in the clear: 2024-06-24

This is a running list of various media I've looked at each week. It's mostly for reference and to give an impression of the type of news that I'm exposed to. Bullets are written by me and numbers are summaries of the respective article from an LLM.

If you have any suggestions or know of other good news sources, please leave a comment in the guestbook or reach out to me directly. I can't spend all my time reading about current events, but I like to try and stay informed whenever possible.

The Atlantic: The Problem With ‘In Demand’ Jobs

1. Federal job training programs, such as the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), have shown limited success in improving earnings for trained individuals in the long term.
2. The WIOA programs often prioritize potential employers' needs over employees, resulting in a focus on low-wage, high-turnover jobs.
3. The most common WIOA training program is truck driving, which may not lead to good long-term job prospects due to high turnover rates in the industry.
4. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued grants for meat-and-poultry agriculture-workforce training, which can unintentionally support industries with unsafe working conditions and low wages.
5. Congress is considering expanding investment in short-term, WIOA-style training programs, which may not provide workers with living wages, benefits, or career advancement opportunities.
6. Alternative state-funded programs, like California's High Road Training Partnerships, offer a potential model for reform by focusing on job quality, worker promotion, and collaboration between employers, unions, and workers.

NYT: A Global Push Fixed the Ozone Hole. Satellites Could Threaten It. (Cited Study)

1. A new study suggests that the increasing number of satellites in low-Earth orbit could lead to a resurgence of the ozone hole problem due to the release of harmful metals.
2. Upon satellite re-entry, they can generate significant amounts of aluminum oxide, a pollutant that could interfere with stratospheric ozone chemistry.
3. If mega-constellations of hundreds or thousands of satellites are created, they could potentially cause significant ozone depletion.
4. Critics argue that the study's conclusions are not supported by current research, and more studies are needed to confirm the environmental impacts.
5. Regulators are starting to take note of the potential environmental effects of space activities, with the UN and FCC making initial steps.
6. The Montreal Protocol, which regulates ozone-depleting substances, may look into the issue in their 2026 assessment.

The New Stack: Open Source LibreChat Offers More Than Just Extra LLMs

1. LibreChat is an open-source, AI conversation platform with a centralized interface, offering model selection, multi-language support, and integration with various AI services.
2. It allows users to host their own AI chat interface, providing control over their data, which is becoming a scarce commodity in the age of large language models (LLMs).
3. LibreChat supports switching between different AI models during conversations and ingesting external data sources like CSV files.
4. It offers a flexible plugin system for users to tailor the platform to their specific needs, with contributions from a growing community of developers on GitHub.
5. LibreChat has been adopted by organizations such as Mistral and Microsoft for prototyping chat interfaces.
6. The platform is continuously updated, with plans to replace the current plugin system with a more modular solution integrating various LLM providers.

Lawfare: Open Banking: A Case Study in the Benefits of Interoperability

1. Open banking is a regulatory regime requiring banks to provide third-party financial service providers access to consumer data via APIs.
2. This has led to innovative fintech solutions, but the dominance of large banks limits open banking's ability to decentralize power effectively.
3. Interoperability-based interventions like open banking aim to disrupt centralized platforms and existing power structures.
4. However, without breaking up concentrated marketplaces first, such mandates may benefit dominant players more than new entrants.
5. Technological changes alone cannot reshape power structures; policymakers must prioritize decentralizing decision-making power in industries.
6. Only then can interoperability mandates achieve their goals of fostering competition, innovation, and consumer empowerment.

EFF: EFF Opposes the American Privacy Rights Act

1. EFF opposes the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) due to concerns about freezing consumer data privacy protections and preventing stronger state protections.
2. Subsequent drafts of APRA have not addressed these concerns, leading EFF to express opposition to Congress.
3. EFF believes federal privacy laws should not roll back state privacy protections, and there's no need to trade strong state laws for weaker national protection.
4. APRA could preempt dozens of stronger state laws, including those in Colorado, Maine, New York, and Illinois, and override a California law for reining in data brokers.
5. The California Delete Act, supported by EFF, provides an easy way to delete information held by data brokers, but APRA falls short of this standard.
6. EFF encourages APRA's authors to center strong consumer protections in future drafts.

CNN: Julian Assange agrees to plea deal with Biden administration that will allow him to avoid imprisonment in US

1. Julian Assange has agreed to plead guilty to a US felony charge related to the release of classified information.
2. The plea deal would allow him to avoid imprisonment in the US and return to Australia, crediting time served in a London prison.
3. Assange was released from UK prison on June 24, 2024, after spending 1901 days there.
4. A plea hearing and sentencing are set for June 25, 2024, in the Northern Mariana Islands.
5. Assange faced 18 counts for publishing confidential military records supplied by Chelsea Manning in 2010-2011.
6. The plea deal may have been influenced by recent efforts from the Australian government and opposition from US officials.

