Links 18/10/2023: US Tech Worker Laid Off Almost Every Minute, Craig Murray Arrested Again
Contents
- Leftovers
- Gemini* and Gopher
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Leftovers
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Deb Chachra's "How Infrastructure Works"
Infrastructure isn't merely a way to deliver life's necessities – mobility, energy, sanitation, water, and so on – it's a shared way of delivering those necessities. It's not just that economies of scale and network effects don't merely make it more efficient and cheaper to provide these necessities to whole populations. It's also that the lack of these network and scale effects make it unimaginable that these necessities could be provided to all of us without being part of a collective, public project.
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Science
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Mark Dominus ☛ The discrete logarithm
A couple days ago I discussed the weird little algorithm of Percy Ludgate's, for doing single-digit multiplication using a single addition and three scalar table lookups. In Ludgate's algorithm, there were two tables, !!T_1!! and !!T_2!!, satisfying the following properties:
$$ \begin{align} T_2(T_1(n)) & = n \tag{$\color{darkgreen}{\spadesuit}$} \\ T_2(T_1(a) + T_1(b)) & = ab. \tag{$\color{purple}{\clubsuit}$} \end{align} $$
This has been called the “Irish logarithm” method because of its resemblance to ordinary logarithms. Normally in doing logarithms we have a magic logarithm function !!\ell!! with these properties: [...]
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The Scientist ☛ How the Venus Flytrap Captures Its Prey
Carnivorous plants and their quick movements have fascinated scientists for centuries. In the 1870s, Darwin and his colleagues discussed how electrical currents played a role in leaf closing.2,3,4 More recently, scientists found mechanosensitive ion channels FLYCATCHER1 (FLYC1) and FLYCATCHER2 (FLYC2) expressed in trigger hairs that may associate with touch sensitivity.5 Even though the Venus flytrap’s genome is sequenced, no targeted mutations of ion channel genes have been made to conclusively prove their roles in leaf closing.
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Vice Media Group ☛ A 21-Year-Old Just Solved a 2000-Year-Old Mystery In 'World-Historical' Breakthrough
A 21-year-old computer scientist named Luke Farritor just became the first person in nearly 2,000 years to read words from a papyrus scroll that was buried under more than 60 feet of volcanic ash after the disastrous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.
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Hardware
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Jake Lazaroff ☛ Making CRDTs 98% More Efficient
At the end of Building a Collaborative Pixel Art Editor with CRDTs, we had just that: a fully functional collaborative pixel editor using state-based CRDTs. The drawback to state-based CRDTs is that you need to transmit the full state between peers to sync up. And our CRDT’s full state is pretty big! For a 100x100 image, it’s around 648kb. Yikes!
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Hackaday ☛ Can An 8-Bit Light Gun Work On A Modern TV?
It’s an accepted part of retro gaming lore, that 8-bit consoles perform best when used with an original CRT TV. One of the reason for this is usually cited as being because the frame buffer and scaler circuit necessary for driving an LCD panel induces a delay not present on the original, and in particular this makes playing games which relied on a light gun impossible to play. It’s a subject [Nicole Branagan] takes a look at, and asks whether there are any ways to use a classic light gun with a modern TV.
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Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Syntax Error #8: What we can learn from hardware debugging?
Syntax Error is a newsletter about debugging for developers, students, hobbyists, curious and duck fans. In this October issue of Syntax Error I took the ducks to see hardware debugging and we wrote down key learnings for software developers. Read full article at syntaxerror.tech/syntax-error-8-what-we-can-learn-from-hardware-debugging/ and either subscribe to the email or RSS feed to catch all of them.
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Hackaday ☛ Noble Graphs: Displaying Data With Neon Like Its 1972
In the days before every piece of equipment was an internet-connected box with an OLED display, engineers had to be a bit more creative with how they chose to communicate information to the user. Indicator lights, analog meters, and even Nixie tubes are just a few of the many methods employed, and are still in use today. There are, however, some more obscure (and arguably way cooler) indicators that have been lost to time.
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Hackaday ☛ Ready For The Rapture: This Wind-Up Cassette Player Can Play Anywhere
As useful as electronics are, the need to have some source of power for them can be a bit of an issue, especially for small, portable devices. One of the most low-tech but universally applicable source is human mechanical power, as demonstrated by the rugged 1980s-era Messenger II tape player in a recent [TechMoan] video. Without beating around the bush, this is indeed a device created by an evangelical organization (GRN) that missionaries would take with them to wherever their mission took them. Naturally this put the availability of power from a wall outlet in question, especially in the 1980s when this tape player was produced.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Pro Publica ☛ States Opposed Tribes’ Access to the Colorado River 70 Years Ago. History Is Repeating Itself.
