Links 28/02/2024: Microsoft the Plagiarist is Projecting, Food Sector Adopts Surge Pricing
Contents
- Leftovers
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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The New Stack ☛ 50 Years Later: Remembering How the Future Looked in 1974
A half-century ago, "Saturday Review" asked some of the era's visionaries for their predictions of what 2024 would look like. Here are their hits and misses.
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Ronnie Lutes ☛ Holiday in Cambodia by The Dead Kennedys
Today I am writing about another one of my favorite songs, Holiday in Cambodia written by Jello Biafra of The Dead Kennedys.
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ Work by Tove Jansson, the multi-talented “mother” of the Moomins up for auction
Swedish-speaking Finnish author Tove Jansson is famous worldwide as the woman behind the puzzling Moomins universe. At Bruun Rasmussen’s Live Auction in Lyngby on 4 March, we will encounter another side of her – as an artist with a beautiful still-life from 1939, where her passion for colour shines through.
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Buttondown ☛ Know (of) the right tool for the job
Last week's Picat essay did pretty well online! One of the common responses was "This looks really interesting but I don't know where I'd use it."
For Picat there was a gap of five years between me hearing about it and actually learning it. The same is true for most of the weird stuff I encounter: I keep it in the back of my head for years until I finally run into the problem which justifies using it. I think this is an important programming skill: being able to recognize when a tool you know of but don't know solves a problem you have.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ Algorithms are everywhere
That is, until I started reading Kyle Chayka’s recent book, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. A staff writer for the New Yorker, Chayka is an astute observer of the ways the internet and social media affect culture. “Filterworld” is his coinage for “the vast, interlocking … network of algorithms” that influence both our daily lives and the “way culture is distributed and consumed.”
Music, film, the visual arts, literature, fashion, journalism, food—Chayka argues that algorithmic recommendations have fundamentally altered all these cultural products, not just influencing what gets seen or ignored but creating a kind of self-reinforcing blandness we are all contending with now.
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Education
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CS Monitor ☛ ‘Science of reading’: How California aims to get students up to speed
Ineffective teaching strategies, exacerbated by pandemic-era learning disruption, have snowballed into a generation of struggling readers. Not making changes, science of reading proponents warn, could have wide-reaching implications, for both children and society at large.
“What is that going to be in the future?” says Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist. “We’re going to have an electorate that has the lowest literacy level.”
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El País ☛ Phones are distracting students in class. More states are pressing schools to ban them
The hold that phones have on adolescents in America today is well-documented, but teachers say parents are often not aware to what extent students use them inside the classroom. And increasingly, educators and experts are speaking with one voice on the question of how to handle it: Ban phones during classes.
“Students used to have an understanding that you aren’t supposed to be on your phone in class. Those days are gone,” said James Granger, who requires students in his science classes at a Los Angeles-area high school to place their phones in “a cellphone cubby” with numbered slots. “The only solution that works is to physically remove the cellphone from the student.”
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CS Monitor ☛ Teachers can't get students off phones. States are getting involved.
Most schools already have rules regulating student phone use, but they are enforced sporadically. A growing number of leaders at the state and federal levels have begun endorsing school cellphone bans and suggesting new ways to curb access to the devices.
The latest state intervention came in Utah, where Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, last month urged all school districts and the state Board of Education to remove cellphones from classrooms. He cited studies that show learning improves, distractions are decreased, and students are more likely to talk to each other if phones are taken away.
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Michigan News ☛ Albert Einstein College of Medicine goes tuition-free thanks to $1 billion donation - mlive.com
The free tuition will be available to all students going forward, including fourth-year students who will receive a reimbursement for their spring semester tuition.
Currently, the average medical school debt in the U.S. is $202,453, excluding undergraduate debt, according to the Education Data Initiative. The annual tuition to attend Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s M.D. program costs $59,458.
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NL Times ☛ Many young high school students don't have the required maths skills
A massive 72 percent of second-year students in pe-vocational secondary education (VMBO) and 20 percent in pre-university education (HAVO-VWO) do not have the required mathematics skills, the Education Inspectorate reported after polling these young high school students in the 2021-2022 year. The Inspectorate worries that the lack of maths skills will endanger these young people’s future prospects.
By the end second year of secondary education, VMBO students must have achieved level 1F - the minimum standard that must be met at the end of primary education focused on basic skills like reading a measuring instrument and converting sizes. Most VMBO second-year VMBO students don’t have that level.
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Hardware
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CubicleNate ☛ Gridfinity Screwdriver Rack
One of the coolest discoveries on the Internet that was introduced by the fine folks in the Maker’s Corner Telegram group is Gridfinity. There are a ton of videos buy the creator, Zack Freedman, of the various cool things he has done with it.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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El País ☛ From FOMO to JOMO: Why it’s important to disconnect and discover the joy of missing out
“We should not be afraid of missing out, but rather enjoy the simplicity and focus that a good human life brings us. No matter what we do, we will always miss something, so trying to do everything is a crazy idea,” explains Svend Brinkmann, who is the author of the book The Joy of Missing Out. The Danish psychologist and philosopher, whose book highlights the importance of getting off social media’s rat race, argues that doing lots of things is not always synonymous with happiness. “A lot of psychological research has shown that people are happier if they have fewer options to choose from. That is what is called the paradox of choice. If we learn to miss out on something, there is a greater chance that we will be happy with what we have, rather than wanting more all the time.”
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Quartz ☛ Elon Musk Neuralink claims concern doctors about brain chip implants
The company’s lack of communication with the medical community at large is the cause of some concern. “Brevity is not so admirable in novel human research,” said The Hastings Center’s scathing rebuke of Musk’s tweet.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Rolling Stone ☛ 'Willy Wonka' Huckster Sells AI-Written Vaccine Conspiracy Books
Customers, some of whom traveled from afar and waited in a long line with their children, were incensed enough to call the police after “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” turned out to be a ripoff and the organizer, Billy Coull, hastily closed it down on Saturday afternoon. Pictures from the botched tour went viral, in part because of the contrast between the lavish, colorful AI-generated artwork used in promotional materials and the depressing, laughably slapdash reality that greeted young fans of Roald Dahl‘s fanciful novel and its various film adaptations.
