How to Make People Want to Read About Climate Change | Pulitzer winner Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book is a master class in writing about the natural world.
How to make people want to read about climate change
Pulitzer winner Elizabeth Kolbert's new book is a master class in writing about the natural world.Mother Jones
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Google Removed 749 Million Anna's Archive URLs from its Search Results * TorrentFreak
Google Removed 749 Million Anna's Archive URLs from its Search Results * TorrentFreak
With nearly 750 million URLs removed from Google search, popular shadow library Anna's Archive is a top target for copyright holders.Ernesto Van der Sar (TF Publishing)
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Philippines to take ASEAN chair in 2026 with focus on South China Sea
Malaysia handed over the chairmanship of Southeast Asia's regional bloc to the Philippines on Tuesday (Oct 28), with territorial disputes in the South China Sea set to dominate its agenda when Manila takes charge in 2026.Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who will remain chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) until the end of the year, symbolically passed the gavel to Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos at the close of a summit in Kuala Lumpur.
"On the first day of 2026, ASEAN will begin a new chapter," Anwar said.
Philippines to take ASEAN chair with focus on South China Sea
ASEAN and China have been negotiating a code of conduct to regulate behaviour in the South China Sea, aiming to secure an agreement by 2026.CNA (Channel NewsAsia)
Why do I need a domain to access my Funkwhale library but not SyncThing?
Sorry if I'm mistaken on this, but I'm still new to self-hosting.
Currently I use SyncThing and I love it. My files are accessible to me wherever I am in the world, and it costs me nothing.
I'd like to move more of my life to self-hosted servers. I'm looking at leaving Spotify for Funkwhale. But if I'm reading the materials correctly, I'll need to set up a domain and pay some upfront costs to make my library accessible outside my home.
Why is that? Is there a way to make my costs 0, the way they are with SyncThing?
The cool thing about SyncThing is that it's peer to peer, meaning you don't need a central server for your files to sync. They can go between your laptop and phone, for example.
Something like Funkwhale does need a server, and to talk to that server outside your local network, you need a domain name.
Your Kindle Can Finally Be Jailbroken Again. [22:00]
Yeah, I put it into airplane mode when I heard Amazon was going to push an update removing some feature. Then just kept using it as I did before using calibre to send books.
Finally decided to jailbreak it and I am glad I did since the custom lockscreens and koreader has been cool.
I'm honestly surprised how many people I see doing this. No judgement , it's just now how I use the device.
I couldn't give up my syncing of progress! I love being able to pick up on the Kindle app on my phone if I'm in a waiting room then back to my kindle proper at home.
I'm jazzed to finally have been able to jailbreak my device so I can use KoReader on both the phone and Kindle and keep the same experience.
The main feature of the Amazon reader apps for me is the position sync so I can read on the go. I’d hate to lose that feature.
Releases · koreader/koreader
An ebook reader application supporting PDF, DjVu, EPUB, FB2 and many more formats, running on Cervantes, Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook and Android devices - koreader/koreaderGitHub
GitHub - readest/readest: Readest is a modern, feature-rich ebook reader designed for avid readers offering seamless cross-platform access, powerful tools, and an intuitive interface to elevate your reading experience.
Readest is a modern, feature-rich ebook reader designed for avid readers offering seamless cross-platform access, powerful tools, and an intuitive interface to elevate your reading experience. - re...GitHub
The ground is swallowing homes in this Native village in Alaska. Residents have no choice but to move | The climate crisis is causing the permafrost to melt in Alaska
The ground is swallowing homes in this Native village in Alaska. Residents have no choice but to move
The climate crisis is causing the permafrost to melt in Alaska, forcing the village of Nunapitchuk to relocateGuardian staff reporter (The Guardian)
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Hurricane Melissa could be Jamaica's "storm of the century," world forecasters say
Hurricane Melissa whips Jamaica with violent winds, heavy rain before heading toward Cuba
Hurricane Melissa made landfall Tuesday in Jamaica as a fearsome Category 5 storm. Forecasters said it could be the island's "storm of the century."CBS Chicago
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New far-right prime minister installed in Japan
New far-right prime minister installed in Japan
The new Japanese government marks a turning point in the ruling class’s agenda to reassert its imperialist interests militarily at the expense of the working class.World Socialist Web Site
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I'll bet the Chinese are thrilled.
I'm concerned about the rise of the far right on Europe and the Americas, but not so much with Japan. If Japan starts getting froggy, China will remember what they did to them in WWII, and crush them decisively, with help from every other Asian country, who also remembers Japan's behavior. Asia HATES Japan.
As Trump lavishes money and praise on Argentina, more Americans ask: Why?
They don't love him so he's pay other people to love him. Its paid love all the way down with this fella.
He doesn't know real love.
He's an actual psychopath, so he doesn't have any concept of love, or any other emotion other than hate, jealously, and greed. That's why he's always saying really weird things like he and the Korean guy "fell in love" and exchanged "beautiful love letters." It's why he recently said that he got some world leaders in a room, and they all hugged and worked out their problems. It's why he says really inappropriate things about people's appearances, thinking he is complimenting them.
He doesn't understand these concepts at all, because he's a profoundly broken human being, raised in a family of generational psychopaths. Like all psychopaths, he knows he's different from normal people, so he has to fake normal behavior to fit in. Most learn to do it because they have to to survive in society, but Trump was so spoiled and coddled, he never had to change his behavior, he just kept getting worse and worse.
But at some point he realized he had to try, so he sprinkles words that he knows the Normies like, like Love, and Beautiful, etc. He doesn't really know what they mean, he's never really felt any emotions, but he knows he has to fake it, and since he's never really had to sell it, he's terrible at it. He tosses those words around in really inappropriate contexts, and instead of looking normal, he looks even more psychopathic than usual.
Reducing Homelab Laptop energy consumption
I've been using my old Laptop from my university days as a home server for some time now. It runs the latest Ubuntu LTS with Jellyfin and Home Assistant both in docker containers.
When it's idle it pulls about 10 Watts, which is Not great, but not terrible either.
So I was wondering what I could do to reduce that number. I'm looking for low hanging fruit rather than complex hacks like CPU undervolting or what have you.
Thanks in advance!
One of the best ways to reduce power consumption on older laptops is to change the HDD to an SDD.
But don't expect to get below 10W on an old laptop.
The rise of global boycotts against Israel’s genocide in Gaza
From streets to supermarkets, global boycotts for Gaza have grown as a fragile ceasefire holds for now.Seeing the livestreamed genocide Israel perpetrated in Gaza has had an effect globally, with the call to boycott Israel at an all-time high.
Quiet boycotts, which started in supermarkets nearly two decades ago, have turned into widely used apps that help millions make choices about purchases.
