The first rule of Qantas hacking is, Australia’s courts say hackers can’t release the data. Seriously. CC-licensed photo by Steven Coochin on Flickr.

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There’s another post coming this week at the Social Warming Substack on Friday at 0845 UK time. Free signup.

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A selection of 10 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.

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Denmark plans social media ban for under-15s as PM warns phones “stealing childhood” • The Guardian

Miranda Bryant:

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The Danish prime minister says the country will ban social media for under-15s, as she accused mobile phones and social networks of “stealing our children’s childhood”.

Mette Frederiksen used her speech on Tuesday at the opening of Folketing, the Danish parliament, to announce the proposal, in which she said: “We have unleashed a monster.” She added: “Never before have so many children and young people suffered from anxiety and depression.”

Many children also have difficulty reading and concentrating, said Frederiksen, adding that “on screens they see things no child or young person should see”.

She did not specify which social networks the new measures would affect, but said it would cover “several” social media platforms. She said there would be an option for parents to give permission to their children to use social media from the age of 13.

It is hoped the ban could come into effect as early as next year.

It follows the lead of Australia, which is introducing a ban on social media platforms including Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube for under-16s, and Norway where the prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, has also said he would enforce a strict minimum age limit of 15 on social media, raising it from 13.

Støre said last year that it would be “an uphill battle” but that politicians must intervene to protect children from the “power of the algorithms”.

Denmark’s minister of digitalisation, Caroline Stage, said her government’s announcement was a “breakthrough”. She said: “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we’ve been too naive. We’ve left children’s digital lives to platforms that never had their wellbeing in mind. We must move from digital captivity to community.”

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Interesting move, and will probably be taken up in other countries. If, that is, parents can resist letting their children have access as soon as they demand it.
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Ted Cruz doesn’t seem to understand Wikipedia, lawyer for Wikimedia says • Ars Technica

Jon Brodkin:

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The letter from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) accusing Wikipedia of left-wing bias seems to be based on fundamental misunderstandings of how the platform works, according to a lawyer for the nonprofit foundation that operates the online encyclopedia.

“The foundation is very much taking the approach that Wikipedia is actually pretty great and a lot of what’s in this letter is actually misunderstandings,” Jacob Rogers, associate general counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation, told Ars in an interview. “And so we are more than happy, despite the pressure that comes from these things, to help people better understand how Wikipedia works.”

Cruz’s letter to Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander expressed concern “about ideological bias on the Wikipedia platform and at the Wikimedia Foundation.” Cruz alleged that Wikipedia articles “often reflect a left-wing bias.” He asked the foundation for “documents sufficient to show what supervision, oversight, or influence, if any, the Wikimedia Foundation has over the editing community,” and “documents sufficient to show how the Wikimedia Foundation addresses political or ideological bias.”

As many people know, Wikipedia is edited by volunteers through a collaborative process.

“We’re not deciding what the editorial policies are for what is on Wikipedia,” Rogers said, describing the Wikimedia Foundation’s hands-off approach. “All of that, both the writing of the content and the determining of the editorial policies, is done through the volunteer editors” through “public conversation and discussion and trying to come to a consensus. They make all of that visible in various ways to the reader. So you go and you read a Wikipedia article, you can see what the sources are, what someone has written, you can follow the links yourselves.”

Cruz’s letter raised concerns about “the influence of large donors on Wikipedia’s content creation or editing practices.” But Rogers said that “people who donate to Wikipedia don’t have any influence over content and we don’t even have that many large donors to begin with. It is primarily funded by people donating through the website fundraisers, so I think they’re worried about something that is just not present at all.”

Anyone unhappy with Wikipedia content can participate in the writing and editing, he said. “It’s still open for everybody to participate. If someone doesn’t like what it says, they can go on and say, ‘Hey, I don’t like the sources that are being used, or I think a different source should be used that isn’t there,'” Rogers said. “Other people might disagree with them, but they can have that conversation and try to figure it out and make it better.”

