Links 21/03/2024: Reddit IPO After Offloading by Parent Company (Endless Losses), Attempts at Public Access to Patent Lawsuit in Texas
Contents
- GNU/Linux
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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GNU/Linux
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Audiocasts/Shows
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Hackaday ☛ FLOSS Weekly Episode 775: Meshtastic Central
This week, Jonathan Bennett and Rob Campbell chat with Ben Meadors and Adam McQuilkin to talk about what’s new with Meshtastic! There’s a lot. To start with, your favorite podcast host has gotten roped into doing development for the project. There’s a new Rust client, there’s a way to run the firmware on Linux Native, and there’s a shiny new web-based flasher tool!
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Leftovers
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Hackaday ☛ 2024 Home Sweet Home Automation: A DIY SCADA Smart Home
Supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, systems sit in the background in industrial settings, performing all kinds of important jobs but in an ad-hoc setup, depending on the precise requirements of the installation. When we think about home automation systems, they’re pretty much the same deal: ad-hoc systems put together from off-the-shelf components and a few custom bits thrown in. [Stefan Schnitzer] clearly has significant knowledge of SCADA in an industrial setting and has carried this over into their home for their entry into the Hackaday 2024 Home Sweet Home Automation Contest.
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Hackaday ☛ DIY RC Controller Built With Old-School Parts
Once upon a time, RC transmitters were expensive units that cost hundreds of dollars even at the low end. Now, you can get them pretty cheaply, or, you can choose to build your own. [Phytion] did just that.
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Manton Reece ☛ Threads opt-in vs. fediverse migration
It is still early, and I think Threads has been very thoughtful about their approach. Account migration is an area that I hope they will consider more fully. There are ramifications for mixing accounts — some with fediverse support and some without — and long-term it becomes very complicated unless Threads goes all-in on the fediverse.
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Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Recent evolution of my note taking systems
A year ago, I started sharing my note taking habits in my blog post The imperfect mess of note taking. At that time, my notes were all over the place. I had small things written here and there, used multiple analog and digital tools and had almost no structure or process.
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Wouter Groeneveld ☛ A Quick Site Maintenance Note
Ideally, I’d even like to take this further and move my VPS to our home and run everything myself. There’s something magical about virtual house visits. I’d more than happily take the risk of a higher latency and occasional outage into account. Some small personal websites are simply unavailable if there’s too little sun, such as Low Tech Magazine: [...]
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Science
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CBC ☛ How to photograph the eclipse without frying your phone
Though both Chidley and Moussette advise against using phones to photograph the eclipse, they acknowledge that people will probably try anyway and recommend taking precautions. During the partial phase of the eclipse as the moon crosses the sun, you'll need to use a solar filter to protect your phone's camera just as you'll need eclipse glasses to protect your eyes.
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Hackaday ☛ The Lunar Odyssey: Moon Landings From The 1960s To Today’s Attempts
With the recent string of lunar landing attempts, it’s interesting to consider how much things have changed – or stayed the same – since the first soft landing attempts in the 1960s with the US Ranger and USSR Luna landers. During the 1950s the possibility of landing a spacecraft on the Moon’s surface was investigated and attempted by both the US and USSR. This resulted in a number of lunar lander missions in the 1960s, with the US’s Ranger 3 and 5 missing the Moon, Ranger 4 nearly missing it but instead crashing into the far side of the Moon, and eventually the USSR’s Luna 9 making the first touchdown on the lunar surface in 1966 after a string of USSR mission failures.
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Education
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RTL ☛ Last link to education: Afghan girls and women cling to glitchy, lonesome online learning
She hopes to save for a laptop but is forced to buy expensive mobile data packages that still don't guarantee a signal in the town of Ishkashim perched high in mountainous Badakhshan province.
"If there were no [Internet] issues, it would be much easier," she told AFP by phone. "But it's better to carry on, instead of sitting and doing nothing."
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Hardware
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Matt Langford ☛ My Top 5 Flashlights to Carry
One of the most common extra items is a flashlight. If you’re questioning the necessity of carrying a flashlight by asking, “Why not use the flashlight on your phone?” then you likely aren’t the individual who needs to carry a flashlight. But if you find yourself needing a legitimate standalone flashlight often (perhaps due to your job) or just want to see what it’s like to carry one, this list is for you.
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Hackaday ☛ These Keycaps Are 100% Recycled Plastic
Artisan keycaps are generally meant to replace your Escape key, though they can be used anywhere you like (as long as they fit, of course). Keycap maker [tellybelly] of jankycaps has been experimenting with making keycaps out of 100% recycled plastic, and offers an interesting post detailing their development and production process.
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Hackaday ☛ You Should Be Allowed To Fix McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines, Say Federal Regulators
Editors Note: According to our infallible record keeping, this is the 50,000th post published on Hackaday! We weren’t sure this was the kind of milestone that required any drawn out navel-gazing on our part, but it does seem significant enough to point out. We didn’t pick any specific post to go out in this slot, but the fact that it ended up being a story about the right to repair ice cream machines seems suitably hacky for the occasion.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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DeSmog ☛ New Report Shows Cancer Organization Shares Lobbyists with Fossil Fuel Companies
One of the U.S.’s leading anticancer groups has hired a network of lobbyists that also works on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, according to a new report.
