridays For Future USA & NYC, Earthworks, Greenfaith, Indigenous Environmental Network, New York Communities for Change, Oil Change International and Oil & Gas Action Network.

      • Overpopulation

    • Finance

      • The Straits TimesDespite Rome’s scepticism, China says Belt and Road cooperation with Italy ‘fruitful’

        In 2019, Italy became the first major Western nation to join China’s Belt and Road.

      • Silicon AngleGitLab shares rise on better-than-expected earnings and revenue

        As of the end of the quarter, GitLab had 7,815 base customers, including 810 customers with a turnover in excess of $100,000, up 37% year-over-year. Total users of GitLab’s platform passed 30 million users, with more than 50% of Fortune 100 now GitLab customers. The company’s revenue run rate sat at $558 million as of the end of July and its dollar-based net retention rate was 124%, meaning it’s getting significantly more business from existing customers.

      • Roku cuts 10% of workforce, slows down on new hiring

        Roku Inc. is cutting 10% of its workforce and curbing hiring plans in an effort to lower expenses, the company said Wednesday in a regulatory filing.

        The video streaming company laid out a series of cost-cutting measures that it says will bring down its annual headcount expense growth rate.

      • Forbes2023 Layoff Tracker: Roku Slashes 10% Of Workforce

        Digital media giant Roku is laying off roughly 10% of its workforce, it announced Wednesday, marking the latest in a series of large corporate layoffs over the past year as employers continue to restructure their workforces amid lingering recession fears (see Forbes’ layoff tracker from the first quarter here).

      • Tech TimesRoku Slashes Workforce by 10%, Limits Hiring Amid Cost-Cutting Measures



        Roku Inc. plans to reduce its personnel by around 10%, equivalent to 360 workers, as part of a strategic move to stop a string of quarterly losses. The prominent streaming platform also intends to restrict new hires to meet its cost-cutting goals.

        Roku's workforce reduction was in response to its updated financial forecast. This move follows Roku's altered financial forecast. Roku now expects third-quarter 2023 sales of $835 million to $875 million, up from a projection of $815 million in July. Investor confidence boosted Roku's shares by 8% to $90.48 in early trading.

    • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

      • New York TimesVanuatu Prime Minister Ousted Amid Criticism of Being Pro-West

        The prime minister of Vanuatu lost his job after he was criticized for veering too close to the West. He accuses his successor of being too cozy with China.

      • India TimesElon Musk borrowed $1 billion from SpaceX in same month of Twitter deal: report

        SpaceX approved the $1 billion loan, which was backed by some of Musk's SpaceX stock in October and Musk drew all of it down the same month, according to the report, citing documents. Musk took ownership of Twitter in October.

      • Security WeekCISA Hires ‘Mudge’ to Work on Security-by-Design Principles

        The U.S. government’s cybersecurity agency CISA on Monday confirmed the addition of Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko to its roster of prominent voices preaching the gospel of security-by-design and secure-by-default development principles.

        Zatko, most recently the CISO at Twitter who blew the whistle on the social media giant’s security shortcomings, is joining the agency in a part-time capacity to work on the “security and resilience by design” pillar of the Biden administration’s National Cybersecurity Strategy.

      • Security WeekMITRE and CISA Release Open Source Tool for OT Attack Emulation

        MITRE and CISA introduce Caldera for OT, a new extension to help security teams emulate attacks targeting operational technology systems.

      • It's long past time for Apple to stop advertising on Twitter

        At this point advertising on Twitter is directly extending financial support to neo-Nazis. It’s long past time that companies like Apple,1 which resumed advertising on the platform in December 2022, just stopped.

        But it won’t, which is finally putting the lie to the idea that the company’s leadership team care one iota about about the impact its actions make on the culture of the country which nurtured it. “You support rampant anti-semitism on your service? No problem! Here’s some money. You explicitly allow transphobic hate speech on the service? That’s fine with us! Here, have some more money.”