In the 1950s, after quarreling for decades over the Colorado River, Arizona and California turned to the U.S. Supreme Court for a final resolution on the water that both states sought to sustain their postwar booms.
The case, Arizona v. California, also offered Native American tribes a rare opportunity to claim their share of the river. But they were forced to rely on the U.S. Department of Justice for legal representation.
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Techdirt ☛ California Court, Ridiculously, Allows School Lawsuits Against Social Media To Move Forward
Over the last year, we’ve covered a whole bunch of truly ridiculous, vexatious, bullshit lawsuits filed by school districts against social media companies, blaming them for the fact that the school boards don’t know how to teach students (the one thing they’re supposed to specialize in!) how to use the internet properly. Instead of realizing the school board ought to fire themselves, some greedy ambulance-chasing lawyers have convinced them that if courts force social media companies to pay up, they’ll never have a budget shortfall again. And school boards desperate for cash, and unwilling to admit their own failings as educators, have bought into the still unproven moral panic that social media is harming kids. This is despite widespread evidence that it’s just not true.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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India Today ☛ IT Industry Keeps Cutting Jobs: 23 Techies Laid Off Every Hour for 2 Years
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn announced more job cuts yesterday, affecting about 668 positions across its engineering, product, talent, and finance teams. The job cuts were cited as necessary as part of the company's focus on streamlining its operations amid Microsoft's experiencing slow revenue growth for eight consecutive quarters.
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The Drone Girl ☛ The best drone simulators
Drone simulators can be a great way for newbies to learn how to fly a drone without risking damaging your expensive new toy. But they’re not just for newbies. Pilots using drones for industrial applications, intricate cinematography and even competitive drone racing turn to drone simulators to practice advanced maneuvers and to prepare for flying in challenging conditions.
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SparkFun Electronics ☛ Machine Learning's Societal Impact
How has machine learning impacted your life? Probably in more ways than you realize. From advancements in healthcare to data privacy concerns, we need to be AI-literate to enter the new era of tech. Here, we talk about the societal impacts of machine learning and AI, what you need to know to navigate this unprecedented tech responsibly, and what the future might hold.
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New York Times ☛ What Happens When an Artist’s Technology Becomes Obsolete?
It’s an ongoing dilemma for the modern-art institution: New technologies are only ever new for so long. When the phaseout of the incandescent light bulb, a go-to material for artists from Robert Rauschenberg to Felix Gonzalez-Torres, began in 2012, museums either amassed stockpiles of the old bulbs or found a reliable supplier. Dan Flavin, who spent his entire career working with fluorescent light, always had his preferred manufacturers. Last year, the Biden administration proposed as part of its climate policy a sunsetting of compact fluorescents, and a few states have recently enacted legislation that in the coming years will also ban the longer tube lights that Flavin used. For now, museums continue to go through the estate of the artist, who died in 1996, to replace burned-out lights. Not all artists are so precious about their materials, however: In 2012, when Diana Thater presented her 1992 video installation “Oo Fifi, Five Days in Claude Monet’s Garden” at the Los Angeles gallery 1301PE, where it had first been shown 20 years earlier, she updated its clunky CRT projectors to digital ones. She digitized the video, a collage of film footage from Monet’s garden in Giverny, France — itself a technological update of the Impressionist painter’s vistas in oil — because, she said, “I don’t want my work to look fake old.” Paik, for his part, left behind a page of instructions specifying that his works could be updated, as long as the integrity of the original look of the sculpture was respected, to the best of what the technology would allow.
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India Times ☛ Explained: How the US will cut off China from more AI chips
The original rules last year restricted chips if they met a two-pronged test for how much computing power the chips contained and how fast they could talk to other chips. Those measures were considered important because AI systems require chaining together thousands of chips at time to chew through huge troves of data.
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India Times ☛ X to test $1 annual subscription for basic features
Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, said on Tuesday it will test a new subscription model under which it will charge $1 annual fee for basic features.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Scoop News Group ☛ Federal agencies are falling behind on meeting key privacy goal set five years ago
In 2018, the National Institute of Standards and Technology published a framework for how agencies should go about incorporating privacy into their risk management tools, but a FedScoop and CyberScoop review finds that several agencies — including the State Department, NASA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development — are still working on meeting privacy recommendations first written during the Obama administration. For other agencies, including the Department of the Interior and Justice Department, it’s not clear what progress has been made to meet these goals.
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India Times ☛ Meta, US government spar in court over toughened privacy order
Lawyers for Meta , which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and the U.S. government tangled on Tuesday over the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's plan to toughen a 2019 privacy order.
