Van dingen die voorbijkomen

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It's easy to get the impression that Discord chat messages are ephemeral, especially across different public servers, where lines fly upward at a near-unreadable pace. But someone claims to be catching and compiling that data and is offering packages that can track more than 600 million users across more than 14,000 servers.

Joseph Cox at 404 Media confirmed that Spy Pet, a service that sells access to a database of purportedly 3 billion Discord messages, offers data "credits" to customers who pay in bitcoin, ethereum, or other cryptocurrency. Searching individual users will reveal the servers that Spy Pet can track them across, a raw and exportable table of their messages, and connected accounts, such as GitHub. Ominously, Spy Pet lists more than 86,000 other servers in which it has "no bots," but "we know it exists."

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  An example of Spy Pet's service from its website. Shown are a user's nicknames, connected accounts, banner image, server memberships, and messages across those servers tracked by Spy Pet. [credit: Spy Pet ]

As Cox notes, Discord doesn't make messages inside server channels, like blog posts or unlocked social media feeds, easy to publicly access and search. But many Discord users many not expect their messages, server memberships, bans, or other data to be grabbed by a bot, compiled, and sold to anybody wishing to pin them all on a particular user. 404 Media confirmed the service's function with multiple user examples. Private messages are not mentioned by Spy Pet and are presumably still secure.

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Enlarge / Three female skeletons found in a Neolithic storage pit in France show signs of ritualistic human sacrifice. (credit: . Beeching/Ludes et al., 2024)

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of two women in a Neolithic tomb in France, with the positioning of the bodies suggesting they may have been ritualistically murdered by asphyxia or self-strangulation, according to a recent paper published in the journal Science Advances.

(WARNING: graphic descriptions below.)

France's Rhône Valley is home to several archaeological sites dating to the end of the Middle Neolithic period (between 4250 and 3600/3500 BCE in the region); the sites include various storage silos, broken grindstones, imported ceramics, animal remains (both from communal meals and sacrifices), and human remains deposited in sepulchral pits. Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux is one such site.

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Almost from the start, arguments about mitigating climate change have included an element of cost-benefit analysis: Would it cost more to move the world off fossil fuels than it would to simply try to adapt to a changing world? A strong consensus has built that the answer to the question is a clear no, capped off by a Nobel in Economics given to one of the people whose work was key to building that consensus.

While most academics may have considered the argument put to rest, it has enjoyed an extended life in the political sphere. Large unknowns remain about both the costs and benefits, which depend in part on the remaining uncertainties in climate science and in part on the assumptions baked into economic models.

In Wednesday's edition of Nature, a small team of researchers analyzed how local economies have responded to the last 40 years of warming and projected those effects forward to 2050. They find that we're already committed to warming that will see the growth of the global economy undercut by 20 percent. That places the cost of even a limited period of climate change at roughly six times the estimated price of putting the world on a path to limit the warming to 2° C.

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Enlarge / Tesla CEO Elon Musk at an opening event for Tesla's Gigafactory on March 22, 2022, in Gruenheide, southeast of Berlin. (credit: Getty Images | Patrick Pleul)

Tesla is asking shareholders to approve a move to Texas and to re-approve a $55.8 billion pay package for CEO Elon Musk that was recently voided by a Delaware judge.

Musk's 2018 pay package was voided in a ruling by Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick, who found that the deal was unfair to shareholders. After the ruling, Musk said he would seek a shareholder vote on transferring Tesla's state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas.

The proposed move to Texas and Musk's pay package will be up for votes at Tesla's 2024 annual meeting on June 13, Tesla Board Chairperson Robyn Denholm wrote in a letter to shareholders that was included in a regulatory filing today.

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Enlarge / A prototype wonder effect—featuring Mario's head turned into blocks that could be eaten by enemies—didn't make it into the final game. (credit: Nintendo)

In a game industry that seems to engage in periodic layoffs as a matter of course, it's often hard for even popular game franchises to maintain continuity in their underlying creative teams from sequel to sequel. Then there's the Mario series, where every person credited with the creation of the original Super Mario Bros. in the 1980s ended up having a role in the making of Super Mario Bros. Wonder just last year.

In a recent interview with Ars Technica, Wonder producer Takashi Tezuka said it wasn't that tough to get that kind of creative continuity at Nintendo. "The secret to having a long-tenured staff is that people don't quit," he said. "For folks who have been there together for such a long time, it's easy for us to talk to each other."

