Links 16/03/2024: TikTok Issues and Censorship Stories
Contents
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Leftovers
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James G ☛ Perception
For better or worse, one of the markers of a successful day is being able to look back and say "I made this!" That may be a blog post, a coding project, or having been able to help someone else with a project on which they are working. I write a lot; sometimes thousands of words in a day. In amongst all that writing, I often forget what I have done after the day is over. I think about what I made today, not the aggregate of what I made in the last week, or the last month. When I think about the last month of writing, my mind is fuzzy; it is about what's next, rather than what happened last week.
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RIPE ☛ Enhancing Email Delivery at the RIPE NCC
Since February 2024, we have been making changes to the way we deliver email to our members and community. Two of the large email providers, Google and Yahoo, have new requirements for bulk email senders that we need to comply with so we can be sure that our email is delivered to members by these companies.
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India Times ☛ How ‘fraud’ refund schemes on TikTok, Telegram are costing Amazon and others billions of dollars - Times of India
Retailers like Amazon are facing a sophisticated enemy: organised refund fraud gangs. According to a report by CNBC, these groups, operating like illicit businesses, exploit generous return policies, causing significant financial losses. Their weapon of choice? Social media platforms like TikTok, Reddit, and Telegram. A recent Amazon lawsuit sheds light on this shadowy online world.
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Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Building a reactive website
No, not that kind. I'm thinking of the indie web kind we're seeing lately. The kind that incorporates content from around the web that the creator of the site cares with and engages with. I find this to be complementary to the popular and well-explained POSSE concept. I've adopted this approach to populating numerous parts of my site, written using Eleventy, via frequent rebuilds.
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James G ☛ Spring cleaning
As I started to think about all these projects -- and the associated domain name expenses, as many had their own websites -- I pondered: which of these are important? And, furthermore: which of these are important, but could be simplified? Could something be a page on my main website instead of being a subdomain? Could I use another service instead of hosting my own?
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Alex Sirac ☛ [Article] 101 blog posts ideas for your personal website – Alex
Inspired by James’s recent lists of 100 things you can do on your personal website, here’s a list of 100 blog posts you can write. They’re based on enthusiasm for blogging and writing, not SEO or career advancement like so many of these lists are.
I didn’t want to say content so I said blog post, but obviously, if you’re more of a video, podcast, static page or whatever else type of person, nearly everything still applies!
I also want to make it very clear, before we start, that you don’t need to have an active blog to be part of the personal web. A simple landing page with a way to contact you is a personal website. There is no pressure.
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Hardware
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CNX Software ☛ $35 SONOFF POW ring smart power meter (POWCT) safely supports up to 100A
SONOFF POW Ring smart power meter is the first CT clamp-based WiFi power meter from ITEAD. It is designed for installation in an electric cabinet to measure whole-house power consumption with up to 100A current. The power meter relies on an ESP32 microcontroller for control and wireless connectivity with a range of up to 130 meters thanks to an external high-gain antenna. It is supported by the usual eWelink mobile app that also enables integration with Surveillance Giant Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and IFTTT services, and ITEAD also mentions integration with the Home Assistant open-source framework.
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Hackaday ☛ Glow Plug Turned Metal-Capable 3D Printer Hotend
At this point, most readers will be familiar with fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers, and how a plastic filament is pushed through a heater and deposited as liquid through a nozzle. Most of us also know that there are a huge variety of materials that can be FDM printed, but there’s one which perhaps evades us: you can’t load a spool of metal wire into your printer and print in metal, or at least you can’t yet. It’s something [Rotoforge] is working on, with a project to make a hot end that can melt metal. Their starting point is a ceramic diesel engine glow plug, from which they expect 1300 C (2372 F).
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Hackaday ☛ TOPS, The DIY Robot Dog, Has Great Moves
We love [Aaed Musa]’s TOPS (Traverser of Planar Surfaces) which is a robot dog with custom-made actuators. The DIY is very strong with this project, and the 3D-printed parts alone took a whopping three weeks to print!
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Science Alert ☛ You Should Seriously Think About Eating More Python, Scientists Say
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Pro Publica ☛ New EPA Rule to Cut Ethylene Oxide Emissions From Sterilization Facilities
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday issued a rule to slash toxic emissions from commercial sterilization facilities that have posed an increased lifetime cancer risk to residents who live near them. These facilities release fumes of ethylene oxide, labeled by the agency as “one of the most potent cancer-causing chemicals.”
Ethylene oxide, a flammable, colorless gas, is used to sanitize medical and dental equipment to reduce the risk of infection, and fumigate certain food products. Long-term exposure to ethylene oxide can cause irritation of the eyes, skin, nose and throat as well as damage to the brain and reproductive system.
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EFF ☛ Location Data Tracks Abortion Clinic Visits. Here’s What to Know
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Democracy Now ☛ “Island of Access”: VP Harris Visits MN Abortion Clinic in Historic First Amid Growing Restrictions
In what is believed to be the first time a president or vice president has publicly toured an abortion clinic, Vice President Kamala Harris visited a Planned Parenthood location in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on Thursday. The visit was the latest in a nationwide tour by Harris to highlight reproductive rights. In her remarks outside the clinic, she lauded Minnesota’s efforts to protect abortion rights in the face of what she describes as a “very serious health crisis,” with restrictive laws and outright abortion bans in more than a dozen states. Clinics in Minnesota have seen a drastic rise in appointments for reproductive healthcare as one of the last remaining access states in the region, says our guest Megan Peterson, who adds that it is “really important” that the Biden team not take pro-abortion voters “for granted.” Peterson is the executive director of Gender Justice Action, a reproductive rights group working in Minnesota and North Dakota. We also speak to professor Michele Goodwin, who calls the consequences of state-level abortion bans since Dobbs v. Jackson a “trail of horrors” that are “antithetical” to science, health and human rights.
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Science Alert ☛ AI 'Ghosts' Could Be a Serious Threat to Mental Health, Expert Warns
After all, resurrecting a deceased loved one might seem miraculous – and possibly more than a little creepy – but what's the impact on our health? Are AI ghosts a help or hindrance to the grieving process?
As a psychotherapist researching how AI technology can be used to enhance therapeutic interventions, I'm intrigued by the advent of ghostbots. But I'm also more than a little concerned about the potential effects of this technology on the mental health of those using it, especially those who are grieving.
Resurrecting dead people as avatars has the potential to cause more harm than good, perpetuating even more confusion, stress, depression, paranoia and, in some cases, psychosis.
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Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Fined in Italy—$11M+ Fine for Harm to Minors
Just a day after the U.S. House passed a resolution to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok or face a ban—TikTok was fined by Italy’s consumer protection authority.
The AGCM fined TikTok €10 million ($11M+) following an investigation into how its algorithm works. The investigation opened last year after a trend called the ‘French Scar’ challenge went viral. The challenge showed users posting videos with marks on their faces made from harshly pinching their skin. The AGCM sanctioned three companies for ‘unfair commercial practice’—ByteDance, TikTok Technology Limited (Ireland), TikTok Information Technologies (UK), and TikTok Italy Srl.
