Leftovers

• Jamie Zawinski ☛ Scrolling text on a web page: still rocket surgery

  The big one, though, is the one in DNA Pizza that displays a parallax cascade of multiple flyers at once, and includes a ticker crawl at the bottom of our Patreon donors. It's a Pi 4, and the text scrolling is not smooth, because apparently this is just too much work for a god damned supercomputer. This is with Chromium 120 on a Pi 4b and Raspbian 11.7. Performance under Firefox 115 is even worse.

• Idiomdrottning ☛ E-Prime

  E-Prime is a variant of English where you can’t use “is”, “am”, “are”, “was”, or “be”.

  The point isn’t to [filter out] certain words, the point is to ban absolute statements about other predicates. “E-Prime is good”, “E-Prime is boring”, “E-Prime is Orwellian newspeak that erodes the free thought”, “the sky is blue”. Contractions and synonyms for “is” are also banned, and forms like “I’m” or “isn’t” are also gone, or “would” and “will”, even “has” can be bad; the point again isn’t to filter out specific words, it’s to learn to think in a way that isn’t absolute about the properties of things.

• Chris Coyier ☛ Where have all the websites gone?

  I know I sound like an old man when I go on and on about RSS, but really, it’s sitting right there and is apparently what a lot of people miss.

• Internet Archive ☛ DISCMASTER Rises Again

  In October of 2022, the DISCMASTER site arrived, providing amazing semantic search of thousands of shareware and compilation CD-ROMs at the Internet Archive. In the entry written on the blog back then, the advantages and features of this site were pretty well enumerated.

• Ruben Schade ☛ My line about SEO being a red herring

  My view has long been that good pages rank well by virtue of being good pages. They’ll usually have most, if not all, of these attributes: [...]

• Hackaday ☛ Writing And Running Atari 2600 Games In Your Browser

  Here in 2024, writing new games for the venerable Atari 2600 game console is easier than ever, with plenty of emulators and toolchains to convert your code into ready-to-load ROMs. Yet what is easier than diving straight into 6502 assembly code without even having to download or set up a toolchain? That’s where [Henry Schmale]’s fully in-browser Atari IDE and associated emulator (using the Javatari project) comes into play.

• Server

  • January 2024 Web Server Survey

    In the January 2024 survey we received responses from 1,079,154,539 sites across 270,447,456 domains and 12,337,710 web-facing computers. This reflects a loss of 8.9 million sites, a gain of 1.2 million domains, and a loss of 17,900 web-facing computers.

• Science

  • Hillel Wayne ☛ An RNG that runs in your brain

    Marsaglia is most famous for the diehard suite of RNG tests, so he knows his stuff. I’m curious why this works and why he chose 6.

    We’re going to use Raku, the language for gremlins.2 I’ll be explaining all the weird features I use in dropdowns in case you’re a bit of a gremlin, too.

  • Science Alert ☛ Most Animals Have a 24-Hour Body Clock. This Beetle Breaks All The Rules.

    In the large black chafer beetle (Holotrichia parallela), a species of scarab beetle, sex hormones seem to take the lead and create an internal rhythm that cycles over 48 hours instead of the typical 24-hour clock.

    Because this strange internal clock takes twice as long as a circadian cycle to start and finish, it is known as a 'circabidian' rhythm.

  • Science Alert ☛ Do We Have Quantum Brains? 'Irrational' Behavior Follows Strange Rules

    It could explain a lot.

  • New York Times ☛ Even Rats Are Taking Selfies Now (and Enjoying It)

    A photographer trained two rats to take photographs of themselves. They didn’t want to stop.

  • Science Alert ☛ Chemists Have Just Tied The Tightest Knot Ever, Made of Just 54 Atoms

    Just the thing for tiny sailors.

  • Science Alert ☛ The Semen Microbiome Is a Thing, And It Might Be Impacting Fertility

    Swimming with bacteria.

  • Science Alert ☛ A Massive Tsunami Could Have Wiped Out Populations in Stone Age Britain

    Don't think it couldn't happen again.

• Education

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Immeasurable Impact

    Given the world of social media — where every interaction is recorded, tallied, and put on display for public exhibition — I like Jerod’s reminder of the nature of deep influence, which often remains anonymous.

  • DJ Adams ☛ Accuracy and precision in language

    I was fortunate to be able to study until I was 21, before starting my real work life. At school, the 'A' level subjects I chose were Latin, Ancient Greek and Ancient History. I was very lucky to be able to continue on that curve at university, reading Classics ... predominantly Latin and Ancient Greek, with an emphasis on language rather than literature, plus a module in Sanskrit and one in Philology.

    A strong interest in all things grammar, syntax and language, combined with this opportunity to study this in depth, has left me with a passion for accuracy and precision in language, as well as a love of etymology and semantics.

• Hardware

  • The Newsprint ☛ The Mode Envoy

    I don’t think you can “review” a mechanical keyboard, per se. They’re too much a sum of their parts. They’re too customizable. There’s so much you can do to make a board great. Or terrible. A great board build could be ruined by bad switches or poor keycaps. A poor build could be covered up by great keycaps or a few neat Bluetooth features.

    Said another way, the Mode Envoy in my hands may be reviewed differently by other folks.

  • Russell Coker ☛ Russell Coker: Storage Trends 2024

    It has been less than a year since my last post about storage trends [1] and enough has changed to make it worth writing again. My previous analysis was that for <2TB only SSD made sense, for 4TB SSD made sense for business use while hard drives were still a good option for home use, and for 8TB+ hard drives were clearly the best choice for most uses. I will start by looking at MSY prices, they aren't the cheapest (you can get cheaper online) but they are competitive and they make it easy to compare the different options. I'll also compare the cheapest options in each size, there are more expensive options but usually if you want to pay more then the performance benefits of SSD (both SATA and NVMe) are even more appealing. All prices are in Australian dollars and of parts that are readily available in Australia, but the relative prices of the parts are probably similar in most countries. The main issue here is when to use SSD and when to use hard disks, and then if SSD is chosen which variety to use.

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Samsung Galaxy S24 series – the bar has been set, albeit in a recycled design

    The Samsung Galaxy S24 range of smartphones was announced and it looks like they are beasts. The S24 Ultra in particular seems to have tickled many people’s fancy.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ China's chipmaking tool imports climb to $40 billion as the country chases semiconductor manufacturing self-sufficiency

    China's semiconductor tool imports increased by 14% to $40 billion as the country tries to become its own chipmaker.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Researchers demonstrate liquid metal RAM, bringing us closer to flexible, implantable hardware – and to our Terminator 2 nightmares

    Researchers from Tsinghua University in China have successfully introduced a fully-flexible liquid RAM, dubbed "FlexRAM". The future possibilities this raises include massive improvements in wearables, implants, and robotics.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • YLE ☛ Court sentences ex-vaccine chief to community service

    A leading Finnish vaccine researcher was found guilty of defrauding a university.

  • COVID-19 vaccine “shedding” might as well be homeopathy

    It’s been too short a time since I last wrote about the antivaccine myth of “shedding,” particularly in the context of COVID-19 vaccines. As you might recall, shedding is a real phenomenon, but only for vaccines made from live attenuated virus (LAV); i.e. vaccines that use a weakened version of the pathogenic virus in order to cause a harmless infection that can stimulate an immune response that protects against the fully pathogenic version of the virus causing the disease targeted. Examples of currently used LAV vaccines include vaccines against measles, mumps, rubella, rotavirus, varicella, and influenza (the intranasally administered vaccine). Because LAV vaccines contain live virus, people vaccinated with them can in some cases “shed” vaccine-strain virus for a period of time afterward. However, the “attenuated” in LAV means that this virus is attenuated, which means that infection caused by it is asymptomatic or very weakly symptomatic. In the age of the pandemic, I must admit that I was surprised when this particularly antivax myth reared its ugly head mere weeks after the mRNA-based vaccines were released, mainly because with these viruses there is no molecular or biological mechanism for “shedding” of mRNA, the spike protein it produces, or anything else to affect others. Yet the myth persists, What inspired me to write about it again after all this time was a post by an antivax quack who goes by the ‘nym A Midwestern Doctor (AMD) entitled What Is The Current Evidence for mRNA Vaccine Shedding? Even as AMD asks, “And how can you protect yourself from it?” I started to realize just how much his arguments remind me of those of homeopaths.

