Links 17/12/2023: Putin Dictatorial Ambitions and Musk Investigated Again
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Chris Hannah ☛ Using an Old Computer for New Writing
Just reading this post makes me want to get out my X1 Carbon ThinkPad, play around with Arch, and configure myself a device dedicated to writing. It wouldn’t even be that complicated for me, since my blog is really just a bunch of markdown files that are put together on my server using Hugo.
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James G ☛ Advent of Technical Writing: Internal Code Documentation Requirements
One of the open source projects to which I contribute at work, supervision, has a requirement that documentation must be written on new features before a PR is merged. This primarily applies to internal contributors; we are happy to write documentation as required for people who have volunteered their time to contribute code.
What does it mean that "documentation must be written on new features"? For supervision, this means that: [...]
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James G ☛ Advent of Technical Writing: Authoring Tools
When someone contributes a blog post or documentation to the Roboflow website, we ask that they write their contributions in specific tools. For blog posts, we ask that contributions are delivered in a Google Document. For product documentation, we ask that the documentation is written in GitBook, our documentation tool of choice. For open source documentation, we ask that documentation is in a PR so that it can be reviewed alongside any code that has changed.
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New York Times ☛ Vera Molnar, Pioneer of Computer Art, Dies at 99
“Vera Molnar is one of the very few artists who had the conviction and perseverance to make computer-based visual art at a time when it was not taken seriously as an art form, with critics denouncing the emergent form since they did not believe that the artist’s hand was evident in the work,” Michael Bouhanna, the global head of digital art at Sotheby’s, wrote in an email.
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Manuel Moreale ☛ Pirating social media
If we’re talking social media, what part of the whole experience is the pirateable product? Is it the shared content? In that case, pirating is easy: you grab whatever is shared, you take it out of the platform walls and you republish it somewhere else. Let’s pirate something now, shall we?
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Kev Quirk ☛ Threads and the Fediverse
Lots of people on Mastodon have been losing their shit over Threads joining the fediverse, so I wanted to give my opinion on this whole shit show.
The fediverse is awash with calls to block Threads at an instance level. As co-admin of Fosstodon, I've been asked on many occasions whether we will be banning Threads at the instance level.
We won't be and here's why...
[...]
This one I can get behind. No one wants to see ads on the fediverse, and you can bet your bottom dollar that if there's a way for Meta to do this, they abso-fucking-lutely will.
[...] This is 100% going to get me some flack on Mastodon (remember...reactionary). Which is why I decided to post it here and not on the Fosstodon Hub. I hope the fedi proves me wrong, so we can all just get along and enjoy our day.
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Science
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Omicron Limited ☛ Trying to communicate with whales is like talking to extraterrestrials
In a flurry of exchanged messages, the scientists sent a "contact" call that drew Twain's attention and had her circling their boat for around 20 minutes. She responded to every burst of sound from the scientists and matched the intervals of delay between sounds in what they called in a press release a "conversational style."
While the scientists understood they were saying some equivalent of "hello" to Twain when she arrived, that's about as far as their understanding went. Luckily, there's a theory for that—in this case, a mathematical one called information theory.
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Science Alert ☛ The World's Oldest Settlements Were Built by a Culture Nobody Expected
What were they protecting?
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Science Alert ☛ Even Sleeping Volcanoes Can Hide an Explosive Surprise Deep Inside
We can't be complacent.
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Science Alert ☛ Physicist Discovers 'Paradox-Free' Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible
"The maths checks out."
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Education
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Daniel Miessler ☛ Purposelessness—Not Social Media—is Causing Our Kids' Depression
These are all signals pulling kids in multiple directions. They obscure and reduce their internal voice, or stop them from developing one at all.
And the result is devastating. It makes kids feel like everyone around them has it figured out—except for them. And that disconnect—that feeling of isolation—is what makes life unbearable.
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[Old] Fatherly ☛ Frank Oz Says Sesame Street Has Gone Downhill. Is He Right?
Frank Oz, the brilliant puppeteer behind such beloved staples of pop culture as Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, Grover, Bert and so many more, has recently thrown down a gauntlet. “Unfortunately ‘Sesame Street’ is only a shadow of what it was,” Oz said during SXSW this year. “They’re just aiming it to little kids. And I’m unhappy about that.” Is Frank Oz right? Is Sesame Street in the 21st century, not the pure and perfect bastion of children’s media it was in years past?
