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● Leftover Links 03/09/2023: WordPad Dies, TikTok Promotes Harm to Children

Posted in News Roundup at 9:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Leftovers

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Growing Our Future

=> ↺ Digital Music News ☛ Who Actually Attends Burning Man?

• The Labor Day tradition for some draws people from all over the world, but what do those people look like? The festival organizers recently released their demographics findings from the 2022 festival—attended by more than 75,000 people. While that’s an impressive attendance figure, it’s down from the 79,000 people who attended in 2019 (and pre-pandemic).

• In 2022, around 16% of attendees had a household income of $300,000 a year or more, up from the 7% in 2013. 34% of attendees reported a graduate degree or more in 2022, another rise from the 24% in 2013. 81% of attendees identified as non-hispanic white—no surprise for a festival that formed an internal anti-racism group. The share of POC attending the festival has risen from 7% in 2013 to 13% in 2022. Another constant? The festival remains popular among people from California. Around 38% of attendees in 2022 said they were from California, while just 4% said they resided in the festival’s home state of Nevada.

=> ↺ El País ☛ “Dating can be like a real-life ‘Squid Game’ minus the killing part”: Have flirting apps desensitized us?

• Model Charli Howard recently published an article on Stylist magazine in which she described the dating process as “unbearable,” arguing that some forms of communication as hypersexual. “For me, modern-day dating can only be described as a real-life Squid Game (minus the killing part, although heartbreak can often feel as painful). There’s the initial battle to see who can outlast the talking stage, trying to maintain the person’s interest before even reaching a first date; emotionally preparing yourself to be ghosted at any time; and then – if you’re lucky enough to even get that far – figuring out when to have the anxiety-inducing ‘What are we?’ chat… because, apparently, two people liking each other isn’t enough anymore,” she writes.

=> ↺ Alan Pope ☛ Alan Pope: You know your life is over…

• Every so often my brain reminds me of a conversation from long ago. Sometimes I’ll go for months without thinking about it, but then it’ll trigger, and I can’t stop thinking about it. It happened this week.

• Many years ago I taught technical courses for SAP in their London training centre. There’d often be moments during the day when the students were busy doing exercises and off-topic conversations would start. Here’s how one went down.

=> ↺ Ruben Schade ☛ Visiting the Rialto Towers again

• I’ll always respond with Blues Brothers if you ask me about my favourite movie, while still admitting it’s not the best. The musicians couldn’t act, it broke the forth wall constantly, and the plot had shopping mall-sized holes wide enough for a Cadillac. Wait, Elwood sold it for a microphone.

• A microphone…!? Okay, I can see that. But what the hell is this?

Science

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Scientists Reveal How Many People You’d Need to Colonize Mars

• As few as 22 people could sustain a colony of pioneers long enough to establish a human presence on Mars.

• That’s the conclusion of a new study by a team of researchers in the US that used modeling and simulation to work out the minimum initial population size for a successful Mars colony that goes on to thrive.

=> ↺ Ruben Schade ☛ Expanding science beyond English

• Gabriel Nakamura and Bruno E. Soares wrote an important article for the Scientific American:

• English May Be Science’s Native Language, but It’s Not Native to All Scientists

• Recently, a team of researchers led by Tatsuya Amano of the University of Queensland tried to quantify the time and career costs of lower English proficiency. Whether needing nearly twice as many minutes to read in English and up to 51 percent more time to write in English than native English speakers or being about 2.5 times more likely than a native English speaker to have journal editors reject their work on a basis of language, not having the advantage of English language in education unfairly punishes good scientists doing good research.

Hardware

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ High Quality 3D Scene Generation From 2D Source, In Realtime

• Here’s some fascinating work presented at SIGGRAPH 2023 of a method for radiance field rendering using a novel technique called Gaussian Splatting. What’s that mean? It means synthesizing a 3D scene from 2D images, in high quality and in real time, as the short animation shown above shows.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Solar Powered Flower Chases The Light

• Many plants are capable of tracking the sun in order to get the most possible light. [hannu_hell] built a solar powered sculpture that replicates this light sensitivity for the benefit of better charging its own batteries, allowing it to run theoretically indefinitely where suitable light was available.

=> ↺ The Hindu ☛ The British engineer remembered, revered for eternity by India’s farmers Premium

• The end of miseries began with the British government, upon recommendations of the higher authorities, sent Visakhapatnam-based Irrigation Engineer Sir Arthur Thomas Cotton to the then Rajahmundry district to find solutions to the frequent famines that had been ravaging the Godavari Delta.