The American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), the advocacy arm of the American Cancer Society, shares lobbyists with 21 fossil fuel companies across 10 states. Those shared relationships are impeding action on climate change and contributing to increased health harms to the public, undercutting the health organization’s own mission, according to the report by F Minus, a nonprofit group that tracks fossil fuel lobbying.
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India Times ☛ Neuralink: Elon Musk's Neuralink shows first brain-chip patient playing online chess
Noland Arbaugh, the 29-year-old patient who was paralyzed below the shoulder after a diving accident, played chess on his laptop and moved the cursor using the Neuralink device. The implant seeks to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using only their thoughts.
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El País ☛ Air pollution: Only 5% of countries meet WHO recommendations for fine particles
Only seven of the 127 countries analyzed by the Swiss air quality technology company IQAir in 2023 complied with the new safety limits set by the World Health Organization (WHO) for suspended particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter (known as PM2.5), a type of particulate matter deriving in part from fossil fuels and linked to around one million premature deaths each year worldwide. That only 5% of the states surveyed now meet these guidelines — which the WHO tightened in 2021 after surveying the scientific literature on the health effects of pollution — demonstrates the huge challenge nations face in making sure their citizens are not exposed to unsafe air.
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New York Times ☛ All but 7 Countries on Earth Have Air Pollution Above WHO Standard
Only 10 countries and territories out of 134 achieved the World Health Organization’s standards for a pervasive form of air pollution last year, according to air quality data compiled by IQAir, a Swiss company.
The pollution studied is called fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, because it refers to solid particles less than 2.5 micrometers in size: small enough to enter the bloodstream. PM2.5 is the deadliest form of air pollution, leading to millions of premature deaths each year.
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The Brownstone Institute embraces old antivax lies about measles
I had no idea who Alan Cassels was before yesterday, when I encountered him as apparently the newest addition to the stable of the far right wing antivax, antimask, anti-“lockdown” wingnuts at the “spiritual child of the Great Barrington Declaration” known as the Brownstone Institute. At least, I thought I didn’t know who he was. It turns out that I didn’t remember, because I discovered with a quick search of this blog that in 2012 I had actually written a post about him, taking him to task for the misinformation he had laid down in a post for the blog Pharmawatch Canada entitled Time to outlaw vaccine propaganda: Are we taking the easy way out by labeling vaccine questioners anti-science loonies?. Let’s just say that I applied some not-so-Respectful Insolence to him
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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EFF ☛ The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
Whether these messages come from popular films like a War Games or The Terminator, reports that in digital simulations AI supposedly favors the nuclear option more than it should, or the idea that AI could assess nuclear threats quicker than humans—all of these scenarios have one thing in common: they end with nukes (almost) being launched because a computer either had the ability to pull the trigger or convinced humans to do so by simulating imminent nuclear threat. The purported risk of AI comes not just from yielding “control" to computers, but also the ability for advanced algorithmic systems to breach cybersecurity measures or manipulate and social engineer people with realistic voice, text, images, video, or digital impersonations.
But there is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons. This means both denying algorithms ultimate decision making powers, but it also means building in protocols and safeguards so that some kind of generative AI cannot be used to impersonate or simulate the orders capable of launching attacks. It’s really simple, and we’re by far not the only (or the first) people to suggest the radical idea that we just not integrate computer decision making into many important decisions–from deciding a person’s freedom to launching first or retaliatory strikes with nuclear weapons.
First, let’s define terms. To start, I am using "Artificial Intelligence" purely for expediency and because it is the term most commonly used by vendors and government agencies to describe automated algorithmic decision making despite the fact that it is a problematic term that shields human agency from criticism. What we are talking about here is an algorithmic system, fed a tremendous amount of historical or hypothetical information, that leverages probability and context in order to choose what outcomes are expected based on the data it has been fed. It’s how training algorithmic chatbots on posts from social media resulted in the chatbot regurgitating the racist rhetoric it was trained on. It’s also how predictive policing algorithms reaffirm racially biased policing by sending police to neighborhoods where the police already patrol and where they make a majority of their arrests. From the vantage of the data it looks as if that is the only neighborhood with crime because police don’t typically arrest people in other neighborhoods. As AI expert and technologist Joy Buolamwini has said, "With the adoption of AI systems, at first I thought we were looking at a mirror, but now I believe we're looking into a kaleidoscope of distortion... Because the technologies we believe to be bringing us into the future are actually taking us back from the progress already made."
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Axios ☛ How scammers are using AI to steal your tax returns
By the numbers: The IRS received 294,138 complaints of identity theft in 2023, and ended up flagging more than 1 million tax returns for possible identify fraud.
Follow the money: Tax identity fraud "is a great crime, because so many tax refund dollars are transacted" and it's harder to spot suspicious behavior with a once-per-year transaction, Ari Jacoby, founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm Deduce, told Axios.
