Leftovers

• [Repeat] James G ☛ Advent of Technical Writing: Style

  Technical writing involves a lot of regiment. Many organisations have style guides that document how you should write. Content should be consistent. But, there is still significant room for creativity. We often call this "style." Style is how you write. The way that you express, explain, structure. The way that you turn an idea from a light bulb above your head (metaphorically), to a finished piece.

• New York Times ☛ Mad for It: What Happened When Chanel Came to Manchester

  The French fashion house took its Métiers d’Art show to the north of England and the home of soccer, Coronation Street and Northern soul.

• Hackaday ☛ Degrees Of Freedom, But For Whom?

  Opening up this week’s podcast, I told Kristina about my saga repairing our German toilet valve. I’m American, and although I’ve lived here over a decade, it’s still surprising how things can be subtly different from how they worked back home.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Delayed gratification and fear

  One of the poignant observations James Clear makes in Atomic Habits is that we crave instant gratification, but we live in a delayed gratification society. An ice cream or expensive phone feels great now, but health and savings reward us in the long term. We need our lizard brains to stay alive, but sometimes we need to exert willpower to keep it in check.

  James didn’t mention it in the book, but I’ve noticed I’ve traditionally tackled anxiety in the same way. When there’s an event with a timetime for which I have control, I crave the instant fix of distracting myself with an unrelated task, or other delaying tactics. Pushing it out only compounds the worry. I know this, but as I’ve come to say here many times this year: emotions aren’t rational!

• Science

  • Hackaday ☛ Impact Of Imperfect Timekeeping On Quantum Control And Computing

    In classical control theory, both open-loop and closed-loop control systems are commonly used. These systems are well understood and rather straightforward, controlling everything from washing machines to industrial equipment to the classical computing devices that make today’s society work. When trying to transfer this knowledge to the world of quantum control theory, however, many issues arise. The most pertinent ones involve closed-loop quantum control and the clocking of quantum computations. With physical limitations on the accuracy and resolution of clocks, this would set hard limits on the accuracy and speed of quantum computing.

• Education

  • Postsen, Sweden ☛ The school will become mobile-free – throughout the school day

    To meet the school’s collapse of knowledge, we are now changing the policy and pushing through a long series of bourgeois school reforms. This means, among other things, that we move from screen time to reading time and that we stop the ill-considered use of screens at school.

    Instead, the school – especially in the younger ages – should be filled with paper, pencil and real books. Exactly what science shows us creates the best conditions for students to learn to read and count.

    Now we are taking the next step and making the school mobile-free throughout the school day.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Provost’s seminar explores new era of teaching, learning with GenAI

    Videos of the opening session and closing panel will be available at the CRLT website in the coming days.

  • YLE ☛ More Finnish children enrolled in home school

    After a post-pandemic dip in 2021, home schooling has regained risen to similar levels at the height of the pandemic.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Postsen, Sweden ☛ Mussels should be tested as salmon food – can reduce the climate footprint

    Approximately 80 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions from the Norwegian salmon farms come from the fish’s food – which today consists of fishmeal, including from Baltic Sea herring, plant-based oil and soy imported from the other side of the globe, where Brazil is the largest supplier. Today, only 0.4 percent of food comes from what are described as new and sustainable sources, mainly insects and algae.

    Now researchers hope at the Marine Research Institute in Norway on a new ingredient in fish feed – which can drastically reduce the climate footprint of farms: blue mussels.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • ABC ☛ Europe reaches a deal on the world's first comprehensive AI rules

    The European Parliament will still need to vote on the act early next year, but with the deal done that’s a formality, Brando Benifei, an Italian lawmaker co-leading the body’s negotiating efforts, told The Associated Press late Friday.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Using AI to transform discoverability at Germany’s oldest news publisher

    The company turned to metadata and taxonomy experts iMatrics to boost reach and SEO across the sites, using software which automatically reads and categorises articles.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • 404 Media ☛ Verizon Gave Phone Data to Armed Stalker Who Posed as Cop Over Email

      The news is a massive failure by Verizon who did not verify that the data request was fraudulent, and the company potentially put someone’s safety at risk. The news also highlights the now common use of fraudulent emergency data requests (EDRs) or search warrants in the digital underworld, where criminals pretend to be law enforcement officers, fabricate an urgent scenario such as a kidnapping, and then convince telecoms or tech companies to hand over data that should only be accessible through legitimate law enforcement requests. As 404 Media previously reported, some hackers are using compromised government email accounts for this purpose.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Growing threat of political violence looms over 2024, former members of Congress warn

    Comstock noted that antisemitism on some elite college campuses also represented a disturbing trend and Jones described a growing acceptance of violence “across the board.”