=> ↺ The Age AU ☛ Social media, birth plans giving parents ‘unreasonable expectations’

• “Messaging from social and mainstream media often delivers a false perception that a woman will have a high percentage chance of following a ‘birth plan’ and achieving a ‘normal’ or ‘perfect’ birth,” the submission read.

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ Scientists Find That Weed Is Leaving Heavy Metals in Your Body

• In news that may give pause to potheads, researchers led by Columbia University have found that people who consume cannabis products have surprisingly high levels of the heavy metals cadmium and lead in their bodies.

• “For both cadmium and lead, these metals are likely to stay in the body for years, long after exposure ends,” study author and an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health Tiffany Sanchez told NBC News of the findings.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Teaching A Mini-Tesla To Steer Itself

• At the risk of stating the obvious, even when you’ve got unlimited resources and access to the best engineering minds, self-driving cars are hard. Building a multi-ton guided missile that can handle the chaotic environment of rush-hour traffic without killing someone is a challenge, to say the least. So if you’re looking to get into the autonomous car game, perhaps it’s best to start small.

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ Google goes all in on the AI cloud

• In our view, Google’s messaging, demos and tech-centric narrative have broad appeal for developers and next-generation startups. As well, the company’s focus on solutions contrasts its strategy to the typically disjointed services we’ve seen from Amazon Web Services Inc. over the past decade. Google also showed off an expanded ecosystem of global systems integrators and smaller cloud service providers, encouraging the broad use of Google’s kit globally. Although Google remains a distant third in the infrastructure-as-a-service/platform-as-a-service race, with revenue one-fifth the size of AWS, it is playing the long game and betting the house on AI as a catalyst to its cloud future.

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ Man Perturbed When Self-Driving [sic] Tesla Tries to Kill Him on the Highway

• When he steered back into the left lane for a second time with FSD on, he wrote, the software once again “veered to the left toward the median strip” and then tried to blow through an unmarked U-turn intended only for emergency vehicles at full speed.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Saying Goodbye to WordPad: Windows’ Staple for 28 Years Gets the Chop

• WordPad has been a Windows staple since the days of Windows 95. Now Microsoft says you should use Word or Notepad instead.

Security

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

=> ↺ Cendyne Naga ☛ Spoofing certificates with MD5 collisions

• I attended a presentation at Crypto and Privacy village where Tomer Peled and Yoni Rozenshein from Akamai. They reverse engineer a Windows update to crypt32.dll to find out what’s behind CVE-2022-34689. A truncated MD5 was used as an index to a hash table which caches whether a certificate has been validated successfully. Only the MD5 was compared when the entry was found in that cache. By using MD5 collisions, they found that crypt32.dll would validate a malicious certificate after an honest certificate was validated.

• This talk summary is part of my DEF CON 31 series. The talks this year have sufficient depth to be shared independently and are separated for easier consumption.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ [Repeat] Quartz ☛ An anti-porn law in Texas was halted on First Amendment grounds

• Judge David Ezra issued an injunction (pdf), finding that the law likely ran afoul of the First Amendment, threatening the free speech protections of adult performers and forcing legal adults to identify themselves online in order to view pornography.

• Ezra wrote that the state has a “legitimate goal in protecting children from sexually explicit material online” but said H.B. 1118, the law in question, likely failed “strict scrutiny,” a legal test that requires limitations on speech be narrowly tailored.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ China to Its People: Spies Are Everywhere, Help Us Catch Them

• “The push reflects the profound legitimacy challenges and crisis that the regime is facing,” said Chen Jian, a professor of modern Chinese history at New York University. Professor Chen said the call to mass action bore echoes of the sweeping campaigns that Mao Zedong unleashed in part to consolidate his own power. The most notable was the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long period of chaos and bloodshed when Chinese leaders urged people to report on their teachers, neighbors or even families as “counterrevolutionaries.”

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Deutsche Welle ☛ Cyprus riots over migrant influx: 13 arrested

• The violence erupted only four days after a group of Greek Cypriots tried to attack protesting Syrians in a village of Chloraka. The village has been a hotbed of tensions between locals and migrants.