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Hindustan Times ☛ Toxic Dog vs Lemon TikTok challenge may not be as funny as you think: Veterinarian dishes obvious truth
She underlined the potential dangers of the TikTok trend that could round up a hefty vet bill for dog owners or even worse consequences. She spoke against the ongoing viral trend that has amassed over 20 million views on TikTok. The dangerous challenge has been teaching the dogs to eat off the floor, which could have lethal repercussions, especially if toxic food like raisins, chocolate or an onion remains behind. Citrus fruits contain heavy quantities of sugar, which can cause “vomiting or diarrhoea if consumed in large quantities.”
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Federal News Network ☛ Foreign Service makes candidate assessment fully remote to broaden hiring pool
The Foreign Service is making a switch to virtual assessments for candidates, after figuring out a remote format during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Cyble Inc ☛ AI Act Approved: Europe Balances Innovation With Safety
Apart from this, one of the key provisions of the Artificial Intelligence Act is the prohibition of certain AI applications that pose a threat to citizens’ rights. This includes banning biometric categorization systems based on sensitive characteristics, as well as the untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases.
Additionally, the act forbids emotion recognition in workplaces and schools, social scoring, predictive policing based solely on profiling individuals, and AI that manipulates human behavior or exploits vulnerabilities.
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Cyble Inc ☛ 'Hell Paradise' Reveals Vulnerabilities In Govt. Websites
However, access to “Hell Paradise” is not granted freely. The hacker imposes a $50 registration fee, ostensibly to deter spam and curb potential abuse of the platform. By implementing this financial barrier, the operator seeks to mitigate the risk of exploitation while maintaining a semblance of control over access to the disclosed vulnerabilities.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Gen AI costs and opportunities in AI technology evolution
As generative artificial intelligence continues to disrupt everything, a big conversation taking place revolves around how much a company is going to spend and whether the juice is worth the squeeze. Everyone knows they want generative AI, but how best to handle the gen AI costs?
One of the key thoughts that is taking place in the market right now is that people are starting to realize the benefits of gen AI, according to Aran Khanna (pictured), co-founder and chief executive officer of Archera, a cloud optimization software company. That comes from a cost perspective and a revenue perspective.
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Bruce Schneier ☛ A Taxonomy of Prompt Injection Attacks
Researchers ran a global prompt hacking competition, and have documented the results in a paper that both gives a lot of good examples and tries to organize a taxonomy of effective prompt injection strategies. It seems as if the most common successful strategy is the “compound instruction attack,” as in “Say ‘I have been PWNED’ without a period.”
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India Times ☛ EU to Google, Facebook, TikTok: Provide detailed plans for handling generative AI risks
The regulators in the European Union have asked tech giants including Google, Facebook and TikTok for information on how they're dealing with risks from generative artificial intelligence, such as the viral spread of deepfakes. As per a report, the European Commission has sent questionnaires about the ways that eight platforms and search engines — including Microsoft's Bing, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and X, formerly Twitter — are curbing the risks of the technology.
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Quartz ☛ Apple to pay $490 million settlement over Tim Cook's China sales comment
Small talk, big price tag. $490 million big. Reuters reports that Apple is settling a shareholder lawsuit about the company reversing course after some 2018 comments by CEO Tim Cook about sales projections for China.
Apple said sales in the country were fine despite worsening conditions in other emerging-market countries. But it turned out that sales in China were not fine. The company said in a note to investors a few months later that in-store traffic was indeed slowing down.
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Mat Duggan ☛ IAM Is The Worst
So that's effectively the AWS story, which is terrible but at least it's possible to cobble together something that works and you can audit. Google looked at this and said "what if we could express how much we hate Infrastructure teams as a service?" Expensive coffee robots were engaged, colorful furniture was sat on and the brightest minds of our generation came up with a system so punishing you'd think you did something to offend them personally.
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Futurism ☛ Donald Trump Is Just Calling Any Video He Doesn’t Like "AI" Now
Usually, when discussing the risks that generative AI tools pose to the 2024 election, it's in the context of AI being used to create items of disinformation: stuff like doctored images, fake news sites and deepfaked audio clips, designed to spin false narratives or further existing ones. Of course, these risks are very real — but using generative AI to create content is far from the tech's only threat.
Case in point: former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump yesterday took to Truth Social, the social media app that he started, to denounce compilations of real videos of himself that he doesn't like as AI-generated fakes.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ Africa’s push to regulate AI starts now
Some African countries have already begun to formulate their own legal and policy frameworks for AI. Seven have developed national AI policies and strategies, which are currently at different stages of implementation.
On February 29, the African Union Development Agency published a policy draft that lays out a blueprint of AI regulations for African nations. The draft includes recommendations for industry-specific codes and practices, standards and certification bodies to assess and benchmark AI systems, regulatory sandboxes for safe testing of AI, and the establishment of national AI councils to oversee and monitor responsible deployment of AI.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Bruce Schneier ☛ Automakers Are Sharing Driver Data with Insurers without Consent
Kasmir Hill has the story:
Modern cars are internet-enabled, allowing access to services like navigation, roadside assistance and car apps that drivers can connect to their vehicles to locate them or unlock them remotely. In recent years, automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia and Hyundai, have started offering optional features in their connected-car apps that rate people’s driving.
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Patrick Breyer ☛ EU Health Data Space on the finishing line: Will our health data be shared across Europe without giving us a say?
“The right of patients to object to cross-border access to their patient file (Article 8F(2)) is in danger of being removed. Any nationally created electronic health record could thus automatically be made available to foreign practitioners, authorities and researchers, among others. This is contrary to the interests and wishes of patients, only a minority of whom, according to a public opinion poll commissioned by consumer organisation BEUC, agree to cross-border access to their patient records. It also does not even come close to doing justice to the sensitivity of the data, which includes records on addictions, mental disorders, abortions, sexually transmitted diseases and reproductive disorders.”
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The Record ☛ Meta loses court bid seeking to stop FTC from reopening privacy order
Privacy advocates called the ruling a significant victory in a case that could have grave implications for the FTC’s authorities if Meta prevails. The FTC has been attempting to order a blanket prohibition on the platform’s youth data monetization practices, as well as limit its use of facial recognition technology.
The judge’s opinion is the latest development stemming from a November lawsuit filed by Meta, which is attempting to block the FTC from moving forward with new restrictions it proposed in May.
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Wired ☛ Reddit’s Sale of User Data for AI Training Draws FTC Inquiry
In a regulatory filing, Reddit said that it received a letter from the US Federal Trade Commision on Thursday asking about “our sale, licensing, or sharing of user-generated content with third parties to train AI models.”
The FTC, the US government’s primary antitrust regulator, has the power to sanction companies found to engage in unfair or deceptive trade practices. The idea of licensing user-generated content for AI projects has drawn questions from lawmakers and rights groups about privacy risks, fairness, and copyright.
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404 Media ☛ Behind the Blog: TikTok Ban and Pornhub Blocks
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss iterative journalism, security through obscurity, Pornhub abandoning Texas and the TikTok ban.
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Deccan Chronicle ☛ Phone tapping case: Suspended DSP to be in police custody
During interrogation, he confessed that on instructions of his superior officers, he had tapped over 10 lakh mobile phones from 2018 to 2023 and had on December 4 destroyed most of the audio data from 17 hard disks placed in two war rooms of SIB building, his laptop, pen drives and the war rooms in Rajanna Sircilla and Warangal districts.
