Pythons Have Surprising Social Lives  The New York Times

1. Fantasy football rankings Week 11: Sleepers, projections, starts, Russell Wilson, Calvin Ridley and more - The Athletic  The New York Times
2. Start 'Em, Sit 'Em Quarterbacks For Fantasy Football Week 11  Sports Illustrated
3. Week 11 Waiver Wire: Top Pickups, Drops Likely Available After Reviewing Box Scores  Bleacher Report
4. Fantasy Football Week 11 Defense (DST) Rankings and Streamers  NBC Sports
5. Fantasy plays: Players to start and sit for NFL Week 11  The Associated Press

1. Booker Prize Is Awarded to Samantha Harvey’s ‘Orbital’  The New York Times
2. Samantha Harvey wins the Booker prize for “Orbital”  The Economist
3. ‘This is a book we need now’: Sara Collins on choosing this year’s Booker winner  The Guardian
4. Orbital by Samantha Harvey: the Booker prize-winner set to go 'stratospheric'  The Week
5. The inconvenient truth about this year’s Booker Prize winner  The Independent

1. iOS 18.2 public beta 2 now available, here’s everything new  9to5Mac
2. iOS 18.2 makes AirPods more powerful than ever, here’s why  9to5Mac
3. Apple Likely Planning to Release iOS 18.2 on December 9  MacRumors
4. iOS 18.2 Public Beta 2 Upgrades Find My and Brings More AI to Some iPhones  CNET
5. iOS 18.2 beta 3: 4 Apple Intelligence features you can test now  Mashable

1. OWC’s Thunderbolt 5 Hub Takes Full Advantage of the Fastest New Macs  PetaPixel
2. My first Thunderbolt 5 experience has been a massive bust  PCWorld
3. OWC Thunderbolt 5 SSD gets first review, and yes, it can reach 48Gbps — making it the fastest single-drive portable SSD that you can buy  TechRadar
4. OWC’s first Thunderbolt 5 hub is available for preorder.  The Verge
5. Thunderbolt 5 in New Macs: Features, Benefits, and Is It Needed?  MacRumors

1. Israel's West Bank settlers hope Trump's return will pave the way for major settlement expansion  ABC News
2. Ex-Trump aides warn Israeli ministers not to assume he’ll back annexation in 2nd term  The Times of Israel
3. This Is How Netanyahu Will Annex the West Bank  Haaretz
4. Eyeing Trump support, Israeli minister pushes for West Bank settlement annexation  CNN

1. IDF: ‘New Hezbollah targets’ reached in expanded south Lebanon ground operation  The Times of Israel
2. A new deterrence for Lebanon is needed to avoid a long war with Israel  Al Jazeera English
3. Lebanon awaits truce proposals after US envoy expresses hope  Reuters
4. Israel-Gaza-Lebanon live updates: 'No cease-fire' in Lebanon, defense minister says  ABC News
5. While Israel Seeks Deal in Lebanon, IDF and Hezbollah Escalate Their Attacks  Haaretz

1. Special Counsel Jack Smith plans to resign, file report before Trump can fire him: report  Fox News
2. Jack Smith expected to resign ahead of Trump inauguration  WAVY.com
3. Special counsel Jack Smith plans to retire before Trump takes office: report  New York Post

1. Biden and Trump to Meet at the White House: Live Updates  The New York Times
2. Biden, Trump Set For White House Meeting After Harris Election Loss  NDTV
3. Biden-Trump White House meeting revives presidential tradition skipped 4 years ago  Fox News
4. Trump and Biden to meet at White House as Senate GOP holds leadership election  CNN

1. Trump names Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defence secretary pick  BBC.com
2. Trump's defense choice stuns the Pentagon and raises questions about the Fox News host's experience  The Associated Press
3. Trump Puts Allies on Alert by Handing Pentagon to Fox News Host Hegseth  Bloomberg
4. How Pete Hegseth went from Fox News host to Trump’s Defense Secretary pick  CNN

Bengaluru’s rental housing market saw an average price correction of 5-10% during the April-June quarter of the current calendar year, according to local brokers who spoke with HT.com. This news should cheer up tenants in the city. The primary reasons … Continue reading →

However, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is making a groundbreaking shift in how it handles property documentation. Starting in September 2024, buyers will receive their flat documents in a sophisticated, customized folder. This change comes after concerns raised by Lieutenant … Continue reading →

Canada becomes the first national government to roll out an integrated RSS-syndicated eNewsroom.