NYT: Oklahoma Supreme Court Says No to State Funding for a Religious Charter School

1. The Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked the establishment of the first religious charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, citing violation of the state constitution.
2. Charter schools are publicly funded but independently run, and this case marks a significant development in the school choice movement, potentially reaching the U.S. Supreme Court.
3. The proposed school aimed to offer religious instruction within the curriculum, causing controversy and division within the school choice movement and the Oklahoma Republican Party.
4. The case raises questions about the nature of charter schools, with arguments focusing on nondiscrimination against religion and the nonestablishment of religion.
5. The school was set to open in August, but the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board's approval was met with resistance, leading to the court's intervention.
6. The case follows previous Supreme Court rulings in 2020 and 2022, which allowed religious schools to participate in state-funded scholarship and tuition programs.

NYT: When the Terms of Service Change to Make Way for A.I. Training

1. Google, Snap, and Meta use publicly available data to train their AI models, which can include user-generated content.
2. Some users have expressed concern that their work is being used to train AI systems that could potentially replace them.
3. Private data, such as text messages and emails, are also used for AI training but are subject to privacy laws and user consent.
4. Companies like Adobe and Snap have faced backlash over changes to their privacy policies related to AI training and data usage.
5. Meta has paused plans to use publicly available posts from Facebook and Instagram users in Europe to train its AI due to complaints.
6. Some companies include clauses in their terms of use to protect their content from being scraped to train competing AI systems.

NPR: Supreme Court rules in favor of Biden administration in social media case

1. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Biden administration in a social media case.
2. The case did not decide on content-moderation policies, but on legal standing to sue.
3. Plaintiffs, including Missouri and Louisiana, claimed government coercion of social media platforms to censor content.
4. The ruling preserves the government's ability to engage with private companies on public interest matters.
5. Critics warn of potential unchecked government pressure on social media companies.
6. The case arose from Biden administration's efforts to address false information surrounding COVID-19 vaccines, foreign interference in elections, and more.

OECD: Six crucial policy considerations for AI, data governance, and privacy: Insights from the OECD

1. The OECD report highlights six crucial policy considerations for AI, data governance, and privacy, emphasizing the need for global coordination.
2. Privacy is a growing concern in the age of Generative AI, with challenges such as informed consent, bias, and data modification or deletion.
3. The report emphasizes the need for mutual understanding and collaboration between AI and privacy policy communities to foster awareness and improve compliance.
4. Fairness, transparency, and explainability are key concepts that should be interrelated and consistently interpreted in both AI and privacy contexts.
5. Accountability mechanisms are crucial to ensure AI systems comply with data protection laws and ethical standards across jurisdictions.
6. Global synergies and cooperation are necessary to address AI's privacy challenges effectively, with the OECD playing a pivotal role in fostering coordination.

NYT: Supreme Court Appears Poised to Allow, for Now, Emergency Abortions in Idaho

1. The Supreme Court seems poised to allow emergency abortions in Idaho when a woman's health is at risk.
2. The court's unsigned opinion dismissed the case on procedural grounds, not addressing the merits of the dispute.
3. The decision would reinstate a lower court ruling that paused Idaho's near-total ban on abortion.
4. The case centers on whether a federal law requiring emergency care for any patient overrides Idaho’s strict abortion ban.
5. The court's decision suggests that women could retain access to emergency abortions as the case works its way through the courts.
6. The final decision has not been released, and it remains unclear whether the document posted online reflects the court's final decision.

404 Media: ID Verification Service for TikTok, Uber, X Exposed Driver Licenses

1. AU10TIX, an identity verification service for TikTok, Uber, and others, exposed administrative credentials online for over a year.
2. The company verifies users' identities through facial recognition and drivers' license photos, and offers "liveness detection" and age verification.
3. Other companies like Fiverr, PayPal, Coinbase, LinkedIn, and Upwork are listed as clients on AU10TIX's website.
4. The breach potentially allows hackers to access sensitive user data, raising concerns about the security of identity services.
5. The cybersecurity researcher who discovered the breach did not distribute the data, instead providing some to 404 Media for verification.
6. The incident highlights the risk of identity services becoming targets for hackers, especially as more platforms move towards identity verification models.