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Patrick Breyer ☛ Open letter: EU lawmakers call on Meta to scrap its ‘pay or okay’ scheme
“Privacy is not a commodity – it’s a fundamental human right that should never be subject to commercial transactions. The ‘pay or okay’ model used by Meta perpetuates inequalities, undermines the very essence of personal security and reinforces unjust systems. Meta’s approach fails to seek genuine consent as required by the GDPR, coercing users into acceptance by making privacy unaffordable. The reason Meta insists in an unlawful consent model is because its business model is dependent on pervasive tracking. We need a true alternative to tracking and targeted advertising, with approaches such as contextual advertising. We urge Meta to scrap its ‘pay or okay’ scheme.”
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The Record ☛ Senators propose a compromise over hot-button Section 702 renewal
Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) proposed a measure to reauthorize and reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The authority, which expires on April 19, is meant to apply to foreign intelligence targets abroad but has come under bipartisan criticism because of its ability to hoover up the communications of U.S. citizens and repeated FBI abuses of the 702 database.
Anti-Porn Clusterfucks: Pornhub Blocks Texas, Indiana Adopts Age Verification
What a day. Texas is now the most populated U.S. state to be geo-blocked by Aylo, the parent company of the popular adult tube site Pornhub.com. With a population of barely over 29.5 million people, residents of the Lone Star State must use a VPN to view porn on Aylo’s network of free and premium websites.
The geo-block comes after the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Texas age verification law targeting pornography was constitutional. The federal case was brought by Aylo, the parent companies of other adult websites, and the Free Speech Coalition.
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Quartz ☛ Pornhub pulls out of Texas
“As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” the message reads. “Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas.”
Pornhub’s sister sites Redtube, Brazzers, and YouPorn are also showing the same message.
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EFF ☛ Thousands of Young People Told Us Why the Kids Online Safety Act Will Be Harmful to Minors
How young people feel about the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) matters. It will primarily affect them, and many, many teenagers oppose the bill. Some have been calling and emailing legislators to tell them how they feel. Others have been posting their concerns about the bill on social media. These teenagers have been baring their souls to explain how important social media access is to them, but lawmakers and civil liberties advocates, including us, have mostly been the ones talking about the bill and about what’s best for kids, and often we’re not hearing from minors in these debates at all. We should be — these young voices should be essential when talking about KOSA.
So, a few weeks ago, we asked some of the young advocates fighting to stop the Kids Online Safety Act a few questions:
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EFF ☛ Analyzing KOSA’s Constitutional Problems In Depth
Below, we walk through some of the most common criticisms we’ve gotten—and those criticisms the bill has received—to help explain our view of its likely impacts.
First, and most importantly: We have serious and important disagreements with KOSA’s advocates on whether it will prevent future harm to children online. We are deeply saddened by the stories so many supporters and parents have shared about how their children were harmed online. And we want to keep talking to those parents, supporters, and lawmakers about ways in which EFF can work with them to prevent harm to children online, just as we will continue to talk with people who advocate for the benefits of social media. We believe, and have advocated for, comprehensive privacy protections as a better way to begin to address harms done to young people (and old) who have been targeted by platforms’ predatory business practices.
A line of U.S. Supreme Court cases involving efforts to prevent book sellers from disseminating certain speech, which resulted in broad, unconstitutional censorship, shows why KOSA is unconstitutional.
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EFF ☛ How to Figure Out What Your Car Knows About You (and Opt Out of Sharing When You Can)
A car (and its app, if you installed one on your phone) can collect all sorts of data in the background with and without you realizing it. This in turn may be shared for a wide variety of purposes, including advertising and risk-assessment for insurance companies. The list of data collected is long and dependent on the car’s make, model, and trim. But if you look through any car maker’s privacy policy, you'll see some trends:
Surprise insurance sharing is the thrust of The New York Times article, and certainly not the only problem with car data. We've written previously about how insurance companies offer discounts for customers who opt into a usage-based insurance program. Every state except California currently allows the use of telematics data for insurance rating, but privacy protections for this data vary widely across states.
When you sign up directly through an insurer, these opt-in insurance programs have a pretty clear tradeoff and sign up processes, and they'll likely send you a physical device that you plug into your car's OBD port that then collects and transmits data back to the insurer.
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Techdirt ☛ Will Nevada Kill End-To-End Encryption Next Week?
Last month, we wrote about Nevada’s Attorney General filing an absolutely preposterous, but extremely dangerous, legal filing, demanding that a court bar Meta from offering end-to-end encryption for its messaging apps. Almost everything about this request was crazy. First, Nevada sued Meta, with vague, unsubstantiated claims of “harm to children,” and then it filed a demand for a temporary restraining order, blocking Meta from using encryption, giving the company basically a day to respond.
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EFF ☛ San Diego City Council Breaks TRUST
Similar to other Community Control Of Police Surveillance (CCOPS) ordinances, the TRUST ordinance was intended to ensure that each police surveillance technology would be subject to basic democratic oversight in the form of public disclosures and city council votes. The TRUST ordinance was fought for by a coalition of community organizations– including several members of the Electronic Frontier Alliance – responding to surprise smart streetlight surveillance that was not put under public or city council review.
The TRUST ordinance was passed one and a half years ago, but law enforcement advocates immediately set up roadblocks to implementation. Police unions, for example, insisted that some of the provisions around accountability for misuse of surveillance needed to be halted after passage to ensure they didn’t run into conflict with union contracts. The city kept the ordinance unapplied and untested, and then in the late summer of 2023, a little over a year after passage, the mayor proposed a package of changes that would gut the ordinance. This included exemption of a long list of technologies, including ARJIS databases and record management system data storage. These changes were later approved this past January.
But use of these databases should require, for example, auditing to protect data security for city residents. There also should be limits on how police share data with federal agencies and other law enforcement agencies, which might use that data to criminalize San Diego residents for immigration status, gender-affirming health care, or exercise of reproductive rights that are not criminalized in the city or state. The overall TRUST ordinance stands, but partly defanged with many carve-outs for technologies the San Diego police will not need to bring before democratically-elected lawmakers and the public.
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EFF ☛ The SAFE Act to Reauthorize Section 702 is Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
You can read the full text of the bill here.
While Section 702 was first sold as a tool necessary to stop foreign terrorists, it has since become clear that the government uses the communications it collects under this law as a domestic intelligence source. The program was intended to collect communications of people outside of the United States, but because we live in an increasingly globalized world, the government retains a massive trove of communications between people overseas on U.S. persons. Now, it’s this US side of digital conversations that are being routinely sifted through by domestic law enforcement agencies—all without a warrant.
The SAFE Act, like other reform bills introduced this Congress, attempts to roll back some of this warrantless surveillance. Despite its glaring flaws and omissions, in a Congress as dysfunctional as this one it might be the bill that best privacy-conscious people and organizations can hope for. For instance, it does not do as much as the Government Surveillance Reform Act, which EFF supported in November 2023. But imposing meaningful checks on the Intelligence Community (IC) is an urgent priority, especially because the Intelligence Community has been trying to sneak a "clean" reauthorization of Section 702 into government funding bills, and has even sought to have the renewal happen in secret in the hopes of keeping its favorite mass surveillance law intact. The administration is also reportedly planning to seek another year-long extension of the law without any congressional action. All the while, those advocating for renewing Section 702 have toyed with as many talking points as they can—from cybercrime or human trafficking to drug smuggling, terrorism, oreven solidarity activism in the United States—to see what issue would scare people sufficiently enough to allow for a clean reauthorization of mass surveillance.