In May, the FTC accused Meta of misleading parents about how much control they had over who their children had contact with in the Messenger Kids app, among other issues, and proposed tightening an existing agreement on privacy to include a ban on making money from minors' data.
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Techdirt ☛ EPIC Asks The DOJ To Take A Closer Look At ShotSpotter Deployment
ShotSpotter may consider itself to be a solid contributor to the fight against crime, but the facts don’t really bear that out. What it is capable of doing is sending cops to any place a gunshot is (possibly) detected, but that hasn’t really shown to have any meaningful impact on solving gun-related crimes, much less the prevention of future gun crime — the latter of which is far more useful than scrambling cops to some place something may have happened.
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Techdirt ☛ Breaking Encryption To Aid Client-Side Scanning Isn’t The Solution To The CSAM Problem
Plenty of legislators and law enforcement officials seem to believe there’s only one acceptable solution to the CSAM (child sexual abuse material) problem: breaking encryption.
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Defence/Aggression
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Freedom To Tinker ☛ Switzerland’s e-voting system has predictable implementation blunder
Last year, I published a 5-part series about Switzerland’s e-voting system. Like any internet voting system, it has inherent security vulnerabilities: if there are malicious insiders, they can corrupt the vote count; and if thousands of voters’ computers are hacked by malware, the malware can change votes as they are transmitted. Switzerland “solves” the problem of malicious insiders in their printing office by officially declaring that they won’t consider that threat model in their cybersecurity assessment.
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Vice Media Group ☛ Major Tech Investor Calls Architect of Fascism a 'Saint' in Unhinged Manifesto
In a new 5,200 word "techno-optimist manifesto,” Andreessen, the man behind prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)—which has invested in Facebook, Airbnb, Lyft, Skype, and many more well-known firms—argues that the only solution to the various structural problems created by capitalism is to do more capitalism—with uninhibited AI development at the forefront. He does so by invoking an obscure online ideology that has taken hold in some tech circles, but may be totally incomprehensible to the masses of people who ultimately use the products that a16z helps bring to market: “effective accelerationism,” or “e/acc.”
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Axios ☛ Civilization depends on more AI, Marc Andreessen says
Why it matters: Andreessen, who often says out loud what other technologists and investors think, has the ear of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and is a star guest at Schumer's next AI expert forum on Oct. 24.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Sweden reports damage to Baltic Sea cable with Estonia
The damage to the cable was sustained outside the territorial waters and Sweden's exclusive economic zone.
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YLE ☛ Finland steps up underwater surveillance as Sweden reports more cable damage
Defence Minister Antti Häkkänen (NCP) discussed last week’s suspected sabotage of a gas pipeline and data cable between Finland and Estonia on Tuesday – shortly before Sweden announced separate damage to a cable linking it with Estonia.
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Meduza ☛ Sweden says Baltic Sea telecommunications cable damaged — Meduza
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El País ☛ Israel-Hamas war: The moral insensitivity of the left
This array of responses surprised us. We never imagined that individuals on the left, advocates of equality, freedom, justice and welfare, would reveal such extreme moral insensitivity and political recklessness. Let us be clear: Hamas is a theocratic and repressive organization that vehemently opposes the attempt to promote peace and equality in the Middle East. Its core commitments are fundamentally inconsistent with progressive principles, and thus the inclination of certain leftists to react affirmatively to its actions is utterly absurd. Moreover, there is no justification for shooting civilians in their homes; no rationalization for the murder of children in front of their parents; no reasoning for the persecution and execution of partygoers. Legitimizing or excusing these actions amounts to a betrayal of the fundamental principles of left-wing politics.
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ADF ☛ Terrorists Target the Sahel’s Gold Mines as a Source of Financing
“The terrorists hear that this site or that one is thriving with gold, and then they target those sites — they can kill everyone or they take control and take taxes,” Kibsa told Financial Times. “To me, it’s not about religion — it’s a kind of mafia.”
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El País ☛ Mikhail Khodorkovsky: ‘To achieve change in Russia, people have to be ready to fight’
A former oil oligarch who was imprisoned for a decade (2003-2013) in a Russian prison, Khodorkovsky now lives outside Russia. From exile, he seeks to promote the country’s democratization. He is convinced that it is not feasible to achieve that through peaceful protests and elections, and that the only realistic opportunity is division within the regime. To take advantage of the opportunities that arise, “people have to be prepared to fight,” he says.
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The Nation ☛ Gaza Is Facing a Desperate Public Health Crisis. We Need a Cease-Fire, Now.