      • Michael GeistWhy The Government’s Bill C-18 Draft Regulations Do Little to Ensure More Spending on Journalists or News Content

        The government released its draft Bill C-18 regulations on Friday ahead of the Labour Day weekend, but ironically those regulations do very little to ensure that new funding will be allocated toward employing journalists. While the regulations establish what amounts to a minimum 4% link tax on Google and Meta if they link to news content, they set no minimum requirements to spend the resulting revenues on journalists or news content. In fact, the government specifically dictates to the CRTC that the legislative requirement that an “appropriate portion of the compensation will be used for the production of local, regional and national news content” will involve no minimum amount and the agreements need only reference that “some” of the compensation will be used for that purpose. As a result, in the best case scenario for the government in which the Internet platforms pay for links by reaching commercial agreements with news outlets, the big beneficiaries such as Bell, Rogers, the CBC, and Postmedia would be free to spend the vast majority of the money generated by those deals on executive salaries, debt repayment, or any other purpose.

      • GizmodoFacebook Is Killing the News Tab in Several Countries

        However, despite Meta’s assurances that news outlets will still be able to post content for viewers to see, recent reports have surfaced revealing Meta has quietly reduced referral traffic to media outlets, according to a report by the prominent UK news outlet, Reach PLC. Digital revenue in the UK dropped by 14.5% in the first quarter of 2023, and Reach claimed the root cause stems from “recent changes to the way Facebook presents news content, causing a reduction in referred traffic across the sector.”

      • Press GazetteMeta to wind down Facebook News tab and stop funding Community News Project

        Since the start of 2021, most major UK publishers have received payments from Facebook to use their content in its News tab. The tab was previously curated by a team of around 15 journalists at Upday, but this contract ended last year as Meta turned it into a fully automated product.

      • IT WireFacebook says it will cut back on news in Europe in December

        The announcement comes after Meta blocked access to news feeds in Canada after that country passed a media law known as the Online News Act earlier this year.

        Meta started blocking Canadian news feeds at the beginning of August, even though the Canadian law will take effect only by the end of the year.

        /blockquote>
      • Pro PublicaTexas AG Ken Paxton Repeatedly Refuses to Represent State Agencies, Documents Reveal

        When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton held a news conference in May decrying state lawmakers’ anticipated vote to impeach him, he framed the decision as not only a threat to his political career but as one that endangered the slew of lawsuits he’d filed against the Biden administration.

        Paxton, who has since been suspended from office, faces an impeachment trial that starts today. He has long positioned himself as one of the country’s strongest conservative attorneys general, relentlessly pursuing nearly 50 lawsuits against the federal government on issues that include immigration, health care and the environment. Such messaging raised Paxton’s national profile, appealed to his base of conservative supporters and helped him tamp down political pushback stemming from allegations of wrongdoing that have dogged his eight-year tenure.

    • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

    • Civil Rights/Policing

      • ReasonPolice Tore Up His Protest Sign. Now They Owe Him $50,000

        Last year, Delaware police prevented 54-year-old Jonathan Guessford from holding a sign warning drivers about a speed trap and wrongfully cited him for "improper hand signal" after he flipped off the officers who seized and tore up his sign. Police have now agreed to pay Guessford $50,000 as part of a settlement reached in a lawsuit alleging that police violated his civil rights.

      • BIA NetLayoffs in Amnesty International Turkey branch

        Amnesty International's Turkey branch, which fights for human rights worldwide and works to end violations, has laid off one-third of its employees. In the branch, which has 24 employees,eight people have been let go, two of them being institution managers. The institution cited "restructuring" as the reason.

        The employees criticized the layoffs, attributing them to "union-related" reasons, as Amnesty International had withdrawn from collective bargaining negotiations with the DÄ°SK Sosyal-Ä°ÅŸ Union on June 7.