  • NPR ☛ Billions of cicadas will buzz this spring as two broods emerge at the same time

    "It's like a graduating class that has a reunion every 17 or 13 years," says Gene Kritsky, professor emeritus of biology at Mount St. Joseph University and author of A Tale of Two Broods: The 2024 Emergence of Periodical Cicada Broods XIII and XIX.

  • Science Alert ☛ Bird Flu Has Made a Terrifying Leap That's Devastated Argentina's Seal Populations

    Heartbreaking.

  • New Yorker ☛ When America First Dropped Acid

    Well before the hippies arrived, LSD and other hallucinogens were poised to enter the American mainstream.

  • New York Times ☛ Top Cancer Center Seeks to Retract or Correct Dozens of Studies

    A British biologist and blogger discovered faulty data in many studies conducted by top executives of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

  • Greg Morris ☛ A Bit Of Internet Silence

    This isn’t me rage-quitting micro.blog after moaning about the lack of muting, but it’s not far off. I will continue to publish in both places until I decide on what to do. I need to reassess where I want to spend my time, and the effect that this election year could have on my life. It’s already creeping into my RSS and podcast feeds; I just don’t want to see it where I hang out. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to — enjoying the silence and learning new things.

  • Greg Morris ☛ At What Point Do You Give Up?

    Don’t get me wrong, I have learned a great deal of new skills and used some of it to pass modules in my qualification. However, while messing around with micropub endpoints this morning to try to get my new thing to do exactly what the old thing does well, at some point you just give up.

  • Site36 ☛ Too much cocaine from “hinterland”: Berlin wants security partnership “from Peru to Germany”

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Preserving Mexico’s heritage and health with organic corn

    Learn more about Mexico's food heritage and be inspired by a woman who is preserving an ancient type of agriculture.

  • The Kent Stater ☛ Iran to execute protester with mental health condition on Tuesday, says lawyer

    CNN — An Iranian protester with a mental health condition will be executed on Tuesday over the death of a local official during Iran’s 2022 mass demonstrations, his lawyer Amir Raesian said Monday.

  • Pro Publica ☛ How Patients and Doctors Are Navigating the Fallout of the Philips Breathing Machine Recall

    In 2021, Philips Respironics recalled its DreamStation breathing machines, along with other sleep apnea devices and ventilators, leaving millions of customers worldwide waiting for replacements. Foam inside the machines could crumble in heat and humidity, sending potentially carcinogenic materials into the lungs of patients.

    I spent eight months making a film about this, following sleep apnea patients through airports to doctor appointments. I recorded their home lives, their bedtime routines. I tried to capture the claustrophobic details of the mask that fits tightly over the nose and mouth.

  • Science Alert ☛ Bacteria Responsible For Acne Were Genetically Modified to Treat It Instead

    Culprit turned comrade.

  • Science Alert ☛ New Antidepressant Could Restore The Body's Ability to Fight Cancer

    Mental health is just the start.

  • Federal News Network ☛ VHA launches ‘access sprints’ to offer more medical appointments to veterans

    The Veterans Health Administration is looking to raise  workforce productivity, after a record year of hiring, and increase the number of health care appointments available to patients.

  • Latvia ☛ Hospital might break ties with builder over delays and errors

    Pauls Stradiņš Clinical University Hospital (PSKUS) could terminate the contract with LLC Velve to build the new A2 hospital building because the company delays construction work and has no evidence that they can finish it, PSKUS announced on January 22.

  • In England, Over a Million People Admitted to Hospital With COVID-19 and Now the Government Shuts Down the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard

    I have only just noticed that a million English people with COVID-19 reached the hospital (probably more, but testing isn’t done much anymore)

  • A ‘Pandemic’ or Epidemic of Heart Diseases (After Botched Response to COVID-19)

  • Government Covering Up Excess Deaths (Mortality) in the UK After Poor Response to COVID-19 and Profiteering

    I am glad some people talk about this. This is worrying. They changed it from Tuesdays to Wednesdays for updates and they try to hide just how badly the COVID-19 response was and still is. Loads of people are dying; answers are not being sought.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Peak period for Covid-19 begins in Hong Kong, pandemic expert urges public to get mRNA vaccines [Ed: This seems more like proof that the vaccines did not work or barely worked; is the solution just more and more of them?]

    A pandemic expert has urged the public to get mRNA vaccines as the city sees a rise in the prevalence of Covid-19, dominated by a new variant: jn.1. Ivan Hung, chair professor of infectious diseases at the Department of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong [...]

  • Science Alert ☛ Alcohol Changes How Your Brain's Genes Work. Changing Them Back May Fight Addiction.

    It's not just alcohol, either.

  • Science Alert ☛ Intermittent Fasting Does Work For Weight Loss – But Only if You Follow This Rule

    It's not a "free pass".

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • CNBC ☛ Tencent's Riot Games division cuts 11% of staff to 'create focus' [Ed: Collapses are "focus", spin from Microsoft's propagandist/media mole Jordan Novet]

    Tencent’s Riot Games is cutting back headcount for the Legends of Runeterra game.

  • TikTok Lays Off Around 60 Employees to Cut Costs

    TikTok is one of the most popular apps today and is used by over 150 million people all over the world. This makes its parent company, ByteDance, among the most successful companies when it comes to social media.

    However, that does not save it from the turbulence in the tech sector. In order to cut costs, approximately 60 employees will be laid off by the social media giant. The divisions that were most affected were sales and advertising, according to NPR.

    The number of laid-off staff, while unfortunate, is small compared to the total number of employees that TikTok has. In the US alone, there are around 7,000 employees. Globally, TikTok employs over 150,000 people.

  • Tracy Durnell ☛ Bottomless graphics

    It seems ironic that even as smart phones have made photography accessible to most people, allowing the average person to take more photos in a week than they might have in a year with film cameras, as well as access to huge free, attribution-licensed photo libraries from all those other photographers on Flickr, Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons, etc, people still “need” to generate AI graphics for their email newsletter or blog 🙄 Bottomless photos weren’t enough; now everything else must be bottomless too.

  • NVISO Labs ☛ Is the Google search bar enough to [breach] Belgian companies?

    In this blog post, we will go over a technique called Google Dorking and demonstrate how it can be utilized to uncover severe security vulnerabilities in web applications hosted right here in Belgium, where NVISO was founded. The inspiration for this security research arose from the observation that many large organizations have fallen victim to severe security breaches, with the perpetrators often being individuals under the age of 18. A recent incident involved an 18-year-old hacker who managed to infiltrate Rockstar Games using just a hotel TV, a cellphone, and an Amazon Fire Stick while under police protection. This can be caused by two possibilities: either these young cybercriminals possess exceptional talent and skills, which we are certain of, and/or the importance of cybersecurity is not being sufficiently prioritized yet by many organizations.

  • El País ☛ Beware of ChatGPT’s evil twin and other generative AI dangers

    The more convincing a scam, the higher the likelihood of success. Some use AI to synthesize audio. “The ‘pig butchering’ crypto scam may eventually transition from messages to calls, boosting its effectiveness,” said Anaya. This scam got its name because criminals “fatten up” the victims by gaining their trust, and then steal everything they have. While commonly associated with cryptocurrencies, the scam can also be applied to other financial transactions.

  • [Repeat] The Register UK ☛ OpenAI bans long-shot presidential candidate bot for breaking T&Cs

    Dean.bot appeared online last week as the brainchild of a political action committee (PAC) with ties to Silicon Valley called "We Deserve Better" that reportedly formed in November of last year. The bot was created by Delphi, an AI startup focused on mimicking the opinions and speech of real people.

  • International Business Times ☛ OpenAI Bans Developer Of Bot That Impersonated US Congressman Dean Phillips

    The bot was backed by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Matt Krisiloff and Jed Somers. The duo started a super PAC called We Deserve Better to support Phillips ahead of the impending New Hampshire primary.

    The PAC had reportedly received $1 million (£0.79 million) from hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who was willing to invest in Elon Musk-led X through his SPARC (special purpose acquisition rights company) structure last year.

  • Futurism ☛ AI Customer Service Bot Disabled After Trashing Company Using It

    The UK-based package delivery service DPD has disabled parts of its AI chatbot service after the bot was caught swearing at customers and even insulting DPD, multiple outlets have reported.