Campus protests and encampments in the US and Canada have led some major education institutions to cut ties with Israeli counterparts, while investments into Israel have dipped, and some of the world’s largest economies have recognised Palestine as a state.
Nearly 50,000 pro-Palestine protests in two years
Satellite Snooping Reveals Sensitive Unencrypted Data
Satellite Snooping Reveals Sensitive Unencrypted Data
In an era where running a website without HTTPS is shunned, and everyone wants you to encrypt your DNS queries, you’d expect that the telecommunications back-ends are secured tightly as well.…Hackaday
It reads like "definitely should not happen" was indeed happening!
I wonder if some techs got a basic unencrypted test working, then a pointy haired boss moved them on to another project and it got deployed into use with no-one setting up the encryption.
Japan PM to nominate Trump for Nobel Prize, White House says
Since his return to power in January, Trump has been increasingly focused on the Nobel Peace Prize. He has claimed to have ended several conflicts around the world.
Experts, however, contest his claims.
Many world leaders and lawmakers are adopting a new tactic to stay in Trump's good graces — praising his peace efforts and nominating him for the Peace Prize.
Japan's Takaichi, Trump sign rare earths and missiles deals
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi welcomed US President Donald Trump on Tuesday when the two signed important agreements on rare earths as well as missiles for Japan's F-35 fighter jets.Jon Shelton (Deutsche Welle)
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Big Oil’s Three-Decade Plot to Kill America’s Clean Energy Revolution
In 1988, the U.S. was in prime position to dominate the industry for decades to come. But thanks to fossil fuel giants, China is instead the world’s superpower in renewables.
Archived copies of the article:
* archive.today
* web.archive.org
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‘China is watching’: Finland warns defeating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine key to stability in Indo-Pacific, says Australia has 'tremendous' role in supporting Kyiv
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/44795915
ArchivedDefeating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is critical to restraining China in the Indo-Pacific, Finland’s defence minister has said, warning Europe and democratic partners, including Australia, face a fight of global consequences.
Antti Häkkänen praised Donald Trump’s decision to impose sanctions on two Russian oil companies last week, calling the move a major sign of resolve by the US president against Vladimir Putin’s three-year long war.In an interview with Guardian Australia at the ministry of defence in Helsinki, Häkkänen said the West’s willingness to stay the course in opposing Russia’s aggression would be closely scrutinised.
“China is watching. Does the West have a muscle and resilience, when the autocrats and dictators think they can wage war for another year, and the democratic countries will become fed up?
“No. We have to show that we are even more putting stronger support against violence. It’s not only on Ukraine. It’s against violence, against war, and that’s a signal also for China and the Indo-Pacific area.”
Ending the Ukraine conflict required a three-pillar approach, he said:
- tougher sanctions on the Russian economy and energy exports;
- stronger military assistance to Ukraine;
- and the use of long-range weapons to destroy factories for drones and missiles.[...]
Häkkänen said any weakness in resolve would embolden China.
“If there will be some kind of military conflict in the Indo-Pacific area, caused by China, Russia will be somehow involved, through supporting China or something like that,” he said.“We see now that Russia, by their own resources, cannot continue this kind of warfare, but China is helping them a great deal. They are giving a lot of money to support their economy, from energy exports, and giving them a lot of military components and industrial cooperation.”
[...]
China considers Taiwan part of its territory and foreign policy experts believe Beijing is aiming to be capable of making a military move against its independence as early as 2027, amid increased military activity in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
While criticising countries not pulling their weight with Ukraine, Häkkänen said he was optimistic about possible peace.
“European countries have in the last month or so chosen really good steps in supporting Ukraine, investing heavily in our own defence.”
[...]
Häkkänen, who has met the [Australian] defence minister, Richard Marles, said Australia had played a “tremendous” role as one of the biggest non-Nato contributors supporting Ukraine.
“It’s a big political message here in Europe, that Australia has been a part of the support,” he said. “That will send the signal that if Australia has some challenges in security or defence, Europe knows that we have to be in the same family.”
‘China is watching’: Finland warns defeating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine key to stability in Indo-Pacific
Defence minister says Xi Jinping should note resolve to stay the course by global democratic alliance, including AustraliaTom McIlroy (The Guardian)
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Russia’s shortage of workers is so severe that it is luring foreigners into sweatshops
Russia’s economy has proven remarkably resilient, despite years of sanctions and economic statecraft. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t deep cracks in Russia’s unstable economic foundation, with only a thin veneer masking increasingly severe shortages — especially of workers.
Russia is in a desperate labor bind. The country has a shrinking, aging population — a fact it ignores as it sends its young men into the meatgrinder of the war in Ukraine. To generate military manpower, Russia has gotten creative, recruiting criminals out of prisons, North Koreans, and mental health patients. Regardless, the endless need for fresh troops on the front line has taken bodies away from industry just as Russia’s military-industrial needs are expanding rapidly.
Russia now desperately needs to fill jobs on assembly lines that make war materiel, but it has a plan: exploiting the Global South, including its so-called friends.
BRICS members India, Brazil, and South Africa have all been recruitment targets for what appears to be forced labor. Russia issues to their citizens a siren song against which many young women are unable to steel themselves, with devastating results.
For at least two years, Russian company Alabuga Special Economic Zone has been luring young women from developing countries with the promise of good jobs and educational opportunities. When they arrive, they are pressed into drone production. They are made to work with corrosive chemicals for long hours, with restricted communications and few or no rights. The women have faced sexual harassment and seen “deductions” taken from their already meager pay for things like rent.
[...]
Educational institutions in Uganda and Burkina Faso have hosted Alabuga recruitment drives; economy-focused civil society organizations in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, and Madagascar have met with Alabuga officials; and diplomats from African and Latin American states have visited and some have promoted Alabuga sites.
Alabuga SEZ has targeted 84 countries, prioritizing recruitment in Africa and Latin America. Although some countries have called out Russian labor fraud, it has been too little, too late. South Africa’s warning and investigation, which began in August, does little to help women already taken to these sweatshops.
[...]
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Relevant:
themoscowtimes.com/2025/10/27/…
lemmy.sdf.org/post/44791056
Ukraine War: Kenyans Being Tricked Into Fighting for Russia – Foreign Ministry
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/44791055ArchivedKenyans have been "lured" by recruiters into fighting for Russia in Ukraine, the Kenyan Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday.
Many have ended up detained in military camps across Russia, said the statement signed by Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi.
It did not give any numbers for the recruits, nor how many had been detained or hurt.
The Foreign Ministry said it held a "crucial meeting" last month with Russian officials to help secure their release and repatriation.