As someone who became unhealthily obsessed with Sesame Street following the birth of my first son four years ago, I have to reluctantly agree with Frank Oz. Sesame Street in its current incarnation is not bad by any estimation. It’s still an extraordinarily well-made children’s show but as Oz asserted, it’s overwhelmingly a show for children, and small children at that, and a shadow of what it once was. It’s still good but it used to be brilliant, transcendent, a goddamned work of art, the gold standard of children’s entertainment, one of American entertainment’s all-time greats.
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CBC ☛ Judge orders former PPC candidate to stop calling himself an engineer
David Hilderman, who ran for the PPC in the Saanich—Gulf Islands riding in 2021, has a university degree in engineering, but is not licensed as a professional engineer, according to a recent B.C. Supreme Court judgment. Engineer is a protected title in certain contexts in B.C.
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Hardware
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Ken Shirriff ☛ Two interesting XOR circuits inside the Intel 386 processor
Intel's 386 processor (1985) was an important advance in the x86 architecture, not only moving to a 32-bit processor but also switching to a CMOS implementation. I've been reverse-engineering parts of the 386 chip and came across two interesting and completely different circuits that the 386 uses to implement an XOR gate: one uses standard-cell logic while the other uses pass-transistor logic. In this article, I take a look at those circuits.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ TSMC will start equipping the 2nm fab in April 2024
Hsinchu Science Park Director discloses TSMC's plans to start 2nm Fab equipment move-in.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Science Alert ☛ A Dentist Reveals What Happens to Your Teeth as You Get Older
7 crucial tips to protect your smile.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Digital Music News ☛ Spotify Is Officially Testing an Artificial Intelligence Playlist Feature Following AI DJ and Daylist Rollouts, Video Shows
But evidence suggests that the AI playlist tool could become available to a larger number of Spotify users sooner rather than later, as the service has long been investing heavily in AI.
To be sure, Spotify’s AI DJ debuted in the US and Canada in February, expanded into Ireland and the UK in May, and reached some 50 additional countries in August. Then, September brought an AI playlist called Daylist, which, in keeping with its name, generates playlists based upon one’s listening habits at various points throughout the day.
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Federal News Network ☛ Air Force’s new policy sets guardrails around generative AI
The Air Force is putting in place guardrails for the service to test and experiment with commercial generative artificial intelligence.
Air Force Chief Information Officer Venice Goodwine, who signed a new AI policy on Wednesday, said that she created an innovation zone within the Air Force’s Office 365 environment that will allow service members to experiment with the technology within a safe environment.
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New York University ☛ Women may pay a "MOM PENALTY" when AI is used in hiring, new research suggests
Maternity-related employment gaps may cause job candidates to be unfairly screened out of positions for which they are otherwise qualified, according to new research from NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
A research team led by Siddharth Garg, Institute Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, examined bias in Large Language Models (LLMs) — advanced AI systems trained to understand and generate human language — when used in hiring processes.
The team will present its findings in a paper presented at NeurIPS 2023 R0-FoMo Workshop on December 15. Akshaj Kumar Veldanda, PhD candidate in Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is the paper's lead researcher.
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Will Cooke ☛ Reverse engineering Bluetooth LE LED light controllers, or How I Bricked My Christmas Lights
I also had another set of addressable lights on my desk. While decorating my office for Christmas, I decided to invest some time in connecting them to Home Assistant using the BJ_LED code as a template. It should have been straightforward, right? Well, yes, but also no.
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India Times ☛ OpenAI suspends ByteDance’s account over ‘secretly using’ its AI tech
The conversations on Lark, ByteDance's internal communication platform for employees, showed how to "whitewash" the evidence through "data desensitisation," said the report late on Friday.
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India Times ☛ EU seeks satellite array offers in space race with AI
The European Space Agency said on Friday it would seek final offers to develop the secure communications system, a flagship project spurred in part by the role of Elon Musk's Starlink as a backbone for Ukraine in the war with Russia.
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Greece ☛ Digital assistant receives 63,000 questions in three days
A digital assistant called mAigov offering easy access to more than 1,600 digital services of the government received 63,000 questions in the first three days of operation, based on data published by the state-run news agency AMNA on Saturday.
Of those, 56,900 were identified as legitimate (non-trolling) questions. The percentage of dialogues (clarification on the first answer) reached 30% and concerned approximately 17,000 cases. This means that 70% of those questions got what they were looking for with the first answer.
