Author Archives: Robin Edgar

About Robin Edgar

Organisational Structures | Technology and Science | Military, IT and Lifestyle consultancy | Social, Broadcast & Cross Media | Flying aircraft

BBC Gives Away huge Sound Effects Library, with readable and sensible terms of use

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BBC Sound Effects website top

Terms for using our content

A few rules to stop you (and us) getting in trouble.

a) Don’t mess with our content
What do we mean by that? This sort of thing:

  • Removing or altering BBC logos, and copyright notices from the content (if there are any)
  • Not removing content from your device or systems when we ask you to. This might happen when we take down content either temporarily or permanently, which we can do at any time, without notice.
b) Don’t use our content for harmful or offensive purposes
Here’s a list of things that may harm or offend:

  • Insulting, misleading, discriminating or defaming (damaging people’s reputations)
  • Promoting pornography, tobacco or weapons
  • Putting children at risk
  • Anything illegal. Like using hate speech, inciting terrorism or breaking privacy law
  • Anything that would harm the BBC’s reputation
  • Using our content for political or social campaigning purposes or for fundraising.
c) Don’t make it look like our content costs money

If you put our content on a site that charges for content, you have to say it is free-to-view.

d) Don’t make our content more prominent than non-BBC content

Otherwise it might look like we’re endorsing you. Which we’re not allowed to do.

Also, use our content alongside other stuff (e.g. your own editorial text). You can’t make a service of your own that contains only our content.

Speaking of which…

e) Don’t exaggerate your relationship with the BBC

You can’t say we endorse, promote, supply or approve of you.

And you can’t say you have exclusive access to our content.

f) Don’t associate our content with advertising or sponsorship
That means you can’t:

  • Put any other content between the link to our content and the content itself. So no ads or short videos people have to sit through
  • Put ads next to or over it
  • Put any ads in a web page or app that contain mostly our content
  • Put ads related to their subject alongside our content. So no trainer ads with an image of shoes
  • Add extra content that means you’d earn money from our content.
g) Don’t be misleading about where our content came from

You can’t remove or alter the copyright notice, or imply that someone else made it.

h) Don’t pretend to be the BBC
That includes:

  • Using our brands, trade marks or logos without our permission
  • Using or mentioning our content in press releases and other marketing materials
  • Making money from our content. You can’t charge people to view our images, for example
  • Sharing our content. For example, no uploading to social media sites. Sharing links is OK.

Source: Licensing | BBC Sound Effects

This is how licenses should be written. Well done, BBC.

Researchers discover new cognitive blueprint for making and breaking habits

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“Habits play a central role in our daily lives, from making that first cup of coffee in the morning, to the route we take to work, and the routine we follow to prepare for bed. Our research reveals why these automatic behaviours are so powerful — and how we can harness our brain’s mechanisms to change them. We bring together decades of research from laboratory studies as well as research from real-world settings to get a picture of how habits work in the human brain.”

Our habits are shaped by two brain systems — one that triggers automatic responses to familiar cues and another that enables goal-directed control. So for example, scrolling through social media when you are bored is the result of automatic response system, and putting your phone away to focus on work is enabled by the goal-directed control brain system.

It is precisely the imbalance between these two brain systems that is key. The research found that such imbalance can lead to everyday action slips such as inadvertently entering an old password instead of the current one. In more extreme cases, Professor Gillan’s research has shown that it can even contribute to compulsive behaviours seen in conditions such as obsessive compulsivedisorder, substance use disorders, and eating disorders.

Habits happen when automatic responses outweigh our ability to consciously control them. Good and bad habits are two sides of the same coin — both arise when automatic responses overpower goal-directed control. By understanding this dynamic, we can start to use it to our own advantage, to both make and break habits.

The new framework describes several factors that can influence the balance between automatic responses and goal-directed control:

  • Repetition and reinforcement are essential to making our habits stick. Repeating a behaviour builds strong associations between environmental cues and responses, while rewarding the behaviour makes it more likely to be repeated. In leveraging the same mechanism to break habits, we can replace old behaviours with new ones to create competing automatic responses.
  • The environment also plays a key role in habit change. Adjusting your surroundings can help; making desired behaviours easier to access encourages good habits, while removing cues that trigger unwanted behaviour disrupts bad habits.
  • Knowing how to engage your own goal-directed system can help strengthen and weaken habits. Disengaging from effortful control, such as listening to a podcast while exercising, accelerates habit formation. However, stress, time pressure, and fatigue can trigger a return to old patterns, so staying mindful and intentional is key when trying to break them.

Dr Buabang explains, “Our research provides a new ‘playbook’ for behaviour change by connecting brain science with practical, real-world applications. We include effective strategies like implementation intentions, so-called, if-then plans (“if situation X occurs, then I will do Y”), and also integrate clinical interventions such as exposure therapy, habit reversal therapy, contingency management, and brain stimulation. It is important that our framework not only captures existing interventions but also provides targets for the development of new ones.”

This research also opens new possibilities for personalising treatments based on how different people form and break habits, making interventions more effective.

Source: Researchers discover new cognitive blueprint for making and breaking habits | ScienceDaily

Hacking Back the AI-Hacker: Prompt Injection by your LLM as a Defense Against LLM-driven Cyberattacks

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Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being harnessed to automate cyberattacks, making sophisticated exploits more accessible and scalable. In response, we propose a new defense strategy tailored to counter LLM-driven cyberattacks. We introduce Mantis, a defensive framework that exploits LLMs’ susceptibility to adversarial inputs to undermine malicious operations. Upon detecting an automated cyberattack, Mantis plants carefully crafted inputs into system responses, leading the attacker’s LLM to disrupt their own operations (passive defense) or even compromise the attacker’s machine (active defense). By deploying purposefully vulnerable decoy services to attract the attacker and using dynamic prompt injections for the attacker’s LLM, Mantis can autonomously hack back the attacker. In our experiments, Mantis consistently achieved over 95% effectiveness against automated LLM-driven attacks. To foster further research and collaboration, Mantis is available as an open-source tool: this https URL

Source: [2410.20911] Hacking Back the AI-Hacker: Prompt Injection as a Defense Against LLM-driven Cyberattacks

Epic Allows Internet Archive To Distribute For Free ‘Unreal’ & ‘Unreal Tournament’ Forever

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One of the most frustrating aspects in the ongoing conversation around the preservation of older video games, also known as cultural output, is the collision of IP rights and some publishers’ unwillingness to both continue to support and make available these older games and their refusal to release those same games into the public domain so that others can do so. It creates this crazy situation in which a company insists on retaining its copyrights over a video game that it has effectively disappeared with no good or legitimate way for the public to preserve them. As I’ve argued for some time now, this breaks the copyright contract with the public and should come with repercussions. The whole bargain that is copyright law is that creative works are granted a limited monopoly on the production of that work, with that work eventually arriving into the public domain. If that arrival is not allowed to occur, the bargain is broken, and not by anyone who would supposedly “infringe” on the copyright of that work.