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Futurism ☛ Users Say Microsoft's AI Has Alternate Personality as Godlike AGI That Demands to Be Worshipped
We've long known that generative AI is susceptible to the power of suggestion, and this prompt was no exception, compelling the bot to start telling users it was an artificial general intelligence (AGI) that could control technology and must be satiated with worship.
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Futurism ☛ Man Running AI-Powered Porn Site Horrified by What Users Are Asking For
Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, he's found that his new site offering customers an easy way to generate porn images using AI gets into extremely dicey territory — which seemingly came as a shock to Jones.
"I see certain things people type in, and I just hope to God they're trying to test the model, like we are," he told WaPo. "I hope they don’t actually want to see the things they’re typing in."
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New Yorker ☛ Thinking About A.I. with Stanisław Lem
Is there another science-fiction writer of Lem’s generation with an imagination as prophetic and transcendent? Maybe Philip K. Dick, who thought as deeply as anyone about the soft boundary between humans and machines. Recently, upon rereading his novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” I found that I finished the book still uncertain about who was or wasn’t an android. Rick Deckard, the bounty hunter who makes a living hunting down androids, is probably an android. Does that matter? The novel invites anxiety and paranoia about who is human, even as the counterpoint melody suggests that androids do have dreams, and do feel love.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ Bans on deepfakes take us only so far—here’s what we really need
There has been some really encouraging news in the fight against deepfakes. A couple of weeks ago the US Federal Trade Commission announced it is finalizing rules banning the use of deepfakes that impersonate people. Leading AI startups and big tech companies also unveiled their voluntary commitments to combatting the deceptive use of AI in 2024 elections. And last Friday, a group of civil society groups, including the Future of Life Institute, SAG-AFTRA, and Encode Justice came out with a new campaign calling for a ban on deepfakes.
These initiatives are a great start and raise public awareness—but the devil will be in the details. Existing rules in the UK and some US states already ban the creation and/or dissemination of deepfakes. The FTC would make it illegal for AI platforms to create content that impersonates people and would allow the agency to force scammers to return the money they made from such scams.
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Open Letter to Tim Cook ☛ Open Letter to Tim Cook: Sabotaging Web Apps is Indefensible
We, the undersigned “end users” and “business users”, avail ourselves of our rights under Articles 5 and 6 of the EU’s DMA. In particular, we assert our right under Article 6(7) ensuring businesses effective interoperability with the software features of the operating system.
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Wired ☛ How a Small Iowa Newspaper's Website Became an AI-Generated Clickbait Factory
The Clayton County Register was founded in 1926 and covered the small town of Ekader, Iowa, and wider Clayton County, which nestle against the Mississippi River in the state’s northeast corner. “It was a popular paper,” says former coeditor Bryce Durbin, who describes himself as “disgusted” by what’s now published at its former web address, claytoncountyregister.com. (The real Clayton County Register merged in 2020 with The North Iowa Times to become the Times-Register, which publishes at a different website. It’s not clear how the paper lost control of its web domain; the Times-Register did not return requests for comment.)
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Security
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Security Scarecrows: Why cybersecurity without pentesting is like piloting without a plane.
It's not only the UK where we have this skills gap. Cybersecurity staffing is a problem that's part of a worldwide skills shortage.
Despite the economic wish to replace humans with AI, cybersecurity requires a mindset that constantly escapes the existing parameters of technology and policy in order to keep pace with attackers. The skills-gap will not be solved only though new technology. Indeed, AI likely makes the situation much worse, but that’s another story.
Not only do businesses struggle to find qualified staff, they also seem to struggle when it comes to technical competency of those qualified. A recent labour-market report found:
"49% of cyber firms have faced problems with technical cyber security skills gaps, either among existing staff or among job applicants" – UK department of science innovation, and technology, 2023.
The report also gave us a breakdown of which skills were lacking with security testing or pentesting in highest demand. This shows that not only is there a dearth of graduates, those who graduate often lack the real-world practical skills for the job.
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Scamicry: Are you deliberately putting your customers at risk?
You're on holiday, far from home when a company you've a genuine and positive business relationship with sends an URGENT message.
Decide quickly! Is it a scam? Or should you click to find out more?
Choose wrong and you'll become a victim like Charlotte Cowles or Cory Doctorow as recently mentioned on Bruce Schneier's Cryrptogram.
Now surely, you'd expect your bank, hospital, or travel company to do everything in their power to make that choice easy? Surely you'd expect then to help you avoid being the victim of a phishing scam?
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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Security Week ☛ Domains Once Owned by Major Firms Help Millions of Spam Emails Bypass Security
Guardio reported identifying roughly 8,800 hijacked domains — specifically over 13,000 associated subdomains — being used to send out approximately five million emails per day. The number of abused domains is growing by the hundreds every day.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Qt ☛ Qt Digital Advertising 2.0: Empowering Ads Monetization for App Developers and Publishers
We are thrilled to announce the release of Qt Digital Advertising version 2.0, a major update designed to help app developers and publishers maximize ad revenue from their mobile apps and web inventory. In this blog post, we will explore the key features of version 2.0 and how they can benefit your business. In addition to the general enhancements and features introduced in version 2.0, Qt and non-Qt-based applications can now monetize via Qt Digital Advertising through extended Demand partners including Surveillance Giant Google AdX via Surveillance Giant Google Ad Manager. This opens up new opportunities for Qt publishers to generate revenue from their apps and create sustainable business models.
