The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the scene of efforts to use geoengineering to benefit its climate. CC-licensed photo by eutrophication&hypoxia on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Deep breath. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in • Financial Times
Tim Bradshaw:
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Thousands of sites offering adult content, as well as popular social media apps including X, Reddit and TikTok, have introduced new “age assurance” systems and controls for UK users since Friday, to comply with the Online Safety Act.
Media regulator Ofcom said it would this weekend start to enforce the new age checks, which are designed to prevent children under the age of 18 from accessing sites that carry pornography as well as other “harmful” material that relates to self-harm, eating disorders or suicide.
But to evade the new rules, a growing number of people in the UK are turning to tools more often used by citizens in authoritarian regimes to get around internet censorship.
Apps offering virtual private networks — which route a smartphone or PC’s internet traffic to another country, bypassing local network providers — made up half of the top ten most popular free apps on the UK’s App Store for iOS this weekend, according to Apple’s rankings.
Proton VPN leapfrogged ChatGPT to become the top free app in the UK, according to Apple’s daily App Store charts, with similar services from developers Super Unlimited and Nord Security also rising over the weekend.
Proton, the Swiss-based company behind the top VPN app, said it had experienced a more than 1,800% increase [18x? – Overspill Ed] in daily sign-ups from UK-based users after new age verification rules took effect on Friday.
Nord said there had been a 1,000% increase [10-fold? – Overspill Ed] in UK purchases of VPN subscriptions since before the rules took effect.
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Nord has been spending tons of money on podcast adverts months ahead of this. Wasted? Or good brand building? A few days ago, the BBC was stroking its chin over whether people would hand over their details. Seems we have an answer.
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Microsoft to stop using China-based teams to support US Department of Defense • Ars Technica
Renee Dudley and Doris Burke:
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Last week, Microsoft announced that it would no longer use China-based engineering teams to support the Defense Department’s cloud computing systems, following ProPublica’s investigation of the practice, which cybersecurity experts said could expose the government to hacking and espionage.
But it turns out the Pentagon was not the only part of the government facing such a threat. For years, Microsoft has also used its global workforce, including China-based personnel, to maintain the cloud systems of other federal departments, including parts of Justice, Treasury and Commerce, ProPublica has found.
This work has taken place in what’s known as the Government Community Cloud, which is intended for information that is not classified but is nonetheless sensitive. The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, the US government’s cloud accreditation organization, has approved GCC to handle “moderate” impact information “where the loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability would result in serious adverse effect on an agency’s operations, assets, or individuals.”
The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division has used GCC to support its criminal and civil investigation and litigation functions, according to a 2022 report. Parts of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education have also used GCC.
Microsoft says its foreign engineers working in GCC have been overseen by US-based personnel known as “digital escorts,” similar to the system it had in place at the Defense Department.
Nevertheless, cybersecurity experts told ProPublica that foreign support for GCC presents an opportunity for spying and sabotage. “There’s a misconception that, if government data isn’t classified, no harm can come of its distribution,” said Rex Booth, a former federal cybersecurity official who now is chief information security officer of the tech company SailPoint.
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So many cold wars, so little time.
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Extreme heat is making us age faster • CNN
Laura Paddison:
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The soupy, smothering extreme heat that has scorched parts of the Northern Hemisphere this summer takes a hard toll on our bodies. It can make you feel nauseous, woozy and dehydrated. It can have pernicious health effects on multiple organs.
But there’s another, less well-known, impact of extreme heat: it makes you age faster.
Prolonged exposure to soaring temperatures can cause a deterioration in our cells and tissues and speed up biological aging, according to a new and growing body of research. Chronological age refers to how long a person has lived, but biological — or “epigenetic” — age measures how well our tissues and cells function. The difference between the two explains why sometimes someone’s age does not seem to match their health and vitality.
An accelerated biological age is the “canary in the coal mine” for future risk of earlier onset of diseases such as cancer, dementia and diabetes, and early death, said Jennifer Ailshire, professor of gerontology and sociology at the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.
