Links 13/10/2023: Tackling Nomophobia, Disinformation in Social Control Media Proliferates
Contents
- Distributions and Operating Systems
- Leftovers
- Gemini* and Gopher
-
Distributions and Operating Systems
-
Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
-
Terence Eden ☛ Should Android's Dark Mode Invert Contact Photos?
I don't know if this is a bug, or just the way the world works now.
Several of the people who live in my phone use artistic black and white headshots. They look very cool. But my Android phone shows their image with inverted colours - so they look like pure shite.
-
El País ☛ ‘Dumbphones’ make a comeback: ‘No one calls me anymore’
Smartphones created a brand-new need: hyperconnectivity. Email, instant messaging and social media followed, causing an urge to be constantly connected. However, this shift brought consequences, as experts noted a rise in mental health problems among young people unprepared for the immediacy of social media. The condition is known as nomophobia (no mobile phone phobia) — when your cellphone becomes a source of pleasure and addiction. Now, a growing number of counterculture users in the United States are renouncing hyperconnectivity and returning to basic mobile phones that are only good for voice calls.
-
-
-
Leftovers
-
Axios ☛ OnlyFans CEO at Axios BFD: "Our goal is to change the internet"
Why it matters: Blair noted that the U.K-based site, which is known for its adult content, offers streaming content (such as stand-up comedy) for free, while making users pay for social media content. "We don't have to accept the way that things are structured at the moment," she said. "There are alternative business models out there that can be successful."
• Asked about the fact that X, formerly known as Twitter, is experimenting with paywalled content, Blair said: "Imitation is the nicest form of flattery."
-
Hackaday ☛ 2023 Halloween Hackfest: Musical Jack-o-Lanterns Harmonize For Halloween
Halloween is many things to many people. For some, it’s a chance to dress up and let loose. For others, it’s a chance to give everyone in the neighborhood a jump scare. For [Aaron], it’s the perfect time to put on a show in the yard with some musical, light-up jack-o-lanterns.
-
Science
-
Gizmodo ☛ Viking Runestones Suggest Bluetooth’s Mom Was Actually a Really Big Deal
The archaeologists 3D-scanned the inscriptions to study the shape of the runes and the carving techniques used to make them. They also compared the historic runestones with runes carved by modern stoneworkers, to better understand how the inscriptions may have been made.
The team concluded that one of the Jelling stones and one of the Ravnunge-Tue stones were carved by the same person; therefore the ‘Thyra’ mentioned on those stones was likely one and the same.
-
Axios ☛ Scientists use tree rings to find evidence of largest solar storm on record
A similar storm striking Earth at present would likely knock out radio communications and satellites while causing widespread blackouts, said Tim Heaton, a professor of applied statistics at the University of Leeds and a co-author of the new study in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A journal.
-
Hackaday ☛ Ingenuity’s 62nd Flight And Attempting A New Speed Record
One of the fun aspects of exploring a new planet is that you can set a lot of new records, as is the case with the very first Mars-based helicopter, Ingenuity. Since its inaugural flight on April 19th of 2021, Ingenuity has flown 61 times, setting various records for distance traveled and other parameters. Although setting the first record is easy on account of anything being better than literally nothing, the real challenge lies in exceeding previously set records, as the team behind Ingenuity seeks to do again with flight 62 and a new speed record.
-
-
Education
-
Pro Publica ☛ The Fallout From Columbia University’s Failure to Stop a Predator
Columbia University has been rocked by revelations about the university’s handling of the case of Robert Hadden, a former obstetrician-gynecologist who sexually abused patients for decades while working at the school.
A ProPublica investigation, published last month in collaboration with New York Magazine, detailed how Columbia failed to stop Hadden and then sought to deflect blame and distance the university from the scandal once his misconduct became public. Columbia has also refused to notify Hadden’s thousands of former patients that he’s been convicted of sexual misconduct.
-
Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ AI and Scholarly Societies
In today’s post I hope to provide a template for scholarly societies wondering how to grapple with the overwhelming and omnipresent prospect of an AI future. The possibilities are broad, philosophical, alarmist, and technical. It is tempting for us to start singing “ La La La La La” as loudly as we can and hope it all goes away. Yet I do believe that, as scholarly societies, we are in the right place to ask questions, questions that may shape the academic community’s response to AI. We will not have answers right now, but let the discourse begin!
