The possible trajectories of billiards (and snooker and pool) balls has enthralled mathematicians for years. CC-licensed photo by Brian DeMaio on Flickr.
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A selection of 10 links for you. Break! I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
‘They lied’: plastics producers deceived public about recycling, report reveals • The Guardian
Dharna Noor:
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The industry has known for decades about these existential challenges, but obscured that information in its marketing campaigns, the report shows.
The research draws on previous investigations as well as newly revealed internal documents illustrating the extent of this decades-long campaign. Industry insiders over the past several decades have variously referred to plastic recycling as “uneconomical”, said it “cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution”, and said it “cannot go on indefinitely”, the revelations show.
The authors say the evidence demonstrates that oil and petrochemical companies, as well as their trade associations, may have broken laws designed to protect the public from misleading marketing and pollution.
In the 1950s, plastic producers came up with an idea to ensure a continually growing market for their products: disposability. “They knew if they focused on single-use [plastics] people would buy and buy and buy,” said Davis Allen, investigative researcher at the CCI and the report’s lead author. At a 1956 industry conference, the Society of the Plastics Industry, a trade group, told producers to focus on “low cost, big volume” and “expendability” and to aim for materials to end up “in the garbage wagon”.
The Society of Plastics is now known as the Plastics Industry Association. “As is typical, instead of working together towards actual solutions to address plastic waste, groups like CCI choose to level political attacks instead of constructive solutions,” Matt Seaholm, president and CEO of the trade group, said in an emailed response to the report.
Over the following decades, the industry told the public that plastics can easily be tossed into landfills or burned in garbage incinerators. But in the 1980s, as municipalities began considering bans on grocery bags and other plastic products, the industry began promoting a new solution: recycling.
The industry has long known that plastics recycling is not economically or practically viable, the report shows. An internal 1986 report from the trade association the Vinyl Institute noted that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of”.
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Not really the message you want to get ahead of sorting the bins for recycling now is it.
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EU accuses TikTok of failing to stop kids pretending to be adults • Ars Technica
Ashley Belanger:
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The European Commission (EC) is concerned that TikTok isn’t doing enough to protect kids, alleging that the short-video app may be sending kids down rabbit holes of harmful content while making it easy for kids to pretend to be adults and avoid the protective content filters that do exist.
The allegations came Monday when the EC announced a formal investigation into how TikTok may be breaching the Digital Services Act (DSA) “in areas linked to the protection of minors, advertising transparency, data access for researchers, as well as the risk management of addictive design and harmful content.”
“We must spare no effort to protect our children,” Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for Internal Market, said in the press release, reiterating that the “protection of minors is a top enforcement priority for the DSA.”
This makes TikTok the second platform investigated for possible DSA breaches after X (aka Twitter) came under fire last December. Both are being scrutinized after submitting transparency reports in September that the EC said failed to satisfy the DSA’s strict standards on predictable things like not providing enough advertising transparency or data access for researchers.
But while X is additionally being investigated over alleged dark patterns and disinformation—following accusations last October that X wasn’t stopping the spread of Israel/Hamas disinformation—it’s TikTok’s young user base that appears to be the focus of the EC’s probe into its platform.
…Likely over the coming months, the EC will request more information from TikTok, picking apart its DSA transparency report. The probe could require interviews with TikTok staff or inspections of TikTok’s offices.
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Once the EU gets its teeth into you, it really bites.
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The epidemic of fraudulent DMCA takedowns • Tax Policy
Dan Neidle:
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I wrote recently about a fraudulent attempt to use US copyright law to take down an article I’d written which was critical of a fake PR firm, “Mogul Press”. I was shocked to see how they did this: they copied my text into a fake website, then filed a takedown notice at Google claiming my article had copied theirs.
The notice was sent by “LMG Media Group” in the UAE. I don’t believe it exists – but Google rather brilliantly accepts takedown notices without checking if the person filing it exists.
Another identical notice was sent by “Lamar Media Corporation” in the US, which also doesn’t appear to exist. The intended effect is to remove my article from Google searches. Note the unusual wording of the two notices [pictured in the article]: “completely infringing” (which reads like someone without legal training trying to sound like a lawyer).
I wondered if there had been any other similar takedowns, and so searched for other occurrences of that unusual phrase. This search of the Lumen database finds 180 just from “Media Corporation” entities. Each one has identical text, and is sent by a fake company whose name appears to have been randomly generated. Forbidden Stories and rest of world published investigations into Eliminalia, a Spanish company that monetised this practice at scale, using the exact same technique of creating backdated copies and then fraudulently claiming the copy is the original. And Mashable reported on another fraudulent takedown attempt in 2022.
I don’t know if what I’m seeing is Eliminalia, or someone else with a similar business model who was hired by Mogul Press.
There’s this, trying to take down a report of a solicitor failing to appeal a striking-off [graphic in article]. And this, trying to take down another report of that same event [ditto].
