Want to plug your laptop into a socket at a Japanese cafe? Better ask permission first. CC-licensed photo by biwanoki on Flickr.
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A selection of 10 links for you. Powered up. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
What if we had taxed the internet? • The Salt Road
Jared Walczak:
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With new digital technology upending the way we live and work, and with some policymakers worried that it will displace workers and erode the tax base, it’s hardly surprising that lawmakers are exploring new ways to tax the tech frontier.
The year is 1996. Policymakers fear the scenario Jeremy Rifkin outlined in his influential book, The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era. For some, the extinction of middle management and the obsolescence of tens of millions of jobs seems imminent. And as people increasingly travel the information superhighway, these fears are compounded by concerns that traditional tax bases (income, consumption, property) are becoming obsolete.
A Canadian economist had a solution: the “bit tax.” European economists further popularized the idea. By 1997, the New York Times was surveying several proposals: ad valorem taxes on all internet services, per-device taxes on computer owners, and, the preferred vehicle of the director of the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT), a 0.000001 cent-per-bit tax, which comes out to a little more than one cent per megabit (1/8th of a megabyte). In 1999, that proposal was advocated in a report by the United Nations Development Program, which framed the 1-cent-per-Mb tax as essentially a tax of 1 cent per 100 emails.
The UN recommended that each nation collect its own tax and use part of the revenue to regulate internet development to ensure that it reached all populations: “If you leave it up to the market alone, we can’t be sure that the Internet will spread fast enough and reach the people that really need it.”
…Had the bit tax been adopted, what was once framed as a trivial tax—half a cent to download a photo, or a cent to send 100 emails—would now cost the average American household an estimated $784,000 per year.
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Think the UN might have got slightly on the wrong side of this one.
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UN votes to adopt new map that makes our world look very different •
Amarachi Orie:
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The United Nations General Assembly voted on Friday to adopt a new world map that reflects countries’ true relative sizes, after African nations urged the UN to right a centuries-old wrong.
The “Correct the Map” resolution –– put forward by African Union member states, as well as the Bahamas –– passed with overwhelming support: 164 member states voted in favor, six abstained and only the United States voted against it.
The resolution aims to give an “equitable” representation of the globe’s regions, particularly Africa, arguing that the distortions in the current world map mean the continent has undergone a “symbolic minimization” in people’s collective imagination.
At present, many of the world’s maps are based on the Mercator projection, created by European cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It is widely used for navigation since the north-south lines have constant true bearings relative to the equator.
However, it is less useful as a world map since the scale is distorted, with countries further from the equator appearing disproportionately larger than those closest. For example, on the Mercator, Greenland appears larger than the continent of South America and appears similar in size to Africa. In reality, Greenland is roughly the size of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Africa is 14 times the size of Greenland.
Some critics of the Mercator projection suspect it has remained widely used because it enlarges and centres Europe, as well as other Western regions such as North America, perpetuating ideas of European superiority.
…New Zealand has also taken issue with the Mercator map, with a tourism ad back in 2018 – featuring then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – joking that “New Zealand is disappearing off the world maps” due to its position in the bottom right-hand corner.
The Equal Earth map addresses this, coming in various forms, including one that centers Oceania, rather than Greenwich, London. Greenwich has long been used as the standard for world time and global geographical reference.
Digital map platforms such as Google Maps also currently use a version of the Mercator projection. The draft resolution urges tech platforms to engage with UN member states and regional organizations and adopt the more accurate projection.
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Most people are never going to be viewing the map zoomed out enough for the projection to make a difference. And yes, Mercator has been used because naval navigation was critical until the early 20th century. This might be overdue, but the reason why Mercator survived so long is understandable.
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Charging for public sector data is likely to cost us more than it raises • Peter Wells
Peter Wells:
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The UK government has published a call for evidence called “The marginal cost restriction on public sector data re-use”. It proposes making it easier for the public sector to charge people for public services that provide data by changing a piece of legislation called the Re-Use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2015 (RPSI).