-
APNIC ☛ We need to talk about your students
If you work in academia — in network design, operations, security or forensics, or as an academic — we’ll need to talk. It’s about your students, and what they get up to online when you don’t watch. We know, cheating is a topic that most academic institutions would prefer not to talk about. We’d rather talk about our research prowess, the prizes and awards our staff and students have won, the latest rankings, and our shiny new campus facilities and initiatives. But it’s a talk we need to have, and as with the birds and the bees, someone needs to broach the subject. Let that be us here, and perhaps you at your institution. Sit down, be brave, and read on. We need to talk about students cheating, the network, and what to do about it.
-
Troy Patterson ☛ H5P in Google Classroom
I’ve been a proponent of H5P. H5P creates interactive activities. I’ve long used it within Moodle to create activities for students to utilize. H5P is open-source. This means that I don’t have to worry about them switching to a paid model and losing all of my material.
-
-
Hardware
-
J Pieper ☛ Forbidding stop_position with acceleration limits
When the moteus acceleration and velocity limits were first announced more than a year ago, it was noted that the semantics of using the legacy “stop_position” along with the new acceleration and velocity limits was “not particularly useful”. In the meantime, I’ve seen many cases where people get tripped up by this, even more so since developer kits now come with velocity and acceleration limits configured.
-
J Pieper ☛ MA732 encoder support for moteus
As of release 2023-09-26, moteus r4 and moteus-n1 now both support the MA732 as an external SPI encoder. The magnetic sensing performance of the MA732 is normally a bit worse than the AS5047P that is used as the onboard encoder with moteus, but it has two possible advantages.
-
Business Today ☛ Tech layoffs to continue as Qualcomm plans to cut jobs after tepid demand - BusinessToday
Qualcomm is on track to see revenue shrink by about 19 per cent in the current fiscal year
-
Computer World ☛ Qualcomm to layoff 1,258 employees from its California offices
Chipmaker Qualcomm is planning to lay off 1,258 employees from its offices in California by December this year, multiple filings with the state’s Employee Development Department showed.
The layoffs, which will impact staffers from Qualcomm's San Diego and Santa Clara offices, include positions such as engineers, analysts, software developers, and staff from the financial, legal, and human resources employees.
-
Tech layoff 2023: Qualcomm continues to cut jobs amid weak demand
Qualcomm will be reducing 1,258 positions in California, affecting a wide range of roles, including engineering, technical staff, and accounting
-
Hackaday ☛ USB-C For Hackers: Build Your Own PSU
What if you wanted to build your own USB-C PSU? Good news – it’s easy enough! If you ever wanted to retrofit a decent DC PSU of yours to the USB-C standard, say, you got a Lenovo/HP/Dell 19V-20V charger brick and you’ve ever wished it were USB-C, today is the day when we do exactly that. To be fair, we will cheat a bit – but only a tiny bit, we won’t be deviating too much from the specification! And, to begin with, I’ll show you some exceptionally easy ways that you can turn your DC PSU into a USB-C compatible one, with a simple module or a few.
-
Hackaday ☛ Badminton String Winder Gets The Tension Just Right
If you want to keep your badminton game at its peak, you’ll need a good racket with a proper set of strings. When an injury kept [Antonie Colin] off the court for a few months, building a restringing machine helped pass the time.
-
-
Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
-
NL Times ☛ Air travel becoming less safe due to overworked pilots: study; Transavia denies findings
The researchers surveyed 10,000 pilots and cabin crew members. A third said that European air travel has become less safe. Eighty percent of cabin crew and 66 percent of pilots said working conditions have deteriorated. Many cited an increase in atypical contracts, like false self-employment and zero-hour contracts, as the reason behind the worsening working conditions. These contracts weakened employees’ legal position, making them less likely to report being “unfit to fly.”
-
-
Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
-
Hackaday ☛ Removing The Air Gap From An IPad Display
Some recent models of the Apple iPad have a rather annoying air gap in between the display and the outer touch surface. This can be particularly frustrating for users that press hard or use the Apple Pencil regularly. It is possible to eliminate this gap in the iPad 9, at least, as demonstrated by [serg1us_eng]. (Warning: TikTok)
-
Quartz ☛ A startup founded by former Google employees claims that users spend two hours a day with its AI chatbots
Character.AI, a startup that offers a chatbot service where users can have open-ended conversations with different characters based on real and imagined personalities, launched last September. Characters include an English teacher who will help you with grammar or a psychologist who can provide support. If users don’t click with one of the 18 million characters available, they can create a new one.