In this site, we'll monitor creative uses of RSS to provide information to the public above government information and services....

MIT, Harvard, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts announce the formation of a loose association of interested U.S. state and local governments to promote sharing of software under open source licenses.

ITS has recently polled State agency developers for their ideas for a more collaborative eDG site that will better serve...

The Utah State Archives has moved to its newly completed building next to the Rio Grande. Dedication is planned for October in conjunction with Utah Archives Month.

Anyone can become a power news consumer by taking advantage of the wealth information being published via RSS newsfeeds. You just need to learn where to find the feeds and how to read them. Bloglines, is a tool that allows you to do both and I hightly recommend it if you haven't already found an aggregator that meets your needs. Here are some tips on how to hit the road running with Bloglines.

The Fifth Annual State GILS Conference, hosted this year by the State of Illinois, was a great success. U.S. states have been meeting ad hoc for the past five years to develop Government Information Locator Services to promote access to...

MIT, Harvard, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts announce the formation of a loose association of interested U.S. state and local governments to promote sharing of software under open source licenses.

Arkansas has joined the growing number of states syndicating agency produced headlines for its citizenry using RSS. The Arkansas Government eNewsRoom is a news portal featuring a RSS 0.91 feed that indexes news releases in PDF format.

Those monitoring U.S. eGovernment progress and news should take a look at Multimedia Victoria, the Victorian Government's Repository of eGovernment Resources. Of particular note is its archives of State Government websites and egovernment reports. To find such a great resource...

The State of Missouri has created a number of departmental RSS news feeds. The most recent headlines of most feeds, but not all, are aggregated to a centralized agency news portal. Every hour the State Webmaster scours feeds on her agency servers to update this portal.

Missouri Governor Bob Holden this week awarded a Governor's Award for Quality and Productivity to the State Portal Newsfeed Development Team. This annual award that recognizes excellence in service, efficiency and innovation went to employees from 17 different state agencies who developed a system for state agencies to share the state's news feed portal at little or no cost to the agency. This system currently publishes the news from 18 government agencies, offices and organizations at the top of each hour on the state homepage, in addition to providing continuous newsfeed to web sites in the public sector.

Emarketing firms IMH, Inc. and eLaw Marketing offer new RSS services for publishing eNewsletters. Can the same thing be accomplished using your existing blogging software?

Moreover Technologies, the premier provider of aggregated online current awareness and business information, today announced that Pluck Corp., a software company dedicated to making it easier to find and manage Internet information, will integrate several of Moreover's RSS (Rich Site Summary) news solutions within Pluck's free Internet Explorer browser companion application. This will provide users with a more convenient and comprehensive view into breaking online news. These new capabilities include...

We’re launching a new feature on The Hub: Tickets. Now you can effortlessly communicate with your clients entirely within The Hub, with an easy-to-use instant ticketing system. Plus, it’s entirely white label so it’ll appear to clients as part of your own site. Why We Created Tickets At the moment, you’re probably using email or […]

Read to the end to see a baby penguin who, for some reason, has the energy of a 58-year-old mob boss. In today’s edition: Hello to everyone in Portland posting selfies with folks IRL that they’ve worked/gossiped with on Slack for ages.???? Etch, please! Kevin Geary attempts to stir up FOMO with his big, bold […]

In an unprecedented move some months ago, Ethiopia became effectively the first country in the world to ban the import of internal combustion engine vehicles. That ban was not some futuristic target for 2030 or 2035. It was an immediate ban on the import of ICE cars, with no exceptions. ... [continued]

The post Inchcape & BYD Partner In New Distribution Agreement For Ethiopia! appeared first on CleanTechnica.

As I sit at my computer tapping out this article, the sun is shining in beautiful Brisbane, capital of Queensland, Australia. We are moving into summer and the sun is up long before I am. When I awake, the house battery is filling up and charging the car. Soon, the ... [continued]

The post Renewables Gallop Ahead Down Under — A Queensland Sample appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Weird things are happening in the Australian auto market at the moment. In recent weeks, we have seen the launch of several new electric vehicles: the BYD Shark EREV ute (see here), the fully electric Jeep Avenger, and the Deepal SO7 SUV made by Changan from China. Not only that, ... [continued]

The post Something Weird in the Neighbourhood — Australian & New Zealand EV Market October Update appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Apple has sought to maintain its run of record iPhone sales with a series of new models that boost battery life and feature advanced cameras.