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Futurism ☛ DeepMind Says Its AI Solved a Math Problem That Humans Were Stumped By
DeepMind built the tool in question, called "FunSearch" in reference to mathematical functions (and not the other kind of fun) on the back of its AlphaZero AI, which solves math problems as if it were playing a game. The LLM it uses is called Codey, which is trained and honed on computer code and programmed to reject incorrect answers and feed correct ones back into its model.
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Futurism ☛ Amazon's AI Reportedly Suffering "Severe Hallucinations"
In a surprise announcement last week, Amazon's cloud computing division announced a flashy new AI chatbot aimed at businesses called Amazon Q — not to be confused with OpenAI's secretive Q*, pronounced Q star, which is rumored to be a separate and powerful new AI system.
But according to leaked documents obtained by Platformer, Amazon's launch is off to a rocky start. Q is reportedly suffering from "severe hallucinations" and is actively "leaking confidential data."
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India Times ☛ AI’s Magic Call: how AI will make smartphones smarter
Artificial intelligence will unlock limitless possibilities in smartphones once they fully adopt the technology and make it a part of their offerings. Here's how AI will make smartphones smarter and unleash the next phase of growth for the industry
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India Times ☛ Seeing eye to AI: risk and impact of artificial intelligence use in businesses
Along with independent research and analysis firm Foundry, looked at actions, experiences, and projections of more than 1,000 decision-makers, C-level executives, business leaders, automation leaders and practitioners across industries and regions over two months. The report underscored three topics – AI, productivity improvements and scalability.
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Security
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Security Week ☛ Recent Apache Struts 2 Vulnerability in Attacker Crosshairs
Attackers are attempting to exploit a critical RCE flaw in Apache Struts 2 after researchers publish PoC code.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Techdirt ☛ NSO Group May Be On Its Way Out But There’s No Shortage Of Competitors To Take Its Place
The Italians are the new Israelis… at least in terms of hawking phone exploits and other spyware.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Google Maps receives privacy upgrades reportedly designed to end geofence warrants
New privacy enhancements introduced for Surveillance Giant Google Maps this week are reportedly designed to end geofence warrants from law enforcement agencies, according to a new report. Surveillance Giant Google announced the enhancements in question on Wednesday. On Thursday, Forbes cited an employee of the search giant as saying that the update was “explicitly” designed to end geofence warrants.
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Privacy International ☛ PI's Submission to the Women and Equalities Committee Inquiry into Women's Reproductive Health
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Off Guardian ☛ The Sanctity of Privacy
I remember as a kid that privacy was pretty important. It really did have a sort of sanctity to it. There was a deep principle violated if someone invaded your private domain, and the abhorrence to this invasion and betrayal was often conveyed in movies, TV shows, and books.
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Privacy International ☛ Free to Protest (Pakistan edition)
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The Verge ☛ US Congress pushes warrantless wiretapping decision off until April next year
Senator Ron Wyden wrote in a press release on December 8th that the vote to reauthorize FISA was inserted into the NDAA “without a vote or debate” before the Senate authorized and passed it to the House. Now, the vote has headed to the desk of President Biden, who has called for it to be reauthorized.
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New York Times ☛ House Passes Defense Bill, Clearing It for Biden
It would also extend into 2025 a program that allows the intelligence community to conduct warrantless surveillance of foreign individuals outside the United States. The program has come under fire because of how the F.B.I. has handled the private messages of Americans.
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ Google Kills the Geofence Capability that Will Show ~30,000 Trump Supporters Swarmed the Capitol on Trump’s Orders
At Trump’s trial, prosecutors will use Google Location data to show how Trump’s mobs responded to his order to march to the Capitol by doing just that: swarming the Capitol. That data will show that roughly a quarter of the people at the Ellipse, around 30,000 people, entered the restricted grounds outside the Capitol, committing at least trespassing on Trump’s instruction, of which 11,500 would be identified by their Google Location data.
Jack Smith’s prosecutors revealed that they will do this on Monday in an expert notice filing.
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Google ☛ Updates to Location History and new controls coming soon to Maps
Additionally, when you first turn on Location History, the auto-delete control will be set to three months by default, which means that any data older than that will be automatically deleted. Previously this option was set to 18 months. If you want to save memories to your Timeline for a longer period, don’t worry — you can always choose to extend the period or turn off auto-delete controls altogether.
These changes will gradually roll out through the next year on Android and iOS, and you’ll receive a notification when this update comes to your account.