    DPD's trouble began late last week when a musician named Ashley Beauchamp took to X-formerly-Twitter to share his bizarre experience with the AI-powered bot. As Beauchamp explained to The Guardian, he was trying to track down a lost package — but as the musician's screenshots of his conversation with the bot show, it seems that the AI was woefully ill-equipped to help with the basic customer service query. The AI explained that it had no way to access Beauchamp's order information, and then, after Beauchamp asked to speak to a human, it said it didn't have a way to reach anyone.

  • Wired ☛ Apple Shares the Secret of Why the 40-Year-Old Mac Still Rules

    That legacy has been long-lasting. For the first half of its existence, the Mac occupied only a slice of the market, even as it inspired so many rivals; now it’s a substantial chunk of PC sales. Even within the Apple juggernaut, $30 billion isn’t chicken feed! What’s more, when people think of PCs these days, many will envision a Macintosh. More often than not, the open laptops populating coffee shops and tech company workstations beam out glowing Apples from their covers. Apple claims that its Macbook Air is the world’s best-selling computer model. One 2019 survey reported that more than two-thirds of all college students prefer a Mac. And Apple has relentlessly improved the product, whether with the increasingly slim profile of the iMac or the 22-hour battery life of the Macbook Pro. Moreover, the Mac is still a thing. Chromebooks and Surface PCs come and go, but Apple’s creation remains the pinnacle of PC-dom. “It’s not a story of nostalgia, or history passing us by,” says Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in a rare on-the-record interview with five Apple executives involved in its Macintosh operation. “The fact we did this for 40 years is unbelievable.”

  • Digital Trends ☛ 40 years ago, Apple’s original Macintosh started a revolution

    Back to the Macintosh story, Apple’s budget model challenged the IBM PC’s 8/16-bit Intel 8088 chip with a Motorola 68000 processor, a 16/32-bit chip that could handle twice as much data in a single instruction. The differences were stark at the surface as well. The Macintosh was tiny compared to an IBM PC and the computer’s motherboard and a floppy disk drive were built into the same case as its small, but sharp, black and white monitor, making for a small footprint on a desk. This was an important consideration at a time when desks weren’t designed for computers.

    The most important difference was the mouse and graphical user interface which made a computer much easier for anyone to learn to use. Apple didn’t invent this concept that was developed at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The Macintosh was, however, the computer that took this idea out of the lab and demonstrated that this should be the way of the future.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Forty Years Ago, the Mac Triggered a Revolution in User Experience

    It turns out that designing for usability, efficiency, accessibility, elegance and delight pays off. Apple’s market capitalization is now over $2.8 trillion, and its brand is every bit associated with the term “design” as the best New York or Milan fashion houses are. Apple turned technology into fashion, and it did it through user experience.

    It began with the Macintosh.

  • India Times ☛ Fit at 40: the revolutionary Apple Mac in numbers

    Jobs, playing the showman inventor to perfection in a black suit and silver bow tie, opened a zipper bag in an auditorium in Cupertino, California, on January 24, 1984, and lifted out a lightweight computer that not only operated at the click of a button but also, thrillingly, talked.

    Here is a look back at Apple's revolutionary machine in numbers.

  • Vice Media Group ☛ ‘Palworld’ Is Tearing the Internet Apart

    Palworld is made by a company called Pocketpair, not Nintendo, and it’s not an officially licensed Pokémon game. But that may be hard to tell because Palworld’s monsters are all thinly veiled reproductions of the beloved pocket monsters. That hasn’t mattered to players. The dream of putting a minigun in the hands of a creature that looks like Raichu—but isn’t quite Raichu—has been popular. Despite the game being sold in early access, meaning it's unfinished, players have flocked to it in droves and the game has been well reviewed across the internet.

  • Hundreds of Layoffs by Google, Amazon, and Meta in Just Weeks

    With massive layoffs that devastated the tech sector, 2023 started badly. Google, Microsoft, Meta, and numerous other industry titans let thousands of employees go as part of their reorganisation and cost-cutting initiatives. The earthquakes were felt all year round and continued until 2024.

    January is only halfway through, and there have already been several layoffs. Employers such as Google, Meta, Amazon, Discord, and many more have announced new layoffs affecting hundreds of workers in various departments. The recent layoffs are not large-scale but noteworthy enough to raise concerns about potential future mass layoffs.

  • Tencent’s Riot Games Layoffs 11% of Staff or About 530 Jobs

    The company said that the decision is not to “appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number”.

    “It’s a necessity. Over the past few years, as Riot more than doubled in headcount, we spread our efforts across more and more projects without sharp enough razors to decide what players needed most,” Riot Games said.

    “We’re changing some of the bets we’ve made and shifting how we work across the company to create focus and move us toward a more sustainable future,” Riot CEO Dylan Jadeja told employees in a letter published on the company’s blog.

  • Riot Games layoff wave will hit 530 people

    In the wake of the Riot Games layoff announcement, the company is facing a critical juncture, as it eliminates approximately 11 percent of its global workforce, amounting to 530 positions.

  • GeekWire ☛ Walmart lays off 62 people in Seattle area as part of innovation unit shutdown

    Walmart is laying off 62 corporate workers in Washington state as part of the closure of Store No8, its innovation-related business unit.

    A new filing with the Washington state Employment Security Department posted Monday shows 62 workers being laid off Feb. 9 due to an office closure in Redmond, Wash.

    A Walmart spokesperson confirmed that the layoffs are related to the shutdown of Store No8.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ AI Bots on X (Twitter)

    You can find them by searching for Proprietary Chaffbot Company chatbot warning messages, like: “I’m sorry, I cannot provide a response as it goes against OpenAI’s use case policy.”

    I hadn’t thought about this before: identifying bots by searching for distinctive bot phrases.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • India Times ☛ US SEC blames 'SIM swapping' for its X account hack

      SIM swapping is a technique in which attackers gain control of a telephone number by having it reassigned to a new device.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ SEC blames sim-swapping, lack of MFA for X account hijacking

      Sim-swapping involves gaining control of a cellular phone number by convincing a mobile carrier to transfer a number to a sim card controlled by the attacker. Once the attacker controls the victim’s phone number, they can use that phone number to reset the password of accounts belonging to the victim.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Passwords are on the way out – good riddance to them

      Biometrics such as facial recognition, fingerprint scans, iris scans and voice verification are leading the password-less revolution. But Dilenea research shows that multifactor authentication, one-time passwords, “magic links” and passkeys are also seeing increasing adoption rates among organisations.

    • EFF ☛ Tools to Protect Your Privacy Online | EFFector 36.1

      EFFector 36.1 is out now—you can read the full newsletter here, or subscribe to get the next issue in your inbox automatically! You can also listen to the audio version of the newsletter below:

    • WhichUK ☛ Which? Get Answers podcast: are smartwatches & health trackers fit for purpose? [Ed: Surveillance 24/7 spun as fitness/health/safety]

      We explore whether smart tech can help improve your fitness

• Defence/Aggression

  • Democracy Now ☛ “American Fascism”: Historian Rick Perlstein on Trump’s Grip on the GOP & Chances of a Second Jan. 6

    We look at the state of the Republican Party after Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s announcement Sunday that he has suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed Donald Trump to be the Republican Party’s 2024 nominee, making it a two-person race between Trump and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. With the pivotal New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, we speak with author Rick Perlstein, a historian of the modern conservative movement, who describes Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party as “American fascism.” He says regardless of how many votes Trump gets, the real question is how his extremist supporters will respond. “The horse race doesn’t matter if the guys in the MAGA hats blow up the track,” says Perlstein.

  • New York Times ☛ Bali Bombers May Return to Malaysia After Sentencing

    The two prisoners have admitted to conspiring with an affiliate of Al Qaeda that carried out a deadly bombing in Indonesia two decades ago.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Bali bombers may return to Malaysia after sentencing

    It was through a secret agreement that was negotiated with a senior Trump-era official.

  • Gizmodo ☛ TikTok AutoScroll Means You Don't Even Have to Move Your Lazy Fingers Anymore

    There’s no official word about the feature from TikTok, but the app dolled out AutoScroll to some users in early 2023, and reports on social media suggest it hit a larger batch of accounts over the past few weeks. TikTok didn’t answer Gizmodo’s questions about AutoScroll’s status.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ A record 6 Chinese balloons detected around Taiwan, island’s defence ministry says

    The defence ministry, which releases daily data on China’s military presence around Taiwan, said the balloons were all spotted on Sunday at an altitude from 15,000 feet to 17,000 feet.