NYT: A Surprising Climate Find

1. Atoll nations like the Maldives, previously thought to shrink due to rising sea levels, have shown stability and growth according to recent studies.
2. Ocean currents and sand are key factors affecting the evolution of atoll islands, as they can erode shorelines but also bring fresh sand from coral reefs.
3. The Maldives faces challenges in adapting to climate change, including preserving coral reefs and designing resilient infrastructure.
4. The Supreme Court rejected a Republican challenge to the Biden administration's efforts to limit misinformation on social media.
5. President Biden and Donald Trump will meet for the first debate of the 2024 election, focusing on economic issues like inflation and the deficit.
6. Trump leads Biden by three percentage points in the first New York Times/Siena College national poll since Trump’s conviction.

Lawfare: A National Advisory Referendum on AI?

1. The text discusses the proposal for a national advisory referendum on AI regulation, aiming to provide Congress with a clearer understanding of public priorities.
2. The author suggests that Congress has been slow to respond to the advancements in AI, comparing the regulatory process to a child waiting for help after falling off a swing.
3. The proposed referendum would be an educational tool, informing voters about AI's potential and perils, and creating political pressure to spur congressional action.
4. The author highlights the lack of specific legislative proposals, turning the regulatory process into a slow-paced inquiry, despite consensus that AI requires regulation.
5. The text mentions several bills and memos, noting their low odds of passing or being rendered moot, and expresses the need for Congress to transition from brainstorming to implementing policy.
6. The "AI LEAD Act" is introduced, which would create a Chief Artificial Intelligence Officers Council to coordinate agency practices relating to AI design, acquisition, development, and more.

AI Snake Oil: AI scaling myths

1. Scaling trends in AI may not continue indefinitely, and there are signs of a slowdown in model size and training data availability.
2. The "better" models referred to in scaling laws only mean improved ability to predict the next word in a sequence, not necessarily new capabilities.
3. Emergent abilities, or models' new capabilities with size increase, do not follow any law-like behavior and may not continue indefinitely.
4. LLMs tend to perform poorly on benchmarks designed to test the efficiency of acquiring skills for unseen tasks.
5. The cost and difficulty of obtaining high-quality training data are increasing, potentially limiting further scaling.
6. The focus is shifting from larger datasets to improving the quality of training data, and synthetic data may not significantly increase the volume of training data.

NYT: Are We Loving Our Pets to Death?

1. Pet ownership is increasing globally, with two-thirds of American homes having a pet, up from 56% in 1988.
2. There's a trend of humanizing pets, which includes pampering them with customized products and services.
3. Some experts argue that treating pets too much like humans can lead to health and behavioral issues in pets.
4. Modern pets often face constraints and dependencies due to breeding practices and lifestyle changes.
5. The increase in pet confinement and isolation has led to issues like separation anxiety and aggression.
6. Overweight and obesity are common in pets due to the burden and expense of modern pet ownership.

NPR: New York City is moving to ban phones from school. Will it work?

1. New York City Public Schools plan to ban phone use among students, following concerns about addiction and distraction.
2. The ban may be implemented as early as January 2024, similar to the recent ban by Los Angeles Unified School District on student cellphone and social media use.
3. A Common Sense Media study found that kids spend a median of 4.5 hours per day on their phones, with 97% using them during school hours.
4. Roughly three-quarters of schools have some form of policy prohibiting non-academic use of cellphones in the classroom.
5. States like Florida and Indiana have passed laws banning student cellphone use during class time, with other states considering similar legislation.
6. The effectiveness of these bans is mixed, with some studies showing increased test scores and reduced cyberbullying, while others indicate no effect or even higher rates of cyberbullying.

1Password Blog: How MFA is falling short

1. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is a security method that requires multiple factors to verify a user's identity.
2. MFA is not foolproof; threat actors can bypass it using social engineering, session hijacking, and Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attacks.
3. Social engineering involves tricking employees into handing over MFA factors, often by impersonating a trusted source.
4. Session hijacking can occur when threat actors steal credentials after login, such as through vulnerable browsers or malicious browser extensions.
5. MITM attacks involve intercepting user credentials by creating a fake network or webpage, allowing hackers to bypass most MFA methods.
6. Despite its weaknesses, MFA is still more secure than relying solely on passwords or other single-factor methods.

LLRX: Here’s how machine learning can violate your privacy

1. Machine learning models can memorize aspects of training data, potentially compromising privacy, especially when dealing with sensitive information.
2. Overfitting is a risk with complex machine learning models, where they make accurate predictions on training data but perform poorly on new data.
3. Machine learning models use parameters derived from training data to make predictions, with more parameters allowing for more complex pattern recognition.
4. To avoid overfitting, models are checked against a validation dataset to ensure they can generalize their learning beyond the training data.
5. Differential privacy is a promising solution to minimize privacy risks, by introducing randomness to prevent the model from depending too much on individual's data.
6. However, differential privacy can lead to a significant drop in performance, necessitating a balance between machine learning performance and privacy protection.