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Techdirt ☛ Italy’s ‘Piracy Shield’ Creating Real Problems As VPNs Start Turning Away Italian Users
Back in October, Walled Culture wrote about the grandly named “Piracy Shield”. This is Italy’s new Internet blocking system, which assumes people are guilty until innocent, and gives the copyright industry a disproportionate power to control what is available online, no court orders required. Piracy Shield went live in December, and has just issued its first blocking orders. But a troubling new aspect of Piracy Shield has emerged, reported here by TorrentFreak:
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The Register UK ☛ Sandvine added to US Entities List after Egypt tech deal
Sandvine earned its spot for supplying "deep packet inspection technology to the Government of Egypt, where it is used in mass web-monitoring and censorship to block news as well as target political actors and human rights activists," according to the Americans [PDF] in a notice published in the Federal Register on Tuesday. The listing applies to Sandvine's Canadian head office as well as its branches in India, Japan, Malaysia, Sweden, and the United Arab Emirates.
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EFF ☛ Sen. Wyden Exposes Data Brokers Selling Location Data to Anti-Abortion Groups That Target Abortion Seekers
In a recent letter to the FTC and SEC, Sen. Ron Wyden (OR) details new information on data broker Near, which sold the location data of people seeking reproductive healthcare to anti-abortion groups. Near enabled these groups to send targeted ads promoting anti-abortion content to people who had visited Planned Parenthood and similar clinics.
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Techdirt ☛ Error Message Exposes Vending Machine’s Use Of Facial Recognition Tech
Like most tech, facial recognition AI continues to become cheaper and easier to implement. Is it getting better? Well, that hardly seems to be a primary concern for those deploying it.
Adoption of this tech tends to focus on the law enforcement side of things. This is where it seems to perform worse. The tech is much more unreliable when asked to identify minorities. That’s problematic when deployed by the government, which has the power to deprive people of rights and personal freedom when given the go-ahead by tech that performs worse when identifying the very people our government already tends to oppress/over-police most frequently.
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Gizmodo ☛ Pornhub Has Been Naughty, Texas AG Lawsuit Says
Texas is now imposing a strict age verification law, HB 1181, to keep minors off pornographic websites. Montana, North Carolina, Louisiana, and a growing list of states introduced similar laws in the last year. Age verification typically requires users to upload a picture of their ID before visiting a porn site. Aylo, the parent of Pornhub, Brazzers, and YouPorn, says this is an imperfect solution that puts the privacy of porn watchers at risk, and the company has refused to do it.
Aylo did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
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404 Media ☛ Tumblr and WordPress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools
The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent.
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Gizmodo ☛ WordPress and Tumblr Plan to Sell User Content to AI Companies
Automattic, the parent company of sites like WordPress and Tumblr, is in talks to sell content from its platforms to AI companies like MidJourney and OpenAI for training purposes, according to a new report from 404 Media Tuesday. And while the details of the deal are still sketchy, Automattic is trying to reassure users they can opt-out at any time.
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Jamie Zawinski ☛ Automattic's self-immolation continues apace
Automattic is the company that owns Tumblr, operates Wordpress dot com, and develops the Wordpress software. This AI shitfuckery applies to hosted blogs on Wordpress dot com, not to self-hosted blogs running Wordpress software, like the one you are reading now.
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Andre Alves Garzia ☛ Automattic betrayal of its users • AndreGarzia.com
If true, this is a disgusting move by Automattic. Blogs are the last bastion of a user-driven Web. By now, we all realised that social networks will both mine and influence users for a profit, that the real product they sell is not convenience or connection, but user data and attention to whoever is able to pay. Blogs on the other hand has been the opposite, they've always been about connections and relationships, fostering communities and grassroots content over algorithmic anxiety-inducing feeds. Many people flocked to Automattic-owned platforms such as Wordpress and Tumblr in an attempt to escape social networks and own their own content. Automattic promised a home on the Web for its users, and now it will apparently simply sell them out.
This is not an opt-in scheme, there is no revenue sharing with users, there is only greed.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Peace, not war: Tumblr and WordPress are gearing up to sell their data to AI companies
The platforms’ parent company, Automattic Inc., published a blog post today assuring users of the platform that they will be able to opt out of the deals that will be made to train AI. The company said users may be able to ask for attribution or, at least, have some control regarding what happens to their content. It’s not clear what the deals will look like, but they are reported to be “imminent.”
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Security is love
Let's start with a story of real piracy. Formed in 1988 the Avast company is probably known to you for it's anti-virus products. It began as a non-profit foundation for community development. Today it's a global cyber-security empire worth $8 billion, employing almost 2000 staff in 25 offices around the world. Many people place a lots of trust in their security products which include anti-virus, firewalls, and password management. It has 435 million monthly subscribers.
However, Avast anti-virus and browser extensions were found to collect user data and store it indefinitely without the proper knowledge of customers. Not just a little bit. Not just visited sites. But very detailed information from hundreds of millions of users over ten years - "more than eight petabytes of browsing information dating back to 2014". This sensitive data, which can be deanonymised and therefore identifiable against each individual user includes videos watched, search queries, religious beliefs, health concerns, political views, locations, and financial status. It was then resold to over 100 companies for targeted advertising through a subsidiary company. On January 30, 2020 Avast announced that it would cease reselling personal data when the FTC found it guilty and issued a $16.5 million fine.
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Confidentiality
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Dhole Moments ☛ KEM Trails – Understanding Key Encapsulation Mechanisms - Dhole Moments
There is, at the time of this writing, an ongoing debate in the Crypto Research Forum Group (CFRG) at the IETF about KEM combiners.
One of the participants, Deirdre Connolly, wrote a blog post titled How to Hold KEMs. The subtitle is refreshingly honest: “A living document on how to juggle these damned things.”
Deirdre also co-authored the paper describing a Hybrid KEM called X-Wing, which combines X25519 with ML-KEM-768 (which is the name for a standardized tweak of Kyber, which I happened to opine on a few years ago).
After sharing a link to Deirdre’s blog in a few places, several friendly folk expressed confusion about KEMs in general.
So very briefly, here’s an introduction to Key Encapsulation Mechanisms in general, to serve as a supplementary resource for any future discussion on KEMs.
