● 09.14.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Leftover Links 14/09/2023: Galina Timchenko Learns Why Not to Use Mobile Phones

Posted in News Roundup at 5:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Leftovers

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ A Warning From Another Time

• “At a sentence level,” Charlie explained, “these words, strung together in this order and seemingly without irony, are hilarious. From the standpoint of being a human, the Musk-Zuck cage match is an offensive waste of time—the result of a broken media system that allows those with influence and shamelessness to commandeer our collective attention at will.”

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ What Can True Crime Offer Us?

• Billed as a literary exploration of the true-crime phenomenon, Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions for You centers on Bodie Kane, an adjunct film professor and middle-aged podcaster. In 2018, Bodie returns to teach at her alma mater, an elite New Hampshire boarding school called Granby. And she comes back with a lot of baggage—she was an unpopular and poor Midwestern transplant in the land of ski chalets and crew teams. She’s also returning to a school that was, in her time there, marred by the murder of the beautiful, talented 17-year-old Thalia Keith, Bodie’s brief acquaintance and former roommate.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ Working Hard for the American Dream

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ You’ve Got Mail: Automatic For The People

• When we last left the post office, I told you all about various kinds of machinery the USPS uses to move mail around. Today I’m going to tell you about the time they thought they could automate nearly every function inside the standard post office — and no, it wasn’t anytime recently.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ It’s Time You Built A Smart Pocket Watch

• There’s just something about a pocket watch that screams class compared to the barbaric act of bending your arm, or the no-fun way of looking at your phone.

Science

=> ↺ Science Alert ☛ Mathematicians Solve A Key Möbius Strip Problem, After Almost 50 Years of Searching

• In their paper, Halpern and Weaver pose a limit for Möbius strips based on the familiar geometry of folded bits of solid paper – that the ratio between the length and width of the paper must be greater than √3, or around 1.73.

• For example, a Möbius strip one centimeter in length would need to be wider than √3 or 1.73 centimeters.

=> ↺ Society for Scholarly Publshing ☛ Having the Courage to Explain Research in Plain Language

• I think the Curse of Knowledge I see most commonly doesn’t arise from overestimating our own ability to convey information, or even from overestimating our audience’s existing knowledge on the topic. It’s more nuanced than that. To some extent, it’s a function of an urge to respect others, not to patronize them and talk down to them. In an age of microaggressions, academics know they must be careful not to treat non-academics as “lesser mortals”. The challenge is particularly acute not on the outer edges of the circle — we are happy to class children as being on the “boundary of ignorance” and thus use plain language when speaking to them. It’s when communicating with the people in the inner zones that we struggle to let ourselves speak in plain language. People in what I am grandiosely calling the Zone of Comprehension and Realm of Familiarity, in particular, fall under the shadow of our “cone of concern”. (I know, I missed my calling as a sociological nomenclator).

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Mistranslation Of Newton’s First Law Discovered After Nearly 300 Years

• For hundreds of years, we have been told what Newton’s First Law of Motion supposedly says, but recently a paper published in Philosophy of Science (preprint) by [Daniel Hoek] argues that it is based on a mistranslation of the original Latin text. As noted by [Stephanie Pappas] in Scientific American, this would seem to be a rather academic matter as Newton’s Laws of Motion have been superseded by General Relativity and other theories developed over the intervening centuries. Yet even today Newton’s theories are highly relevant, as they provide very accessible approximations for predicting phenomena on Earth.

Hardware

=> ↺ DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ HP Stream Laptops at Walmart. How Much Computer Do You Need in 2023?

• You can barely use Linux productively with 4 these days. Much less Windows.

• With Windows 11 and 4 GB, you can barely even boot the computer and load one program. These things don’t age well because they can barely handle a single use case that people are going to take them home for.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ Paper Punching Machine Looks Like Cute Piece Of Computer History Past

• Computing used to run on punch cards. Great stacks of cards would run middling programs, with data output onto more punched cards in turn. [Nii] has built a machine in this vein, capable of punching binary into paper tape. 

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ 3D Printed RC Car Is Geared For Speed

• You can always go out and buy an RC car off the shelf. However, it’s readily achievable to print your own design that has many of the features of off-the-shelf models, as demonstrated by [Jinan].

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ University of Michigan ☛ My pal Prozac

• I started seeing a therapist the summer before my freshman year of high school. After several months of cognitive behavioral therapy — a form of therapy which focuses on changing negative thoughts and behaviors while instilling healthy coping mechanisms — I didn’t feel much better.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ My Sister’s Mental Health Crisis Became My Crisis

• Two siblings learn to balance love and self-preservation.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Decongestant in Cold Medicines Doesn’t Work, Panel Says

• The agency now must decide whether products containing the ingredient, like some Sudafed and NyQuil products, should no longer be sold or perhaps give companies lead time to substitute other ingredients.

=> ↺ The Kent Stater ☛ Overdose Awareness Day highlights efforts to raise overdose awareness with events in downtown Kent

• In efforts to raise overdose awareness worldwide, several organizations in the community took part in Overdose Awareness Day in downtown Kent Thursday evening.

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ It’s Now Clearer Than Ever: The US Is Choosing to Impoverish Children

• “The Census data make it painfully clear: poverty—in particular, child poverty—is a policy choice,” explains the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Washington-based Quaker peace and justice lobby that has long monitored poverty rates with an eye toward developing and advancing policy interventions. “When lawmakers expanded the child tax credit in 2021, fewer kids lived in poverty. When they failed to do so in 2022, child poverty more than doubled.”

=> ↺ Jacobin Magazine ☛ Boys and Men in the United States Are Struggling. The Left Should Talk About It.