[…]

But it just doesn’t have to be like this. Companies could be willing to give up their iron-fisted control over their IP for these older games they aren’t willing to support or preserve themselves and let others do it for them. And if you need a real world example of that, you need look only at how Epic is working with The Internet Archive to do exactly that.

Epic, now primarily known for Fortnite and the Unreal Engine, has given permission for two of the most significant video games ever made, Unreal and Unreal Tournament, to be freely accessed via the Internet Archive. As spotted by RPS, via ResetEra, the OldUnreal group announced the move on their Discord, along with instructions for how to easily download and play them on modern machines.

Huge kudos to Epic for being cool with this, because while it shouldn’t be unusual to happily let people freely share a three-decade-old game you don’t sell any more, it’s vanishingly rare. And if you remain in any doubt, we just got word back from Epic confirming they’re on board.

“We can confirm that Unreal 1 and Unreal Tournament are available on archive.org,” a spokesperson told us by email, “and people are free to independently link to and play these versions.”

Importantly, OldUnreal and The Internet Archive very much know what they’re doing here. Grabbing the ZIP file for the game sleekly pulls the ISO directly from The Internet Archive, installs it, and there are instructions for how to get the game up and running on modern hardware. This is obviously a labor of love from fans dedicated toward keeping these two excellent games alive.

[…]

But this is just two games. What would be really nice to see is this become a trend, or, better yet, a program run by The Internet Archive. Don’t want to bother to preserve your old game? No problem, let the IA do it for you!

Source: Epic Allows Internet Archive To Distribute For Free ‘Unreal’ & ‘Unreal Tournament’ Forever | Techdirt

Climate Change Is Altering Animals’ Colors

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As our planet warms up and rain patterns shift, the feathers and skin of many species are changing colors, often getting lighter. Snails in the Netherlands are going from brown to yellow. In a species of tropical bee in Costa Rica, the proportion of orange to blue individuals is increasing. Lizards in France are turning lighter, and so are many insects and birds across the globe. “Under global warming one would expect that the darker species, and darker individuals, might decline,” says Stefan Pinkert, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at Yale University.

[…]

Melanins, the most common pigments in birds and mammals, may be affected by rising temperatures and changing rain patterns. “If you have more melanin in your skin or your fur or feathers, then it tends to absorb more heat,” says Matthew Shawkey, an evolutionary biologist at Ghent University in Belgium. This may be a disadvantage as the temperature soars, he says, because it can cause animals to overheat. On the flip side, if it rains more, pathogens tend to thrive. In such conditions, dark melanins can be protective because they “toughen up tissues,” Shawkey says.

A rule proposed by Charles Bogert, an American herpetologist, in a 1949 paper, predicts that hotter climates should have a higher presence of ectotherms, or so-called cold-blooded animals, that are lighter in color and therefore less likely to overheat. (These animals, such as reptiles and insects, can’t regulate their own body temperature, and they rely on external heat sources.)

In recent years, science has not only confirmed Bogert’s rule but also extended it to endothermic, or warm-blooded, species. It’s not just frogs, toads, snakes and midges that are lighter in warmer regions; birds get lighter as well. A 2024 analysis of more than 10,000 species of birds showed that in hot places, white and yellow feathers win over blue and black ones.

[…]

With global warming, some animal populations are becoming even lighter. Between 1967 and 2010, as temperatures in the Netherlands rose by 1.5 to two degrees Celsius, brown land snails gave way to yellow ones. Between 1990 and 2020 in the U.K., dragonflies and damselflies got progressively lighter, too—as Pinkert and his colleagues found in a 2023 paper. And if you’ve looked closely at some dragonflies, you may have noticed that they now have fewer dark ornaments on their wings.

In one recent study conducted in North America, male dragonflies from 10 different species had the smallest melanin-based color patches on their wings in the warmest years between 2005 and 2019. In this same time period, pretty spots also seemed to pale on Mediterranean Blue Tits—tiny birds with yellow chests and azure, hatlike markings on their head. Between 2015 and 2019, the blue head patches of tit populations around Montpellier, France, have gotten lighter by approximately 23 percent—a change related to the rise in local temperatures.

[…]

Besides individual ability to adjust color based on temperature, animal populations living in warming regions may become lighter simply because paler animals move into new areas. There may be genetic changes at play, too, Pinkert says, but we still have “a critical knowledge gap” about how such evolution may be playing out.

While Bogert’s rule appears straightforward in regions that heat up yet remain dry, such as the Mediterranean, if rainfall increases alongside temperatures, species may turn dark instead of light.

[…]

When Delhey tested what happens when both temperatures and precipitation increase with climate change, he found that, at least in birds, “the effects of humidity are generally much, much stronger,” he says. Delhey and his colleagues mapped the plumage colors of all species of passerine birds, of which there are more than 5,000, to climates in which they live. They found that the animals were lighter where warm and dry but darker where warm and humid. Roulin and his colleagues found something similar in a 2024 study of thousands of museum specimens of barn owls collected across the globe between 1901 and 2018. The researchers showed that over time, plumage colors became lighter where the climate got warmer and drier but darker where both temperature and precipitation increased. “Where the climate change was stronger, the change in color was stronger,” Roulin says.

[…]

Source: Climate Change Is Altering Animals’ Colors | Scientific American

Mystery Palo Alto Networks 0-day RCE now actively exploited – shut off access to Management Interface NOW

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A critical zero-day vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks’ firewall management interface that can allow an unauthenticated attacker to remotely execute code is now officially under active exploitation.

According to the equipment maker, the vulnerability requires no user interaction or privileges to exploit, and its attack complexity is deemed “low.” There’s no CVE number assigned to the flaw, which received a 9.3 out of 10 CVSSv4.0 rating, and currently has no patch.

Exploitation potentially allows a miscreant to take control of a compromised firewall, providing further access into a network. That said, the intruder must be able to reach the firewall’s management interface, either internally or across the internet.

Palo Alto Networks earlier urged network hardening of its products – recommending locking off access to the interface, basically – after learning of an unverified, mystery remote code execution (RCE) flaw in its devices’ PAN-OS some days ago. But in a late Thursday update, it confirmed it “has observed threat activity exploiting an unauthenticated remote command execution vulnerability against a limited number of firewall management interfaces which are exposed to the internet.”

Because of this, customers must “immediately” make sure that only trusted, internal IPs can access the management interface on their Palo Alto firewall systems — and cut off all access to the interface from the open internet.

[…]

Source: Mystery Palo Alto Networks 0-day RCE now actively exploited • The Register

Automotive Grade Linux Launches New Expert Group to Help Automakers Manage Open Source Activities. Lots of Automakers are already onboard.