NYT: The Voices of A.I. Are Telling Us a Lot

1. The text discusses the gendered stereotypes in the voices of AI, using OpenAI's chatbot, ChatGPT, as an example.
2. The voice of ChatGPT, named Sky, was initially similar to the operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the movie "Her", leading to Johansson's displeasure.
3. The voices of AI assistants, including Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, have been largely feminized, often sounding robotic, manipulatable, and subservient.
4. The text highlights the retro-futuristic appeal of these robotic voices and their influence on TikTok's text-to-speech feature.
5. The AI operating system in "Her", Samantha, voiced by Johansson, is a machine that becomes real and advances beyond human consciousness.
6. Johansson's voice, used in AI systems, subverts the usual processed virtual assistant voices, sounding alive and human, not just because of her voice, but also her complex character development in "Her".

Friday SCOTUS Decisions

• NPR: Supreme Court just made it harder for federal agencies to regulate in sweeping ruling (Overturned Chevron Doctrine)
• NPR: The Supreme Court says cities can punish people for sleeping in public places
• NPR: Supreme Court says prosecutors improperly charged some Jan. 6 defendants
• NPR: Supreme Court overturns opioid settlement with Purdue Pharma that shielded Sacklers

NYT Opinion: Today’s Teenagers Have Invented a Language That Captures the World Perfectly

1. The text is a guest essay discussing the unique and innovative slang used by today's teenagers.
2. The author, Stephen Marche, highlights how this slang, such as "mid" and "glazed," reflects the current societal issues and realities faced by the younger generation.
3. "Mid" is used to describe things that are average or slightly below, reflecting a world full of mild disappointments.
4. "Glazed" is used to signify positive spinning of judgments, akin to the artificial positivity often encountered online.
5. The author expresses admiration for the innovative language of the younger generation, which he finds more precise and relevant than older slang.
6. The essay concludes with a positive note about the resilience and innovation of today's teenagers, despite the challenging world they are inheriting.

WSJ: Supreme Court Puts Biden Policies Like Net Neutrality and Ban on Noncompete Contracts at Risk

1. The Supreme Court has ended the "Chevron deference" doctrine, which instructed judges to defer to federal agencies' interpretations of laws.
2. This decision may make it harder for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to revive net neutrality and for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to defend its ban on noncompete contracts.
3. The FCC's reinterpretation of the Communications Act to bring back net neutrality may face challenges due to the demise of Chevron deference.
4. The FTC's ban on noncompete contracts could also be at risk due to unsettled questions about its authority.
5. The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) plans to reduce pollution from coal-powered plants may face legal challenges due to the Supreme Court's ruling.
6. The ruling could lead to more litigation challenging federal agency actions, potentially resulting in more losses for these agencies.

NYT: Who Might Replace Biden on the Top of the Ticket?

1. President Biden's debate performance has led some Democrats to consider potential replacements.
2. Vice President Kamala Harris is a top contender, despite initial concerns about her defining her role and low approval ratings.
3. Other potential candidates include Governors Gavin Newsom (California), Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan), JB Pritzker (Illinois), and Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania).
4. Each candidate offers unique benefits, such as progressive policies, high approval ratings, or a strong presence in swing states.
5. If Biden withdraws, the Democratic convention in Chicago could see unconventional possibilities for replacements.
6. Other potential candidates mentioned are Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senators Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, and Governor Andy Beshear (Kentucky).

The Economist: Ukraine has a month to avoid default

1. Ukraine has a month to avoid default as private foreign bondholders' debt service payment moratorium expires on August 1st.
2. The country's debt-to-GDP ratio will approach 94% by the end of the year, and it requires fiscal room to manage its debts.
3. Ukraine proposed a write-down of 60% from the present value of its debts, but bondholders suggested 22% was more reasonable.
4. Only a fraction of the recent $60bn funding package from the US and the proposed $38bn EU aid over three years will go directly to Ukraine's government as cash.
5. The IMF's analysis of Ukraine's debt repayment capacity is a few months out of date, causing uncertainty among bondholders.
6. The extent of Western support and potential fatigue from taxpayers, along with private investors' scepticism about long-term reconstruction plans, contribute to the impasse.

Colorado Sun: An experiment doled out money to homeless people in Denver, no strings attached. Here’s what happened.

1. The Denver Basic Income Project gave homeless individuals $1,000/month for a year, leading to a doubling in stable housing.
2. The project resulted in a decrease in shelter nights and increased full-time employment.
3. It also led to significant tax dollar savings, estimated at $589,214.
4. The project was funded by a mix of public and private money, including city pandemic relief funds.
5. The study found that participants used the money for essential needs, housing, transportation, and education.
6. The project has been extended for eight more months to understand the relationship between guaranteed income and homelessness.