• Statistics show that men and boys in the United States today disproportionately suffer from a number of serious problems. Since the 1970s, they’ve seen their wages stagnate and are now far less likely than women to attend or graduate from college. Even more seriously, men are much more likely than women to be afflicted by “deaths of despair”: deaths due to suicide or alcohol or drug abuse. These trends are affecting boys and men across racial groups, and especially working-class boys and men.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ College Kids Are Easily Bypassing Stupid University TikTok Bans

• We’ve noted a few times how the political push to ban TikTok is a dumb performance largely designed to distract people from our failure to pass even a basic internet privacy law or regulate data brokers. We’ve also noted how college bans of TikTok are a dumb extension of that dumb performance, and don’t accomplish anything of meaningful significance.

=> ↺ The antimask antivax Brownstone Institute is still ranting about COVID-19 “censorship”

• One of the most consistent narratives from science deniers, be they quacks, antivaxxers, COVID-19 minimizers, or even 9/11 Truthers or moon landing hoaxers is that of “censorship,” in which “They”—generally the government, press, scientific/medical establishment, and corporations (e.g., big pharma)—are somehow “suppressing” The Truth that the deniers are spreading to the masses. In these days of social media, when some of the most notorious science deniers have Twitter—excuse, me, X—accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers and Substacks with many thousands of subscribers making up to over a million dollars a year from paid subscriptions, I’ve always found the cries of “censorship!” to be far more performative than reflecting reality. The bottom line is that all too many of these cranks have no difficulty whatsoever spreading their misinformation and disinformation.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ The Return of COVID Mandates?

• Join Reason on YouTube and Facebook at 1 p.m. Eastern this Thursday for a discussion with Aaron Kheriaty, author of The New Abnormal about the persistent COVID mandates for K-12 schools, college campuses and health care settings.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuania to offer free shots of updated Covid vaccine [Ed: How many clinical trials predate this? Also, it's not free, it is pre-paid. Citizens pay whether they want this or not.]

• Free Covid-19 vaccinations will be available this season to all Lithuanian residents, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday.

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Finns’ well-being at work stuck at the level undermined by COVID-19

• The well-being of workers in Finland has yet to fully recover to pre-pandemic levels, according to a study by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. The report, titled “How is Finland doing?” reveals that people experienced lower work ability and engagement in the summer of 2023 compared to late 2019. Although well-being no longer appears to be declining for those under 36, none of the measured aspects of well-being at work have improved. Occupational burnout and loneliness have both increased, posing significant societal challenges.

=> ↺ Helsinki Times ☛ Over 9,000 patient injury reports filed annually in Finland

• Every year in Finland, over 9,000 patient injury reports are filed by individuals who suspect they’ve suffered harm during medical treatment. The number of injury reports has stabilized at this level following the COVID-19 pandemic.

• From January to June 2023, 4,618 new injury reports were submitted, roughly similar to the figures for the same period in 2022 (4,594).

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Driver shortage prompts Japan taxi firms to recruit new graduates

• The shortage worsened after more than 10,000 drivers left the industry during the Covid-19 pandemic.

=> ↺ Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong welcomed 4.1 million visitors in Aug, but arrivals still below pre-pandemic figures

• Hong Kong welcomed 4.07 million visitors in August, up 14 per cent from the previous month, according to provisional data from the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB). However, the figure remained below average pre-pandemic levels. In August 2018, the city saw nearly 6 million visitors.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

=> ↺ EDRI ☛ Council of Europe must not water down their human rights standards in convention on AI

• The CAI negotiations are now intensifying: a Consolidated Working Draft of the Convention is expected to be imminently published on the CAI’s website. That’s why on July 4, 2023, the undersigned CSOs participating in the CAI sent a letter to the CAI Chair and Secretariat.

• In the letter, civil society underscore the urgency of this Convention as the challenges arising from the design, development and deployment of AI systems increase. We deeply regret that the negotiating States have chosen to exclude both civil society observers and Council of Europe member participants from the drafting group of the Convention and call on the drafting group to ensure, among other priorities: [...]

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ Friends don’t let friends use AI to chat

• Liu said that people “feel less satisfied” if their friends turned to AI to send them messages, and that they were more likely to “feel more uncertain about where they stand” in their relationships.

=> ↺ Vice Media Group ☛ Your Friends Will Hate You If You Use AI to Write Texts, Science Confirms

• According to a new paper from researchers at Ohio State University, using AI generators to write personal correspondence like letters and text messages actually results in profoundly negative reactions from friends and colleagues who receive them. In the study, 208 adults were presented with one of three scenarios involving a fictional “good friend” named “Taylor.” The participants were instructed to reach out to Taylor about their situation—needing emotional support, a conflict with a colleague, or an upcoming birthday—and then rate how they felt about Taylor’s reply.

=> ↺ Scoop News Group ☛ Bolstering web application security

• Invicti Security’s Chief Technology Officer, Frank Catucci, emphasizes the need for a comprehensive understanding of potential attack scenarios, especially in dealing with legacy systems. Rigorous testing is essential to identifying vulnerabilities accurately as more applications move online and become exposed to threats.

=> ↺ Tom’s Hardware ☛ AI Lie: Machines Don’t Learn Like Humans (And Don’t Have the Right To)

• There’s nothing wrong with LLMs as a technology. We’re testing a chatbot on Tom’s Hardware right now that draws training data directly from our original articles; it uses that content to answer reader questions based exclusively on our expertise.

• Unfortunately, many people believe that AI bots should be allowed to grab, ingest and repurpose any data that’s available on the public Internet whether they own it or not, because they are “just learning like a human would.” Once a person reads an article, they can use the ideas they just absorbed in their speech or even their drawings for free. So obviously LLMs, whose ingestion practice we conveniently call “machine learning,” should be able to do the same thing.