=> ↺ Greece ☛ Cyprus police arrest 13 after anti-immigrant marchers set fire to trash bins and damage storefronts

• Tensions over a large influx of migrants have been simmering on the east Mediterranean island nation where authorities have struggled to cope with the numbers.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Taxes, Drugs and … TikTok?

• As his meal arrived and the jukebox played music from the country artist and rodeo champion Chris LeDoux, Mr. Knudsen addressed the question that seemed particularly relevant given his current location: Why had he, the top cop in one of the country’s most sparsely populated states, put himself and Montana at the center of a fight between geopolitical superpowers?

=> ↺ The Washington Post ☛ Doctors to parents: Stop smashing eggs on your kids’ heads on TikTok

• Cath Knibbs, a British child trauma psychotherapist who writes about how technology influences human behavior, said she found it “really, really difficult” to watch the clips.

• “We’re talking about abuse disguised as having a bit of a laugh,” she said in a telephone interview. “For a child, the most important relationship they have is with their caregiver, whomever that should be. And that involves a trusting relationship — that this person will take care of me.”

• She added: “It’s not just the cracking of the egg; it’s the parents’ responses of laughing. By children, that’s experienced as humiliation. It’s experienced as a lack of trust. And many children are going to be confused by that on a visceral level, never mind just about a cognitive level.”

=> ↺ Motherly Inc ☛ PSA: Please don’t crack eggs on your toddler’s head for the sake of social media trends

• “[Are we] needing to post on the internet so bad because it is so consuming to be a part of our world?” Sarah asks in her response video to the “TikTok egg crack” trend. “And the dopamine hit, and the likes and views, that we now in 2023 are cracking eggs on our children’s heads in hopes that they have an entertaining reaction that we can post publicly online to entertain strangers? What are we doing? Why are we doing this?”

• [...]

• I could only stomach a few of the egg-cracking videos, because I don’t find anything even remotely funny about a child, excited to help Mom in the kitchen, looking bewildered, then hurt, then embarrassed because the person they trust more than anyone in the world is cackling into their iPhone camera over the harm they just caused their young child.

=> ↺ NDTV ☛ ”Child Abuse”: Parents Are Cracking Eggs On Their Toddler’s Heads In New TikTok Trend

• A fourth added, ”I don’t know who needs to hear this but hitting your child in the head with an egg as part of the stupid social media ‘crack the egg’ “challenge” is totally UNacceptable. It’s a cruel assault on a child who relies on its caregivers for affection and encouragement.”

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Another Ethnic Cleansing Could Be Underway — and We’re Not Paying Attention

• We tend to think of genocide as the slaughter of an ethnic group. But the legal definition in the 1948 Genocide Convention is broader and doesn’t require mass killing, so long as there are certain “acts committed with intent to destroy” a particular ethnic, racial or religious group.

• That is what Azerbaijan is doing, Moreno Ocampo argued, by blockading Nagorno-Karabakh so that people die or flee, thus destroying an ancient community.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Quietly Crushing a Democracy: Millions on Trial in Bangladesh

• Over her 14 years in office, she has captured Bangladesh’s institutions, including the police, the military and, increasingly, the courts, by filling them with loyalists and making clear the consequences for not falling in line.

• She has wielded these institutions both to smother dissent — her targets have also included artists, journalists, activists and even the Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus — and to carry out a deeply personal campaign of vengeance against her political enemies.

Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Belgorod governor reports one killed in attack on border town — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Nobel Foundation rescinds invitation for ambassadors from Russia and Belarus to attend prize ceremony — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ NATO countries to participate in first Baltic Sea drills focused on repelling Russian attack — Meduza

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ Deciphering the Wagner Group’s Love for Wagner

• Nazism influenced the mercenary group’s twisted aesthetics, but so did Wagnerian Hollywood spectacle.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Prigozhin’s Real Legacy: The Mercenary Blueprint

• The Wagner group will serve as a model for other mercenaries ready to muscle in to resource-rich territories.