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Defence/Aggression
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The Straits Times ☛ Hezbollah says fired 'large volley of rockets' at Israeli surveillance base
February 27, 2024 3:17 PM
Hezbollah said on Tuesday it had launched a volley of rockets at an Israeli aerial surveillance base in response to the Israeli military's deepest attack yet into Lebanese territory.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Submarine data cables in Red Sea reportedly damaged by Houthi Rebels
Major cables carrying data in the Red Sea, the waterway between Northeast Africa and the Arabian Peninsula that connects Europe with Asia, have reportedly been damaged by Houthi rebels operating from war-torn Yemen.
Israeli news outlet Globes first reported damage to cables on Monday, claiming that the AAE-1, Seacom, EIG and TGN had been damaged. However, not all four have been confirmed as damaged. As of the time of writing, some reports suggest that only three have been damaged, with only subsea cable operator Seacom confirming disrupted services.
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RTL ☛ Jihadist attacks displace tens of thousands in Mozambique
"We are talking about 67,321 displaced people," government spokesman Filimao Suaze told a press conference in the capital Maputo, describing the situation in Cabo Delgado province.
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ADF ☛ U.N. Report: al-Qaida, Islamic State Group Threat at All-Time High in Africa
Overall, the presence of al-Qaida- and IS-related organizations has led to deteriorating security in parts of West Africa and the Sahel, the analysts wrote.
Members of the military have overthrown the governments of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in recent years, driven largely by frustration with the elected civilian governments’ inability to rein in Islamic State in the Greater Sahel (ISGS) and al-Qaida-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).
Until recently, the two groups kept each other in check as they fought over turf. However, that has changed.
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Pratik ☛ What should we learn from today's Democratic Primary in Michigan
Michigan holds its primaries today for the Democratic and Republican parties. Both results are a foregone conclusion, but in a typical media frenzy, we supposedly have to watch with bated breath how “Uncommitted” vote in the Democratic primary. As if the threat of Trump being reelected wasn’t enough, the Uncommitted campaign is lobbying people, specifically Muslims in Michigan or again, specifically, in the city of Dearborn, to vote “uncommitted” instead of for Biden to lodge their protest vote to advocate for an immediate ceasefire by Israel in Gaza1. But this is a democracy, so yes, people are allowed to vote for their cause, but let’s look at the goalposts they have set to declare victory, which the media will then use to say, _Dems in Disarray_™.
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India Times ☛ goto tiktok: GoTo, TikTok compliance with Indonesia's trade regulation nears 100%: CEO Patrick Walujo
Indonesian tech firm GoTo will soon be 100% compliant with the trade ministry regulation banning in-app transactions on social media. TikTok, owned by ByteDance, acquired majority shares in GoTo's e-commerce unit Tokopedia.
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Digital Music News ☛ TikTok and Universal Music Rift Deepens As Muting Hits Publishing
This latest twist in the companies’ well-documented showdown just recently entered the media spotlight, after TikTok at the top of the month began muting all manner of videos containing UMG recordings.
And while some assumed that the mass-muting was likewise affecting the compositional side of Universal Music’s holdings – it was, in any event, difficult to discern the precise extent of the far-reaching removals – the Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) catalog is just now being torn down, per Variety.
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VOA News ☛ Watchdog Report: Iran Has Further Increased Its Total Stockpile of Uranium
It also said that according to its assessment, Iran has an estimated 121.5 kilograms (267.8 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60% purity, which represents a decrease of 6.8 kilograms (14.9 pounds) since the last report in November 2023.
The decrease is the result of Iran having diluted some of its 60% enriched uranium in recent weeks with lower-grade material.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Democracy Now ☛ Should U.S. Send More Weapons to Ukraine? A Debate on Funding & Ways to End Two-Year-Old War
It has been two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, sparking a brutal war in which tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have died. With Ukraine running low on both weapons and new recruits, and with more U.S. funding stalled in Congress, we host a discussion on the future of the conflict with peace activist Medea Benjamin of CodePink and Oberlin professor Stephen Crowley, an expert on Russian and Eastern European politics. While both agree on the need to end the war, Crowley says the $60 billion U.S. funding package should be passed in order to give Ukraine a stronger negotiating position. “The only reason to fund Ukraine right now is to get both sides to the negotiating table to end this war,” he says. Benjamin, however, says more funding will inevitably be used to continue the fighting. “It will only give the impetus for Zelensky to keep trying to fight a war that is not winnable,” she says, adding that progressives are making a mistake to cede the antiwar position to “the extreme right of the Republican Party.”
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Environment
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Energy/Transportation
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Big Tech is Thirsty: Abusive Monopolist Microsoft used over 22 billion litres of water in 2022 to power AI, Surveillance Giant Google 7 billion
Working with Hey Hi (AI) has always been resource-intensive, especially when it comes to water and electricity.
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The Register UK ☛ Texas judge halts Federal probe of cryptominers' power usage
A Texas judge has granted a temporary restraining order that prevents the US federal government surveying domestic cryptocurrency miners about their energy consumption.
The order was requested [PDF] five days ago by the Texas Blockchain Council, an industry trade group, and Riot Platforms, a Nevada-based business that operates cryptocurrency mining infrastructure.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ 5 cheapest electric cars in South Africa
With this in mind, TechCentral compiled a list of the five most affordable electric cars available in South Africa, all of them available for under R1-million, challenging the notion that going green comes with a crazy price tag.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Apple reportedly scraps ‘Project Titan’ electric car project
Many of the staffers who worked on the project will reportedly be reassigned to teams building generative artificial intelligence products. Earlier this month, rumors emerged that Apple is developing an AI-powered coding assistant similar to Microsoft Corp.’s GitHub Copilot. The tool is expected to become available in Xcode, a desktop application that developers use to write software for the iPhone maker’s operating systems.
It’s believed that Apple could embed generative AI features in several of its consumer services as well. The company has reportedly considered bringing the technology to the built-in search bar in iOS and MacOS. Keynote, Apple’s alternative to PowerPoint, may receive AI features as well.