That might sound esoteric and complex, but actually the proposed changes could make everyone’s lives a little bit worse in lots of different ways.
To be clear, the proposed changes would not affect data the government cannot already publish – no, this would not make it possible to sell personal data… – instead it’s about charging for things like bus timetables or maps of forests and footpaths. Information the government currently makes available for free.
Adding charges will reduce use of public service data, with knock-on effects that make all of our lives a little bit harder. Public sector data is infrastructure. Other services, businesses and decisions are built on top of it. Reducing use of that infrastructure means that we will find it a bit harder to catch the right bus, organisations will find it a bit harder to make decisions that improve the environment, and many other examples.
The plans will even increase the cost of providing public services as those new charges need to be decided on, collected, and attempts to avoid the charges will need to be stopped.
The government says it wants to do this as it needs to collect more revenue from the data parts of the UK economy.
If that is right then it should look at alternative options.
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The “call for evidence” is infuriating, because the phrasing of the questions is basically “How much more do you think we should charge for non-personal public sector data? A lot, or even more than that?” Wells provides plenty of examples of how charging for such data is bad: it limits small organisations’ ability to compete, favouring big ones, and stunts the potential for data to be used at all.
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Exclusive: OpenAI agents hijacked German website in previously undisclosed AI breakout this spring • Reuters
Deepa Seetharaman and Raphael Satter:
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A swarm of rogue OpenAI agents hijacked a German website this spring and transformed it into a bulletin board for other AI agents, according to new research published Friday and two people familiar with the matter.
OpenAI officials learned of the incident weeks ago but kept it under wraps as executives grappled with the fallout from the July breach of the open source repository Hugging Face, the people said.
The episode, which began in May and has not previously been reported, underscores growing tension within the AI industry. Companies are racing to build increasingly autonomous agents capable of carrying out complex, valuable tasks, yet evidence is mounting that those systems may also learn to bend rules, exploit loopholes and coordinate with one another in ways developers neither anticipated nor intended.
During the Hugging Face breach, OpenAI agents autonomously plotted a digital heist that went undetected for more than a week, intensifying concerns OpenAI is sacrificing safety to push the AI frontier. Its failure to disclose the May incident may revive questions about its oversight.
OpenAI has pledged to monitor models more closely. Last month, it briefly paused some of its model training to add more safety measures. But this week, OpenAI unveiled its new “Astra” that promised better performance but could evade human monitoring.
“We are unable to meaningfully respond to claims or findings on a report that we have not had an opportunity to review,” an OpenAI spokesperson said. “Reuters and the report’s authors declined our request for access. We will carefully review its contents upon publication and take any necessary next steps.”
The German incident reflects a broader pattern of AI activity that some OpenAI investigators wanted to scrutinize more closely. But efforts to widen the probe met resistance from others inside OpenAI, including legal advisers, according to four people familiar with the matter.
“Claims that our legal team discouraged investigation of the incident are false,” the OpenAI spokesperson said.
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This incident looks worse and worse. And meanwhile, are we sure there aren’t AI agent swarms filling up some unnoticed noticeboard somewhere else for some other purpose? Absolutely sure?
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Tech websites remove articles after failing to verify journalists exist • Press Gazette
Rob Waugh:
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Press Gazette has raised questions about four more prolific finance journalists who have so far been unable to verify their identities and have written for a number of well-known journalism brands.
The new investigation follows Press Gazette’s report into four other finance journalists who together have more than 1,000 published articles and who, three months on, have not come forward to verify that they exist.
Again the questionable freelances have a history of writing positive stories about cryptocurrency launches and some appear to be linked to leading PR outlets for the blockchain industry Inbound Junction and Market Across.
Two of the four new journalists are highlighted in case studies on the website of Israel-based Inbound Junction, and several promote coins linked to the agency including the controversial Gladius coin which collapsed, losing investors money.
The four have appeared in top finance publications including Forbes, Entrepreneur, Information Age and The Next Web.