=> ↺ Neritam ☛ U.S. of Pushing Berlin into Proxy War

• Germany has officially announced it will send 14 German-made Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine and allow other NATO allies to send more German tanks to help Kyiv in its fight against Russia. Germany made the announcement after the United States reportedly agreed to also send 30 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ My New “The Hill” Article on Dubious Lawsuit Challenging Immigration Parole Program for Migrants Fleeing Socialism, Oppression, and Violence in Four Latin American Nations

• The case was filed by 20 red states seeking to dismantle the CNVH program extending the successful Uniting for Ukraine policy to migrants fleeing Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ 🔴 Live: Russia targets Ukrainian port as grain ships defy Black Sea blockade

• Ukraine’s air force said early on Sunday it had destroyed 22 Russian drones during an overnight attack on the southern Odesa region, though three other drones hit their targets, damaging port infrastructure on the Danube River and injuring at least two people. The attack comes a day after Kyiv said two more cargo ships had sailed through the Black Sea in defiance of a Russian blockade.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Nobel Foundation cancels Russian envoy’s invitation to prize ceremony

• The Nobel Foundation said on Saturday that it was reversing its decision to invite ambassadors from Russia and Belarus to this year’s Nobel award ceremony in Stockholm, after the move sparked anger. The news comes after Russia said its forces had destroyed Ukrainian naval drones that were attempting to target the Crimea bridge.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Ukraine Shoots Down 22 Russian Drones That Targeted Odesa Region, Kyiv Says

• Ukraine’s air-defense systems shot down 22 of the 25 Iranian-made Shahed drones that Russia launched on the southern Odesa region in the early hours of September 3, Ukraine’s Air Force said.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Court Orders Either $14 Million Bail For Kolomoyskiy Or Pretrial Detention

• A court in the Ukrainian capital ordered bail of nearly $14 million for powerful businessman Ihor Kolomoyskiy, who was detained after he was named a suspect in a fraud and money-laundering case.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ How the Khakova Dam Disaster Continues to Devastate Ukraine

• Environmentally, economically and in terms of pure human suffering, the destruction of the Kakhovka dam unleashed untold damage. Months later, many communities are still reeling.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Insists Kyiv’s Forces ‘Are Moving Forward’ As Push Toward Melitopol Continues

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has rebuffed criticism over the slow pace of Kyiv’s nearly three-month-long counteroffensive to retake territory occupied by Russia.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Three American Lives Forever Changed by a Weapon Now Being Sent to Ukraine

• The mother of a Marine and two veterans who served in Iraq reflect on the U.S. decision to send failure-prone shells to help the Ukrainian military battle Russia.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Russia Says It Thwarted Another Attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge

• Russia’s Ministry of Defense said it had destroyed three sea drones targeting the Kerch Strait Bridge, a vital supply line for Moscow’s forces that links occupied Crimea to Russia.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Pope Francis offers apparent gesture to China during visit to Mongolia

• By Alexandria Sage Pope Francis appeared to seek to reassure China on Saturday, using a gathering of Catholic missionaries in Mongolia to state that governments had “nothing to fear” from the Catholic Church.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Nobel Foundation Withdraws Invitation to Russia and Belarus

• The foundation, which also excluded both countries last year because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, retracted an invite after the move drew outrage.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Japan’s ‘Militarization’ Complicates Situation In Asia-Pacific, Russia’s Medvedev Says

• Japan’s “militarization” complicates the situation in the Asia-Pacific region, the deputy chair of the Russian Security Council and former President Dmitry Medvedev said on September 3.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Russia Attacks Ukrainian River Port, Injuring at Least 2

• The assault in the Odesa region came as Ukraine’s president announced that two more ships had traveled through a temporary corridor established by Kyiv after Moscow pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ IOC: Participation Of Russian, Belarusian Athletes At Asian Games ‘Not Feasible’

• Russian and Belarusian athletes will not compete at the Asian Games in China starting on September 23 after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) concluded that the plan was “not feasible.”

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Russia’s Medvedev: Japan’s ‘militarisation’ complicates Asia-Pacific

• Russia has declareed Sept 3 a “Day of Victory over Militaristic Japan”, spurring a protest from Tokyo.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Nobel Foundation Cancels Invites To Russia, Belarus, Iran After Uproar

• The Nobel Foundation said on September 2 that it would not after all invite the ambassadors of Russia, Belarus, and Iran to attend the Nobel Prize awards ceremony in Stockholm this year, reversing an earlier decision after widespread criticism.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Nobel Committee Says Russia Is ‘Trying To Silence’ Peace Laureate Dmitry Muratov

• Russia is trying “to silence” the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov by branding the journalist a “foreign agent,” the body in charge of the prestigious award said on September 2.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ Russian 400 AI PetaFLOPS Supercomputer for AI Comes Online

• Russian Moscow State University unveils new supercomputer, forgets to mention what hardware it uses.