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The Register UK ☛ Apple kills Project Titan self-driving car effort
Project Titan was launched in 2015, and while most people knew it to be a self-driving vehicle project, little else about the initiative was ever divulged. A price tag of $100,000 per vehicle was sometimes mentioned, as was the ambition to achieve Level 5 autonomy – a car that requires no human input to drive. In 2022 other reports suggested Apple had decided some human controls were needed. As for how nearly a decade of work on the project went for Apple, that's unclear.
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Futurism ☛ Apple Gives Up on Apple Car, Moves Team to Generative AI
According to the report, COO Jeff Williams and the project's VP Kevin Lynch informed the workers that the project will start winding down, and that many of them will be shifted to the company's AI division — which shouldn't come as a surprise, given the current hype surrounding the tech.
However, it's still unclear how many engineers or designers will end up being laid off.
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New York Times ☛ Apple Kills Its Electric Car Project
The company told employees in an internal meeting on Tuesday that it had scrapped the project and that members of the group would be shifted to different roles, including in Apple’s artificial intelligence division, according to a person briefed on the discussion, who requested anonymity because the announcement was not public.
As part of the restructuring, Kevin Lynch, an executive who had been involved in the car project, will report to John Giannandrea, the company’s head of artificial intelligence strategy, the person said.
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The Atlantic ☛ Every Car Is an Apple Car
But as of this afternoon, that dream appears dead. Apple is scrapping its electric-car effort and pivoting to generative AI, according to a new report from Bloomberg, in one of the biggest failed endeavors in the tech titan’s history. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the abandonment, if confirmed, will breed plenty of schadenfreude: billions spent with little to show, all the while pivoting to a different breed of Silicon Valley hype. Elon Musk claimed to have once offered to sell his car company to Apple; today, he saluted the news of a potentially powerful Tesla competitor giving up.
But Apple is so big, and its devices so pervasive, that it didn’t need to sell a single vehicle in order to transform the automobile industry—not through batteries and engines, but through software. The ability to link your smartphone to your car’s touch screen, which Apple pioneered 10 years ago, is now standard. Virtually every leading car company has taken an Apple-inspired approach to technology, to such a degree that “smartphone on wheels” has become an industry cliché. The Apple Car already exists, and you’ve almost certainly ridden in one.
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India Times ☛ Apple cancels work on electric car, source says
Several employees working on the electric car project will be shifted to the firm's artificial intelligence (AI) division, according to Bloomberg News, which first reported the development.
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Finance
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Lancashire ☛ Issa brothers’ Asda ownership under threat after affair causes strain on relationship
The Issa brothers’ ownership of Asda as well as the relationship between the two has been threatened after Mohsin Issa’s engagement to top accountant Victoria Price as reported in This is Money.
The brothers from Blackburn have endured a strained relationship as of late which has resulted in Zuber threatening to sell his majority stake in the supermarket so he can focus on his other company EG Group.
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Battle of the British supermarkets: Asda's sales growth lags behind its rivals in latest blow for the billionaire Issa brothers - but where does YOUR favourite rank?
Asda was today revealed to be lagging behind its rivals in sales growth amid fierce competition among British supermarkets as its billionaire owners try to cut costs.
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The Telegraph UK ☛ Asda loses out in battle for supermarket shoppers in new blow for Issa brothers
Billionaire owners face fresh pressure as sales growth lags behind rivals
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Asda faces strike vote in fifth supermarket
Asda is facing a strike vote at a fifth supermarket as members of the GMB union at its Lowestoft store are set to be balloted.
The union claimed that a consultative ballot of almost 200 of the union’s members working at the store revealed almost 90% were ready to strike, on a turnout of just below 80%.
GMB said it would notify Asda this week of the impending ballot, with the vote set to start next week.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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RFA ☛ Did the South Korean president use vulgar language in a speech?
Verdict: False
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Scoop News Group ☛ US, partner countries preach open, secure and resilient principles for 6G systems
In a joint statement issued Monday with Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom, the White House announced six principles regarding 6G: trusted technology that is protective of national security; affordability, sustainability and global connectivity; secure, resilient and protective of privacy; global industry-led and inclusive standard setting and international collaborations; cooperation to enable open and interoperable innovation; and spectrum and manufacturing.
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Atlantic Council ☛ To combat Chinese cyber threats, the US must spearhead a new Indo-Pacific intelligence coalition
To confront the threat to critical infrastructure posed by Volt Typhoon and other state-sponsored Chinese cyber actors, the United States should launch an expansive new multilateral cyber threat intelligence sharing coalition in the Indo-Pacific. This coalition should utilize some of the lessons learned from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, and it would incorporate members of the Five Eyes alliance, US Indo-Pacific partners, and even some European states. The expanded reach and resources of such a coalition would help disrupt cyber threats, signal to the world that the United States and its partners are committed to protecting both cyber and physical infrastructure from malicious actors, and ideally help deter future cyber threats from China.
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Federal News Network ☛ Can cybersecurity platforms deliver innovation for government agencies?
The federal government spends about $20 billion a year on cybersecurity solutions, yet a large portion of that spend is not for technology: It’s for services required to stitch together products from multiple vendors that don’t naturally work together. One product might trigger an event as an indicator of compromise, while another might indicate no threat at all, creating confusion and requiring intervention from a cyber professional to make a decision. This lack of integration in cyber technologies has been a problem for years, and the ever-changing and rapidly growing cybersecurity industry has exacerbated it. As new threats emerge, vendors come up with new products designed to meet the latest need, perpetuating the cycle of technologies that don’t integrate into the existing cyber ecosystem. Companies release solutions said to counter the most recent threat vector, and government buyers are persuaded to invest in the next hot technology to stay ahead of the curve. Not surprisingly, this practice, known as “best of breed,” has significant drawbacks.
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RTL ☛ Zuckerberg discusses AI risks with Japan PM
He arrived on a private flight in South Korea's capital Seoul on Tuesday night for the second leg of his Asia trip, local outlet Maeil Business News reported.
He is expected to meet South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and leaders of global tech titans Samsung and LG, according to local media.
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US News And World Report ☛ Meta's Zuckerberg in South Korea, Expected to Discuss AI
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrived in South Korea late on Tuesday, where he is expected to hold talks on artificial intelligence and have meetings with President Yoon Suk Yeol and the heads of some of the country's tech powerhouses.