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Matt Webb ☛ Who will build new search engines for new personal AI agents? (Interconnected)
The definition of an “agent” is an autonomous AI that has access to “tools”. A tool is something like a web browser, or a calculator, or integration with a booking system, anything with an API (a machine interface).
Then you know the way that ChatGPT has a turn-taking interaction, human then AI, human then AI, etc? Agents are different. You give the AI a goal, then you tell it to choose for itself which tool to use to get it closer to its goal…
…and then you run it again, in a loop, automatically, until the AI says that it’s done.
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Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ The Latest "Crisis" - Is the Research Literature Overrun with ChatGPT- and LLM-generated Articles? >
Elsevier has been under the spotlight this month for publishing a paper that contains a clearly ChatGPT-written portion of its introduction. The first sentence of the paper’s Introduction reads, “Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic:…” To date, the article remains unchanged, and unretracted. A second paper, containing the phrase “I’m very sorry, but I don’t have access to real-time information or patient-specific data, as I am an AI language model” was subsequently found, and similarly remains unchanged. This has led to a spate of amateur bibliometricians scanning the literature for similar common AI-generated phrases, with some alarming results. But it’s worth digging a little deeper into these results to get a sense of whether this is indeed a widespread problem, and where such papers have made it through to publication, where the errors are occurring.
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404 Media ☛ 'Enhanced' Photos of Kate Middleton Are Just More AI Bullshit
For much of the last week, a large part of both the conspiracy internet and the royal watching internet has been trying to determine if various blurry images and video screengrabs are of Duchess Kate Middleton, who has not been seen in public, or at all, since an apparent abdominal surgery in January. On Monday, the fervor entered a new phase when The Sun tabloid newspaper published video it says is of Kate and husband Prince William walking during a shopping trip. In response, multiple people have turned to so-called photo enhancement apps, which they believe prove the video isn’t actually of Kate at all.
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The Register UK ☛ Greggs suffers payment meltdown
Images from the front line show shops with signs in the windows, saying: "Due to IT issues, we are unable to open until the issue is fixed," and "Shop will open late due to technical issues. You can order through click and collect or Uber Eats. Sorry for any inconvenience caused."
The payment system outage at Greggs comes hot on the heels of similar issues affecting a host of brands last week. On Saturday, supermarket Sainsbury's said: "Due to an error with an overnight software update, we are experiencing issues with contactless payments and will not be able to deliver the vast majority of today's Groceries Online orders. Our stores are open as usual, accepting chip and pin and cash payments."
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Wired ☛ 8 Google Employees Invented Modern AI. Here’s the Inside Story
Approaching its seventh anniversary, the “Attention” paper has attained legendary status. The authors started with a thriving and improving technology—a variety of AI called neural networks—and made it into something else: a digital system so powerful that its output can feel like the product of an alien intelligence. Called transformers, this architecture is the not-so-secret sauce behind all those mind-blowing AI products, including ChatGPT and graphic generators such as Dall-E and Midjourney. Shazeer now jokes that if he knew how famous the paper would become, he “might have worried more about the author order.” All eight of the signers are now microcelebrities. “I have people asking me for selfies—because I’m on a paper!” says Llion Jones, who is (randomly, of course) name number five.
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Futurism ☛ Dystopian Google AI Tool Turns Still Images into Creepy Talking Videos
So, in other words, the goal of these researchers is absolutely to create realistic-looking fake people that interact in a "human"-feeling way with actual human beings on the other end.
In the paper, the researchers propose that this model — which requires just one image and a desired audio clip as inputs — could be used to "enhance online communication, education, or personalized virtual assistants." Vlogger can also edit moving videos, which the researchers claim will "ease creative processes."
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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The Verge ☛ House passes bill banning sale of US personal data to foreign adversaries
The Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act, or HR 7520, would prohibit data brokers from selling Americans’ personally identifiable information to foreign adversaries, including countries like China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Data brokers can face penalties from the Federal Trade Commission if they’re found to have sold sensitive information like location or health data to these countries. The bill sailed through the House, with all 414 lawmakers who voted opting to pass it.
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Wired ☛ Glassdoor Wants to Know Your Real Name
Using Glassdoor, the site famous for candid employee reviews that break through corporate facades, is less anonymous than it used to be.
In July last year, the company added new social features integrated from Fishbowl, an app for work-related discussions acquired in 2021. Glassdoor has also changed its sign-up process to ask people to disclose their full name, job title, and employer; historically, it had required email addresses, but not names. In tests by WIRED, returning users who didn’t previously provide a full name are prompted to enter one by an impossible-to-dismiss pop-up that says, “Entering your real name is required to verify your profile but other users won't see your name unless you choose to share it.”
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EDRI ☛ European Court of Human Rights confirms: weakening of encryption can violate the human right to privacy
In a milestone judgment - Podchasov v. Russia - the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled that weakening of encryption can lead to general and indiscriminate surveillance of the communications of all users and violates the human right to privacy.