=> ↺ YLE ☛ Henriksson defends fellow SPP minister over brother-in-law’s Russian ties

• Swedish People’s Party leader Anna-Maja Henriksson says some Finnish companies have struggled to extricate themselves from Russian contracts.

Environment

=> ↺ CBC ☛ Ecologists say life will return to B.C. wildfire zone, but trees may never grow back

• An eruption of low plants, grasses, and shrubs will turn the hills green. Birds and small mammals, as well as deer and bears, will return to feast on berries and other plant life. Carnivores including cougars could move in.

• But the tall trees destroyed by the fires may never recover or return, said Robert Gray, a wildland fire ecologist.

=> ↺ uni Stanford ☛ Experts warn of the West Nile Virus as mosquito season picks up

• With mosquito season in full swing through the end of August, Stanford infectious disease experts have expressed concern over the increase of mosquito-borne diseases like the West Nile Virus (WNV). There are currently over 200 confirmed cases of WNV in the U.S.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ Burning Man Revelers Stranded in Nevada Desert by Rain and Mud

• “Rain over the last 24 hours has created a situation that required a full stop of vehicle movement on the playa,” the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the agency that manages the land on which the event takes place, said in a statement. “More rain is expected over the next few days and conditions are not expected to improve enough to allow vehicles to enter the playa,”

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Trapped in Mud, Burning Man Attendees Are Told to Conserve Food

• And with incredibly muddy conditions, water puddled to their ankles and more rain expected tonight, attendees are unlikely to leave until early next week.

=> ↺ CBC ☛ Burning Man attendees told to shelter in place after rain turns Nevada site into muddy, flooded mess

• More than 12 millimetres of rain is believed to have fallen on Friday at the festival site, located about 177 kilometres north of Reno. According to the U.S. National Weather Service, at least another six millimetres is expected Sunday.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Thousands evacuated, flights cancelled as Typhoon Haikui hits into Taiwan

• It is expected to bring torrential rain and strong winds to the island’s south and east.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ El País ☛ Two years of bitcoin in Bukele’s El Salvador: An opaque experiment with a little-used currency

• Interest has waned, but the experiment continues. It is tempting to classify the Bitcoin Law — the name for the legislative project that made the digital asset legal tender — as a success or a failure. But nothing is so simple in President Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador. The country’s decision to make bitcoin an official currency is difficult to analyze because it is an opaque experiment with several different objectives: financial inclusion, revenue for the public treasury and building the reputation of the president.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ Ruben Schade ☛ A morning at the Royal Botanic Gardens

• I needed a change of pace from data centres and the city today, so I got up early to wander through Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens. It was easily the highlight of my little introvert trip.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ [Repeat] Silicon Angle ☛ Malwarebytes lays off 100+ workers ahead of planned company split

• TechCrunch first reported the move on Thursday, citing a former Malwarebytes employee. Marcin Kleczynski, the company’s chief executive, confirmed the layoffs to the publication. He said that between 100 and 110 workers are affected.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ China adopts foreign national immunity law that allows foreign states to be sued domestically

• China’s Law on the Immunity of Foreign States, scheduled to become effective on January 1, 2024, regulates the system of foreign state immunity comprehensively. This legislation establishes a legal framework for the jurisdiction and adjudication of civil cases within Chinese courts involving foreign states as defendants. This new law represents a shift from the previous policy of absolute state immunity to a regime of limited state immunity. According to the provisions of this law, Chinese courts will, under specific conditions, accept foreign states as defendants.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Meta May Allow Instagram and Facebook Users in Europe to Pay to Avoid Ads

• Those who pay for Facebook and Instagram subscriptions would not see ads in the apps, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plans are confidential. That may help Meta fend off privacy concerns and other scrutiny from E.U. regulators by giving users an alternative to the company’s ad-based services, which rely on analyzing people’s data, the people said.

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ Meta Reportedly Looking to Give Europeans an Ad-Free Option on Its Platforms

• On Friday, The New York Times reported based on three anonymous sources who knew of Meta’s plans that the company would offer a subscription model for EU users. Simply put, this subscription would let users pay for an ad-free experience. Both Facebook and Instagram would still maintain a free version that includes ads. The report does not mention how much this subscription would cost or any other features that would come for payment, but the move would be a major shift for the company which has long depended on the users-as-product model.