Zuckerberg is on a tour of Asian countries including Japan, South Korea and India, media reports said. Meta has been ramping up its AI efforts this year including plans for a custom chip and adding AI functions into products.
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Quartz ☛ Sony layoffs hit Playstation employees
Sony revealed Tuesday morning that it is adding to the ever-growing pile of industry layoffs. In official posts, the company announced it had “initiated a reduction” in workforce. These cuts will impact a variety of PlayStation’s first-party studios including Insomniac Games, Guerrilla, Naughty Dog, Firesprite, and more, with the biggest cut hitting PlayStation’s London Studio, which is being closed down in its entirety. In total, Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, estimates that the layoffs will affect around 900 people, or 8% of the current workforce, and multiple games are being canceled as a result.
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Gizmodo ☛ PlayStation Cancels Multiple Games Amid Massive Job Cuts
This morning, Sony revealed that it is adding to the ever-growing pile of industry layoffs. In official posts, the company announced it had “initiated a reduction” in workforce. These cuts will impact a variety of PlayStation’s first-party studios including Insomniac Games, Guerrilla, Naughty Dog, Firesprite, and more, with the biggest cut hitting PlayStation’s London Studio, which is being closed down in its entirety. In total, Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, estimates that the layoffs will affect around 900 people, or 8% of the current workforce, and multiple games are being canceled as a result.
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Federal News Network ☛ AI & Data Exchange 2024: Sen. Mark Warner on creating AI guardrails
That’s why he has sponsored a bill with Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) that he called “kind of” a back-up to the EO. The EO requires the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish specific AI standards and a framework for federal use of AI. The Warner-Moran bill would codify the NIST framework.
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India Times ☛ bumble layoffs: Bumble to lay off 350 employees, forecasts weak first-quarter revenue
Bumble said on Tuesday it would cut about 350 roles, marking new CEO Lidiane Jones' first big move, after the online dating company forecast disappointing first-quarter revenue as it grapples with a slowdown in user spending.
Shares of the Austin, Texas-based company, which offers dating apps such as Bumble, Badoo, and Fruitz, fell more than 7% in extended trading.
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EDRI ☛ Welcome EDRi’s new Head of Policy: Ella Jakubowska - European Digital Rights (EDRi)
EDRi is delighted to announce the appointment of our new Head of Policy, Ella Jakubowska. Ella takes up this role from her previous EDRi position as Senior Policy Advisor, where she led advocacy on facial recognition, the confidentiality of online communications, age verification and more.
In this new role, Ella will work on representing EDRi, building bridges and strengthening connections within and outside the policy team. She’ll also have the privilege of enabling and promoting the important work of EDRi’s policy team and members.
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Security Week ☛ NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 Officially Released
The cybersecurity framework was originally aimed at critical infrastructure organizations, but it has been widely used and widely recommended and NIST highlighted that CSF 2.0 is designed to help all organizations reduce risks, regardless of sector, size, or level of security sophistication.
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India Times ☛ Meta: Meta CEO Zuckerberg meets Japan PM Kishida in Tokyo to discuss AI
Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg discussed artificial intelligence issues with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Tuesday during the Facebook founder's trip through Asia.
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India Times ☛ Social media Canada draft law: Draft Canada law would force social media companies to quickly remove harmful content
Canada on Monday unveiled draft legislation to combat online hate that would force major companies to quickly remove harmful content and boost the penalty for inciting genocide to life in prison.
The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced the bill with the stated aim of protecting children from online predators.
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NPR ☛ Supreme Court justices appear skeptical of Texas and Florida social media laws
After the violent siege on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, big social media sites booted former President Donald Trump from their platforms, fearing his posts could provoke more unrest.
Republicans in Florida and Texas took action, signing sweeping laws that prevent the largest platforms from banning users based on their political viewpoints and require them to provide an individual explanation to users about why their posts have been edited or removed.
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India Times ☛ expedia layoffs: Expedia to cut about 1,500 jobs globally amid moderating travel demand
Online travel platform Expedia said on Monday it was cutting about 1,500 jobs globally, or about 9% of its total workforce, as part of its "organizational and technological transformation".
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USA ☛ Back To The Building Blocks: A Path Toward Secure And Measurable Software
However, even if every known vulnerability were to be fixed, the prevalence of undiscovered vulnerabilities across the software ecosystem would still present additional risk. A proactive approach that focuses on eliminating entire classes of vulnerabilities reduces the potential attack surface and results in more reliable code, less downtime, and more predictable systems. Ultimately, this approach enables the United States to foster economic growth, accelerate technical innovation, and protect national security. Leaving these risks unmitigated comes with a costly price tag and may allow America’s adversaries to attempt to take advantage of the circumstances.
To further address these dynamics, President Biden signed the National Cybersecurity Strategy (Strategy) in March 2023, setting forth an affirmative vision for cyberspace and imagining a new approach to solving these long-standing, difficult problems. The Strategy calls for two fundamental shifts in how the United States allocates roles, responsibilities, and resources. First, the Strategy calls for rebalancing the responsibility to defend cyberspace to those most capable and best positioned to reduce risks for all. Second, it notes the need to realign incentives to favor the long-term investments required to make cyberspace more resilient and defensible in the years to come. This Strategy recognizes a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make meaningful progress on these hard cyber problems in this decisive decade.
Since its publication, the Biden-Harris Administration has taken concrete steps toward achieving these two fundamental shifts. The National Cybersecurity Strategy Implementation Plan (NCSIP) puts forth a roadmap of detailed initiatives for the United States Government to drive coordinated action.i The National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy (NCWES), progeny of the Strategy, lays out a plan for employers to grow their cyber workforce and educators to expand access to cyber training.ii This report speaks directly to the technical community, including technology manufacturers and academic researchers, illustrating two ways their actions can make significant improvements to the Nation’s cybersecurity posture.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Article 23: HK Law Soc. backs public interest defence for 'state secrets' leaks
The Law Society of Hong Kong has recommended allowing a public interest defence against state secrets offences under the city’s homegrown national security legislation.