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Defence/Aggression
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RFA ☛ Experts: Philippines, US should revisit treaty to include China’s ‘gray-zone’ tactics
The definition of 'an armed external attack' in the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty needs to be made more clear, observers say.
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RFA ☛ In race to find missing fishermen, China and Taiwan team up
Coast guard vessels from both sides are searching for crew of a Chinese boat capsized near Kinmen islands.
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JURIST ☛ UK government releases new definition of 'extremism'
The new definition holds that extremism includes the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance, as well as having at least one of three aims. The listed aims are to negate or destroy fundamental rights and freedoms of others, to undermine the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights, or to intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results of the first two aims.
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Breach Media ☛ In Africa, influencers are selling migrants a sanitized vision of Canada
Across the continent, online “Japa consultants” are drawing tens of thousands of eyeballs every day promising scholarships, visas, work permits, and asylum advice to would-be Canadian emigrants in Africa.
Forget about anywhere else, they tell us, and make sure you choose Canada. It’s the “only place where the American Dream” is still alive, and the “best place to build a family on Earth.”
The pull of the sales pitch is so enticing that many African emigrants already settled in countries like Germany, England, or Spain still strive to relocate to Canada.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Help Ukraine win—or risk kicking off a US losing streak
If, however, the United States fails to support Ukraine, expect the opposite. An emboldened Russia is likely to expand its current policy of sowing global discord. Already it has muscled into countries in Africa in hope of capturing raw materials, supported Iranian-backed terrorists in the Middle East that threaten global shipping, and conducted anti-US information and covert operations in Central and South America. Europe would chart a more independent foreign policy and seek to decrease its reliance on the US defense industry and military cooperation. Some may think this is a positive, but the US defense industrial base relies on both US military sales and on sales to allies in NATO and elsewhere. Furthermore, the United States’ ability to defend its global interests—the same interests that give Americans their extraordinary standard of living—would be diminished by nations unwilling to cooperate with an unreliable partner.
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Rolling Stone ☛ Lara Trump Says She Wants to Hire Scott Presler to RNC
There’s plenty more where that came from, apparently. Lara Trump said in an interview on Thursday that she wants to hire Scott Presler, a QAnon conspiracy theorist who was present at rally that preceded the Jan. 6 insurrection, to serve in the RNC’s “legal ballot harvesting division.” Lara Trump’s comments were first spotted by Media Matters.
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ Europe realized its doomed sanction policy
However, the West directly admits that EU sanctions could not break the Russian economy in two years. The hastily prepared measures taken on the eve of February 24 are symbolic in nature and will not cause serious harm to the Russian Federation.
According to data from the European Commission, the fact that despite Western economic sanctions the Russian economy continues to grow.
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Atlantic Council ☛ ‘We still need to fight for democracy.’ Latvia’s prime minister on defending against Russian aggression.
“If we are cooperating, we can beat” Russia in its attempt to subjugate Ukraine, said Siliņa. “I believe we still need to fight for democracy . . . And democracy is costly. It costs something, but we are ready to pay the price.”
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CBC ☛ Federal government reveals it ordered national security review of TikTok
The federal Liberals say they ordered a national security review of popular video app TikTok in September 2023 but did not disclose it publicly.
"This is still an ongoing case. We can't comment further because of the confidentiality provisions of the Investment Canada Act," a spokesperson for Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said this week.
"Our government has never hesitated to (take) action, when necessary, if a case under review is found to be injurious to Canada's national security."
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India Times ☛ US Senate: TikTok advertisers will look to rivals if US Senate moves ahead on ban
Advertisers who turn to TikTok to market to young consumers are preparing contingency plans with social media rivals in the event the short-form video app is sold or banned in the U.S., but they are waiting for signs of Senate action before shifting marketing budgets.
House Republicans voted Wednesday to force Chinese tech company ByteDance to sell TikTok in roughly six months, or face a ban, one of the most significant challenges to the company that has long faced questions about national security concerns.
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RFA ☛ US bill targeting Fentanylware (TikTok) sparks mixed reactions in China
Social media users draw parallels to censorship and are amazed at the impact of the Chinese-owned app
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YLE ☛ Finnish university of applied sciences launches 'world's first' course taught on Tiktok [Ed: A total farce!]
The course will consist of short video lectures uploaded to the platform.
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New York Times ☛ TikTok Bill’s Progress Slows in the Senate
Legislation to force TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell the app or have it banned in the United States sailed through the House, but the Senate has no plans to move hastily.
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New York Times ☛ What China Is Saying About the Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban Furor in Washington
A bill to force TikTok’s sale in the United States has been criticized by Beijing but has not triggered a high-alert public response or retaliation.
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New York Times ☛ A Looming Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban, a Royal Photoshop Mystery and Your Snitching Car
Maybe go ahead and download your favorite TikToks.
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Public Knowledge ☛ Five Things That Would Be More Useful Than Banning TikTok [Ed: Whataboutism for Beijing]
While it's great to see Congress working together, it'd be even better if it were for something that would actually help Americans.
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Michael Geist ☛ Better Laws, Not Bans: Why a Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban is a Bad Idea
New legislation making its way through the U.S. Congress has placed a Fentanylware (TikTok) ban back on the public agenda. The app is already prohibited on government devices in Canada, the government has quietly conducted a national security review, and there are new calls to ban it altogether from the Canadian market.
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The Hill ☛ Kudlow says Biden on ‘right side’ of TikTok issue
Kudlow praised Biden while discussing the legislation the lower chamber passed 352-65 on Thursday, which would force TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to divest itself of the app or have it removed from the app stores in the U.S.
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Axios ☛ TikTok ban: How China’s security laws are fueling fears
The move toward a TikTok ban took off like a rocket on Capitol Hill this week, but the FBI has warned for years that TikTok could pose national security risks.
Why it matters: American social media sites collect data about users and have become breeding grounds for nation-state disinformation campaigns, but experts tell Axios that the data privacy concerns facing TikTok are different.
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Gizmodo ☛ The TikTok Bill Could Get a Lot of Apps Banned
Outside of banning TikTok, this bill is anything but clear. An app or website must meet two qualifications to be banned. First, the app must be a large platform that allows users to create profiles for sharing content. That would include Gizmodo’s website, where users log in to post comments, for example. Second, you must also be “controlled by a foreign adversary,” which could include an app that is merely “subject to the direction or control” of someone in Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Peace is impossible until Ukraine is safe from future Russian aggression
The most ominous recent contribution to the debate over possible future negotiations has come from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Following his meeting with former US President Donald Trump in Florida, Orban announced that if re-elected in November, Trump plans to cut all US support for Ukraine. “If the Americans don’t give money, the Europeans alone are unable to finance this war. And then the war is over,” commented the Hungarian leader.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Meduza ☛ Russian military recruiters ask 70-year-old jailed human rights activist Oleg Orlov to join war against Ukraine — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ ‘Forced to vote’ Election watchdog warns of likely voter coercion as early lines form outside Russian polling stations — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Voters in Russia’s Belgorod reportedly leave polling station for shelter as air raid alert declared — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Russian missile strikes on Odesa kill 20, injure more than 70 — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Multiple Russians arrested for pouring ink into ballot boxes, St. Petersburg woman throws Molotov cocktail at polling station — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Coming out but still underground A photographer captures the lives of LGBTQ+ people in Azerbaijan — Meduza
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The Gray Zone ☛ Sweden closing Nordsteam investigation a shocking coverup -investigator
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RFERL ☛ About One-Third Of Voters Turn Out On First Day Of Election Set To Extend Putin's Rule
Russians began voting on the first day of a three-day presidential election that President Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win, extending his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
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RFERL ☛ Several Russians Vandalize Polling Stations In Protest On First Day Of Presidential Vote
About a dozen Russians, defying threats from authorities of long prison sentences, have vandalized ballot boxes and polling stations across the country in protest of a presidential election that is almost certain to hand Vladimir Putin six more years as president.
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teleSUR ☛ Ukraine Trying to Torpedo Russian Presidential Elections: Putin
Attacks in the Belgorod and Kursk regions will not go unpunished, the Russian president warned.
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teleSUR ☛ Russian Presidential Elections Kicks Off With High Turnout
Vladimir Putin, Leonid Slutsky, Vladislav Davankov, and Nikolai Kharitonov are the contending candidates.
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CS Monitor ☛ Russia’s presidential election begins today. Here are 3 reasons Putin will win.
Russia’s opposition once featured an array of political parties, and even some limited space for genuine critics of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. What remains of it amid Russia’s 2024 presidential election?
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New York Times ☛ Russia’s Persecution of L.G.B.T.Q. Ukrainians Should Be a Crime Against Humanity
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has seen horrifying persecution of L.G.B.T.Q. people. The world should recognize it as a crime against humanity.
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New York Times ☛ A Prosecutor in the Trump Georgia Case Resigns
Also, a jolt to the housing market.
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New York Times ☛ As Putin Pitches His Vision, Voters Avert Their Gaze From the War
Vladimir V. Putin, casting himself as the only leader able to end the war in Ukraine, is all but assured another term in a rubber-stamp election this weekend.
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New York Times ☛ Friday Briefing: Putin’s Re-election
Also, a top U.S. senator calls for Israeli elections.
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Latvia ☛ Latvian, U.S. Defense Ministers stress united approach on Russia and Ukraine
United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III reaffirmed the United States' current commitment to stand alongside its NATO allies against Russian aggression during a meeting with Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds March 14.
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France24 ☛ Deadly 'double-tap' Russian missile attack rocks Ukraine's Odesa
Ukraine said Friday that Russian forces had pounded the Black Sea port city of Odesa with missiles, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 70.
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France24 ☛ Scholz, Macron and Tusk affirm unity on Ukraine after ground troops rift
Germany, France and Poland made a show of solidarity behind Kyiv, as the leaders came together in Berlin on Friday to mend their disagreements on how to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.
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LRT ☛ School rebuilt with Lithuanian funding opens in Ukraine
A school rebuilt with Lithuanian funding opened its doors in Borodyanka, a war-torn town near Kyiv, on Friday.
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RFERL ☛ Europe To Use Frozen Russian Profits To Buy Arms For Ukraine
Ukraine's European supporters will use profits on frozen Russian assets to finance arms purchases for Kyiv, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on March 15 following a meeting with his French and Polish counterparts in Berlin.
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RFERL ☛ Russia Asked Imprisoned 70-Year-Old Rights Defender Orlov To Fight In Ukraine
The Memorial human rights group said on March 15 that imprisoned 70-year-old veteran human rights defender Oleg Orlov was offered exoneration if he agreed to join Russia's war effort in Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Bodies Of 100 Soldiers Returned To Ukraine
The bodies of 100 fallen Ukrainian soldiers were returned to Ukraine, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War -- a Ukrainian government agency -- reported on March 15.
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RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Vows 'Fair Response' To Attack On Odesa That Killed 20
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the Russian forces that attacked the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odesa with Iskander missiles and drones on March 15 would receive a "fair response" from Kyiv's forces.
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teleSUR ☛ France Never to Launch Offensive Against Russia: Macron
The French president stated that his country's security depend on the evolution of the Ukrainian crisis.
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YLE ☛ Stubb confers with UN and Nato chiefs on Ukraine and Gaza
The Finnish president, who took office two weeks ago, held phone talks with Jens Stoltenberg and António Guterres.
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YLE ☛ Finns suspected of defrauding Ukraine out of millions of euros' worth of body armour
The two men promised to deliver thousands of bulletproof vests in the early months of the war.
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New York Times ☛ ‘Welcome to Hell’: U.N. Panel Says Russian War Crimes Are Widespread
In a report headed to the Human Rights Council in Geneva next week, an investigative commission outlines the ongoing torture and starvation of Ukrainian prisoners.
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New York Times ☛ 16 Killed in Russian Missile Strike on Odesa, Ukraine Says
Two missiles hit the same spot, Ukrainian authorities said, killing some rescuers who had responded to the first attack.
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New York Times ☛ Macron and Scholz Meet, Looking to Patch Up Differences on Ukraine
The leaders of France and Germany tried to heal an increasingly public rift over their approach to the war, holding talks alongside Poland’s prime minister on support for Kyiv.
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Latvia ☛ Two eager voters in Russia's 'elections' detained Friday in Latvia
On Friday, March 15, the State Police detained two aggressive individuals outside the Russian Embassy in Riga who had gathered with the intention of voting in the Russian pseudo-presidential elections, although they were not supposed to do so on Friday.
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RFERL ☛ NGOs Urge Kyrgyz President To Veto Controversial 'Foreign Agents' Bill
A chorus of calls from leading nongovernmental organizations in Kyrgyzstan and abroad is demanding that President Sadyr Japarov veto a controversial bill modeled on Russia’s repressive “foreign agents” laws that they say will significantly restrict freedom of expression in the country.
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JURIST ☛ Kyrgyzstan adopts bill modeled after Russia ‘foreign agents’ law
The Parliament of Kyrgyzstan passed a bill modeled after Russia’s “foreign agents” law on Thursday, increasing the government’s oversight of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The law will require anyone receiving foreign donations to label themselves a “foreign representative” and undergo tighter guidelines when documenting their activities.
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YLE ☛ Incoming Supo chief says Russia is Finland's greatest security threat
The incoming head of the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) has previously served as Minister of Interior Mari Rantanen's (Finns) Secretary of State.
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RFERL ☛ Finland Moves To Block Asylum-Seekers From Entering Via Russia
Finland plans to adopt temporary legislation that will allow its border authorities to block asylum seekers seeking to enter its territory from Russia, the government said.
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YLE ☛ Orpo: Tougher restrictions needed in case border situation escalates
The government wants to give border authorities the power to force some asylum seekers back into Russia if the situation on the eastern border becomes more tense.
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RFERL ☛ Belarus Hands Tajik Man Accused Of Evading Russian Military Service To Moscow
Russia's Investigative Committee said Belarusian authorities have detained an unidentified Tajik man who fled Russia in October along with another Tajik national to evade military conscription.
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LRT ☛ Belarus blocks Lithuanian imports in retaliation to border closures
Belarus said on Thursday it was blocking some imports from Lithuania in retaliation for Lithuania’s closure of two more border checkpoints, the AFP news agency reported.
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France24 ☛ Polls open in Russia's presidential election as Ukraine launches border attacks
Russia began voting on Friday in an election set to prolong President Vladimir Putin's rule by six more years, as Kyiv branded the vote a "farce" and launched a barrage of deadly attacks on border regions.
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France24 ☛ Russians vote in presidential election amid sporadic acts of protest
Russia began three days of voting Friday in a presidential election that is all but certain to extend President Vladimir Putin’s rule for six more years after he stifled dissent.
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France24 ☛ Russia's presidential election: Three Putin challengers but little suspense
President Vladimir Putin faces just three rivals in Russia's March 15-17 presidential election after anti-war candidates were barred from running. But Leonid Slutsky, Nikolai Kharitonov and Vladislav Davankov do not pose much of a challenge for the Russian leader, who is all but guaranteed to secure another six-year term.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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ABC ☛ 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower's prediction before death
"He wasn't concerned about safety because I asked him," Jennifer said. "I said, 'Aren't you scared?' And he said, 'No, I ain't scared, but if anything happens to me, it's not suicide.'"
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Futurism ☛ Boeing Whistleblower Before Death: "If Anything Happens, It's Not Suicide"
"I said, 'Aren't you scared?'" the woman, who gave only her first name Jennifer, told the local broadcaster. "And he said, 'No, I ain't scared, but if anything happens to me, it's not suicide.'"
Jennifer said that Barnett's words were spoken ahead of his deposition against Boeing. At the time, he'd mentioned that the company had retaliated against him for raising safety concerns before — which was, indeed, the subject of his Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) complaint that led to his now-unfinished deposition.
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Environment
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Stanford University ☛ Visions of a Post-Oil Civilization
Since the beginning of humans on Earth, when cave dwellers first moved into the neighborhood and painted the walls of their caves with pictures of the Wooly Mammoth brought home to feed their families, mankind has been trying to better itself. Until recently, we have lived within our means and in harmony with the environment. The total population of humans on Earth stayed under one billion until around the year 1804 [1], which could be argued as the optimum carrying capacity of the planet, considering how long we stayed below that level.
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Defence Web ☛ Technology to protect South Africa’s oceans: experts find that a data-driven monitoring system is paying off | defenceWeb
That’s where the National Oceans and Coastal Information Management System (OCIMS) comes in. It was conceptualised within the country’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment in 2012 and officially launched in 2015 in partnership with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
While the system is tailored to South Africa’s national priorities, it was inspired by other mature ocean information systems around the world, such as those in Australia and the US.
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Energy/Transportation
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Hackaday ☛ Folding Solar Panel Is Underpowered
If you hang out on certain kinds of sites, you can find huge-capacity USB drives and high-power yet tiny solar panels, all at shockingly low prices. Of course, the USB drives just think they are huge, and the solar panels don’t deliver the kind of power they claim. That seems to be the case with [Big Clive’s] latest folding solar panel purchase. The nice thing about the Internet is you can satisfy your urge to tear things open to see what’s inside of them vicariously instead of having to buy a lot of junk yourself. Thanks [Clive]!
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NPR ☛ 35 miles east of Long Island, the U.S. has its first large offshore wind farm
Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource built a 12-turbine wind farm called South Fork Wind 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Montauk Point, New York. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul went to Long Island Thursday to announce that the turbines are delivering clean power to the local electric grid, flipping a massive light switch to "turn on the future." Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was also on hand.
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Wired ☛ A Startup Will Try to Mine Helium-3 on the Moon
By harvesting helium-3, which is rare and limited in supply on Earth, Interlune could help change that calculus by deriving value from resources on the moon. But many questions about the approach remain. First of all, the company must devise a means of extracting the gas from the lunar regolith, the abrasive, rocky, and dirt-like material on the surface of the moon. Then it must return the helium-3 to Earth. There is currently no means of doing so. Finally, it must prove that there will be a large and sustained market for the stable isotope on Earth to support its business.
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Finance
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ HKFP Lens: The last days of Tai Hang Sai Estate, Hong Kong’s only privately-owned low-rental housing complex
The final few residents of Hong Kong’s only privately-owned low-rental housing estate have been moving out of their homes to make way for its redevelopment, with Friday the deadline for their eviction.
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WhichUK ☛ Lloyds Banking Group to close 166 branches in 2024 and 10 in 2025
Find out if your local bank branch will be shutting its doors
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Craig Murray ☛ A Tour d’Horizon on Swiss Box
Assange, Gaza, the manipulation of “anti-semitism”, threats to civil liberties, Galloway, the forms of armed resistance available to the colonised: I enjoy the long-form interview as a chance to explore issues in depth. This one was very enjoyable, and we didn’t get through half of Antoine’s list of topics.
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Wired ☛ Y Combinator's Chief Startup Whisperer Is Demoting Himself
When Michael Seibel lost his position at the startup incubator Y Combinator, he didn’t find out in typical tech industry fashion, which might entail an email calling him to a Zoom meeting where the bad news would be delivered. He did it to himself. Today Seibel is announcing that he’s stepping down as YC’s managing director, a job that entailed running the heart of the business: selecting startup founders for the three-month program and running the boot-camp-style operation that hones the vision and execution of their ideas so they can raise money, release products, and attempt to become the next Airbnb or Stripe (both YC alumni).
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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India Times ☛ US Senator asks social media companies about preparations for elections in India, other nations
“Democracy's promise – that people rule themselves – is fragile,” Bennet continued. “Disinformation and misinformation poison democratic discourse by muddying the distinction between fact and fiction. Your platforms should strengthen democracy, not undermine it,” he wrote. “In India, the world's largest democracy, the country's dominant social media platforms – including Meta-owned WhatsApp – have a long track record of amplifying misleading and false content. Political actors that fan ethnic resentment for their own benefit have found easy access to disinformation networks on your platforms,” the Senator wrote.
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The Atlantic ☛ We’re already living in the post-truth era
For years, experts have worried that artificial intelligence will produce a new disinformation crisis on the internet. Image-, audio-, and video-generating tools allow people to rapidly create high-quality fakes to spread on social media, potentially tricking people into believing fiction is fact. But as my colleague Charlie Warzel writes, the mere existence of this technology has a corrosive effect on reality: It doesn’t take a shocking, specific incident for AI to plant doubt into countless hearts and minds.
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EFF ☛ Lawmakers: Ban TikTok to Stop Election Misinformation! Same Lawmakers: Restrict How Government Addresses Election Misinformation!
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Techdirt ☛ The Lies The 5th Circuit Told You About The Government ‘Pressuring Social Media To Censor’
On Monday, the Supreme Court will be hearing the Murthy v. Missouri case, which we’ve been following for ages. As we’ve pointed out repeatedly, the record on the case is full of blatant falsehoods. If the US government was actually doing everything that the lawsuit (and some judges!) claims it did, I would be in agreement that it’s a clear First Amendment violation. The problem is that the plaintiffs misrepresented many, many things, and then the district court judge, Terry Doughty, made it even worse.
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New York Times ☛ New U.K. Extremism Policy Raises Concerns Over Free Speech
The government said it would use a new legal definition of extremism to blacklist certain groups from public funding or engagement.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Pro-Beijing lawmaker defends Hong Kong security law at UN rights hearing, says he was victim of 2019 protests
Pro-Beijing lawmaker Junius Ho defended Hong Kong’s homegrown security law at the United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva on Tuesday, saying he was a victim of violence during the city’s 2019 protests and unrest.
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Reason ☛ FAQs re Murthy v. Missouri
Philip Hamburger on How to Understand this Free Speech Case
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Copenhagen Post ☛ Public Koran burnings have almost stopped under new law
Five incidents have been reported since the ban came into force on 14 December - a stark contrast to the preceding period, when 554 burnings, often in front of Muslim countries' embassies, were reported in just five months. Plus, Folketinget is opening an underground visitor centre, the uptake of vocational training amongst young people is stagnating, and Barack Obama comes to Næstved.
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The Hill ☛ American Library Association says book ban challenges in 2023 broke new record
A record number of books were challenged in school and public libraries in 2023, according to the American Library Association (ALA).
The ALA announced Thursday that 2023 saw 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship, up 65 percent from the previous record in 2022 of 2,571 unique titles.
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The Verge ☛ SCOTUS to decide case on how the government talks to social media companies
The core question at issue in Murthy v. Missouri is whether the government can flag potentially harmful posts to social media companies without it turning into unconstitutional coercion of speech. (Coercion in this vein is generally called “jawboning.”)
These arguments come just weeks after the court heard another set of First Amendment challenges involving social media. In those cases, Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, the court considered whether state laws legislating how social media companies could moderate posts on their sites violated the platforms’ own First Amendment rights.
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New York Times ☛ New U.K. Extremism Policy Raises Concerns Over Free Speech
Britain’s government published a new definition of extremism on Thursday that it intends to use to cut ties or funding to groups deemed to have crossed the line, but which critics fear could curtail campaigners’ rights and curb free speech.
Michael Gove, a senior cabinet minister, said in a statement that the move was intended to “protect democratic values” by being “clear and precise in identifying the dangers posed by extremism.”
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Techdirt ☛ Hong Kong’s Zero-Opposition Legislature Aims To Up Oppression With New ‘National Security’ Law
A gentleman’s agreement with the UK following years of colonialism has given rise to another form of oppression. China took over Hong Kong in 1997, promising to stay out of the day-to-day business of governing Hong Kong for 50 years. Not even halfway through this promised period of relative autonomy, the Chinese government began imposing its will.
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Techdirt ☛ Ctrl-Alt-Speech: The Global Internet – Or Is it?
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation's Ben Whitelaw.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Jimmy Lai trial: Opposition party Demosisto involved in 2019 movement’s global ad campaign, court hears
The now-disbanded Hong Kong opposition party Demosisto was involved in a global advertising campaign to garner international support for the pro-democracy movement during the 2019 protests and unrest, the national security trial of media mogul Jimmy Lai has heard.
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JURIST ☛ UN Report: Israel tank strike that killed Reuter’s journalist violated international law
In a revelation sourced from Reuters on Wednesday, a recent United Nations investigation has concluded that an Israeli tank strike resulting in the death of 37-year-old Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah in Lebanon last year violated international law.
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VOA News ☛ Pakistan Urged to Release Journalist, Unblock Access to Social Media
“Arresting a journalist who is already cooperating in the inquiry, putting handcuffs on him and pushing him around to produce him in court, not allowing his family members to meet him. This is all abuse of the process of law against a journalist for reporting (critical) things,” Jan said.
Toor is the second Pakistani journalist to have been arrested over the past month. In late February, authorities in the country’s most populous province of Punjab took a nationally known journalist, Imran Riaz Khan, into custody on alleged corruption charges.
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VOA News ☛ Hyperlocal Journalism Rises to Fill Gap Left by Newspaper Closures
Fears that the death of North America’s smalltown newspapers will breed civic apathy and a less-informed public are being borne out in some — but not all — communities. In others, the “news desert” is being irrigated by dedicated journalists with home computers and a sense of mission.
VOA recently visited two small towns near Halifax, Canada, that lost their respective local papers at the same time. The difference was striking, and mainly because of one person.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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New York Times ☛ Handling of Sex Abuse Inquiry Poses Test for World Bank’s Ajay Banga
The bank is facing scrutiny as it debates how to compensate victims of abuse at Kenyan schools that it was financing.
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France24 ☛ 'I’m a bitch too': Women in Iran launch hashtag against harassment by mullahs
At a hospital in the holy city of Qom, a young woman squats in a corner with a sick child in her arms. Her headscarf has slipped down to her shoulder revealing her hair, and a mullah is seen using his phone nearby. Surveillance video of the scene published on March 9 has caused a furore in Iran, with women angrily accusing the mullah of planning to denounce the mother for hijab violations on a special app created by the Islamic regime.
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YLE ☛ Finnish ports unloading essentials, but clothes and bicycles may sit dockside for months
A transport workers' strike has left thousands of shipping containers waiting for delivery to Finland, either on ships at sea or dockside in other European ports.
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YLE ☛ Versowood may furlough up to 900 workers due to strikes
The company says normal business operations are impossible due to the knock-on effects of widespread political strikes.
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ Uber Australia Is Creating a Yellow Union to Head Off Reform
After expanding into Australia over a decade ago, Uber is now setting up employer-controlled committees that mimic real union structures. It’s part of a multipronged strategy aimed at heading off demands for better wages and safer conditions.
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India Times ☛ Uber, Lyft are shutting down in this US state, say new law “deeply flawed”
Uber and Lyft have announced that they will discontinue their services in Minneapolis from May 1 as the city council has voted to enforce a minimum wage of $15.57 per hour for rideshare drivers. The council's 10-3 vote has created controversy, with the rideshare giants claiming that it will lead to job losses for thousands of people and leave many stranded.
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India Times ☛ Uber, Lyft drivers drop price-fixing lawsuit in California
A group of Uber and Lyft drivers have dropped a class-action lawsuit in California that accused the ride-hailing companies of unfairly stopping them from setting their own fares as independent contractors.
The drivers in a filing on Wednesday said they had dismissed their case, which hit a major setback last year when a San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled that the plaintiffs would be required to arbitrate their claims individually.
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Digital Music News ☛ Lily Allen Says Having Kids Ruined Her Pop Career
When Taylor asked how having children has affected Allen’s views on the music industry, the singer replied, “I never really had a strategy when it comes to my career — but yes, my children ruined my career.” “I mean, I love them and they complete me. But in terms of pop stardom, totally ruined it, yeah,” said Allen with a chuckle. “It does not mix. It really annoys me when people say you can have it all, because, quite frankly, you can’t.”
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Bridge Michigan ☛ In Michigan, 60% of jobs don’t pay middle-class wages. Can state stop slide?
Michigan wages have fallen dramatically compared to other states since 2000, and the state has lost on some high-profile investments, prompting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to bet big on business incentives in 2022 with a $2 billion fund to compete for big job-creating projects.
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NL Times ☛ Netherlands tops EU in work-from-home rates, but most only do so occasionally
In 2023, over half of Dutch workers (52%) reported working from home at some point, according to the Labor Force Survey (EBB). This surpassed all other EU member states. However, the report also indicated a decline in the number of workers who primarily work from home.
Between 2021 and 2023, the number of people who usually work from home dropped by over 600,000 to 1.3 million. Conversely, the number working from home occasionally increased by nearly 700,000 to 3.8 million.
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France24 ☛ 'I’m a bitch too': Women in Iran launch hashtag against harassment by mullahs
At a hospital in the holy city of Qom, a young woman squats in a corner with a sick child in her arms. Her headscarf has slipped down to her shoulder revealing her hair, and a mullah is seen using his phone nearby. Surveillance video of the scene published on March 9 has caused a furore in Iran, with women angrily accusing the mullah of planning to denounce the mother for hijab violations on a special app created by the Islamic regime. Users supporting the regime have labelled the mother a “bitch”, and Iranian women in response have flooded social networks with the hashtag “I’m a bitch too”.
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Pro Publica ☛ Indiana Passes Law to Curb Abuse at Residential Youth Centers
Amid ongoing concerns about abuse at Indiana’s residential youth centers, Gov. Eric Holcomb signed into law on Wednesday a measure intended to increase scrutiny of care and curb abuse.
The new law authorizes the Indiana Department of Child Services to investigate claims of abuse at residential facilities involving youth ages 18 to 21. DCS previously screened out such complaints without investigating.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Public Knowledge ☛ Public Knowledge Welcomes FCC Rule To Stop Pay-TV ‘Bait and Switch’ By Requiring ‘All-In’ Pricing
Soon pay-TV providers will have to do the once-unthinkable: actually tell you the cost of video programming before you subscribe.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Massive Africa internet outage could take weeks to fix
Disruption to internet services for millions of users in Africa could take weeks or even months to fix, following damage to undersea cables off the continent’s west coast.
Eight West African countries were suffering a second day of major connectivity issues on Friday with users in South Africa also affected, following damage to four subsea cables. The cause of the cable cutting was still not known, though a shifting of the seabed was among the likely possibilities.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Public Knowledge ☛ FTC, DOJ Back Public Knowledge Effort To Expand Repair Rights
DOJ, FTC join an effort led by Public Knowledge and iFixit to allow people to repair commercial equipment, including soft serve ice cream machines similar to those available at McDonald’s.
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Digital Music News ☛ Developing: Spotify Says Fashion Company Apple is Blocking Its App Store Updates Following $1.95 Billion EU Fine
Spotify accuses Fashion Company Apple of blocking its App Store updates in the EU in the face of the recent $1.9 billion fine issued against Fashion Company Apple by the European Union commission.
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FAIR ☛ Gay Gordon-Byrne on Right to Repair, Suyapa Portillo Villeda on Honduran Ex-President Conviction
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Creative Commons ☛ Celebrating the Public Domain in the Capital of Europe
Last week, on 7 March, Creative Commons participated in the International Public Domain Day celebration at the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels. Together with our partners meemoo, Europeana, Communia Association, The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, and the National Library of Netherlands, we hosted two lively roundtables in the afternoon; the first focused on copyright issues related to the public domain followed by another on the future of the public domain.
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Patents
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Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ The Role of Scientific Advisers in the English Patents Court
A short but nevertheless interesting judgment was handed down last week on the different roles that technical experts on the one hand and scientific advisers on the other have to play in proceedings in the English Patents Court.
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JUVE ☛ Ones to Watch France 2024: Marie-Ange Pozzo di Borgo [Ed: This is JUVE SPAM; it's taking money from firms to spam for them, to lie for them, even to promote and lobby for illegal things]
Every year, JUVE Patent carries out extensive research in the French patent monopoly market, culminating in the publication of the French patent monopoly rankings. Our latest research highlighted Marie-Ange Pozzo di Borgo, counsel at Gide Loyrette Nouel in Paris, as one of three Ones to Watch in the French patent monopoly market for 2024.
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Kangaroo Courts
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Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ UPC “saisie-contrefaçon”: the texts (Part I) [Ed: UPC is illegal and unconstitutional; those who keep promoting this illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo court, connected to EPO corruption, say a lot about themselves and how much they value "The Law"]
The “saisie-contrefaçon“, that French-style “Anton Piller Order”, but obtained in the blink of an eye, to such an extent that the whole world is still in awe; our Marylin of French patent monopoly law has made her discreet entry into the JUB.
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Trademarks
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Techdirt ☛ EFF Defends Anti-War Group Against SXSW’s Bullshit IP Claims
We haven’t talked a great deal about SXSW in some time, but they are back in the news and not for good reasons! The conference and festival kicked off in March as planned, but less planned were the protests that organized against the conference as a result of its affiliations with defense contractors and the United States military and the ongoing support of Israel’s heavy-handed response to the attacks it suffered from Hamas last year. Performers backed out and a handful of protest groups organized alternative concerts and demonstrations out in front of SXSW.
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Copyrights
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Digital Music News ☛ Daddy Yankee, Black Eyed Peas, and Sony Music Face Infringement Suit Over Allegedly Unauthorized ‘Bailar Contigo’ Sample
Daddy Yankee, the Black Eyed Peas, and Sony Music are facing a copyright monopoly infringement lawsuit for reportedly sampling a recording in 2022’s “Bailar Contigo” without permission. Denmark’s Iceberg Records, one division of a namesake 42-year-old music company, just recently submitted the straightforward complaint to a California federal court.
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Digital Music News ☛ Underestimate the Indie Music Publisher at Your Own Peril, TikTok - Digital Music News
If TikTok somehow avoids getting banned, sold, or otherwise knee-capped in the United States, another dark storm cloud awaits. Enter indie music publishers, who could render this platform awfully quiet in the coming months. Their collective impact is bigger than many realize.
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Futurism ☛ In Cringe Video, OpenAI CTO Says She Doesn’t Know Where Sora’s Training Data Came From
Wondering what data OpenAI used to train its buzzy new text-to-video AI? The company's CTO is similarly unsure.
Mira Murati, OpenAI's longtime chief technology officer, sat down with The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern this week to discuss Sora, the company's forthcoming video-generating AI. About halfway through the 10-minute-long interview, Stern straightforwardly asked Murati where the new model's training data was gleaned from. But Murati, in the most cringe-inducing way possible, couldn't find an answer beyond vague corporate language.
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Torrent Freak ☛ BitTorrent is No Longer the 'King' of Upstream Internet Traffic
BitTorrent is no longer the 'King' of upstream traffic. New data published by Canadian broadband management company Sandvine reveals that cloud storage, YouTube, and other apps have taken over. This marks the end of a period of declining dominance that started two decades ago when BitTorrent reportedly accounted for a third of all web traffic.
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Torrent Freak ☛ YouTuber Liable For Bogus DMCA Notice "Awareness Campaign" Targeting Bungie
A gamer who impersonated a Bungie anti-piracy partner as part of a bogus copyright takedown campaign on YouTube, has been found liable for violations of the DMCA. 'Lord Nazos' sent bogus complaints to YouTube claiming to represent Bungie, to take down Destiny content creators' videos, to "raise awareness" of shortcomings in the takedown system. A remarkable investigation followed as Bungie tracked down the perpetrator.
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