=> ↺ [Old] WordFinderX ☛ The Most Spoken Languages in American Neighborhoods (Besides English and Spanish)

• What language does your family speak around the dinner table?

• While 78% of Americans only speak English at home, you may not know that it’s not an official language in the U.S. in the same way French is in France or Portuguese is in Brazil. English may be America’s de facto language (as the most commonly spoken), but millions of households across the U.S. use another language entirely.

=> ↺ US News And World Report ☛ Arm Set to Target IPO Valuation of $50 Billion-$55 Billion-Sources

• Arm, the chip designer owned by SoftBank Group Corp, is expected to set a price range for its offering next week, the sources said. Arm plans to price its shares on Sept. 13, with stock trading on the Nasdaq to start the following day.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ In Monitoring Child Sex Abuse, Apple Is Caught Between Safety and Privacy

• The company is caught between child safety groups, which want it to do more to stop the spread of such materials, and privacy experts, who want it to maintain the promise of secure devices.

=> ↺ DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ As Microsoft Collapses, Their Cottage Industry Based on Window Problems Dies Off. Malwarebytes Fires 100.

• As Windows on the desktop plummeted from almost 95% to under 70%, and the PC sales are in the dumps due to “Chromebooks”, Macs, users switching to Linux, and “devices”, and the bad economy, less people are on Windows, which needs antivirus software.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Omicron Limited ☛ Influential ‘Instavangelists’ blur line between religion and social media

• “Religious studies scholars are interested in how fluid religion is and how it’s really bound up with social processes and power struggles,” said Jacquelene Brinton, associate professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas. “Whereas outside of religious studies, people think of religion as something static and easily defined. Social media is showing us how that process of transformation happens.”

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry investigates actress Liya Akhedzhakova for ‘discrediting’ Russian army

• Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry has started to investigate Liya Akhedzhakova, the 85-year-old state-honored actress known as an icon of Soviet and Russian cinema, for “discrediting” the Russian army, reports state news media TASS with reference to a source in law enforcement.

=> ↺ DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ Mastodon: A Community So Vile They Even Eat Their Own. More Thoughts On Reddit.

• Reddit is one of those platforms for censorship. You post something informative that mods or Reddit doesn’t like, it vanishes. Unfortunately, search engines are starting to index and prioritize Reddit, and then you click on more posts that aren’t there.

• The Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive doesn’t always have them either.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ As Anniversary of Women’s Uprising Nears, Iran Cracks Down

• The purging of academics like Mr. Sharifi Zarchi is part of a wide and intensifying crackdown by the government before the anniversary of the start of the uprising this month. In the past few weeks, Iran has arrested women’s rights activists, students, ethnic minorities, an outspoken cleric, journalists, singers and family members of protesters killed by security agents.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ A Crackdown on Free Speech in One of the Freer Corners of the Mideast

• The new cybercrime legislation, enacted last month, carries a punishment of up to three years in prison or a fine of up to $28,000 for content deemed to undermine public order, stir up strife or disrespect religion. Jordanians accused of inciting “debauchery” online will face at least six months in prison and a $21,000 fine.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Political prisoners in Vietnam’s Prison No. 6 face threats from inmates

• He also asked them to contact the prison warden and ask him to take steps to ensure political prisoners’ safety.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Cambodian ex-leader Hun Sen back on Facebook after long-running row

• He claimed Facebook had “rendered justice” to him by refusing to suspend his account.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ Cops drill into chat apps, sink plot to smuggle tons of coke into Europe

• Specifically, the plod said the cartel, which had been under investigation since January 2022, was slinging “multi-ton cocaine shipments” from Brazil to the EU using a large boat. We’re told the vessel’s skippers had also gone to West Africa to prep their craft for smuggling. Below is a video summary of the raids carried out against the crime ring.

=> ↺ Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Housing Crisis Isn’t Going Anywhere Until We Tackle Property Wealth Inequality

• Canada’s housing crisis is spiraling out of control. The situation has been critical for a long time, but it’s now moved well past critical and into deep crisis. The circumstances are particularly rough in British Columbia, where people are being priced out of the province or are trapped within it, grappling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, landowners have seen windfalls as prices soar and create a massive wealth gap between those who’ve won the property lottery and those left behind. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Hemingway has some ideas about how to close the wealth chasm and make housing more affordable.