  • India Times ☛ TikTok lays off employees to reduce costs: report

    The job cuts happened mostly in the sales and advertising division, according to a company spokesperson.

    The affected employees worked in Los Angeles, New York, Austin and some at global locations, reports NPR, which said 60 employees were being asked to go.

  • NPR ☛ TikTok cuts jobs as tech layoffs continue to mount

    While TikTok's ties to ByteDance have for years kept the service in the crosshairs of officials in Washington over national security fears, its growth has been immense.

    The company says it has more than 150 million active users in the U.S. And at $225 billion, ByteDance is estimated to be the most valuable private company in the world.

  • Futurism ☛ Experts Terrified by Mark Zuckerberg's Human-Tier AI Plans

    Last week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that he's going to purchase hundreds of thousands of expensive AI processing chips — and experts are mighty worried about what he plans to use them for.

    In the same Instagram post announcing his planned purchase of 350,000 Nvidia's H100 graphics chips, which average about $30,000 apiece and are considered the gold standard for powering AI models, Zuckerberg said that he wants to build an open-source artificial AGI, the industry term for the point at which AI reaches or even surpasses human-level intelligence.

  • France24 ☛ US and UK launch new round of strikes against Houthi sites in Yemen

    The U.S. and British militaries bombed multiple targets in eight locations used by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen on Monday night, the second time the two allies have conducted coordinated retaliatory strikes on an array of the rebels' missile-launching capabilities.

  • RFERL ☛ U.S., U.K. Launch New Strikes On Multiple Huthi Sites In Yemen

    The U.S. and British militaries bombed multiple targets in eight locations used by the Iranian-backed Huthis in Yemen on the night of January 22, the second time the two allies have conducted coordinated retaliatory strikes on an array of the rebels' missile-launching capabilities.

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. and U.K. Strike Iran-backed Houthi Sites in Yemen

    The strikes against eight sites come as the Iran-backed militant group remains defiant and the region teeters on the edge of a wider war.

  • RFERL ☛ Protesters In Iraqi Kurdistan Condemn Deadly Iranian Strikes

    Protesters in Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdistan have condemned last week’s strikes on Irbil by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

  • NYPost ☛ Google engineer was ‘quiet and staring blankly’ at dinner before allegedly beating wife to death: report

    The couple's friend told police that he was worried over the "noticeable change in Chen's demeanor" ahead of the murder.

  • New York Times ☛ Israel’s Treatment of Gaza Detainees Raises Alarm

    A U.N. office said Israel’s detention and treatment of detainees might amount to torture. It estimated thousands had been detained and held in “horrific” conditions. Some were freed wearing only diapers.

  • RFA ☛ North Korea urges mothers to snitch on their kids who watch South Korean media

    The government has offered forgiveness to teens whose mothers report on their ‘anti-socialist’ actions.

  • RFA ☛ Seoul doubts North Korea's underwater nuclear test

    Pyongyang claimed it had conducted the test last week

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Newsweek ☛ Putin's Decree Triggers Ominous Alaska Calls

      The Institute for the Study of War noted that the "exact parameters of what constitutes current or historical Russian property are unclear." Newsweek has contacted the Kremlin by email to request comment.

    • Latvia ☛ Government urges businesses to stop Russian LPG imports

      The Latvian government is urging companies to end Russian petroleum gas imports as soon as possible and to adapt in time to the expected sanctions, Prime Minister Evika Siliņa (New Unity) said on Monday, January 22, after the ruling coalition party meeting.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvia's NATO ambassador: 1% war chance is enough to be prepared

      Public opinion is often heard that war with Russia is imminent in the future, but NATO's policy of deterrence is aimed directly at preventing a potential war. Even a 1% possibility of war is enough to prepare for its prevention, Latvian Ambassador to NATO Māris Riekstiņš said in an interview with Latvian Television on January 22.

    • Latvia ☛ LTV's De Facto looks at Latvia's petroleum gas imports from Russia

      Although statistics for December are not yet available, it is clear that Latvian imports from Russia exceeded half a billion euros last year. The largest section is not much-discussed grains, which mostly do not remain in Latvia, but mineral products, especially liquefied petroleum gas, Latvian Television's De Facto reported on January 21.

    • LRT ☛ Baltics agree on common defence line on Russia, Belarus borders

      Baltic states on Friday signed an agreement to create a common defence line on their borders with Russia and Belarus, Lithuania’s Defence Ministry said.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Regulator Says Fashion Company Apple Paid $13.6 Million Fine

      Apple paid a 1.2 billion-ruble ($13.6 million) fine to the Russian government over Moscow's claims that the U.S. tech giant abused its dominant position in the mobile app market, the country's competition watchdog said.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Lawmakers To Discuss Bill On Confiscating Property Of Those Convicted Of Distributing 'False' Information About Military

      Russia's parliament began considering a draft bill on January 22 that would give the state the power to seize the property of people convicted for defaming the armed forces or for calling publicly for actions that undermine state security.

    • Meduza ☛ Russian lawmakers introduce bill enabling asset seizure for convictions related to ‘fake news’ about Russian army — Meduza

    • RFERL ☛ Kremlin-Friendly Russian Journalist Banned From Entering Kazakhstan Over Online Post

      Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Aibek Smadiyarov said on January 22 that Kremlin-friendly Russian journalist Tina Kandelaki has been banned from entering the country over a post she made online, alleging that the Russian language was being discriminated against in the Central Asian nation.

    • RFERL ☛ Navalny Back In Russian Solitary Confinement Again

      Associates of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny say the outspoken Kremlin critic was placed in punitive solitary confinement for 10 days for "failing to promptly introduce himself to a prison guard."

    • The Straits Times ☛ Australian spy agencies say Russian citizen behind cyber attack

      Australia has named the individual believed responsible: Aleksandr Gennadievich Ermakov.

    • RFERL ☛ Trial In Absentia Of Former Belarusian Police Starts In Minsk

      The trial in absentia of six former law enforcement officers who left Belarus after taking the side of protesters in 2020 challenging the official results of a presidential election that named authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka the winner began behind closed doors on January 22.

    • Latvia ☛ Contraband cigarettes seized on Belarus border

      The Customs Administration of the State Revenue Service (VID) has found a total of 23,830 packs of cigarettes (476,600 cigarettes) hidden in wagons with loads of dry milk and corn grains on the border of Latvia with Belarus during recent days, VID confirmed January 23.

    • Meduza ☛ Kazakhstan to ban Russian TV executive from country in response to Telegram post about train station name changes

      In a response to Kandelaki’s second post, former Kazakhstani lawmaker Bekbolat Tleuhan called her statements a “deliberate provocation” and said they were an insult to the Kazakh people. “Every country has the right to decide for itself what names to give its train stations, streets, and cities,” he added.

    • AntiWar ☛ To End the War in Ukraine, Expose Its Core Lie

      The essential argument used to avoid negotiation and continue support for the war in Ukraine is based on a falsehood. That falsehood, repeated by President Joe Biden, is that when Vladimir Putin decided to invade, he intended to conquer all of Ukraine and “annihilate” it.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Ukraine’s Black Sea success exposes folly of West’s “don’t escalate” mantra

      Ukraine's remarkable success during 2023 in the Battle of the Black Sea can serve as a blueprint for victory over Putin's Russia, writes Peter Dickinson.

    • YLE ☛ Russian speakers hold dual demonstrations in Helsinki

      The two events included an anti-Putin protest.

    • Meduza ☛ Navalny supporters hold ‘Russia Without Putin’ demonstrations around world — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ The low expectations of Boris Nadezhdin: A Putin challenger’s anti-war message has thousands of Russians lining up to support him. What’s the catch? — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin gathers over 100,000 signatures in support of candidacy, says many ‘imperfect’ and could be challenged — Meduza

    • New York Times ☛ Russian Celebrities Caught ‘Almost Naked’ Are Now Dressing to Appease

      President Vladimir Putin derided those “jumping around without pants,” at a party, while some guests have tried to make amends through donations and adopting a cat.