With a duplicate from another made-up company (“Ventuky Media Corporation”), and another from “Bryan Media Corporation”, and another from “Yan Media Corporation”, and another from “Richards Media Corporation”, and another from “Venkata Media Corporation”. There are many more.
The fraudulent companies set up automated systems that can file zillions of complaints instantly. The victim, however, is unlikely to have any automated way to file counter-notices… they’ll have to do so individually. It’s also widely believed that the more reports Google receives, the greater the chance it downgrades the target website in its ranking.
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As he points out, this would be quite easy to prevent if Google were to demand more information about the claimant, including some sort of proof of ID and/or IP ownership, and also some sort of payment (in escrow if necessary, with false claims forfeited).
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Ozempic is taking off with the world’s largest obese population. (It isn’t the US) • WSJ
Dave Sebastian:
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China has more obese people than anywhere else in the world, and they are increasingly turning to weight-loss drugs to solve the problem.
That is fueling a gray market of drug sellers and buyers, who have little trouble getting around China’s rules on the use of Ozempic.
Ozempic isn’t available for weight loss in the country, instead being reserved for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes. But users on e-commerce platforms are able to buy the shots, colloquially known as “miracle drugs,” simply by declaring they have been diagnosed with diabetes—without providing proof.
They aren’t getting a bad deal. On JD.com, a dosage of Ozempic retails for around $139. That is higher than its cost on the country’s national-insurance plan but much cheaper than the $970 some users pay in the US each month. JD.com didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The gray market for Ozempic highlights a conundrum facing China’s government: how to tackle the world’s biggest obesity problem.
There are about 200 million obese adults in China, and an additional 400 million who are overweight, according to estimates by Jefferies based on official data. China will have another 100 million people with obesity in just over a decade, the investment banking firm predicts, despite the country’s declining population.
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After years of avoiding extradition, Julian Assange’s appeal is likely his last chance. Here’s how it might unfold (and how we got here) • The Conversation
Holly Cullen is an adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia:
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On February 20 and 21, Julian Assange will ask the High Court of England and Wales to reverse a decision from June last year allowing the United Kingdom to extradite him to the United States.
There he faces multiple counts of computer misuse and espionage stemming from his work with WikiLeaks, publishing sensitive US government documents provided by Chelsea Manning. The US government has repeatedly claimed that Assange’s actions risked its national security.
This is the final avenue of appeal in the UK, although Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, has indicated he would seek an order from the European Court of Human Rights if he loses the application for appeal. The European Court, an international court that hears cases under the European Convention on Human Rights, can issue orders that are binding on convention member states. In 2022, an order from the court stopped the UK sending asylum seekers to Rwanda pending a full review of the relevant legislation.
The extradition process has been running for nearly five years. Over such a long time, it’s easy to lose track of the sequence of events that led to this. Here’s how we got here, and what might happen next.
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His best chance is if his defence can successfully argue that the US is, in effect, not a safe place to which to extradite somebody.
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How Google is killing independent sites like ours • HouseFresh
Gisele Navarro and Dany Ashton:
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Google regularly launches updates to its algorithm to continuously improve search results quality. Think of these updates as a refresh of the system where rankings change: some websites see an improvement while others see a decline.
At HouseFresh, we keep an eye on Google’s news and documentation because these updates can literally make or break our website. That said, we don’t write for Google’s robots and always make editorial decisions with our readers in mind.
We know that at the end of the day, Google will reward us if our readers find our articles useful. Or that’s what we thought.
You might have noticed that no matter what you google, there’s always a selection of the same publishers showing up at the top of the results. What do BuzzFeed, Rolling Stone, Forbes, Popular Science, and Better Homes & Gardens have in common?
They all know which are the best air purifiers for pet hair. Another thing they’ve got in common is that they all also seem to know the best cooling sheets for hot sleepers.
You could play this game yourself. Other searches you could try are: best gifts for mom, best home saunas, best beard products, best gifts for teens, best cocktail kits… the list goes on.
The problem is, for the most part, these publishers recommend products without firsthand testing and simply paraphrase marketing materials and Amazon listing information.
In the last year, we have waited patiently for the many, many, MANY Google algorithm updates to impact these results.
We were hopeful when Google introduced its reviews system with the Products Review Update back in 2021. It seemed they were finally doing something about one of the worst aspects of the modern internet: searching for information about products only to have to wade through countless reviews from people who had never even seen the thing.
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Well, ’twas ever thus. The big publications would “review” things and get the attention; smaller outlets would struggle to get noticed.
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Subprime intelligence • Where’s Your Ed At
Ed Zitron:
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These models are not saying “I shall now draw a monkey,” they are saying “I have been asked for something called a monkey, I will now draw on my dataset to generate what is most likely a monkey.” These things are not “learning,” or “understanding,” or even “intelligent” — they’re giant math machines that, while impressive at first, can never assail the limits of a technology that doesn’t actually know anything.