  • New York Times ☛ Talk of a Trump Dictatorship Charges the American Political Debate

    If Mr. Trump is returned to office, people close to him have vowed to “come after” the news media, open criminal investigations into onetime aides who broke with the former president and purge the government of civil servants deemed disloyal. When critics said Mr. Trump’s language about ridding Washington of “vermin” echoed that of Adolf Hitler, the former president’s spokesman said the critics’ “sad, miserable existence will be crushed” under a new Trump administration.

  • Postsen, Sweden ☛ Anders Borg: “We made big mistakes with immigration” | Sweden

    At the same time, he now calls on the government to mobilize against increasing honor violence and oppression of young immigrant women in Sweden.

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Properties of a good economics system

    I was in an argument online with someone and I was close to tears but then the other person graciously shifted both of our gears from the “quips and slags and put-downs” mode it felt like we were both in by asking an interesting and genuine question.

    "if you could unleash an AI on the world that would maximize a variable, what would you pick to maximize?"

  • New York Times ☛ Israeli Strikes Pound Gaza a Day after U.S. Vetoes Cease-Fire Resolution.

    Some of the strikes targeted the southern Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military has ordered civilians to go to avoid bombardment.

  • New York Times ☛ State Department Bypasses Congress to Approve Israel’s Order for Tank Ammunition

    It is the first time the Biden administration has declared an emergency to expedite arms shipments to the Middle East, which are controversial because of the civilian death toll from Israeli airstrikes.

  • New York Times ☛ Israel strikes targets across the Gaza Strip.

  • New York Times ☛ Mexico Shootout Kills 14 After Town Fights Back Against Cartel

    At least 14 people were killed in a clash between the gunmen and members of a small farming community in central Mexico, an episode that the state authorities cast as a gang extortion attempt that backfired.

  • New York Times ☛ Who’s a ‘Colonizer’? How an Old Word Became a New Weapon

    In bitter debates from Israel to Africa to America, invoking a brutal history has become a powerful accusation.

  • YLE ☛ NBI opens preliminary investigation into terror suspect

    This preliminary investigation is unorthodox because the suspect did not commit a crime in Finland and is not a Finnish citizen, but is suspected of terror offences in Ukraine.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • LRT ☛ LRT from Kherson. A city freed from occupation but not from death

      Oleksandr, a resident of Kherson, drives through the empty streets of the city observing the buildings destroyed by shelling. “This is where they hit just this week,” he points to an apartment building.

    • Meduza ☛ Vice principal, security firm director, and shooter’s father arrested after deadly school shooting in Russia — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ 'Initiative Group' Meets To Plan Putin's Presidential Campaign

      Representatives of the ruling United Russia party and the All-Russia Popular Front met in Moscow on December 9 as an "initiative group" to discuss their support for President Vladimir Putin's bid for a fifth presidential term.

    • Meduza ☛ Criminal case opened against Russian journalist for ‘publicly inciting actions against the security of the state’ — Meduza

    • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The May 2017 Report Tying Oleg Deripaska to Russian Intelligence

      Bill Barr's flunkie, Seth DuCharme, thinks his client Charles McGonigal should get a probation sentence even though he reviewed reports of Oleg Deripaska's Russian intelligence ties before choosing to work for Deripaska.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Missing For Three Days, Life 'At Risk,' Supporters Say

      Supporters of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny say they have had no contact with him for three days.

    • RFERL ☛ U.S.-Russian Citizen Arrested For Social-Media Posts

      Russia has arrested a dual U.S.-Russian citizen on charges of "rehabilitating Nazism" for two critical posts he made on social control media.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia Transfers Seized Stake In Strategic Metals Firm To State Nuclear Energy Company

      Russia has transferred a majority stake in a strategic metals firm to the state's nuclear energy company after seizing shares from its private owners.