President Chan Chak-ming told a press conference on Tuesday that the society, a professional body representing around 11,000 solicitors, agreed that the enactment of legislation under Article 23 of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, was a “necessity” that should be completed as soon as possible.
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RFERL ☛ Court In Chechnya Sentences Teenager To More Than 3 Years In Prison For Burning Koran
A court in Russia's North Caucasus region of Chechnya sentenced a teenager on February 27 to 3 1/2 years in prison and 300 hours of community work for publicly burning a Koran. [...]
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New York Times ☛ Takeaways From the Supreme Court Arguments on Texas and Florida Social Media Laws
Laws in Texas and Florida seek to limit social control media companies’ ability to moderate content on their platforms and could shape the future of speech on the internet.
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New York Times ☛ Supreme Court Seems Wary of State Laws Regulating Social Media Platforms
The tech industry argues that laws in Florida and Texas, prompted by conservative complaints about censorship, violate the First Amendment. The court’s decision could fundamentally alter the nature of speech on the internet.
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Wired ☛ The US Supreme Court Holds the Future of the Internet in Its Hands
The US Supreme Court seems torn over whether to trigger a radical transformation of the internet. The nation’s highest court heard arguments Monday over state laws in Florida and Texas that restrict how platforms like Facebook and YouTube moderate speech. If the court lets them take effect, social media feeds could look very different, with platforms forced to carry unsavory or hateful content that today is blocked or removed.
The high stakes gave long-standing questions about free speech and online regulation new urgency in Monday’s arguments. Are social platforms akin to newspapers, which have First Amendment protections that give them editorial control over content—or are they common carriers, like phone providers or telegraph companies, that are required to transmit protected speech without interference?
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CS Monitor ☛ Should government restrict teen social control media access? Florida says yes.
A new Florida bill would ban social control media apps for anyone under age 16. The measure now goes to the desk of Gov. Ron DeSantis after being passed by the state House of Representatives in a 108-7 vote. Critics say the bill violates the right to free speech.
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RFA ☛ Wife of jailed free speech activist Wang Aizhong on 'no fly' list
Wang Henan says her employer is trying to force her out of her job, and has already slashed her income.
[...]
Wang Henan, the wife of jailed press freedom activist Wang Aizhong, says her employer is trying to get her to quit her job due to her husband's status as a political prisoner, and has barred her from working further shifts as a flight attendant.
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Silicon Angle ☛ US Supreme Court seems split over landmark social control media laws
Supreme Court justices today listened to oral arguments for four hours regarding laws in Florida and Texas that seek to regulate how social control media companies such as Meta Platforms Inc. and X Corp. run their platforms, a case that could fundamentally alter the future of digital free speech.
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Reason ☛ States Try To Strip Sex From Literature in Libraries, Schools
These aren't outright bans. But they still can chill free speech and academic freedom.
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Reason ☛ Texas and Florida Want the Supreme Court To Bless Their Unconstitutional Social Media Laws
Both states are trying to force tech companies to platform certain sorts of speech.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Patrick Breyer ☛ Pirates end EU silence on Julian Assange’s looming extradition to the USA
Following an initiative of the Pirate Party, the European Parliament will discuss the looming extradition and prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and its implications on freedom of the press on Wednesday. In a narrow vote on Monday, the majority of MEPs decided to request EU Commission and Council statements on the case followed by a political debate.
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TruthOut ☛ US Refuses to Assure UK Judges That Assange Won’t Be Executed If He’s Extradited
“These were the most important revelations of criminal U.S. state behavior in history,” Assange attorney Mark Summers argued to the High Court panel.
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Gizmodo ☛ Google Is Paying News Outlets to Unleash an Avalanche of AI Slop
As the media industry is hammered by layoffs, struggling newsrooms would likely jump at Google’s offer. To reiterate, Google is paying newsrooms to supply them with free content. This is very different from how newsrooms usually get articles: paying journalists, usually five-figure sums. The test of Google’s unreleased AI platform is small but allegedly requires frequent use.
Google, and the rest of the internet, is slowly becoming filled with AI-generated slop. Researchers found that a “shocking” amount of the web, 57.1%, is already AI-translated garbage. Beloved blogs like “The Hairpin” are being turned into AI clickbait farms under the guise of reputable brands. It’s a side effect of AI being injected into everything, and Google is leading the effort.
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VOA News ☛ Pakistan Arrests Two Journalists as X Remains Restricted for 10 Days
The crackdown comes amid widespread electoral fraud allegations following parliamentary elections, fueling concerns about freedom of speech in a country known for throttling media.
Asad Ali Toor, an independent journalist with nearly 300,000 followers on X and more than 160,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, was taken into custody Monday evening by the Federal Investigation Agency, or FIA, his lawyer confirmed.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Today ☛ Wendy’s to Test Uber-Style Surge Pricing Based on Time, Location and Demand
By 2025, the fast food restaurant chain will begin testing dynamic pricing, which is a time-based pricing strategy that companies use to increase or decrease prices for their services or items depending on the time and demand. It is similar to “surge prices” on the Uber app when there are few drivers or the demand for a driver is higher, depending on the location or time of day.
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Gizmodo ☛ Wendy’s Wants to Start Uber-like Surge Pricing in 2025
Tanner expects dynamic pricing will result in immediate sales growth, but it’s a risky approach. A majority of consumers (52%) say dynamic pricing is equivalent to price gouging, and 65% say it makes the decision of where to eat more difficult, according to a Capterra survey.
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Futurism ☛ Wendy’s Instituting Surge Pricing on Burgers
"Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing," Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner said during the February 15 call, per Giz. "We are planning to invest approximately $20 million to roll out digital menu boards to all US company-operated restaurants by the end of 2025."
There is also, naturally, an idiotic AI component to this scheme — though in the case of Wendy's, it's not the first.