=> ↺ Hackaday ☛ How Three Letters Brought Down UK Air Traffic Control

• The UK bank holiday weekend at the end of August is a national holiday in which it sometimes seems the entire country ups sticks and makes for somewhere with a beach. This year though, many of them couldn’t, because the country’s NATS air traffic system went down and stranded many to grumble in the heat of a crowded terminal. At the time it was blamed on faulty flight data, but news now emerges that the data which brought down an entire country’s air traffic control may have not been faulty at all.

Windows TCO

=> ↺ The Record ☛ Sri Lankan government loses months of data following ransomware attack

• The attack, which started at the end of August, affected nearly 5,000 email addresses using the gov.lk email domain. The victims include Sri Lanka’s council of ministers which forms the central government of the country.

=> ↺ The Register UK ☛ Ransomware attack hits Sri Lanka government, causing data loss

• The attackers likely gained access to government systems using phishing schemes targeting civil servants, and took advantage of the use of outdated software. The government was using Microsoft Exchange 2013, for which its maker stopped support on April 11 this year.

=> ↺ Silicon Angle ☛ New ‘3AM’ ransomware strain used in place of failed LockBit attack

• Detailed today by researchers from the Symantec Threat Hunting team, 3AM is written in the Rust programming language and is believed to be a completely new malware family. The ransomware attempts to stop multiple services on the infected computer before it begins encrypting files. Once encryption is complete, it attempts to delete Volume Shadow copies.

Security

=> ↺ Krebs On Security ☛ FBI Hacker Dropped Stolen Airbus Data on 9/11

• In December 2022, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news that a cybercriminal using the handle “USDoD” had infiltrated the FBI‘s vetted information sharing network InfraGard, and was selling the contact information for all 80,000 members. The FBI responded by reverifying InfraGard members and by seizing the cybercrime forum where the data was being sold. But on Sept. 11, 2023, USDoD resurfaced after a lengthy absence to leak sensitive employee data stolen from the aerospace giant Airbus, while promising to visit the same treatment on top U.S. defense contractors.

=> ↺ EFF ☛ UN Cybercrime Treaty Talks End Without Consensus on Scope And Deep Divides About Surveillance Powers

• “Imagine a scenario where a particular national residing in another country continues to use the influence of social media to spread propaganda and hateful messages and incite violence that leads to fatal clashes with security forces,” Sierra Leone said.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ The Atlantic ☛ You Should Worry About the Data Retailers Collect About You

• The reality is, unfortunately, worse. Retail companies do collect massive volumes of terrifically sensitive data: demographic information, geographic location, websites you’ve visited, brick-and-mortar stores you have patronized, products you own, products you’ve browsed, products you’ve searched for, even products they think you might have looked at but passed over in the store. They do this not only to predict your future behavior, but to influence it.

=> ↺ Patrick Breyer ☛ Breyer: Von der Leyen has simply not understood the digital age

• “On the one hand, Ms. von der Leyen keeps official text messages with the head of Pfizer about billion-dollar deals secret bypassing all rules, but on the other hand she wants to have our private messages indiscriminatly scanned by unreliable suspicion machines via #ChatControl and destroy the digital secrecy of correspondence. She is the conservative commission president whose appointment we Pirates have rejected from the start.

• „Ms. von der Leyen is remembered by many young Germans as ‘Zensursula’. With an emotional fear campaign, she tried years ago to push through an ineffective and harmful Internet censorship law, ignoring mass protests and criticism from academia. In 2015, she voted in the Bundestag to reintroduce blanket data retention, even though the European Court of Justice had ruled it disproportionate. Nothing at all comes from her on curbing lobbying, more transparency and genuine citizen participation. The Pirate Party demands for all these reasons that she finally leave next year.”

=> ↺ Terence Eden ☛ I think “Law 3.0″ is OK, actually

• We should embrace new ways of organising ourselves. And we should embrace technological limitations which protect the majority. And those limitations must be safeguarded.

=> ↺ EDRI ☛ The Stop Scanning Me movement organised a mass protest in Berlin against dangerous surveillance law

• The brute force of this action is a symbol of what the European Commission is planning to do with its surveillance law on chat control (CSAR): breaking the digital privacy of letters for everyone.

=> ↺ EDRI ☛ Open letter: EU countries should say no to the CSAR mass surveillance proposal

• The Council of EU Member States are close to finalising their position on the controversial CSA Regulation. Yet the latest slew of Council amendments – just like the European Commission’s original – endorse measures which amount to mass surveillance and which would fundamentally undermine end-to-end encryption.

• Legal experts advising EU governments have warned that in its current form, the CSA Regulation would likely violate the rights of hundreds of millions of people in Europe, without any suspicion that they have done something wrong. It could also force everyone to undergo ID checks in order to access the internet, threatening digital exclusion for those without the ‘right’ documents.

=> ↺ Axios ☛ DOJ: Musk “may have jeopardized data privacy and security” at X

• Elon Musk may have violated a 2022 Federal Trade Commission order on privacy and security practices at Twitter, now known as X, the Department of Justice said in a new court filing on behalf of the FTC.

=> ↺ EFF ☛ Apple and Google Are Introducing New Ways to Defeat Cell Site Simulators, But Is it Enough?

• In 2021, Google released an optional feature for Android to turn off the ability to connect to 2G cell sites. We applauded this feature at the time. But we also suggested that other companies could do more to protect against cell-site simulators, especially Apple and Samsung, who had not made similar changes. This year more improvements are being made. 