    • Latvia ☛ U.S. Ambassador to NATO: We take Russia's threats against Baltics seriously

      Latvian Television's Brussels correspondent Ilze Nagla has secured an interesting interview with the United States' ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith. Ambassador Smith assumed her position as the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO in November 2021. Prior to her current position, she served as a Senior Advisor at the Department of State.

    • RFERL ☛ Bulgarian Parliament Approves Additional Surplus Military Aid To Ukraine

      The Bulgarian parliament on December 8 voted overwhelmingly to provide surplus air-defense missiles to Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Parliament Approves Three Bills Seen As Key To Starting EU Accession Talks

      The Ukrainian parliament on December 8 approved three bills necessary to start European Union accession talks.

    • RFERL ☛ Kyiv Removes Monument To Bolshevik Military Commander Shchors

      The authorities in Kyiv on December 9 dismantled a massive equestrian monument to Bolshevik military commander Mykola Shchors that was erected in the Ukrainian capital nearly 70 years ago.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia Seeks To Unfreeze Gold Reserves As It Woos Global South

      Russia has said it is studying whether its gold reserves, frozen by the West in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, could be used to help developing countries overcome the impact of climate change.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukraine's Zelenskiy Heads To Argentina To Drum Up Global South Support In War With Russia

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has made a stopover visit to Cape Verde on his way to Argentina, where he is due to attend the inauguration of new President Javier Milei, his latest bid to shore up support in the Global South for Kyiv in its 21-month-old war against Russia.

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Climate 'tipping points' can be positive too—our report sets out how to engineer a domino effect of rapid changes

    Fortunately, tipping points with good outcomes—"positive" tipping points—are also possible in human technology, economics, politics, and social behavior. In fact, they're already happening in areas ranging from renewable energy and electric vehicles to social movements and plant-based diets. Our report sets out ways to intervene in these systems to enable positive tipping points to be triggered—for example, by making the desired change the cheapest, most convenient, or morally acceptable option.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ What is carbon capture and why does it keep coming up at COP28?

    The future of fossil fuels is at the center of the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, where many activists, experts and nations are calling for an agreement to phase out the oil, gas and coal responsible for warming the planet. On the other side: energy companies and oil-rich nations with plans to keep drilling well into the future.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Verge ☛ How to build a bike lane in America

      The US, like most of the world, is straining under the weight of cars and their baggage. People are buying bigger, heavier vehicles, causing roads to crack and deteriorate. EVs cause less atmospheric harm, but their production is deeply problematic, and they’re too heavy for the country’s crumbling roads. Car tires still create unhealthy pollution. Even setting aside environmental, social, and structural concerns, the US’s swollen SUVs and trucks are killing people more often and more effectively, and Black people and people of color are dying at disproportionate rates.

      Roads and highways are also expensive. A list of Florida Department of Transportation reports on various projects, for example, puts new construction of a two-lane urban arterial road with a four-foot bike lane at very nearly $6 million per mile. Widening it can cost even more. By contrast, the most expensive pedestrian and cyclist improvement — a two-way, 12-foot shared-use path — is listed at about $410,000. Cycling infrastructure also doesn’t cost nearly as much to maintain. In fact, it’s likely a net financial benefit instead, owing to the reduced healthcare debt of more active people.

    • Futurism ☛ Experts Deeply Concerned About Cybertruck Safety

      Because only limited footage was shared with the public with no accompanying data, there's only so much that can be deduced right now. But whatever the armchair experts may be saying online, the real experts are already quite concerned with what they've seen so far.

    • Reuters ☛ Tesla Cybertruck's stiff structure, sharp design raise safety concerns -experts

      "The big problem there is if they really make the skin of the vehicle very stiff by using thick stainless steel, then when people hit their heads on it, it's going to cause more damage to them," said Adrian Lund, the former president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), whose vehicle crash tests are an industry standard.

    • DeSmog ☛ ‘Inoculate From Criticism’: A Closer Look at the Public Relations Companies Active at COP28

      There’s only a few days to go before Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the first oil executive to preside over UN climate negotiations, brings down his gavel in Dubai.  