The situation in the Gaza Strip is dire. Amid an intense bombing campaign, Israel has shut off water and power and limited essential supplies such as food, medicine, and fuel, creating a massive public health crisis in a region that was already struggling due to a years-long blockade. According to latest statistics, more than 2,750 people have been killed by Israeli strikes, of whom 1,000 are children. Hospitals in Gaza have already been targeted. After repeated threats and calls to evacuate, the Ahli Arab Hospital was bombed on October 17, with early estimates of casualties reporting 500 dead. The hospital was filled with people seeking shelter from the bombings, as are hospitals across Gaza. At Shifa Hospital alone the number of people seeking shelter is estimated to be around 35,000 people. These are ideal conditions for infectious disease to spread. If there is not immediate intervention, thousands of Gazans will die of infections, malnutrition, and dehydration, in addition to the bombardment.
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The Nation ☛ How Today’s Turmoil Is Eliciting a Wave of Nostalgia for Pax Americana
Terror wracks Israel and Palestine. The Ukraine war grinds on. Azerbaijan routs Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. China flexes its muscles in the South China Sea. A red wave—or at least a pink one—wends through South America. Military dictators take over countries across Africa.
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The Gray Zone ☛ Media whitewashes own role in killing of Palestinian-American child
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Meduza ☛ Dagestani police shut down pro-Palestine protest, while Chechnya holds collective prayer for Gaza residents — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Perfecting the art of election fraud: How the Kremlin hopes to streamline its vote rigging in Putin’s next run — Meduza
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Meduza ☛ WSJ: Ukraine struck Russian forces with U.S.-provided long-range ATACMS missiles for the first time — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Russian State Duma passes bill to withdraw ratification of Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in first reading — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Putin arrives in China for Belt and Road Forum — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Ukraine strikes airfields in Russian-occupied territory — Meduza
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Environment
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New York Times ☛ A Severe Drought Pushes an Imperiled Amazon to the Brink
The drier conditions are accelerating the destruction of the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest where parts have started to transform from humid ecosystems that store huge amounts of heat-trapping gases into drier ones that are releasing the gases into the atmosphere. The result is a double blow to the global struggle to fight climate change and biodiversity loss.
“This is a catastrophe of lasting consequences,” said Luciana Vanni Gatti, a scientist at Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research who has been documenting changes in the Amazon. “The more forest loss we have, the less resilience it has.”
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Futurism ☛ US Military Bases Appear to Be Polluting Drinking Water, Pentagon Admits
Hundreds of military bases across the US could be polluting nearby water supplies with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a Department of Defense report found — the latest in a growing body of evidence that these so-called "forever chemicals" have contaminated huge portions of the country's drinking water.
An alarming 245 of 275 bases investigated so far are potentially releasing plumes of PFAS "in the proximity of" groundwater aquifers that supply drinking water, according to the report, many of which are classified as sole source aquifers that entire communities depend on.
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[Old] EPA ☛ Overview of the Drinking Water Sole Source Aquifer Program
EPA defines a sole source aquifer (SSA) as one where:
The aquifer supplies at least 50 percent of the drinking water for its service area
There are no reasonably available alternative drinking water sources should the aquifer become contaminated
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Axios ☛ Data: Global warming may be accelerating
The intrigue: "This is a partial payment in return for the Faustian bargain that humanity made when it chose to build its economies on fossil fuel energy," Hansen and his co-authors wrote in mid-September and detailed further late last week.
Climate scientist Zeke Hausfauther largely backed Hansen's findings, citing evidence of a clear climate change acceleration.
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Energy/Transportation
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Vice Media Group ☛ How One False Viral Tweet Cost Bitcoin Investors $84 Million in Minutes
A viral tweet caused a huge price movement that burned investors. It was false.
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Ruben Schade ☛ It’s a relief seeing NFTs in the rear-view mirror
I don’t think it’d be a stretch now to say the people profiting the most from NFTs are debunkers, who’ve made a career selling ads on videos that destroy the premise of bad tech. I wish them nothing but success; we need to fight misinformation lies with facts.
The problems with NFTs were threefold:
[...]
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Overpopulation
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Rlang ☛ The Forgotten Factor in the Middle East Conflict | Youth Bulge Theory
One such theory, known as the Youth Bulge Theory, asserts that a high proportion of young people within a population can lead to political instability and even violence. This theory could provide an illuminating perspective on the dynamics of the Middle East conflicts.
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Overpopulation ☛ The Catalyst of Overpopulation in the Gaza Conflict
Palestine’s population has risen from 1 million to 5 million since 1970 and absolute numbers are rising faster than at any point in history, with another 100,000 added every year, despite falls in fertility over those decades, as well as considerable emigration. The median age is under 20, compared to the UK which is 42. The Gaza Strip is home to two million people with a population density of over 5,000 per square kilometre. This makes it one of the most densely populated places on the planet. This is in a tiny area of virtual desert, leaving people close to poverty with the majority of the population depending on international aid.