• Google’s Efforts to Prevent CSS Attacks 

• Earlier this year Google announced another new mobile security setting for Android. This new setting allows users to prevent their phone from using a “null cipher” when making a connection with a cell tower. In a well-configured network, every connection with a cell tower is authenticated and encrypted using a symmetric cipher, with a cryptographic key generated by the phone’s sim card and the tower it is connecting to. However, when the null cipher is used, communications are instead sent in the clear and not encrypted. Null ciphers are useful for tasks like network testing, where an engineer might need to see the content of the packets going over the wire. Null ciphers are also critical for emergency calls where connectivity is the number one priority, even if someone doesn’t have a SIM card installed. Unfortunately fake base stations can also take advantage of null ciphers to intercept traffic from phones, like SMS messages, calls, and non-encrypted internet traffic. 

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ UK Government Pauses Demands For Broken Encryption In Its Online Safety Bill

• The UK government is still pushing a bill that would give it more direct control of the internet, but it has, at least for the time being, decided against mandating broken encryption.

=> ↺ EFF ☛ EFF to Michigan Court: Governments Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Use a Drone to Spy on You Without a Warrant

• In this case, Long Lake Township hired private operators to repeatedly fly drones over Todd and Heather Maxon’s home to take aerial photos and videos of their property in a zoning investigation. The Township did this without a warrant and then sought to use this documentation in a court case against them. In our brief, we argue that the township’s conduct was governed by and violated the Fourth Amendment and the equivalent section of the Michigan Constitution. 

• The Township argued that the Maxons had no reasonable expectation of privacy based on a series of cases from the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1980s. In those cases, law enforcement used helicopters or small planes to photograph and observe private backyards that were thought to be growing cannabis. The Court found there was no reasonable expectation of privacy—and therefore no Fourth Amendment issue—from aerial surveillance conducted by manned aircraft.  

• But, as we pointed out in our brief, drones are fundamentally different from helicopters or airplanes. Drones can silently and unobtrusively gather an immense amount of data at only a tiny fraction of the cost of traditional aircraft. In other words, the government can buy thousands of drones for the price of one helicopter and its hired pilot. Drones are also smaller and easier to operate. They can fly at much lower altitudes, and they can get into spaces—such as under eaves or between buildings—that planes and helicopters can never enter. And the noise created by manned airplanes and helicopters functions as notice to those who are being watched—it’s unlikely you’ll miss a helicopter circling overhead when you’re sunbathing in your yard, but you may not notice a drone.  

Confidentiality

=> ↺ [Old] GnuPG ☛ Large keys

• Koch showed examples of digital signatures of comparable security, one made with RSA-4096 and one with Ed25519 [..] HSM timing data showed that RSA is about 60 times slower than Ed25519 for signing.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Site36 ☛ Great Britain wants to return to Frontex: Official request at EU summit in early October

Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Sky News: Ukraine used British Storm Shadow missiles in Sevastopol shipyard attack — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘A covert smear campaign’: Vladimir Osechkin made his name exposing abuses in Russia’s penal system. A new report alleges he exploited those who sought his help. — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Bucharest to summon Russian ambassador in response to third apparent Russian drone crash on Romanian territory — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Moscow authorities open criminal case against volunteer guard at Boris Nemtsov memorial for alleged participation in pro-Ukraine Freedom of Russia Legion — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Armenian prime minister confirms Yerevan will fully ratify Rome Statute, recognizing jurisdiction of ICC — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Russia launches drone attack on Odesa region, injuring seven people — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Ukraine carries out missile attack on shipyard in annexed Crimea More than 20 people injured and two vessels damaged — Meduza

=> ↺ The Nation ☛ The West Needs a Russia—Not a Putin—Policy

• Even before the latest phase of the war in Ukraine, the narrative surrounding Western policy toward Moscow has focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Such an approach ignores the reality that Putin acts rather as the adjudicator, and ultimate stabilizer, of the country’s fractious political elite. Nevertheless, recent reporting on Russia has remained fixated on Putin, effectively dismissing the rest of society and institutions as inept and insignificant.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ ‘Voters are interested in everyday matters’: Why the war was a non-issue in Russia’s regional elections — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Even in Europe, we are not safe A statement from Meduza editor-in-chief Ivan Kolpakov — Meduza

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ Estonia third Baltic country to ban entry of vehicles with Russian license plates — Meduza

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Kim-Putin Summit Highlights How Ukraine War Drives Russian Foreign Policy

• The backdrop of the war has made North Korea more relevant than in years past for Russia, despite the North’s history as an impoverished, sometimes troublesome partner.

=> ↺ AntiWar ☛ Why We Don’t Negotiate

• The signature of Joe Biden’s State Department has been the abdication of diplomacy. Its head, Antony Blinken, the chief U.S. diplomat, has abdicated the role of diplomat.

=> ↺ AntiWar ☛ Depleted Uranium Added to Toxic Mess in Ukraine

• Following on from its decision to donate widely banned cluster munitions to Ukraine the US is sending armor-piercing depleted uranium (DU) munitions to fight Russia. Indifferent to the poisonous effect of these weapons, the Justin Trudeau government has remained mum on Washington’s escalatory move. De

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Now is the time for businesses to look at Ukraine

• Ukraine’s reconstruction promises to be the largest national recovery project in Europe since World War II and will create unique business opportunities, writes AmCham Ukraine’s Andy Hunder.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Poland threatens to extend Ukrainian grain import ban after embargo date expires

• A temporary EU ban on Ukrainian grain imports, introduced after Poland and four other eastern EU countries complained about cheap Ukrainian produce flooding the market, is set to expire on September 15. Warsaw now not only wants to extend the ban but expand it and include honey too, angering many in Brussels. FRANCE 24′s Magdalena Chodownik and Gulliver Cragg report.

=> ↺ France24 ☛ US says Russia-North Korea cooperation ‘troubling’, threatens sanctions

• The United States “won’t hesitate” to impose more sanctions on Russia and North Korea if they conclude any new arms deals, the US State Department warned on Wednesday after the two countries’ leaders met for talks in Vladivostok. Earlier, Ukraine’s military said its forces had struck naval targets and port infrastructure in Crimea’s Sevastopol, in what appeared to be the biggest attack yet on the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Read our live blog to see how all the day’s events unfolded. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).

