Martin Ruskov @mapto@qoto.org

"So far, only Brazil and Indonesia have announced investments in the scheme. The World Bank has agreed to host the facility. Several countries have murmured positively, but not yet committed any money. The UK has made clear it will not contribute at this stage. There will need to be greater momentum at Cop30 if the plan is to get off the ground."

"Brazilian finance ministry officials, who have spent the past 18 months working on this project, say the TFFF would be a step-change. “There is no way I would get that amount of money if I asked Oslo or Berlin,” said João Paulo de Resende, the undersecretary for fiscal and economic affairs, who has been working on this project for 18 months. He said the payments would also be less vulnerable to political mood swings. The former US president Joe Biden for example, promised $500m for the Amazon Fund in 2023, but only sought a 10th of that amount from the US Congress, which then gave him nothing."

"Unlike the Amazon Fund, the money would pay for standing forests. In a radical departure, it would also earmark 20% of disbursements as direct payments for Indigenous and other traditional forest communities.

The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, told the Guardian this was a positive development because Indigenous communities have been shown to preserve biodiversity and protect carbon sinks. “It is absolutely fundamental,” he said, “to invest in those who are the best guardians of nature. And the best guardians of nature are precisely the Indigenous communities.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/06/tropical-forest-forever-fund-proposed-cop30-tackle-climate-change

"EU members, like most countries including the US, have no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and follow a “one China” policy. But the EU and Taiwan share common democratic values as well as close trade ties, and the bloc opposes any use of military force by China to settle its dispute with Taiwan.

Hsiao also drew parallels between Taiwan suffering cyber-attacks and having its undersea internet cables cut by China, and hybrid attacks faced by European nations since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Europe has defended freedom under fire, and Taiwan has built democracy under pressure,” she said.

She said that China’s disruptions of global supply chains – likely a reference partly to Beijing’s throttling of rare earth exports to the EU earlier this year – should push Brussels to forge with Taiwan “a reliable technology ecosystem rooted in trust, transparency and democratic values” like they already have for semiconductor sales."

"Ben Bland, director of the Asia-Pacific programme at the London-based thinktank Chatham House, wrote in an analysis last month that despite the lack of formal diplomatic relations, the EU and Taiwan could do much more to deepen ties for mutual benefit in the face of worsening US-China rivalry. Any conflict over Taiwan could have afar more devastating impact on Europe than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, given Taiwan’s leading role in semiconductor and electronics supply chains, he wrote."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/08/taiwan-vice-president-presses-case-at-eu-parliament-for-joint-efforts-to-counter-china

Meta is in the scam business. According to an internal assessment, 10% of its mind-blowing revenue is generated by scam. As a consequence, Meta actually promotes such content, charging it a higher rate, until a high-profile authority draws attention to it.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/11/bombshell-report-exposes-how-meta-relied-on-scam-ad-profits-to-fund-ai/

This is particularly bad in #Italy, where #WhatsApp is the default means of communication. In other countries I've lived in at least they consider alternatives. In Italy people don't even ask you if you have an account before adding you in school parent groups or contacting you for work over WhatsApp.
https://theconversation.com/why-people-dont-demand-data-privacy-even-as-governments-and-corporations-collect-more-personal-information-262197

Finally, MIT Technology Review has called AGI what it is: a conspiracy theory. https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/30/1127057/agi-conspiracy-theory-artifcial-general-intelligence/

Yet, just recently MS CEO Satya Nadella sounded still full of long-term ambition:
“I don’t think AGI as defined, at least by us in our contract, is ever going to be achieved anytime soon.”
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/812455/ai-industry-earnings-bubble-fomo-hype

On 31 March 2026, University College London will be hosting a Festschrift Symposium for Professor M. Angela Sasse, to recognise and celebrate her contributions to the field of Computer Science and human-centred security specifically. We are seeking scientific contributions to a volume that will be presented at the event. Submissions will be selected by a committee of her students and colleagues, with accepted papers being made available online following the event.

Submissions are limited to eight pages in LNCS format, excluding bibliography and any appendices, and a maximum of ten pages total (shorter submissions are encouraged) on a topic inspired by, relating to, or commenting on the broad area of Professor Sasse’s research. The theme of the event will be “Users Are Not The Enemy”, but this should be interpreted as a springboard for ideas rather than as a constraint. The deadline for submissions is 31 December 2025.

For further details, including timelines and submission instructions, please see https://sassefest.cs.ucl.ac.uk/
@ucl

@RossGayler @carnage4life
From the shared page:
"Is this a policy change?

Technically, no! If you take a look at arXiv’s policies for specific content types you’ll notice that review articles and position papers are not (and have never been) listed as part of the accepted content types. Review articles and position papers have, in the past, only been accepted at moderator discretion, because the few we received were of high quality and of interest to arXiv readers and the scientific community at large."