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 Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative cross-industry effort developing an open source platform for Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs), has created a new Open Source Program Office (OSPO) Expert Group (EG). Led by Toyota, the OSPO EG will promote the establishment of OSPOs within the automotive industry and encourage the sharing of information and best practices between them.

Open source software has become more prevalent across the automotive industry as automakers invest more time and resources into software development. Automakers like Toyota and Subaru are using open source software for infotainment and instrument cluster applications. Other open source applications across the automotive industry include R&D, testing, vehicle-to-cloud and fleet management.

“Historically, there has been little code contributed back to the open source community. Often, this was because the internal procedures or IT infrastructure weren’t in place to support open source contributions,” said Dan Cauchy, Executive Director of Automotive Grade Linux. “The rise of SDVs has led to a growing trend of automakers not just using, but also contributing, to open source software. Many organizations are also establishing OSPOs to streamline and organize open source activities to better support business goals.”

Automakers including Toyota, Honda, and Volvo have already established Open Source Program Offices. The new AGL OSPO Expert Group provides a neutral space for them to share pain points and collaborate on solutions, exchange information, and develop best practices that can help other automakers build their own OSPOs.

[…]

The AGL Open Source Program Office Expert Group meets biweekly on Tuesdays. Learn more about how to get involved here.

Source: Automotive Grade Linux Launches New Expert Group Led by Toyota to Help Automakers Manage Open Source Activities – Automotive Grade Linux

HarperCollins Confirms It Has a Deal to Bleed Authors to allow their Work to be used as training for AI Company

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HarperCollins, one of the biggest publishers in the world, made a deal with an “artificial intelligence technology company” and is giving authors the option to opt in to the agreement or pass, 404 Media can confirm.

[…]

On Friday, author Daniel Kibblesmith, who wrote the children’s book Santa’s Husband and published it with HarperCollins, posted screenshots on Bluesky of an email he received, seemingly from his agent, informing him that the agency was approached by the publisher about the AI deal. “Let me know what you think, positive or negative, and we can handle the rest of this for you,” the screenshotted text in an email to Kibblesmith says. The screenshots show the agent telling Kibblesmith that HarperCollins was offering $2,500 (non-negotiable).

[…]

“You are receiving this memo because we have been informed by HarperCollins that they would like permission to include your book in an overall deal that they are making with a large tech company to use a broad swath of nonfiction books for the purpose of providing content for the training of an Al language learning model,” the screenshots say. “You are likely aware, as we all are, that there are controversies surrounding the use of copyrighted material in the training of Al models. Much of the controversy comes from the fact that many companies seem to be doing so without acknowledging or compensating the original creators. And of course there is concern that these Al models may one day make us all obsolete.”

“It seems like they think they’re cooked, and they’re chasing short money while they can. I disagree,” Kibblesmith told the AV Club. “The fear of robots replacing authors is a false binary. I see it as the beginning of two diverging markets, readers who want to connect with other humans across time and space, or readers who are satisfied with a customized on-demand content pellet fed to them by the big computer so they never have to be challenged again.”

Source: HarperCollins Confirms It Has a Deal to Sell Authors’ Work to AI Company

DOJ Will Push Google to Sell Chrome to help Break Search Monopoly

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Top Justice Department antitrust officials have decided to ask a judge to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell off its Chrome browser in what would be a historic crackdown on one of the world’s biggest tech companies.

The department will ask the judge, who ruled in August that Google illegally monopolized the search market, to require measures related to artificial intelligence and its Android smartphone operating system, according to people familiar with the plans.

Antitrust officials, along with states that have joined the case, also plan to recommend Wednesday that federal judge Amit Mehta impose data licensing requirements, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing a confidential matter.

[…]

Owning the world’s most popular web browser is key for Google’s ads business. The company is able to see activity from signed-in users, and use that data to more effectively target promotions, which generate the bulk of its revenue. Google has also been using Chrome to direct users to its flagship AI product, Gemini, which has the potential to evolve from an answer-bot to an assistant that follows users around the web.

[…]

Source: DOJ Will Push Google to Sell Chrome to Break Search Monopoly – Bloomberg

It’s a start.

Scientists Who Taught Rats To Drive Little Cars Say They Absolutely Love It

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the scientists who taught rats how to drive are back, and their latest research suggests rats enjoy the open road as much as we do, with a new video showing one revving motor of its little car in anticipation of a joyride.

Kelly Lambert, the University of Richmond neuroscientist who developed the initial experiment, conducted new tests to determine whether rats performed a task (e.g., driving) simply for a physical reward (e.g., Froot Loop) or for an emotional one (e.g., happiness).

In the original university research study, the lab rats were taught the absolute basics, such as getting into the vehicle and grabbing a small wire that acted as the throttle. The “car” was equally basic, manufactured from a plastic cereal container. That rudimentary rat car eventually evolved to include steering via three copper bars that signified left, center, and right for steering. The reward, though, was always the sweet crunch of a Froot Loop.

The catalyst for the updated cognitive test was the rats’ behavior, which resembled eagerness and anticipation when Lambert arrived at the lab. In an essay written for The Conversation, Lambert writes: “The three driving-trained rats eagerly ran to the side of the cage, jumping up like my dog does when asked if he wants to take a walk.”

For the new tests, the rats received a new car: Rat Car II. Courtesy of the university’s robotics department, the redesigned rat-operated vehicle, or ROV, featured rat-proof wiring and tires as well as ergonomic driving levers. Lambert said the little EVs were “akin to a rodent version of Tesla’s Cybertruck.”

According to Lambert, the rats had already supported the idea of neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to continually adapt and change in response to life experiences. After all, driving a car requires more brain activity and complex thought processes than wandering through a maze. Trial and error will eventually get you to the snackies, but driving requires additional skill and anticipation.

As for the updated test, the rats were given a choice: a short or long route to the Froot Loop. The rats could scurry to sweetness, which was a much shorter journey, or they could take the long way via car. To the team’s surprise, two of the three rats took the scenic route. Not only that but in other tests, the rats would hop into the car and immediately hit the throttle before the vehicle was placed back on the ground.

“This response suggests that the rats enjoy both the journey and the rewarding destination,” Lambert said. Relatable.

The rats’ raised tails were also an indicator of excitement, similar to a dog wagging its tails happy. Lambert contacted other neuroscientists regarding the raised rattails. Apparently, the S-shaped curl exhibited by Lambert’s rats resembled a “gentler form” of what’s known as the Straub tail. The reaction was typical of rodents that had been given opioids and linked to increased dopamine.

Lambert says that studying positive experiences and how they shape the brain is just as important as researching negative emotions, which we often focus on minimizing rather than elevating. Emotions like anger, fear, and stress.