      • The NationHow Inequality Was Redefined as “Poverty”—Letting Capitalism Off the Hook

        The discovery of poverty as a national problem in the late 1950s and early ’60s redefined economic inequality from a description of relative material circumstances to a cultural issue deriving from the inadequacies of individuals or groups. Debate within and around the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations on how to understand and thus respond to “poverty” overlapped with the debate about structural unemployment. Figures like Labor Secretary W. Willard Wirtz, labor and civil rights leaders like Walter Reuther, A. Philip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin, and labor economists like Charles Killingsworth continued to argue that poverty stemmed primarily from the economy’s inability to generate sufficient gainful employment. In their view, the most effective anti-poverty strategy would involve the kind of substantial federal intervention that would tighten labor markets—including public investment, serious job training, and direct job creation.

      • Pro PublicaWhy the Destruction of Shoe Lane Matters to Me — and Should Matter to Everyone

        As a high school sprinter in Virginia’s Tidewater region, I often participated in meets at Christopher Newport University’s Freeman Center, which had one of the few indoor tracks in the area. I won 500-meter races against top runners, and my high school was team champion.

        Track and field was a huge part of my identity. I looked forward to crossing the Monitor-Merrimac bridge over the James River to Newport News, and I saw the opportunity to display my skill at Christopher Newport as a way to impress colleges and earn an athletic scholarship. It wouldn’t be until 20 years later that I understood the underlying irony. The construction of Christopher Newport, where Black athletes like me competed alongside our white counterparts, had displaced Black homeowners whose hopes and aspirations were dashed by racism.

      • Pro PublicaHow a Virginia College Expanded by Uprooting a Black Neighborhood

        Katie Luck was sitting in her yard under a magnolia tree one afternoon in April when a school bus passed by. A white elementary school student shouted at her from a window, “You don’t belong here.”

        The 81-year-old grandmother and retired teacher, who is Black, was so distressed that she called James and Barbara Johnson, who live down the road from her on Shoe Lane in Newport News, Virginia. The Johnsons, perhaps better than anyone, knew just how wrong the elementary schooler was. The stacks of files and photo albums on their dining room table are a shrine to what the Shoe Lane area used to be — and what it might have become.

      • MeduzaHuman rights lawyer Tatyana Solomina receives death threats from family of Chechen man she assisted — Meduza
      • EFFUK Online Safety Bill Will Mandate Dangerous Age Verification for Much of the Web

        Under new age verification rules in the UK’s massive Online Safety Bill, all internet platforms with UK users will have to stop minors from accessing ‘harmful’ content, as defined by the UK Parliament. This will affect adult websites, but also user-to-user services – basically any site, platform, or app that allows user-generated content that could be accessed by young people. To prevent minors from accessing ‘harmful’ content, sites will have to verify the age of visitors, either by asking for government-issued documents or using biometric data, such as face scans, to estimate their age.

        This will result in an enormous shift in the availability of information online, and pose a serious threat to the privacy of UK internet users. It will make it much more difficult for all users to access content privately and anonymously, and it will make many of the most popular websites and platforms liable if they do not block, or heavily filter, content for anyone who does not verify their age. This is in addition to the€ dangers the Bill poses to encryption.

      • New York TimesLeaders of Canadian Trucker Protest Go on Trial

        Two key organizers of the 2022 trucker protest argued that their efforts were a form of free speech, as prosecutors asserted that “this case is not about their political views.”

    • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

      • APNICUnderstanding the Japanese Internet with the Internet Yellow Pages

        Moving to Tokyo was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me. Discovering another culture brings a lot of surprises, one of them was the ‘Disaster Preparedness Tokyo’ book that came with my new apartment. The level of preparedness for natural disasters in Japan is way beyond anything I have seen in other parts of the world. And I believe this also applies to the Internet in Japan, something I’d like to convey in this article.

      • RIPEThe RIPE Chair Team Reports - September 2023

        Making RIPE more visible, taking part in industry events, keeping up with policy discussions, and preparing for a RIPE Meeting in Rome - as we go into September, the RIPE Chair Team reports on the work ahead in the months to come.

