Techrights

Links 14/07/2025: Arresting Photographers, Threats to Revoke US Citizenship Over Criticism

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 14, 2025

GNOME bluefish

Contents

• LeftoversScienceCareer/EducationHardwareHealth/Nutrition/AgricultureProprietaryArtificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / PlagiarismSocial Control Media SecurityIntegrity/Availability/AuthenticityConfidentiality Defence/AggressionTransparency/Investigative ReportingEnvironmentEnergy/Transportation AstroTurf/Lobbying/PoliticsCensorship/Free SpeechCivil Rights/PolicingInternet Policy/Net NeutralityMonopolies/MonopsoniesCopyrights

* ### Leftovers

Science

Roman Kashitsyn ☛ Stepanov’s biggest blunder

If you have ever tried using the std::adjacent_difference algorithm in c++, I’m sure it left you puzzled. As the name suggests, this algorithm computes differences between adjacent elements of the input sequence, but it does one more thing: it copies the first element of the input sequence into the output sequence unmodified. The following example demonstrates how to apply the algorithm to delta-compress a postings list of document identifiers that contain a search term (the example is contrived since Google developed much more sophisticated posting list compression techniques).

Etienne Jacob ☛ Algorithms for making interesting organic simulations

The purpose of this article is to explain techniques that enabled me to make simulations like the one below, along with a lot of other organic looking things. We will focus on algorithmic techniques for artistic purpose rather than scientific meaning.

Wired ☛ For Algorithms, Memory Is a Far More Powerful Resource Than Time

Time and memory (also called space) are the two most fundamental resources in computation: Every algorithm takes some time to run and requires some space to store data while it’s running. Until now, the only known algorithms for accomplishing certain tasks required an amount of space roughly proportional to their run time, and researchers had long assumed there’s no way to do better. Williams’ proof established a mathematical procedure for transforming any algorithm—no matter what it does—into a form that uses much less space.

Career/Education

Court House News ☛ Hungary’s oldest library is fighting to save 100,000 books from a beetle infestation

Restoration workers are removing about 100,000 handbound books from their shelves and carefully placing them in crates, the start of a disinfection process that aims to kill the tiny beetles burrowed into them.

US News And World Report ☛ Hungary's Oldest Library Is Fighting to Save 100,000 Books From a Beetle Infestation

“This is an advanced insect infestation which has been detected in several parts of the library, so the entire collection is classified as infected and must be treated all at the same time,” said Zsófia Edit Hajdu, the chief restorer on the project. “We've never encountered such a degree of infection before.”

Hardware

HowTo Geek ☛ How to Avoid Disaster When a Cat Walks Across Your Keyboard

Many Linux distributions will have a similar solution. For example, in Ubuntu you can click on the area in the top-right corner of the screen and then toggle Bluetooth off with a click.any Bluetooth keyboards have multiple profiles, for connecting to different devices. You can trigger these using a keyboard shortcut, like Fn+3. This could also be a handy solution that you can trigger quickly from your keyboard (and then switch back when the coast is clear).

The Register UK ☛ Nvidia warns of Rowhammer attacks on GPUs

Rowhammer is a method of attempting to corrupt memory by repeatedly "hammering" rows of memory cells with a burst of read or write operations. The repeat operations can create electrical interference between rows of memory cells, potentially disrupting operations.

Nate Graham ☛ The hunt for a perfect laptop continues

This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about the dearth of truly great PC laptops out there, and I suspect it won’t be the last.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

Science Alert ☛ Cannabis Use Is Linked to Epigenetic Changes, Scientists Discover

US researchers found it may cause changes in the epigenome, which acts like a set of switches that activate or deactivate genes involved in how our bodies function.

Science Alert ☛ One Piece of Advice to Parents Slashed Food Allergies in Children

"For the babies in group two – whose caregivers followed the updated guidelines and introduced peanut butter and egg around six months of age – egg allergy reduced from 12 percent to 3 percent, and peanut allergy reduced from around 6 percent to 1 percent," says Summer Walker, a health scientist at the University of Western Australia.

Futurism ☛ Vast Numbers of Lonely Kids Are Using AI as Substitute Friends

Of the 1,000 children aged nine to 17 that Internet Matters surveyed for its "Me, Myself, and AI" report, some 67 percent said they use AI chatbots regularly. Of that group, 35 percent, or more than a third, said that talking to AI "feels like talking to a friend."Perhaps most alarming: 12 percent said they do so because they don't have anyone else to speak to.

The New Stack ☛ Does ChatGPT Encourage Dangerous Delusions?

The Cleveland Clinic defines psychosis as “trouble telling the difference between what’s real and what’s not.” And the Reddit user, a self-described schizophrenic, seems to have stumbled into what’s become a wider and much more disturbing phenomenon.