That said, Tezuka added that just getting a bunch of industry veterans together to make a game runs the risk of not "keeping up with the times. Really, for me, I have a great interest in how our newer staff members play, what they play, what they think, and what is appealing to them. I think it's very interesting the things we can come up with when these two disparate groups influence each other to create something."

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Broadcom CEO Hock Tan this week publicized some concessions aimed at helping customers and partners ease into VMware’s recent business model changes. Tan reiterated that the controversial changes, like the end of perpetual licensing, aren't going away. But amid questioning from antitrust officials in the European Union (EU), Tan announced that the company has already given support extensions for some VMware perpetual license holders.

Broadcom closed its $69 billion VMware acquisition in November. One of its first moves was ending VMware perpetual license sales in favor of subscriptions. Since December, Broadcom also hasn't sold Support and Subscription renewals for VMware perpetual licenses.

In a blog post on Monday, Tan admitted that this shift requires "a change in the timing of customers' expenditures and the balance of those expenditures between capital and operating spending." As a result, Broadcom has "given support extensions to many customers who came up for renewal while these changes were rolling out." Tan didn't specify how Broadcom determined who is eligible for an extension or for how long. However, the executive's blog is the first time Broadcom has announced such extensions and opens the door to more extension requests.

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Enlarge / See that fortress over there? You can explore it. And then die, when someone in your party remembers a tragic incident involving meat and perishes of sadness. (credit: Bay 12 Games/Kitfox)

"I'm crying for some reason," says Tarn Adams, demonstrating Dwarf Fortress' "Adventure Mode" for a Discord stream full of games writers and PR folk. His adventurer is crying, that is. "Something must have upset me. Probably the dead bodies… I have great grouchiness, though."

Adventure Mode, out today, builds on the graphical version of Dwarf Fortress and the work you've put into it. The adventurers you create and send out into the world traverse the overland and underground places you yourself crafted. This allows you to both appreciate the realms carved out by your imagination and also be a kind of dungeon master for other adventurers (with, hopefully, an easier fortress-swapping mechanic to come soon). You can also generate a new world if you prefer the simulation's weird choices to your own.

Release trailer for Dwarf Fortress' Adventure Mode update.

Everything about the standard simulation version of playing Dwarf Fortress applies to playing it as a hardcore CRPG. Everything has layers, all is described, and the combination of deep logic and utter silliness is unmatched.

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NASA has confirmed that the object that fell into a Florida home last month was part of a battery pack released from the International Space Station.

This extraordinary incident opens a new frontier in space law. NASA, the homeowner, and attorneys are navigating little-used legal codes and intergovernmental agreements to determine who should pay for the damages.

Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, told Ars he is fairly certain the object came from the space station, even before NASA's confirmation. The circumstances strongly suggested that was the case. The cylindrical piece of metal tore through his roof March 8, a few minutes after the time US Space Command reported the reentry of a space station cargo pallet and nine decommissioned batteries over the Gulf of Mexico on a trajectory heading forward the coast of southwest Florida.

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Enlarge / Honda's forward collision warning system has always been sensitive. Now the NHTSA is investigating some Hondas for false-positive automatic emergency brake activations. (credit: Honda)

This week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration decided to expand an ongoing investigation into the alarming tendency of some modern Hondas to inappropriately trigger their automatic emergency braking systems. Studies have shown that automatic emergency braking systems have reduced road deaths in the US, Europe, and China, but so-called phantom braking problems have dogged systems from both Tesla and Honda.

We first learned of the problem in 2022, when NHTSA opened a preliminary investigation into the matter, based on 278 complaints. Now, NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation has received 1,294 complaints from drivers of Honda CR-Vs (model years 2017–2022) and Honda Accords (model years 2018–2022), all claiming that their Hondas' automatic emergency braking system slammed on the brakes with no apparent obstruction in the way.

Honda says it's aware of even more cases—1,991 in all, and NHTSA says that, when it takes out cases where multiple reports affect the same vehicle, it knows of 2,976 reports of inadvertent automatic emergency braking, with 93 injury reports and 47 crashes to date.

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Electricity supply is becoming the latest chokepoint to threaten the growth of artificial intelligence, according to leading tech industry chiefs, as power-hungry data centers add to the strain on grids around the world.