Kenyans are being "lured by... corrupt and ruthless agents to travel to Russia and unknowingly find themselves in the Russian military operation," Kenya's Foreign Ministry said.
[...]
Two men arrested after Louvre jewel heist
French police arrest two men over €88m Louvre jewel heist
One man arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport and another just outside Paris, officials confirmJon Henley (The Guardian)
Scientists demand cancer warnings on bacon and ham sold in UK
Bacon and ham sold in the UK should carry cigarette-style labels warning that chemicals in them cause bowel cancer, scientists say.
Their demand comes as they criticise successive British governments for doing “virtually nothing” to reduce the risk from nitrites in the decade since they were found to definitely cause cancer.
Saturday marks a decade since the World Health Organization in October 2015 declared processed meat declared processed meat to be carcinogenic to humans, putting it in the same category as tobacco and asbestos.
Scientists demand cancer warnings on bacon and ham sold in UK
Successive governments criticised for doing ‘virtually nothing’ to reduce risk in the decade since cancer link foundDenis Campbell (The Guardian)
Any experience of Diode?
I stumbled across Diode whilst looking for ways to do secure off-site backups (to my own equipment at another house) and it feels like a paid-for TOR (Ok, there is a free option)
I'm looking for any real experience as the site has too much marketing lingo in it:
Every Client is secured with a public/private key self-custody identity
And this doesn't seem very dynamic if I want to change something:
Diode’s Blockchain Name System can be used for Client friendly names
And somewhere on the site it infers unlimited storage...!
So, is the free option worth me looking into, or is it a waste of time?
Privacy-first Collaboration & Remote Access
Diode enables digital sovereignty in everyday interactions.Diode™
It sounds to me that for your specific use case, the tailscale free option would be a better match. You can self host it if you would like, using headscale (involves a little more work though). It's basically like an orchestrator for wireguard tunnels.
I'm running tailscale on quite a few of my systems. I've configured the Grants (like advanced ACL's) to allow for only specific services available from certain hosts while other hosts can act as exit nodes like a VPN egress. I've found it very useful for connecting families networks up so that I can assist with remote troubleshooting help and I've used it to reach back into my own network while traveling.
Hmm, ok, I'd not thought of the remote troubleshooting part.
The NAS is at a family member's home, so the troubleshooting might come up in the future.
Thanks
Bill Gates Says China Is Outspending the World on Nuclear Power
Their fusion and fission work is very impressive,” the Microsoft Corp. co-founder said of China’s nuclear innovation efforts. The country is investing more in fusion “than the rest of the world put together, times two
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Ukraine War: Kenyans Being Tricked Into Fighting for Russia – Foreign Ministry
cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/44791055
ArchivedKenyans have been "lured" by recruiters into fighting for Russia in Ukraine, the Kenyan Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday.
Many have ended up detained in military camps across Russia, said the statement signed by Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi.
It did not give any numbers for the recruits, nor how many had been detained or hurt.
The Foreign Ministry said it held a "crucial meeting" last month with Russian officials to help secure their release and repatriation.
Kenyans are being "lured by... corrupt and ruthless agents to travel to Russia and unknowingly find themselves in the Russian military operation," Kenya's Foreign Ministry said.
[...]
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Just like North Korea hacking bitcoin to prop itself up; but Russia does it with people. Well, with everything really. Any cheap way to exploit and expand its influence, legality notwithstanding. No ethics.
Russia has been repeatedly accused of deceiving citizens from poor countries into signing contracts with its military, written in Russian, which they do not understand.There is widespread poverty in Kenya and minimal job opportunities.
Local media have reported on Russian recruitment networks targeting poor young men, with many claiming they were tricked or pressured into fighting once they arrived.
Thing I don't understand: they cannot be good fighters if they're doing it against their will? But I'm sure the military has tricks to keep the pressure on.
RRF Caserta. Kaos. Il Dio Share, Belve e l'ipocrisia
Melissa now a Category 5 hurricane as it approaches Jamaica
Hurricane Melissa intensified to Category 5 strength on Monday as it neared Jamaica, with up to 76 centimetres (30 in) of rain and a life-threatening storm surge.
Melissa is forecast to make landfall on the island on Tuesday, and cross Cuba and the Bahamas through Wednesday.
Melissa was centred about 230 kilometres southwest of Kingston, the capital, and about 530 km southwest of Guantánamo, Cuba, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said in its 11 a.m. ET update.
I'll share my two favorite sources for hurricane info.
Tropical Tidbits for excellent parsing of meteorological data and models without much editorializing and essentially no fear mongering. Excellent videos and website tools for nerding out about the weather side of things.
And NOAA's National Hurricane Center for up to date guidance on rain, flooding, and wind probabilities and warnings. This coupled with a local emergency services communications is what most people should be using to track what impacts they should expect for upcoming storms.
nhc.noaa.gov/ click on the storm in the map graphic to view detailed warnings and info.
Tropical Tidbits
Tropical weather and Atlantic hurricane information, analysis, and forecasts by Levi Cowan.Levi Cowan (Tropical Tidbits)
Venezuela Says CIA-Linked Mercenaries Caught During 'False-Flag Attack'
cross-posted from: ibbit.at/post/93096
From Common Dreams via this RSS feed
Venezuela Says CIA-Linked Mercenaries Caught During 'False-Flag Attack'
"This is a colonial operation of military aggression that seeks to turn the Caribbean into a space for lethal violence and US imperial domination."brett-wilkins (Common Dreams)
Internal domain and reverse proxy
I'm going round in circles on this one.
What I want to do is:
- serve up my self-hosted apps with https (to local clients only - nothing over the open web)
- address them as 'app.server.lan' or 'sever.lan/app'
- preferably host whatever is needed in docker
I think this is achievable with a reverse proxy, some kind of DNS server and self-signed certs. I'm not a complete noob but my knowledge in this area is lacking. I've done a fair bit of research but I'm probably not using the right terminology or whatever.
Would anyone have a link to a good guide that covers this?
Automate SSL Certificates with ACME Protocol | ZeroSSL
Automate 90-day SSL certificate renewal using the ZeroSSL Bot or third-party ACME clients, such as Acme.sh, NGINX Proxy, Caddy Server, and others.zerossl.com
*-cert is definitely something I’d need to setup in my self host setup, though a little complex as my (free) domain provider does not let me edit TXT records for DNS-01.
RRF Caserta. Kaos. Il Dio Share, Belve e l'ipocrisia . L'attuale stato della televisione e la sua crescente dipendenza dai social media e dagli influencer per aumentare gli ascolti
Trump humiliated by fact-check after claiming Canada used AI for 'cheat' Reagan ad
President Donald Trump was once again fact-checked following an embarrassing tantrum over a Canadian advertisement.