-
Press Gazette ☛ Norway’s biggest daily doubles audio audience with AI-voiced articles
Aftenposten, Nordic publisher Schibsted’s biggest subscription title with some 250,000 subscribers of which 165,000 are digital, launched a custom AI-generated voice this year after a successful pilot on its title for classrooms, Aftenposten Junior Skole.
The robot voice, which is based on that of Aftenposten podcast host Anne Lindholm, gives audiences the option to listen to individual articles.
-
-
Security
-
Privacy/Surveillance
-
Patrick Breyer ☛ Chat Control 2.0: EU governments set to approve the end of private messaging and secure encryption
By making a minor concession EU governments hope to find a majority next week to approve the controversial „chat control“ bill. According to the proposed child sexual abuse regulation (CSAR), providers of messengers, e-mail and chat services would be forced to automatically search all private messages and photos for suspicious content and report it to the EU. To find a majority for this unprecedented mass surveillance, the EU Council Presidency proposed Tuesday that the scanners would initially search for previously classified CSAM only, and even less reliable technology to classify unknown imagery or conversations would be reserved to a later stage. The proposed „deal“ will be discussed by ambassadors tomorrow and could be adopted by ministers next week.
Patrick Breyer, Pirate Party Member of the European Parliament and co-negotiator of the proposal, warns about the consequences of such a „deal“: [...]
-
Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Why WeChat wins (in China)
WeChat’s inconspicuousness on my phone screen is no accident. Although WeChat is an everything app in the sense of being a digital hub for over a billion users, the app’s design is intentionally grounded in a more nuanced and philosophical meaning of the word “everything” than you might expect.
Launched in 2011, WeChat has become an all-in-one app that offers services covering most aspects of everyday life, from instant messaging and mobile payments to photo- and video-sharing social networking. It has become a staple of daily activities for 1.3 billion Chinese mobile users.
-
Bert Hubert ☛ Transcript Dutch parliamentary hearing on EU Chat Control and Client Side Scanning
I’ve translated my introduction in the Dutch parliamentary hearing because I think it might add a little bit to the debate, and also because it sheds a light on the poor state of Dutch democracy, and some sunlight might help.
More context on this proposed EU law can be found, in Dutch, in a post I wrote earlier. Automated translation will likely do a decent job on this. Or follow Patrick Breyer’s explanation here. He’s been on the case for years now.
-
Techdirt ☛ DHS Releases Previously-Withheld Report Detailing Agencies’ Abuse Of Location Data Purchased From Data Brokers
This report [PDF], obtained by the newly-formed 404 Media, contains a lot of what we know, some of what we don’t know, and confirms a lot of suspicions.
-
-
-
Defence/Aggression
-
Common Dreams ☛ We Will Destroy: A Hundred Eyes For An Eye
In a bitter, ravaged Middle East where both sides seek to out-war-crime each other - Hamas kills innocents, Israel rains down genocidal hellfire on a trapped populace - moral distortions and misinformation keep pace with atrocities. For the record: Hamas is not Palestine; Bibi and his gang of racist thugs are not Israel; sometimes evil, whether dressed in the language of liberation or righteous vengeance, is just evil; and amidst searing oppression and the carnage it begets, "Neither tragedy negates the other."
-
India Times ☛ US judge questions Montana state TikTok ban
US District Judge Donald Molloy, considering a court challenge from TikTok and users, on Thursday questioned the state attorney general's office at a hearing of the state's ban approved by the legislature. He noted that no other state has followed suit to ban TikTok. "Does that seem a little strange to you?" Molloy asked at the hearing.
-
RFERL ☛ NATO Will Hold Major Nuclear Exercise As Russia Plans To Pull Out Of Test-Ban Treaty
“This is a routine training event that happens every October,” Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said. "This year, the training will take place over Italy, Croatia, and the Mediterranean Sea."
-
El País ☛ Surge in migrant boats to Spain’s Canary Islands stretches resources thin
The humanitarian reception network provides basic assistance to new arrivals, ensuring those arriving in precarious situations, with no money or family, don’t end up on the street. It also offers a period of respite and a degree of financial support to help them with their ongoing journey. As a general rule, a stay at one of these centers cannot exceed three months, a period that has now been reduced to one month to accommodate the intensity of arrivals. So far this year, more than 20,000 people have arrived in the Canary Islands, an increase of more than 50% on 2022. The upward trend is mirrored on the mainland and the Balearic Islands, although to a lesser extent.
-
Scheerpost ☛ John Kiriakou: A Victimizers’ Memorial
The memorial’s leadership also is important in understanding the direction that it’s taking in ignoring the victims of the war on terror and in honoring the victimizers. The organization’s chairman is none other than President George W. Bush. The “executive team” and board of advisers includes an array of retired generals and colonels, hedge fund managers, oil executives and two conflict widows.