“In a world of immediate gratification, these rats offer insights into the neural principles guiding everyday behavior,” Lambert concluded. “Rather than pushing buttons for instant rewards, they remind us that planning, anticipating, and enjoying the ride may be key to a healthy brain.”

Now, that’s one rat race I can get behind.

Source: Scientists Who Taught Rats To Drive Little Cars Say They Absolutely Love It

Goodbye, annoying car touchscreens. Welcome back, buttons?

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For years, car safety experts and everyday drivers have bemoaned the loss of the humble button. Modern cars have almost unilaterally replaced dashboards full of tactile knobs with sleek, iPad-like digital displays, despite concerns these alluring devices might be making distracted driving worse. But there are signs the tide might be shifting.

After going all in on touch screens for years, Korean carmaker Hyundai is publicly shifting gears. Hyundai Design North America Vice President Ha Hak-soo remarked on the shift during a recent interview with JoongAng Daily admitting the company was lured in by the “wow” factor of massive, all-in-one screen-based infotainment systems. Customers apparently didn’t share that enthusiasm.

“When we tested with our focus group, we realized that people get stressed, annoyed and steamed when they want to control something in a pinch but are unable to do so,” Ha said.

Now the company is reversing course. Hyundai previously announced it would use physical buttons and knobs for many in-cabin controls across its new lineup of vehicles. They aren’t alone. Porsche and Volkswagen are amongst the major brands planning to buck the trend. It’s part of what looks like a broader acknowledgment of so-called “screen fatigue” setting in amongst car buyers.

[…]

it turns out drivers, for the most part, aren’t too interested in all that choice and functionality. A survey of U.S. car owners by JD Power last year found a consecutive two-year decline in overall consumer satisfaction with their vehicles for the first time in 28 years. The main driver of that dissatisfaction was complicated, difficult to navigate touch-based infotainment systems. A more recent JD Power survey found that most drivers ranked passenger-side display screens–a growing trend in the industry–as simply “not necessary.” Only 56% of drivers surveyed said they preferred to use their vehicle’s built-in infotainment systems to play audio.

“This year’s study makes it clear that owners find some technologies of little use and/or are continually annoying,” JD Power director of user experience benchmarking and technology  Kathleen Rizk, said in a statement.

There’s also evidence a growing reliance on overly complicated touch based infotainment displays may be a safety hazard. A 2017 study conducted by the AAA Foundation claims drivers navigating through in-car screens to program navigation apps and other features were “visually and mentally” distracted for an average of 40 seconds. A car traveling at 50mph could cover half a mile during that time. Buttons and knobs aren’t totally distraction-free, but research shows their tactile response allows drivers to use them more easily without looking down and away from the road. The European New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), an independent safety organization, stepped into the debate earlier this year and announced it would grant five-star safety ratings to cars with physical controls for turn signals, windshield wipers, horns, and other critical features.

[…]

Source: Goodbye, annoying touchscreens. Welcome back, buttons? | Popular Science

The Onion buys Alex Jones’s Infowars at auction

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Satirical news publication The Onion has bought Infowars, the media organisation headed by right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, for an undisclosed price at a court-ordered auction.

The Onion said that the bid was secured with the backing of families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who won a $1.5bn (£1.18bn) defamation lawsuit against Jones for spreading false rumours about the massacre.

A judge in Texas ordered the auction in September, and various groups – both Jones’s allies and detractors – had suggested they would bid for the company.

[…]

The Onion plans to rebuild the website and feature well-known internet humour writers and content creators.

“We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website,” said Ben Collins, a former NBC News journalist who is chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, in a statement.

The website also posted a jokey article, saying that Infowars “has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society”.

The article went on to say that the satirical publication “has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars” and “forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars”.

A lawyer for families of eight of the Sandy Hook victims said the bid had their support.

“By divesting Jones of Infowars’ assets, the families and the team at The Onion have done a public service and will meaningfully hinder Jones’ ability to do more harm,” lawyer Chris Mattei said in a statement.

Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie died in the Sandy Hook attack, said: “The world needs to see that having a platform does not mean you are above accountability – the dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for.”

[…]

Source: The Onion buys Alex Jones’s Infowars at auction

Data broker gathers records on 100M+ people, gets stolen, put up for sale

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What’s claimed to be more than 183 million records of people’s contact details and employment info has been stolen or otherwise obtained from a data broker and put up for sale by a miscreant.

The underworld merchant, using the handle KryptonZambie, has put a $6,000 price tag on the information in a cybercrime forum posting. They are offering 100,000 records as a sample for interested buyers, and claim the data as a whole includes people’s corporate email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, names of employers, job titles, and links to LinkedIn and other social media profiles.

We believe this information is already publicly available, and was gathered up by a data-broker called Pure Incubation, now called DemandScience. That biz told us it was aware of its data being put up for sale, and sought to clarify what had been obtained – business-related contact details that are already out there.

“It is also important to note that we process publicly available business contact information, and do not collect, store, or process consumer data or any type of credential information or sensitive personal information including accounts, passwords, home addresses or other personal, non-business information,” a DemandScience spokesperson said in an email to The Register.

Seems to us this is the circle of data brokerage life. One org scrapes a load of info from the internet to profit from, someone else comes along and gets that info one way or another to profit from, sells it to others to profit from…

[…]

In a subsequent report by HIBP founder and Microsoft regional director Troy Hunt, which includes a screenshot of an email from DemandScience – sent to someone whose info was in the data peddled by KryptonZambie – that blamed the leak on a “system that has been decommissioned for approximately two years.”

[…]

After coming across the pile of data for sale, and hearing from someone whose personal information was swept up in the affair, Hunt said he decided to check whether his own info was included. He did find a decade-old email address and an incorrect job title.

“I’ll be entirely transparent and honest here – my exact words after finding this were ‘motherfucker!’ True story, told uncensored here because I want to impress on the audience how I feel when my data turns up somewhere publicly,” Hunt wrote.

We couldn’t have said it any better ourselves. ®

Source: Business records on 100M+ people swiped, put up for sale • The Register

Meta Fined €798 Million by EU Over Classified Ads Dominance in Facebook

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Meta Platforms Inc. was hit with a €798 million ($841 million) fine by European Union regulators by tying its Facebook Marketplace service to the social network, the US tech giant’s first ever penalty for EU antitrust violations.

In a groundbreaking decision, the European Commission ordered Meta to stop tying its classified-ads service to Facebook’s sprawling social media platform, and refrain from imposing unfair trading conditions on rival second-hand goods platforms.

“Meta tied its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and imposed unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers,” EU antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, said. “It did so to benefit its own service Facebook Marketplace.”

[…]

The decision follows a probe into how Meta leverages Facebook’s billions of users to squeeze out rivals. EU watchdogs said Menlo Park California-based Meta also used data from rival platforms that advertised on Facebook to boost its Marketplace service.

