Closure of many streets in Paris ahead of the Olympics has significantly reduced pollution. CC-licensed photo by Conall on Flickr.
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A selection of 10 links for you. I’m back, you’re back, let’s do news. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Stanford’s top disinformation research group collapses under pressure • The Washington Post
Joseph Menn:
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The Stanford Internet Observatory, which published some of the most influential analysis of the spread of false information on social media during elections, has shed most of its staff and may shut down amid political and legal attacks that have cast a pall on efforts to study online misinformation.
Just three staffers remain at the Observatory, and they will either leave or find roles at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, which is absorbing what remains of the program, according to eight people familiar with the developments, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The Election Integrity Partnership, a prominent consortium run by the Observatory and a University of Washington team to identify viral falsehoods about election procedures and outcomes in real time, has updated its webpage to say its work has concluded.
Two ongoing lawsuits and two congressional inquiries into the Observatory have cost Stanford millions of dollars in legal fees, one of the people told The Washington Post. Students and scholars affiliated with the program say they have been worn down by online attacks and harassment amid the heated political climate for misinformation research, as legislators threaten to cut federal funding to universities studying propaganda.
Alex Stamos, the former Facebook chief security officer who founded the Observatory five years ago, moved into an advisory role in November. Observatory research manager Renée DiResta’s contract was not renewed in recent weeks.
…It follows Harvard’s dismissal of misinformation expert Joan Donovan, who in a December whistleblower complaint alleged that the university’s close and lucrative ties with Facebook parent Meta led the university to clamp down on her work, which was highly critical of the social media giant’s practices.
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Both of these losses are very bad at this time, when election disinformation is already a thing in the UK (bot TikTok accounts run by Russians boosting Reform) and the US elections are in the offing.
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Wells Fargo fires more than a dozen employees for faking work using mouse jigglers and keyboard simulation • Tom’s Hardware
Jeff Butts:
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the terminated employees worked in Wells Fargo’s wealth- and investment-management unit. They used special but easily obtainable tools to create the impression the staffers were busily working. In truth, the allegations state these employees weren’t even at their computers. A Wells Fargo spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company “holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behavior.”
Software and hardware that make it seem like someone is moving their mouse or typing on their keyboard are readily available. Tips for using them are easy to find on social media sites like Reddit and TikTok. The devices themselves are available on Amazon for less than $20. You can even build your own using a Raspberry Pi and some electronic components.
These inexpensive and widely available devices prevent computers from entering sleep mode when the PC isn’t in use. They don’t move the mouse or type on the keyboard but trick screen monitoring software into thinking the user is active when they are not.
Such apps and equipment became increasingly popular during the pandemic’s work-from-home era. According to Bloomberg, Wells Fargo’s disclosures to Finra don’t clarify whether the discharged employees worked from home or the office.
The finance industry quickly and aggressively brought its employees back into the office. However, Wells Fargo waited longer than most of its rivals to make that move. It didn’t start requiring employees to return to the office until early 2022 under a “hybrid flexible model.” The company now requires most employees to be in the office at least three days a week.
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Though this also says something about how boring the work must have been. Use AI to make the fakery more realistic next time!
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Paris Olympics visitors will see a city moving away from cars to reduce air pollution • NBC News
Mike Gagliardi:
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The 15 million people expected to swarm Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics will visit a city far different than it was a decade ago.
That’s because a campaign to make Paris greener, primarily by reducing its dependence on cars, has transformed it into a shining example of what many environmental activists, city planners and transit advocates say ought to be the future of cities worldwide.
Paris has closed more than 100 streets to motor vehicles, tripled parking fees for SUVs, removed roughly 50,000 parking spots, and constructed more than 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) of bike lanes since Mayor Anne Hidalgo took office in 2014.
Those changes have contributed to a 40% decline in air pollution, according to city officials.
“How did we achieve this?” Hidalgo said in a statement in March. “By assuming a major and radical rupture: the end of car-dependence.”
Paris and other European cities have for years been at the forefront of efforts to reduce car use, though their successes have not come without challenges. The U.S., on the other hand, has been slower to adopt similar reforms.
“For 100 years in the U.S., we have built streets, neighborhoods and cities around cars, and as a result most people live in auto-dependent neighborhoods, and it’s very hard to undo that,” said Nicholas Klein, professor of city and regional planning at Cornell University.
Paris’ new urban landscape will be on display at a challenging time for Hidalgo, who has faced declining approval ratings and a failed presidential run. Still, a 2023 poll showed a majority of Parisians approve of her environmental reforms.
Louise Claustre, a resident of the 12th arrondissement and an avid cyclist, told NBC News she’s “100%” in favor of Hidalgo’s anti-car policies.