=> ↺ LRT ☛ The fear of Belarusian laying claim to Lithuanian history

• An identity clash between European-facing Belarusians and Lithuanians has echoed across social media, as well as from the lips of politicians eyeing next year’s elections. At the core is Litvinism, a strand of Belarusian nationalism questioning the Vilnius-centric legacy of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the mediaeval state stretching from the Baltics to the Black Sea and incorporating parts of present-day Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Child Killed In Russian Shelling In Ukraine As Another Aerial Attack Targets Occupied Crimea

• Explosions were reported in Russian-occupied Crimea early on September 14 as Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed it had thwarted another Ukrainian drone attack, a day after two Russian military vessels docked on the peninsula were seriously damaged in a similar strike.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Bulgaria Signals Possible Track To Lift Ban On Ukrainian Grain Import

• The Bulgarian government on September 13 said it favors lifting the ban on Ukrainian grain imports in return for additional compensation for its farmers, but Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia insist that the current ban be extended by the European Commission and threatened to unilaterally take action if their demands are not met.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger Leave Russian Market

• The U.S.-based company that owns clothing brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger has become the latest Western business to exit the Russian market amid Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Romania Finds Possible Drone Fragments After Russian Attack Hits Ukrainian Ports

• Romania’s Defense Ministry said elements of what could be a drone were identified on the NATO member’s territory following a Russian drone attack early on September 13 on Izmayil in southern Ukraine, just across the border.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Ukraine Making ‘Great Strides’ But More Hard Work Before Accession, EU Says

• Ukraine has made “great strides” to join the European Union since being granted candidate status in 2022, but full accession is a merit-based process and hard work lies ahead, the head of the bloc’s executive said in her annual speech.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Ukraine ‘Ready For Winter Loads’ After Repairs To Energy System

• Ukraine has nearly completed repairs to its power systems following Russian air strikes on energy infrastructure last winter, and is ready for the coming winter, a senior energy official said.

=> ↺ New Yorker ☛ “Liturgy of Anti-Tank Obstacles” Shows the Transformations of Life in Ukraine

• A documentary short by the Ukrainian filmmaker Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk shows sculptors of religious statues using their tools and training for war.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Russia-Ukraine War: Ukraine Strikes Headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet

• The pre-dawn attack damaged two ships and triggered a large blaze at a naval shipyard in Crimea that plays a critical role in Russia’s war effort.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Russia Overcomes Sanctions to Expand Missile Production, Officials Say

• Moscow’s missile production now exceeds prewar levels, officials say, leaving Ukraine especially vulnerable this coming winter.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Now the Koreas Are the Ones Supplying Weapons

• Desperate for munitions for the war in Ukraine, the U.S. and Russia have turned to their allies in South and North Korea, which kept stockpiling arms for decades after their own conflict.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Thursday Briefing: Ukraine Strikes Russia’s Black Sea Fleet

• Plus a road trip in Mongolia.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Top EU Official Calls for Expanding Bloc to Include Ukraine and Other Nations

• In an address, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, expressed support for Ukraine and several other nations joining the bloc over the next few years.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ Ukraine Strikes the Headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea

• The Russian Ministry of Defense said that it had shot down seven of 10 cruise missiles that Ukraine fired at the facility in the city of Sevastopol. The area hosts naval operations key to Moscow’s war efforts in Ukraine.

=> ↺ Latvia ☛ Saeima committee discusses dropping treaty agreement with ‘immoral’ Russia

• A meeting of the Saeima’s influential Foreign Affairs Committee on September 13 discussed proposals to cancel treaty agreements with Russia on legal assistance and legal relations in civil, family and criminal matters.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Kevin McCarthy’s Impeachment Inquiry Provokes Predictably Polarized Reactions

• Plus: The Stations of the Cross isn’t a zoning violation, inflation is making people poorer, and Russian mercenaries win hearts and minds with their own branded beer.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Russians allowed to bring personal items not posing ‘sanctions evasion risk’, says EC clarification

• Russians are allowed to bring only items that pose no risk of sanctions evasion into the European Union, according to a further clarification issued by the European Commission on Wednesday.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Sixth Leonidas Donskis memorial conference in Vilnius asks: Will Russia survive 2024?

• A conference dedicated to the late Lithuanian philosopher and politician will focus on possible and desirable future transformation of Russia.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Latvia, Estonia follow Lithuania in banning Russian cars from entering

• A ban on vehicles with Russian licence plates entering the EU via the external border has come into force in Estonia and Latvia.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Lithuania stops 19 Russian cars overnight under new EC sanctions guidelines

• After the European Commission issued a clarification on how to apply sanctions on Russian vehicles, customs officers refused to allow 19 cars with Russian plates to enter Lithuania from Tuesday morning until Wednesday morning.

=> ↺ LRT ☛ Ice dancer Drobiazko defends herself in open letter as commission looks to revoke her Lithuanian citizenship

• The ice dancer Margarita Drobiazko, who risks losing her Lithuanian citizenship due to performances in Russia, says she is not involved in Moscow’s propaganda and claims that she is spreading “the light of culture and kindness”.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ U.S. Ambassador To Russia Visits Whelan In Notorious Penal Colony, Demands His Release

• The U.S. ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy, visited Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine jailed in Russia over what the United States calls bogus espionage charges, for the first time in four months, as Washington again demanded his immediate release.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Moldova Expels Director Of Russia’s Sputnik State News Agency

• Moldovan authorities have expelled the director of Russia’s Sputnik state news agency in Moldova, Vitaly Denisov, saying he poses a national security threat.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ More Suspected Russian Drone Debris Found in Romania

• The NATO member said it was the third such discovery in less than two weeks.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ ‘Merchant Of Death’ Viktor Bout Wins Seat In Local Russian Legislature

• Viktor Bout, the convicted gun runner who spent nearly a decade in a U.S. prison before being sent back to Russia in a prisoner swap, has won a seat in a regional legislature, officials said.