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Defence/Aggression
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Mozambique: Jihadists from abroad pour into Cabo Delgado
Repeated clashes between armed insurgents and security forces have been rife in several coastal towns. As a result, around 100,000 people, including over 61,000 children, were displaced between early February and early March, according to the UN migration agency.
Mozambique has been fighting the jihadist militants in the north since October 2017.
The insurgent group was initially known as Ansar al-Sunna but proclaimed affiliation with the so-called Islamic State in 2019. It is known locally as al-Shabab, whose name comes from the Arabic word for youth but has no relation to Somalia's al-Shabab militia.
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ADF ☛ Somali Military Operations in Jubaland Win Back Territory from al-Shabaab
Somalia’s ongoing efforts to eradicate al-Shabaab coincide with the departure of troops from the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), which includes troops from Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.
In the drawdown’s first two phases, 5,000 troops left Somalia and 13 military bases were turned over to Somali forces. Officials initially expected to complete the second phase of the ATMIS withdrawal at the end of September. However, ongoing al-Shabaab offensives, coupled with the retreat of forces from areas previously captured, persuaded the Somali government to ask for a delay in the drawdown.
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Deccan Chronicle ☛ India to Prosecute 35 Pirates Who Hijacked Ship Off Somalia: Navy Official
Indian navy commandos managed to release the Malta-flagged commercial ship MV Ruen on Saturday, which had been hijacked 450 nautical miles east of Socotra in the northern Arabian Sea by Somali pirates on Dec 14.
It marked the first hijacking of a merchant ship by Somali pirates since 2017. At the peak of their attacks in 2011, Somali pirates cost the global economy an estimated $7 billion, including hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom payments.
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New York Times ☛ U.K. Bill to Send Asylum Seekers to Rwanda Is Stalled by House of Lords
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak argues that the flights to Rwanda, a small country in East Africa, would be a vital deterrent that could stem the flow of tens of thousands of people who make dangerous crossings from France to Britain each year on small, often unseaworthy boats.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Truth and reconciliation: New study finds people less likely to acknowledge war crimes on social media
Social media could prove to be as much a barrier to post-conflict reconciliation as it is a way of helping communities move forward, new research has claimed.
A study has found that there are clear differences between how people discuss the legacy of war in face-to-face situations compared to those interactions on platforms such as Facebook and X.
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Taylor Francis Group ☛ Full article: Social Media, Stereotypes, and the Acknowledgement of War Crimes
Human rights activists increasingly employ social media to promote post-conflict justice and reconciliation. This study asks what role social media play in facilitating the acknowledgement of war crimes committed by members of one’s ethnicity and what the implications of mediated visibility are. It finds that people are less willing to acknowledge ingroup responsibility for war crimes on social media because they fear being negatively stereotyped by foreign audiences and reputationally undermined. The study sheds light on the unintended negative consequences of mediated visibility of war crimes and counters presumptions of digital universalism showing that implications of visibility are context dependent.
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Pro Publica ☛ U.N. Has Flown $2.9B in Cash to Afghanistan Since Taliban Seized Control
The United Nations has delivered more than $2.9 billion in cash to Afghanistan since the Taliban seized control, resulting in the flow of U.S. funds to the extremist group, according to a recent government report.
The U.N. deposits the cash into a private Afghan bank and disburses funds to the agency’s aid organizations and nonprofit humanitarian groups. But the money does not stop there, the report found. Some winds up at the central bank of Afghanistan, which is under the control of the Taliban. The group took over the country after the withdrawal of U.S. forces in August 2021.
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US SIGAR ☛ Cash Shipments to Afghanistan: The UN Has Purchased and Transported More than $2.9 Billion to Afghanistan to Implement Humanitarian Assistance
Lastly, SIGAR found that the Taliban benefits from the cash shipments. UN entities and UN-partnered PIOs and NGOs receiving cash via the UN’s cash shipments use either U.S. dollars or afghanis to fund their operations. When these groups require afghanis, they solicit bids from private banks to convert the shipped U.S. currency. However, SIGAR found that many private banks do not maintain enough afghanis to exchange for large amounts of U.S. dollars. As a result, the bank typically uses UN-supplied U.S. dollars to purchase local currency from the Taliban-controlled DAB, through currency auctions. This has led DAB, and thereby the Taliban, to accumulate a large supply of U.S. dollars through the conversion process of dollars for afghanis.
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The Verge ☛ Surveillance has a body count: CBP reports 895 migrant deaths in 2022
Thirty years later, the plan has borne out, though it hasn’t actually reduced migration. Instead, as the 1994 plan predicted, it just shifted the location of crossings. Surveillance tools allow Border Patrol to track migrants through vast expanses of the border without actually having to be there — the agency considers them a “force multiplier.” But the expansion of CBP’s surveillance apparatus has come at a significant human cost. A 2019 study by researchers at the University of Arizona found a “significant correlation between the location of border surveillance technology, the routes taken by migrants, and the locations of recovered human remains in the southern Arizona desert.”
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The Hill ☛ Senate briefed on TikTok risks, mulls potential ban
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) said he is trying to get information declassified about risks posed by TikTok to better inform the public.