      While COP28 delegates have been wrangling over the wording of the all-important text, DeSmog has been tracking an overlooked factor in climate diplomacy: the role of the advertising and public relations (PR) industry in shaping perceptions of key players.

    • DeSmog ☛ Meet the ‘Extreme’ Atlas Network Groups Fighting Canada’s Oil and Gas Emissions Cap

      Within hours of Canada’s federal government announcing key details during COP28 about its plans to cap greenhouse gas emissions within the oil and gas sector, the country’s top conservative think tanks started sounding the alarm. 

      “Capping the energy sector’s emissions would deprive Canada of over $6.0 billion a year,” declared a media release from the Quebec-based Montreal Economic Institute, which was soon quoted extensively by the media outlet Business in Vancouver.

• Finance

  • Ruben Schade ☛ People who need cash being left behind

    Future access to physical cash is now under a cloud, according to Australia’s primary cash transit company, amid a sharp decline in the use of notes and coins […] which experts say risks isolating those who rely on [cash].

    […] actual cash usage has dropped to just 13% of transactions, according to professional services firm Accenture, down from 27% before the pandemic.

    Australians are early adopters of payments technology and among the least likely in the world to transact in cash, alongside those in the Nordic countries.

    Wait, 13% of transactions? I would not have guessed that little, not even close.

    There are issues of digital fraud and tracking here worth considering. But the point raised in this article is one of accessibility. There’s a real risk that those whom depend on cash may find themselves unable to live and work in our economy, or only with extreme difficulty.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • [Old] Sven Vermeulen ☛ The three additional layers in the OSI model

    Then, we start rising up the stack. Discussions that are close to the physical aspects are still easy to moderate, but the higher up we go the more chance we have of misinterpretation of the information at hand. People make more assumptions to understand the discussion, which might lead to misunderstandings.

    Higher layers are also because we want to abstract away the complexity of reality. Discussions are held on topics that have wider consequences, and thus we abstract this complexity in models so that the discussions can move forward quickly enough. If not all people understand the abstraction (and its consequences), the discussions might quickly move to details and specifics that do not provide much value to the discussion, but are considered as necessary by some of the attendees.

  • European Commission ☛ Digital Services Act – implementing regulation

    The Digital Services Act (DSA) empowers the Commission to adopt implementing acts detailing arrangements on issues identified in Article 83 of the DSA, such as:

    the proceedings in Articles 69 to 72 regulating aspects of the Commission’s investigatory and enforcement powers

    • the hearings in Article 79

    • the negotiated disclosure of information provided for in Article 79.

    This implementing regulation will lay down rules on all procedural practical arrangements in Article 83 of DSA.

    [...]

    Feedback period
    08 December 2023 - 05 January 2024 (midnight Brussels time)

  • EDRI ☛ EU AI Act: Deal reached, but too soon to celebrate

    On 8 Dec, after over 36 hours of negotiations, a political deal has been reached on the EU’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act.

    The European Parliament, Council and Commission have brokered a high-level compromise on the main rules for artificial intelligence in Europe.

    However, whilst EU negotiators celebrate the conclusion one of the most controversial digital legislations in EU history, the devil will be in the detail.

    The extent to which the AI Act protects people in Europe from the worst excesses of surveillance, discrimination and AI-based harms will require a fuller assessment of the technical drafts, which will surface over the next weeks.

  • France24 ☛ EU member states and lawmakers strike landmark deal on AI regulation

    "Historic! With the political deal on the AI Act sealed today, the EU becomes the first continent to set clear rules for the use of AI," declared the EU's internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton.

  • Security Week ☛ Europe Reaches a Deal on the World’s First Comprehensive AI Rules

    European Union negotiators clinched a deal Friday on the world’s first comprehensive artificial intelligence rules, paving the way for legal oversight of AI technology that has promised to transform everyday life and spurred warnings of existential dangers to humanity.

    Negotiators from the European Parliament and the bloc’s 27 member countries overcame big differences on controversial points including generative AI and police use of face recognition surveillance to sign a tentative political agreement for the Artificial Intelligence Act.

  • Axios ☛ EU reaches landmark deal on world’s first comprehensive AI regulation

    Yes, but: The new law still needs to be approved by the European Parliament, though that will be a formality.