The ad quoted former U.S. President Ronald Reagan from 38 years ago criticizing tariffs -- a policy tool Trump frequently employs. The commercial includes audio clips from an April 25, 1987 radio address where Reagan stated: "Over the long run such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer.''
Trump humiliated by fact-check after claiming Canada used AI for 'cheat' Reagan ad
The fact-check features a link to a transcript of Reagan's address from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, as well as full audioBrigid Brown (Irish Star)
In Shift in Relationship With Netanyahu, Trump Says ‘I Will Decide’ What Is Right for Israel
Since an Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal came into effect, the U.S. effort to sustain it appears to have constrained Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
[Bias alert - #NYT usually favors Israel]
Oct. 27, 2025 Updated 12:10 p.m. ET
After Israel’s botched airstrike on Hamas negotiators in Qatar last month, Mr. Trump, meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in the Oval Office, forced him to call the Qatari prime minister and apologize.Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, elaborated in a “60 Minutes” interview on Oct. 20.
“I think he felt like the Israelis were getting a little bit out of control in what they were doing,” he said, “and that it was time to be very strong and stop them from doing things that he felt were not in their long-term interests.”
It was an extraordinary revelation by Mr. Kushner, who indicated that Mr. Trump believed he was acting in Israel’s interests and that Mr. Netanyahu was not.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/world/middleeast/trump-netanyahu-relationship.html
In Shift in Relationship With Netanyahu, Trump Says ‘I Will Decide’ What Is Right for Israel
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/38158481
Since an Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal came into effect, the U.S. effort to sustain it appears to have constrained Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[Bias alert - #NYT usually favors Israel]
Oct. 27, 2025 Updated 12:10 p.m. ETAfter Israel’s botched airstrike on Hamas negotiators in Qatar last month, Mr. Trump, meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in the Oval Office, forced him to call the Qatari prime minister and apologize.Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, elaborated in a “60 Minutes” interview on Oct. 20.
“I think he felt like the Israelis were getting a little bit out of control in what they were doing,” he said, “and that it was time to be very strong and stop them from doing things that he felt were not in their long-term interests.”
It was an extraordinary revelation by Mr. Kushner, who indicated that Mr. Trump believed he was acting in Israel’s interests and that Mr. Netanyahu was not.
In Shift in Relationship With Netanyahu, Trump Says ‘I Will Decide’ What Is Right for Israel
Since an Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal came into effect, the U.S. effort to sustain it appears to have constrained Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[Bias alert - #NYT usually favors Israel]
Oct. 27, 2025 Updated 12:10 p.m. ETAfter Israel’s botched airstrike on Hamas negotiators in Qatar last month, Mr. Trump, meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in the Oval Office, forced him to call the Qatari prime minister and apologize.Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, elaborated in a “60 Minutes” interview on Oct. 20.
“I think he felt like the Israelis were getting a little bit out of control in what they were doing,” he said, “and that it was time to be very strong and stop them from doing things that he felt were not in their long-term interests.”
It was an extraordinary revelation by Mr. Kushner, who indicated that Mr. Trump believed he was acting in Israel’s interests and that Mr. Netanyahu was not.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/world/middleeast/trump-netanyahu-relationship.html
Youtube AI filter making it dangerous to watch for people with Epilepsy due to a bug
There is a bug in Youtube's AI filter that is causing some videos to flicker. The content creator have no idea that is happening and no way to opt out. If you have Epilepsy it is recommended that you watch out for these situations
Also as content creators dont know this may be happening, if you find these issues you should try to contact the respective content creator and let them know this is happening on your specific device. Again, its so random it may only happen on some devices
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
If you have epilepsy, watch out so you don’t randomly see something that could potentially kill you.
Great job google.
I don't know the type of flashes causes by this glitch but the post specifically warns for epilepsy.
That part of the post might be wrong, that’s completely fair and i trust you have less to gain from lying versus a post craving clicks.
Though my point is, if it is dangerous. What are they supposed to look out for? The “recommendation” should be google stop doing this shit that puts people at random risk.
If it’s just annoying, then its just a glitch, the same for other photosensitive but not suffering epilepsy people.
The danger is honestly pretty minimal for people who are aware they have photosensitive epilepsy; those who are prone to it but unaware of it are not likely to heed warnings even where they exist since they won't typically perceive the risk until after experiencing it.
It takes several minutes from triggering exposure to actual seizure onset, so those who know of their susceptibility have time to stop exposure and make sure they're in a safe position if a seizure does come. There are many ways of mitigating the seizure risk by stopping exposure, closing one eye and facing away from the light source, keeping screen brightness at the lowest level you can still easily read, etc.
That's not to say I think warnings aren't useful, but the intensity of many of the warnings people use is disproportionate to the actual risk and can cause people to be much more worried than necessary IMO. Google et al really need to stop messing with videos and such via AI without any sort of notice or warning for a whole host of reasons, including broader non-epileptic photosensitive since becoming intensely nauseous or getting a migraine over it is still pretty annoying.
tl;dr I think the warnings are a good idea, but maybe a little broader and less "OMG the epileptics are gonna all die". And fuck companies silently manipulating content they didn't even produce with AI in general.
Well said.
Did they ever give any reason why they even consider it an acceptable thing to do?
Imagine making an art piece to be displayed in a museum only to find they allowed an interim with next to zero experience to paint over it.
Looking for opinions on Trilium Notes
Has anyone here tried Trilium notes? What are your opinions on it?
I see. I must've missed that while doing my skimming a bit too hastily. Good thing it has, I was worried it would be limited to securing it through a VPN.
I'm glad it exists and hope of develops further. It has gotten some well deserved growth and exposure in general.
US Colonel Who Probed Shireen Abu Akleh's Killing Says Biden Admin Lied About His Findings to Appease Israel
Retired US Col. Steve Gabavics went public Monday with an account he had previously only spoken about anonymously—the story of his investigation into an Israeli soldier’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 and the unsuccessful attempts he made to ensure the US State Department would accurately report his findings: that Abu Akleh was intentionally shot.
Gabavics previously discussed his experience investigating Abu Akleh’s killing just days after it happened in a documentary produced by Zeteo News, but he wasn’t named in the film.
On Monday, he came forward publicly for the first time in an interview with the New York Times to discuss the case he said has “bothered [him] the most” of any he investigated during his 30-year military career.
US Colonel Who Probed Shireen Abu Akleh's Killing Says Biden Admin Lied About His Findings to Appease Israel
A top Muslim civil rights group applauded retired Colonel Steve Gabavics for "bravely coming forward and confirming what was obvious to everyone: An Israeli sniper deliberately murdered an American journalist."julia-conley (Common Dreams)
Naw, it was the War on Drugs. There isn't enough money in the entire world to make reparations for what the US government did to its own people.