His aim to declassify some of the information is part of his broader push for the Senate to pass a bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese-based parent company ByteDance to sell the app or face a ban in the U.S., following a broad bipartisan vote for the legislation in the House last week.
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The Atlantic ☛ The Founders Would Have Been Worried About TikTok
During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the Framers were quite worried that foreign powers would exploit America’s open form of government to serve their own interests. At the time, the United States was small and weak compared with the powerhouses of France and England, and the Framers feared that favors and financing could seduce officeholders. Alexander Hamilton cautioned that “foreign powers also will not be idle spectators. They will interpose, the confusion will increase, and a dissolution of the Union ensue.” The Constitution therefore forbids foreigners from running for Congress until they have been U.S. citizens for seven years, and famously prohibits anyone but a natural-born citizen from being president. Elbridge Gerry, the great champion of the Bill of Rights, argued at the Constitutional Convention that “foreign powers will intermeddle in our affairs, and spare no expence to influence them. Persons having foreign attachments will be sent among us & insinuated into our councils, in order to be made instruments for their purposes. Every one knows the vast sums laid out in Europe for secret services.”
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Techdirt ☛ It Appears Users Are Getting Bored With TikTok
We’ve been covering many stories about a potential TikTok ban, including how unconstitutional it clearly is, how pointless it clearly is, and how even those who back it don’t seem to have a good explanation of why, beyond some vague handwaving about “China.”
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Deutsche Welle ☛ TikTok in US under pressure: Who's in line to buy it?
This isn't TikTok's first time on the possible selling block. Donald Trump tried with an executive order to force ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, to sell the subsidiary to an American owner back in 2020.
It seemed a deal with Oracle was close, but those efforts failed, as did an attempt to keep the app out of app stores.
Since then TikTok says it has gone to great lengths to delete the data on American users from ByteDance servers and move all that information to US-based servers, a move it calls Project Texas. This should in theory keep the data out of the hands of Chinese surveillance.
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India Times ☛ ByteDance researcher wrongly added to AI safety groupchat: US standards body
A researcher from TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance was wrongly added to a group chat for American artificial intelligence safety experts last week, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said Monday.
The researcher was added to a Slack instance for discussions between members of NIST's U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium, according to a person familiar with the matter.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Break up TikTok, arm Ukraine
Regarding Beijing, the assessment underscores China’s growing efforts online, resembling the long-standing Moscow playbook, “to exploit perceived US societal divisions . . . for influence operations.” That includes experimentation with artificial intelligence. TikTok accounts run by a Chinese government propaganda arm “reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the US midterm election cycle in 2022,” it notes, something the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab was the first to show through an open-source investigation.
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Axios ☛ TikTok hawks hope intel briefing will scare Senate into action
What to watch: The bill's proponents are hoping the briefing makes clear the unique threat of TikTok because of its ties to China — separating it from broader concerns with social media companies and data privacy, according to one GOP Senate aide familiar with the dynamics.
• Lawmakers on the far left and the far right have raised concerns about focusing only on TikTok and not the broader social media space.
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Digital Music News ☛ The TikTokifcation of YouTube and Vice Versa
In 2023, TikTok became the fourth largest social network in the world—behind Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. It has its sights set on replacing YouTube as the premiere video destination—which it is already achieving among the youngest age cohorts (13-25). What does that mean for the music industry—which depends heavily on TikTok for music discovery?
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Digital Music News ☛ Senators Receive Briefing on TikTok By National Security Officials
The classified briefing will be hosted by chairs of the Commerce and Intelligence committees—Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) alongside Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX). The Senate is now considering how to proceed following a vote in the House last week that would force Chinese company ByteDance to divest from TikTok.
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ Women and Violent Extremism
According to (Oxfam Policy and Practice, 2017), “currently, women are on the frontlines of violent extremism, as recruiters, propagators, suicide bombers, and targets”. Such example as explained by, David Cook is, the “acceptability and prevalence of women waging jihad in Islamist terrorist groups and establishes that women are more visible as suicide bombers in more secular contexts (Chechnya and Palestine”. These overt acts of engaging as suicide bombers or terror leaders however is a gradual and emerging development because in history the instances were where women engaged in supplementary roles and functions rather than directly involved in extremism and terrorism. As cited by Mahmood, (Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 1987), “In the context of Islamist terrorism, the role of men encapsulates participation in violent jihad to defend the ideology or goals of their organisations, while the women’s part is to take up a supportive position by assisting the men in defending and facilitating violence through supplementary functions”. The reasons pointed out by Mahmood are that there are strategic benefits of women’s involvement since Women deployed as attackers allow these groups to gain publicity or ‘renown’ as referred to by Louise Richardson. Further, the inclusion of women leads to the longevity of the group since giving birth increases the multi-generational impact of the group.