Billionaire Elon Musk said this month that while the development of AI had been “chip constrained” last year, the latest bottleneck to the cutting-edge technology was “electricity supply.” Those comments followed a warning by Amazon chief Andy Jassy this year that there was “not enough energy right now” to run new generative AI services.

Amazon, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet are investing billions of dollars in computing infrastructure as they seek to build out their AI capabilities, including in data centers that typically take several years to plan and construct.

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Enlarge / EV charger status is coming to Google Maps. (credit: Google)

Google Maps is making itself friendlier for electric vehicles. A couple of years ago it added the option to select different powertrain types when calculating a route—gas, hybrid, electric, and so on. Lower-energy routes with fewer hills are helpful for electric vehicles, but mostly what EV drivers on unfamiliar terrain really want to know about are the chargers: Where are they, how fast are they, and do they work? Soon, that critical information will be available to Google Maps users via a new update.

Live charger status is usually available from the on-board navigation system built into an EV. Better yet, those native nav systems invariably talk to the powertrain, so they know how much state of charge is currently in the battery and how much to expect upon arrival. Add in real-time status on chargers—how many are working, how many are available—and it's not hard to see why plenty of EV drivers stick with the built-in system.

But for some EVs, that built-in system is Google Maps, including EVs from Ford, Honda, General Motors, Volvo, Polestar, and soon even Porsche. These will be the first devices to receive the update, Google says, which will roll out globally in the coming months. After the connected cars, smartphones will be next.

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In our capacity as accredited observers of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), we are attending the 45th session of the Committee, which is currently taking place in Geneva (April 15-19, 2024).

We made the following statement regarding limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities (Agenda Item 6):

Dear Delegates,

Many of us here today will remind you that knowledge institutions face many challenges when it comes to fulfilling their public interest missions in the digital environment. These hurdles range from lack of harmonisation of copyright exceptions to legal uncertainty and fear of litigation.

In the words of Marcin, a researcher from Poland researching ancient Chinese literature and contemporary culture, and I quote “a considerable part of the work is thinking about what I can do and what I can’t do, what is legal, what is illegal”.

These obstacles are particularly problematic in a cross-border environment, where a fragmented legal framework negatively affects these activities, forcing for instance researchers to limit or abandon collaborative projects, or to select research partners according to their national copyright laws. The 2nd edition of our publication “Nobody puts research in a cage”, where we interview researchers engaged in joint and cross-border projects, shows this very clearly.

If you want case studies to understand what are the kinds of problems that you should be fixing right now, this is a good start. From researchers stuck in cages in Sweden, to researchers flying across continents to be able to research Chinese movies from the TVs of their hotel rooms, it’s unsettling to read about the obstacles they face to conduct their research projects. But it’s also fascinating to see the solutions that they propose to tackle these problems.

Sure enough, they all want more copyright exceptions, more legislation granting them rights to use copyrighted works, particularly in an international environment. And this Committee knows that there are various binding and non-binding ways of getting close to that place. With all due respect, toolkits published on an obscure corner of the WIPO website, where there are about 6000 entries for the word “toolkits”, are just not it.

We understand why this would be a priority for the Secretariat, but if this Committee is truly committed to implement their work program on L&Es, the way forward are the working groups foreseen there. And again, with all due respect, we are appalled to see that, one year after the approval of the work program, you have not been able to agree on the scope and modalities of such working groups. We thus urge you to not leave this meeting without an implementation agreement in place.

The post SCCR/45: COMMUNIA Statement on Limitations and Exceptions appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

In our capacity as accredited observers of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), we are attending the 45th session of the Committee, which is currently taking place in Geneva (April 15-19, 2024).

We made the following statement regarding the protection of Broadcasting Organizations (Agenda Item 4):

Dear Delegates,

The proposed broadcast treaty, in its current version, remains a threat to the Public Domain and usage rights, particularly when legal protection of broadcasters is shaped in the form of exclusive rights, on top of rights that apply to content.

The rights-based model suggests that broadcasters will benefit from secondary rights for exploitation and control following fixation of the broadcast signal, without sufficient consideration for the public interest needs related to access to knowledge and information of signal content. In the current text, none of the exceptions are mandatory and there is no Public Domain safeguard.