All in order to keep minorities down. One in three people have lost someone to overdose. 99% were preventable with harm reduction.
Trump, Hegseth step up military murders in Latin America
US military forces struck two small boats off the Pacific coast of Colombia Wednesday, killing at least five people. The strikes were the eighth and ninth since President Trump issued orders September 2 for a campaign of military violence against alleged drug traffickers that is both illegal and unconstitutional.While Trump claims that the strikes are justified because the United States is at war with drug cartels based in Latin America, the White House has not sought a declaration of war from Congress, or even a congressional resolution authorizing military operations, as in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The strikes are in flagrant violation of international law. The US government has offered no evidence against the people it is annihilating, and even their names are unknown. And the military assaults are taking place in international waters, where ships of any nationality supposedly have “freedom of navigation,” a right that Washington claims to be defending in the South China Sea...
Trump, Hegseth step up military murders in Latin America
As US missiles killed five more fishermen off the coast of Colombia, the gangster-president boasted, “We’re going to kill them, you know, they’re going to be like dead, OK?”World Socialist Web Site
Trump this, Trump that.
Who executed these orders? Who in the chain of command was happy to bomb these people? What names and ranks are there in the report?
There shouldn't be people who, without a shadow of a doubt, would press the red button on an incorrect order. It seems, there are a lot of them there right now. All that stops us from having the US from starting a nuclear war is an assumption, that there would be someone knowing better in place, and this international bombing spree tells us it's not a safe bet at all.
Imagine Donald wanting to nuke South America or Canada - would there be anyone to refuse?
It's semi-accurate, it's based on a memoir but heavily modified. That said, boot camp is supposed to break someone down, get them to think like a soldier, Airman, sailor, or marine depending on branch. The Navy for example puts a lot more emphasis on critical decision making than the Marines, the Marines emphasize martial prowess, the Army is somewhere between, and the Air Force is kinda just a souped up summer camp.
No one becomes a drill instructor to bully people, they do it because it's all but required for advancement at a certain point in jobs that have a low promotion rate. There is some bullying in a sense but at least Navy side it's fairly minimal and the experience is mostly focused on learning things then making sure you can perform your now learned duties under duress.
The Marines boot camp (what's in the show) is focused on making sure that when a lot of people are screaming different things you can still execute the task at hand, effectively making sure you can be effective and task focused even in chaotic situations. At least that's what I hear from Marines, I also hear they do in fact do some shit like stealing toilet paper and stuff, the Marines don't care if your smart, or make good decisions, just that you can execute tasks in chaos.
You have a good point but may not have an appreciation for what that means for the individual soldiers. I recommend this legal eagle vid. Even if they were clearly in the right in refusing the order (which they obviously are in this case) - do you think there is any chance they would get a fair trial with this regime in power?
Imo the check on this is impeachment and prosecution of the president and officials.
Any reliable reporting coming out on all these boats and crews that are being blown up?
(The 'Drug War' has been blatantly evil for decades. We know there's a good chance the official narrative is bullshit, and there certainly is no nuance.)
Are they fishing, smuggling, or both?
youtubica stronzata porta gli innocenti alla fucilazione (YouTube ha bannato senza motivo il canale di Enderman)
Alphabet Inc., o meglio Google, o meglio YouTube, proprio ieri sera ha combinato un’ennesima delle sue stronzate colossali, totalmente a sorpresa… e non mi riferisco ai soliti insensati cambi di policy (che, per giunta, a volte sono fatti esplicitamente, altre volte in completo silenzio; lasciamo stare questo, che è tutto un altro gran casino). Hanno […]
octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…
youtubica stronzata porta gli innocenti alla fucilazione (YouTube ha bannato senza motivo il canale di Enderman) - fritto misto di octospacc
Alphabet Inc., o meglio Google, o meglio YouTube, proprio ieri sera ha combinato un'ennesima delle sue stronzate colossali, totalmente a sorpresa... e non mi riminioctt (fritto misto di octospacc)
TSE julga recurso que pede cassação de Cláudio Castro no RJ
TSE julga recurso que pede cassação de Cláudio Castro no RJ
Claúdio Castro é acusado pelo Ministério Público Eleitoral de obter vantagem eleitoral na contratação de servidores temporários sem amparo legal.Larissa Pereira (ISTOÉ Independente)
Palantir Slides on AI Valuation Concerns, Burry Put Options
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60 Minutes Obeys in Advance
When I read the full transcript of the interview, I realized there had been no pushback, no corrections, no challenging follow-ups. The entire interview had been an open-ended opportunity for Trump to tell rambling lies, only to have them cleaned up into a more polished product.
60 Minutes Obeys in Advance - Democracy Docket
I tuned in to watch Norah O’Donnell interview Donald Trump on “60 Minutes.” Over the span of 40 minutes, I sat in disbelief as Trump was asked a series of softball questions with little follow-up.Democracy Docket
60 Minutes Obeys in Advance
When I read the full transcript of the interview, I realized there had been no pushback, no corrections, no challenging follow-ups. The entire interview had been an open-ended opportunity for Trump to tell rambling lies, only to have them cleaned up into a more polished product.
60 Minutes Obeys in Advance - Democracy Docket
I tuned in to watch Norah O’Donnell interview Donald Trump on “60 Minutes.” Over the span of 40 minutes, I sat in disbelief as Trump was asked a series of softball questions with little follow-up.Democracy Docket
IOF murder Palestinian adolescent in West Bank
[Neocolonial] forces shot and killed a 15-year-old Palestinian overnight into Friday during clashes in the village of Silwad, north east of Ramallah in the West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.Eyewitnesses told Palestinian news agency Wafa that the boy, Yamin Samed Hamed, was seriously wounded, but that soldiers prevented an ambulance from evacuating him for an extended period of time. He was left on the ground, and only later did the force allow him to receive treatment. He was declared dead at the hospital.
According to Palestinian sources, the clashes erupted when soldiers entered the village. They said the forces used tear gas, stun grenades and live fire.
The Israeli military has yet to issue a response.
Two weeks ago, IDF soldiers shot and killed 9-year-old Muhammad al-Hallaq in the village of al-Rihiya, south of Hebron. Eyewitnesses told Haaretz that he was shot while playing next to the village's school.
Last month, the Palestinian Health Ministry announced that soldiers had killed 14-year-old Mohammed Alwana and Islam Majarmi in the Jenin refugee camp and wounded three others, aged 12, 17 and 22.
Eyewitnesses told Wafa that soldiers had infiltrated the camp, encountered a group of residents, shot live fire at them, arrested a handful of people and set fire to a home.