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The Telegraph UK ☛ One in five Muslim prisoners is white as 'gangs drive conversions'
Figures highlight concerns that gangs in some jails are ordering prisoners to become Muslims or face violence
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[Old] The Telegraph UK ☛ Islamic hate literature distributed in British prisons, leaked report finds
Earlier this year it was suggested that all convicted Jihadi terrorists could be placed in a single top security prison in a measure designed to prevent them from spreading their propaganda to other inmates.
Policy for the past 50 years has been to disperse dangerous inmates around eight jails.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Meduza ☛ Russian schools hold extracurricular lesson and quiz game based on Tucker Carlson’s Putin interview — Meduza
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European Commission ☛ Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi's press statement during the joint press conference following the EU-Ukraine Association Council
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Latvia ☛ Latvia backs Czech munitions-for-Ukraine initiative
On Tuesday, March 19, at the meeting of the Ukrainian Defense Contact Group in Ramstein, Germany, the Defense Ministries of Latvia and the Czech Republic signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the field of military-technical assistance to Ukraine, which provides for the purchase of large-caliber ammunition for Ukraine's needs.
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Latvia ☛ Repeated surveys confirm most basements are not fit for shelters in Latvia
According to the State Land Service (VZD), there are about 30,000 buildings with basements in Latvia that could theoretically be used as shelters. Most of the buildings with basements are apartment blocks, but so far only a few have been surveyed, adapted and are ready to accommodate people in case of danger, Latvian Radio reported on March 20.Although two years ago - right after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine - municipalities set to work to identify possible shelters, guidelines have only now been developed, so the buildings will be surveyed again. Shelters that meet the minimum requirements will then be compiled into a digital map, while financial support for adapting basements will be available for the rest. The type of support and funding options will be decided in the coming months.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Peacemaking through curbing Russian oil and gas exports
As Russia’s aggression in Ukraine continues, Western governments have available tools to limit the Kremlin's war budget. They can do this by plugging the gaps in sanctions against Russian oil and gas exports—and severing a critical revenue stream supporting the Kremlin’s war machine.
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France24 ☛ EU to cap imports of Ukrainian poultry and grains to appease farmers
EU member states and lawmakers on Wednesday reached a deal to cap duty-free imports of some Ukrainian grains, which were allowed in the wake of Russia’s invasion but have drawn fierce protests from farmers in the bloc.
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LRT ☛ Lithuania approves €35m for Czech initiative to buy ammo for Ukraine
The Lithuanian government on Wednesday approved 35 million euros for the Czech-led multinational initiative to procure and send ammunition to Ukraine.
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LRT ☛ Funds from frozen Russian assets could reach Ukraine in July – EU commissioner
As Brussels plans to propose that EU countries use interest generated from frozen Russian assets to arm Ukraine, Lithuanian EU commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius says the first funds could reach Kyiv as early as July.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Filmmaker Gets 3 Years In Prison Over Posts About War In Ukraine
A Russian documentary director was sentenced on March 20 to three years in prison by a court in St. Petersburg on a charge of distributing false information about the country's military.
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RFERL ☛ European Commission Says First $4.9 Billion Released From Ukraine Aid Fund
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the first $4.9 billion payment in financial aid has been made to Ukraine from a support fund set up to help Kyiv as it battles invading Russian forces.
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RFERL ☛ Moldovan-Born Man Loses Russian Citizenship Over Covering Ukraine War
A rights group has published a document from the Russian Interior Ministry about the cancellation of the Russian citizenship of Aleksandr Somryakov, a Moldovan-born man who was sentenced to six years in prison in April 2023 for publishing online reports about Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine Hails EU Move To Extend Suspension Of Import Duties
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has welcomed a provisional decision by the EU to extend by one year the suspension on import duties on Ukrainian agricultural products announced early on March 20.
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teleSUR ☛ The Russian Army Protected the Elections From Ukrainian Attacks
Ukraine used at least 419 drones and 67 missiles against military and civilian installations.
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New York Times ☛ From Russia, Elaborate Tales of Fake Journalists
As the Ukraine war grinds on, the Kremlin has created increasingly complex fabrications online to discredit Ukraine’s leader and undercut aid. Some have a Hollywood-style plot twist.
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New York Times ☛ E.U. Plans to Use Russian Frozen Assets to Pay for Weapons for Ukraine
Using interest earned on frozen Russian assets held in Europe, the bloc plans to raise billions. But other ways to pay for new weapons remain elusive.
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New York Times ☛ U.S. Defense Secretary Praises NATO Allies for Commitment to Ukraine
The American defense secretary told a meeting of Kyiv’s backers that the fight against Russia “remains one of the great causes of our time.”
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New York Times ☛ Symbolism or Strategy? Ukraine Battles to Retain Small Gains.
Despite American doubts, Ukrainians say that defending places with little strategic value is worth the cost in casualties and weapons, because the attacking Russians pay an even higher price.
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ADF ☛ Russian Mercenaries Take Aim at Ethnic Minorities in Mali
Thousands of civilians in northern Mali have fled their homes in recent months, running from what they call systematic attacks by Russian mercenaries and Malian soldiers.
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Off Guardian ☛ Genetic vaccines & PCR tests: Russia is ready for Disease X
Riley Waggaman Is Russia prepared for the most anticipated public health crisis in WHO-history? Yes, according to Russia’s Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor).