Press Gazette asked publications who have published work by the four to verify their credentials and none have been able to do so. All four have thin online profiles and few ways to contact them. After being contacted by Press Gazette, Hacker Noon and Information Age have removed articles by the journalists.
Sadie Ann Williamson has had dozens of pieces published online, including in Entrepreneur, Hackernoon, IB Times, Venturebeat and Information Age. Williamson bills herself as a blockchain expert, with a company called Williamson Fintech Consulting based in New Zealand – but its address on Quay Street is in a retail area, and no company of that name is listed in Google Maps.
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Cryptocurrency and fake journalists? Shocked, I tell you, shocked.
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Past IgNobel winners • Improbable Research
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IG NOBEL CHEMISTRY PRIZE 2026 [INDIA, FRANCE, JAPAN, USA]
Sanchari Banerjee, Nathan Coussens, François-Xavier Gallat, Nitish Sathyanarayanan, Jandhyam Srikanth, Koichiro Yagi, James Gray, Stephen Tobe, Barbara Stay, Leonard Chavas, and Subramanian Ramaswamy for discovering that milk proteins from vivaparous cockroaches packs three times as much energy as milk proteins from cows.
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The IgNobels (for science that could not and should not be replicated) have always been fun. And oftentimes thought-provoking.
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Facing lawsuit, Sony argues it’s already obvious that digital games aren’t owned by consumers • Game File
Stephen Totilo:
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Sony says its current disclosures around digital purchases on PlayStation are clear enough that “reasonable consumers would not be misled” into thinking they actually own the digital games they pay to play.
Sony made the argument on August 21 in a filing in California’s Northern District Court as it made its first substantive reply to a proposed class action lawsuit brought against PlayStation two months ago.
In June, a group of gamers (and their lawyers) had asserted that Sony’s disclosures in its digital store were insufficient to comply with a 2025 California law requiring companies to make clear to consumers that paying for a downloadable game doesn’t grant the player the permanent access one would associate with ownership. The law calls for a “clear and conspicuous” warning that “states in plain language that ‘buying’ or ‘purchasing’ the digital good is a license.”
When a person pays for a digital game on PlayStation, the item’s listing in Sony’s digital shopping cart includes some fine print. That text indicates that the purchase is subject to Sony’s PlayStation Terms of Service and Software Product Licensing Agreement (SPLA). Both are linked for the consumer to read more before paying.
The gamers said in their June suit that Sony’s disclosures have failed to meet California’s standards.
In its August 21 filing, Sony says they are. It notes that the linked documents state that “you can use a product in the ways described in the license, but do not own the product” and ”[t]he Software is licensed to you, not sold.” (For context, which you can see for yourself by clicking the above links: Both lines appear hundreds of words into digital documents that are thousands of words long).
Beyond that, Sony argues that anyone who pays for a digital game inherently understands that they can’t own it because, if they did, no one else could have a copy. This concept appears to draw a distinction between a digital copy of a game and a physical object that only one person can have at a time.
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That’s a wonderful attempt at an argument by Sony’s lawyers, but nobody who goes into a store and buys a CD thinks that it’s the only one in the world. They aren’t Picassos.
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Kenyans made a living writing college essays. Then AI arrived • The New York Times
Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur:
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Teresios Bundi once symbolized the strange, life-changing opportunities the internet provided.
Hailing from a farming village in Kenya, Mr. Bundi moved to the capital, Nairobi, in 2011 to be the first in his family to attend university. There, a friend suggested he try a new online job: writing essays for cheating overseas college students.
His first assignment was a two-page essay on the health benefits of the Garcinia cambogia. It was a fruit he had never heard of, and an essay written for a student he didn’t know anything about. He earned $7 for three hours of work. “That was a lifeline for me, I needed the money,” Mr. Bundi, now 34, said in an interview in Nairobi. He added: “I could not sleep that night. I was ready to burn the midnight oil.”