As climate change forces people to endure increasingly severe and longer lasting heat waves, scientists say there is an urgency to better understand the ways heat is slowly and silently undermining human health at a cellular level.
…Ailshire is one of the scientists trying to change that. She and another researcher, Eunyoung Choi, published the first population-scale research into this area in February.
They analyzed blood samples taken from a group of more than 3,600 people across the United States aged 56 and above. They used tools called “epigenetic clocks,” which capture the way DNA is modified and provide an estimate of biological age. They then linked this to daily climate data in participants’ locations in the years before the blood samples were taken.
Their results, published in February, found people who experienced at least 140 extreme heat days a year — when the heat index, a combination of temperature and humidity, was above 90ºF — aged up to 14 months faster than those in locations with less than 10 extreme heat days a year.
This link between heat and biological aging remained even when taking into account individual factors such as exercise levels and income, although the study did not look at access to air conditioning or time spent outside. The strength of the association was significant, too. The results showed extreme heat had the same impact on aging as smoking or heavy alcohol use.
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The hottest business strategy this summer is buying crypto • WSJ via MSN
Gregory Zuckerman and Vicky Ge Huang:
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Companies are raising tens of billions of dollars, not to invest in their businesses or hire employees, but to purchase bitcoin and more obscure cryptocurrencies. A Japanese hotel operator, a French semiconductor manufacturer, a Florida toy maker, a nail-salon chain, an electric-bike maker—they’re all plowing cash into tokens, helping to send all kinds of digital currencies to record levels. News that a new company plans to buy crypto is enough to send its shares flying—spurring others to consider joining the frenzy.
Since June 1, 98 companies have announced plans to raise over $43bn to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, according to Architect Partners, a crypto advisory firm. Nearly $86bn has been raised for this purpose since the start of the year. That’s more than double the amount of money raised in initial public offerings in the U.S. in 2025, according to Dealogic.
Skeptics say the rush of companies buying crypto is a sign the market is overheating, noting that digital tokens, especially the obscure ones, are notoriously volatile and have uncertain futures. They scratch their heads about why an investor would buy shares of a company purchasing cryptocurrencies when they can buy them on their own through low-cost exchange-traded funds and other vehicles.
Others note that many of these companies are worth much more than the cryptocurrencies they hold, as if investors are willing to pay $2 for a $1 bill.
That hasn’t stopped big-name bankers, investors and others from jumping in. Mutual-fund giant Capital Group, hedge fund D1 Capital Partners and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald are among those backing recent efforts by companies to raise huge sums to purchase cryptocurrencies.
Venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital and other investors backed a move by a company called Bitmine Immersion Technologies to raise $250m to buy ether. The company, worth $26m on June 27, the Friday before its announcement, is now worth over $2bn after a surge of more than 800%. Thiel, the tech billionaire known for starting PayPal and Palantir, holds a 9.1% stake in the company, according to a recent filing. He declined to comment.
“If you blink, you miss a couple of these deals,” said Bob Diamond, the former Barclays chief executive.
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As the next link points out, this is just like the runup to the financial crash of 2007-08. (Diamond made a killing back then. Don’t think this time will be any different.)
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The coming crypto crisis • Financial Times
Rana Foroohar:
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Bitcoin, one of the digital assets banks may lend against, has been nearly four times as volatile as major indices since 2020. It has also had ties to terror funding, and I have yet to read anything that made me think it is more than a tool for speculators and criminals. But that hardly matters when the largest political donors are behind it.
Crypto political action committees have, over the last several years, spent tens of millions of dollars donating to not only Republican politicians but many Democrats too. This effort culminated a couple of weeks ago in the passage of the Genius Act. Legislation covering other crypto assets is expected later this year. I predict all this will not only cause the next financial crisis, but fuel even more political populism and unrest in the US.