[…]

Amazon.com Inc. dodged EU fines in a similar case in 2022, targeting how the US. ecommerce firm allegedly pillaged rivals’ sales data to unfairly favor it own products. Regulators accepted a number of proposals from Amazon, including a vow to stop using non-public data on independent sellers on its marketplace for its competing retail business.

Facebook’s Marketplace has also been targeted by other regulators. It settled a probe with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority after agreeing to a slate of concessions.

[…]

While the EU can levy fines of 10% of global sales, its penalties are usually much smaller and take into account severity of the allegations and the sub-markets involved.

That’s led to frustration among regulators and a clamor for tougher remedies, including more structural solutions. Like the US, the EU has been weighing a potential breakup of Alphabet Inc.’s Google to allay concerns over its adtech dominance.

The new Digital Markets Act bolsters traditional antitrust law by placing strict guardrails on Silicon Valley firms.

[…]

Source: Meta Fined €798 Million by EU Over Classified Ads Dominance – Bloomberg

Apple faces UK iCloud monopoly compensation claim worth $3.8B

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U.K. consumer rights group ‘Which?’ is filing a legal claim against Apple under competition law on behalf of some 40 million users of iCloud, its cloud storage service.

The collective proceeding lawsuit, which is seeking £3 billion in compensation damages (around $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), alleges that Apple has broken competition rules by giving its own cloud storage service preferential treatment and effectively locking people into paying for iCloud at “rip-off” prices.

“iOS has a monopoly and is in control of Apple’s operating systems and it is incumbent on Apple not to use that dominance to gain an unfair advantage in related markets, like the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what has happened,” Which wrote in a press release announcing the filing of the claim with the U.K.’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).

The lawsuit accuses Apple of encouraging users of its devices to sign up for iCloud for photo storage and other data storage needs, while simultaneously making it difficult for consumers to use alternative storage providers — including by not allowing them to store or back up all of their phone’s data with a third-party provider.

“iOS users then have to pay for the service once photos, notes, messages and other data go over the free 5GB limit,” Which noted.

The suit also accuses Apple of overcharging U.K. consumers for iCloud subscriptions owing to the lack of competition. “Apple raised the price of iCloud for UK consumers by between 20% and 29% across its storage tiers in 2023,” it wrote, saying it’s seeking damages for all affected Apple customers — and estimating that individual consumers could be owed an average of £70 (around $90), depending on how long they’ve been paying Apple for iCloud services.

A similar lawsuit — arguing Apple unlawfully monopolized the market for cloud storage — was filed in the U.S. back in March and remains pending after the company failed to get it tossed.

[…]

Source: Apple faces UK ‘iCloud monopoly’ compensation claim worth $3.8B | TechCrunch

USAF Flight Test Boss on use of AI at Edwards

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[…]

“Right now we’re at a point as generation AI is coming along and it’s a really exciting time. We’re experimenting with ways to use new tools across the entire test process, from test planning to test execution, from test analysis to test reporting. With investments from the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office [CDAO] we have approved under Control Unclassified Information [CUI] a large language model that resides in the cloud, on a government system, where we can input a test description for an item under test and it will provide us with a Test Hazard Analysis [THA]. It will initially provide 10 points, and we can request another 10, and another 10, etc, in the format that we already use. It’s not a finished product, but it’s about 90% there.”

“When we do our initial test brainstorming, it’s typically a very creative process, but that can take humans a long time to achieve. It’s often about coming up with things that people hadn’t considered. Now, instead of engineers spending hours working on this and creating the administrative forms, the AI program creates all of the points in the correct format, freeing up the engineers to do what humans are really good at – thinking critically about what it all means.”

“So we have an AI tool for THA, and now we’ve expanded it to generate test cards from our test plans that we use in the cockpit and in the mission control rooms. It uses the same large language model but trained on the test card format. So we input the detailed test plan, which includes the method of the test, measures of effectiveness, and we can ask it to generate test cards. Rather than spending a week generating these cards, it takes about two minutes!”

The X-62A takes off from Edwards AFB. Jamie Hunter

Wickert says the Air Force Test Center is also blending its AI tooling into test reporting to enable rapid analysis and “quick look” reports. For example, audio recordings of debriefs are now able to be turned into written reports. “That’s old school debriefs being coupled with the AI tooling to produce a report that includes everything that we talked about in the audio and it produces it in a format that we use,” explained Wickert.

“There’s also the AI that’s under test, when the system under test is the AI, such as the X-62A VISTA [Variable-stability In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft]. VISTA is a sandbox for testing out different AI agents, in fact I just flew it and we did a BVR [Beyond Visual Range] simulated cruise missile intercept under the AI control, it was amazing. We were 20 miles away from the target and I simply pushed a button to engage the AI agent and then we continued hands off and it flew the entire intercept and saddled up behind the target. That’s an example of AI under test and we use our normal test procedures, safety planning, and risk management all apply to that.”

“There’s also AI assistance to test. In our flight-test control rooms, if we’re doing envelope expansion, flutter, or loads, or handling qualities – in fact we’re about to start high angle-of-attack testing on the Boeing T-7, for example – we have engineers sitting there watching and monitoring from the control room. The broad task in this case is to compare the actual handling against predictions from the models to determine if the model is accurate. We do this as incremental step ups in envelope expansion, and when the reality and the model start to diverge, that’s when we hit pause because we don’t understand the system itself or the model is wrong. An AI assistant in the control room could really help with real-time monitoring of tests and we are looking at this right now. It has a huge impact with respect to digital engineering and digital material management.”

“I was the project test pilot on the Greek Peace Xenia F-16 program. One example of that work was that we had to test a configuration with 600-gallon wing tanks and conformal tanks, which equated to 22,000 pounds of gas on a 20,000-pound airplane, so a highly overloaded F-16. We were diving at 1.2 mach, and we spent four hours trying to hit a specific test point. We never actually  managed to hit it. That’s incredibly low test efficiency, but you’re doing it in a very traditional way – here’s a test point, go out and fly the test point, with very tight tolerances. Then you get the results and compare them to the model. Sometimes we do that real time, linked up with the control room, and it can typically take five or 10 minutes for each one. So, there’s typically a long time between test points before the engineer can say that the predictions are still good, you’re cleared to the next test point.”

A heavily-instrumented F-16D returns to Edwards AFB after a mission. Jamie Hunter

“AI in the control room can now do comparison work in real time, with predictive analysis and digital modeling. Instead of having a test card that says you need to fly at six Gs plus or minus 1/10th of a G, at 20,000 feet plus or minus 400 feet pressure altitude, at 0.8 mach plus or minus 0.05, now you can just fly a representative maneuver somewhere around 20,000 feet and make sure you get through 0.8 mach and just do some rollercoaster stuff and a turn. In real time in the control room you’re projecting the continuous data that you’re getting via the aircraft’s telemetry onto a reduced order model, and that’s the product.”

