Technology

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For Palestinians living in the West Bank, stepping onto the roads of the territory occupied by Israel is a daily journey of resilience.

With movement shackled by a complex web of Israeli checkpoints and barriers, homegrown mapping solutions have become their lifelines. These digital networks help Palestinians reach work, schools, and hospitals as blockades have continued to increase since the latest Israel-Gaza war started in October 2023.

Apps such as Doroob Navigator and Azmeh, which crowdsource traffic data and information about road closures, guide them through the numerous obstacles they face in their commutes. The situation has worsened dramatically in recent months. Simple trips that once took 45 minutes now stretch beyond three hours, with some routes completely sealed, commuters say.

Before the war, the UN counted about 565 obstacles across the West Bank. Today, the app Azmeh, Arabic for traffic jams, tracks more than 800 checkpoints and barriers based on updates from its 60,000-plus users, one of the developers of the app told Rest of World on condition of anonymity, fearing Israeli reprisal. In October and November of 2023, 8,000 Palestinians installed the Azmeh app every single day, the person said.

Verizon announced its $20 billion deal for Frontier in September 2024, in the final months of the Biden administration. In last week's letter agreeing to end DEI practices, Verizon General Counsel Vandana Venkatesh wrote, "we recognize that the regulatory and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion ('DEI') has changed. The Supreme Court, the President's Executive Orders, and federal mandates require changes in the way companies approach DEI issues moving forward."

Verizon's letter said that because of the "changing landscape," the firm "has been evaluating its DEI-related programs, HR processes, supplier programs, training programs and materials, and other initiatives." Among other changes, Verizon said it "will no longer have a team or any individual roles focused on DEI" and will reassign DEI-focused employees to "HR talent objectives."

"Verizon recognizes that some DEI policies and practices could be associated with discrimination," the letter said.

T-Mobile sent a similar letter to Carr on March 27, saying it "is fully committed to identifying and rooting out any policies and practices that enable such discrimination, whether in fulfillment of DEI or any other purpose," and is thus "conducting a comprehensive review of its DEI policies, programs, and activities." One day later, the FCC approved a T-Mobile joint venture to acquire fiber provider Lumos.

With the Verizon and T-Mobile deals approved, Carr has another opportunity to make demands on a major telecom company. On Friday, Charter announced a $34.5 billion merger with Cox that would make it the largest home Internet provider in the US, passing Comcast. Several Charter and Cox programs could be on the chopping block because of Carr's animosity toward diversity initiatives.

This is just insanity. The problem with ISPs is not "there's too much competition."

What's the endgame here? We just go back to Ma Bell, but this time with internet?

After 2,5 years of intensive research and programming efforts, the entire Openwebsearch.eu project team is excited to grant access to its pilot of the first-ever federated pan-European Open Web Index (OWI).

From June onward, commercial and scientific development teams of any size as well as interested individuals are welcome to access and make use of almost a petabyte (and growing) of open web data under a general research license or – upon request – under a designated commercial license as well.

Given that the European Commission has launched the InvestAI initiative to mobilize €200 billion of investment in artificial intelligence, the Open Web Index comes with perfect timing.

The OpenWebSearch.eu consortium actively calls early adopters to pioneer innovative projects surrounding vertical web search, argumentative search, LLM applications including RAG and more.

“The OWI symbolizes a first step towards true European digital sovereignty and is a fundamental step in paving the way for a comprehensive open European AI landscape.“ says Community Manager Ursula Gmelch and further:

“Our goal behind this initial pilot phase is to onboard a range of projects from diverse domains to get early feedback in. We look forward to users confirming the quality and value in current functionalities and/or helping us pivot in such ways that real market demands can be met and further expanded upon.“

An official kick-off event will be hosted on 6 June from 10 am to 12 am CEST via Zoom.

Registration to the event is open under the following link:

https://cscfi.zoom.us/meeting/register/eATIpDQ5TZidh4Jzkim6FQ#/registration

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This is one of those Asianometry posts that goes way deep into the weeds, but if you've passing knowledge of semiconductor production processes, it should be accessible.

I found it fascinating and basically knew nothing about these latest issues and solutions.

An interesting development, but I doubt it'll be a good thing, especially at first. This looks like the kind of thing that will be an entirely new threat vector and a huge liability, even when used in the most secure way possible, but especially when used in a haphazard way that we'll certainly see from some of the early adoptors.

Just because you can do a thing, does not mean that you should.

I almost feel like this should have an NSFW tag because this will almost certainly not be safe for work.

Edit: looks like the article preview is failing to load... I'll try to fix it. ... Nope. Couldn't fix.