The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs now provides RSS feeds for top stories from the State Department homepage, daily press briefings, press releases, and remarks by Secretary of State Colin Powell. The RSS feeds are found at:  
 
http://www.state.gov/rss/channels/highlights.xml
http://www.state.gov/rss/channels/briefings.xml
http://www.state.gov/rss/channels/prsreleases.xml
http://www.state.gov/rss/channels/sremarks.xml

You can also subscribe to email mailing lists to receive the full texts of selected U.S. Department of State documents and publications that provide key official information on U.S. foreign policy, notifications of travel warnings, and Foreign Travel Per Diem updates.

Unlike Yahoo, Google has had a long standing resistance to offering RSS feeds for Google News queries. Hacks have long abounded from Julian Bond's GNews2RSS, Ben Hammersley's Google to RSS using the Google SOAP API, and Steve Rubel's advice in "RSS Hack for Sites That Don't Offer Feeds".

In this spirit, Justin Pfister has created gnewsfeed. Filling out the form uses a script that converts a Google news query (example) into an RSS feed (example). "I welcome anyone in the world," he humbly proffers, "to use it in an effort to become a more informed public."

Poor Justin. He's looking for a job. Maybe Adam Smith, and the Google Alerts product team will hire Justin to build in the syndication that Google should have offered long ago (hint).

We interrupt this irregularly scheduled broadcast.... to share a message more momentous than we've reported on before. We bring a message of hope, of goodness, of peace, of universal brotherhood. Here's how we can join our voices in a global conversation that can forever change the world.

"In one's own way," my mother told me long ago, "every person can change the world." That advice was at the time more prophetic than a truism.

Hyperbole aside, I do believe that individuals are now empowered as never before in history. Individuals are no longer bound by the confines of time, place, language, and political regime in their quest to do good in the world. We now have the capacity to find each other, to gather, and to converse without ever meeting in the flesh. It's all made possible through virtual communities and virtual networking.

Why does that phrase in the United States Constitution "we the people" so resonate in the hearts of people throughout the world? I think it has something to do with our nature as social beings.

In the past, institutions such as governments and churches were needed to organize and rally people. The problem is that all institutions by their nature become corrupt. Leaders succumb to power and greed, and institutions stray from their altruistic beginnings as they amass fortunes and property, gain political power, and build monuments unto themselves.

To Jesus, the church was the community of believers. It wasn't a building, it wasn't an organization, it wasn't a corporation. The church was not a place nor did it own any property. It's unfortunate, but institutions calling themselves churches have embellished to the point of distraction those simple teachings of Jesus to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. The true church remains the community of believers.

To do good in the world, you don't need institutional wealth, buildings, and treasuries. To self-organize, you don't need creeds, dictums, laws, governments, and rulers. People just need to do be free to do two things: talk and act. You just need to be able to communicate with others of like mind and then to collaborate with them in resolving needs. All conversation inevitably leads to understanding. Understanding leads to acceptance and concern, which in turn naturally leads to the desire to act.

So why can we be so optimistic?

Think for moment about peer-to-peer networks, instant messagers, collaboration workspaces (wikis, collaborative blogs), online communities (Meetups, AOL, Craigslist, Tribe.net, eWomenNetwork, Yahoo Groups, Ecademy, Idealist), alumni communities (SelectMinds, Classmates, TheSquare), syndication technologies (blogs, moblogs, RSS news feeds), and social and business networks (LinkedIn, Ryze, Orkut, Spoke Software, VisiblePath, ZeroDegrees, Knowmentum, Company of Friends). These social networking inventions are now in place and changing the way we interact and converse. But they only portend the future; more powerful social networking is on the horizon.

Social networking facilitates real-world and online conversations. Each of these technologies helps us bridge the six degrees of separation in finding others with similar goals and interests. We just need to apply this knowledge to loftier purposes. It's high time we used what we know for a higher purpose than dating, deal making, and job hunting. How about world peace? Maybe that generation of Miss America contestants had it right after all.

I'll call this repurposing of social networking the "Good News Network." The Good News Network needs no place, no domain, no trademark, no sponsors. It needs only open access and to be built on standards -- standards to converse one language with another and standards to programmatically exchange information. It consists of you and I, our friends, friends of friends, and those yet to be brought into our circle of friendship.

The Good News Network has two functions: to promote conversation and action. We converse by sharing the good news, our faith, and our belief in the goodness of humanity. And we act. We act in small ways, in big ways, but always in individual and personal ways, to share the good news of universality and peace and to promote well-being.