-
The Atlantic ☛ This War Shows Just How Broken Social Media Has Become
Their transformation has not been an accident. For nearly a year, Musk has worked to dismantle his site’s previous architecture, including the platform’s verification system for public figures, journalists among them. Musk’s antics and layoffs have contributed to the diminishing of its trust and safety team. Now anyone can pay for a verification badge to make one’s posts more visible. (Some of the site’s new blue-check users are scam artists or disinformation peddlers, a number of whom are pawning off fake, old, or misleading footage as verified reports from Gaza.) Musk has also reinstated accounts that were banned for rules violations. And last week, in a supremely poorly timed move, the platform stripped auto-populating headlines from news stories; the result has been a substantial loss of legibility and the further erosion of trusted media sources on the platform. Musk has turned X into a deepfake version of Twitter—a facsimile of the once-useful social network, altered just enough so as to be disorienting, even terrifying.
-
India Times ☛ EU gives TikTok 24 hours to set out disinformation action
EU industry chief Thierry Breton on Thursday gave TikTok 24 hours to detail measures taken to counter the spread of disinformation on its short video app following Palestinian Islamist group Hamas' attack on Israel.
Breton's warning in a letter to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, first seen by Reuters, follows similar letters to X owner Elon Musk and Meta Platforms' Mark Zuckerberg earlier this week. Breton subsequently posted the letter on social media platform Bluesky.
-
Janes ☛ Investigation under way into potential sabotage of Balticconnector pipeline
In an 11 October announcement the CKP said the initial classification of its investigation was “gross sabotage”.
-
Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
-
Meduza ☛ Debris from drone downed in Russia’s Belgorod region kills three, including child — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Russia to force export companies to sell foreign currency earnings on Russian market at government-controlled rates — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Putin signs classified executive order to bolster the ruble, compelling industrial export companies to divest of foreign currency revenues — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Siberia, prison, or straight to the mines? A timeline of Russia’s debate over what to do with citizens who left but want to return — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Why does GRU need a PMC? Meet the private military company ‘Redut’ — a mercenary recruitment proxy for Russian intelligence and Spetsnaz forces — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Russia captures Ukrainian spetsnaz serviceman during landing mission in Crimea — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Ramzan Kadyrov posts video clip from meeting with prisoner who was beaten by the Chechen leader’s son — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Putin arrives in Kyrgyzstan for state visit, his first trip abroad since ICC arrest warrant — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Russian State Duma passes bill to scrap requirement that Moscow notify Council of Europe about martial law — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ ‘All of them were civilians’: Hroza missile strike death toll rises to 59 — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Yekaterinburg court jails human rights activist for ‘displaying extremist insignia’ — namely, Facebook logo — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Russian State Duma speaker says first reading of draft bill to withdraw ratification of nuclear test ban treaty scheduled for next week — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Latvia to close only land crossing for Ukrainians to enter Russia through third country — Meduza
-
-
-
Environment
-
NPR ☛ Climate rules are coming for corporate America
Businesses and climate activists have been pushing to shape the SEC rules for months, because the stakes are high. The economy is awash in climate disclosures that companies tout, but there are few ways for customers and investors to gauge the validity of the claims. The SEC's goal is to ensure that publicly-traded corporations are reporting comparable information, and also to make sure they aren't misleading investors about their environmental activities — a practice known as greenwashing, Gary Gensler, chair of the SEC, told the House Financial Services Committee in September.
-
[Old] Greenpeace ☛ Bjorn L omborg Think Tank Funder Revealed As Billionaire Republican ‘Vulture Capitalist’ Paul Singer
New York-based hedge fund manager Paul Singers charitable foundation gave $200,000 to Lomborgs Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) in 2013, latest US tax disclosures reveal.
-
RFA ☛ Northeast India flood: Man-made disaster worsened by climate change
In recent years, researchers and government officials noted the increasing water levels in South Lhonak due to the melting glaciers caused by global warming, with experts singling it out as “high risk” and “critical.”
Studies have shown South Lhonak increased almost ten times from 17 hectares in 1977 to 167 hectares just before the burst. Last week, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) released a satellite study saying about 105 hectares of water area was drained out after Oct. 4.