Israel’s population has risen from around 2 million to 9 million since 1970 with absolute numbers still rising at roughly 130,000 per year and a with a median age of 29. Having only recently tipped below 3 children per woman, it has the highest fertility of any Western, industrialised country. Despite Israel’s admirable achievements in greening the desert and leading the world in water use efficiency and water recycling, it depends on imports for all staple foods.
Population rise is not the sole cause of this conflict, but it is a factor. It is never the spark, but a large share of the tinder.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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The Strategist ☛ Shields beyond the horizon: landing Australia’s 2023 cybersecurity strategy
Strategies are hard to write, but they’re even harder to land. Cyber is a contested space—every person and their dog have opinions about what should and shouldn’t be included. The process of developing a coherent and actionable strategy thus becomes one of cruel prioritisation—not only excluding things from the strategy’s scope, but making hard, clear decisions on where the government’s responsibility starts and ends. This makes O’Neil’s push to have the new strategy ready for release less than a year after its announcement all the more impressive.
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El País ☛ Fighting pedophilia at the expense of our privacy: The EU rule that could break the internet
The mastermind behind the billboards and newspaper exhortations calling on Apple to detect pedophile material on iCloud is, reportedly, a non-profit organization called Heat Initiative, which is part of a crusade against the encryption of communications known in the U.S. as Crypto Wars. This movement has gone from fighting against terrorism to combating the spread of online child pornography to request the end of encrypted messages, the last great pocket of privacy left on the internet. “It is significant that the U.S., the European Union and the United Kingdom are simultaneously processing regulations that, in practice, will curtail encrypted communications. It seems like a coordinated effort,” says Diego Naranjo, head of public policies at the digital rights non-profit EDRi.
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India Times ☛ Indian IT takes a bigger bite out of Europe as US business growth slows
The country's largest software exporter TCS said that the United Kingdom registered a 10.7% growth even as North America grew by a meagre 0.1% in revenues. Meanwhile, for the second largest IT major Infosys, Europe witnessed a year-on-year growth of 10.9% (5.4% in constant currency terms) while North America's growth stood at 1.2% (1% in constant currency).
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The Register UK ☛ Qualcomm to shed over 1,000 staff in California, plus some Brits, starting in December
Reports suggest Qualcomm has filed a California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice – the paperwork required to inform the State Government of looming layoffs. Qualcomm's notice reportedly warns of 1,258 workers in California alone – 194 in the Bay Area and a further 1,064 in its home city San Diego.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ How to fix the [Internet]
When we talk about fixing the [Internet], we’re not referring to the physical and digital network infrastructure: the protocols, the exchanges, the cables, and even the satellites themselves are mostly okay. (There are problems with some of that stuff, to be sure. But that’s an entirely other issue—even if both do involve Elon Musk.) “The [Internet]” we’re talking about refers to the popular kinds of communication platforms that host discussions and that you probably engage with in some form on your phone.
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The Atlantic ☛ The Internet Could Be So Good. Really.
The unfortunate consequence of this model is that the best content for keeping eyes glued to screens is often the most emotionally provocative and polarizing content, regardless of quality or accuracy. Quieter voices get drowned out. Most people quickly come to understand that silence is safest and shift into a mode of passive consumption and emotion-driven sharing of content. Peer-to-peer communication is largely reduced to inconsequential chatter, given the risks of cancellation and trolling, which suppress meaningful conversation. Harms are most acute for youth, who feel social pressure to be on social media yet refrain from meaningful self-expression because of possible ostracism and bullying.
The threats to democracy in an environment like this are clear. Social media distorts our understanding of others, amplifying false and harmful stereotypes that lead to dehumanization and violence. Moreover, the foundational truth-seeking function of open dialogue and debate is nearly impossible.
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The Nation ☛ Unity in the Face of Oppression
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The Nation ☛ Go Home, Tom Suozzi. You Already Cost Democrats the House.
I wrote about the New York Democrats whose fecklessness cost Democrats control of the House of Representatives in 2022. Arguably, the worst offenders were longtime state party chair Jay Jacobs, friend of the wealthy and the mediocre (and especially the mediocre wealthy), and former representative Tom Suozzi, who left his safe House seat on purple Long Island to chase Governor Kathy Hochul’s safe governor’s seat with sexism and GOP-inspired crime paranoia, and turned his seat over to fabulist wing nut George Santos, last seen stealing a baby.