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Settlers filmed torturing lambs in a Palestinian-owned pen in the West Bank
[…] settlers were filmed this week torturing lambs in a Palestinian-owned pen in the southern West Bank.A video from a security camera filmed on Monday shows nine masked men with clubs entering the yard of the Dramin family, on the outskirts of the village of Samu in the South Hebron Hills.
The video shows the settlers shattering windshields and torching harvests, as three of the men enter the sheep pen and beat lambs in front of the ewes. The security camera filmed one of the settlers throwing lambs onto the floor, throwing concrete blocks at them and beating them, as another settler hit the others. Six lambs were killed, and four others were severely injured.
Human rights activists say that at the start of the war, an illegal outpost was built near Samu and that its settlers assaulted Palestinians living nearby. The activists say that this isn't the first time that the Dramin family's house has been attacked, but this is the most serious incident. In addition to injuring the sheep, the attackers broke the house's windows and pepper-sprayed the inside. They fled when a Palestinian car arrived.
Activists Ben Zion Eshel and Amir Pinsky, who help defend Palestinians in the Jordan Valley from settler attacks on behalf of the human rights group Looking the Occupation in the Eyes, said that they have seen worsening settler violence against animals.
They cited throwing stones at dogs and recently filmed Hilltop Youth activists beating dogs with clubs in the Jordan Valley. They said that there are testimonies of settlers running over sheep and other farm animals and using drones to chase flocks, resulting in cases of ewes miscarrying.
Eshel and Pinsky added that they have noticed over the past two years an increase in cases of settlers placing sheep and donkey carcasses at the entrances to Palestinian communities in Area C to drive the residents away.
They said that a flock of sheep was stolen and slaughtered in Ein al-Hilweh in the Jordan Valley. "Flocks are poisoned. Poisoned chicken heads that kill dogs and wild animals, such as foxes, are scattered around," Eshel said.
Eshel and Pinsky added that settlers' use of their flocks to drive Palestinians from the land is animal abuse. "This is abuse in itself, and it is carried out to harass Palestinian communities," Pinsky said. "They travel great distances with their flocks just to reach Palestinian homes, and their flocks can't handle it. Lambs die in the pasture."
The Israel Police issued a statement on the filmed abuse, saying that forces from the IDF, Border Police and Shin Bet security service found one of the cars the suspects used in the act and handed it to the police investigators. "Extensive actions and investigations are underway to locate them, including exhausting all testimonies and evidence collected on the scene," the police said.
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There is a meme trend of finding inexistent references to people and characters in unrelated stuff, and then pointing it out as a clickbait YouTube thumbnail.
In this meme, I came across the verb "trumps" and interpreted it as the plural of the name "Trump", and complemented it with red arrows and fake PNGs of boomer emojis.
Example of this kind of meme from Reddit: reddit.com/r/tf2shitposterclub…
The Authoritarian Stack
The Authoritarian Stack
How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Nextwww.authoritarian-stack.info
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The Authoritarian Stack
The Authoritarian Stack
How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Nextwww.authoritarian-stack.info
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Neil Young + Promise Of The Real - The Monsanto Years (2015)
Preceduto da feroci critiche ma anche da recensioni positive, il nuovo album di Neil Young non è certo un disco da buttare. L’inglese Mojo, che dà quattro stelle a cani e porci, gli affibbia uno striminzito due e mezzo, altri addirittura due stelle... Leggi e ascolta...
Neil Young + Promise Of The Real - The Monsanto Years (2015)
Preceduto da feroci critiche ma anche da recensioni positive, il nuovo album di Neil Young non è certo un disco da buttare. L’inglese Mojo, che dà quattro stelle a cani e porci, gli affibbia uno striminzito due e mezzo, altri addirittura due stelle. Onestamente, dopo averlo ascoltato abbastanza velocemente (ne siamo venuti in possesso quando il numero di Luglio era già chiuso), non possiamo definire questo disco brutto, assolutamente no. Ci sono almeno quattro canzoni sopra la media, quindi belle e, anche se qualcuna ha un titolo bizzarro (su tutte A Rock Star Bucks A Coffee Shop) il mio giudizio è decisamente positivo... artesuono.blogspot.com/2015/07…
Ascolta il disco: album.link/s/3H13KvqouxpPgY2OV…
Home – Identità DigitaleSono su: Mastodon.uno - Pixelfed - Feddit
Neil Young + Promise Of The Real - The Monsanto Years (2015)
di Paolo Carù Preceduto da feroci critiche ma anche da recensioni positive, il nuovo album di Neil Young non è certo un disco da buttar...Silvano Bottaro (Blogger)
The Golden Age of Protest Is Now
Until recently, if you had asked us to guess whether a mass movement to protect democracy is growing in the United States, we would have expressed skepticism. We’ve watched law firms and universities capitulate, heard little from business leaders, bemoaned the Democrats’ geriatric leadership, and nodded along to many of our friends telling us they’ve needed to stop following the news to maintain their mental health. “News avoidance” has reached an all-time high, with some 42 percent of Americans reporting that they “sometimes or often avoid the news.”We study social change, and even we were surprised to learn that, by some estimates, six of the eight largest protests in U.S. history have taken place since 2017. While careful counts are not yet available, the No Kings marches this past Saturday will almost surely have earned a top spot on the list. In Philadelphia alone, early estimates were that more than 20,000 people would join the protest downtown, with dozens of parallel marches planned in surrounding counties.
The Golden Age of Protest Is Now
Collective action in the U.S. is surging. Recognizing our shared momentum may be key to saving democracy.The MIT Press Reader
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IOF continue to strike Gaza and block entry of tents despite truce
Compounding the targeted attacks and demolitions of Gaza's buildings are restrictions meted out by Israeli authorities on the entry of various essential aid, including materials for tents.Amjad al-Shawa, head of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza, noted that most of the tents used by the displaced people are worn out and do not meet the minimum requirements for shelter.
There is an urgent need for about 300,000 new tents before the arrival of winter in order to avoid an imminent humanitarian and environmental disaster, he stressed.
According to Thawabta, the ceasefire deal stipulated the introduction of more than 300,000 tents and mobile homes to shelter the over 288,000 displaced Palestinian families.
But Thawabta added that Israel did not adhere to the stipulations regarding the shelters as well as other necessities that should have entered the blockaded strip, including essential food, medicine, heavy machinery and fuel.
Between the start of the ceasefire and the end of October, only 3,203 trucks entered out of the stipulated 13,200.
On a daily basis, an average of only 145 commercial and aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip, the media office noted, while the original plan required the entry of at least 600 trucks per day.
The upcoming winter is set to worsen the already dire situation in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians face starvation, displacement and disease.