It’s all too reminiscent of 2000, when advocates for over-the-counter derivatives descended on Washington begging to be properly “regulated” so that they could gift the world with financial “innovation.” What we got instead was a seven-fold increase in poorly regulated credit default swaps that culminated in the great financial crisis of 2008.
Now consider that US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent expects the stablecoin market to grow tenfold over the next few years, from a near-$200bn to a $2tn industry, one that will be embedded in everything from loan underwriting to Treasury markets.
As Democrat Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the Senate banking commission, told me last week: “We’ve seen this movie before,” with lobbyists “saying, ‘Please regulate us’ because they want the gold sticker of government confirmation that they are a ‘safe’ investment,” and politicians offering up bipartisan support for deregulation.
Indeed, you can draw a clear line from derivatives deregulation in 2000, and the broader Clinton era deregulation that eroded the barriers between trading and lending, to the weakening of Dodd Frank regulation for regional banks in 2018 (which contributed to the banking crisis of 2023), and now, the Genius Act. All of it was bipartisan.
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Even if Warren says it, I don’t think she’s wrong. The potential for this all to go enormously south is exactly the same as with CDOs and the other alphabet soup.
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Under siege from Trump and Musk, a top liberal group falls into crisis • The New York Times
Kenneth Vogel, Kate Conger and Ryan Mac:
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Media Matters raised nearly $250m in the two decades between its creation in 2003 and the end of 2023, establishing itself as a force in Democratic politics by effectively undermining major right-wing media figures and politicians.
…Founded in 2003 by David Brock, a self-described “right-wing hit man” who switched sides and became an enforcer for Democrats, Media Matters set out to neutralize what Mr. Brock saw as a powerful Republican information ecosystem. The group became the flagship in a constellation of nonprofits formed or acquired by Mr. Brock to help Democrats and undermine Republicans.
…In November 2023, Media Matters published research showing that ads appeared on X next to antisemitic and pro-Nazi content. The report — along with a post in which Mr. Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory — contributed to an advertiser exodus from X that cost the company more than $75m in revenue through the end of that year.
Later that month, X sued in federal court, claiming that Media Matters had “manipulated” the site to bypass safeguards and display advertisements next to incendiary posts in an effort to damage X’s relationships with advertisers. In a December 2023 livestream on X, Mr. Musk took aim at Media Matters, telling listeners, “We will pursue not just the organization, but anyone funding that organization.” Mr. Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment.
The suit was quickly followed by investigations from the offices of Republican attorneys general Ken Paxton of Texas and Andrew Bailey of Missouri, probing Mr. Musk’s claims that the group had manipulated data in its research about X and suggesting donors in their states may have been misled.
Media Matters sued, and a federal court blocked the Texas investigation, ruling that the state attorneys general were likely infringing on the organization’s First Amendment rights. Missouri agreed to drop its investigation. Still, the legal fights cost Media Matters nearly $2m.
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American sites getting sued towards oblivion by billionaires isn’t novel, but it is becoming more common. Particularly, left-wing sites are being targeted. The beloved First Amendment isn’t looking so robust.
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The manmade clouds that could help save the Great Barrier Reef • The New York Times
Ferris Jabr:
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Since 2016, [oceanographer Daniel] Harrison and his colleagues have been investigating whether it is possible to reduce coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef by altering the weather above it. As the planet heats up, unusually high ocean temperatures are stressing corals around the world, forcing them to eject their symbiotic partners: the photosynthetic single-celled algae that live in their tissues and provide them with much of their sustenance. Theoretically, machine-generated fog and artificially brightened clouds can shade and cool the water in which corals live, sparing them much of that stress.