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Meduza ☛ Alexey Navalny calls for a move from ‘trash-talk’ to real politics The politician’s 10-point questionnaire aims to clarify political positions ahead of the 2024 election in Russia — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Viktor Orban meets with Putin, says Hungary trying to salvage relations with Russia — Meduza
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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EFF ☛ Social Media Platforms Must Do Better When Handling Misinformation, Especially During Moments of Conflict
Yet in the wake of Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel last weekend—and Israel’s ongoing retributive military attack and siege on Gaza—misinformation has been thriving on social media platforms. In particular, on X (formerly known as Twitter), a platform stripped of its once-robust policies and moderation teams by CEO Elon Musk and left exposed to the spread of information that is false (misinformation) and deliberately misleading or biased (disinformation).
It can be difficult to parse out verified information from information that has been misconstrued, misrepresented, or manipulated. And the entwining of authentic details and real newsworthy events with old footage or manufactured information can lead to information genuinely worthy of record—such as a military strike in an urban area—becoming associated with a viral falsehood. Indeed, Bellingcat—an organization that was founded amidst the Syrian war and has long investigated mis- and disinformation in the region—found one current case where a widely shared video was said to show something false, but further investigation revealed that although the video itself was inauthentic, the information in the text of the post was accurate and highly newsworthy.
As we’ve said many, many times, content moderation does not work at scale, and there is no perfect way to remove false or misleading information from a social media site. But platforms like X have backslid over the past year on a number of measures. Once a relative leader in transparency and content moderation, X has been criticized for failing to remove hate speech and has disabled features that allow users to report certain types of misinformation. Last week, NBC reported that the publication speed on the platform’s Community Notes feature was so slow that notes on known disinformation were being delayed for days. Similarly, TikTok and Meta have implemented lackluster strategies to monitor the nature of content on their services.
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[Repeat] New York Times ☛ Hamas Hijacked Victims’ Social Media Accounts to Spread Terror
In a new war tactic, Hamas has seized the social media accounts of kidnapped Israelis and used them to broadcast violent messages and wage psychological warfare, according to interviews with 13 Israeli families and their friends, as well as social media experts who have studied extremist groups.
In at least four cases, Hamas members logged into the personal social media accounts of their hostages to livestream the Oct. 7 attacks. In the days since, Hamas also appeared to infiltrate their hostages’ Facebook groups, Instagram accounts and WhatsApp chats to issue death threats and calls for violence. Hamas members also took hostages’ cellphones to make calls to taunt friends and relatives, according to the Israeli families and their friends. Israel’s military has said at least 199 people have been taken hostage by Hamas.
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Vox ☛ Elon Musk now faces an investigation into disinformation about the Israel-Hamas war
Regulators in Europe, however, are trying to check the power of big tech companies by testing a new law that seeks to make social media companies more accountable and transparent. The European Union is investigating X’s handling of hate speech and misinformation related to the Israel-Hamas war, the first of its kind under the new Digital Services Act (DSA) which went into effect in late August.
This test of the DSA’s reach could have real consequences for social media companies, and the outcome could change the experience of being online well beyond Europe. While some tech companies have rolled out new transparency features for European users that are unavailable elsewhere, it’s likely going to be difficult for tech companies with a global reach to maintain two versions of their products — one DSA compliant, and one not — indefinitely.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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The Gray Zone ☛ Former ambassador and Assange advocate Craig Murray detained under UK terror laws
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IJ ☛ Lawsuit Seeks Accountability for Unconstitutional Silencing and Arrest During City Council Meeting
A few days later, after the mayor called on him, Noah stood up and proceeded to calmly read his letter criticizing the Newton police department and the officers who conducted the DUI arrest. At that point, Newton Mayor Michael Hansen banged his gavel and ordered Noah to stop speaking. Noah protested, citing his First Amendment rights, but the mayor didn’t care and ordered the police chief to forcibly remove Noah for violating the city’s rules against criticizing government officials. The next thing Noah knew, the police chief had him in handcuffs. The police then took him to jail, where he was booked, strip searched, and thrown into a cell to wait for his parents.
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RFERL ☛ Iranian Singer Ghorbani, Who Uses Female Musicians On Stage, Sees Concerts Canceled
Music correspondent Bahman Babazade noted in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that this recent setback for Ghorbani was specifically due to regulations against female musicians in his ensemble playing instruments. Consequently, the concerts, initially slated to run for seven consecutive nights, have been called off.
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[Repeat] RFA ☛ Fears grow for mainland Chinese activist deported from Hong Kong
Zeng was sentenced to six months' imprisonment on Sept. 12 after being convicted of conspiring with U.S.-based democracy activist Zhou Fengsuo to "commit acts with seditious intent" ahead of the June 4 massacre anniversary, sending shock waves through the growing community of mainland Chinese who have made Hong Kong their home.