      • Linux LinksBest Free and Public DNS Servers

        This article focuses on four user-friendly DNS servers: Gcore Public DNS, OpenDNS, Quad9, and 1.1.1.1 Public DNS.

    • Monopolies

      • Patents

        • Unified PatentsThe Public Has Spoken: Stakeholders Overwhelmingly Oppose Proposed Restrictions on Patent Trial and Appeal Board Review

          Public comments responding to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office proposals have been posted on regulations.gov on a rolling basis. This analysis has been updated from the original version – July 23, 2023 – to reflect comments posted on regulations.gov as of August 22, 2023.

        • Dennis Crouch/Patently-OMandamus for Improper Venue

          The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently declined to issue a writ of mandamus directing the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Judge Gilstrap) to dismiss a patent infringement lawsuit against Charter Communications based upon improper venue. In re Charter Commc’ns, Inc., No. 2023-136 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 5, 2023). Although non-precedential, the decision highlights a key difference between motions to dismiss for improper venue under 28 U.S.C. €§ 1406 and motions to transfer venue for convenience under 28 U.S.C. €§ 1404. It also shows the high bar for obtaining the “extraordinary remedy” of mandamus relief from denial of an improper venue motion.

          >
        • Kluwer Patent BlogPatent case: Bot M8 LLC v. Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC, USA

          Substantial evidence supported a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision finding the challenged claims were obvious. A PTAB decision finding that Sony Interactive Entertainment had shown that a Bot M8’s patent directed to a video game authentication system was obvious over prior art has been affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals...

        • Unified PatentsPhelan Group automotive patent challenged

          On August 31, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 10,259,470, owned and asserted by the Phelan Group, LLC, an NPE. The '470 patent generally relates to a vehicle control system for authenticating and monitoring a driver and their operation of a vehicle to improve safety.

        • Unified PatentsVision Works IP automotive patent instituted

          On August 25, 2023, less than two months after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding a substantial new question of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 8,437,935, owned and asserted by Vision Works IP Corp., an NPE.

      • Trademarks

        • TTAB BlogTTABlog Test: How Did These Three Appeals from Section 2(d) Refusals Turn Out?

          A TTAB judge once told me that one can predict the outcome of a Section 2(d) case 95% of the time just by looking at the marks and the goods/services. Here are three recent appeals from Section 2(d) refusals. How do you think these came out? Answers will be found in the first comment. [No hints this time].



          In re Puma SE
          , Serial No. 90600590 (August 29, 2023) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Christopher C. Larkin). [Section 2(d) refusal of the mark PWRSHAPE for "Clothing, namely, pants, skirts” and “Clothing, namely, pullovers, jackets, shirts, T-shirts, sweaters, and coats," in view of the registered mark POWERSHAPE for "bras."

      • Copyrights

        • Digital Music NewsMiley Cyrus ‘Bangerz’ Tour Grossed $63 Million—But Cyrus “Didn’t See a Dime”

          Why hasn’t Miley Cyrus gone on tour since her ‘Bangerz’ tour in 2014? The singer bares all on TikTok, revealing the 70+ date “didn’t earn her a dime.” Miley Cyrus has posted a series of videos to TikTok sharing some inside information about the industry.

        • Bjoern BrembsIs this Smits’ tripleC moment?

          Jeffrey “predatory journals” Beall famously catapulted himself out of any serious debate with an article in the journal TripleC, entitled “The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access“. In it, Beall claimed that OA proponents don’t care about access, but that they form an “anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom of the press to companies it disagrees with”. The article is so replete with similarly unhinged fairy tales that Beall quickly lost all standing with the scholarly community.

        • Walled CultureChina fully embraces Western copyright, and inevitably suffers from its ills

          The export of the West’s obsession with enforcing copyright monopolies has brought with it the inevitable rise of copyright madness. Here’s a good example of that, reported on the Sixth Tone site. It involves a professional Chinese astrophotographer, Dai Jianfeng, and Visual China Group (VCG), China’s largest stock photo provider. The latter demanded that Dai should pay compensation to VCG for publishing his own photos: [...]