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Refusing to Pay Severance to Fired Twitter Employees May Be Backfiring Spectacularly

• Since Elon Musk took over as CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter, the company has been a lawsuit magnet. There’s that class-action suit in California by former employees who claim they weren’t paid promised bonuses. Another claims the company hasn’t ponied up $500 million in severance pay to employees who were laid off.

• Now add more than 2,200 arbitration cases, according to a complaint filed earlier this week in Delaware. All told, the social media giant is potentially on the hook for more than $3.5 million in filing fees, according to CNBC’s estimate. When it rains, it pours!

=> ↺ Vox ☛ A Canadian study gave $7,500 to homeless people. Here’s how they spent it.

• The results proved that prediction wrong. The recipients of the cash transfers did not increase spending on drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, but did increase spending on food, clothes, and rent, according to self-reports. What’s more, they moved into stable housing faster and saved enough money to maintain financial security over the year of follow-up.

• “Counter to really harmful stereotypes, we saw that people made wise financial choices,” Claire Williams, the CEO of Foundations for Social Change, told me.

• The study, though small, offers a counter to the myths that people who become poor get that way because they’re bad at rational decision-making and self-control, and are thus intrinsically to blame for their situation, and that people getting free money will blow it on frivolous things or addictive substances. Studies have consistently shown that cash transfers don’t increase the consumption of “temptation goods”; they either decrease it or have no effect on it.

=> ↺ NBC ☛ Climate change activists who blockaded Burning Man accuse police of excessive force

• “The excessive response is a snapshot of the institutional violence and police brutality that is being shown to anyone who is actively working to bring about systemic change within the United States, including the climate movement,” the statement said.

• Seven Circles Alliance also said a civilian [sic] falsely reported to the rangers that the activists had a firearm.

=> ↺ Terence Eden ☛ WeWork – how did anyone fall for this bullshit?

• If I were the head of an investment fund, I think I probably would have fallen for Theranos. Sure, Elizabeth Holmes was a bit of a kooky Steve Jobs tribute act – but the science sounded plausible. Perhaps with due diligence on their financials and a degree in biology it would have been easy to see it was a massive fraud. But to an outsider, it seemed like a reasonable businesses.

• WeWork was just batshit though.

=> ↺ Jacobin Magazine ☛ How University of California Workers Won the Biggest Higher-Ed Strike in US History

• Two University of California union organizers argue the keys to their union pulling off the largest strike of 2022 were simple: an emphasis on majority participation, democratic decision-making, and building a representative structure across the UC system.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Pakistani Business Leaders Strike Against Rising Energy Prices

• Pakistani business leaders on September 2 went on strike to protest higher fuel and electricity prices and the general rise in the cost of living.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Japan workers strike over sale of department store to US investment group

• On Thursday, Japan witnessed its first labor strike in six decades. The catalyst for this strike was the sale of the Seibu department store, a subsidiary of the Japanese retail giant Seven & i, to the US-based Fortress Investment Group.

=> ↺ JURIST ☛ Nigeria labor unions plan strikes over cost-of-living crisis

• On Friday, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NCL) announced labor union warning strikes for September 5 and 6.

=> ↺ Robert Reich ☛ Why Do We Have Weekends?

=> ↺ DeSmog ☛ Anti-ULEZ Protest Group Promotes Conspiracy Theories and Climate Science Denial

• Tuesday’s protest against the expansion of London’s ultra low emission zone (ULEZ), which featured on the front page of two national newspapers, was led by a group with ties to conspiracy theories and climate science denial, DeSmog can reveal.

• A reported 200 people attended the protest outside parliament on Tuesday as the ULEZ scheme to tackle air pollution by charging high emission vehicles was extended to Greater London. 

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ Pulse Security Ltd ☛ Mashing Enter to bypass full disk encryption with TPM, Clevis, dracut and systemd

• Using the vulnerability described in this advisory an attacker may take control of an encrypted Linux computer during the early boot process, manually unlock TPM-based disk encryption and either modify or read sensitive information stored on the computer’s disk. This blog post runs through how this vulnerability was identified and exploited – no tiny soldering required.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ qBittorrent Web UI Exploited to Mine Cryptocurrency: Here’s How to Fix

• qBittorrent is one of the most popular torrent clients around but taking time to properly configure security surrounding its web interface shouldn’t be overlooked. A combination of unchanged default credentials and UPnP settings allowed an attacker to install Monero mining software on a user’s PC. Fortunately the dangers are mitigated with a few easy but crucial steps.

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