-
DeSmog ☛ California Pension Funds Have Billions Invested in Fossil Fuel Companies Named in State’s Lawsuit
“It makes no sense that on one hand California is suing five major oil companies for climate-related damages to the state, while at the same time our state public employee pension funds are investing over $4 billion in these very same companies,” Carlos Davidson, a member of the California Faculty Association and a CalPERS beneficiary, said to DeSmog in an email. “We should divest.”
-
Energy/Transportation
-
New York Times ☛ Stockholm to Ban Diesel- and Gas-Powered Vehicles in City Center in 2025
The plan, announced on Tuesday by the vice mayor for transport, Lars Strömgren, will allow only vehicles that run on electricity or natural gas in a 20-block zone. The only exceptions are plug-in hybrid vans and vehicles driven by certified physically impaired drivers, police and emergency workers.
-
DomainTools ☛ Two Seans, a Tim, and a Pig Butchering Ring
Before we dive into the specifics of Sean Gallagher’s article, we discuss the concept of pig butchering. The term comes from the translation sha zhu pan in Chinese – literally translating to “pig butchering.” The tactic evolved out of mainland China and as the Chinese people became more vigorous in prosecuting these cases, the Coronavirus pandemic hit, effectively moving pig butchering out to bordering countries.
-
DeSmog ☛ ‘Deeply Troubling’ Lack of UK North Sea Oil and Gas Monitoring
The main regulator of North Sea oil and gas doesn’t conduct physical inspections to ensure companies operating in the region are following the rules, DeSmog can reveal.
The revelations, labelled “deeply troubling” by campaigners, come as the government and the regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), have announced plans to approve drilling at a new oil field, Rosebank, that could produce 69,000 barrels of oil and 44 million cubic feet of gas a day.
-
-
-
AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
-
CBC ☛ The EU wants to crack down on misinformation online — but here's why it probably won't work
Paul Bernal, who teaches information technology law in the United Kingdom, said while it's clear that European authorities want to police online content deemed illegal, it's not clear whether they can actually compel anything to happen.
"if it turns out they can't [enforce these rules], then ... it's really removing their power. They'll feel like kind of paper tigers who don't actually have any any power to do anything," said Bernal, a professor at the University of East Anglia law school. Even though EU law does not directly apply in the U.K. at this time, he said, similar laws and regulations are brewing there.
-
Daniel Pocock ☛ Bad faith, fraud, FINMA judgment against Parreaux Thiebaud & Partners, Justicia SA, Justiva SA, Atlas Capital SA, finding a lawyer in Switzerland
Surely, after 25 years of collaboration, my copyright interest as a Debian Developer would be beyond question? Nonetheless, Switzerland is a country known for a lot of racism [sic] and they may be hoping to get some corrupt judge who will be unable to see my work and make a verdict based on my anglophone accent.
-
CS Monitor ☛ Let us now listen, says Europe
The informal forum was set up by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One aim is to build trust and create respectful deliberation among the European Union’s 27 members and 20 non-EU-affiliated countries, many of which seek to join the bloc. The summit’s tone of humility was reflected by President Macron himself. In June, he apologized to many Eastern European countries for not heeding their warnings about Russian aggression.
-
Axios ☛ Governments become major target in online Israel-Hamas information war
Of note: Misinformation refers to false or misleading information being circulated unintentionally, often by everyday people online. Disinformation is posted intentionally by bad actors with the goal of creating confusion or sowing discord.
Driving the news: In the immediate aftermath of Hamas' weekend attack on Israel, a document that had been altered to make it look like the White House designated $8 billion in U.S. aid for Israel began to circulate online.
-
India Times ☛ Social media is awash in misinformation about Israel-Gaza war, but Elon Musk's X is the most egregious
While Twitter has always struggled with combating misinformation about major news events, it was still the go-to place to find out what's happening in the world. But the Israel-Hamas war has underscored how the platform now transformed into X has become not only unreliable but is actively promoting falsehoods.
-
NDTV ☛ "No Place For Terrorist Organisations": Elon Musk's X Removes Pro-Hamas Accounts
The swift response from X was prompted by a 24-hour ultimatum issued by European Union industry chief Thierry Breton to Elon Musk, urging him to combat the spread of disinformation on X and ensure compliance with new EU online content regulations. Breton voiced concerns over the platform's alleged use in distributing illegal content and disinformation within the European Union.
Under the newly implemented EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), large online platforms like X and Meta's Facebook (META.O) are required to take more proactive measures to remove illegal content and address threats to public security and civic discourse.
-
The North Lines IN ☛ Beware of fake news on social media, X ‘takes action’ against offensive posts
Elon Musk's X in particular was flooded with misinformation, heightening tensions across the globe.