        • WBUR RadioArtist: Known — Illustrator for 'A Wrinkle in Time' gets long-overdue credit

          The answer isn't on any page of google, or any page of the physical book itself — not the copyright page where the rest of the credit information is, not the front or back cover, NOWHERE. Sarah posed the question in the Unresolved Mysteries subreddit. "This would be the kind of thing that the folks over at Endless Thread would have a field day over," someone commented.

          And, indeed... we did! In this episode, Amory uncovers the artist behind this iconic illustration.

        • Digital Music NewsStreaming Dominates French Music Industry H1 2023

          SNEP also revealed some interesting stats about the French music industry as a whole. The 200 most listened-to tracks in paid audio streaming accounted for 10.5% of the total number of paid streams. Those top 200 tracks streamed in H1 2023 accounted for around 3.8 billion streams from paid subscribers. The entire top ten best-selling artists for H1 2023 in France were all local acts. 17 of the Top 20 best-selling album sin the country were also made by local acts, while 75% of the Top 200 were French productions.

        • Society for Scholarly PublshingAppeals Court Rules That Library of Congress Can No Longer Require Deposit of Published Works

          Title 17, Section 407 of the U.S. Code requires that the copyright holder in a printed work or sound recording published in the United States “deposit, within three months after the date of such publication, two complete copies of the best edition… in the Copyright Office for the use or disposition of the Library of Congress.”

          Failure to do so subjects the copyright holder to “a fine of not more than $250 for each work” as well as “the total retail price of the copies… demanded” and an additional “fine of $2,500… if such person willfully or repeatedly fails or refuses to comply” with the deposit requirement.

          A few years ago, a small publisher called Valancourt Books sued the government, challenging the constitutionality of this requirement, and initially lost its suit. But last week the District of Columbia Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s decision.

        • Torrent Freak‘Books3’ Takedown: Anti-Piracy Group Calls for More AI Training Transparency

          With AI initiatives developing at a rapid pace, copyright holders are on high alert. Of particular concern is technology companies using their content as training data, without any form of compensation. Last month, Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance was the first to successfully send a DMCA takedown notice for the Books3 training dataset, and is now calling for more transparency.

        • Creative CommonsCC’s #BetterSharing Collection | September: Open Is Beautiful

          Each month throughout 2023, we will be spotlighting a different CC-licensed illustration from the collection on our social media headers and the CC blog. For September, we’re excited to showcase “Open Is Beautiful” by Ukrainian illustrator, Tanya Korniichuk. The piece, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, was inspired by a quote from Cecília Oliveira, Executive Director of Fogo Cruzado:

        • Creative CommonsHardiansyah — Open Culture VOICES, Season 2 Episode 23

          Open Culture VOICES is a series of short videos that highlight the benefits and barriers of open culture as well as inspiration and advice on the subject of opening up cultural heritage. Hardi is the Deputy General Secretary for Internal Affairs and Partnership Manager of Wikimedia Indonesia and has been working in open culture since he started with Wikipedia.

        • Torrent FreakACE Shuts Down Three Piracy Rings in Egyptian Whack-a-Mole

          Anti-piracy coalition ACE reports that Egyptian law enforcement authorities have shut down three anti-piracy rings, which operated sports, TV, and movie piracy sites. These successes are the result of close cooperation between rightsholders and the local authorities. While these successes should not be understated, most brands live on, as copycat sites thrive.

        • Digital Music NewsOne Media iP Announces Deal for ‘Licensor’s Income Share’ of 15,000-Track Catalog — Including Works Performed by Ray Charles, Dean Martin, and More

          Days after inking an expanded distribution deal with Sony Music’s The Orchard, One Media iP has announced the acquisition of the “licensor’s income share” of an over 15,000-track catalog. One Media iP reached out to Digital Music News today with word of the investment, which was executed specifically via its “Harmony IP” royalty-advance program.



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