    • Latvia ☛ Wounded Latvian soldier to be brought home from Ukraine

      A call for help recently went round social control media – a Latvian who's been injured while fighting for Ukraine needed help to get home. The society "Mūsu ligzda" ('Our Nest') has accumulated the resources and will go pick him up on Tuesday, Latvian Radio reports.

    • The Strategist ☛ Small, cheap and numerous: a military revolution is upon us

      Armed forces usually adapt slowly in peacetime, resisting change. Well, only the most hidebound will be ignoring the revolution in military affairs under way in Ukraine and the Red Sea.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Three Seas Initiative leaders on European connectivity and Ukraine’s reconstruction

      Central and Eastern European leaders discussed the Initiative's efforts to attract investment, as well as Ukraine's potential membership.

    • Meduza ☛ Russian forces launch missiles at Kyiv and Kharkiv, reportedly killing three, trapping others under rubble — Meduza

    • Atlantic Council ☛ How Ukraine can rebuild in partnership with the Three Seas Initiative, according to leaders at Davos

      Officials and business leaders discussed how the Three Seas Initiative can support Ukraine’s reconstruction.

    • France24 ☛ Deadly Russian missile strikes hit Kyiv and Kharkiv

      Russia unleashed a mass air strike on Ukraine on Tuesday, local officials said, killing at least four people and wounding more than 60 others.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ How Ukraine can rebuild in partnership with the Three Seas Initiative, according to leaders at Davos

      Officials and business leaders discussed how the Three Seas Initiative can support Ukraine’s reconstruction.

    • France24 ☛ Deadly Russian missile strikes hit Kyiv and Kharkiv

      Russia unleashed a mass air strike on Ukraine on Tuesday, local officials said, killing at least four people and wounding more than 60 others.

    • France24 ☛ Schools in Ukraine's Kharkiv go underground amid Russian bombardments

      Since the start of the year, Russia has been increasing its strikes on Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city. After almost two years of war, the city's inhabitants have been adapting to their new way of life across all areas. School, for instance, has been held almost exclusively online as many buildings have been destroyed and are seen as potential targets, while in-person classes are now being held underground in the city's metro stations.

    • France24 ☛ UN panel to grill Russia on fate of thousands of ‘evacuated’ Ukrainian children

      Moscow will be asked to explain at the UN on Monday what has happened to thousands of Ukrainian children believed to have been forcibly sent to Russia since its 2022 invasion.

    • RFERL ☛ NATO Signs 1.1 Billion-Euro Contract For Artillery Ammunition

      NATO has signed a 1.1 billion-euro ($1.2 billion) contract for 155 mm artillery ammunition, the alliance said, with part of the shells to be supplied to Ukraine after complaints a shortage of munitions was hampering its war efforts.

    • RFERL ☛ Several Killed, Wounded In Wave Of Russian Missile Attacks On Ukrainian Cities

      A Russian missile strike on Ukraine's capital early on January 23 has wounded at least one person, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram, adding that three districts -- Pechersk, Svyatoshynsk, and Solomyansk -- were targeted.

    • RFERL ☛ At UN Security Council, Russia Rules Out Any Peace Plan Backed By Kyiv, West

      Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on January 22 clashed with Ukraine's supporters at a UN meeting in which Moscow ruled out any peace plan backed by Kyiv and the West.

    • RFERL ☛ Poland Preparing New Defense Package For Ukraine, Zelenskiy Says, As Warsaw, Kyiv Work To 'Reset' Relations

      Poland is planning a new defense package for Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on January 22 after a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in which they pledged to tackle political disputes that have caused bilateral friction amid Russia’s full-scale invasion.

    • RFERL ☛ Borrell Says EU Needs To Do 'More And Faster' To Support Ukraine

      EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said EU foreign ministers agreed during a meeting in Brussels on January 22 that now is not the time to reduce aid to Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia Blames Ukraine For Gas Depot Blaze

      The Kremlin has blamed Ukraine for a blaze at a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the Russian Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga that broke out on January 21.

    • teleSUR ☛ Ukrainian Shelling of Donetsk Market Is Terrorism: Kremlin

      "The Kiev regime continues to show its ferocious face," the Russian Presidency spokesman said.

    • The Straits Times ☛ NATO signs 1.1 billion euro contract for 155mm artillery ammunition

      NATO has signed a 1.1 billion euro contract for 155mm artillery ammunition, the alliance said on Tuesday, with part of the shells to be supplied to Ukraine after complaints a shortage of munitions was hampering its war efforts.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Gratitude as a global change agent

      Ukraine’s leader has learned that being grateful for foreign aid helps bring more aid. On other global issues, appreciation of progress has opened windows.

    • New York Times ☛ Tuesday Briefing: North Korean Missiles in Ukraine

      Plus, a “revolutionary” way to feed the world.

    • New York Times ☛ North Korean Missiles in Ukraine Prompt New Concerns

      As the war approaches its second anniversary, the Russians are beginning to deploy North Korean arms, worsening Ukraine’s troubles while it still awaits new air defenses from the United States.

    • France24 ☛ Kyiv and Kharkiv bear brunt of deadly Russian air strike on Ukraine

      Russia unleashed a mass air strike on Ukraine on Tuesday, local officials said, killing at least four people and wounding more than 60 others.

    • Meduza ☛ E.U. to consider creating new Ukraine military fund to release over $20 billion in aid, WSJ says — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ E.U. foreign ministers agree to use revenues from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine, says E.U. foreign policy chief — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Zelensky signs decree on Russian territories ‘historically inhabited by Ukrainians,’ introduces bill on multiple citizenship — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ The art of resistance A Russian theater director on trial for her work addressed the judge in verse. Hear her fellow artists’ haunting rendition of her speech. — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Apple pays fine of over $13 million to Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian authorities report 220 attacks on enlistment offices and 184 railway sabotage attempts since full-scale war began — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Here’s how Russia plans to seize the property of anti-war activists and other supposed public enemies — Meduza

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Scientists warn missing Russian data causing Arctic climate blind spots

    Russia represents almost half the landmass of the entire Arctic region, creating a massive information gap, said lead author Efren Lopez-Blanco, of Aarhus University, who led the study published in Nature Climate Change.

    Researchers sought to quantify just how much of an impact this has had on scientific understanding of the changes taking place in the Arctic.

  • NPR ☛ Could Champagne soon stop producing champagne?

    "By 2050, we're looking at about 85% of the lands that we grow good wine grapes on, actually no longer producing suitable wine grapes" Jasmine Spiess, the company's head of wine and events, told NPR's Morning Edition.

  • [Old] PNAS ☛ Diversity buffers winegrowing regions from climate change losses

    Agrobiodiversity—the variation within agricultural plants, animals, and practices—is often suggested as a way to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on crops [S. A. Wood et al., Trends Ecol. Evol. 30, 531–539 (2015)]. Recently, increasing research and attention has focused on exploiting the intraspecific genetic variation within a crop [Hajjar et al., Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 123, 261–270 (2008)], despite few relevant tests of how this diversity modifies agricultural forecasts. Here, we quantify how intraspecific diversity, via cultivars, changes global projections of growing areas. We focus on a crop that spans diverse climates, has the necessary records, and is clearly impacted by climate change: winegrapes (predominantly Vitis vinifera subspecies vinifera). We draw on long-term French records to extrapolate globally for 11 cultivars (varieties) with high diversity in a key trait for climate change adaptation—phenology. We compared scenarios where growers shift to more climatically suitable cultivars as the climate warms or do not change cultivars. We find that cultivar diversity more than halved projected losses of current winegrowing areas under a 2 °C warming scenario, decreasing areas lost from 56 to 24%. These benefits are more muted at higher warming scenarios, reducing areas lost by a third at 4 °C (85% versus 58%). Our results support the potential of in situ shifting of cultivars to adapt agriculture to climate change—including in major winegrowing regions—as long as efforts to avoid higher warming scenarios are successful.

  • [Old] Down to Earth ☛ Heritage erased: How the Kashmir Valley’s ancient mound formations are being levelled

    Despite its agricultural and archaeological importance, karewas are now being excavated to be used in construction. Between 1995 and 2005, massive portions of karewas in Pulwama, Budgam and Baramulla districts were razed to the ground for clay for the 125-km-long Qazigund-Baramulla rail line.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Death toll in China landslide rises to 20 as rescuers continue search for missing people [Latest]

    At least 47 people from 18 households were reported missing, of which 20 were confirmed dead.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Death toll in China landslide rises to 11, rescuers still search for missing [Older]

    The death toll from a landslide in China's Yunnan province rose to 11 on Tuesday as rescue workers battled freezing temperatures and snow to locate dozens of missing people.