Environment

=> ↺ France24 ☛ Libya’s deadly dam collapse was decades in the making

• “It is too early to determine whether the failure of the dam was caused by a lack of maintenance or whether it was not designed to be resilient to the exceptional amount of rainfall that fell,” she said. “Monitoring of the condition of the dam could have perhaps supported early warning of potential failure, and precautionary evacuations of the people in harm’s way.”

=> ↺ Axios ☛ Climate change made U.S. summer hotter for almost everyone

• Symbol map of the U.S. showing where climate change most affected daily summer temperatures in 2023. Far more places in the south had a Climate Shift Index of 3 or higher, meaning human-caused climate change made the average daily temperature at least three times more likely. In Victoria, Texas, 76 out of 91 summer days were strongly affected. In contrast, summer temperatures in the midwest and northeast were largely unaffected by climate change.

=> ↺ RFA ☛ Kim Jong Un blasts premier for typhoon lack of preparedness

• Harsh criticism generates buzz among the public, and some sympathy.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ “A Calamity of Epic Proportions”: Death Toll from Libyan Floods Tops 6,000 in Latest Climate Disaster

• We get an update from Libya, where at least 6,000 are feared dead after a catastrophic cyclone hit the eastern city of Derna, causing two dams to burst and flooding whole sections of the city. Storm victims are being buried in mass graves as hope is dwindling for those who have been unable to locate friends and family members. Libya’s infrastructure has crumbled over years of civil war, NATO intervention and political instability; Derna’s dams have not been maintained since 2002. Ahead of the storm, the government did not declare an emergency or carry out evacuations. “It’s obviously our government’s fault,” says Libyan youth climate activist Nissa Bek in Tripoli. She notes Libya’s lack of investment in risk mitigation or climate adaptation means the scale of the disaster was not a surprise. “I’m hoping that this tragedy could be the turning point for all of this, and for them to actually take the climate crisis more seriously,” adds Bek.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ University of Michigan ☛ University of Michigan Transportation rolls out four new electric buses

• The buses were manufactured by automotive company New Flyer and can drive about 250 miles on a single charge. The arrival of the buses on campus was initially delayed due to supply chain delays and safety recalls, in an effort to prevent battery leaks.

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ Apple’s New CO2 Neutral Products Are Cool, But Don’t Let Them Distract You From the Big Picture

• But it turns out that having an entirely carbon-neutral product depends on the combination of items purchased. “Select case and band combinations of Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Ultra™ 2, and Apple Watch SE® are Apple’s first-ever carbon neutral products,” a press release about the products explained. It’s great that a multinational business is working on lowering its emissions, but major corporations need to be held to higher standards that go beyond buying the right combination of things. Apple’s large target is carbon neutrality by 2030—that should be the most important metric that we judge the company by.

=> ↺ Interesting Engineering ☛ Swiss students have broken the 1-second EV acceleration mark

• On September 1, 2023, a group of speed freak students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Switzerland demolished the electrical vehicle acceleration world record in style. Spending every spare minute building and refining their racing car, called “Mythen,” they managed to get from zero to 62.15 mph (100 kph) in 0.965 seconds over a distance of 40.3 feet (12.3 meters).

=> ↺ Futurism ☛ Tesla Engineers Hated the Cybertruck So Much They Started Secretly Designing an Alternative

• If you thought Tesla’s Cybertruck looks weird and ungainly, you’re not the only one. Apparently, some Tesla staff thought the same of the electric pickup — with its sharp angles, futuristic silhouette, and absurdly large windshield wiper — according to a new excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s blockbuster just-dropped biography on Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

=> ↺ DeSmog ☛ American PR Firm Edelman Enabled Oil Baron Al Jaber’s Ascension to Lead COP28 Climate Conference

• With three months to go until the COP28 United Nations climate talks begin in Dubai, critics have stepped up their condemnation of the decision to put Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the head of Abu Dhabi’s state oil company ADNOC, in charge of the conference. 

• What few may realize, however, is that Al Jaber’s ascent to the highest levels of climate diplomacy began 16 years ago, and Edelman, the largest public relations firm in the world, played a crucial role.

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ China’s flood-hit city hunts for crocodiles on the loose

• Over 70 crocodiles escaped from a farm after a lake overflowed in Maoming city in Guangdong province.

Finance

=> ↺ Pro Publica ☛ Wall Street Bet Big on Used-Car Loans for Years. Now a Crisis May Be Looming.

• Wall Street could always bank on used cars. In fact, for years, investors bought bonds backed by auto loans because they reliably produced handsome returns, even amid rocky markets and downturns in the economy.

• But now, for the first time in decades, that winning streak appears to be coming to an end, with a half dozen prominent used-auto lenders facing either an avalanche of failed loans — or growing regulatory scrutiny. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is currently suing two of those lenders over potentially predatory practices.

=> ↺ BBC ☛ Cash payments rise for first time in 10 years – BBC News

• Payments made with notes and coins rose as the cost of living started to bite, but debit card use was higher.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ RFA ☛ 3 ASEAN nations to boycott defense meeting hosted by Myanmar junta

• Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines to avoid Air Chiefs Conference.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ Tehran Names Five Iranians For Looming Prisoner Swap With U.S.,Says Americans ‘In Full Health’

• Iranian officials have identified five individuals in U.S. custody whom Tehran would like handed over as part of a possible 10-person, $6 billion prisoner swap initially said to have been mapped out last month between the longtime foes.