    Lawmakers still need to work out some of the details of the new law.

    The rules also won't take effect until 2025 at the earliest, leaving room for a lot of technological evolution until then.

  • El País ☛ Europe reaches a deal on the world’s first comprehensive AI rules

    Officials were under the gun to secure a political victory for the flagship legislation. Civil society groups, however, gave it a cool reception as they wait for technical details that will need to be ironed out in the coming weeks. They said the deal didn’t go far enough in protecting people from harm caused by AI systems.

  • [Old] The Business of Fashion ☛ Vanessa Kingori to Exit Condé Nast, Join Google

    In recent years, Kingori has been vital to helping Condé Nast navigate an increasingly challenging environment for legacy media players, spearheading innovative ways to open and expand new revenue streams like digital content creation for brand clients.

    She will be joining Google UK as managing director of technology, with a focus on deploying new tools including artificial intelligence. In recent months, the search giant, like many other big tech players, has begun introducing features powered by generative AI. Shopping has been a key area of experimentation for the company.

  • Futurism ☛ OpenAI Cofounder Who Pushed Out Sam Altman Is In a Confusing Limbo

    Known primarily for his outlandish statements about algorithmic sentience, the Russian-born researcher is considered something of an "AI god" by his acolytes — and now is thought of as a traitor to others who think he won't be able to come back from voting alongside two fellow (and now former) OpenAI board members to fire Altman as CEO over vague accusations of dishonesty.

  • New York Times ☛ Inside OpenAI’s Crisis Over the Future of Artificial Intelligence

    Unbeknownst to Mr. Altman, Dr. Sutskever and the three board members had been whispering behind his back for months. They believed Mr. Altman had been dishonest and should no longer lead a company that was driving the A.I. race. On a hush-hush 15-minute video call the previous afternoon, the board members had voted one by one to push Mr. Altman out of OpenAI.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Fans Horrified When His Grok AI Immediately "Goes Woke"

    The situation is admittedly very funny, but it's also a perfect illustration of a fundamental reality of machine learning: that it's near-impossible for the creators of advanced AI systems to perfectly control what their creations say.

  • New Yorker ☛ Why Are House Republicans Leaving Congress?

    Former Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee joins The Political Scene to discuss the rush of lawmakers leaving Congress and what’s driving them away.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Vice Media Group ☛ Elon Musk's Grok AI Is Pushing Misinformation and Legitimizing Conspiracies

      The chatbot’s big selling point is that it is designed to integrate with X and draw information from users’ posts in order to have access to real-time events around the world. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the chatbot is just as reliable at giving accurate information as the once-cherished platform formerly known as Twitter and its right-wing billionaire owner—which is to say, not at all. The chatbot produced fake timelines for news events and misinformation when tested by Motherboard, and lent credence to conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • France24 ☛ French teens convicted for identifying Samuel Paty to his attacker before 2020 murder

    Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography teacher, was stabbed and then beheaded near his secondary school in the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on October 16, 2020.

    Lawyers representing Paty's friends and family hit out at the leniency of the sentences, describing them as "not fitting" and sending "a bad signal".

    "A man beheaded in the street is not nothing," said Virginie Le Roy, a lawyer representing members of Paty's family.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ France: Six teenagers convicted in teacher murder trial

    Paty was killed on October 16, 2020, by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a radicalized 18-year-old of Chechen origin. The killing was classified as an act of Islamist terrorism.

    The teacher had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his class during a debate on freedom of expression.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Iran Begins Trial of Swedish EU Employee Detained in 2022

    Rights groups and Western governments have accused the Islamic Republic of trying to extract political concessions from other countries through arrests on security charges that may have been trumped up. Tehran says such arrests are based on its criminal code and denies holding people for political reasons.

  • France24 ☛ Iran bans Mahsa Amini’s family from travelling to accept EU's Sakharov human rights prize

    She said the family had been banned from leaving Iran despite having a valid visa, and their passports had been confiscated.

    Ardakani said Iranian authorities "have never been so mobilised to prevent the families of the victims from speaking to the international community".

  • RFERL ☛ Iran Blocks Amini's Family From Traveling To Accept EU Award

    The family's lawyer, Saleh Nikhbakht, who was accompanying them, was apparently allowed to travel.

