Revenue is just an agreement between friends.

An objectively pointless rehash of beautiful source material that Disney seems desperate to strip-mine until even its memory is nothing more than the skeletal remains of something once alive. Jackson Weaver of the CBC has some things to say...

This month's major national USA protest event is Good Trouble Lives On, July 17-19. "Coined by civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis, "Good Trouble" is the act of coming together to take peaceful, non-violent action to challenge injustice. The power of collective non-violent action resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and we must maintain that same collective action to fight for voting rights today. This year's weekend of action will honor the legacy of Congressman John Lewis and carry the torch of the civil rights movement by doing what Lewis loved most – organizing, educating, and taking action."

As always, check mobilize.us for local protest events near you, there are events in every state every week. Indivisible, People Power United, Working Families Party and National Day Laborer Organizing Network are some organizations you can check out. Consider joining a local group! You can also check 50501's linktree for some highlighted national campaigns. Also of note, on July 14th are these two national training calls: Union of Concerned Scientists: Science Rising National Call. "It's not too late to register for the next Science Rising national call, which will highlight ways you can help counter the administration's anti-science and authoritarian actions, while laying the foundation for reimagining federal science policy for the public good. " ACLU: Organizing to Protect Democracy: August Recess Organizing Playbook. "Join ACLU People Power for our July Organizing to Protect Democracy session: a practical organizing training on how to engage members of Congress during August Recess and help advance civil liberties at the federal level."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The European Union is ramping up pressure on Meta to make big changes to Facebook and Instagram after the European Commission preliminarily found that features like autoplay, infinite scroll, and highly personalized content recommendations were addictive. On Thursday, the EC said its investigation indicated that "Meta did not adequately assess the risks of its addictive design on the physical and mental wellbeing of users, including minors and vulnerable adults." "These features fuel the user's urge to keep scrolling and shift the brain into 'autopilot mode,' contributing to unhealthy habits and compulsive use," the commission said. Over the next few months, Meta will have an opportunity to dispute the claims, and it has already taken a defensive stance. Meta's spokesperson, Ben Walters, told Reuters that Meta disagrees with the commission's preliminary findings, which supposedly "don't accurately take into account the significant steps we've taken to protect teens."

"Since this investigation began, we rolled out Teen Accounts that automatically protect teens and put parents in control -- allowing them to block access to Instagram at night and cap daily screen time at just 15 minutes," Walters said. However, the EC emphasized that Meta's current mitigation efforts, including time management tools activated by default for teens, "failed to effectively tackle the risks stemming from its addictive design." Additionally, parental controls were deemed "only effective if parents and guardians possess adequate technical expertise" and dedicated "effort and time to understand them effectively." "This undermines the efficiency of such measures in addressing the inherent risks posed by Instagram and Facebook's addictive design," the EC said, particularly for minors.

At this stage, the EC recommended that Meta consider "disabling key addictive features such as 'autoplay' and 'infinite scroll' by default, implementing effective 'screen time breaks,' and adapting its recommender system to make it less engagement-oriented." If Meta fails to make changes to comply with the EU's Digital Services Act, the company risks fines up to 6 percent of its global annual turnover when the EC makes its final decision in the coming months. "Our starting point is that, based on our findings, this design is too addictive and changes need to be made," Henna Virkkunen, the EU's tech chief, told Reuters. "The next step is either that Meta changes its design or a non-compliance decision will follow," she said, noting in the press release that the EU's priority is "protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans." "The Digital Services Act provides a clear framework to hold platforms accountable for the addictive design and effects of their services," Virkkunen said. "We are fully committed to enforcing our legislation in Europe."

