FASTER, PLEASE: Mapping the heart to prevent damage caused by a heart attack.
WELL, GOOD: Weight-loss drug effective in treating sleep apnea, study finds
THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Microplastics found in human penises for first time
BEHOLD MY PROFOUNDLY SHOCKED FACE: DEA Uncovers Drug Money Laundering Scheme Between Chinese Organized Crime, Sinaloa Cartel.
The curse of Egyptian mummy If he did not pose for the foto the first world war wouldn't have happened
Archduke Franz Ferdinand posing as a mummy on a trip to Cairo (1896).
This is a monumental exhibition worthy of its monumental subject 1 day ago — The aim is to cover 3000 years of history through artefacts, works of art, and crafts. There are no mummies in this show
Relatives search for missing in Saudi Arabia as hajj death toll tops 900 France24
Heatwave in Mexico claims lives of more than 150 since March France24
Why some scientists think extreme heat could be the reason people keep disappearing in GreeceCNN
India heatwave sparks spate of fires, ignites calls for stricter safety regulation enforcement Channel News Asia. Commentary:
every surface is hot to touch. The human body can't endure a heatwave this nonstop without respite. ACs running nonstop, but rooms are barely cool, house plants are dying – you have to water them with boiling hot water. Struggling to breathe in the thick scalding air
— Rituparna Chatterjee (@MasalaBai) June 19, 2024
Stop Giving Companies Your Real Email—Do This Instead
HowToGeek: ”
- Websites may sell your email address to spammers or leak your address in a data breach.
- An email alias service hides your real email address and makes it easier to curb spam.
- Choose an email alias service like Proton Mail for top-notch encryption, or AnonAddy for easy, on-the-fly alias generation.
You can’t increase your privacy or security without changing your habits.
Using your real email address to sign into websites is one such habit—you’ve spent decades typing the same email address into every website, and you’ve made yourself vulnerable to both spammers and hackers in the process. Thankfully, this habit is very easy to correct. You just need to use email aliases…”
What’s the Difference Between Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads?
EFF: “The ongoing Twitter exodus sparked life into a new way of doing social media. Instead of a handful of platforms trying to control your life online, people are reclaiming control by building more open and empowering approaches to social media. Some of these you may have heard of: Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads. Each is distinct, but their differences can be hard to understand as they’re rooted in their different technical approaches.
The mainstream social web arguably became “five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four,” but in just the last few years radical and controversial changes to major platforms were a wake up call to many and are driving people to seek alternatives to the billionaire-driven monocultures. Two major ecosystems have emerged in the wake, both encouraging the variety and experimentation of the earlier web. The first, built on ActivityPub protocol, is called the Fediverse. While it includes many different kinds of websites, Mastodon and Threads have taken off as alternatives for Twitter that use this protocol. The other is the AT Protocol, powering the Twitter alternative Bluesky.
These protocols, a shared language between computer systems, allow websites to exchange information. It’s a simple concept you’re benefiting from right now, as protocols enable you to read this post in your choice of app or browser. Opening this freedom to social media has a huge impact, letting everyone send and receive posts their own preferred way. Even better, these systems are open to experiment and can cater to every niche, while still connecting to everyone in the wider network. You can leave the dead malls of platform capitalism, and find the services which cater to you…”
Why lying on the internet keeps working
Vox: “A new book examines the “Invisible Rulers” who manipulate your attention online. A.W. Ohlheiser is a senior technology reporter at Vox, writing about the impact of technology on humans and society…
About a month ago, I wrote about a viral book of “Lost” herbal remedies that had, at the time, sold 60,000 copies on the TikTok Shop despite appearing to violate some of the app’s policies on health misinformation. The book’s sales were boosted by popular videos from wellness influencers on the app, some of which had millions of views, who claimed inaccurately that the once obscure 2019 book contained natural cures for cancer and other ailments. The influencers, along with TikTok, made money off the sale of this misleading book.
I brought all this to the attention of TikTok. The videos I flagged to a company spokesperson were removed after a review for violating TikTok’s policies banning health misinformation. The book remained for sale in the shop, and new influencers stepped in. Nonetheless, I haven’t stopped seeing TikTok Shop promotions for this book, The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies, since.
“This right here is the reason they’re trying to ban this book,” said one TikTok Shop seller’s video, as he pointed to the book’s list of herbal cancer treatments. Later, he urged his viewers to click through on a link to the Shop listing and buy right away because “it probably won’t be around forever because of what’s inside.”
SKYNET SMILES: How killer robot dogs could become weapons of mass destruction.
Of all the inventions in the dystopian sci-fi series Black Mirror, perhaps none is more terrifying than the robotic guard dogs in Metalhead. In the episode, from the fourth series of the programme in 2017, Maxine Peake plays Bella, a woman who, along with two companions, breaks into a remote warehouse to look for medicine. Instead, she finds an autonomous “dog”, armed with a shotgun, knives and shrapnel sprays. It quickly kills both of her colleagues and chases Bella over the moorland with ruthless single-mindedness. The film is a chilling vision of machines programmed to do one thing only. The dog does not think or feel; it just kills.
Such machines are no longer fantasy. Last month, it was disclosed that United States Marines special operators were testing robotic dogs armed with guns based on sentry automatic machine guns. Robotic quadrupeds have become increasingly common across the US military in recent years, for everything from bomb disposal to perimeter patrols, but arming them is a newer development.
Not to be outdone, three weeks later, the Chinese military released a YouTube video showing its own four-legged robot, armed with an assault rifle, working alongside its soldiers on exercises. “It can serve as a new member in our urban combat operations,” one soldier says in the video, while the footage shows the rifle firing off bursts, “replacing our members to conduct reconnaissance and identify [the] enemy, and strike the target.” The film makes it clear why such a robot might be useful, able to run into dangerous situations ahead of human soldiers. In another video, an army of similar machines does press-ups in sync.