On Tuesday the European Commission wrote to Musk warning him over alleged disinformation on X about the Hamas attack on Israel, including fake news and “repurposed old images”.
-
Quartz ☛ The EU is holding Elon Musk accountable for Hamas-related disinformation on X
In an Oct. 10 letter to the Tesla and SpaceX tycoon who bought X (formerly Twitter) last year, European Commission committee member Thierry Breton wrote that the microblogging platform “is being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU.” The bloc is demanding transparent and clear policies, “timely, diligent, and objective” review and removal of questionable content, and mitigation measures, such as taking down “repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games.”
-
Silicon Angle ☛ EU now tells Meta to keep platform free of misinformation during Israel-Gaza conflict
A day after the European Union warned X Corp. about the spread of disinformation regarding the Hamas attack on Israel, a similarly worded letter was sent to Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg.
In this missive, also penned by the European Commissioner Thierry Breton, Meta was told to heed the EU’s Digital Services Act – the sweeping legislation in the EU designed to encourage tech companies to take responsibility for what appears on their platforms.
-
New York Times ☛ E.U. Probes Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Violent Israel-Hamas War Content
E.U. authorities formally requested information from X, once known as Twitter, the first step in what could become a wider investigation of the company. Regulators are examining whether X violated a new European law, the Digital Services Act, which requires large social media companies to stop the spread of illegal content, disinformation and other harmful material. Under the law, companies can be penalized up to 6 percent of their global revenues.
-
Silicon Angle ☛ EU opens probe into X over alleged Israel-Hamas war disinformation
Earlier this week, the EU’s European commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, sent a letter to X’s owner, Elon Musk, warning that the platform may have transgressed the EU’s fairly new Digital Services Act, or DSA – potentially costly legislation designed to make “very large online platforms” responsible for what appears on their services.
A day later, Breton sent a similar letter to Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, although the wording was somewhat softer. It seems now the Chinese-owned social media giant TikTok has also been issued a screed regarding possible “disinformation” on its platform that breaches DSA rules. The law now requires not just transparency and the removal of such content, but the latter done proactively.
-
India Times ☛ EU investigating X's compliance with bloc's online content rules
The European Commission has launched an investigation into Elon Musk's X social media platform to see whether it complies with new EU tech rules on illegal and harmful content following the spread of disinformation on its platform after Hamas' attack on Israel.
The EU executive said it has formally asked X to provide information in accordance with the Digital Services Act (DSA).
-
Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
-
Techdirt ☛ Video Game Footage Used As Disinformation In Israel, Hamas Conflict
We’ve talked about this sort of thing before, but here we go again, I guess. For the last decade or so, video games have gotten realistic enough in terms of how they visually depict wartime scenarios that misinformation utilizing video game footage has become a somewhat regular thing. Regular enough that the larger world has started to catch onto the game with more speed and game producers are even getting involved advising the public on how to spot the difference between real and fake war footage (more on that further down the post). Previous versions of this sort of thing saw Iran using game footage to pretend it had weapons it didn’t have, Russia using it to claim America was supporting ISIS, and both sides of the Korean DMZ using game footage to show how great at war they are but can’t demonstrate with IRL footage, apparently.
-
-
-
Censorship/Free Speech
-
The Age AU ☛ Russian journalist who denounced Ukraine war checked for suspected poisoning
Ovsyannikova, who worked at Russian state television Channel One, drew international attention in March 2022 after appearing behind the anchor of an evening news broadcast with a sign that said, “Stop the war, don’t believe the propaganda, they are lying to you here.”
-
Techdirt ☛ A Gentle Reminder That Censoring Books Is Never A ‘Reasonable’ Solution
Conservatives are making the rounds again, placing op-eds and analytical pieces explaining how book bans aren’t really book bans. For example, Education Week published a column by a pair of authors from the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation trying to justify laws across the country that restrict and even remove certain texts from many public school libraries.
-
-
Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
-
CPJ ☛ Nigerien journalist Samira Sabou charged with treason, cybercrime
On Wednesday, October 11, a magistrate court in the capital, Niamey, provisionally released Sabou, who regularly posts news and commentary on her Facebook page, after 11 days in detention, according to her lawyer, Ould Salem Saïd, and a family member who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns. Authorities kept Sabou’s phone and ordered the journalist to provide one week’s notice of any intention to travel to the judge.