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BW Businessworld Media Pvt Ltd ☛ Apple Settles Class-Action Lawsuit For $25 Mn Over Family Sharing Feature
Tech giant Apple has agreed to a USD 25 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit filed in 2019, alleging misleading representations regarding its Family Sharing feature. The lawsuit claimed that Apple misrepresented the functionality of Family Sharing in relation to app subscriptions.
According to court documents, the lawsuit argued that Apple, despite denying any wrongdoing, had promoted Family Sharing on subscription-based apps that, in reality, did not support the feature. The court noted that the majority of these apps, a growing segment within Apple's ecosystem, could not be shared among designated family members as implied.
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Gizmodo ☛ Google Will Turn Off Cookies for 30 Million People on January 4
For the past 30 years, websites and tech companies have used so-called “third-party cookies” as the primary way to track consumers online. Has that pair of shoes you added to your cart three weeks ago been following you around in ads on the web? There are probably third-party cookies involved. These cookies let websites partner with other companies including Google and tons of others to keep tabs on everything you do online. That’s great for companies, and terrible for your privacy because it means there are a lot of businesses who get to keep a history of all of your web browsing.
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Meduza ☛ Russian officers fire warning shots into air and detain 82 people during clash with migrants in Moscow
In Moscow, 82 foreign nationals were detained after a clash with police officers, reports Russian state news agency Interfax, referencing Russia’s Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow.
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Defence/Aggression
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The Straits Times ☛ Philippines' Marcos says tensions in South China Sea have increased
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He warned that a “more assertive China” posed a “real challenge” to its Asian neighbours.
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RFERL ☛ U.S. Media: Sources Say Secret Intelligence On Alleged Russian Election Meddling Went Missing
Multiple U.S. news outlets say material from a binder containing "highly classified" information related to Russian efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. elections or the subsequent investigation into alleged meddling vanished in the waning days of the Trump administration, fueling concerns of a leak of closely guarded secrets including secret sources and methods. [...]
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Scheerpost ☛ Chinese Cyber Attack: What Really Happened?
Journalist Whitney Webb speaks on the recent alleged Chinese cyber attacks that U.S. officials claim targeted American infrastructure. Using her reporting over the years on cyber warfare, Webb provides a unique insight into the issue.
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Scheerpost ☛ The Never Ending War on Terror Targets Freedom
The revelations of people like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and John Kiriakou have allowed the world to know about the sly and insidious turn Western governments took following 9/11. From torture programs to mass surveillance to extrajudicial captures and killings, it has become clear how far these governments have poured away their own values and beliefs.
Despite their best efforts to reveal the truth, whistleblowers, leakers, journalists can only show so much against the backdrop of entire governments. In the years since, hundreds, if not thousands of stories remain to be told about those most affected by these illegal and immoral measures, and Phantom Parrot, a new documentary by director Kate Stonehill, adds one more to the record.
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The Register UK ☛ Shame about those wildfires. We'll just let the fossil fuel giants off the hook, then?
The clear question, then, is what responsibility do these companies have regarding their contributions to the climate impacts we’re experiencing: the extreme weather events, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and the like?
Some communities around the globe are seeking to answer that question in the courts, and are suing fossil-fuel companies for damages. Those lawsuits need a few questions to be answered to proceed, not the least of which being the classic, "What did they know and when did they know it?" Also, any negative effects from fossil-fuel companies' alleged reticence to come clean about their own research and findings regarding CO2 emissions will have to be quantified and presented in a way that satisfies the courts.
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India Times ☛ Judge says TikTok must turn meeting records over in US states probe
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said the attorneys general investigating since 2022 have discovered TikTok had an archive of tens of thousands of recorded internal Zoom meetings that the company initially failed to disclose for nearly a year and a half.
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NYPost ☛ Biden administration alarmed by dozens of Israeli military strikes against US-backed Lebanese army: report
The purported Israel Defense Forces strikes against the Lebanese military have come from small arms, artillery fire, drones and helicopters.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Meduza ☛ Russia reports shooting down 32 Ukrainian drones over annexed Crimea — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Former FBI agent sentenced to four years in prison for aiding Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Financial Times: U.S. says it found way to seize frozen Russian assets ‘in accordance with international law’ — Meduza
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New York Times ☛ Ukrainian Marines on ‘Suicide Mission’ in Crossing the Dnipro River
Soldiers frustrated by positive reports from Ukrainian officials break their silence, describing the effort as brutalizing and, ultimately, futile.