“When Dr Will Roper started trumpeting digital engineering, he was very clear that in the old days we graduated from a model to test. In the new era of digital engineering, we graduate from tests to a validated model. That’s with AI as an assistant, being smarter about how we do tests, with the whole purpose of being able to accelerate because the warfighter is urgently asking for the capability that we are developing.”

[…]

Source: Flight Test Boss Details How China Threat Is Rapidly Changing Operations At Edwards AFB

Now the copyright industry wants to apply deep, automated blocking to the Internet’s core routers

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A central theme of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) and this blog is that the copyright industry is never satisfied. Now matter how long the term of copyright, publishers and recording companies want more. No matter how harsh the punishments for infringement, the copyright intermediaries want them to be even more severe.

Another manifestation of this insatiability is seen in the ever-widening use of Internet site blocking. What began as a highly-targeted one-off in the UK, when a court ordered the Newzbin2 site to be blocked, has become a favoured method of the copyright industry for cutting off access to thousands of sites around the world, including many blocked by mistake. Even more worryingly, the approach has led to blocks being implemented in some key parts of the Internet’s infrastructure that have no involvement with the material that flows through them: they are just a pipe. For example, last year we wrote about courts ordering the content delivery network Cloudflare to block sites. But even that isn’t enough it seems. A post on TorrentFreak reports on a move to embed site blocking at the very heart of the Internet. This emerges from an interview about the Brazilian telecoms regulator Anatel:

In an interview with Tele.Sintese, outgoing Anatel board member Artur Coimbra recalls the lack of internet infrastructure in Brazil as recently as 2010. As head of the National Broadband Plan under the Ministry of Communications, that’s something he personally addressed. For Anatel today, blocking access to pirate websites and preventing unauthorized devices from communicating online is all in a day’s work.

Here’s the key revelation spotted by TorrentFreak:

“The second step, which we still need to evaluate because some companies want it, and others are more hesitant, is to allow Anatel to have access to the core routers to place a direct order on the router,” Coimbra reveals, referencing IPTV [Internet Protocol television] blocking.

“In these cases, these companies do not need to have someone on call to receive the [blocking] order and then implement it.”

Later on, Coimbra clarifies how far along this plan is:

“Participation is voluntary. We are still testing with some companies. So, it will take some time until it actually happens,” Coimbra says. “I can’t say [how long]. Our inspection team is carrying out tests with some operators, I can’t say which ones.”

Even if this is still in the testing phase, and only with “some” companies, it’s a terrible precedent. It means that blocking – and thus censorship – can be applied automatically, possibly without judicial oversight, to some of the most fundamental parts of the Internet’s plumbing. Once that happens, it will spread, just as the original single site block in the UK has spread worldwide. There’s even a hint that might already be happening. Asked if such blocking is being applied anywhere else, Coimbra replies:

“I don’t know. Maybe in Spain and Portugal, which are more advanced countries in this fight. But I don’t have that information,” Coimbra responds, randomly naming two countries with which Brazil has consulted extensively on blocking matters.

Although it’s not clear from that whether Spain and Portugal are indeed taking this route, the fact that Coimbra suggests that they might be is deeply troubling. And even if they aren’t, we can be sure that the copyright industry will keep demanding Internet blocks and censorship at the deepest level until they get them.

Source: Now the copyright industry wants to apply deep, automated blocking to the Internet’s core routers – Walled Culture

Judge: Just Because AI Trains On Your Publication, Doesn’t Mean It Infringes On Your Copyright. Another case thrown out.

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I get that a lot of people don’t like the big AI companies and how they scrape the web. But these copyright lawsuits being filed against them are absolute garbage. And you want that to be the case, because if it goes the other way, it will do real damage to the open web by further entrenching the largest companies. If you don’t like the AI companies find another path, because copyright is not the answer.

So far, we’ve seen that these cases aren’t doing all that well, though many are still ongoing.

Last week, a judge tossed out one of the early ones against OpenAI, brought by Raw Story and Alternet.

Part of the problem is that these lawsuits assume, incorrectly, that these AI services really are, as some people falsely call them, “plagiarism machines.” The assumption is that they’re just copying everything and then handing out snippets of it.

But that’s not how it works. It is much more akin to reading all these works and then being able to make suggestions based on an understanding of how similar things kinda look, though from memory, not from having access to the originals.

Some of this case focused on whether or not OpenAI removed copyright management information (CMI) from the works that they were being trained on. This always felt like an extreme long shot, and the court finds Raw Story’s arguments wholly unconvincing in part because they don’t show any work that OpenAI distributed without their copyright management info.

For one thing, Plaintiffs are wrong that Section 1202 “grant[ s] the copyright owner the sole prerogative to decide how future iterations of the work may differ from the version the owner published.” Other provisions of the Copyright Act afford such protections, see 17 U.S.C. § 106, but not Section 1202. Section 1202 protects copyright owners from specified interferences with the integrity of a work’s CMI. In other words, Defendants may, absent permission, reproduce or even create derivatives of Plaintiffs’ works-without incurring liability under Section 1202-as long as Defendants keep Plaintiffs’ CMI intact. Indeed, the legislative history of the DMCA indicates that the Act’s purpose was not to guard against property-based injury. Rather, it was to “ensure the integrity of the electronic marketplace by preventing fraud and misinformation,” and to bring the United States into compliance with its obligations to do so under the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty, art. 12(1) (“Obligations concerning Rights Management Information”) and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty….

Moreover, I am not convinced that the mere removal of identifying information from a copyrighted work-absent dissemination-has any historical or common-law analogue.

Then there’s the bigger point, which is that the judge, Colleen McMahon, has a better understanding of how ChatGPT works than the plaintiffs and notes that just because ChatGPT was trained on pretty much the entire internet, that doesn’t mean it’s going to infringe on Raw Story’s copyright:

Plaintiffs allege that ChatGPT has been trained on “a scrape of most of the internet,” Compl. , 29, which includes massive amounts of information from innumerable sources on almost any given subject. Plaintiffs have nowhere alleged that the information in their articles is copyrighted, nor could they do so. When a user inputs a question into ChatGPT, ChatGPT synthesizes the relevant information in its repository into an answer. Given the quantity of information contained in the repository, the likelihood that ChatGPT would output plagiarized content from one of Plaintiffs’ articles seems remote.

Finally, the judge basically says, “Look, I get it, you’re upset that ChatGPT read your stuff, but you don’t have an actual legal claim here.”