The Gaza Media Office stated that Israel has dropped over 200,000 tonnes of bombs during the past two years, leaving more than 90 percent of the enclave destroyed.
Much of Gaza's infrastructure — including homes, schools, universities, mosques, churches, public spaces and health centres — has been reduced to rubble.
In late October, the UN agency for Palestine refugees (Unrwa) urged that "humanitarian access must be restored" as colder temperatures are expected.
"As winter approaches in Gaza, people are increasingly in need of shelter and warmth," Unrwa posted on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Israel continues to strike Gaza and block entry of tents despite truce deal
The Israeli army has continued to attack various areas across the Gaza Strip, as troops carry out demolitions of buildings despite the lack of shelters amid dropping temperatures.Mera Aladam (Middle East Eye)
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How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral
Wikipedia is the most ambitious multilingual project after the Bible: There are editions in over 340 languages, and a further 400 even more obscure ones are being developed and tested. Many of these smaller editions have been swamped with automatically translated content as AI has become increasingly accessible. Volunteers working on four African languages, for instance, estimated to MIT Technology Review that between 40% and 60% of articles in their Wikipedia editions were uncorrected machine translations. And after auditing the Wikipedia edition in Inuktitut, an Indigenous language close to Greenlandic that’s spoken in Canada, MIT Technology Review estimates that more than two-thirds of pages containing more than several sentences feature portions created this way.This is beginning to cause a wicked problem. AI systems, from Google Translate to ChatGPT, learn to “speak” new languages by scraping huge quantities of text from the internet. Wikipedia is sometimes the largest source of online linguistic data for languages with few speakers—so any errors on those pages, grammatical or otherwise, can poison the wells that AI is expected to draw from. That can make the models’ translation of these languages particularly error-prone, which creates a sort of linguistic doom loop as people continue to add more and more poorly translated Wikipedia pages using those tools, and AI models continue to train from poorly translated pages. It’s a complicated problem, but it boils down to a simple concept: Garbage in, garbage out.
“These models are built on raw data,” says Kevin Scannell, a former professor of computer science at Saint Louis University who now builds computer software tailored for endangered languages. “They will try and learn everything about a language from scratch. There is no other input. There are no grammar books. There are no dictionaries. There is nothing other than the text that is inputted.”
There isn’t perfect data on the scale of this problem, particularly because a lot of AI training data is kept confidential and the field continues to evolve rapidly. But back in 2020, Wikipedia was estimated to make up more than half the training data that was fed into AI models translating some languages spoken by millions across Africa, including Malagasy, Yoruba, and Shona. In 2022, a research team from Germany that looked into what data could be obtained by online scraping even found that Wikipedia was the sole easily accessible source of online linguistic data for 27 under-resourced languages.
This could have significant repercussions in cases where Wikipedia is poorly written—potentially pushing the most vulnerable languages on Earth toward the precipice as future generations begin to turn away from them.
“Wikipedia will be reflected in the AI models for these languages,” says Trond Trosterud, a computational linguist at the University of Tromsø in Norway, who has been raising the alarm about the potentially harmful outcomes of badly run Wikipedia editions for years. “I find it hard to imagine it will not have consequences. And, of course, the more dominant position that Wikipedia has, the worse it will be.”
How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral
Machine translators have made it easier than ever to create error-plagued Wikipedia articles in obscure languages. What happens when AI models get trained on junk pages?Jacob Judah (MIT Technology Review)
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As long as none of the victims is a White cishet capitalist man, who cares?
An army massacring hundreds of thousands of non-Whites = yawn.
Somebody murdering one White cishet capitalist man (e.g. Charlie Kirk) = most important event in all of history.
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A picture I took today of some mushrooms
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 9th November 2025
Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
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What's a government backstop, and does it happen often? It sounds like they're asking for a preemptive bail-out.
I checked the rest of Zitron's feed before posting and its weirder in context:
Interview:
She also hinted at a role for the US government "to backstop the guarantee that allows the financing to happen", but did not elaborate on how this would work.
Later at the jobsite:
I want to clarify my comments earlier today. OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop for our infrastructure commitments. I used the word "backstop" and it mudlled the point.
She the proceeds to explain she just meant that the government 'should play its part'.
Zitron says she might have been testing the waters, or its just the cherry on top of an interview where she said plenty of bizzare shit
"I don’t think there’s enough exuberance about AI"
Tinkerbell needs you all to wish harder, boys and girls
The Future of Advertising Is AI Generated Ads That Are Directly Personalized to You
Do you and your human family have interest in sharing an exciting IRL experience supporting your [team of choice] with other human fans at The Big Game? In that case, don the chosen color of your [team of choice] and head to the local [iconic stadium]; Ticketmaster has exciting ticket deals, and soon you and your human family can look as happy and excited as these virtual avatars:
Ticketmaster's personalized AI slop ads are a glimpse at the future of social media advertising, a harbinger of system that Mark Zuckerberg described last week in a Meta earnings call. This future is one where AI is used both for ad targeting and for ad generation; eventually ads are going to be hyperpersonalized to individual users, further siloing the social media experience: "Advertisers are increasingly just going to be able to give us a business objective and give us a credit card or bank account, and have the AI system basically figure out everything else that’s necessary, including generating video or different types of creative that might resonate with different people that are personalized in different ways, finding who the right customers are,” Zuckerberg said.
The Future of Advertising Is AI Generated Ads That Are Directly Personalized to You
Do you and your human family have interest in sharing an exciting IRL experience supporting your [team of choice] with other human fans at The Big Game? In that case, don the chosen color of your [team of choice] and head to the local [iconic stadium]; Ticketmaster has exciting ticket deals, and soon you and your human family can look as happy and excited as these virtual avatars:
Ticketmaster's personalized AI slop ads are a glimpse at the future of social media advertising, a harbinger of system that Mark Zuckerberg described last week in a Meta earnings call. This future is one where AI is used both for ad targeting and for ad generation; eventually ads are going to be hyperpersonalized to individual users, further siloing the social media experience: "Advertisers are increasingly just going to be able to give us a business objective and give us a credit card or bank account, and have the AI system basically figure out everything else that’s necessary, including generating video or different types of creative that might resonate with different people that are personalized in different ways, finding who the right customers are,” Zuckerberg said.
The Ticketmaster example you see above is rudimentary and crude, but everything we've seen over the last few months suggests that the real way Meta is bringing in revenue with AI is not through its consumer-facing products but with AI ad creation and targeting products for advertisers that allows them to create many different versions of any given ad and then to show that ad only to people it is likely to be effective on.