Broadcasters own extensive collections of exclusive content that is highly valuable for researchers, educators, learners, cultural heritage institutions, and the general public. These collections document not only popular culture and the entertainment industry, but also function as historical documents, educational resources and research sources.

Often, the only way of accessing high-quality copies of the content in those collections is through broadcasting. Therefore, it is essential to limit exclusive rights with adequate usage rights, and ensure that, when the signal content is in the Public Domain, broadcasters are prevented from claiming exclusive rights and taking that content out of the Public Domain.

Countries opting for a rights-based model should be required to implement at least those exceptions that are already mandatory for copyrighted works (quotation, news of the day, and providing access for the visually impaired). Furthermore, they shall be required to provide in their domestic laws that, when the term of protection of the signal content has expired, the rights and protection guaranteed in this Treaty shall not apply.

The post SCCR/45: COMMUNIA Statement on Broadcasting Organizations appeared first on COMMUNIA Association.

If you want to appreciate Japanese books, it helps to be able to read Japanese books. It helps, but it’s not 100 percent necessary: even if you’ve never learned a single kanji character, you’ve probably marveled at one time or another at the aesthetics of Japan’s print culture. Maybe you’ve even done so here at Open Culture, where we’ve previously featured archives of Japanese books going back to the seventeenth century, a collection of Japanese wave and ripple designs from 1980, a Japanese edition of Aesop’s Fables from 1925, and even a fantastical history of America from 1861 — all of which display a heightened design sensibility not as easily found in other lands.

The same even holds true for Japanese schoolbooks and other educational materials, a digital archive of which you can explore on the web site of Japan’s National Institute for Educational Policy Research. “Ranging from brush painting guides to elementary readers to the geography of Koshi Province — now the Hokuriku region — hundreds of digital scans reveal what students were learning in school more than 100 years ago,” writes Colossal’s Kate Mothes.

Certain publications, like the epistolary 冨士野往来 (“Mount Fuji Comings and Goings”) from 1674, date back much further. But only a couple of centuries later did Japanese books start integrating the colorful artwork that still looks so vivid to us today. You’ll find particularly rich examples of such books in the sections of the archive dedicated to educational pictures, wall charts, and sugoroku, a kind of traditional board game.

Originally produced, for the most part, in the mid-to-late nineteenth century (though with some items as recent as the time of World War II), these provide a look at the worldview that Japan presented to its young students during a period when, not long emerged from more than 200 years of deliberate isolation, the country was taking in foreign influence — and especially Western influence — at a breakneck pace.

But despite a variety of proposed dramatic language reforms (which would later include the wholesale adoption of English), Japan would continue almost exclusively to speak and read Japanese. If you’re interested in learning it yourself, the reading materials in this archive will surely work as well for you as they did for the students of the eighteen-nineties. And even if you’re not, they’re still timeless object lessons in educational illustration and design. Enter the collection here.

via Colossal/Present & Correct

Related content:

1,000+ Historic Japanese Illustrated Books Digitized & Put Online by the Smithsonian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

A Japanese Illustrated History of America (1861): Features George Washington Punching Tigers, John Adams Slaying Snakes & Other Fantastic Scenes

Behold A Grammar of Japanese Ornament and Design: The 19th Century Book That Introduced Western Audiences to Japanese Art (1880)

Download Classic Japanese Wave and Ripple Designs: A Go-to Guide for Japanese Artists from 1903

The Japanese Fairy Tale Series: The Illustrated Books That Introduced Western Readers to Japanese Tales (1885–1922)

A Wonderfully Illustrated 1925 Japanese Edition of Aesop’s Fables by Legendary Children’s Book Illustrator Takeo Takei

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

For Christopher Schwarz, American anarchism isn’t “about bombs and leather jackets; it’s about being an independent designer.” It’s about working outside “massive and dehumanizing institutions” (like corporations) and designing beautiful objects that last. He writes: “As a designer of books, tools and furniture, I have zero desire to make things that are intended from the get-go to fall apart.” Based in Covington, Kentucky, Schwarz runs a small woodworking business where he handcrafts beautiful tables, chairs and other pieces of furniture. He also runs Lost Art Press, which publishes books like The Anarchist’s Tool Chest, The Anarchist’s Design Book, The Anarchist’s Workbench, and other titles.