Sabou is charged with disseminating data likely to disturb public order, which is punishable by up to three years imprisonment and a maximum fine of 5 million West African francs (US$8,080), and is also accused of maintaining “intelligence with a foreign power,” a treasonous charge that carries the death penalty, according to Article 31 of the cybercrime law and Article 63 of the penal code.
-
-
Civil Rights/Policing
-
Techdirt ☛ New York Pushing Yet Another Unconstitutional Social Media Age Verification Bill
It never ends with these moral-panic-driven, blatantly unconstitutional state bills “for the children.” The latest, from New York state Senator Andrew Goundardes and Assemblymember Nily Rozic was announced this week with direct support from NY Governor Kathy Hochul (who has been pushing for such unconstitutional bills for a while now, mainly to redirect attention away from her own failures as a governor).
-
RFERL ☛ Iranian Teen Reportedly Remains In Coma, Condition Unchanged
Relatives of Armita Garavand say the Iranian teen remains in a coma after reportedly being assaulted by the morality police for not wearing the mandatory hijab earlier this month. [...]
-
The Hindu ☛ Cyber Security Bureau arrests 19 offenders involved in 143 cases
The Telangana State Cyber Security Bureau (TSCSB), in a drive organised with six police jurisdictions in the State, visited nine States and arrested 19 offenders involved in 143 cases registered in Telangana and reported 726 incidents in other States.
-
ANF News ☛ ‘Turkey is not building a border wall to keep out refugees [sic], but to tear Kurdish society apart’
The Turkish state is building a wall along its eastern border. Since 2018, the Turkish state has been building a huge bulwark along the 560-kilometre-long Turkish-Iranian border to prevent any uncontrolled border crossing. This wall separates the provinces and districts of Çaldıran-Van, Doğubeyazıt-Ağrı, Yüksekova-Hakkari in northern Kurdistan from eastern Kurdistan and is intended to break the connection between the parts of Kurdistan on Turkish and Iranian territory. So far, 185 kilometres of the wall have been completed. A three-metre high barbed wire is placed on the wall and trenches are dug around it.
-
Pro Publica ☛ Men Say Therapist Touched Them Inappropriately During Sessions Paid for by LDS Church
Three additional men have come forward to say a therapist recommended and paid for by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints touched them inappropriately during counseling sessions related to struggles with their sexuality. The men's statements follow allegations by three others, previously reported by The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica, that clinical mental health counselor Scott Owen touched them sexually during therapy.
The three who most recently came forward said their counseling sessions were paid for with money donated by church members to help those in need. The church said it has no process in place to vet the therapists its church leaders recommend.
-
FAIR ☛ ‘Wage Theft Is Built Into the Business Models of Many Industries’
News media interested in crime—its impact on human beings, on society, its cost to the economy—would be interested in wage theft, the more than $50 billion a year stolen from workers in this country. But when is the last time your nightly local news talked about that, or encouraged you to be outraged and concerned and moved to action about that? There are efforts to address this ongoing, mundane thievery, but so far it seems to be under the radar of news outlets that, in every other way, suggest they care very much about crime, all the time.
-
Meduza ☛ International Olympic Committee suspends Russia until further notice — Meduza
-
-
Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
-
The Register UK ☛ EU consultation on future telecoms cools on having big tech pay for network builds
The European Commission's consultation on the future of the bloc's telecoms sector has concluded, and revealed majority disinterest in the idea of making big tech pay to access networks.
Such access fees were up for discussion because of their introduction in South Korea. Euro-telcos have been lobbying for the fees on grounds that they bear the cost of building and operating the networks that consumers use to consume content services operated by outfits like Netflix and Google.
-
India Times ☛ Google to pay German publishers €3.2 million per year on interim basis
Google has agreed to pay German publishers 3.2 million euros ($3.38 million) a year for its publication of news content pending a decision from the German patent office (DPMA) on the issue, the sides said in separate statements on Thursday.
-
Techdirt ☛ Gavin Newsom Signs California’s Own FOSTA
A month ago, we explained how California bill AB 1394, kind of a mini-FOSTA for California, was so problematic, and was likely to be found unconstitutional, just like last year’s “Age Appropriate Design Code.” AB 1394 is yet another of those “but think of the children” laws that California loves these days, and it passed with basically no scrutiny at all. There was a brief mention of it in the LA Times, and the only substantive analysis of the bill I can find was mine on Techdirt’s as well as John Perino’s at Tech Policy Press.
-
Techdirt ☛ FTC Pushes New Rule To Try And Kill Bullshit ‘Junk Fees’
As a reporter who has covered telecom for the better part of two decades, I’ve spent much of that time watching broadband giants like AT&T and Comcast sock their captive customers with a wide variety of bullshit, sneaky fees designed to help them advertise one price, then charge you with a higher rate. It’s a practice that nets them billions of dollars annually.