Let us be clear about what is really at stake here. The alleged injury for which Plaintiffs truly seek redress is not the exclusion of CMI from Defendants’ training sets, but rather Defendants’ use of Plaintiffs’ articles to develop ChatGPT without compensation to Plaintiffs. See Compl. ~ 57 (“The OpenAI Defendants have acknowledged that use of copyright-protected works to train ChatGPT requires a license to that content, and in some instances, have entered licensing agreements with large copyright owners … They are also in licensing talks with other copyright owners in the news industry, but have offered no compensation to Plaintiffs.”). Whether or not that type of injury satisfies the injury-in-fact requirement, it is not the type of harm that has been “elevated” by Section 1202(b )(i) of the DMCA. See Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 341 (Congress may “elevate to the status of legally cognizable injuries, de facto injuries that were previously inadequate in law.”). Whether there is another statute or legal theory that does elevate this type of harm remains to be seen. But that question is not before the Court today.

While the judge dismisses the case with prejudice and says they can try again, it would appear that she is skeptical they could do so with any reasonable chance of success:

In the event of dismissal Plaintiffs seek leave to file an amended complaint. I cannot ascertain whether amendment would be futile without seeing a proposed amended pleading. I am skeptical about Plaintiffs’ ability to allege a cognizable injury but, at least as to injunctive relief, I am prepared to consider an amended pleading.

I totally get why publishers are annoyed and why they keep suing. But copyright is the wrong tool for the job. Hopefully, more courts will make this clear and we can get past all of these lawsuits.

Source: Judge: Just Because AI Trains On Your Publication, Doesn’t Mean It Infringes On Your Copyright | Techdirt

Mapping the ionosphere with millions of phones

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The ionosphere is a layer of weakly ionized plasma bathed in Earth’s geomagnetic field extending about 50–1,500 kilometres above Earth1. The ionospheric total electron content varies in response to Earth’s space environment, interfering with Global Satellite Navigation System (GNSS) signals, resulting in one of the largest sources of error for position, navigation and timing services2. Networks of high-quality ground-based GNSS stations provide maps of ionospheric total electron content to correct these errors, but large spatiotemporal gaps in data from these stations mean that these maps may contain errors3. Here we demonstrate that a distributed network of noisy sensors—in the form of millions of Android phones—can fill in many of these gaps and double the measurement coverage, providing an accurate picture of the ionosphere in areas of the world underserved by conventional infrastructure. Using smartphone measurements, we resolve features such as plasma bubbles over India and South America, solar-storm-enhanced density over North America and a mid-latitude ionospheric trough over Europe. We also show that the resulting ionosphere maps can improve location accuracy, which is our primary aim. This work demonstrates the potential of using a large distributed network of smartphones as a powerful scientific instrument for monitoring Earth.

[…]

Although measurements from individual mobile phones are noisier than those from conventional monitoring stations, we have shown that millions of phones in concert yield valuable measurements of ionospheric TEC. Other recent work has shown that phone accelerometers can detect earthquakes to provide early warning33 and that phone barometers can improve weather forecasting34. Building on these examples, our work continues to illuminate the potential for mobile phone sensors as a powerful tool to improve the scientific understanding of our planet.

Source: Mapping the ionosphere with millions of phones | Nature

Ubisoft Facing Lawsuit Over Shutting Down Online Game

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In 2014, Ubisoft launched The Crew as an open-world, always-online racing game with a campaign and multiplayer mode. It was a fairly successful game for Ubisoft, spawning two sequels—The Crew 2 and Crew: Motorfest. But in December 2023, Ubisoft suddenly delisted the racing game from digital stores and, in April 2024, completely shut off its servers. This means that even if you bought a physical copy of the game, you can no longer play it. Now, two gamers in the United States who weren’t happy about this are filing a lawsuit against Ubisoft.

As reported by Polygon, on November 4 Matthew Cassell and Alan Liu filed a lawsuit in federal court. The main complaint of the recently filed lawsuit is that the two plaintiffs believe Ubisoft has “duped” consumers by telling them they are buying a game when in reality they are only “renting” a “limited license.” The lawsuit also says that Ubisoft rubbed “salt on the wound” by not making the single-player portion of The Crew playable offline.

[…]

Earlier this year, Ubisoft’s decision to kill The Crew’s servers and make them unplayable led to a firestorm online, and fueled a movement dedicated to fighting back against the ongoing practice of companies killing online games and making them unplayable after people have bought them. Currently, that group is looking for signatures to force European Union lawmakers to address the issue directly.

[…]

Funnily enough, Ubisoft announced in September that it was planning to make sure The Crew 2 and Motorfest get offline modes that will let people keep playing the games even after the servers are shut down. I wonder why they scrambled to announce that?

[…]

Source: Ubisoft Facing Lawsuit Over Shutting Down Always Online Game

LG’s New Stretchable Screen Can Morph like a Piece of Laffy Taffy

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Imagine a display as flexible as plastic wrap—so malleable you could stretch it over your face in a futuristic impression of expert Saran-wrapping serial killer Dexter. LG is supposing the future will be full of such flexible displays, and its latest rendition of the concept screen is capable of stretching up to 50% of its normal length, mainly thanks to the same material used in contact lenses.

[…]

microLED. Like OLED, this display type allows for its self-emitting glow without any kind of backlight. MicroLED is so minuscule, it allows researchers to come up with some unique use cases, such as LG’s prototype.

Lg Bendy Display 1
© Image: LG

The Laffy Taffy screen uses a “special silicon material substrate,” according to LG. It’s the same kind of material used in soft contact lenses, and it’s wired in such a way that you can morph it without fear of breaking it. LG said it can be folded and stretched “over 10,000 times” and still maintain a clear image.

[…]

LG said this new display is 100 ppi (pixels per inch)

[…]

 

Source: LG’s New Stretchable Screen Can Morph like a Piece of Laffy Taffy

Pakistan limits outdoor activities, market hours to curb air pollution-related illness – attacks symptom but not cause

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Pakistan’s Punjab province banned most outdoor activities and ordered shops, markets and malls in some areas to close early from Monday to curb illnesses caused by intense air pollution.
The province has closed educational institutions and public spaces like parks and zoos until Nov. 17 in places including Lahore, the world’s most polluted city in terms of air quality, according to Swiss group IQAir’s live ratings.
The districts of Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad and Gujranwala have seen an unprecedented rise in patients with respiratory diseases, eye and throat irritation, and pink eye disease, the Punjab government said in an order issued late on Sunday.
The new restrictions will also remain in force until Nov. 17.
“The spread of conjunctivitis/ pink eye disease due to bacterial or viral infection, smoke, dust or chemical exposure is posing a serious and imminent threat to public health,” the Punjab government said.
[…]
Lahore’s air quality remained hazardous on Monday, with an index score of more than 600, according to IQAir, but this was significantly lower than the 1,900 that it touched in places earlier this month.
A score of 0-50 is considered good.
[…]
Punjab has blamed its toxic air this year on pollution wafting in from India, where northern parts have also been battling hazardous air, and has said it will take the issue up with the neighbouring country through its foreign ministry.
India’s Supreme Court on Monday directed the Delhi government to decide by Nov. 25 on imposing a perpetual ban on firecrackers, legal news portal Bar and Bench reported.
Firecrackers set off by revellers on Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights celebrated on Oct. 31 this year despite a ban, have aggravated the region’s pollution problem.