  • New York Times ☛ Landslide in Southern China Buries Dozens and Sends Hundreds Fleeing

    At least 11 people died, and several dozen were under the rubble, the state media reported.

  • Meduza ☛ Magnitude 6.7 earthquake strikes near border of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and China — Meduza

  • RFERL ☛ Strong Earthquake Centered Near China-Kyrgyzstan Border Felt Across Central Asia

    A major earthquake followed by a series of aftershocks struck early on January 23 along the China-Kyrgyzstan border, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported, warning of potentially widespread damage.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Major 7.0-magnitude earthquake hits China-Kyrgyzstan border

    Local TV channels in the Indian capital New Delhi reported strong tremors in the city, about 1,400km away.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Marine Animals Are Feeling the Heat From Ocean Warming

    • Science Alert ☛ Most Animals Have a 24-Hour Body Clock. This Beetle Breaks All The Rules.

      Dancing to a different tune.

    • Science Alert ☛ Growing Fruit And Veg In Urban Farms Isn't The Green Choice We Imagine

      But it could be.

• Finance

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia considers legal proceedings against foreign banks linked to 1MDB graft

    They did not conduct proper due diligence before facilitating fund transfers, Malaysia said.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Wife of Malaysia’s former finance minister charged with failing to disclose assets

    If found guilty, she faces a maximum prison term of five years and a hefty fine.

  • uni Emory ☛ A New Currency for a New Age: The Advent of China’s Digital Yuan

    China’s digital yuan, often referred to as the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), is poised to revolutionize the landscape of global finance. Unlike cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, the digital yuan is issued and controlled by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), making it the world’s first sovereign digital currency.

  • GNOME ☛ Ronald Bultje: Taxes and section 174

    7 years since my last post (2017!), so many exciting things to talk about: the AV1 video codec was released, we at Two Orioles wrote an AV1 encoder (Eve) and decoder (dav1d). Covid happened. I became a US citizen. Happily married for 15 years. My two boys are now teenagers (and behaving like it). So, let’s talk about … taxes?

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Verge ☛ Riot Games cuts more than 500 jobs

    After last year saw over 9,000 layoffs in the video game industry, 2024 is continuing the trend, and League of Legends maker Riot Games is the latest example. On Monday night, the company announced that “we are refocusing on fewer, high-impact projects to move us toward a more sustainable future,” which means eliminating roles for 530 people globally, or about 11 percent of its total workforce.

  • 404 Media ☛ Wikimedia's Pornographers

  • New Yorker ☛ Pramila Jayapal on Biden’s Fragile Coalition

    The chair of the powerful Congressional Progressive Caucus looks at whether President Biden can put the Democratic Party back together again in time to achieve victory in the 2024 election.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Gizmodo ☛ Deepfake Dirty Tricks Descend on New Hampshire Ahead of Primary

      White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed that the recording of the phone call is fake at a Monday briefing, but declined to comment in detail as an investigation is ongoing.

      Jean-Pierre noted the White House expects deepfakes to be an ongoing problem. “We have to be mindful. There are gonna be deep fakes,” Jean-Pierre said. “That’s why the president has taken this very seriously over the last couple of years here.”

    • RFA ☛ Brainwashing still a global threat, new book on China says

      Brainwashing the public through mass propaganda campaigns by the Chinese Communist Party and other authoritarian regimes is a global threat, according to political scholars who recently published a new book on the topic.

      The book, "Brainwashing in Mao's China and Beyond," takes an in-depth look, through the lenses of political science, sociology and international relations, at the kind of "cognitive warfare" waged by the Communist Party from the Mao era onwards, co-editor Xia Ming told RFA in an interview on Monday.

    • LRT ☛ Up to 300,000 Lithuanian citizens may live in Russian disinformation field – study

      The Lithuanians are often praised for their support for Ukraine, but a significant share of the population holds different beliefs. The second Lithuanian Democracy Sustainability Barometer, published by the Eastern Europe Studies Centre (EESC), shows that up to 300,000 people in the country may live in the Russian disinformation field.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Have We Hit Peak TikTok? Report Suggests Slowing Usage Amid Data Concerns and Regulatory Scrutiny

      Have we finally hit peak TikTok? After years of rapid growth – and billions of reported users – for the controversial app, consumption stats suggest that usage could be slowing. The underlying data, sourced from Sensor Tower, entered the media spotlight in a recent report from TechCrunch. According to the outlet’s analysis,

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Project Censored ☛ The Project Censored Newsletter—January 2024

    The yearbook’s editors, Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff, have been guests on several news and public affairs programs. Huff joined John Fugelsang on Tell Me Everything (at 46:30 of the episode) to discuss how to hold corporate news media accountable; Roth discussed some of the year’s most important but under-reported news stories with Michael Welch on The Global Research New Hour. Andrew Keen interviewed Roth for the Keen On podcast. And Kevin Gosztola hosted Huff and Roth on Unauthorized Disclosure. Truthout published an interview by Peter Handel with Roth and Huff discussing the new book and the Project’s longtime mission of fighting censorship and advocating for critical media literacy.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong woman given suspended sentence over reposting call to boycott ‘patriots’ District Council election

    A 51-year-old woman has received a suspended sentence over reposting an ex-politician’s call to boycott the “patriots-only” District Council Election last December. Yeung Sze-wing on Monday pleaded guilty to breaching Hong Kong’s elections law before Magistrate Ivy Chui at the Eastern Magistrates’ Courts, according to local media reports.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Research warns that North Korean threat group is targeting media organizations

    For its attack path, ScarCruft was found to use oversized Windows Shortcut (LNK) files that initiate multi-stage infection chains delivering RokRAT, a custom-written backdoor associated with a threat group of the same name. RokRAT is a backdoor equipped with capabilities that enable its operators to conduct effective surveillance on targeted entities. In an attempt to execute undetected, the infection chains involve multiple executable formats and evasion techniques.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian journalist whose home address was posted online by lawmaker says she has left country ‘until better times come’

    Kazantseva said she’s relocated to Tbilisi in response to growing pressure and harassment from the Russian authorities and state-controlled media as well as the repeated cancellations of her public lectures, which she said will jeopardize her ability to earn a living if it continues. In the lead-up to Russia’s upcoming presidential election, she added, the Kremlin wants to “clear its information space of undesirable elements as much as possible.”

  • RFERL ☛ Taliban Enforcing Restrictions On Single, Unaccompanied Afghan Women, UN Says

    The Taliban is restricting Afghan women's access to work, travel, and health care if they are unmarried or don't have a male guardian, according to a UN report published on January 22.

  • CPJ ☛ Taliban detains Ehsan Akbari, Afghan journalist with Japan’s Kyodo News

    On January 17, the Taliban’s Government Media Information Center (GMIC) summoned Akbari, the assistant bureau chief of Japanese media outlet Kyodo News, to their office in the capital, Kabul, and officials from the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) agency detained the journalist and took him to an undisclosed location, according to news reports and a Kyodo News representative who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, as they did not have permission to speak publicly.

  • Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ U.S.: Impose Khashoggi Ban Sanctions on Head of Saudi Counterterrorism Court Awadh al-Ahmari

    The organization presented details of how al-Ahmari helped conceal evidence from the Turkish authorities in the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018, leading to the exoneration of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and other high-level Saudi officials. It also provided evidence of al-Ahmari's role as the Head of the SCC in targeting family members of peaceful dissidents abroad, such as Mohammed al-Ghamdi, brother of Saudi dissident cleric Dr. Saied al-Ghamdi in self-exile in the UK.

  • RFA ☛ Jailed Vietnamese activist beaten until he ‘coughed blood’

    Vietnamese prisoner of conscience Nguyen Nhu Phuong has claimed he was beaten by detention center guards after getting in a row with the warden over a missing gift from his family, his mother told Radio Free Asia this week.

  • EFF ☛ The PRESS Act Will Protect Journalists When They Need It Most

    To fix this, we need to change the law. Now, we’ve got our best chance in years. The House of Representatives has passed the Protect Reporters from Exploitive State Spying (PRESS) Act, H.R. 4250, and it’s one of the strongest federal shield bills for journalists we’ve seen. 