-
-
Monopolies
-
Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Google warns it would fight EU break-up order
In June, the EU said that it was concerned that Google’s allegedly intentional conduct in the ad-tech supply chain gives its own exchange — AdX — a competitive advantage that may have foreclosed rival ad exchanges, to the detriment of fair competition.
The EU case is a direct attack on the black box of online advertising where Google automatically calculates and offers ad space and prices to advertisers and publishers as a user clicks on a web page.
-
India Times ☛ Five things to know about the Google antitrust trial as it hits halfway mark
In the trial that started on Sept. 12 and is scheduled to go to about mid-November, the Justice Department accused Google of manipulating online auctions - a multibillion dollar industry dominated by Google - with these formulas to favor its own bottom line.
-
Copyrights
-
Walled Culture ☛ The New York Times tried to block the Internet Archive: another reason to value the latter
As the article explains, one of the important uses of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is to compare Web pages as they are updated over time. It allows the differences between the original and later versions of a page to be identified. In particular, this feature can be used to spot changes in news stories that have been made without any accompanying editorial notes, so-called stealth edits. Here’s why that has been awkward for The New York Times: [...]
-
The Register UK ☛ Google offers some copyright indemnity to users of its generative AI services
Many generative AI services rely on neural networks trained from content slurped from all sorts of sources without consent or payment. Content creators have launched lawsuits to seek compensation for the inclusion of their works in those models, which can be prompted to produce works that closely imitate or straight-up rip off their distinct styles and themes.
-
India Times ☛ Google to defend generative AI users from copyright claims
Major technology companies like Google have been investing heavily in generative AI and racing to incorporate it into their products. Prominent writers, illustrators and other copyright owners have said in several lawsuits that both the use of their work to train the AI systems and the content the systems create violate their rights.
-
Torrent Freak ☛ How An Undercover Lawyer Helped to Topple Denmark's Torrent Tracker Scene
A few days ago, yet another former operator of a Danish torrent tracker received a suspended prison sentence, the latest conviction following the successful dismantling of Denmark's thriving piracy scene. This unprecedented crackdown started in 2020, but preparations began years earlier, when a local lawyer went 'undercover' at the private tracker DanishBits.
-
Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate IPTV Owners Sentenced to 36 Months in Prison & $18m Damages
Two men who operated a pirate IPTV service have been handed 36-month prison sentences by a specialist IP court in Sweden. Anonymous tips led to an investigation, police surveillance including wiretapping, and subsequent raids which netted 47 gold bars and sufficient evidence for two convictions. The men were also ordered to pay broadcasters over $18 million in damages.
-
-
-
-
Gemini* and Gopher
-
Technology and Free Software
-
Re: Are You a Terminal Emulator Hipster?
In Linux I think I always just used what came with the OS. On Lubuntu it is something called lxterminal. It works fine, I guess. I am not sure what to look for in a terminal emulator. There was some setting I was looking for the other day, but could not find, so I guess there is something that is missing, but I can't even remember what it was.
For some time last century I owned a real hardware terminal. A VT-220-something. The university was getting rid of them and I managed to pick one up. I used it as a bedside terminal, connected by a serial cable to my Linux desktop a few meters away at my desk. I do not remember using it much. That was not really a terminal emulator of course, as it was an actual terminal, but it sounds like the kind of thing I imagine a terminal (emulator) hipster would have
-
My FOSS Writing Process
I believe writing should be a universal thing that everyone has access to. FOSS software is in a really good position right now, where it should cost someone nothing to get started writing, as long as they have a computer. I'm going to share what my writing process is in case it helps someone build or improve their own.
FOSS of course stands for "free, open-source software". Software that is free to use, modify, and redistribute. These are important traits for me, because I wish to actually own the software I use to ensure that I will always have access to my creations in the future.
If you don't have your own computer, consider trying out PortableApps as a way to carry the software with you to the library or other places with free computer access.
-
People
Two types of people in my server, one being people who cares, and people who don't. People who don't care won't care, they probably cared, but they probably see something they disliked, think it's 100% going to be permanent, and decided to not care anymore.
For those who care however, or at least those who actually do voice out their opinions instead of just hiding in the corner, are weird. Because instead of telling me what to do about the situations with reasons, they would tell me how it sucks then get mad then do anything but to tell me why I should've done the things they wanted.
-
-
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.