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The Cruz letter does come across a bit clueless, though Rogers exaggerates the ease of pushing against the enormous inertia of Wikipedia’s immanent editors, who flick off unwanted but merited changes like flicking bugs. The bias is definitely there, but Cruz’s complaints aren’t the way it will be fixed.
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Sora 2 watermark removers flood the web • 404 Media

Matthew Gault:

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Sora 2, Open AI’s new AI video generator, puts a visual watermark on every video it generates. But the little cartoon-eyed cloud logo meant to help people distinguish between reality and AI-generated bullshit is easy to remove and there are half a dozen websites that will help anyone do it in a few minutes.

A simple search for “sora watermark” on any social media site will return links to places where a user can upload a Sora 2 video and remove the watermark. 404 Media tested three of these websites, and they all seamlessly removed the watermark from the video in a matter of seconds.

Hany Farid, a UC Berkeley professor and an expert on digitally manipulated images, said he’s not shocked at how fast people were able to remove watermarks from Sora 2 videos. “It was predictable,” he said. “Sora isn’t the first AI model to add visible watermarks and this isn’t the first time that within hours of these models being released, someone released code or a service to remove these watermarks.”

Hours after its release on September 30, Sora 2 emerged as a copyright violation machine full of Nazi SpongeBobs and criminal Pickachus. Open AI has tamped down on that kind of content after the initial thrill of seeing Rick and Morty shill for crypto sent people scrambling to download the app. Now that the novelty is wearing off we’re grappling with the unpleasant fact that Open AI’s new tool is very good at making realistic videos that are hard to distinguish from reality.

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Yup, the deluge starts here.
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Global electricity mid-year insights 2025 • Ember

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The increase in solar and wind power outpaced global electricity demand growth in the first half of 2025. Solar alone met 83% of the rise, with many countries setting new records. Fossil fuels remained mostly flat, with a slight decline. Fossil generation fell in China and India, but grew in the EU and the US.

As the world’s energy needs increase and electricity makes up a growing share of final energy consumption, spectacular solar growth, alongside increased wind generation, met and exceeded all new demand. This led to renewables overtaking coal’s share in the global mix and prevented further increases in CO2 emissions from the power sector.

Solar grew by a record 306 TWh (31%) in the first half of 2025. This increased solar’s share in the global electricity mix from 6.9% to 8.8%. China accounted for 55% of global solar generation growth, followed by the US (14%), the EU (12%), India (5.6%) and Brazil (3.2%), while the rest of the world contributed just 9%. Four countries generated over 25% of their electricity from solar, and at least 29 countries surpassed 10%, up from 22 countries in the same period last year and only 11 countries in H1-2021.

A strong rise in solar, and to a lesser extent wind, led to renewables overtaking coal generation for the first time on record in the first half of 2025.

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Though of course solar growth is going backwards in the US. What a world where China is the one we look to for technological progress and good sense.
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Spotify strengthens AI protections for artists, songwriters, and producers • Spotify

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We’ve always had a policy against deceptive content. But AI tools have made generating vocal deepfakes of your favorite artists easier than ever before.

We’ve introduced a new impersonation policy that clarifies how we handle claims about AI voice clones (and other forms of unauthorized vocal impersonation), giving artists stronger protections and clearer recourse. Vocal impersonation is only allowed in music on Spotify when the impersonated artist has authorized the usage. 

We’re also ramping up our investments to protect against another impersonation tactic—where uploaders fraudulently deliver music (AI-generated or otherwise) to another artist’s profile across streaming services. We’re testing new prevention tactics with leading artist distributors to equip them to better stop these attacks at the source. On our end, we’ll also be investing more resources into our content mismatch process, reducing the wait time for review, and enabling artists to report “mismatch” even in the pre-release state.

Unauthorized use of AI to clone an artist’s voice exploits their identity, undermines their artistry, and threatens the fundamental integrity of their work. Some artists may choose to license their voices to AI projects—and that’s their choice to make. Our job is to do what we can to ensure that the choice stays in their hands.

Total music payouts on Spotify have grown from $1bn in 2014 to $10bn in 2024. But big payouts entice bad actors. Spam tactics such as mass uploads, duplicates, SEO hacks, artificially short track abuse, and other forms of slop have become easier to exploit as AI tools make it simpler for anyone to generate large volumes of music.