Proprietary

Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

India Times ☛ Does AI actually boost productivity? evidence is murky

A survey of 2,500 professionals found generative AI actually increased workload for 77% of workers. Some 47% said they didn't know how to unlock productivity benefits. The study points to barriers such as the need to verify and/or correct AI outputs, the need for AI upskilling, and unreasonable expectations about what AI can do.

The Verge ☛ xAI explains Grok’s Nazi meltdown, as Tesla puts Elon’s bot in its cars

The xAI explanation says those lines caused the Grok AI bot to break from other instructions that are supposed to prevent these types of responses, and instead produce “unethical or controversial opinions to engage the user,” as well as “reinforce any previously user-triggered leanings, including any hate speech in the same X thread,” and prioritize sticking to earlier posts from the thread.

Social Control Media

The Guardian UK ☛ Are a few people ruining the internet for the rest of us?

In a paper I recently published with Claire Robertson and Kareena del Rosario, we found extensive evidence that social media is less like a neutral reflection of society and more like a funhouse mirror. It amplifies the loudest and most extreme voices while muting the moderate, the nuanced and the boringly reasonable. And much of that distortion, it turns out, can be traced back to a handful of hyperactive online voices. Just 10% of users produce roughly 97% of political tweets.

The Telegraph UK ☛ The disturbing world of extreme dieting on social media

The app’s powerful algorithm can send users down a rabbit hole of content within a niche, meaning videos promoting extreme dieting techniques could be being fed to teenagers. Regulators are taking note – in fact, one French government minister is seeking to ban it once and for all. Clara Chappaz is the minister delegate for artificial intelligence and digital technologies in the government of prime minister François Bayrou. In April, she reported “#SkinnyTok” to France’s audiovisual and digital watchdog, and to the EU, over concerns that it is promoting anorexia.

Security

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

The Register UK ☛ Fake North Korean IT workers: How companies can stop them

In some instances, the scammers even used deepfake videos in attempts to get hired, including at a security company that uses AI to find vulnerabilities in code. "If they almost fooled me, a cybersecurity expert, they definitely fooled some people," Vidoc Security Lab co-founder Dawid Moczadło told us in an earlier interview.

Confidentiality

Terence Eden ☛ It is 1939 and you want to use public-key cryptography

Imagine, just for a moment, that a mathematical breakthrough had occurred on the eve of the second World War. Perhaps Turing or Rejewski or Driscoll realised that prime number theory held the key to unbreakable encryption. This blog post attempts to answer the question "could public-key cryptography have been used in 1939?"Let's briefly step back into history.

Defence/Aggression

Ben Werdmuller ☛ Why Big Tech is threatened by a global push for data sovereignty

This has always been true, but was perhaps less of an issue when the US government wasn’t both unpredictable and antagonistic. Now, it isn’t just Europe that is seeking to own its own technology future: Global Majority countries are too. And they’re taking steps to make sure it happens.Africa is building new data centers. While some more of the wealth and investment will flow into the continent as a result, it doesn’t appear that many of them are actually owned by Africans, which feels like a necessary next step. Otherwise they’re essentially being colonized by tech companies from places like the US and China.

The Telegraph UK ☛ July set to be busiest ever for Channel migrant arrivals amid ‘summer sale’

Extrapolating that daily rate for the rest of the month gives a total monthly figure of 6,143, which would be the highest on record.

The Atlantic ☛ What Exactly Is Required to Preserve Our Democracy?

Since The Atlantic first released the podcast Autocracy in America last fall, Donald Trump was elected president again. Staff writer Anne Applebaum describes how Trump’s return to the White House fits into the changing geopolitical landscape as she hands the show over to its new host: Garry Kasparov. The former world chess champion and lifelong democracy activist will guide a series of conversations about society’s complacency with liberal values and how this carelessness has fueled a democratic retreat—and a new belligerence among dictators.

Mike Brock ☛ The Democrats’ Choice: Righteous Anger or Continued Complicity

If Democrats want a message that will galvanize support in 2026, here it is: “We see your corruption, your lies, your lawlessness, and we’re coming for you.”This isn’t hyperbole. This isn’t partisan rage. This is moral clarity about systematic lawbreaking by people who have captured American institutions and are using them to eliminate democratic accountability. The corruption is real. It is historically unprecedented and prodigious in scope. Justice is called for. Unrelenting justice. A promise of reckoning.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

BoingBoing ☛ Citizen journalist arrested for photographing sheriff's deputy at Texas county meeting

The arrest raises questions about who can document local government activities. As reported in The Texas Tribune, Texas law explicitly states that "any person may record all or any part of an open meeting of a governmental body." Flash, who holds a graduate degree in digital audience strategy but no traditional journalism background, has built a following of 285,000 on Facebook by covering an area with limited media presence.