We speak multitudes of languages, we live in diverse regions of the globe, and we comprise all races and nationalities. In this day and age that is unique in history, we can all converse, we can join a global conversation, and we can meet in the virtual living room or the virtual temple of our choice.

So back to the age old question, how do you change the world?

Start by entering the conversation. In your blogs, in your chat rooms, in your networks, in your music, in your poems, in your art, in your families, and in your communities -- tell your story. Let your voice be heard. Sign on in whatever way makes sense to you in order to make a difference. As the marketers say, create a buzz. In the sense of paying it forward, start something in your own way and in your own voice. Start a conversation that will spread, that will continue, that will penetrate the hearts and minds of the power brokers. Those in high places will join us. They will, as Saul of old, see the vision and join the conversation. Perhaps in fulfillment of ancient prophecy, those with ears to hear will find each other, and they who are confused will recognize the voice.

Interrupt your own broadcast to begin the conversation. Let it begin with you; let it begin now. Spread the Good News!

Season's greetings, my friends,

Ray Matthews
Editor RSS in Government

With the proliferation of RSS feeds in state and local governments, a unique opportunity is developing to expand the delivery of the critical information contained in these feeds by leveraging the most ubiquitous personal communications device in the world -– the telephone. Governments that use RSS to deliver information to citizens using RSS feeds can also leverage VoiceXML, an open standard for developing telephony applications, to expose RSS content via cellular and traditional telephones.

VoiceXML is a web technology that can turn any telephone, even a rotary phone, into an Internet device. VoiceXML is a non-proprietary, web-based markup language for creating vocal dialogues between humans and computers. VoiceXML is similar to another common markup language -- HTML, the basic language of visual web pages. Just as a web browser renders HTML documents visually, a VoiceXML interpreter renders VoiceXML documents audibly. In this respect, one can think of the VoiceXML interpreter as a telephone-based, voice browser. As with HTML documents, VoiceXML documents have web URIs and can be located on any web server. However, instead of pointing a client-side web browser at a specific URI, citizens can access a VoiceXML application by calling a toll free telephone number from any ordinary telephone - cellular or traditional, touch-tone or rotary.

It’s not hard to think of a scenario where a local government or a university could publish an RSS feed with topical news, and have a phone number for students or citizens to call for more information. Depending on how the VoiceXML is structured, the caller could have the option of being transferred directly to the number associated with the information.

The trick would be, in my opinion, finding the right place within the RSS feed to put the phone number (if the publisher wanted to provide the option of an automatic transfer). Ideally, the phone number would be contained within its own RSS element. Glancing quickly at the RSS 2.0 spec, this could be something like the guid element. So, if a publisher was using a software package to author and publish RSS feeds, they would probably need to do a little experimenting to find the right place to place the phone number.

Because RSS and VoiceXML are both XML vocabularies, there are a number of standards-based methods for converting RSS to VoiceXML and using RSS feeds from within VoiceXML applications. The first method involves the use of eXstensible Style Sheet Language Transformations (XSLT). I have created a tutorial covering this technique and some of the issues relating to it. This technique is generally agnostic to the underlying technology used; XSLT transformations are supported in technologies like JSP, PHP, Perl, .NET and others.

To see it in action there is a demo application available at (800) 289-5570. Enter the following PIN when prompted: 9991422919. This example uses the latest headlines news feed from CNET News.com (news.com.com) and the XSLT file covered in my tutorial. This is only running on a demo platform, so I can’t guarantee anything on performance. Still, it gives you a sense of how an RSS feed sounds. This technology could allow travelers only equipped with cell phones to get the latest NOAA RSS weather reports, lobbyists to dial-in for legislative floor calendars, and rescue teams to phone for the latest operational instructions.

The other method for using RSS from within VoiceXML applications is to leverage the new data tag, an addition to the VoiceXML specification that is part of the developing VoiceXML 2.1 standard. Some excellent examples of this technique can be found on the VoiceXML Forum website at http://www.voicexmlreview.org/apr2004/columns/apr2004_speak_listen.html.

VoiceXML also allows for the playback of recorded audio. If one had an audio file that they want to include in a feed, a VoiceXML application could actually invoke the audio file and play it to the caller. There is a VoiceXML service at (800) 555-TELL that plays audio files. Give it a call and try listening to the “News Center” option.

One caveat -- most VoiceXML platforms only support certain audio formats, but the more common ones (WAV, MP3) are usually supported. VoiceXML also supports recording the audio of a call, so if one wanted to let callers post comments the application could record their audio and save it for later playback. There is actually a project called “Phone Blogger” that takes this approach (see www.wombatnation.com/phoneblogger).