This fall [autumn], we’ll roll out a new music spam filter—a system that will identify uploaders and tracks engaging in these tactics, tag them, and stop recommending them.

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The arms race intensifies. And some people probably like AI-generated music.
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My email to Tim Cook • Wiley Hodges

Hodges worked for Apple for 22 years, leaving in 2022:

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The removal of ICEBlock without evidence of the government either providing a lawful basis for such a demand or following a legal process to effect its removal represents an erosion of this principled stance. Acceding to a government ‘demand’ without demanding that the government follow legal process in order to back up its request (or at least shedding light on how the government did follow such process) raises the question of how easily Apple will accede to other requests. Will Apple lower its general standards for law enforcement requests from those outlined at https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelines-us.pdf? Will Apple give data on the identities of users who downloaded the ICEBlock app to the government? Will Apple block podcasts that advocate points of view opposed to the current US administration? I imagine and hope that these are ridiculous questions, but without a clearer demonstration of Apple’s principled commitment to lawful action and due process, I feel uncertain.

I don’t know where this leaves me as an Apple customer, but I do know that it upsets me as an Apple shareholder. I am asking you and your team to more clearly explain the basis on which you made the decision to remove ICEBlock—and how the government showed good faith and strong evidence in making its demand of Apple, or that you reinstate the app in the App Store.

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John Gruber links to this and is excoriating about Apple once again. (Are they having discussions in the Apple PR offices, since he used to just be the “hardware review and links” guy?) ICEBlock, as Gruber points out, contains no harmful content; it just tells you where law enforcement are, which both Maps and Waze, still available, also do.

When the FBI demanded a backdoor to crack the San Bernadino shooter’s phone in 2016, Apple refused. When the UK government demanded a backdoor into encrypted iCloud backups in 2025, Apple refused (though it did turn off encrypted backups in the UK). When the Trump administration demanded – without any legal authority – that ICEBlock be removed, it was.

What’s the difference? Tim Cook may be thinking that retirement looks welcoming rather than fighting these contradictions.
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OpenAI and Jony Ive grapple with technical issues on secretive AI device

Tim Bradshaw, Cristina Criddle, Michael Acton and Ryan McMorrow:

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OpenAI and star designer Jony Ive are grappling with a series of technical issues with their secretive new artificial intelligence device, as they push to launch a blockbuster tech product next year.

The San Francisco-based startup run by Sam Altman acquired the former Apple design chief’s company io for $6.5bn in May, but the pair have shared few details on the projects they are building.

Their aim is to create a palm-sized device without a screen that can take audio and visual cues from the physical environment and respond to users’ requests.

People familiar with their plans said OpenAI and Ive had yet to solve critical problems that could delay the device’s release. Despite having hardware developed by Ive and his team — whose alluring designs of the iMac, iPod and iPhone helped turn Apple into one of the most valuable companies in the world — obstacles remain in the device’s software and the infrastructure needed to power it.

These include deciding on the assistant’s “personality”, privacy issues and budgeting for the computing power needed to run OpenAI’s models on a mass consumer device.

“Compute is another huge factor for the delay,” said one person close to Ive. “Amazon has the compute for an Alexa, so does Google [for its Home device], but OpenAI is struggling to get enough compute for ChatGPT, let alone an AI device — they need to fix that first.”

A person close to OpenAI said the teething troubles were simply normal parts of the product development process.

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Of course, the device is being built in China (so there’s a byline from China in there). It’s not surprising if they’re having challenges, but that doesn’t mean they won’t hit their deadline.
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Removing these 50 objects from orbit would cut danger from space junk in half • Ars Technica

Stephen Clark:

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A new listing of the 50 most concerning pieces of space debris in low-Earth orbit is dominated by relics more than a quarter-century old, primarily dead rockets left to hurtle through space at the end of their missions.

“The things left before 2000 are still the majority of the problem,” said Darren McKnight, lead author of a paper presented Friday at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney. “Seventy-six% of the objects in the top 50 were deposited last century, and 88% of the objects are rocket bodies. That’s important to note, especially with some disturbing trends right now.”