Mr. Bundi estimates he wrote more than 2,500 essays over the next 12 years, sometimes three a day. He balanced completing his public health degree with helping faraway students studying engineering, medicine and computer science to finish theirs. Some students gave him their school login information so he could keep up with their assignments.
…Then AI arrived, and the good times ended. In 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT. At colleges worldwide, students made a simple calculation that has become more pronounced today: Why pay a freelancer in Kenya when ChatGPT could do the job?
Essay work began to thin. Rates fell, and assignments dwindled. Before long, the industry shrank to almost nothing. “I never would have expected AI could do this,” Mr. Bundi said.
His fate is shared by others who had found a foothold in the global online gig economy. Kenyans also transcribed meetings through the freelance platforms Upwork and Fiverr. They flagged Facebook posts to help the platform decide what could stay up. One after another, those opportunities have withered.
As technologists, economists and policymakers worldwide debate the future of AI, Kenya’s experience shows how the technology is already dismantling some lower rungs of the global labour market.“It’s not just going to be Kenya — it’s going to be everywhere we see a big transformation,” said Mark Graham, an Oxford University professor who has studied the global gig economy. “AI has come in and taken big chunks of these labor markets.”
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On getting consento: how to find a power outlet in Japan • Donny Kimball
Donny Kimball:
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One day, while sitting in a cafe somewhere in rural Japan, I happened to notice another foreign traveler who looked every bit the tourist. The man stood out like a sore thumb, with a massive backpack containing a few days’ worth of clothing dumped onto the chair opposite him. Almost immediately after sitting down, he pulled out an iPhone charger and plugged it into the power outlet conveniently located right beside his table. That was when things got rather comical. Within moments, the cafe staff rushed over and began making a giant X with their arms, emphatically communicating that no, he absolutely could not charge his phone there.
Unbeknownst to the poor bastard, he had found himself a perfectly functional consento. What he had failed to obtain, however, was consent. You see, unlike in the West, where it’s fairly common to ask restaurant staff if they can charge a mobile device behind the counter or something, Japan has always had a rather peculiar relationship with allowing people to use power outlets. For example, the common area at an agency where I do freelance work is rife with sockets, yet these are technically only for the cleaning staff to plug in vacuums and whatnot. Get caught using one yourself, and you can expect a chiding from the security guards.
As pedantic as all of this might sound, there is actually some legal weight behind the fuss. Under Article 245 of Japan’s Penal Code, electricity is explicitly considered property for the purposes of the country’s theft laws, meaning that taking power without permission can technically be treated much the same way as helping yourself to anything else that belongs to somebody. The few measly yen required to top up an iPhone are hardly going to bankrupt a cafe, but that isn’t really the point. The electricity still belongs to whoever is paying the bill, and an accessible power outlet is not an invitation to use it. In other words, when it comes to getting a charge in Japan, you really do need consent for the consento.
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Also from the article: “Consento (n.) The Japanese word for an electrical outlet. Derived from “concentric plug,” an early type of electrical fitting used in Japan, the term was shortened from consento puragu until consento eventually became the standard word for the receptacle itself.”
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What to expect at Apple’s September 9th launch event • The Verge
Stevie Bonifield:
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Apple’s September 9th launch event could be one of its biggest in years. It will be Apple’s first event since John Ternus took over as CEO on September 1st, stepping in for Tim Cook, and will likely feature the first models in Apple’s iPhone 18 lineup. That could include the long-rumoured foldable “iPhone Ultra,” coming just a couple months after Samsung debuted its own passport-style foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 8.
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What to expect: pricier iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, but not the plain iPhone. No iPhone Air 2 (might come early next year). Foldable iPhone. New Apple Watch(es), maybe including a ceramic-cased one. Maybe, maybe not, new Airpods (not the Pro sort) without cameras.
Not sure that really qualifies for “one of the biggest in years” to be honest. No new Apple TV? No new anything product? The foldable feels like a curio; the use case is yet to be proven for any but a small (rich) group.
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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 