The report also notes that the EC will share findings from experts on Monday that "could help pave the way for a Europe-wide social media ban for teenagers." It's not looking much better for Meta in the U.S., either. The company faces a lawsuit from 29 states that claim Meta's platforms addict kids. "That trial begins in August, and states may seek up to $1.4 trillion in penalties if Meta is found guilty," reports Ars.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Disney is exploring a free tier for Disney+ that would make some content available without a subscription. According to Nielsen data, the three largest free streamers accounted for 18.7% of watch time on U.S. TVs in April, up from 16.8% a year earlier and 12.7% in April 2024. Business Insider reports: Product and tech chief Adam Smith spoke about enabling free-tier content during a streaming town hall on Thursday afternoon, one staffer said. Smith didn't share a timeline for this initiative or a sense of the scope, this person added. A person familiar with Disney's streaming strategy said these talks are part of an ongoing discussion about concepts to better serve fans. Currently, the Disney+ and Hulu bundle costs $12.99 a month with ads or $19.99 without ads at full price.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI is retiring its ChatGPT Atlas browser less than a year after launch. Going forward, its browsing features will be shifted into a redesigned ChatGPT desktop app that also combines Codex, a built-in browser, and "ChatGPT Work" for acting across apps and files. PCMag reports: OpenAI disclosed Atlas's retirement in a Thursday post introducing a more powerful ChatGPT desktop app, following reports that the company planned on turning it into a "superapp." [...] In a tweet, OpenAI product staff member James Sun added, "The current targeted date for deprecation is 8/9, and we'll share more information in the upcoming days both in-app and via email."

The sunsetting means the Windows version of ChatGPT Atlas has been canceled, though the ChatGPT desktop app is still available on both Mac and Windows. The company is already touting the built-in browser, noting: "You can ask ChatGPT to research a market, compare sources, pull information from websites, or open and refine files from Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 inside the app. It can use the browser to bring in fresh context, take steps across web pages, and keep the work moving while you review and guide the result."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

De gouden generatie van België blijft zonder grote prijs. Mikel Moreno profiteerde in de 88ste minuut van een fout van de ingevallen keeper Senne Lammens en schoot Spanje daarmee naar de halve finale.

Twee hulporganisaties die in Ter Apel bijsprongen om ondersteuning te bieden aan asielzoekers die tijdelijk geen toegang tot de opvang kregen, houden daar per direct mee op. De situatie op het open veld is te onveilig geworden, zeggen ze. Met hun besluit onderstrepen ze een oproep aan het kabinet om voor structurele opvang te zorgen.

stan.jernigan has added a photo to the pool:

I took this photo of the top floor of the “Gwandeokjeong Pavilion” with my iPhone 17 Pro Max while visiting and touring Jeju Island, South Korea. I love the building's beautiful, intricate designs and colors. It is truly a master art work…

In a rare combined cybersecurity/squid post, a twenty-nine-year-old squid proxy bug can leak HTTP requests.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Blog moderation policy.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