The Texas Tribune ☛ West Texas publisher’s arrest spurs First Amendment questions

He also pointed to the state’s open meeting handbook, which government officials and members of the public must comply with. Any person, the handbook says, “may record all or any part of an open meeting of a governmental body by means of a recorder, video camera, or other means of aural or visual reproduction.”The document, which translates Texas’ transparency laws into plain English, additionally states that a governmental body may adopt reasonable rules to maintain order at a meeting, including the location of recording equipment, and how the recording is conducted. The rules “may not prevent or unreasonably impair a person from exercising a right.”

Environment

NL Times ☛ Warm air layer causes Rotterdam festival music to travel, triggering 66 noise complaints

According to DCMR, weather conditions on Saturday evening caused the sound to travel farther than usual. The agency explained that an inversion was occurring, in which a layer of warm air remains above cooler air near the ground. This acts as a lid that reflects sound back toward the ground, amplifying how far it carries.

Energy/Transportation

Futurism ☛ China Working On Levitating Train That Could Get You From New York to Chicago in Two Hours

While there are a handful of low-speed maglevs currently operating in countries like South Korea and Japan, Chinese engineers are plugging away on a maglev that they say hit spectacular speeds of 650 kmph, or 400 miles per hour. For context, that's fast enough to connect New York to Los Angeles in under seven hours, or New York to Chicago in just two hours — assuming the political will to build all that maglev track, that is.

Chris O'Donnnell ☛ College Dating and Fuck Budget Rent A Car

I hopped on the city bus for the 3 mile ride to the airport, and upon arriving stood in line for 15 minutes while the 2 Budget/Avis agents dealt with a grand total of 3 customers. When I got the front I was told that there were "no cars in the garage" and that I could have a seat and wait and eventually maybe somebody would return a car and I would get the rent the car I had reserved the day before.Cue Seinfeld. That bit was broadcast in September 1991. So it was already enough of a recognized problem then to be worthy of pop culture skewering. And here we are 34 years later, and the problem hasn't gotten better, if we are being generous. If we are realistic, it's worse. Budget tried to blame it on the storms in RVA yesterday. Apparently a bunch of people with afternoon flights decided to skip the flights instead of returning their rental cars in the rain.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

Computational Complexity ☛ Computational Complexity: How much money did Francis Scott Key give to have a building named after him?

Marcy Wheeler ☛ Jeffrey Epstein Is about Trump's Failing Ability to Command Attention

The bubbling Jeffrey Epstein scandal is about two things: the underlying scandal and any ties Trump has to it, and the way it has disrupted Trump’s normal super power ability to command and direct attention.His attack on Rosie O’Donnell yesterday shows that his ability to direct the attention of the left remains undiminished and makes clear why this power is so important to Trump.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

The Kyiv Independent ☛ Russia scales up propaganda operations across Africa, Ukrainian intelligence says

“Russian propaganda is a global threat that works for one purpose — the aggressor's territorial, resource and cultural expansion,” said HUR spokesperson Andrii Yusov in a statement.Over the past 2 years RT has increased the number of its African partner TV channels twofold, — from 30 to 60.

Censorship/Free Speech

The Telegraph UK ☛ Comedian Sebastian Hotz faces trial for Trump assassination joke

The incident is not the first to cause a free speech stir in the world of comedy. In 2016, Jan Böhmermann, a TV host, was charged with breaking an obscure German law against insulting authority figures after a satirical poem about Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president.

Civil Rights/Policing

TruthOut ☛ The US Public Loves the National Park Service. Trump Is Destroying It Anyway.

Rokala continued: “DOGE’s unelected bureaucrats in Washington have no idea how to staff a park, a wildlife refuge, or a campground. They have no idea how to manage a forest or prepare for fires in the wildland-urban interface. But Doug Burgum just gave DOGE free rein over all of that.”In April, Hassen attempted to fire Anthony Irish, an attorney who had been with the Interior for two decades, after Irish expressed concerns about giving DOGE access to a personnel payroll system. Irish was placed on investigative leave.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

IT Wire ☛ iTWire - Google announces new subsea cable to connect US and Spain

Google says its new Sol cable system will interconnect with its Nuvem subsea cable announced in September 2023, with the two systems interconnecting terrestrially in the US and in Iberia, as well as in Bermuda and the Azores.According to Google, Sol will be the only in-service fibre-optic cable between Florida and Europe.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

Copyrights

Futurism ☛ New Video-Generating AI Trained 100 Percent on Public Domain Films

These complex algorithms, which cleave millions of datapoints together into seconds-long gobs of video, are notoriously trained on proprietary material, leading to widespread ethical and legal concerns. (That's before we even mention how much energy it takes to synthesize an AI video.)Tech billionaires tend to argue that this is simply the way things need to be — if you want AI, we need to feed it copyrighted books, music, and video.