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • teleSUR ☛ German Railway Workers to Strike on Wednesday

    Deutsche Bahn expects massive disruptions during this strike as the planned emergency service only ensures a very limited train service.

  • New York Times ☛ Cal State Professors Reach Tentative Deal to End Strike

    Faculty members and other academic workers in the nation’s largest public university system walked out on Monday just as classes were scheduled to begin at many campuses.

  • New Yorker ☛ “The Runaway Princesses,” Episode 1: Sisters

    Why the daughters of the ruler of Dubai decided to escape his control.

  • New Yorker ☛ “The Runaway Princesses,” Episode 2: Escape

    After Princess Shamsa was caught trying to flee her father, Princess Latifa decided to make her own attempt.

  • New Yorker ☛ “The Runaway Princesses,” Episode 3: A Nice Lunch

    Aboard a yacht in the Arabian Sea, Latifa was briefly free. Then commandos stormed the boat.

  • New Yorker ☛ “The Runaway Princesses,” Episode 4: Hostage

    Latifa was captured and returned to Dubai. Secret recordings shed light on her desperate fate.

  • New Yorker ☛ “The Runaway Princesses,” a New Yorker Podcast, Exposes the Plight of Dubai’s Royal Women

    A four-episode narrative series, from In the Dark, examines why the daughters of the emirate’s ruler have risked their lives to run away. Subscribers get early, ad-free access.

  • YLE ☛ Daycare centres in Helsinki region to close for two days as strikes spread

    The walkout will affect the operations of daycare centres in the capital area on 31 January and 1 February.

  • The Hill ☛ Cal State faculty start strike at largest US public university system

    University professors, counselors, librarians, lecturers and coaches at the system’s 23 campuses, members of the California Faculty Association union, staged a five-day walkout over demands for higher wages and benefits. The union has 29,000 Cal State members.

  • California Faculty Association ☛ CFA Members’ Historic Systemwide Strike Begins Monday

    “In recent news reports, CSU management has only addressed our conflict over salary; they have completely ignored the issues of workload, health and safety concerns, and parental leave. Management wouldn’t even consider our proposals for appropriate class sizes, proper lactation spaces for nursing parents, gender inclusive bathroom spaces, and a clear delineation of our rights when interacting with campus authorities,” said Chris Cox, CFA Vice President of Racial & Social Justice, North, and San José State Lecturer.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ MIT study shows AI is still too costly to replace most human workers

    At least, that was the takeaway from a new study authored by five Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers titled Beyond AI Exposure. The study took a deep dive into the practicalities of implementing AI systems to replace human labor in various industries, with a focus on tasks that require computer vision skills, such as those performed by property appraisers, teachers and bakers.

  • Quartz ☛ It's expensive to replace humans with AI, MIT says

    Surprisingly, the authors found that only 23% of workers’ wages for such jobs could be cost-effectively replaced by AI. “Even with a 50% annual cost decrease, it will take until 2026 before half of the vision tasks have a machine economic advantage,” states the 45-page study seen by Quartz. “By 2042 there will still exist tasks that are exposed to computer vision, but where human labor has the advantage.”

  • The Register UK ☛ Law designed to stop AI bias in hiring decisions is so ineffective it's slowing similar initiatives

    New York City Local Law 144 (LL144) was passed in 2021, came into effect as on January 1 last year and has been enforced as of July 2023. The law requires employers using automated employment decision tools (AEDTs) to audit them annually for race and gender bias, publish those results on their websites, and include notice in job postings that they use such software to make employment decisions.

    The study from researchers at Cornell University, nonprofit reviews service Consumer Reports, and the nonprofit Data & Society Research Institute, is as yet to be published but was shared with The Register. It found that of 391 employers sampled, only 18 had published audit reports required under the law. Just 13 employers (11 of whom also published audit reports) included the necessary transparency notices.

    LL144 "grants near total discretion for employers to decide if their system is within the scope of the law," Jacob Metcalf, a researcher at Data & Society and one of the study's authors, told The Register. "And there are multiple ways for employers to escape that scope.”

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Illegal to marry below 18 – Zambia passes the landmark Marriage (Amendment) Act, 2023

    Research shows that robust laws prohibiting the practice have a positive influence on lowering rates of child marriage and adolescent pregnancy, and children’s general welfare improves.

  • France24 ☛ Taliban restricting unmarried women’s access to work and travel, UN report says

    The Taliban have barred women from most areas of public life and stopped girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade as part of harsh measures they imposed after taking power in 2021, despite initially promising [sic] more moderate rule.

    They have also shut down beauty parlors and started enforcing a dress code, arresting women who don't comply with their interpretation of hijab, or Islamic headscarf. In May 2022, the Taliban issued a decree calling for women to only show their eyes and recommending they wear the head-to-toe burqa, similar to restrictions during the Taliban’s previous rule between 1996 and 2001.

  • CBC ☛ UN says Taliban is restricting Afghan women from working, seeking health care

    The Taliban are restricting Afghan women's access to work, travel and health care if they are unmarried or don't have a male guardian, according to a UN report published Monday.

    In one incident, officials from the Vice and Virtue Ministry advised a woman to get married if she wanted to keep her job at a health-care facility, saying it was inappropriate for an unwed woman to work, said the report from the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

  • RFA ☛ Tiananmen massacre victim Qi Zhiyong dies of illness in Beijing

    "His wife doesn't want any contact with the outside world, because then the police would come to their home and threaten them," Sun said. "According to my understanding, his family members are afraid, and want to keep things low-key."

    [...]

    Qi had spent most of his life as a double amputee after losing both legs due to gunshot injuries sustained during the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, in which the People's Liberation Army killed hundreds, possibly thousands of civilians, putting a bloody end to weeks of protests on Tiananmen Square.

  • Vox ☛ Where do billionaires come from? Mom and Dad.

    Billionaires have been minted at a dizzying pace in the last few decades — in 1987 Forbes counted 140, while in 2023 the tally was 2,640 — and we’ve now returned to the point in the cycle where enormous piles of wealth are passed on to the next generation. “This is how wealth dynasties are formed,” says Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the left-leaning think tank Institute for Policy Studies. The only thing that’s new in 2024 is that the piles of money are bigger than ever.

    Not only are there more billionaires today, their average wealth keeps ticking up too, thanks to historic stock market returns. On top of that, heirs are receiving wealth transfers earlier in life, rather than waiting for the death or near death of a family member. All this underscores the truth that having money remains the best way to get more money. Perhaps there’s nowhere that’s truer than in the US, home to the most billionaires, despite the pervasive myth of hardscrabble, self-made entrepreneurs climbing to the top of the socioeconomic ladder. If you’re born poor, you’re likely to stay poor; if you’re born super rich, you’ll probably get even richer.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China undergoes rare scrutiny of rights record at UN meeting

    China underwent scrutiny of its human rights record at a key U.N. meeting on Tuesday, with Western countries calling for more protections for Xinjiang Uyghurs and greater freedom in Hong Kong while Beijing said it had made historic progress.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Beijing hopes UN review of human rights is constructive, non-politicised

    China is one of 14 states to be reviewed between Jan 22 and Feb 2.

  • teleSUR ☛ G77+China Summit to Deepen South-South Cooperation: Uganda

    The meeting of the Group of 77 and China takes place under the theme "Leaving No One Behind".

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ The IPv6 city — Xiong’an China

    Guest Post: China is building a city with IPv6-only from the ground up.

  • BT: Third Time Lucky?

    Two months ago a BT advisor said I would not be charged 10 pounds (spurious fee). He assured me it would not happen and if it did happen, I should phone to rectify it. Weeks passed and they did charge me, contrary to what their staff had said.

  • APNIC ☛ The IPv6 city — Xiong’an China

    Xiong’an New Area (Xiong’an) is a new Chinese city established in 2017 as a ‘pilot city’, 100kms west of Beijing. The goal for Xiong’an is to create a model for future digital cities. A large part of that model is building in IPv6-only, from the ground up.