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New Yorker ☛ How the American Right Came to Love Putin
Many Republicans are resisting calls for more U.S. aid for Ukraine. Part of the explanation is the right’s affinity for the projects of Viktor Orbán, in Hungary, and Vladimir Putin, in Russia.
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LRT ☛ The war must go on, until Putin says otherwise: key takeaways from Russian president’s Q&A
Four-plus hours filled with talk of eggs, natural gas, the European Union, abortions, Siberian railways, artificial intelligence, veterans' benefits. And the war in Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Putin To Run For President As Independent Candidate, Officials Say
Vladimir Putin will run for president again as an independent candidate with a wide support base but not on a party ticket, Russian news agencies reported on December 16, citing his supporters.
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RFERL ☛ Austria Clears EU Russia Sanctions After Ukraine Stops Blacklisting Raiffeisen
Austria has lifted its blockage of a 12th package of EU sanctions on Russia after Ukraine took Raiffeisen Bank International off a blacklist, Ukraine's government website and an EU diplomat said on December 16.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine Gains Return Of Three Additional Children Taken By Russia
Ukraine, with the help of Qatar, has been able to gain the return of three more children who had been abducted and taken into Russian hands, according to Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential office.
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RFERL ☛ Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria To Ink Deal On Black Sea Mine Clearance
Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria plan to sign a deal in January on a joint plan to clear mines floating in the Black Sea as a result of the war in Ukraine, Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said on December 16, after months of talks between the NATO member nations.
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RFERL ☛ Bulgarian Host Laments National Radio's Purported Ban On Interview With Russian Envoy
A longtime host for Bulgarian National Radio on December 16 accused the national broadcaster of preventing the airing of a previously recorded interview with the Russian ambassador to that country amid escalating tensions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the dismantling of a towering Red Army monument in Sofia.
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YLE ☛ Eastern border quiet; PM describes Russian operation as "hybrid attack"
The two border posts re-opened on Thursday, but the government decided later that day to close them again after it deemed that Russian authorities had begun once again to systematically deliver third-country asylum [sic] seekers to the Finnish border.
Finnish officials and experts have repeatedly this autumn described Russia’s instrumentalising the flow of migrants as of "hybrid operation" aimed at destabilising Finland in response to its [NATO] membership and support for Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ U.S. Media: Sources Say Secret Intelligence On Alleged Russian Election Meddling Went Missing
Multiple U.S. news outlets say material from a binder containing "highly classified" information related to Russian efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. elections or the subsequent investigation into alleged meddling vanished in the waning days of the Trump administration.
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RFERL ☛ Russia To Test-Launch Seven Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles In 2024
Russia plans to test-launch seven intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2024, Sergei Karakayev, the commander of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, has said, the Interfax news agency reported on December 16.
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RFERL ☛ Hungary Threatens To Veto Bulgaria's Schengen Entry Over Russian Gas Transit Tax
Hungary on December 16 threatened to veto Bulgaria’s entry into the passport-free Schengen zone unless it abolishes the transit fee for Russian gas.
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RFERL ☛ Masha Gessen Receives Hannah Arendt Prize After Gaza Controversy
U.S.-Russian author Masha Gessen received the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought in the German city of Bremen on December 16, a day later than scheduled due to criticism of Gessen's remarks on the Gaza conflict.
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RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Vows To Strengthen Air Defenses, Push On With Global Press For More Military Aid
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met with military commanders and vowed to strengthen air defenses as the nation continued to take hits from multiple Russian missile and drone attacks, while he also promised to continue his diplomatic offensive to keep the flow of aid coming.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine Puts Head Of Russian Orthodox Church On 'Wanted' List
Ukraine's Interior Ministry on December 15 placed the head of Russia's Orthodox Church, a backer of the Kremlin's 21-month-old war against Kyiv, on a wanted list after security services accused him of abetting the conflict.
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RFERL ☛ G7 Said To Be 'Moving Closer' To Seizing $300 Billion In Russian Assets For Ukraine
Group of Seven member states have intensified efforts to agree on funneling some of the $300 billion in "immobilized" Russian central bank and other sovereign assets to Ukraine just as massive U.S. and EU support proposals have run into resistance, the Financial Times reports.