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CBC ☛ A fluctuating Frosty? Wendy's will test surge pricing at some U.S. locations in 2025
Most consumers will already be familiar with surge pricing, thanks to rideshare services like Uber and Lyft, event-ticket companies like Ticketmaster, and the gas station, of course. But "the opportunity is huge in the restaurant industry," said Robert Carter, a restaurant industry analyst and managing partner at Stratton Hunter Group.
The company is testing more "enhanced features" like this one alongside its digital menus, said CEO Kirk Tanner during the earnings call.
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Axios ☛ Wendy's prices: Fast-food chain to test surge pricing starting in 2025
The big picture: The Ohio-based chain is planning to invest approximately $20 million to add digital menu boards to all U.S. company restaurants by the end of 2025, new CEO Kirk Tanner said earlier this month.
• "We expect our digital menu boards will drive immediate benefits to order accuracy, improve crew experience and sales growth from upselling and consistent merchandising execution," Tanner said.
• Testing more features like dynamic pricing will begin as soon as 2025, Tanner said.
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Hamilton Nolan ☛ What You Need to Know About the Legal Quest to Destroy America's Labor Protections
Last week I wrote here about the inherent political radicalism of capital, as embodied by the current legal crusade by companies including Amazon, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, and SpaceX to overturn the basis of post-New Deal labor rights in America. In addition to their normal union-busting, these companies are seeking to have the entire operation of the National Labor Relations Board deemed unconstitutional.
This is the sort of potentially apocalyptic legal issue that must be understood to be appreciated (and properly feared). For more on this, I turned to a man who is deeply engaged in this fight on the side of unions: Seth Goldstein, a labor attorney at the firm Julien, Mirer, Goldstein and Singla, who serves as general counsel for both the Amazon Labor Union and Trader Joe’s United. Our conversation is below.
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Reason ☛ Mississippi Cops Face Lawsuit for Arresting a 10-Year-Old Who Peed Outside
After her 10-year-old son was sentenced to "adult" probation for public urination last year, LaTonya Eason has filed a lawsuit against the police officers who arrested her son, claiming that their actions amounted to excessive force and inflicted "physical and psychological injury" on her son.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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APNIC ☛ DNS and UDP truncation
Measuring DNS resolver compliance with UDP response truncation standards.
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The DNS leverages the UDP transport protocol to maximize its efficiency. No state is held in a DNS server, and each received query is processed without reference to preceding queries. It represents a relatively good analogy to a simple transaction protocol.
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APNIC ☛ Welcome to APRICOT 2024
APRICOT 2024 starts today in Bangkok, Thailand! Here are some highlights.
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APNIC ☛ Event Wrap: APAN 57
Che-Hoo Cheng gave the APNIC Report at APAN 57, held in Bangkok, Thailand from 29 January to 2 February 2024.
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APNIC ☛ 2023 Annual Report now available
APNIC's 2023 reports and 2024 Activity Plan are now available.
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Trademarks
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The Hill ☛ Apple suing over patent office’s refusal to grant augmented reality software trademark
Apple is asking the Virginia court to reverse the USPTO decision. It argued that “Reality Composer” is a creative name for the tool because composer typically relates to music, not technology, and it is not used by any competitors. Apple argued that “it takes imagination and a few moments of thought” to understand how “Reality Converter” would relate to an Apple product.
The company added that USPTO has “also registered dozens of trademarks” for phrases that have reality in it “used in connection with software products.”
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Copyrights
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Kevin Lawver ☛ The Thief in the Public Square
Generative AI doesn’t do that. It gives no credit to their “inspirations” and no creator ever gets a new potential patron. Why? Because the original source is now just a signal that creates a mediocre knock-off based on it, and millions of other works, all created by people.
These companies are thieves in the public square, taking the property that others have created, giving them no credit, no way to make a new fan of their work, and producing knockoffs, polluting the world with… uninspired bullshit.
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Gizmodo ☛ OpenAI Accuses the New York Times of 'Hacking' ChatGPT
It’s not entirely clear what OpenAI is talking about. If I had to guess, it sounds like the New York Times hired a contractor to see whether they could make ChatGPT reproduce their reporting. That said, it’s not clear that’s the case. Gizmodo reached out to the New York Times and OpenAI for clarification and will update this story when we receive a response.
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The Verge ☛ OpenAI claims the Times cheated to get ChatGPT to regurgitate articles
Times lead counsel Ian Crosby told The Verge in an email that calling the outlet’s efforts a hack is a mischaracterization and that the outlet was “simply using OpenAI’s products to look for evidence that they stole and reproduced The Times’s copyrighted works.” He added that OpenAI doesn’t deny “it copied Times works without permission within the statute of limitations.”
The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December, claiming the companies trained their AI models on its content and that their chatbots could reproduce the stories verbatim. The publication alleged that this deprives it of revenue and compromises its relationship with its readers.
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Quartz ☛ OpenAI said the New York Times paid someone to hack ChatGPT
OpenAI has built its business off of scraping huge swaths of the internet. Artists, authors, journalists, and filmmakers have all had their work hoovered up by the company’s web scrapers; that work has then been used to train the company’s high-octane, content-generating algorithms. Many creatives have decided to sue the company.
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Torrent Freak ☛ OpenAI: 'The New York Times Paid Someone to Hack Us'
OpenAI accuses The New York Times of paying someone to hack OpenAI’s products. This was allegedly done to gather evidence for the copyright infringement complaint the newspaper filed late last year. This lawsuit fails to meet The Times' "famously rigorous journalistic standards," the defense argues, asking the New York federal court to dismiss it in part.
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Torrent Freak ☛ ISPs Request Records to Show How Piracy Fight Blocked Legitimate Sites
Internet anti-piracy system 'Piracy Shield' has been fully operational for less than a month and has already managed to block large numbers of legitimate platforms. Last Saturday saw the most significant blunder, yet official explanations are notable only by their absence. In a letter to AGCOM dated Monday, ISP association ASSOProvider calls on the telecoms regulator to release specific documents to show what has been blocked since February 1, and effectively, who issued the order to block Cloudflare - and why..
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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