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Atlantic Council ☛ Tony Pfaff: ‘The United States has proxies’ too
The academic and former US government official was interviewed by our MENASource editor to discuss his most recent book and its implications for US foreign policy.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Soldier Dies After Being Shot At Military Base In Armenia
A 22-year-old Russian soldier has died after being shot at Russia’s military base in Armenia's northwestern city of Gyumri.
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RFERL ☛ U.S. Imposes Sanctions On Russian Firms For Supporting Kremlin's Influence Campaigns
The United States has imposed sanctions on two people and two companies it said have supported disinformation efforts directed by the Russian government.
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RFERL ☛ Employees Of Gay Club In Russia Arrested On Extremism Charges
A court in Russia's southwestern city of Orenburg on March 20 sent two employees of an unofficial gay club to pretrial detention for two months on a charge of creating an extremist group.
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LRT ☛ There are no Litvinist groups among Belarusian diaspora – intelligence
There are no organised groups promoting the so-called Litvinism ideology, a radical branch of Belarusian nationalism, in Lithuania, according to the country’s intelligence.
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RFERL ☛ Nobel Prize Winners Demand Release Of Belarusian Political Prisoners
An open letter signed by more than two dozen Nobel Prize winners calls for the immediate release of political prisoners in Belarus.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Meduza ☛ Putin 2024 Meduza breaks down the evidence pointing to the most fraudulent elections in modern Russian history
On March 18, Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) announced that Vladimir Putin would remain in power for a fifth presidential term, following a landslide “election” win. According to the CEC’s preliminary data, Putin received a record-breaking 87.28 percent of the vote with an equally record-breaking voter turnout of 77.44 percent. Surprisingly, the CEC continues to publish data on individual polling stations, making it possible to piece together how the authorities manufactured these unprecedented results. Peculiarities in the vote count itself paint a clear picture of what appears to be the most fraudulent election in Russia’s modern history. Meduza examines the evidence.
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Quartz ☛ Amazon says plastic packaging can be recycled. It usually isn’t
Jan Dell, an independent chemical engineer and founder of the environmental nonprofit The Least Beach Cleanup, has been deploying her own trackers too. Since December 2022, she hasn’t traced a single bundle of film labeled for store drop-off to U.S. facilities that can turn the material into new bags. Twelve bundles have been sent to a landfill or waste station, and one to an incinerator. Four appeared to have traveled to Mexico, Vietnam, or Malaysia, countries that generally lack adequate recycling infrastructure.
“They’re absolutely lying with these labels,” Dell said. The store drop-off system has “never worked, it was never true.”
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PIRG ☛ Truth in recycling
Plastic packaging used to ship items to our homes is a major contributor to the plastic waste crisis. Nearly every time we order something online, we’re confronted with a pile of plastic — plastic envelopes, bubble wrap, and foam. When you multiply that by the millions and millions of online purchases made everyday, you get an e-commerce plastic problem that generated 3.4 billion pounds of plastic waste globally in 2021 alone.
As one of the largest retailers in the world, Amazon is a major contributor to this plastic problem. A report from the ocean conservation group Oceana, estimated that Amazon alone generated 709 million pounds of plastic waste globally in 2021– enough to circle the Earth more than 800 times in the form of air pillows.
Amazon packaging is not as recyclable as the company claims. Amazon claims that much of the packaging the company uses to deliver goods is recyclable, either through curbside recycling programs for their cardboard packaging or store drop-off for its plastic packaging.
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The Atlantic ☛ Russia's Non-Election
Vladimir Putin staged an elaborate charade—so why did some Western media outlets play along?
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Environment
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The Scotsman ☛ Beach litter and sewage debris on Scotland shores sparks renewed calls for action on plastics and disposables
The amount of litter found strewn on Scottish beaches in 2023 was up by 17 per cent on the previous year, surveys have revealed.
Results from Beachwatch clean-ups run by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) show an average of 188 items were found on every 100m stretch of Scotland’s coastline searched.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ UN warns of e-waste 'catastrophe'
The United Nations warned on Wednesday that waste from electronic devices is creating an environmental catastrophe.
A joint report by the UN's International Telecommunications Union and the research arm UNITAR said recycling lags well behind the mass of e-waste being created, including discarded mobile phones, computers, televisions, and other devices.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Crawfish could transfer ionic lithium from their environment into food chain
"As aquatic organisms, crawfish can take up large amounts of lithium dissolved in water. Because other creatures—including people—eat crawfish, looking at them allows us to see how lithium moves through the food chain and potentially into us," says Joseph Kazery, a professor of biology.
Two undergraduate students in Kazery's lab at Mississippi College, Andrew Doubert and Javian Ervin are presenting the results of their experiments on the uptake of ionic lithium by different crawfish organs, as well as the impact of seasonal temperatures. "If crawfish are raised near a landfill or a polluted site, runoff could expose them to lithium, with effects we don't yet fully understand," Ervin says. "I myself eat crawfish, so this issue is important to me."