Not far behind the primary fogger on the big ship stood a pair of cloud-modifying machines known as the cannons. From a distance, each tubular white contraption resembled a jet engine angled toward the sky. Up close, you could see that they were mostly hollow, outfitted on one end with a large fan and on the other with a ring of torpedo-shaped manifolds, each of which supported nearly 100 small metal nozzles. When the scientists switched them on, a series of squat, square air compressors began to groan and shake, like washing machines pushed to their breaking point. This time, seawater pumped onboard was combined with highly pressurized air before being expelled through the nozzles. The result was a fine white mist that burst from the cannons at more than 60 miles per hour. As the wind lifted the briny spray into the air, it intermingled with low-lying clouds, making them more reflective.
Harrison’s project is essentially a highly localized version of geoengineering: the deliberate modification of the planet to counteract climate change.
…“Things have changed very quickly even in the last six months,” says [physicist David] Keith, who headed solar-geoengineering research at Harvard before moving to the University of Chicago in 2023 to establish a new climate-engineering initiative. “There’s a much higher level of interest. More senior political and environmental figures are willing to engage in a serious way. More people in the scientific core are talking about it. There’s new money. It feels different.”
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(Thanks Gregory B for the link.)
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Women dating safety app ‘Tea’ breached, users’ IDs posted to 4chan • 404 Media
Emanuel Maiberg:
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Users from 4chan claim to have discovered an exposed database hosted on Google’s mobile app development platform, Firebase, belonging to the newly popular women’s dating safety app Tea. Users say they are rifling through peoples’ personal data and selfies uploaded to the app, and then posting that data online, according to screenshots, 4chan posts, and code reviewed by 404 Media. In a statement to 404 Media, Tea confirmed the breach also impacted some direct messages but said that the data is from two years ago.
Tea, which claims to have more than 1.6 million users, reached the top of the App Store charts this week and has tens of thousands of reviews there. The app aims to provide a space for women to exchange information about men in order to stay safe, and verifies that new users are women by asking them to upload a selfie.
…The thread says the issue was an exposed database that allowed anyone to access the material. While reporting this story, a URL the 4chan user posted included a voluminous list of specific attachments associated with the Tea app. 404 Media saw this list of files. In the last hour or so, that page was locked down, and now returns a “Permission denied” error.
404 Media verified that Tea does contain the same storage bucket URL that 4chan claims was related to the exposure. 404 Media did this by downloading a copy of the Android version of the app and decompiling its code.
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This has been confirmed all over the place during the weekend, with geocoding for the IDs as well. Pretty disastrous for the app; calamitous for the app makers. If they were in Europe, they’d be getting sued into oblivion. Could still happen in the US.
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Intel’s foundry future depends on securing a customer for next-gen chipmaking tech • Reuters
Max Cherney and Stephen Nellis:
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Intel warned investors on Thursday that it may have to get out of the chip manufacturing business if it does not land external customers to make chips in its factories.
New CEO Lip-Bu Tan said on Thursday the company’s engineers were busy working with customers to jump-start its next-generation contract manufacturing process, or foundry, as the company announced big layoffs alongside a wider-than-expected third-quarter loss outlook.
Those customers for the company’s so-called 14A manufacturing process are crucial to the success of the technology – so much so that if it fails to secure a big one, it could shut down its cutting-edge manufacturing business altogether, according to Intel’s quarterly filing on Thursday.
The possibility that Intel could drop out of the cutting-edge manufacturing business would be a historic shift for a company that has described itself as a steward of Moore’s Law – an observation by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore about the fast rate of development of the chip industry that held true for decades.
Intel is the only U.S. chipmaker capable of making advanced computing chips.
…”We’re developing Intel 14A … from the ground up in close partnership with large external customers,” Tan said in a memo released with the results. “Going forward, our investment in Intel 14A will be based on confirmed customer commitments.
“We will build what our customers need, when they need it, and earn their trust through consistent execution.”
Intel said that without a significant customer, it would consider cancelling or pausing development of 14A and subsequent technologies. Should the company take the step, it planned to continue to manufacture chips with its 18A technology and a variant through 2030, according to the filing.
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So the company that once was in essentially every computing device is now struggling to find people who will use its factories. The world can turn so far.
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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 
What do you make of this?
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui/
Long.