=> ↺ The Straits Times ☛ Malaysian police wow with flawless rendition of Hong Kong rock band Beyond’s hit song

• The all-Malay band sang Hai Kuo Tian Kong in flawless Cantonese.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ In Show of Force, Silicon Valley Titans Pledge ‘Getting This Right’ With A.I.

• The meeting — also attended by Bill Gates, a founder of Microsoft; Sam Altman of OpenAI; Satya Nadella of Microsoft; and Jensen Huang of Nvidia — was a rare congregation of more than a dozen top tech executives in the same room. It amounted to one of the industry’s most proactive shows of force in the nation’s capital as companies race to be at the forefront of A.I. and to be seen to influence its direction.

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI are getting questioned about their AI “data labelers”

• US lawmakers are probing nine tech giants—Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Inflection AI, Scale AI, and IBM—on the working conditions of data labelers. Data labelers are human workers tasked with labeling training data and rating chatbot responses to make sure that AI systems are safe and reliable.

=> ↺ The Drone Girl ☛ 11 of the most influential women in drones not just this year — but all time

• These women weren’t just crucial to propelling the drone industry forward over the past year — they’ve been doing it for years (and sometimes decades). The 11 influential women in drones listed below stem from an announcement made today by female leadership organization Women and Drones, which today listed their second crop of inductees into its “Women in Emerging Aviation Technologies Hall of Fame.”

=> ↺ Gizmodo ☛ X (Twitter) Failed to Take Action on 86% of Hate Speech Posts, Researchers Say

• Many of these posts, which Gizmodo independently reviewed, weren’t borderline or confusing cases. One of the violating posts labeled Hitler as a “hero” for white children while another encouraged users to “stop race mixing.” Another post showed a black and white photo of a family enjoying a picnic with the caption “Just admit it, white America was better.”

=> ↺ [Repeat] New York Times ☛ Google Sheds Hundreds of Recruiters in Another Round of Layoffs

• Google’s recruiting group, which at one point had more than 3,000 employees, has already been hit hard by layoffs this year.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ Quartz ☛ New York and Oregon pension funds are far from the first to sue Fox for fake news

• Pension funds in New York City and Oregon are suing Fox Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, for the media company’s role in spreading fake news during the 2020 election cycle.

• Fox’s board, including the media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son and Fox’s CEO-chairman Lachlan Murdoch, “knew that Fox News’s promotion of political narratives without regard for whether the underlying factual assertions were true created significant exposure to defamation charges,” according to the complaint filed in Delaware Chancery Court yesterday (Sep. 12). The lawsuit will remain sealed for five days to allow time for redactions.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Kansas Reflector ☛ U.S. Senate hearing on book bans probes censorship attempts in local libraries

• The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony about book bans, focusing on how censorship limits liberty and literature. The hearing occurred amid an increase in book challenges across the nation.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ You Can’t Wish Away The 1st Amendment To Mandate Age Verification

• So, we’ve been talking a lot about age verification of late, as governments around the world have all (with the exception of Australia?!?) seemed to settle on that as a solution to “the problem” of the internet (exactly what that problem is they cannot quite identify, but they’re pretty sure there is one). Of course, as we’ve explained time and time again, age verification creates all sorts of problems, including undermining both privacy and speech rights.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ A Trio Of Failed Lawsuits Trying To Sue Websites For Moderating Content

• Why do people still file these lawsuits? For years now, we see lawsuits filed against websites over their content moderation decisions, despite Section 230 barring them (and the 1st Amendment rights of the platform backing that up). These lawsuits always fail.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ CPJ ☛ Investigation finds Russian journalist Galina Timchenko targeted by Pegasus spyware

• Timchenko’s phone was infected by Pegasus, a spyware produced by the Israeli company NSO Group, while she was in Berlin on or around February 10, 2023, according to a Meduza report and a joint-investigation by rights groups Access Now and research organization Citizen Lab. The investigation found that the infection took place shortly after Russia’s Prosecutor General designated Meduza as an “undesirable” organization – a measure that banned the outlet from operating on Russian territory – and likely lasted several days or weeks.

=> ↺ Meduza ☛ The million-dollar reporter: How attackers hijacked the phone of Meduza co-founder Galina Timchenko, making her the first Russian journalist to be infected with Pegasus spyware — Meduza

=> ↺ Citizen Lab ☛ Pegasus Infection of Galina Timchenko, exiled Russian Journalist and Publisher

• In an investigative collaboration with Access Now, the Citizen Lab has analyzed forensic artifacts from the iPhone of award-winning exiled Russian investigative journalist Galina Timchenko and found with high confidence that on or around February 10th, 2023 it was infected with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Atlantic Council ☛ Letters from women protesters inside Iran: One year after #MahsaAmini’s death

• “Break the pen that writes,” commanded the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a few months after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He heralded an age of silence in Iran, which his successor, Ali Khamenei, has struggled to maintain. But the people in Iran have refused to be silenced, particularly one year after twenty-two-year-old Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Jina Amini died at the hands of the so-called morality police for allegedly violating mandatory hijab. Since her death, Iranians continue to call for the Islamic Republic’s demise.

• Here are three open letters from women in Iran who have risked arrest, torture, and even jail to share their vision of a better future for their motherland. Their first names have been changed out of consideration for their safety.

=> ↺ RFERL ☛ UN Fact-Finding Mission On Deadly Iran Protest Crackdown Met With Silence By Tehran

• Ali described the mission’s exhaustive efforts to uncover and verify cases of abuse, including arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances as well as torture and other ill-treatment.