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New York Times ☛ Trump, Quoting Putin, Declares Indictments ‘Politically Motivated Persecution’
The former president cited comments by the Russian leader to argue the 91 felony charges he is facing undermine the United States’ claim to be the world leader on democracy.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Kansas Reflector ☛ ‘1619 Project’ creator has been attacked for revealing heartbreaking truths. Listen to her.
Hannah-Jones’ real crime is that she revealed the heartbreaking truth that our systems and society don’t intend to end inequality. In fact, they are designed to sustain inequality. She discussed these topics during a recent visit to the Kansas City metro for the 16th annual Urban Summit.
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Environment
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Energy/Transportation
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National Geographic ☛ Cooking oil just fueled a transatlantic flight. But is it a solution or a distraction?
The first commercial transatlantic flight using 100 percent Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), made from used cooking oil, recently flew from London’s Heathrow airport to New York’s JFK airport—a project called Flight100. But while some hope this could be a step forward for sustainability, many have criticized Flight100’s green claims.
Globally, aviation made up around 2.5 percent of the world’s carbon emissions in 2022, and in the next 20 years, reports suggest those emissions will triple as more people and goods fly around the world.
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India Times ☛ US SEC says no to new crypto rules; Coinbase asks court to review
The five-member commission, in a 3-2 vote, said it would not propose new rules because it fundamentally disagreed that current regulations are "unworkable" for the crypto sphere, as Coinbase has argued. Coinbase later said it had filed a petition for review of the SEC's decision in court.
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RFERL ☛ Oil Workers In Kazakhstan's Volatile West Continue Hunger Strike
Hundreds of workers from the West Oil Software company in Kazakhstan’s volatile western region of Manghystau are continuing with a hunger strike they started on December 11, despite increasing pressure from authorities on the eve of the Central Asian nation's Independence Day.
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France24 ☛ Musk's woes deepen as Tesla strike spreads across Scandinavia
The labour dispute between Tesla and its repair workshop mechanics that originated in Sweden on October 27 has escalated to include Denmark, Finland and Norway. As the stakes rise, Elon Musk's electric vehicle manufacturer continues to resist signing a collective agreement with its Swedish employees.
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Russell Graves ☛ Solar Shed Part 19: Going Lithium with EG4-LLs
But, coming up on 8 years of use, I decided it was time to preemptively replace my lead acid bank out back with something… a tiny bit more modern. That’s right. My office energy storage is now based around lithium batteries!
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Wildlife/Nature
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Omicron Limited ☛ Reindeer vision may have evolved to spot favorite food in the snowy dark of winter
Instead, researchers from Dartmouth and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland report that the eyes of Rudolph and his reindeer brethren may have evolved so that they can spot their favorite food during dark and snowy Arctic winters, according to a new study in the journal i-Perception.
The findings help explain the long-standing scientific mystery as to why reindeer can see light in the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum—and add intrigue to the smiling airborne ungulates popularized in the classic story by 1926 Dartmouth graduate Robert L. May.
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Science Alert ☛ Mystery Behind Dozens of African Elephant Deaths Finally Explained
And a new threat discovered.
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Finance
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The Straits Times ☛ Australia confident of end to China wine tariffs early in 2024
Australia's government on Sunday said it was confident punitive tariffs on Australian wine introduced by China in 2021 would be lifted early next year.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Elon Musk to testify again in SEC hearing on Twitter buyout
A federal judge in San Francisco told the legal team of Elon Musk on Thursday that the billionaire must testify again as part of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation of his $44 billion (€40 billion) buyout of the social media website Twitter, since rebranded as X.
US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler stopped short of ordering Musk to testify, but she rapidly rejected arguments from his attorney that SEC officials lacked the authority to issue subpoenas.
Beeler said the US agency, charged with enforcing laws against stock market manipulation, among others, had broad investigative powers and that no judge would "second guess" an SEC probe.
She called on Musk and the SEC to agree to a date for another day's testimony in the case, adding that she would set one for them if they did not.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ EU sets new stringent rules on corporate accountability
Those opposed to the rules say they are unnecessarily burdensome, as EU companies will already be required to make similar environment, social and governance (ESG) disclosures from 2024.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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India Times ☛ Microsoft's Bing Chat made up false scandals about EU elections: Research
Researchers at AlgorithmWatch asked Bing Chat questions about recent elections held in Switzerland and the German states of Bavaria and Hesse. It found that one-third of its answers to election-related questions had factual errors and safeguards were not evenly applied.