Despite what fantasists may tell you, these are not “kinks” to work out of artificial intelligence models — these are the hard limits, the restraints that come when you try to mimic knowledge with mathematics. You cannot “fix” hallucinations (the times when a model authoritatively tells you something that isn’t true, or creates a picture of something that isn’t right), because these models are predicting things based off of tags in a dataset, which it might be able to do well but can never do so flawlessly or reliably.
…I believe artificial intelligence companies deeply underestimate how perfect the things around us are, and how deeply we base our understanding and acceptance of the world on knowledge and context. People generally have four fingers and a thumb on each hand, hammers have a handle made of wood and a head made of metal, and monkeys have two legs and two arms. The text on the sign of a store generally has a name and a series of words that describe it, or perhaps its address and phone number.
…there are no essential artificial intelligence use cases, and no killer apps outside of non-generative assistants like Alexa that are now having generative AI forced into them for no apparent reason. I consider myself relatively tuned into the tech ecosystem, and I read every single tech publication regularly, yet I’m struggling to point to anything that generative AI has done other than reignite the flames of venture capital. There are cool little app integrations, interesting things like live translation in Samsung devices, but these are features, not applications. And if there are true industry-changing possibilities waiting for us on the other side, I am yet to hear them outside of the fan fiction of Silicon Valley hucksters.
This entire hype cycle feels specious, though not quite as specious as the metaverse or cryptocurrency boom.
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The mysterious math of billiards tables • Quanta Magazine
David Richeson:
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In Disney’s 1959 film Donald in Mathmagic Land, Donald Duck, inspired by the narrator’s descriptions of the geometry of billiards, energetically strikes the cue ball, sending it ricocheting around the table before it finally hits the intended balls. Donald asks, “How do you like that for mathematics?”
Because rectangular billiard tables have four walls meeting at right angles, billiard trajectories like Donald’s are predictable and well understood — even if they’re difficult to carry out in practice. However, research mathematicians still cannot answer basic questions about the possible trajectories of billiard balls on tables in the shape of other polygons (shapes with flat sides). Even triangles, the simplest of polygons, still hold mysteries.
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Of course mathematicians are not satisfied with rectangular billiard tables, so they extend the question of “where will the ball go?” to tables of any and all shapes. But not for nothing is the World Snooker Finals known by many as the Geometry Championships.
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‘Not letting me on Snapchat was the best thing my mum ever did for me’: how to talk to your kids about social media • The Guardian
Annalisa Barbieri:
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“People do not communicate with authenticity and vulnerability on social media,” explains the ACP registered child and adolescent psychotherapist Ryan Lowe. “As a result, young people have really contorted pictures of what the lives of others are like. Lives on social media are always either exaggeratedly wonderful or exaggeratedly awful, traumatic and extreme. This leaves them trying to form an identity in a hall of mirrors with all the reflections of themselves and others being completely distorted. It takes a strong adolescent to be able to filter the noise of social media out and find an authentic way of developing.”
The specialists also taught me how important it was to model the sort of behaviour you want back from your children. In other words: do as I do, not as I say.
Everything in our house is a discussion. (“My advice,” Prof Peter Fonagy, CEO of the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, once told me, “is to reach a reasoned democratic agreement with your child, in discussion with them.”)
I would never ask my children to do anything I wasn’t prepared to do myself (with some exceptions). I would always ask for their consent, where appropriate, from when they were small (eg: “Can I use your colouring pens?”; “Can I get you undressed for a bath?”), and – crucially – I’d listen to them if they said no. And I would never say no for the sake of it just because I was the adult. I would give reasons. But – and this is important – their father and I have always been the adults. Sure, they could negotiate, but someone had to take final responsibility, and that person, where social media was concerned, was me. (Their father, my partner, didn’t want her to have social media either, but wasn’t sure how to navigate these tricky waters.)
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Annalisa really is one of the smartest people around – as much as anything because she is so good at listening to what people are saying, and not forcing her ideas on others.
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Science journal published ‘ridiculous’ graphic of rat with big penis after asking AI for a picture • Daily Telegraph
Sarah Knapton:
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It might be considered an AI cock-up on a massive scale.
A scientific paper purporting to show the signalling pathway of sperm stem cells has met with widespread ridicule after it depicted a rodent with an anatomically eye-watering appendage and four giant testicles.
The creature, labelled “rat”, was also sitting upright in the manner of a squirrel, while the graphic was littered with nonsensical words such as “dissilced”, “testtomcels” and “senctolic”.
A cut-away image showed “sterrn cells” in a Petri dish being picked up with a spoon.
It appeared in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Development Biology this week alongside several other absurd graphics that had been generated by the AI tool Midjourney.
They included a multicoloured JAK-STAT signalling pathway diagram which experts likened to “some crazy level of Candy Crush” and said was not grounded in “any known biology”.
The paper, written by researchers at the Honghui Hospital in China, has since been retracted by the journal, which issued an apology and said it was working to “correct the record”.
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How, you might wonder, could any journal possibly pass such work for publication? Because Frontiers, where it appeared, is a pay-for-publication journal. The illustration really have to be seen to be believed, though.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 