By using these techniques, governments that make information available to citizens through RSS feeds can dramatically expand the accessibility of these feeds by making them available to anyone with a telephone.

Mark J. Headd
Voice Technologies for Government
www.voiceingov.org
mheadd@voiceingov.org





[Editor's note: Commenting is turned off because of spamming. Mark is interested in hearing from readers who are interested in how that can use VoiceXML to augment what they are doing with RSS. Please email the author with your comments and we'll invite him to write a follow-up here at RSS in Government addressing your ideas and suggestions.]

Two new U.S. Supreme Court opinion feeds now join RSS feeds that have been available from the West Virginia Supreme Court and other courts.

Humans are generally the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain, so training and awareness are essential alongside technology to keep organizations safe. With the launch of its AI Scenario Generator, Immersive Labs enables organizations to seamlessly generate threat scenarios for crisis simulations to ensure their workforces are ready for the latest threats. By inputting a few short prompts, customers can use the AI Scenario Generator to rapidly generate and launch customized cyber exercises to prove and improve individual and team cyber skills against various attack types, such as ransomware and supply chain threats. Organizations can automatically tailor content by attack… [Continue Reading]

As organizations increasingly adopt AI capabilities, the most common and dangerous attacks often go undetected by static code scanning or traditional security methods. The only effective way to stop common AI attacks, such as prompt injection and zero-day vulnerabilities, is through active runtime detection and defense. Operant AI is launching a new 3D Runtime Defense Suite aimed at protecting live cloud applications, including AI models and APIs in their native environments. Because AI applications don't operate in isolation, they need to be secured in the full context of the modern cloud application stack. The 3D Runtime Defense Suite is designed… [Continue Reading]

A couple of weeks ago, Google announced the new features for travel search ads through integration with travel feeds. These may now be out in the wild, as we are seeing pricing and other rich markup showing up for hotel ads in Google Search.

Lluc B. Penycate posted some examples and screenshots on X of these out in the wild. He wrote, "I think we are seeing the new Google Hotel Ads format announced last week(s) which integrates rooms, prices and availability."

Here are those screenshots:

Google wrote a couple of weeks ago, "all hotel advertisers can now showcase feed data, such as hotels, prices, dates, ratings and images, in this ad format" and then shared some mock examples of those ads. But these look like them in real life.

Forum discussion at X.

A couple of months ago, we reported how Google Search will label if an image was AI-generated, edited by photo editing software or taken with a camera by working with Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) as a technical standard. Well, now Google officially supports C2PA metadata in the about this image feature.

Google wrote this morning, Google Search now supports this [C2PA] metadata in the "About this image" feature."

Google updated its image meta data documentation to add a new section for "How C2PA metadata can appear in Google Search results."

The new section reads:

If an image contains C2PA metadata, Google can extract those details and may show information in the "About this image" feature, such as how the image was created or if it was edited with AI tools. This metadata comes from a signer, which is usually an app, device, or service (for example, photo editing software, the camera itself, or other services that modify or create images) that meets the following conditions:

• The app, device, or service has adopted C2PA version 2.1 or later.
• The image's manifest must be signed by a certificate from a Certification Authority on the C2PA Trust List.

It does seem like Adobe products, like Photoshop, Illustrated, and others, do support this metadata.

I just wonder how it handles the image above, which I generate using Midjourney AI and then edit later in Photoshop.

Forum discussion at X.

A new system called Pomelo has been developed to estimate population densities during emergencies with unerring accuracy using artificial intelligence. The system has been designed to provide a fast and accurate mini census in times of emergency, such as natural disasters or war. Pomelo, created as a joint venture between the International Red Cross, Lausanne Polytechnic and Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, uses large sets of data from remote sensing systems, and uses a neural network to identify likely population...

The post Pomelo – New AI System Offers Benefits For Humanitarian Relief appeared first on The Red Ferret Journal.

Happy New Year to everyone. Here’s to a spectacular fresh year and lots of cake.

The post Happy New Year 2023 appeared first on The Red Ferret Journal.

Welcome back to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast! This week Jared and guest host Morgan Overholt take on the latest SEO news and break it down for listeners. They also share the side hustles they've been working…

The post Google Offers New Insights in Lengthy Interview? appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

Google is replacing FID with Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as a primary Core Web Vitals metric. Understand how INP works and what it means for site owners.

The post Interaction to Next Paint (INP) – New Core Web Vitals Metric appeared first on Portent.