• She also explained the laborious and often futile process of appealing to the Iranian government to provide information about specific cases regarding Iran’s crackdown against the protests, which broke out following Masha Amini’s death in police custody on September 16, 2022.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ NYPD’s Stop And Frisk Program Still Limping Along, More Biased Than Ever

• It’s been a decade since a federal court declared the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program (mostly) illegal. Judge Shira Scheindlin, in a 195-page decision, pointed out everything that was wrong with the program, which ignored the “Terry stop” parameters defined by the Supreme Court in its 1968 decision to engage in stops of anyone at any time, often accompanied by a “frisk” of the person in hopes of feeling up contraband.

=> ↺ Democracy Now ☛ “Complicit”: Columbia U. Shielded Predator OB-GYN Robert Hadden for Decades as He Assaulted Hundreds

• We look at how Columbia University ignored women, undermined prosecutors and protected obstetrician Robert Hadden while he preyed on hundreds of his patients for more than two decades, as detailed in a new investigation from ProPublica and New York magazine. Hadden was sentenced in July to 20 years in federal prison for sexually abusing his patients, but survivors say no one has been held accountable at Columbia, and are still demanding justice. We speak with a survivor who reported Hadden to police after he assaulted her during a supposedly routine pregnancy exam in 2012, leading to his arrest, but Columbia allowed him to go back to work, and he assaulted more women. We are also joined by Laura Beil and Bianca Fortis, who co-wrote the new report. Beil also hosts the podcast Exposed: Cover-Up at Columbia University.

=> ↺ DeSmog ☛ Nearly 200 Environmentalists Were Murdered for Their Work in 2022

• In early June of last year, Indigenous rights expert Bruno Pereira and Guardian journalist Dom Phillips set off together on a riverboat journey through Brazil’s Javari Valley Indigenous territory, to meet and speak with residents working to protect the area. They would not make it back alive.

• Pereira and Phillips were two of at least 177 environmental and Indigenous land rights advocates killed last year, according to the non-profit organization Global Witness in its latest annual report on risks to environmental activists, while many more were threatened with violence or attacked. The researchers also found that the criminalization of environmental activists, which sometimes precedes violent attacks or murder, is on the rise.

=> ↺ Reason ☛ Students for Fair Admissions and the End of Racial Classification as We Know It

• My article, Students for Fair Admissions and the End of Racial Classification as We Know It, will be published in the new Cato Supreme Court Review on Monday.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Disney, Spectrum End Cable Blackout, Nothing Meaningfully Changes

• Last week we discussed how a contract dispute between Charter (Spectrum) and Disney resulted in 15 million Charter customers losing access to more than 20 ABC and ESPN channels they pay for. We also noted how despite a lot of weird claims this standoff would somehow dramatically reshape television, that nothing would actually change and the only real outcome would be higher rates for consumers.

Monopolies

=> ↺ [Old] Computer World ☛ Limos and bonuses lure staff

• In its statement of claim Borland alleges that “the method Microsoft chose to develop its answer to Delphi, as well as Borland C++ and Internet tools, was to hire away the people at Borland who had developed the products”.

=> ↺ [Old] CNET ☛ Borland sues Microsoft over brain drain

• Saying that he “just wants Microsoft to leave us alone,” Borland International (BORL) CEO Delbert Yocam today filed a lawsuit against Microsoft (MSFT), claiming that the software giant is hiring away Borland’s key employees to put it out of business.

• Borland claims that in the past 30 months, Microsoft has hired 34 of the ailing software developer’s key employees by offering “large signing bonuses of several millions of dollars and other incentives,” according to the suit. “It’s like we’re in the desert, and Microsoft is stealing our water bottle,” said the executive, clearly frustrated by Microsoft’s recruiting operations.

=> ↺ New York Times ☛ In Antitrust Trial, Former Google Employee Details History of Search Deals

• Chris Barton, a former Google employee who testified on Wednesday, said the company had been willing to pay mobile companies mainly to become their exclusive default search engine. “That’s the kind of primary goal of the partnership,” he said of the agreements.

Trademarks

=> ↺ TTAB Blog ☛ Precedential No. 25: TTAB Deems Grace Period Petition for Cancellation Moot When Registrant Failed to Renew

• The Board dismissed a petition for cancellation (of a registration for the mark ROD & CUSTOM for “magazines about automobiles”) that was filed during the six-month grace period for (second) renewal of the challenged registration. When the registrant did not file its renewal application, the registration automatically expired as of its twentieth anniversary date, and so the later-filed petition for cancellation was deemed moot. Thomas C Taylor v. Motor Trend Group, LLC, Cancellation No. 92081731 (September 8, 2023) [precedential].

Copyrights

=> ↺ Torrent Freak ☛ Bungie’s Copyright Infringement Claim Against AimJunkies Fails to Convince Court

• Game developer Bungie has failed to convince the court that cheat seller AimJunkies infringed its “Destiny 2″ copyrights and trademarks. Judge Thomas Zilly denied the motions for summary judgment, which means that the issues are now ripe for trial, if the case gets that far. According to AimJunkies’ lawyer, the day of reckoning is near.

=> ↺ Techdirt ☛ Bungie Fails To Get Summary Judgement On Aimjunkies For Cheat-Selling… Again

• I must admit that before even beginning to write this story up about Bungie losing in court in the summary judgement phase on copyright and trademark infringement claims against cheat-seller Aimjunkies, I had to check the dates on the TorrentFreak post several times. That’s because we already talked about this a year ago, when Bungie had its initial suit against Aimjunkies dismissed after Judge Thomas Zilly rejected the claims on the grounds that Bungie had failed to offer any evidence of copyright infringement. That dismissal did leave room for Bungie to re-file, though, which Bungie did, this time promising it had solid evidence to bring before the court. Judge Zilly once again fielded Bungie’s request for summary judgment. And, once again, Judge Zilly has handed Bungie a loss, denying summary judgment, due to a lack of evidence.

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