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Just goes to show: these things are possible. It only needs sufficient incentive. Wars may be taking it to an extreme, but pandemics (also extreme), or quadrennial events (Olympics) will suffice.
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Texas lawmakers sour on bitcoin mining, fearing large power needs • Houston Chronicle
Claire Hao:
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Spooked by projections of how much electricity Texas could need by 2030, lawmakers have soured on the growth of cryptocurrency mining after years of welcoming the industry to the state.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator, said in April that Texas could need 152 gigawatts of electricity by the end of the decade, compared with a record 85.5 gigawatts set by the grid last summer. This forecast is approximately 40 gigawatts greater than what ERCOT expected last year, with around 60% of that new demand coming from potential cryptocurrency mines and data centers, regulators told lawmakers this week during legislative hearings about the power grid.
The Permian Basin alone is expected to see 24GW of added power demand, about half from electrification of oil and gas operations and half from data centers and cryptocurrency mines, ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas told lawmakers.
…José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, said he didn’t want Texans, especially those on fixed incomes, to absorb the cost of grid upgrades needed for businesses like bitcoin miners.
“I see something inherently unjust in the fact that we’re asking everyday Texans who’re making tough decisions — costs, grocery stores — to be paying for the ability for other people to make even greater profit, especially if they’re moving from place to place to place and taking advantage of the low cost of Texas energy,” Menéndez said.
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Bitcoin miners still causing trouble. And you thought they’d all gone away.
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Survey finds payoff from AI projects is ‘dismal’ • The Register
Thomas Claburn:
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Businesses have become more cautious about investing in artificial intelligence tools due to concerns about cost, data security, and safety, according to a study conducted by Lucidworks, a provider of e-commerce search and customer service applications.
“The honeymoon phase of generative AI is over,” the company said in its 2024 Generative AI Global Benchmark Study, released on Tuesday. “While leaders remain enthusiastic about its potential to transform businesses, the initial euphoria has given way to a more measured approach.”
Between April and May 2024, Lucidworks conducted a survey of business leaders involved in AI adoption in North America, EMEA, and the APAC region. The respondents, it’s claimed, were drawn from 1,000 companies with 100 or more employees across 14 industries, all of which are said to have active AI initiatives underway.
About 23% are executives and about 50% are managers, with 86% involved in technology decision making. Of participants, 39% hailed from North America, with 36% from EMEA, and 24% from the APAC region.
According to the results of the survey, 63% of global companies plan to increase spending on AI in the next twelve months, compared to 93% in 2023 when Lucidworks conducted its first investigation.
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I still think it’s a little early to make judgements like this. The caution is a completely normal process. And look at the number who are going to increase their spending. They’re just trying to find where it fits.
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A peek behind a dark curtain • Hi, I’m Heather Burns
Heather Burns was between jobs when..:
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The tl;dr is that I was approached to be the public face of a privately funded advocacy campaign on a big tech crusade. Their proposal would have paid me very well to do a few hours of work, at most, a month. But that job would not have involved any actual work, or any of the, you know, stuff I’ve actually spent my life doing.
Rather, my role would have been to play a quasi-fictional composite character. They wanted me to be the campaign’s public face, media spokesperson, and rent-a-human behind the team of desk jockeys doing the actual crusading work. The role would have required me to define my public identity around a manufactured sob story of how I was a victimised victim of big tech, and to appear on the front pages of the broadsheets and broadcast media as the personification of the campaign.
Regardless of the fact that the thing I was to be the victimised victim of hadn’t actually happened to me – it happened to other people.
And regardless of the fact that anyone who’s done more than two minutes of research on me – reading this blog, for example – knows that I care not a jot for the obsession with Big Tech and its celebrities. My work is about the little tech and everyday people who are being swept up and condemned as collateral damage in the big tech crusade. This is not news, people.
Those who know me personally will also be amused to imagine me defining myself as the victim of anything, much less being a paid professional one.
But still, this group, in its London luvvie wisdom, approached me with the offer. An offer, I must add, which kissed my Scottish arse, hard.
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She doesn’t know who they found to do that job, which I find intriguing because surely she knew what the campaign was, so would have seen who took the place and did it. Unless it didn’t get taken on.
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Publishers around the world hit by Facebook labelling news as spam • Press Gazette
Charlotte Tobitt:
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International publishers from the US and Europe have all had Facebook posts unexpectedly flagged as spam and removed, Press Gazette has learned.
The issues newly shared with Press Gazette match those experienced by UK independent local publishers as described in our initial story below. The posts all featured links to typical website articles and the editors involved have been unable to speak to anyone at Meta about it.