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Meduza ☛ Russian Investigative Committee recommends Navalny ‘take action’ to get lawyer after three of his lawyers arrested — Meduza
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Press Gazette ☛ 86-year-old investigative journalist says arrest and de-arrest at home was ‘terrifying’
An 86-year-old journalist claims to have been arrested and de-arrested in an “extremely aggressive” visit from police at his home which he believes was the result of a story he was writing.
Brian Radford, who spent 13 years on the Western Mail in Cardiff before moving to the Mirror Group and ultimately becoming an investigative reporter for the Sunday People, has made a formal complaint to Thames Valley Police over the incident.
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El País ☛ Ben Smith, journalist: ‘On Twitter/X, we’re only left with depraved journalists and politicians yelling at each other’
Ben Smith, 47, has been part of journalism’s efforts to survive in the internet era. He started with blogs at Politico, then went on to exploit viral content on social media with BuzzFeed News. From there, he rose to become a media columnist at The New York Times, where he witnessed the success of the new paywalls. Today, he’s the co-founder of Semafor, an online news platform that aspires to become a reference for the current era, calling for greater transparency and more authentic voices.
Earlier this year, the NYC-born journalist published a book titled Traffic about his past two decades in the media. He discusses how an era is ending, as the platforms that channeled online news traffic, especially Facebook, have found that journalism isn’t good for business.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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[Repeat] RFA ☛ China bans Tibetan language in schools in Sichuan province
China has banned the teaching and use of the Tibetan language at elementary and middle schools in two Tibetan-populated regions in southwestern China, sources inside the country said, requiring all instruction to be in Mandarin.
The move could lead to the extinction of the language in the regions – and could endanger its viability across the country, Tibetan activists fear.
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The Verge ☛ About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
Songtradr’s statement also confirmed that its purchase of Bandcamp had been completed, but it did not confirm if it would voluntarily recognize Bandcamp’s union that employees won earlier this year, despite pressure from employees and the Bandcamp community.
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Vulture ☛ Bandcamp Hit With Layoffs Amid Sale to Songtradr
Update, October 16: Around 50 percent of staff at Bandcamp have been laid off after Epic sold the platform to Songtradr. Several staff members of the site’s editorial arm, Bandcamp Daily, were among those laid off, they shared on X. When Epic announced the sale, the gaming company said not all employees would receive offers from Songtradr. “These are not new layoffs,” Epic told Vulture in a statement today, adding that laid off employees would receive severance from Epic. Songtradr, a licensing company, previously confirmed on October 5 that the layoffs would occur. “Based on its current financials, Bandcamp requires some adjustments,” the company said. Bandcamp United, the workers’ union, had previously asked Songtradr to offer employment to all current Bandcamp staff, along with voluntary severance, after the sale. Songtradr has yet to recognize the union.
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Hollywood Reporter ☛ Bandcamp Undergoes Major Layoffs After Sale
After the layoffs were made, a group of employees at the platform organizing under the name Bandcamp United released a statement saying, “We’re glad we have our union — coworkers who have each other’s backs. We’ll be moving together to decide what our next steps are.” The group noted that they plan to “return to the bargaining table with Epic Games.”
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Variety ☛ Half of Bandcamp’s Staff Laid Off After Songtradr Acquisition
Bandcamp’s U.S. employees, who launched a union that went public earlier this year, announced early in October that they had sent a letter to Songtradr outlining a list of demands around the sale of the company. In it, they said they were “demanding employment offers for all workers; clear, consistent, and equitable voluntary severance offers; employment offers for all workers,” and also called for Songtradr to recognize the Bandcamp United union. The statement added that on September 28, “In an internal announcement to staff, Epic Games wrote that Songtradr, Inc. would be offering positions to some Bandcamp employees but not all,” according to Music Business Worldwide.
A rep for Songtradr told Variety on Monday it did not yet have an update on whether the company will recognize the union.
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Rolling Stone ☛ Half Of Bandcamp’s Work Force Laid Off After Songtradr Acquisition
Several members of Bandcamp’s editorial team responsible for Bandcamp Daily announced their layoffs on X, formerly Twitter. Prior to the layoffs, Bandcamp’s union Bandcamp United had pushed Songtradr to recognize the union, and to extend employment offers to the entire Bandcamp staff. Songtradr had said in a statement two weeks ago that the company wouldn’t give offers to all of Bandcamp’s workforce. The union did not immediately respond to request for comment regarding today’s layoffs.