  • RIPE ☛ Jim Cowie: The Historical Record of the Internet

    Understanding outages and shutdowns and how the Internet as a whole came to be vulnerable to - but also resilient against - these kinds of events requires more than a snapshot of things as they are today. In this episode, Jim Cowie talks about how historical measurement data can help us acquire a better understanding of the Internet.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Capcom's Steam Deck Verified Games are being made unplayable with new DRM that only punishes paying customers

    Capcom has recently started patching certain titles in its catalog with "Enigma" DRM. Unfortunately, this is also rendering certain Steam Deck Verified Games unplayable, and sabotages the vibrant Capcom games modding scene.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • JUVE ☛ Bardehle Pagenberg bolsters Paris office with Bird & Bird litigator [Ed: This is pure spam from JUVE, but it is being disguised as "news"; JUVE used to do journalism, not lies and propaganda, lobbying for crimes, and spam-farming]

    Frédéric Portal (45) joined the Paris office of Bardehle Pagenberg at the beginning of 2024. Until now, the French team led by partner Julien Fréneaux was known primarily for its commercialisation actions for intellectual ventures in the French market.

  • JUVE ☛ Hofstetter Schurack welcomes back biotech partner in Munich [Ed: More spam; pure marketing put forth as reporting, for firms that bribe JUVE to lie and drive illegal agenda for patent trolls and convicted criminals]

    At the beginning of 2024, Vera Kühr rejoined Hofstetter Schurack & Partner after just under two years at patent monopoly attorney firm, Forresters.

  • Unified Patents ☛ Acacia entity, Monarch, network routing patent monopoly challenge instituted

    On January 18, 2024, two months after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 8,693,369, owned and asserted by Monarch Networking Solutions, LLC, an Acacia Research Corp. entity. The ‘369 patent monopoly relates to routing data packets with the same destination address using port masks.

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ En Banc Denied in In re Cellect: Double Patenting and Patent Term Adjustment

    The Federal Circuit has denied Cellect’s en banc petition on the interplay between obviousness-type-double-patenting and patent-term-adjustment.  The situation here is creating some strategic challenges for patentees with large patent monopoly families. 

    The vast majority of obviousness-type double-patenting rejections arise in family-member cases — continuation applications where the USPTO examiner identifies the claims in one application as obvious variants from a sister application.  The easiest way to overcome an OTDP rejection is via terminal disclaimer that links the two patents together so that they maintain the same owner and expire on the same day.  The terminal disclaimer filing often has no negative consequences because the patents are already set to expire on the same day and would likely already be maintained together as assets. 

  • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ Patent filings and divisionals in Brazil: The challenge to obtain IP protection

    Divisional filings are one of the most controversial topics in patent monopoly prosecution in Brazil. The Patent Office (BRPTO) severely limits the ability of patent monopoly applicants to file divisionals. For instance, the BRPTO rejects divisionals filed after receiving a notice of allowance, after receiving a denial or during the appeal stage.

  • Software Patents

    • Unified Patents ☛ Anonymous Media ad measurement patent monopoly challenged

      On January 16, 2024, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 8,510,768, owned by Anonymous Media Research Holdings, LLC. The ‘768 patent monopoly relates to media monitoring and measurement systems for automatic content recognition (ACR) to, for example, measure viewership on Smart TVs.

    • Unified Patents ☛ Dolby HEVC/AV1 patent monopoly revoked in EPO [Ed: This was used to blackmail GNU/Linux]

      On January 17, 2024, the European Patent Office announced the revocation of all claims of EP 3798988. The EP ‘988 patent monopoly is owned by Dolby International AB and is related to patents that have been declared essential to Access Advance and SISVEL’s AV1 patent monopoly pools.

• Trademarks

  • TTAB Blog ☛ J. Michael Keyes: "TTAB Goes "Bamm-Bamm" To Fruity Pebbles' Consumer Surveys"

    Mike Keyes, a consumer survey expert and IP litigator at Dorsey & Whitney LLP, has given me permission to post this recent article from his newsletter, "Lanham Act Surveys for Lawyers" (subscribe here).

    TTAB Goes "Bamm-Bamm" To Fruity Pebbles' Consumer Surveys

    Post Foods' application to register its "Fruity Pebbles" color trademark recently got reduced to a bit of rubble. In re Post Foods, LLC, 2024 USPQ2d 25 (TTAB 2024). [TTABlogged here]. Why is that? Because the Board found Applicant's proffered evidence failed to meet some bedrock principles. We focus here on two consumer surveys that got stone-cold rejected by the Board. But first, just a bit of pre-historic background.

    Fruity Pebbles was released in the early days of the 1970s with none other than the Grand Poobah himself, Fred Flintstone, as the pitch man for the cereal. About half of a millennium later, Post Foods sought to register the color of Fruity Pebbles for "breakfast cereals." Here's the drawing submitted to the USPTO: [...]

• Copyrights

  • EFF ☛ It's Copyright Week 2024: Join Us in the Fight for Better Copyright Law and Policy

    Copyright law affects so much of our daily lives, and new technologies have only helped make everyone more and more aware of it. For example, while 1998’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act helped spur the growth of platforms for creating and sharing art, music and literature, it also helped make the phrase “blocked due to a claim by the copyright holder” so ubiquitous.

    Copyright law helps shape the movies we watch, the books we read, and the music we listen to. But it also impacts everything from who can fix a tractor to what information is available to us to when we communicate online. Given that power, it’s crucial that copyright law and policy serve everyone.

    Unfortunately, that’s not the way it tends to work. Instead, copyright law is often treated as the exclusive domain of major media and entertainment industries. Individual artists don’t often find that copyright does what it is meant to do, i.e. “promote the progress of science and useful arts” by giving them a way to live off of the work they’ve done. The promise of the internet was to help eliminate barriers between creators and audiences, so that voices that traditional gatekeepers ignored could still find success. Through copyright, those gatekeepers have found ways to once again control what we see.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ ACE Shuts Down Huge Football Piracy Ring, Total Destruction TBC

    Right now, dozens of domains linked to live football piracy sites are redirecting to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. Domains began displaying the ACE seizure banner on Saturday and the list has been growing ever since. Once complete, ACE will quite rightly celebrate a significant win but unless those behind the sites have been taken out too, confirming total destruction may never be possible.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Warner Bros. Wants Tumblr to Identify Beetlejuice 2 'Leaker'

    The upcoming "Beetlejuice 2" film, starring Jenna Ortega and Winona Ryder, is scheduled to premiere in September. However, it appears that someone managed to get their hands on early footage, leaking an 'on set' photo on Tumblr. Warner Bros. is unhappy with this teaser and has obtained a DMCA subpoena, requiring Tumblr to identify the user in question.

  • EFF ☛ The Public Domain Benefits Everyone – But Sometimes Copyright Holders Won’t Let Go

    Unlike copyright, trademark protection has no fixed expiration date. Instead, it works on a “use it or lose it” model. With some exceptions, the law will grant trademark protection for as long as you keep using that mark to identify your products. This actually makes sense when you understand the difference between copyright and trademark. The idea behind copyright protection is to give creators a financial incentive to make new works that will benefit the public; that incentive needn’t be eternal to be effective. Trademark law, on the other hand, is about consumer protection. The function of a trademark is essentially to tell you who a product came from, which helps you make informed decisions and incentivizes quality control. If everyone were allowed to use that same mark after some fixed period, it would stop serving that function.

    So, what’s the problem? Since trademarks don’t expire, we see former copyright holders of public domain works turn to trademark law as a way to keep exerting control. In one case we wrote about, a company claiming to own a trademark in the name of a public domain TV show called “You Asked For It” sent takedown demands targeting everything from episodes of the show, to remix videos using show footage, to totally unrelated uses of that common phrase. Other infamous examples include disputes over alleged trademarks in elements from Peter Rabbit and Tarzan. Now, with Steamboat Willie in the public domain, Disney seems poised to do the same. It’s already alluded to this in public statements, and in 2022, it registered a trademark for Walt Disney Animation Studios that incorporates a snippet from the cartoon.

    The news isn’t all bad: trademark protection is in some ways more limited than copyright—it only applies to uses that are likely to confuse consumers about the use’s connection to the mark owner. And importantly, the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that trademark law cannot be used to control the distribution of creative works, lest it spawn “a species of mutant copyright law” that usurps the public’s right to copy and use works in the public domain. (Of course, that doesn’t mean companies won’t try it.) So go forth and make your Steamboat Willie art, but beware of trademark lawyers waiting in the wings.