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El País ☛ No, pork rinds are not healthier than vegetables, and there is no study that proves it
Although the origin of the story is not known with certainty, Juan Camilo Mesa, a Colombian dietitian, nutritionist and microbiologist, explains that the first reference to this supposed study is a Facebook post that went viral. Afterwards, it was published in the Argentine portal TN, where it began its journey through the world’s newsrooms, growing like a huge snowball of misinformation. “Colombian media began to replicate the first news story and did not change a single comma,” says Mesa, outraged, from his home in Stockholm, Sweden, where he earned a master’s degree in nutritional sciences. “There is no article about pork rinds and vegetables in the database of the scientific journal. It does not exist.”
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Kansas Reflector ☛ Kansas Supreme Court, ‘wary’ of free speech restrictions, allows challenge to 2021 voting law
Now, he said, a decision made Friday by the Kansas Supreme Court has vindicated his claims that a 2021 voting law based on “the big lie” poses a threat to advocacy groups like his. Hammet is the founder and executive director of Loud Light.
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The Atlantic ☛ That’s Not Censorship
Every artist must exist in two realms: as the art maker, who thinks and ponders and creates work of radical honesty (an activity that one could argue is inherently political), and as the art mover, who, however reluctantly, must be part showman and part businessperson. Both come together every time a writer walks onstage. Because book talks have cultural value, it can be easy to forget that they are in fact commercial opportunities—performances designed to be entertaining in the hope of moving books.
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[Repeat] Reason ☛ Harvard Panel on Campus Free Speech
On December 12, I participated in a timely panel discussion at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study on "Free Speech, Political Speech, and Hate Speech on Campus." The panel included Jeannie Suk Gersen, Nadine Strossen, and Erica Chenoweth, and was moderated by Tomiko Brown-Nagin.
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C-SPAN ☛ Harvard and Princeton University Scholars on Campus Speech
Scholars from Harvard, Princeton, and New York Law School discussed campus speech amid the Israel-Hamas war at an event hosted by Harvard University. Topics included fostering a culture of mutual respect for disagreeing viewpoints, distinguishing between protected hate speech and harassment and bullying, protests on college campuses, and whether universities should take a stance on controversial issues. Prior to this event, Harvard University President Claudine Gay and other university presidents received backlash and calls for resignation due to their congressional testimony on antisemitism on college campuses.
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The Dissenter ☛ Unauthorized Disclosure: Project Censored's Mickey Huff & Andy Lee Roth
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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New York Times ☛ Al Jazeera Cameraman Killed and Bureau Chief Injured in Gaza
The journalists were covering the aftermath of airstrikes at a U.N. school-turned-shelter in Khan Younis. The bureau chief’s wife, son, daughter and grandson had been killed in October.
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BIA Net ☛ Journalists' Association condemns journalist & columnist of government-affiliated newspaper
The Journalists' Association stated that the unfounded bribery allegations against İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu in Sabah newspaper violated the Principles of Press Profession. The organization imposed a condemnation penalty on the intelligence chief Halit Turan, the columnist Mahmut Övür, and the responsible editor Hamza Özdemir.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Public Knowledge ☛ From Airwaves to Streaming: Upholding Public Interest Values in the Digital Age
In the golden age of television, the public airwaves were the heartbeat of our nation, a shared resource that connected communities and informed the public. With the rise of streaming, it's imperative that public interest values of diversity, accessibility, and localism are not lost in the digital shuffle, and that values like privacy that are even more salient in the streaming context, are elevated.
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The Verge ☛ The Epic question: how Google lost when Apple won
As you probably already know, Google is the one that lost its fight against Epic Games this week. It’s a fight that Apple previously (mostly) won in a similar trial in 2021, beating claims that it had violated antitrust laws by charging mandatory in-app transaction fees and kicking Epic’s game Fortnite off the App Store. Google tried a similar move, but in its case, a jury found it had maintained an unlawful monopoly with the Play store; a judge is scheduled to consider remedies next month.
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ How Future YouTube Policies Affect Today's Creativity & Tomorrow's Income
New rules guiding future content creation on YouTube can, without issue, be retroactively applied to content uploaded years ago. For transgressions of rules that didn't apply in the past, creators receive community strikes in the present. For the operator of the DBTech YouTube channel, which specializes in tutorials about self-hosted services, two strikes for old videos featuring youtube-dl and similar software, raise concerns over future content viability, even when it fully complies today.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.