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SFGate ☛ Bandcamp, Oakland-based music industry darling, gutted by 50% layoff
Monday’s close of the Songtradr acquisition caps off weeks of uncertainty for Bandcamp employees. After Epic announced the sale on Sept. 28, many Bandcamp workers lost access to the systems they used to do their jobs, according to a statement from the firm’s union. Songtradr, a week later, posted a statement saying not all Bandcamp employees would receive offers to join the firm — a petition asking Songtradr to recognize Bandcamp’s union has garnered more than 10,500 signatures as of Monday afternoon but no commitment from the firm.
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The Register UK ☛ So this one time, at Bandcamp, half the staff were laid off
Bandcamp employees are reportedly receiving six months severance pay - unusually generous terms for the tech industry. This might have something to do with staff choosing to unionize in March, in alliance with the Tech Workers Union 1010.
The cuts, however, have been brutal. According to one former employee the editorial department that promotes new music is now down to three people after being gutted.
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The Conversation ☛ Is someone using your pictures to catfish? Your rights when it comes to fake profiles and social media stalking
There is very little known about how many online accounts are fake. What we do know is that many of these fake profiles use images from real people – often an unsuspecting third party’s public social media account. This, of course, can cause problems for the person whose photo is used. Their face is now attached to online behaviour that may be illegal, dishonest or just plain embarrassing.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Techdirt ☛ Everything T-Mobile, Sprint Merger Critics Predicted Has Come True
Last week T-Mobile annoyed customers everywhere by not only informing them they’d soon be facing a steep price hike, but by pretending it wasn’t actually a price hike. The company announced it would be moving customers to a more expensive plan unless they opted out (hoping that users wouldn’t notice the change). Leaked support docs show reps were told to lie to customers:
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Monopolies
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ Court Orders Torrent Site Operators to Pay €489 Million in Piracy Damages
Two people connected to T411, once France's most-visited torrent site, have been handed prison sentences by a Criminal Court in Rennes. The pair, who were tracked down through PayPal records and IP-addresses, are also on the hook for 489 million euros in piracy damages. One of the defendants, a Ukrainian sysop living in Sweden, informs TorrentFreak that he will appeal the judgement.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Sky Targets *47* Pirate IPTV Providers, Specifics Prevail After Police 'Gagging'
Earlier this year, dozens of news outlets amplified the erroneous conclusion that 1,000 homes in the UK were receiving police visits for suspected involvement in IPTV piracy. This week, Sky and anti-piracy group FACT reported a similar operation using clear and unusually specific language. That's a welcome change; back in January, police forces all over the UK were instructed not to discuss visit numbers due to fears that the deterrent effect would be watered down.
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Techdirt ☛ Denmark Trying To Brainwash Schoolchildren With The Tired Old Lie That Copying Is Theft
This is completely untrue, of course, even if the copyright industry parrots the idea endlessly. Theft involves taking something from someone; downloading material involves making an additional copy – that is, not taking away, but adding. Of course, there is then the argument that this is still stealing because the unauthorized version represents a lost sale. But numerous pieces of research have debunked this simplistic claim. Indeed, there is evidence that after downloading such unauthorized copies, people go on to buy official versions, thus boosting sales, rather than harming them. Needless to say, none of these more subtle points are mentioned in the one-sided Danish presentation. Instead, we get this weirdly moralistic take: [...]
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Walled Culture ☛ Here’s another way that AI will reduce ad income for publishers – and what they can do about it
The solution is for publishers and Web sites to forge closer and more permanent connections with readers and visitors, in a way that makes AI summaries and the invisibility of online ads irrelevant. Creators and their intermediaries need to foster direct support by adopting the true fans approach that has been discussed here on Walled Culture in general many times, and with specific reference to publishers and writers back in April. It’s interesting that even though the application of generative AI technology continues to throw up new problems for creators and companies, the tried and tested true fans idea remains a remarkably resilient solution.
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Techdirt ☛ BMG Settles With Toymaker Over Parody Song Used To Sell Pooping Unicorn Toys
Back in February, a copyright case that somehow made it past me, but embedded below, was filed by BMG against MGA Entertainment over a song the latter used for one of its toys. That song was called “My Poops” and is a parody of The Blackeyed Peas’ “My Humps.” You can go hear the song, which MGA used in advertising for the toy, in the link above. There are similarities, yes, because this is a parody song.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Technology and Free Software
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ICON 48 Retrospective
I got back from this year's ICON 48[1] in Cedar Rapids, and it was definitely an experience but not that much of an adventure this year. A lot of it was the result of the previous weekend, when we went up to the cabin, a lack of child watching (usually the children's grandmother watches them but she was exhausted), and Partner getting “peopled out.”
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Internet/Gemini
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TIL that Lagrange has a nice translator
It works pretty well from English to Spanish. I hope it works well for your language, too.
In case you need to read that again, Lagrange is an amazing piece of software.
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.