His “Anarchist” series of books “represent a 10-year effort to make woodworking more accessible, affordable and ethical – and less commercial.” Typically the print editions run $30-$54. But, to the delight of many fellow woodworkers, Schwarz has made several editions available as free digital downloads. This includes (as of this week) The Anarchist’s Tool Chest, which “shows you how you can build furniture with only a small kit of high-quality tools. The first half of the book explains in detail how to choose the right tools… The second half of the book shows you how to build a traditional tool chest to hold these tools.” To find a complete list of books available as free downloads, see the list below.

• The Anarchist’s Tool Chest
• The Anarchist’s Design Book
• The Anarchist’s Workbench
• The Art of Joinery
• Roman Workbenches
• The Stick Chair Book

113 artikelen, 13 bijlagen, 180 overwegingen, verwijzingen naar 27 andere wetten: de AI Act is het meest complexe stuk wetgeving dat ik ooit heb gezien. Mijn nieuwe boek “The Annotated AI Act” verheldert en analyseert de wet in gewone taal. Je kunt nu al voorintekenen!

Op hoofdlijnen is de AI Act vast al bekend. Een risicogebaseerde regulering van AI systemen, met aparte regels voor general-purpose AI en een markeerplicht voor synthetische content. Maar de risicobenadering werkt nét even anders dan bijvoorbeeld de AVG; het gekozen model is dat van productveiligheid en conformeren aan standaarden (CE keurmerk).

Met name in de laatste maanden van 2023 is er veel gebeurd met de tekst. Er moest en zou een regulering van GPAI in komen, maar dat past niet echt bij die productveiligheidsbenadering, en de auteursrechtlobby had zich ook gemeld ondertussen. Dit leidde tot een paar marathonsessies in december, waar uiteindelijk een politiek akkoord uit kwam dat in de maanden daarna uitgewerkt werd.

(Ik ben gaan schrijven toen dat akkoord er was, en moest uiteraard alles omnummeren toen de definitieve tekst werd gedropt want toen werden artikel 29a, overweging 80z+1, het lege artikel 19 en de twee artikelen 54 en nog wat van die missers aangepast.)

De haast heeft helaas een aantal dingen laten we zeggen iets minder optimaal gestructureerd. Het is dus flink zoeken naar het juiste artikel, of de combinatie met andere artikelen. Dat is waar ik dit boek voor geschreven heb: kruisverwijzingen, contrasten en literatuur (100+ referenties) voor meer achtergrond of kritische beschouwing.

Het boek verschijnt in mei wanneer de AI Act gepubliceerd is. Maar je kunt nu al voorintekenen:

Bestel The Annotated AI Act nu!

Arnoud

Het bericht The Annotated AI Act komt eraan verscheen eerst op Ius Mentis.

Enlarge / Cans of Tab diet soda on display in 2011. Tab was discontinued in 2020. There has never been a soda named "Spaces" that had a cult following. (credit: Getty Images)

Anybody can contribute to the Linux kernel, but any person's commit suggestion can become the subject of the kernel's master and namesake, Linus Torvalds. Torvalds is famously not overly committed to niceness, though he has been working on it since 2018. You can see glimpses of this newer, less curse-laden approach in how Torvalds recently addressed a commit with which he vehemently disagreed. It involves tabs.

The commit last week changed exactly one thing on one line, replacing a tab character with a space: "It helps Kconfig parsers to read file without error." Torvalds responded with a commit of his own, as spotted by The Register, which would "add some hidden tabs on purpose." Trying to smooth over a tabs-versus-spaces matter seemed to awaken Torvalds to the need to have tab-detecting failures be "more obvious." Torvalds would have added more, he wrote, but didn't "want to make things uglier than necessary. But it *might* be necessary if it turns out we see more of this kind of silly tooling."

If you've read this far and don't understand what's happening, please allow me, a failed CS minor, to offer a quick explanation: Tabs Versus Spaces will never be truly resolved, codified, or set right by standards, and the energy spent on the issue over time could, if harnessed, likely power one or more small nations. Still, the Linux kernel has its own coding style, and it directly cites "K&R," or Kernighan & Ritchie, the authors of the coding bible The C Programming Language, which is a tabs book. If you are submitting kernel code, it had better use tabs (eight-character tabs, ideally, though that is tied in part to teletype and line-printer history).

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