The Record-Argus, a small independent newspaper in Pennsylvania in the US, has had several posts with story links in the past few weeks marked as spam and deleted. They have requested a review on each one and not heard back on any, Press Gazette was told. Sebastian Matyszczak, editor-in-chief of Polish local news website wlkp24.info, told Press Gazette he has seen the issue for several weeks.
…In the UK, Birkenhead News editor David Humphreys estimated that more than 20 posts have been removed since 25 May.
On Monday evening he shared the latest to be removed: a story about “all the candidates standing for Wirral seats in the general election”. The Facebook notification told him: “It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way” and added: “Your post goes against our Community Standards on spam.”
Humphreys said Birkenhead News, an independent site that launched in 2020, does not “have the resources to battle these deletions” and but they are impactful because a “significant portion” of readers get to the site through links posted on Facebook.
Paul Winspear, who edits the Bishop’s Stortford Independent which is part of Iliffe Media, saw three Facebook posts relating to two election stories removed within 24 hours last week. Both, he said, were diary-style pieces that showed the local Conservative candidate “in a poor light”.
Winspear has also had one further removal but has struggled to work out which post was affected as clicking the “We’ve had to remove content” notification did not give the full information.
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Facebook has completely lost interest in news. As to some extent so has Google, which is trying to replace links to news with its AI answers.
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iOS and iPadOS 18: the MacStories overview • MacStories
Federico Viticci:
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From a renewed focus on Home Screen customization and redesigned Control Center to a new design for tab bars on iPad and expanded Tapbacks in Messages, Apple has showed that, while they can follow the rest of the tech industry in rethinking how AI can enhance how we use our devices, they can continue shipping other functionalities for iPhone and iPad, too. Or, at the very least, they certainly can for the iPhone and iOS.
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Knock yourself out if you want to find out about the (coming) changes. Nothing particularly stood out for me, but that’s been the case for a few years.
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How I found a 55 year old bug in the first lunar lander game • Martin C. Martin
Martin is a retired software engineer:
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Just months after Neil Armstrong’s historic moonwalk, Jim Storer, a Lexington High School student in Massachusetts, wrote the first Lunar Landing game. By 1973, it had become “by far and away the single most popular computer game.” A simple text game, you pilot a moon lander, aiming for a gentle touch down on the moon. All motion is vertical and you decide every 10 simulated seconds how much fuel to burn.
I recently explored the optimal fuel burn schedule to land as gently as possible and with maximum remaining fuel. Surprisingly, the theoretical best strategy didn’t work. The game falsely thinks the lander doesn’t touch down on the surface when in fact it does. Digging in, I was amazed by the sophisticated physics and numerical computing in the game. Eventually I found a bug: a missing “divide by two” that had seemingly gone unnoticed for nearly 55 years.
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There’s also a good writeup by Benj Edwards, who interviewed the original program author back in 2009. As he points out, the real Apollo code didn’t make this mistake.
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Google, Cloudflare and Cisco must poison DNS to stop piracy block circumvention in France • TorrentFreak
Andy Maxwell:
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In 2023, Canal+ went to court in France to tackle pirate sports streaming sites including Footybite.co, Streamcheck.link, SportBay.sx, TVFutbol.info, and Catchystream.com. The broadcaster said that since subscribers of local ISPs were accessing the pirate sites using their services, the ISPs should prevent them from doing so.
When the decision went in favor of Canal+, ISPs including Orange, SFR, OutreMer Télécom, Free, and Bouygues Télécom, were required to implement technical measures. Since the ISPs have their own DNS resolvers for use by their own customers, these were configured to provide non-authentic responses to deny access to the sites in question.
In response, increasingly savvy internet users that hadn’t already done so, simply changed their settings to use different DNS providers – Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco – whose resolvers hadn’t been tampered with; at least not yet.
Use of third-party DNS providers to circumvent blocking isn’t uncommon so last year Canal+ took legal action against three popular public DNS providers – Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), Google (8.8.8.8), and Cisco (208.69.38.205), demanding measures similar to those implemented by French ISPs.
Tampering with public DNS is a step too far for many internet advocates but for major rightsholders, if the law can be shaped to allow it, that’s what will happen. In this case, Article L333-10 of the French Sports Code (active Jan 2022) seems capable of accommodating almost anything.
…Two decisions were handed down by the Paris judicial court last month; one concerning Premier League matches and the other the Champions League. The orders instruct Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to implement measures similar to those in place at local ISPs. To protect the rights of Canal+, the companies must prevent French internet users from using their services to access around 117 pirate domains.
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I didn’t know that Cisco had a DNS service. Or that Torrentfreak had started using names on bylines. But it’s hard to argue that internet services, including DNS, should never obey local laws.
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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. |
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The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 