HANDS HEAD ON Have you ever felt so lazy that reaching up to scroll on your MacBook’s trackpad was too much work? Yeah, me too – especially with the summer heat blanketing much of the Northern Hemisphere, even reaching my remote corner of the US. Thankfully, there’s an app for that. ScrollPods is a simple macOS app that’s been out since last November but which just came to my attention thanks to a blog post this week from its creator, Ahmed Mohamed, who hails from Austria. It lets anyone with a compatible Mac and supported headphones scroll through webpages, documents, and other scrollable content using nothing but a head tilt. Look down, and the page scrolls down; look up, and your content will scroll back that way. You can continue typing as you scroll. The idea, Mohamed wrote, was to allow himself to move up and down a document without taking his hands off the keyboard – not as a complete replacement for conventional navigation methods, but as a supplement. “ScrollPods is not trying to replace the mouse but when it comes to intuitive scrolling, I think it gives traditional scrolling methods like the mouse, scroll wheel, trackpad and touchscreen a good run for their money,” Mohamed wrote. “I enjoy ScrollPods when I’m reading long documents, when my hands are occupied, when I’m drinking an iced coffee or when I simply want to rest my hands.” With the ScrollPods website stating that the app is free, and its Mac App Store page reporting that it doesn’t collect any data, I decided to give it a shot. Installation was easy. It detected my second-gen AirPods Pro without issue, and we were off to the hands-free races. ScrollPods is responsive, easy to use, and isn’t too sensitive, either. It does tend to jump a bit if you slightly move your head, so if you’re fidgety you might want to turn the sensitivity down or enable the feature that automatically pauses the app with a quick tilt of the head. Speaking of settings, there are a lot of options to get ScrollPods working to your liking. Sensitivity, the threshold at which the app starts to scroll, acceleration speed, and even how fast the scrolling stops can all be tweaked, as can how you actually scroll – if you’d prefer to move content up and down by turning left and right, you can do that, too. You can also reverse the order so that looking up scrolls down and looking down scrolls up, if you’re a crazy person. It’s also a great accessibility feature, but Mohamed told us that wasn’t his original goal. “This was initially designed for comfort, I initially came up with ScrollPods because I needed a hands-free way to scroll documents as I was soothing my baby, often stuck in the same position for an hour,” Mohamed told The Register via email, adding that he didn’t want to make an assumption that it would be a significant accessibility product since he’s an able-bodied person. That said, he has heard from a number of people using ScrollPods for accessibility, and the feedback has been positive. “Feedback from the accessibility community … has been phenomenal and is also my current main focus,” Mohamed added. “Updates with a bigger emphasis on accessibility will follow.” As for whether Apple, famous for baking accessibility features into its products, could snipe his idea, he said he’s not entirely surprised it hasn’t happened yet. “Based on the simplicity, it seems so straightforward,” Mohamed said. “With an original concept, this is part of the game and I can’t influence what another company does.” If you want to try ScrollPods out, the link is included above. You’ll need a Mac running macOS 14 or newer and a pair of AirPods 3rd gen or newer, or any version of AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, and Beats Fit Pro. ScrollPods is free right now, but it might not stay that way – Mohamed said he hasn’t settled on final pricing. “Due to the accessibility element of ScrollPods, I do foresee a free tier,” he told us. ®

Even uitvogelen hoe dit de schuld is van Geert Wilders maar: de vluchtelingenvriendjes van het Rode Kruis en VluchtelingenWerk STOPPEN met hulpverlening in Ter Apel. Komt allemaal door de inmiddels gevaarlijke overlast van 'een groepje mannen' dat weinig tot geen kans maakt op asiel in Nederland. Nou jaaaaa dat doen ze anders nooooooooooit! Die 'mannen' gaan dus maar hulpverleners lastigvallen - barmhartige Samaritanen die daar juist zijn voor de asielzoekers. Hulpverleners die water, dekens en maaltijden uitdelen, ondersteuning geven, hulp proberen te bieden, of desnoods een luisterend oor. De laatste week liepen de gemoederen in de wachtrij van Pretpark Nederland weer eens hoog op: steekpartijen, vechtpartijen, gezeik. En terwijl Bartje van den Brink smeekt om meer spreiding tikt de asiel-drup-0-meter van ons woningloze landje gewoon door: 710, 670, 690, 890...

Het in 2014 door trompetist/zangeres Sheila Maurice-Grey opgerichte Kokoroko geeft hier een Tiny Desk Concert.

Vier nummers lang genieten van jazzy, funky  Afrobeat.  Met Sheila Maurice-Grey (zang en trom[pet) en Noushy Nanguy (zang en trombone).

Ik wil de rest van de band natuurlijk niet tekort doen, maar zoekt u ze zelf maar op. In de warmte van vandaag wil ik gewoon lekker lui luisteren.

Onome Edgeworth, percussie; Duane “Hurcs” Atherley: basgitaar, zang; Tobi Adenaike, gitaar, zang; Yohan Kebede: keyboards, zang en Joel “JC” Clarke op drums.