Appie Verschoor (6efb5ed9) at 12 Oct 11:47
Merge branch 'real404' into 'master'
... and 1 more commit
Appie Verschoor (faa02d25) at 12 Oct 11:47
Lawrence Barretto selects his winners and losers from the Singapore Grand Prix weekend.
Drone strikes on Yandex data centers are disrupting services from taxis to digital payments across Russia.
The companies supply components for Russian missiles, drones and aircraft, including explosives, ammunition, semiconductors and computers.
Woorden doen ertoe, ook in de wereld van economen. Nobelprijswinnaars Robert E. Hall en Michael Woodford legden met onderzoek naar consumenten en bedrijven een steviger fundament onder overheidsbeleid om de economie te stabiliseren. En ze redden Keynes van de vergetelheid.
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Theatermaker Florian Myjer maakte een voorstelling over de Nederlandse klassenmaatschappij. The Drama confronteert het publiek met privilege, empathie en de vraag hoe goed we de ander werkelijk kunnen begrijpen.
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Uit straatboekenkastjes in heel Nederland haalt Arjen Fortuin steeds een boek, bespreekt het, en geeft het door. Het oude vestingstadje Grave leidt je zo naar smoezelig Amsterdam.
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NPR reports:
Police officers in cities across the U.S. are quick to extol the virtues of real-time crime centers as a game changer that helps them find missing children, monitor large events from the skies and scope out dangerous scenes before putting an officer in harm's way. Hundreds of police departments have one of these central hubs, which have existed for years. But many are now being powered with AI software, such as Fusus, from the public-safety technology giant Axon... synthesizing the data it pulls in and allowing police command centers to watch an entire city from one place.
Flock cameras, the automated license plate readers (ALPRs), have faced intense backlash in recent months amid stories of abuse. Yet privacy experts say they're just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to police surveillance. "I have been watching the debate about Flock with a little bit of puzzlement," says Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University. "Because real-time crime centers have not just ALPR cameras and sensors, but video analytics and drones and essentially a way to create a visual single-pane-of-glass vision of what's going on in a city, with time machine capabilities where you can go back and investigate crime." Tools like Axon Fusus, which is a leader in this type of software, also pull in footage and data from police body cameras, law enforcement dashcams, 911 dispatch, gunshot detectors and surveillance cameras, including sometimes those of private businesses that opt in. Its use is growing fast. In 2024, the technology news site 404 Media reported that just over 100 law enforcement agencies had deployed Fusus, which was then its own company and was acquired by Axon that year. The number of law enforcement agencies using the tool has more than doubled since then, according to Axon.
Even the American Civil Liberties Union warned concerned citizens in August that "Flock is far from the only vendor," adding that "it's important to realize that its competitors aren't so great either, and that simply replacing Flock surveillance with another company's surveillance won't necessarily solve any of the privacy and other civil liberties problems posed by this mass surveillance technology."
Communities can't simply assume that their residents will be better off from a privacy and civil liberties perspective by dropping Flock and replacing it with another ALPR provider, as some customers have done. They should ask hard questions about whether they really want to create that kind of a system, and if they do, ensure it doesn't function as a mass surveillance system...
One of Flock's most significant competitors is Motorola. This company, which has been expanding its police technology offerings through an aggressive acquisition strategy in recent years, offers a nationwide law enforcement data sharing system similar to Flock's called the National Vehicle Location Service, operated by Motorola unit Vigilant Solutions. In addition to collecting data from law enforcement clients' cameras, it also runs a large separate commercial ALPR unit that makes deals for tow trucks and other fleet vehicles to carry cameras and collect data for Motorola as they drive around, amassing billions of plate reads (a claimed 500 million monthly, subject to no apparent data retention policy). Known as the Digital Recognition Network, that unit sells its data for commercial purposes but also makes it available to its law enforcement customers for an extra charge. Motorola tells agencies they can have "access to billions of detections beyond your own."
Abandoning Flock for another system doesn't protect privacy, their article argues. "If a jurisdiction decides to allow license scanners to be installed, how that system operates is more important than which vendor provides it..." They recommend strong restrictions like data retention limits — and imposing them by law rather than in the language of contracts with vendors (which could always be renegotiated).
Police officers in cities across the U.S. are quick to extol the virtues of real-time crime centers as a game changer that helps them find missing children, monitor large events from the skies and scope out dangerous scenes before putting an officer in harm's way. Hundreds of police departments have one of these central hubs, which have existed for years. But many are now being powered with AI software, such as Fusus, from the public-safety technology giant Axon... synthesizing the data it pulls in and allowing police command centers to watch an entire city from one place.
Flock cameras, the automated license plate readers (ALPRs), have faced intense backlash in recent months amid stories of abuse. Yet privacy experts say they're just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to police surveillance. "I have been watching the debate about Flock with a little bit of puzzlement," says Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University. "Because real-time crime centers have not just ALPR cameras and sensors, but video analytics and drones and essentially a way to create a visual single-pane-of-glass vision of what's going on in a city, with time machine capabilities where you can go back and investigate crime." Tools like Axon Fusus, which is a leader in this type of software, also pull in footage and data from police body cameras, law enforcement dashcams, 911 dispatch, gunshot detectors and surveillance cameras, including sometimes those of private businesses that opt in. Its use is growing fast. In 2024, the technology news site 404 Media reported that just over 100 law enforcement agencies had deployed Fusus, which was then its own company and was acquired by Axon that year. The number of law enforcement agencies using the tool has more than doubled since then, according to Axon.
Even the American Civil Liberties Union warned concerned citizens in August that "Flock is far from the only vendor," adding that "it's important to realize that its competitors aren't so great either, and that simply replacing Flock surveillance with another company's surveillance won't necessarily solve any of the privacy and other civil liberties problems posed by this mass surveillance technology."
Communities can't simply assume that their residents will be better off from a privacy and civil liberties perspective by dropping Flock and replacing it with another ALPR provider, as some customers have done. They should ask hard questions about whether they really want to create that kind of a system, and if they do, ensure it doesn't function as a mass surveillance system...
One of Flock's most significant competitors is Motorola. This company, which has been expanding its police technology offerings through an aggressive acquisition strategy in recent years, offers a nationwide law enforcement data sharing system similar to Flock's called the National Vehicle Location Service, operated by Motorola unit Vigilant Solutions. In addition to collecting data from law enforcement clients' cameras, it also runs a large separate commercial ALPR unit that makes deals for tow trucks and other fleet vehicles to carry cameras and collect data for Motorola as they drive around, amassing billions of plate reads (a claimed 500 million monthly, subject to no apparent data retention policy). Known as the Digital Recognition Network, that unit sells its data for commercial purposes but also makes it available to its law enforcement customers for an extra charge. Motorola tells agencies they can have "access to billions of detections beyond your own."
Abandoning Flock for another system doesn't protect privacy, their article argues. "If a jurisdiction decides to allow license scanners to be installed, how that system operates is more important than which vendor provides it..." They recommend strong restrictions like data retention limits — and imposing them by law rather than in the language of contracts with vendors (which could always be renegotiated).
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Yandex engineers are working to restore services after Ukraine launched drone strikes on three of its five Russian datacenters. The strikes began overnight on October 7-8, "seriously damaging" Yandex's Sasovo datacenter and leading to a total shutdown. Ukrainian drones struck again on the morning of October 9, targeting the company's Kaluga datacenter, resulting in part of its infrastructure being taken offline. Dima Pirogov, head of Yandex's fintech division, confirmed via Telegram on Sunday morning that a third strike targeted the company's Vladimir site, which supports Yandex Pay. A day later, services remain offline, although Pirogov said users' money is safe. "I'm very sorry I can't tell you yet that everything is working again," the exec wrote. "The team continues to restore services and is checking every step. When it comes to your money, it's important to us not just to restore Yandex Pay as quickly as possible, but also to ensure that everything is working reliably. "I understand that you're not waiting for words, but for access to your money. And I understand how hard it is to wait when you can't use it. We can't give you a precise timeline for the restoration yet, but we promise: we won't stop until the service is back online." Yandex Pay is the company's digital payments service. Users can make online and in-store purchases, pay in installments, and split bills with friends and family. It's also integrated into online shopping experiences. It is comparable to Apple Pay or Google Pay, while Yandex more broadly offers services similar to Google's. Yandex said engineers are prioritizing the most-used services, and reported that access to the Alice AI assistant, Mail, Maps, Search, and Taxi is being restored, but other features remain offline. The company's status page lists widespread outages across Yandex Cloud, its public cloud platform, following the attacks. Updates from the maintenance team describe partial availability despite the outage indicators. They suggest that some customers may be able to access certain features, such as Yandex Cloud Console and API, but availability remains inconsistent across the platform. In its most recent update, the company said: "The Yandex Cloud platform is still operating in a limited mode. Our specialists continue restoration work around the clock. The technical support team receives an increased number of requests, so the response time can be increased. "Our recommendations continue to be relevant. We recommend using alternative sites for hosting and reserving resources." Internet monitoring organization Netblocks reported that Yandex Cloud's network connectivity was at 30 percent of normal levels on October 11. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said the drone attacks were a response to Russia's own, which had targeted datacenters in Kyiv. The BBC reported that in September, Russian drone strikes targeted a business center in the capital city, killing four people and damaging a datacenter, which in turn resulted in around 100,000 households losing internet access. The attacks led to other knock-on effects, such as public transport boards not displaying information in Lutsk. Kyiv's attack on the Vladimir site on Sunday morning came hours after controversial comments from US president Donald Trump, who accused Zelensky of wanting "to make problems for the world" by continuing to attack Russian oil refineries. Trump went on to say that it was time for Ukraine to elect a new president after Zelensky said measures should not be taken that allow Russia to generate more revenue to fund its war. Zelensky was referring to a deal between Trump and Putin to release diesel from Russia to the US and the rest of the world. Later that day, the US president claimed Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an "energy ceasefire" to halt attacks on each other's energy infrastructure. Kyiv said it was unaware of the agreement before Trump announced it on his social media platform, but was willing to halt attacks on Russian energy infrastructure if Moscow reciprocated. Russia launched a missile attack on a Ukrainian power plant hours later. ®
Een deel van het sfeerbeeld zag u gisteren al, tijdens die Hamas-megafestatie op de Dam, waar een giftige combinatie van Zwarte Magica's (foto boven), professioneel moslims en islamisten, blikbierdrinkende krakers, Trouw-columnisten, Biker Mice from Mars, Tena Lady's en natuurwijnidealistische Instafluencers een lans braken voor de islamitische terroristen van Hamas, Ansar Allah (de Houthi's), Hezbollah en meer halvegaren uit de feestfabriek. Omdat Femke Halsema vast haar zondagse wegkijkwijntjes aan het toeteren was had Ruben Brekelmans veroordeeldienst: hij 'veroordeelt' de 'terreurverheerlijking' door die 'ongure types'. De politie stond er weer bij, keek er weer naar, nam weer wat foto's en maakte weer een paar praatjes. Je bent een laffe tak, Brekebeens. Meer sfeerbeeld na de klik.
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VLAARDINGEN (ANP) - Een kapperszaak aan de Westhavenkade in Vlaardingen moet in elk geval de komende twee weken dichtblijven. Zondagavond laat was daar een explosie. Het gebouw was vorig jaar meerdere keren beschadigd.
Burgemeester Frederik Zevenbergen zegt dat hij het besluit heeft genomen om de veiligheid van "omwonenden, ondernemers en bezoekers" te beschermen en om nieuwe incidenten te voorkomen.
In Vlaardingen zijn de laatste tijd vaker zulke incidenten bij kapperszaken. Regionale media spreken over een 'kappersoorlog' in de Zuid-Hollandse gemeente. In mei en augustus waren er explosies bij een kapperszaak aan het Liesveld, niet ver van de Westhavenkade. Diezelfde salon was eind vorig jaar twee keer besmeurd met witte verf. In augustus besloot de burgemeester om die zaak voor meerdere weken te sluiten.
TEL AVIV (ANP) - Door een explosie in het noorden van Israël, niet ver van de Libanese grens, zijn meerdere mensen gewond geraakt. Volgens Israëlische media gaat het om twintig gewonden, onder wie kinderen.
Onder de slachtoffers zouden leerlingen van een middelbare school zijn, schrijft Haaretz. Volgens Israëlische media werd de explosie vermoedelijk veroorzaakt door niet eerder ontplofte munitie.
Soldaten van het Israëlische leger zijn ter plaatse. Ook zijn er legerhelikopters naar het gebied gestuurd.
Op de A16 bij het knooppunt Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht zijn maandagmiddag in de richting van Rotterdam drie auto's op elkaar gebotst. Daarbij is een dode gevallen. Ook raakten twee mensen zwaargewond.
Fragile coalition suffers another blow as labour minister and co-leader of SPD Bärbel Bas leaves both posts
Germany’s labour minister and co-leader of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), Bärbel Bas, has quit both posts, citing the death of her stepdaughter and subsequent political attacks against her, in a stinging blow to the fragile coalition government.
“After my stepdaughter’s death, I realised that I need time to come to terms with my grief,” Bas said in a statement posted on Facebook, without giving further details.
Continue reading...Naffah Naffah makes the bells in the mountains near Beirut. His sons will take over the foundry when he retires
The story of Lebanon’s last remaining church-bell maker begins with a rifle. In the 18th century, Youssef Gabriel, a local metalworker, was secretly making and equipping Arab revolutionaries with rifles to assist their revolt against the Ottoman empire, which controlled Lebanon at the time.
Then, one day, a Russian engineer came to the Lebanese town of Beit Chabab to make a church bell. Gabriel, intrigued, shadowed the man and picked up the process on sight.
Continue reading...My friend Matt was recently here for a week in Tokyo and wrote up his experience and observations. “I don’t think humans were ever meant to experience that many eyes and faces at once, so it was a unique experience.”