💡
Do you work in the advertising industry and have any insight into how generative AI is changing ad creative and targeting? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at jason.404. Otherwise, send me an email at jason@404media.co.Ticketmaster, in this case, has has invented several virtual families whose football team allegiances change presumably based on a series of demographic, geographic, and behavioral factors that would cause you to be targeted by one of its ads. I found these ads after I was targeted by one suggesting I join this ethnically ambiguous, dead-eyed family of generic blue hat wearers at the World Series to root on, I guess, the Dodgers. I looked Ticketmaster up in Facebook’s ad library and found that it is running a series of clearly AI-generated ads, many of which use the same templates and taglines.
“There’s nothing like a sea of gold. See Vanderbilt football live and in color.” “There’s nothing like a sea of red. See USC football live and in color.” “There’s nothing like a sea of maize. See Michigan football live and in color,” and so on and so forth. There are a couple dozen of these ads for college football, and a few others that use different AI-generated people. My favorite is this one, which features the back of AI people’s heads standing and cheering at other fans and not facing where the game or field would be.
As AI slop goes, this is relatively tame fare, but it is notable that a company as big as Ticketmaster is using generative AI for its Facebook ads. It is also an instructive example that shows a big reason why Facebook and Google are bringing in so much revenue right now, and highlights the fact that social media is not so slowly being completely drowned in low-effort AI content and ads.Here's why you're seeing more AI ads on social media, and why Meta and its advertising clients seem intent on making this the future of advertising.
- Generative AI creative material is cheap: The effort and cost required to make this series of ads is incredibly low. Generating something like this is easy and, at most, requires just a small amount of human prompting and touchup after it is generated. But most importantly, Ticketmaster doesn’t have to worry about paying human models or photographers, does not have to worry about licensing stock photos, and, notably, there are no logos or actual places highlighted in any of these ads. There are no players, no teams, just the evocation of such. There is no need to get permission from or pay for logo licensing (this reminds me of a Wheaties box of Cal Ripken that I got as a kid in the immediate aftermath of him breaking the 2131 consecutive games record. In the boxes released immediately, he was wearing only a black t-shirt and a black helmet. A few days later, after General Mills presumably secured the rights to use Orioles logos, they started selling the same box with his Orioles jersey and helmet on them).
- Less money on creative means more budget for spend, and more varieties of ads: I’ve written about this before, but a big trend in advertising right now is AI-powered ad creative trial and error. Using AI, it is now possible to make an essentially endless number of different variations of a single ad that uses slightly different language, slightly different images, slightly different calls to actions, and different links. AI targeting also means that “successful” variations of ads will essentially automatically find the audience that they’re supposed to. This means that companies can just flood social media with zillions of variations of low-effort AI ads, put their “spend” (their ad budget) into the versions that perform best, and let the targeting algorithms do the rest. AI in this case is a scaling tactic. There is no need to spend tons of time, money, and human resources refining ad copy and designing thoughtful, clever, funny, charming, or eye-catching ads. You can simply publish tons of different versions of low-effort bullshit, and largely people will only see the ones that perform well.
- This is Meta’s business model now: Meta’s user-facing commercial generative AI tools are pretty embarrassing and in my limited experience its chatbot and image and video generation tools are more rudimentary than OpenAI’s, Google’s, and other popular AI companies’ tools. There is nothing to suggest that Meta is making any real progress on Mark Zuckerberg’s apparent goal of “superintelligence.” But its AI and machine learning-powered ad targeting and ad variation tools seem to be very successful and are resulting in companies spending way more money on ads, many of which look terrible to me but which are apparently quite successful. Meta announced its third quarter earnings on Wednesday, and in its earnings call, it highlighted both Advantage+ and Andromeda, two AI advertising products that do what I described in the bullet above.
Advantage+ is its advertiser-facing AI ad optimization platform which lets advertisers optimize targeting, but also lets them use generative AI to create a bunch of variations of ads: “Advantage+ creative generates ad variations so they are personalized to each individual viewer in your audience, based on what each person might respond to,” the company advertises.
“Within our Advantage+ creative suite, the number of advertisers using at least one of our video generation features was up 20% versus the prior quarter as adoption of image animation and video expansion continues to scale. We’ve also added more generative AI features to make it easier for advertisers to optimize their ad creatives and drive increased performance. In Q3, we introduced AI-generated music so advertisers can have music generated for their ad that aligns with the tone and message of the creative,” Meta said in its third quarter earnings report.
Susan Li, Meta's CFO, said "now advertisers running sales, app or lead campaigns have end-to-end automation turned on from the beginning, allowing our systems to look across our platform to optimize performance by automatically choosing criteria like who to show the ads to and where to show them."
Andromeda, meanwhile, is designed to “supercharge Advantage+ automation with the next-gen personalized ads retrieval engine.” It is basically a machine learning-powered ad targeting tool, which helps the platform determine which ad, and which variation of an ad, to show a specific user: “Andromeda significantly enhances Meta’s ads system by enabling the integration of AI that optimizes and improves personalization capabilities at the retrieval stage and improves return on ad spend,” the company explains.
This is all going toward a place where Meta itself is delivering hyper personalized, generative AI slop ads for each individual user. In the Meta earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg described exactly this future: “Advertisers are increasingly just going to be able to give us a business objective and give us a credit card or bank account, and have the AI system basically figure out everything else that’s necessary, including generating video or different types of creative that might resonate with different people that are personalized in different ways, finding who the right customers are.”
I don’t know if Ticketmaster used Advantage+ for this ad campaign, or if this ad campaign is successful (Ticketmaster did not respond to a request for comment). But the tactics being deployed here are an early version of what Zuckerberg is describing, and what is obviously happening to social media right now.
Meta Andromeda: Supercharging Advantage+ automation with the next-gen personalized ads retrieval engine - Engineering at Meta
Andromeda is Meta’s proprietary machine learning (ML) system design for retrieval in ad recommendation focused on delivering a step-function improvement in value to our advertisers and people. Thi…Neeraj Bhatia (Meta)
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RRF Caserta. Cinema. La vita va così
MIT Sloan quietly shelves AI ransomware study after researcher calls BS
Netflix, Disney & Crunchyroll Named Following Mass Anime Streaming Crackdown [Edit: better source]
cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/56920779
torrentfreak.com/global-piracy…
Global Piracy Injunction Targets VidSrc Domains, Hydra Regenerates in Russia * TorrentFreak
An attempt to quickly suspend a dozen or so VidSrc domains aimed to do significant damage, but the site lives on thanks to a backup plan.Andy Maxwell (TF Publishing)
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It's ironic that crunchyroll is here.
They should understand more than anyone that they need to offer a good service, and piracy would be less of an issue.
I was having trouble watching Mushishi on kissanime a few weeks ago.
Download anything that's valuable to you.
[CW: meat] Chinese astronauts are now grilling in space
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
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in reply to silence7 • • •