The 50 objects identified by McKnight and his coauthors are the ones most likely to drive the creation of more space junk in low-Earth orbit (LEO) through collisions with other debris fragments. The objects are whizzing around the Earth at nearly five miles per second, flying in a heavily trafficked part of LEO between 700 and 1,000 kilometers (435 to 621 miles) above the Earth.

An impact with even a modestly sized object at orbital velocity would create countless pieces of debris, potentially triggering a cascading series of additional collisions clogging LEO with more and more space junk, a scenario called the Kessler Syndrome.

McKnight, a senior technical fellow at the orbital intelligence company LeoLabs, spoke with Ars before the paper’s release. In the paper, analysts considered how close objects are to other space traffic, their altitude, and their mass. Larger debris at higher altitudes pose a higher long-term risk because they could create more debris that would remain in orbit for centuries or longer.

Russia and the Soviet Union lead the pack with 34 objects listed in McKnight’s Top 50, followed by China with 10, the United States with three, Europe with two, and Japan with one. Russia’s SL-16 and SL-8 rockets are the worst offenders, combining to take 30 of the Top 50 slots.

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What isn’t stated is how you’d do this. Heading up there and nudging them down seems like a proposition, but nobody seems to be suggesting it.
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UAE’s AI university lures global talent to fuel tech ambitions • Rest of World

Amar Diwakar:

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In the six years since its founding, Abu Dhabi’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence has hired more than 100 faculty from China, the US, Germany, and other countries. MBZUAI currently has over 700 students and alumni from 49 nations. The government-funded institute promises students full scholarships, and professors freedom from having to secure academic grants. It works closely with the UAE’s multibillion-dollar AI firm G42, and in May, it opened a satellite research facility in Silicon Valley dedicated to developing AI models. 

There is a lot riding on the institute, which is central to the nation’s vision of becoming a global AI powerhouse. The government has bet billions on the tech, and hopes a steady talent pipeline will help diversify its oil-based economy. AI is expected to contribute 20% of the UAE’s non-oil GDP by 2031, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

MBZUAI should “create an AI district that would become the bedrock of the next level of advancement of the UAE’s and MENA’s [Middle East and North Africa] economy and global impact,” Eric Xing, the university’s president, said at an event in January.

The university says its ambition to be the “Stanford of the Middle East” is already beginning to pay off. It is currently among the top 20 universities publishing on AI topics, according to CSRanking, a global computer-science ranking initiative.

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In case you thought that AI study was the sole preserve of the US and China. (And maybe a bit the UK.)
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Qantas shrouds stolen data in secrecy: will it help?​ • Cybernews

Gintaras Radauskas:

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When it emerged in early July that almost six million customer details were stolen from Qantas in a security breach, it seemed a bit bizarre that the airline kept saying that its operations weren’t actually impacted.

At the time, the company explained that its system doesn’t store credit card details, personal financial information, or passport details. Customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and frequent flyer numbers were nabbed.

While this might not seem like the most sensitive data, threat actors could still use the information to craft sophisticated phishing scams that urge flyers to hand over their credentials.

However, there’s another reason why Qantas remained remarkably calm over the seemingly major cyber incident. Soon after the attack, the company was granted an interim injunction in the NSW Supreme Court, aimed at stopping the data from being accessed or released.

The court has now made the injunction permanent. Essentially, the order prevents third parties from publishing, viewing, or accessing the data if it is released by the attackers. Qantas has also successfully obtained permission not to publicly disclose the identities of lawyers acting for the company, saying that the hackers could target them.

Justice Francois Kunc said that “the perpetrators have some temporary ire against the legal advisors,” and that “it is depressing as it is obvious to observe that their attention will move on.”

Qantas claims there’s no evidence that the stolen data has been released, but the hackers allegedly contacted the airline via a series of emails. Rather than giving in to a ransom demand, the company responded by filing a lawsuit against “persons unknown.”

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Definitely going to work, uh-huh.
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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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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified