Links 20/03/2024: 7,500 Unilever Layoffs, Microsoft in Court for Plagiarism in "AI" Clothing
Contents
- Distributions and Operating Systems
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- 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
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
- Leftovers
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Distributions and Operating Systems
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Leftovers
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🔤SpellBinding — ADELOPX Wordo: HORSE
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Doc Searls ☛ The end of what’s on, when, and where – Doc Searls Weblog
The question “what’s on?” is mostly gone. “Where?” is still in play, because nobody knows what streaming service carries what you want. All the “guides”—Apple’s, Google’s, Amazon’s, everyone’s—suck, either because they’re biased to promote their own content or because there’s simply too much content and no system can cover all of it. Search engines help, but not enough.
The age we’re closing is the one Jeff Jarvis calls The Gutenberg Parenthesis. The age we’re entering is the Age of Optionality. It began for print with blogging, for TV with VCRs and DVRs, and for radio with podcasting and streaming. And it began to obsolesce all the media we knew, almost too well, by putting it in hands Clay Shirky told us about in 2009 with Here Comes Everybody.
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Dan Q ☛ The Stupidest CSS
Then it hit me. The blobs weren’t part of the design at all, but the designer’s way of saying “look at this bit, it’s important!”. Whoops!
So I got to rush over to my (already-approved, somehow!) changeset and rip out the offending CSS: the stupidest bit of CSS of my entire career. Not bad code per se, but reasonable code resulting from a damn-stupid misinterpretation of a designer’s wishes. Brilliant.
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Devon Dundee ☛ A New Role at MacStories
Now, I’m grateful to make another announcement: I’ve taken on a new role at MacStories in addition to podcast host. I’m helping out with editing stories for the website and Club MacStories! I’ve been lending a hand behind-the-scenes for a couple of weeks now and am absolutely loving it.
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Rob Knight ☛ Ruminate is Joining MacStories
As of today, Ruminate is part of MacStories but the show isn't changing. We'll still talk about KFC crocs, spicy crisps, and anything else we can think of. We will be sticking to the schedule better though. If you're already subscribed you don't need do anything. If you've not listened before, now is a great time to jump in - all the links you need are on the Ruminate website and the dedicated page on MacStories. John also wrote a post about it here.
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Alex Sirac ☛ [Like] The enshittification of the web… in 2012
Devastatia (NSFW website) shared this post that really made me smile. She found this 2012 post by Anil Dash called The Web We Lost.
Although I had been blogging since middle school, I bought my first domain name in 2012 (actually, two of them: the personal one (Internet Archive didn’t keep the design, sad times) and Réussir Mes Études), so the timing is pretty great.
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Fred Herbert ☛ A Commentary on Defining Observability
Recently, Hazel Weakly has published a great article titled Redefining Observability. In it, she covers competing classical definitions observability, weaknesses they have, and offers a practical reframing of the concept in the context of software organizations (well, not only software organizations, but the examples tilt that way).
I agree with her post in most ways, and so this blog post of mine is more of an improv-like “yes, and…” response to it, in which I also try to frame the many existing models as complementary or contrasting perspectives of a general concept.
The main points I’ll try to bring here are on the topics of the difference between insights and questions, the difference between observability and data availability, reinforcing a socio-technical definition, the mess of complex systems and mapping them, and finally, a hot take on the use of models when reasoning about systems.
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Alex Sirac ☛ [Article] My web archive, from 2001 to 2022
Finding the Internet Archive link for my 2012 blog made me realize that the Internet Archive (bless them, and of course, support them financially) has a bunch of my 2012 to 2017 blog posts which I mostly considered lost forever.
While I might prefer for them to be lost forever, I’ll still dive into the rabbit hole and import some early-Internet era (as far as I’m concerned) posts.
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Science
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James G ☛ Seven Days of New Things Day 2: Linear Algebra, Tulips
I think I am starting to enjoy maths (maybe).
Toward the end of high school, my maths classes were anxiety-inducing. Our teacher liked to ask people at random in the class what they thought was the answer to questions. At this time, I was not comfortable speaking out in front of the whole class. I always worried about whether my answer would be right, knowing there were people around me who would definitely know the answer. I was good at maths in the academic sense, but I, like many, encountered math as a subject strictly to learn rather than to be appreciated.
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Wired ☛ Brace Yourself For the Comeback of Citizen Scientists
But citizen science to tackle this problem has been growing in popularity worldwide too. A mixture of cheaper technology making monitors more affordable for normal people, a fall in trust for governments and a rising number of environmental crises triggered by climate change, mean that more and more people are turning to citizen science as a way to monitor the invisible damage being done to the natural world around them.
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The Register UK ☛ AI researchers now reviewing their peers with AI assistance
Academics focused on artificial intelligence have taken to using generative AI to help them review the machine learning work of peers.
A group of researchers from Stanford University, NEC Labs America, and UC Santa Barbara recently analyzed the peer reviews of papers submitted to leading AI conferences, including ICLR 2024, NeurIPS 2023, CoRL 2023 and EMNLP 2023.
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Education
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Vox ☛ Schools are using Yondr pouches to lock up kids’ cellphones
In Akron, Ohio, teens and tweens show up to school every day with their homework, their textbooks ... and a special magnetic pouch that renders their smartphones useless during the day.
The Akron schools are part of a growing movement across the US and Europe to ban phones in schools or require them to be locked up in pouches made by a startup named Yondr. School districts in at least 41 states have bought the pouches in recent years, a response to behavior issues as well as concerns about students’ mental health and learning, which have ramped up since the pandemic.
“The results for us were just a game-changer,” Patricia Shipe, president of the Akron Education Association, which represents teachers and other educators in the district, told me. Fights in the schools have decreased since the bags were introduced to all middle and high schools in 2022, and kids report engaging with their friends more.
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[Old] American Library Association ☛ State of America's Libraries Report 2023
In 2022, the global COVID-19 pandemic entered its third year; political, economic and digital divides grew; and book challenges and bans surged across the country. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked a record 1,269 book challenges, the highest number of demands to ban books reported since they began compiling data about censorship in libraries. But despite all these challenges, libraries thrived, pivoting to offer new and updated services to their communities. Adaptation and innovation shined in 2022, proving that there truly is “more to the story” at libraries.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Pro Publica ☛ Utah Child Care Providers Are Struggling. Lawmakers Haven’t Helped.
Aleatha Child struggled to keep her Brigham City, Utah, day care open after federal funding meant to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic ended last September. She raised the fees she charged families and let an employee go.
She put some hope in the Utah legislative session. But instead of providing day cares like hers with more money, lawmakers expanded a child tax credit in a bill that also allows unlicensed care providers to take in more children.
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Pro Publica ☛ TN Child Services Agency Pushes Back on Juvenile Detention Reform
The commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services publicly said this month that the agency was working with lawmakers to address oversight gaps at juvenile detention facilities across the state. But behind the scenes, the department is working to water down a bill that would do just that, according to one of the bill’s sponsors and others working on the legislation.
Last year, an investigation by WPLN and ProPublica revealed that the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center in Knoxville was illegally locking children alone in cells and that the facility had faced few consequences even as DCS repeatedly documented violations.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Daniel Miessler ☛ The AI Coin-sorter Analogy
And thus, the output of the filter also isn’t foreign.
It’s just a view of what we sent it.
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New York Times ☛ Saudi Arabia Plans $40 Billion Push Into Artificial Intelligence
In recent weeks, representatives of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund have discussed a potential partnership with Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firms, and other financiers, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly. They cautioned that the plans could still change.
The planned tech fund would make Saudi Arabia the world’s largest investor in artificial intelligence. It would also showcase the oil-rich nation’s global business ambitions as well as its efforts to diversify its economy and establish itself as a more influential player in geopolitics. The Middle Eastern nation is pursuing those goals through its sovereign wealth fund, which has assets of more than $900 billion.
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Futurism ☛ Advertisers Horrified by Under Armour's AI-Generated Commercial
In an Instagram post, Walker called it the "world's first AI-powered sports commercial," and he claims it mixes human-created footage and visual effects with "AI video, AI photo... and advances in AI voiceover." It's impressively edited, but it's also obvious when the ad's switching between grittier human photography and weirdly smooth AI images.
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Futurism ☛ Facebook Is Making Insane AI-Generated Fever Dreams Go Viral for Gullible Boomers
Even with the proliferation of AI image generators, the novelty has clearly yet to wear off for users on the largest social media network, a veritable social media dinosaur.
And scammers are abusing that persistent interest, in addition to support from Facebook's unwitting algorithms, to drive people to other websites filled with ads, sell products, and build bigger followings, according to the researchers.
It's only the latest sign that the internet is struggling to ward off a tidal wave of AI-generated garbage, further eroding the quality of content we're exposed to on a daily basis.
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OpenRightsGroup ☛ The Post Office Scandal and Data Protection
The Post Office scandal, which saw hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly convicted of fraud, is one of the UK’s biggest miscarriages of justice. Thanks largely to the ITV drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, parliamentarians are finally taking action and passing legislation that will quash the convictions of post office workers who were prosecuted during the Horizon scandal.
ORG believes that the subpostmasters’ long campaign could have suffered further setbacks if the Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) Bill had been law. In November 2015, the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance urged its members to submit Subject Access Requests to find out what information the Post Office held about them. The information that they received was instrumental to exposing that the Post Office knew about flaws in the Horizon system.
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Aleksandar Vacić ☛ Hackintosh is (almost) dead
It’s true that latest macOS 14 (Sonoma) still supports the latest generations of Intel Macs and it’s very likely that at least one or two major versions will still be compatible. But there’s one particular development that is de-facto killing off the Hackintosh scene.
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Futurism ☛ SEO Guy Mocks Google for Deindexing His "Gibberish" AI Sites
Earlier this month, Google — the web's monopolistic landlord slash organizer slash feudal ruler — announced a major spam policy shakeup.
Given that algorithmic search updates are often very boring, they don't always make big media waves. But these updates, which largely read as a response to the rise of mass-produced AI-generated drivel proliferating across the internet, have been a big deal. And the spammier side of the SEO industry is feeling the squeeze.
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The Register UK ☛ Dell adds Nvidia GPUs to its portfolio of AI platform
Dell has tied its AI flag firmly to Nvidia's mast with its latest offerings, comprising a fully integrated end-to-end platform for enterprise customers looking to build and operate their own AI, plus updated server support for Nvidia's upcoming GPUs, scalable storage and professional services.
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404 Media ☛ Facebook’s Algorithm Is Boosting AI Spam That Links to AI-Generated, Ad-Laden Click Farms
Facebook’s recommendation algorithms are promoting bizarre, AI-generated images being posted by spammers and scammers to an audience of people who mindlessly interact with them and perhaps don’t understand that they are not real, a new analysis by Stanford and Georgetown University researchers has found. The researchers’ analysis aligns with what I have seen and experienced over the course of months of researching and reporting on these pages, many of which have found a novel way to link to off-platform, AI-generated “news” sites that are littered with Google ads or which are selling low-quality products.
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Wired ☛ Kids’ Cartoons Get a Free Pass From YouTube’s Deepfake Disclosure Rules
YouTube’s new policies exclude animated content altogether from the disclosure requirement. This means that the emerging scene of get-rich-quick, AI-generated content hustlers can keep churning out videos aimed at children without having to disclose their methods. Parents concerned about the quality of hastily made nursery-rhyme videos will be left to identify AI-generated cartoons by themselves.
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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Env.Fail ☛ 900 Sites, 125 million accounts, 1 vulnerability - env.fail
- Firebase allows for easy misconfiguration of security rules with zero warnings
- This has resulted in hundreds of sites exposing a total of ~125 Million user records, including plaintext passwords & sensitive billing information
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Reason ☛ The One-Man 'Cult' That Put St. Louis Under Surveillance
The story behind the city's ban on unlicensed drone businesses is even weirder than the ban itself.
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Patrick Breyer ☛ EU cash cap and ban on anonymous crypto payments results in financial paternalism
The majority of the EU Parliament’s lead committees today approved far-reaching new anti-money laundering laws: Anonymous cash payments over €3,000 will be banned in commercial transactions. Cash payments over €10,000 will even be completely banned in business transactions. And anonymous payments in cryptocurrencies to wallets operated by providers (hosted wallets) will be prohibited even for minimum amounts without a threshold.
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Patrick Breyer ☛ EU tightens surveillance of air travelers
Whether and which passenger data is reported to law enforcement agencies for flights without border controls is a secret. The secret report is by no means limited to suspects, but covers entire flight connections on the basis of a vague ‘risk analysis’.
This tightening of air traveler surveillance contradicts the achievement of abolishing border controls in Europe. It is not justified to place unsuspicious air travelers under general suspicion. That is why I voted against the reform.”
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Site36 ☛ Click, click, arrest! The use of facial recognition by police in Germany
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Defence/Aggression
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France24 ☛ 🔴Live: Hamas number three killed by Israeli operation, US says
Israel killed the Hamas militant group’s third-in-command Marwan Issa last week, the White House said Monday, after Israel previously said he had been targeted in a Gaza airstrike but did not confirm his death. In a phone call earlier Monday, US President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu he was deeply concerned about a planned ground offensive in Rafah, adding that an operation in the overcrowded southern Gaza city would be a “mistake”.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Experts react: Pakistan just carried out airstrikes on Afghanistan. What’s next?
How will Pakistan’s strikes inside Afghanistan affect the already tense relations between Islamabad and Kabul? Our experts share their insights.
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US News And World Report ☛ Germany Arrests Two Over Suspected Islamist Plot on Swedish Parliament
The Swedish Security Service said it could not comment on the German case, adding that it was in constant contact with its counterparts in Europe.
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Defence Web ☛ Report: Al-Shabaab extends reach with offer to protect Somali pirates | defenceWeb
Some observers believe al-Shabaab militants in Somalia’s northern Sanaag region reached a deal to provide protection to pirates in exchange for 30% of all ransom proceeds and a cut of any loot, Emirati newspaper The National reported.
The deal could provide al-Shabaab with critical funds after the Somali government clamped down on its other illegal money sources and froze its bank accounts. The terrorists also are suspected of negotiating with pirates and Houthi rebels to acquire weapons.
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University of Michigan ☛ From The Daily: A TikTok ban might be a good thing
Despite the threat posed by TikTok’s parent company, one billion users still interact with the app’s short-form videos and creative challenges. American youth are especially captivated by the platform, with teenagers logging on for an average of 1.5 hours per day. This demographic has reacted strongly to the recent developments on Capitol Hill, responding en masse to a TikTok notification telling them to call their representatives and voice their opposition to the bill.
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NPR ☛ This senator tells NPR why he's leading a charge against TikTok — and what comes next
Warner spoke with All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro on Tuesday about why he thinks Chinese ownership of TikTok is a national security threat and what he wants to tell the 170 million Americans who are on the platform.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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India Times ☛ tiktok ban: TikTok and its 'secret sauce' caught in US-China tussle
As a US campaign to sever TikTok from its Chinese parent heads to the Senate, analysts say Beijing's response to a forced sale of the app -- and its 'secret sauce' algorithm -- Hands off. - 'The secret sauce' - That ByteDance algorithm has helped drive TikTok's stratospheric success since the app was launched for the international market in 2017.
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VOA News ☛ Q&A: TikTok Owner Is Essentially 'Subsidiary' of China's Communist Party, US Lawmaker Says
VOA: The House just passed a bill that would require ByteDance to divest TikTok. Did you support this bill?
U.S. Representative Mario Diaz-Balart: I absolutely did. … It has strong bipartisan support. And there's also been a lot of misinformation about it. People say that it's to ban TikTok. No, it's basically saying you have to divest from, in essence, being controlled by the Communist Party of China.
We would have never allowed, during the Soviet empire, the Soviet Union to control, to own, one of the major networks in the United States - ABC, NBC, CBS. Why? Because it's a threat to national security. In this case, it's even more dramatic because they [the Chinese] have access not only to getting into people's homes, but to actually get information from the American people. And they've been pretty good and very aggressive at doing that. And so TikTok needs to be divested. That's the least that we should be requiring, and if so, then they can continue to function. But we cannot allow for this to function, getting information from the American people to an entity that is in essence a subsidiary of the Communist Party of China.
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Digital Music News ☛ Just How Much is TikTok Worth?—Bidding Could Start at $100B+
According to a report from the Financial Times, TikTok has hit $16 billion in sales in the United States. That’s record revenue for 2023, with ByteDance on track to overtake Meta as the world’s largest social media company by sales. According to FT’s sources, ByteDance racked up $120 billion in revenues for 2023—an increase of 40% compared to 2022.
The future of TikTok in the United States has been cast into doubt after the U.S. House passed a bill to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok or face a ban. The legislation grants ByteDance 180 days to complete its divesture—which some experts believe isn’t enough time to complete a deal. Meanwhile, other sharks are circling with former gaming exec Bobby Kotick rumored to be among the interested.
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Site36 ☛ Almost 600 right-wing extremists remain in hiding in Germany, while 94 people are wanted as “left-wing”
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Democracy Now ☛ “Anarchy & Chaos”: U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti Who Resigned Protesting U.S. Meddling & Deportations
Haiti is being gripped by escalating violence and turmoil as armed groups battle for control in the streets. Last week, unelected Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced he would resign, after a coalition of armed groups opposing the de facto leader declared an uprising. Negotiations to establish a transitional presidential council are being led by the U.S.-backed Caribbean political alliance CARICOM as a refugee crisis brews, with the Biden administration floating the idea of housing Haitian asylum seekers in Guantánamo Bay. We speak to Dan Foote, who resigned from his post as U.S. special envoy for Haiti in September 2021 over the Biden administration’s “inhumane” treatment of Haitian asylum seekers and U.S. interference in Haitian politics. “We’re holding Haiti hostage through this CARICOM political process,” says Foote, who says Haitian sovereignty must be respected in order to break the cycle of intervention, unrest and violence. “Everybody has an answer for Haiti. Unfortunately, historically, none of those answers have worked.”
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Democracy Now ☛ “Unseen”: New Film Profiles a Blind, Undocumented Social Work Student, Humanizing Disabled Migrants
As presidential front-runners Donald Trump and Joe Biden scapegoat and attack immigrants on the campaign trail, stoking racist and xenophobic fears for votes, we speak to the director of a groundbreaking new film, unseen, that aims to reframe the narrative. Using experimental cinematography to promote accessibility for blind and low-vision audiences, unseen follows Pedro, who is blind and undocumented, as he works toward a degree in social work. Director Set Hernandez, themself an undocumented immigrant and a co-founder of the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective, discusses the film’s uplifting of the “undocumented and disabled perspective,” in opposition to political narratives that exclude and dehumanize immigrant communities.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Meduza ☛ ‘Tsar Putin!’ Meduza’s dispatch from Russia’s ‘rally concert’ celebrating 10 years of an annexed Crimea and six more years of Putin — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ ‘I want Putin to see what he’s done to our city’ As rocket fire becomes the norm in Russia’s Belgorod, locals feel powerless and forgotten — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Former Wagner Group fighter recruited from prison reportedly shoots man in St. Petersburg restaurant, then continues eating — Meduza
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Atlantic Council ☛ Vladimir Putin’s history obsession is a threat to world peace
Putin has weaponized history to justify the genocidal invasion of Ukraine. Unless he is defeated, the Russian dictator will use the same bogus historical arguments to launch new imperial adventures, writes Nicholas Chkhaidze.
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LRT ☛ Italian singer Pupo’s performance in Lithuania cancelled following Moscow appearance
The Italian artist Enzo Ghinazzi, better known by his stage name Pupo, was to perform in Lithuania in April but his recent concert in Moscow has elicited calls to cancel the event.
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France24 ☛ Russia says it has captured frontline village of Orlivka in eastern Ukraine
Russia said on Tuesday that its forces had taken control of the eastern Ukrainian village of Orlivka, situated about four kilometres (2.5 miles) west of the town of Avdiivka, which Moscow's forces captured last month after one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Earlier, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said the United States "will not let Ukraine fail" as he attended a meeting of Kyiv's Western allies in Germany.
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RFERL ☛ Blinken Blasts Russia For 'Sham' Presidential Election
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the Kremlin's marginalization of civil society and the "intense repression" of independent voices in Russia mean a weekend presidential election that saw Vladimir Putin claim a fifth presidential term in a landslide "can only be described as undemocratic."
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The Straits Times ☛ Russia's Putin says he will consider China for his first trip in new term
Russian President Vladimir Putin said late on Tuesday that he will consider China for his first overseas trip during his new presidential term that he secured in weekend election.
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AntiWar ☛ Has Macron Become Unmoored?
In the early days of the war in Ukraine, France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, was somewhat isolated as Europe’s leading dove. But in more recent days of the war, he is somewhat isolated as the leading hawk. And even as the hawk, he seems to fly whichever way the wind blows. >
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The Strategist ☛ The New Great War for Civilisation: defending the Ukraine front
There are times when we must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Ukraine’s partners should link wartime aid to continued reform progress
It is crucial for Ukraine’s international allies to link continued wartime financial assistance with the implementation of reforms, write Mykhailo Zhernakov and Nestor Barchuk.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Even as war continues, NATO should open the door to defense integration with Ukraine
The Alliance can begin integration in certain sectors, such as cyber security, air defense, logistics, training, and future force design.
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JURIST ☛ Amnesty International: anniversary of Russia annexation of Crimea highlights human rights and international law violations
Amnesty International (AI) said Monday that Crimean residents have suffered ten years of systematic oppression since Russia’s annexation of the region in 2014.
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LRT ☛ Lithuanian FM calls for opening EU accession talks with Ukraine ‘as soon as possible’
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis has urged the European Union to open membership talks with Ukraine as soon as possible.
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RFERL ☛ Recent 'Found' Aid For Ukraine Was Unique Case, Pentagon Spokesman Says, Larger Package Remains Focus
A $300 million U.S. aid package for Ukraine that the Pentagon announced last week is not something that officials expect to happen again, the Pentagon's spokesman said on March 19 in an interview with RFE/RL at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Germany.
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RFERL ☛ EU's Borrell Wants To Use 90 Percent Of Frozen Russian Asset Revenues To Buy Arms For Ukraine
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says that he will propose that the EU use 90 percent of the revenues from Russian assets frozen in Europe to buy arms for Ukraine via the European Peace Facility fund.
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RFERL ☛ Austin Vows United States 'Will Not Let Ukraine Fail'
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said his country will continue to back Ukraine in its fight against Russia's unprovoked invasion even though a critical $60-billion military aid package remains stuck in the U.S. House of Representatives due to Republican opposition.
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teleSUR ☛ Estonia Expels Russian Charge D'affaires
The relations between these countries have deteriorated after the Ukrainian conflict broke out.
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The Straits Times ☛ EU reaches interim deal to extend tariff-free Ukrainian agricultural imports
The European Union has reached a provisional agreement on granting Ukrainian food producers tariff-free access to its markets until June 2025, the European Parliament said in a statement on Wednesday.
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YLE ☛ Romanian media: Finland donated military vessels to Ukraine
The vessels will transit through Romania to Ukraine, according to Romanian media outlet, Defence and Security Monitor.
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France24 ☛ Russian, Belarusian athletes will not take part in Paris Olympics opening ceremony
Russian and Belarusian athletes will not be allowed to take part in the traditional parade at the opening ceremony at the Paris Olympics, the IOC said Tuesday.
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RFERL ☛ IOC Bars Russians, Belarusians From Paris Olympics' Opening Ceremony
Russians and Belarusians will not be allowed to take part in the parade of athletes at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics on July 26, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said.
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RFERL ☛ IOC Calls Russia's Friendship Games 'Cynical Attempt To Politicize Sport'
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has called on the world's athletes to ignore Russia's plans to organize a so-called Friendship Games, saying the plan is a "cynical attempt to politicize sport."
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RFERL ☛ Former Russian Deputy Minister Gets Five Years For Embezzlement
A Moscow court on March 19 sentenced former Russian Deputy Education Minister and former Deputy President of Sberbank Marina Rakova to five years in prison on fraud and embezzlement charges.
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RFERL ☛ Russia Investigates Tatar Political Analyst In Exile
The Mash Iptash Telegram channel linked to Russia's law enforcement structures said on March 19 that a probe was launched against self-exiled Tatar political analyst Ruslan Aisin on charges of the rehabilitation of Nazism and violation of "foreign agent" status.
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RFERL ☛ 13 Miners Trapped Underground After Landslide In Russia's Far East
Vasily Orlov, the governor of Russia's Far Eastern region of Amur, said on March 19 that rescue teams were trying to establish contact with 13 miners trapped underground after an overnight landslide at a mine.
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RFERL ☛ Moldova Expels Russian Diplomat After Transdniester Voting
Moldova's Foreign Ministry says it has declared a Russian diplomat persona non grata after Moscow's embassy opened polling stations in separatist Transdniester during the weekend's Russian presidential election.
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teleSUR ☛ Russia Appoints Navy Chief After Ships Sink in the Black Sea
Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov, who had been in charge of the Navy since 2019, has been replaced.
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ David Weiss Does Not Contest He Reneged on Hunter Biden’s Plea Agreement to Chase Russian Lies
David Weiss is claiming one thing about the disposition of Alexander Smirnov's 2020 attempt to frame Joe Biden in Smirnov's prosecution and saying something totally different in attempts to withhold discovery on that from Hunter Biden.
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Latvia ☛ Customs service reports big cigarette smuggling case
The Customs Administration of the State Revenue Service (VID) said on March 18 that it prevented large-scale smuggling of cigarettes at the Latvian border with Belarus. A total of 578,800 cigarettes - 28,940 packs of cigarettes - were hidden in carriages with loads of maize flour and feed pellets, as well as in the door structure of a passenger car, the VID said.
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Environment
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The Nation ☛ Protests Are Supposed to Be an Inconvenience
A Broadway audience sits rapt as Michael Imperioli, playing the vain small-town mayor in Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, moves to shut down the whistleblowing doctor, performed by Jeremy Strong, who is struggling to expose dangerous toxins in the waters of the town. The mayor asks if there are any objections. There are objections. But last Thursday night, there were objections that were not part of the script.
Three activists from the climate group Extinction Rebellion interrupted the speakers on stage to object to the silencing of scientists and the dangers in our waters. Since their protest was so smoothly in keeping with Ibsen’s message—and since Imperioli and Strong stayed in character—some members of the audience didn’t realize that it was not part of the play.
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Wired ☛ Illegal Trawlers Are No Match for Undersea Sculptures
The problems started, he explains, with the arrival of large-scale industrial trawlers in the 1980s. Trailing chain-weighted nets, these boats scraped the seabed bare, scooping up not just fish but all manner of plants and sea creatures. Known as “bottom trawling,” the practice is illegal within three nautical miles of Italy’s coastline, but that hasn’t stopped some unscrupulous operators from carrying on regardless.
“You see, these are like the nets the apostles used,” Fanciulli says, gesturing to his own equipment. “When you put them in the sea, the holes are big, and they only catch the adult fish,” allowing the ecosystem to thrive. “It’s sustainable fishing,” he says. By contrast, bottom trawling endangers not just the future of local fish stocks, but the existence of one of Europe’s most important carbon sinks.
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Energy/Transportation
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David Rosenthal ☛ More On Pig Butchering
Their Figure 9 shows the flow of funds over time into the scammer's wallets at exchanges. This is how they estimated the $75.3B; their extremely conservative estimate is $35.1B, and their liberal estimate is $237.6B. Note the huge ~$45B increase from January 2021 to January 2023, partly driven by the cryptocurrency boom, and the slowing until January 2024. Presumably the ETF pump will accelerate the rate.
Below the fold, some commentary on this and other recent developments.
Note that these numbers are flows not the total revenue for the scammers, there is some double-counting involved as scammers move funds between their accounts at these exchanges. The $15.2B is likely much closer to revenue, because the scammers generally don't want to move significant sums into Western exchanges.
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Jeremy Cherfas ☛ Riding Under the Radar
Last week, in an effort to keep riding my bicycle for fun outside the city, I put myself in the hands of Komoot. The app allows you to plan your own rides and use (and modify) rides that Komoot itself or other members have created and saved. It also offers a kind of online diary in which you can share photos and add comments about them.
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The Register UK ☛ Crypto scams more costly to US than ransomware, Feds say
Investment scams, often promising huge returns, led to reported losses of $4.57 billion throughout the year – a 38 percent increase from $3.31 billion in 2022. The vast majority prey on those looking to make a quick buck with cryptocurrency, with these kinds of scams contributing just shy of $4 billion to the overall losses.
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Pete Brown ☛ More e-bikes!
But you know what? People driving cars pose an exponentially create risk to pedestrians and cyclist than even the biggest bike scofflaw, and people driving cars break traffic all the time.
So I say bring in the e-bikes! Are they perfect? Nope, but I’ll take fifty e-bikes zooming down my street over fifty cars doing the same any day of the week.
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DeSmog ☛ Will The UK’s Flagship Climate ‘Solution’ Be Used to Pump More North Sea Oil?
This story is the first part of a DeSmog series on carbon capture in Europe and was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s flagship plan to slash the country’s carbon emissions is a public relations gift for an industry accustomed to being cast as a climate villain.
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DeSmog ☛ Renewables Not a Threat to Agriculture, Alberta Utilities Commission Finds
A new report issued by the Alberta Utilities Commission has confirmed what environmentalists have been saying all along: renewable energy systems are not a threat to the environment or agriculture.
The report was issued two weeks after Alberta Premier Danielle Smith lifted a moratorium on new renewable energy development in the province. Smith, a well-known climate change denier and fossil fuel sector advocater, nonetheless announced a series of new regulations critics say would ban wind turbines from much of the southern half of the province.
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DeSmog ☛ Court of Appeal Rules Climate Crisis A Matter of ‘Opinion’
The Court of Appeal this week delivered another blow to the rights of climate activists to defend themselves in court.
The case centred on a jury’s decision to acquit a group of activists last year after hearing evidence of the consequences of climate breakdown as part of the defence.
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Overpopulation
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Joburg water system on the verge of collapse
Rand Water, Africa’s biggest bulk-water supplier, on 16 March told three municipalities in the central Gauteng province — Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, which have a combined population of more than 13 million people — that its system was on the verge of collapse.
The warning comes after a large swathe of Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, was left without water for as long as 11 days, with some areas still without supply after lightning struck a pump station.
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Finance
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Nigeria ☛ Unilever to cut 7,500 jobs worldwide to save $869m
Unilever Plc, a British multinational consumer goods company, has announced plans to cut around 7,500 jobs globally as part of an overhaul aimed at saving around $869 million (£684 million) over the next three years.
In a statement on Tuesday, Unilever said the jobs affected by the restructuring would be largely office-based.
It said the move came as it intends to invest in technology to boost productivity and save money.
Unilever said staff will be consulted about the job cuts, which will happen within the next two years.
Speaking on the changes, Hein Schumacher, chief executive officer of Unilever, said it would help speed up the plan.
“Under the growth action plan, we have committed to do fewer things better, and with greater impact,” Schumacher said.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Daniel Pocock ☛ UN DRR and Public Health England criteria match Debian Suicide Cluster
We have various deaths in countries like Germany and Switzerland where suicides are routinely covered up. Out of all these, the case of unexpectedly falling off a roof appears most likely to be part of a cluster.
In two cases, we simply don't know because there is no official report. The case from Germany in 2008 and the case from Switzerland in 2011, just eight months after the Debian Day Volunteer Suicide.
In one case, the volunteer has vanished.
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Daniel Pocock ☛ Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Another potentially significant death is that of Adrian von Bidder (cmot). The date is also significant. von Bidder, from Basel, Switzerland, died on the very same day that Carla and I went to the church together to get married. It is very disturbing for me that we don't really know why he died that day.
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University of Michigan ☛ UMich study examines political cynicism and social media
A University of Michigan study published in late January examined the correlation between exposure to political attacks on social media and increased political cynicism. It also considered the role that the negative emotions of anxiety and anger play in mediating a cynical attitude. The results concluded that people who see more hostile social media content have increased political anger and cynicism.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Ariel Hasell, lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication and media, said she believes the political cynicism commonly associated with Americans is a result of their political reality.
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The Register UK ☛ Cisco closes $28 billion Splunk acquisition
Cisco has closed its $28 billion acquisition of Splunk.
A Monday regulatory filing [PDF] made it official, meaning Cisco's recent hint that the deal could conclude late in the first quarter of 2024 proved correct.
Cisco must now therefore digest its largest-ever acquisition, in terms of the price paid. The networking giant is famed for having built a process to ingest acquired orgs, but Splunk will prove a challenge – it employed over 7,000 people who will swell Cisco's headcount by around ten percent.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Cisco completes its $28B acquisition of Splunk
Splunk provides a popular data analytics platform that companies use to collect the information generated by their technology infrastructure. The software can analyze that information to detect cyberattacks, as well as find clues about the cause of technical issues such as outages. Splunk’s platform is used by more than 15,000 organizations including most of the Fortune 100.
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Wired ☛ Reddit IPO Filings Reveal the Company’s Hopes—and Fears
Reddit’s stock market debut expected on Thursday has been a long time coming. The ad-supported home of over 100,000 forums first announced its intention to go public in December 2021. Over the course of the unusual years-long delay, Reddit revised its initial investor pitch 10 times, leaving a trail of edits that provide a look at the company’s past struggles, current vulnerabilities, and future ambitions.
The many drafts show how CEO Steve Huffman dialed back warnings that too much content moderation can be “autocratic,” and that he and other Reddit leaders culled priorities for the company as pandemic-fueled growth waned. Here are seven takeaways from a close reading of the submissions.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Security Week ☛ Preparing Society for AI-Driven Disinformation in the 2024 Election Cycle
If you believe that the 2020 Presidential election in the United States represented the worst kind of campaign replete with lies, misstated facts and disinformation, I have some news for you. You haven’t seen anything yet.
The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics engines will put campaign-year disinformation into hyperspeed in terms of false content creation, dissemination and impact. To prepare ourselves as a society to sift through falsehoods, deal with them appropriately and arrive at the truth, we need to understand how disinformation works in the age of AI.
This article describes the four steps of an AI-driven disinformation campaign and how to get ahead of them so that security teams can be more prepared to deal with – and seek the truth behind – advancing tactics of malicious actors.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Techdirt ☛ Supreme Court Seems Skeptical Of The Claims That The Federal Government Coerced Social Media To Moderate
With the standard caveat that reading too much into oral arguments is dangerous, I will note that I am cautiously optimistic after listening to the oral arguments in the Murthy v. Missouri case at the Supreme Court this morning. There are very real concerns about where the line is between government coercion (not allowed) and government persuasion (allowed) on speech, as we’ve discussed repeatedly. Sometimes this is referred to as the legality of “jawboning.”
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New York Times ☛ Supreme Court Seems Likely to Side With NRA in First Amendment Case
The National Rifle Association argued that a New York official violated the First Amendment by encouraging entities to break ties with the group after the Parkland mass shooting.
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Reason ☛ ACLU, Once a Defender of Free Speech, Goes After a Whistleblower
The former civil liberties group continues morphing into a progressive organization.
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Reason ☛ SCOTUS Ponders Whether the Biden Administration Coerced Social Media Platforms To Censor Speech
Several justices seemed concerned that an injunction would interfere with constitutionally permissible contacts.
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CBC ☛ From Tehran to St. John's: An Iranian dissident's harrowing 6-month journey to safety
Daemi's decision to leave Iran came amid one of the Islamic Republic's most violent crackdowns on anti-regime protests. From September 2022 into 2023, security forces killed more than 500 people and arrested over 20,000 — actions the UN has called "crimes against humanity."
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Germany detains two IS suspects over Swedish attack plan
Germany's Federal Prosecutor's Office on Tuesday said two suspected supporters of the so-called "Islamic State" (IS) jihadist militia had been arrested in the central German state of Thuringia.
Prosecutors allege that the two Afghan nationals had hatched a plot to carry out an attack near the Swedish legislature in retaliation for Quran book burnings in the country.
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American Library Association ☛ American Library Association reports record number of unique book titles challenged in 2023 | News and Press Center
“The reports from librarians and educators in the field make it clear that the organized campaigns to ban books aren’t over, and that we must all stand together to preserve our right to choose what we read,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “Each demand to ban a book is a demand to deny each person’s constitutionally protected right to choose and read books that raise important issues and lift up the voices of those who are often silenced. By joining initiatives like Unite Against Book Bans and other organizations that support libraries and schools, we can end this attack on essential community institutions and our civil liberties."
ALA will unveil its highly anticipated list of the top 10 most challenged books in the U.S. on Monday, April 8, which is Right to Read Day of National Library Week, along with its full State of America's Libraries Report.
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The Gray Zone ☛ I was banned from Elon’s ‘free speech’ X app for offending power
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EFF ☛ Speaking Freely: Maryam Al-Khawaja
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Maryam Al-Khawaja is a Bahraini Woman Human Rights Defender who works as a consultant and trainer on Human Rights. She is a leading voice for human rights and political reform in Bahrain and the Gulf region. She has been influential in shaping official responses to human rights atrocities in Bahrain and the Gulf region by leading campaigns and engaging with prominent policymakers around the world.
She played an instrumental role in the pro-democracy protests in Bahrain’s Pearl Roundabout in February 2011. These protests triggered a government response of widespread extra judicial killings, arrests, and torture, which she documented extensively over social media. Due to her human rights work, she was subjected to assault, threats, defamation campaigns, imprisonment and an unfair trial. She was arrested on illegitimate charges in 2014 and sentenced in absentia to one year in prison. She currently has an outstanding arrest warrant and four pending cases, one of which could carry a life sentence. She serves on the Boards of the International Service for Human Rights, Urgent Action Fund, CIVICUS and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy. She also previously served as Co-Director at the Gulf Center for Human Rights and Acting President of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.
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EFF ☛ Lucy Parsons Labs Takes Police Foundation to Court for Open Records Requests
The argument is that the Atlanta Police Foundation, as the nonprofit holding the lease for facilities intended for use by government agencies, should be subject to the same state Open Records Act as to its functions that are on behalf of law enforcement agencies. Beyond the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, the APF also manages the Atlanta Police Department’s Video Surveillance Center, which integrates footage from over 16,000 public and privately-held surveillance cameras across the city.
According to UGA School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic, “The Georgia Supreme Court has held that records in the custody of a private entity that relate to services or functions the entity performs for or on behalf of the government are public records under the Georgia Open Records Act.”
Police foundations frequently operate in this space. They are private, non-profit organizations with boards made up of corporations and law firms that receive monetary or equipment donations that they then gift to their local law enforcement agencies. These gifts often bypass council hearings or other forms of public oversight.
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RFERL ☛ Reporters Without Borders Welcomes Kyrgyz Decision To Stop Blocking Of Kloop Website
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has welcomed a decision by a court in Bishkek to cancel a move by Kyrgyzstan's Culture Ministry to block the Russian-language website of the independent media outlet Kloop.
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Press Gazette ☛ Jimmy Lai lawyer reveals daily online threats and frustration with big tech
Event also hears from Clive Myrie on how to be impartial about Russia's 'sham' election.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Site36 ☛ Press Freedom: Trial against editor of German left-wing radio station comes with nine dates
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Doc Searls ☛ The Online Local Chronicle
In the same way that every little place in America used to have a printed newspaper, every little place in America could have an online local chronicle.
Broadly speaking, an online local chronicle is a collection of facts organized mostly in chronological order. The “pages” of the chronicle can be thought of as subsets of a community’s universal timeline of events. These online local chronicles could become the backbone of local news operations.
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VOA News ☛ EU Adopts Act to Safeguard Media
The idea for the European Media Freedom Act was introduced in 2022 after the EU raised concerns about media pluralism in countries such as Hungary and Poland.
The act is focused on independence, stable funding of public service media, and transparency of media ownership. It also includes protections for journalists from harassment by authorities, regulation of spyware used to target journalists, and measures to protect journalistic sources.
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CPJ ☛ Russia jails journalist over plane crash coverage, detains another during election
Police detained Kustov, who was reporting on the crash of a Russian military aircraft in Ivanovo, a region northeast of the capital, Moscow, on March 12, for four hours before releasing him; his phone was also briefly confiscated.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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NYPost ☛ Canceling women who won’t tolerate biological men in their gym locker room is a ridiculous new low
I'm firmly on the side of a locker room being a camera-free zone. But I am also against scaring people to the point they feel the need to take a photo.
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Papers Please ☛ Unanimous Supreme Court rules that no-fly case can go forward
In a unanimous 9-0 decision announced today, the US Supreme Court has ruled that a lawsuit brought by Yonas Fikre challenging the US government’s placing him on its no-fly list can go forward even though the government has, for the time being (and only after he sued), taken him off its travel blacklist.
Mr. Fikre is a US citizen who was put on the US government’s “no-fly” list while he was traveling overseas, in order to pressure him to become an informer working for the FBI to spy on members of a mosque he had attended back home in Portland, OR. As a result of being unable to return to the US, he was eventually arrested (at the behind-the-scenes instigation of the US, he plausibly claims) for overstaying his visa, tortured and further interrogated (also at the behest of the US, he claims, also plausibly), and again told he could be removed from the no-fly list — and thus allowed to be released from immigration detention and deported to the US — if he became an FBI informer.
The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision is narrow but important. The government has never, so far as we can tell, actually tried to defend any of its no-fly decisions and orders in court. Instead, the government has tried to avoid judicial review of either its decision-making procedures (as the Supreme Court notes in its opinion today, “no statute or publicly promulgated regulation describes the standards the government employs when adding individuals to, or removing them from, the list”) or the substantive outcomes (a striking pattern, publicly-revealed when the list was leaked, of anti-Muslim bigotry).
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VOA News ☛ Gambian MPs Advance Bill Lifting Ban on Female Genital Mutilation
Gambian lawmakers voted on Monday to advance to the next parliamentary stage a highly controversial bill that seeks to lift a ban on female genital mutilation (FGM), which has been in place since 2015.
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CNBC ☛ Doctors feel burned out but encouraged by potential of AI, survey says
Doctors in the U.S. are struggling to contend with burnout, staffing shortages and overwhelming administrative workloads, according to a new survey.
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Futurism ☛ Doctors Using AI to Automatically Generate Clinical Notes on Patients
Clinical notes — and paperwork in general — take up a remarkably huge chunk of physicians' time, often leading to after-hours paperwork and organization workloads and overall contributing to feelings of exhaustion and abysmal work-life balance in the high-burnout field of healthcare. Now, a growing tide of AI-powered transcription tools are emerging as possible antidotes to doctors' ever-piling paperwork mountains, with creators and users of the programs arguing that patient experiences will ultimately improve as a result.
Per CNBC, contenders in the burgeoning marketplace include the VC-backed platforms Abridge and Suki, in addition to the Microsoft-owned Nuance's DAX Copilot, which last week announced a partnership with Stanford Health Care to deploy its tech throughout the university's medical system.
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Gizmodo ☛ Nvidia Wants to Replace Nurses With AI for $9 an Hour
Nvidia announced a collaboration with Hippocratic AI on Monday, a healthcare company that offers generative AI nurses who work for just $9 an hour. Hippocratic promotes how it can undercut real human nurses, who can cost $90 an hour, with its cheap AI agents that offer medical advice to patients over video calls in real-time.
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Gizmodo ☛ Dell Says Remote Employees Won't Be Eligible for Promotions: Report
Most recently, that mindset has led to changes in the company’s promotion policy, according to a report from Business Insider. The outlet found that Dell is telling remote employees they will no longer be considered for promotions. In order to qualify for promotions, employees must go in to work at their nearest “approved office” at least three days a week, according to documents seen by Business Insider.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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The Register UK ☛ Trial to determine if social media radicalized mass shooter
Some of the largest social media platforms in the world will soon try to convince a US court their platforms did not contribute to the radicalization of a mass shooter who killed ten people and injured three more in a New York grocery store in 2022.
Depending on the outcome, the case could reshape liability rules for social media sites.
In a court order [PDF] published on Tuesday, New York 8th district Supreme Court justice Paula Feroleto denied a dismissal request from Meta, Reddit, Twitch's company Amazon, YouTube owner Alphabet, plus Discord and 4Chan. They all need to go to court to argue their case.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Tedium ☛ Hackintosh Has Served Its Purpose. Have We Moved Past It?
So I’m not totally surprised that word is starting to spread that the Hackintosh is starting to reach its technical limits, finally, after all of these years, something expanded on over the weekend by blogger Aleksandar Vacić.
The thing is, Apple has been dropping hints that it is about to leave much of its legacy behind for years. It is a company that throws legacy aside as if disruption is not a thing. It has been building new software architectures for common tools like cloud computing platforms, gumming up the works for existing players, and it has been working to deprecate kernel extensions (kexts) for a long time, in favor of updated protocols.
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Matt Birchler ☛ Take a breath, save your outrage until WWDC
First, Apple and Google have a long established relationship working together on iPhone features. Google pays Apple well north of $10 billion per year to be the default search engine on Apple devices, as well as being used in things like Spotlight and Siri to provide web results when looking things up. Apple may throw shade at Google, but they certainly aren’t above working together, and in my opinion that’s not a bad thing overall; Google is still the best search engine for most people and it makes Apple’s features better.
Second, there is absolutely no evidence that Apple has somehow “failed” at building what they want for running LLMs and other ML features on their devices. The company has published numerous papers over the years, including a big one literally the same day that the Gemini rumor hit.
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Patents
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New York Times ☛ Apple Steps Up Its Lobbying to Change Patent Rules
The company has been campaigning across Washington for legislation that would make some patent owners ineligible to bring complaints before the I.T.C. It has sought to influence the language of committee reports that could affect how the agency levels punishments. And it has added to its lobbying might by enlisting one of the agency’s former commissioners.
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Copyrights
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Quartz ☛ Apple and Microsoft's industry-defining legal battle
Apple launched a landmark lawsuit against Microsoft 36 years ago on March 18, 1988 — the outcome of which defined how tech companies could use one another’s ideas as they developed then-groundbreaking computer software.
In its $5.5 billion suit, Apple alleged that Microsoft copied its computers’ look and feel with Windows version 2.03. At the time, Apple’s computers were the first to have graphical user interfaces (or GUIs) — a new and exciting way for users to interact with computer screens using visual elements like icons, buttons, and menus rather than text. Apple released its first commercial computer with a GUI named “Lisa” in 1983. Here’s how the New York Times described GUIs five years later: [...]
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Torrent Freak ☛ 16-Year-Old Pirate Site Prosecution Resurrected Despite Four Acquittals
After its launch in 2007, the popularity of streaming links platform SeriesYonkis exploded and within a year it was among the most-visited sites in Spain. From a local law enforcement operation against one of the site's operators in 2009, a full trial demanding 550 million euros from four men in 2019, to their complete acquittal in 2021, the journey was eventful. Yet suddenly, following an appeal by the movie companies' anti-piracy outfit, the case will be resurrected.
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Torrent Freak ☛ New York Times: Microsoft's AI Tools Are Nothing Like The VCR
The New York Times has responded to Microsoft's motion to dismiss key claims in the highly publicized 'GPT' copyright infringement lawsuit. After Microsoft compared the lawsuit to the VCR scaremongering of the early 1980s, The Times stresses that generative AI is nothing like the VCR, before doubling down on its copyright infringement allegations.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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