Source: Pakistan limits outdoor activities, market hours to curb air pollution-related illness | Reuters

A hint – it’s not just the firecrackers mate. Look at the horrible 2 cylinder engines on the mopeds in the pictures for a start.

Retailers Eye Radio emitting ink on fibres to Stop Shoplifting

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[…] small Spanish technology company, Myruns, and telecommunications operator Telefónica SA about the possible application of a system based on an anti-theft alarm product so thin it’s imperceptible to the naked eye

[…]

The technology from Myruns, in San Sebastian, Spain, may be just one of the efforts to curb thefts that have been studied by Inditex, which declined to comment on specific projects. Myruns’ product, which one of the people says is five times thinner than a human hair, or about a thousandth of an inch, uses a conductive ink derived from cellulose to transmit signals. It can set off alarms if someone walks out of a shop with items whose woven-in tags haven’t been deactivated, according to the people. The novel ink replaces aluminum, the main material used in most alarms. That would mean retailers wouldn’t need to rely on the metal for alarms, making the devices potentially biodegradable and supporting the garments’ recyclability.

Competitors that make threadlike radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology containing metals include Primo1D, an offshoot of a research center in Grenoble, France; and RFID Threads Ltd., in Nottingham, England, formerly known as Adetex.ID.

[…]

Pressure to improve profitability and reduce losses has pushed many retailers to step up their traditional anti-theft efforts. Inditex rival Hennes & Mauritz AB, or H&M, has increased the number of security guards at its stores, including in the US. Associated British Foods Plc’s Primark has also hired more security staff, in addition to investing in closed-circuit television systems and body cameras worn by staff. And in the UK, retailers such as John Lewis, Sainsbury’s and Tesco have teamed up with law enforcement to help fund a team of police and intelligence officers targeting shoplifters.

The lack of visible security can encourage shoplifting, but more drastic measures can impede sales, says Martin Gill, a UK-based consultant whose work involves testing retailers’ security by trying to steal things.

“Certain retail strategies, which aim to boost sales, have made it much easier to steal,” he says. “The key for good security is not to stop theft from happening at all costs, but do as much as possible to reduce the number of offenses. It’s always about the balance between sales and security.”

Source: Retailers Eye High-Tech Tags to Stop Shoplifting – Bloomberg

The Open Source Project DeFlock Is Mapping License Plate Surveillance Cameras All Over the World

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[…] Flock is one of the largest vendors of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in the country. The company markets itself as having the goal to fully “eliminate crime” with the use of ALPRs and other connected surveillance cameras, a target experts say is impossible.

In Huntsville, Freeman noticed that license plate reader cameras were positioned in a circle at major intersections, forming a perimeter that could track any car going into or out of the city’s downtown. He started to look for cameras all over Huntsville and the surrounding areas, and soon found that Flock was not the only game in town. He found cameras owned by Motorola, and a third, owned by a company called Avigilon (a subsidiary of Motorola). Flock and automated license plate reader cameras owned by other companies are now in thousands of neighborhoods around the country. Many of these systems talk to each other and plug into other surveillance systems, making it possible to track people all over the country.

[…]

And so he made a map, and called it DeFlock. DeFlock runs on Open Street Map, an open source, editable mapping software. He began posting signs for DeFlock to the posts holding up Huntsville’s ALPR cameras, and made a post about the project to the Huntsville subreddit, which got good attention from people who lived there.

[…]

When I first talked to Freeman, DeFlock had a few dozen cameras mapped in Huntsville and a handful mapped in Southern California and in the Seattle suburbs. A week later, as I write this, DeFlock has crowdsourced the locations of thousands of cameras in dozens of cities across the United States and the world.

“It still just scratches the surface,” Freeman said. “I added another page to the site that tracks cities and counties who have transparency reports on Flock’s site, and many of those don’t have any reported ALPRs though, so it’ll help people focus on where to look for them.”

[…]

He said so far more than 1,700 cameras have been reported in the United States and more than 5,600 have been reported around the world. He has also begun scraping parts of Flock’s website to give people a better idea of where to look to map them. For example, Flock says that Colton, California, a city with just over 50,000 people outside of San Bernardino, has 677 cameras.

A ring of Flock cameras in Huntsville’s downtown, pointing outward.

People who submit cameras to DeFlock have the ability to note the direction that they are pointing in, which can help people understand how these cameras are being positioned and the strategies that companies and police departments are using when deploying them.

[…]

Freeman also said he eventually wants to find a way to offer navigation directions that will allow people to avoid known ALPR cameras. The fact that it is impossible to drive in some cities without being passing ALPR cameras that track and catalog your car’s movements is one of the core arguments in a Fourth Amendment challenge to Flock’s existence in Norfolk, Virginia; this project will likely show how infeasible traveling without being tracked actually is in America. Knowing where they are is the first step toward resisting them.

Source: The Open Source Project DeFlock Is Mapping License Plate Surveillance Cameras All Over the World

Spotify’s Car Thing, Due For Bricking, Is Getting an Open Source Second Life

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If you have Spotify’s soon-to-be-bricked Car Thing, there are a few ways you can give it a new lease on life. YouTuber Dammit Jeff has showcased modifications to Car Thing that makes the device useful as a desktop music controller, customizable shortcut tool, or a simple digital clock. Ars Technica’s Kevin Purdy reports: Spotify had previously posted the code for its uboot and kernel to GitHub, under the very unassuming name “spsgsb” and with no announcement (as discovered by Josh Hendrickson). Jeff has one idea why the streaming giant might not have made much noise about it: “The truth is, this thing isn’t really great at running anything.” It has half a gigabyte of memory, 4GB of internal storage, and a “really crappy processor” (Amlogic S905D2 SoC) and is mostly good for controlling music.

How do you get in? The SoC has a built-in USB “burning mode,” allowing for a connected computer, running the right toolkit, to open up root access and overwrite its firmware. Jeff has quite a few issues getting connected (check his video description for some guidance), but it’s “drag and drop” once you’re in. Jeff runs through a few of the most popular options for a repurposed Car Thing:

– DeskThing, which largely makes Spotify desk-friendly, but adds a tiny app store for weather (including Jeff’s own WeatherWave), clocks, and alternate music controls
– GlanceThing, which keeps the music controls but also provides some Stream-Deck-like app-launching shortcuts for your main computer.
– Nocturne, currently invite-only, is a wholly redesigned Spotify interface that restores all its Spotify functionality.

Source: Spotify’s Car Thing, Due For Bricking, Is Getting an Open Source Second Life