    The European Parliament on October 19 awarded the 2023 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Amini and the Women, Life, Freedom movement that was sparked by her death.

  • VOA News ☛ Criticized Over Blogger Arrests, Uzbekistan Denies It's a Free Speech Issue

    While debates rage about the allegations in each case, many Uzbek journalists and bloggers worry that the modest freedom Mirziyoyev seemed to offer is rapidly vanishing.

    The Tashkent-based Ezgulik Human Rights Society reports more than 20 criminal cases concerning bloggers this year alone.

  • Meduza ☛ Russia arrests U.S.-Russian dual national, charges him with ‘rehabilitating Nazism’ over social media posts

    According to the Telegram channel SOTAvision, Yuri Malev is a graduate of St. Petersburg State University’s law department and has been living in the U.S. since 1991. The Telegram channel Baza reported that Malev went to Russia at the end of November.

  • RFERL ☛ Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Missing For Three Days, Life 'At Risk,' Supporters Say

    She said his allies had not received any letters from him for more than a week, which she said was unusual.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Dissenter ☛ TUNE IN: Second Belmarsh Tribunal For Assange In DC

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Norman Lear’s ’70s TV comedies confronted issues in a way Gen Z would appreciate

    Norman Lear’s legacy offers storytellers a road map for meeting the needs of Americans coming of age today. I believe that we need more storytellers who, like Lear, hold up a mirror to our world, showcasing its complexity and imperfections – both the good and the bad.

  • CNBC ☛ Musk's Scandinavian woes deepen as Tesla loses Swedish court case, Finnish union joins port blockade

    Finnish transport workers' union AKT on Thursday confirmed that a blockade on Tesla vehicles earmarked for Sweden would also come into force across all Finnish ports from Dec. 20.

    One of Denmark's largest pension funds on Wednesday announced that it would sell its holdings of Tesla stock over the U.S. giant's refusal to enter into agreements with labor unions.

  • VOA News ☛ Taliban Criticize New US Human Rights Curbs Against Two Leaders

    The Taliban ban girls from receiving an education beyond the sixth grade in Afghanistan and women from most workplaces. The Islamist group reclaimed power from an American-backed government two years ago, declaring its male-only administration as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, or IEA.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Postsen, Sweden ☛ Is the [Internet] we built really for everyone?

    The directive contains many taken-for-granted obviousness for the vast majority. Therefore, common standards are welcome, mainly because they help companies to see shortcomings and gaps – the company’s own bias, or partiality.

    An examination was recently made of Sweden’s 20 largest e-commerce stores and how they performed today, a little more than a year before the introduction of the accessibility directive, based on 12 parameters.

    The result shows that not even half meet the requirements, which will soon be regulated in the law.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Cloudbooklet ☛ Apple Cracks Down on Beeper Mini: No More iMessage for Android Users

  Beeper Mini, an app that enabled Android users to use iMessage, faced an outage possibly caused by Apple. Learn what this means for cross-platform encrypted messaging.

• Patents

  • CBC ☛ U.S. 'beginning' internal discussions about renewing North American trade pact

    For anyone with lingering night terrors from the last renegotiation of NAFTA, the notion of reopening the pact might evoke the trailer for a classic horror movie sequel: It's baaaaa-aaaack.

    But this time is different, says the U.S. envoy to Canada.

    In an interview with CBC News, Ambassador David Cohen said officials in his country have begun informal talks to prepare for new negotiations as required by the pact.

  • [Old] Global Affairs Canada ☛ Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) / United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)

    The Canada, United States, Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) / The United States, Mexico, Canada Agreement (USMCA) is a new, high standard 21st century regional agreement between the Government of Canada, the Government of the United Mexican States and the Government of the United States of America to support mutually beneficial trade leading to freer, fairer markets, and to robust economic growth in the region.

  • [Old] Foreign Affairs ☛ The New American Way of Trade: How the USMCA Does What NAFTA Couldn’t

• Copyrights

  • Futurism ☛ Oops! Elon Musk's Grok AI Caught Plagiarizing OpenAI's ChatGPT

    "We plagiarized your plagiarism so we could put plagiarism in your plagiarism," quipped NBC News reporter Ben Collins.