Lithium contamination is not new. Even before lithium-ion batteries became widespread, lithium was, and still is, used as a medication to treat mood disorders. It enters the water supply in those applications because typical wastewater treatment does not remove drug contaminants.
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Gizmodo ☛ Trackers Placed in Amazon Packaging Reveal What Really Happens to Store Drop-Off Recycling
For years now, Amazon’s plastic bags, bubble-lined mailers, and air pillows have featured the ubiquitous “chasing arrows” recycling symbol along with the words “store drop-off.” The idea is simple: Since most curbside recycling programs don’t accept this type of plastic — it’s too expensive to process and can clog machines — consumers can instead leave it at retail stores across the country. From there, this plastic, known as “film,” will go to a specialized facility and be turned into new products.
The problem, however, is that the system doesn’t seem to be working.
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El País ☛ WMO warns ocean temperatures over the past 12 months have been ‘off the charts’
The average ocean temperature is now half a degree above normal, taking as a reference point the average between the period 1991-2020. Earlier this March, when the absolute daily average temperature record was broken by reaching 21.09 degrees, the anomaly was almost one degree, according to data from the Copernicus Climate Pulse service, which focuses on the analysis of sea surface temperature for the coordinates 60°S-60°N, i.e., excluding polar areas.
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France24 ☛ Planet 'on the brink' as UN agency warns new heat records are likely in 2024
"There is a high probability that 2024 will again break the record of 2023", WMO climate monitoring chief Omar Baddour told reporters.
Reacting to the report, UN chief Antonio Guterres said it showed "a planet on the brink".
"Earth's issuing a distress call," he said in a video message, pointing out that "fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts", and warning that "changes are speeding up".
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Energy/Transportation
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The Atlantic ☛ Flying Is Weird Right Now
This is only a partial list of the year’s aeronautic mishaps, which are prodigious: Consider investigations into Alaska Airlines that revealed numerous doors with loose bolts, the Airbus grounded for a faulty door light, or the Delta Boeing whose nose wheel popped off and “rolled down” a hill as the flight prepared to take off.
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Gizmodo ☛ Following Ban, Flipper Zero Creators Say They're Being Scapegoated for Car Thefts
This week, the multi-tools’ developers published a statement on their site arguing that they have been unfairly singled out as the hacker boogeymen behind Canada’s car theft problem. They also urge web users to sign a petition denouncing the proposed Flipper ban. “We believe that proposals like this are harmful to security and slow down technological progress,” the post reads. “They are usually made by those who do not really understand how security works and will do nothing to solve the car theft problem.”
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Wildlife/Nature
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Science Alert ☛ Orcas Have Learned Brutal New Hunting Techniques to Feed in The Open Sea
To hunt the sea lions, multiple orcas surrounded a prey animal, taking turns rushing in and ramming it or hitting it with their head or tail. They would also toss the sea lion into the air. Once the sea lion was dead, the group would divide and eat the animal, or carry it around for a while. For elephant seals, the technique varied a little, with the orcas surrounding the animal, hitting it with their tails, then grabbing it by the fins to shake it.
Hunts of gray whale calves were often initiated and led by adult female orcas. The group would chase the mother gray whale and calf until the calf started to tire. Then, the orcas worked to separate the calf, coming between it and the mother and grabbing on to the calf to drag it away. The hunt would get pretty brutal, with the orcas ramming and biting the calf, and leaping on top of its blowhole to drown it.
For dolphins, the hunts were highly coordinated, with the orcas flanking a large school of dolphins to separate out individuals. Once a dolphin was vulnerable, the orcas would ram it from underneath to fling it into the air, or grab it and drag it under the water, until it was dead. Similar techniques were used to hunt porpoises.
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The Revelator ☛ The Shocking Truth About Sloths
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Overpopulation
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El País ☛ Humanity will shrink in the future: 97% of countries will experience negative growth by 2100
It hasn’t started happening yet, but the trend seems unstoppable: humanity is shrinking. By 2050, over three-quarters (155 out of 204) of the world’s countries will have fertility rates so low that they will not be able to maintain their population size. And this trend will be nearly complete by 2100, when 97% of countries (198 out of 204) will be in the same situation. Deaths will outnumber births, and there will be fewer and fewer people in the world.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ German birth rate drops steeply against backdrop of unease
The birth rate fell from 1.57 children per woman in 2021 to around 1.36 in autumn 2023.
The BiB rated this sharp decline within two years as "unusual, as phases of falling birth rates have tended to occur more slowly in the past."
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France24 ☛ Global fertility rate to shrink by the end of the century, study warns
By 2050, the population of three quarters of all countries will be shrinking, according to the study by the US-based Institute For Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
At the end of the century, that will be true for 97 percent -- or 198 out of 204 countries and territories, the researchers projected.
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Finance
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The Atlantic ☛ The IRS Finally Has an Answer to TurboTax
During the torture ritual that was doing my taxes this year, I was surprised to find myself giddy after reading these words: “You are now chatting with IRS Representative-1004671045.” I had gotten stuck trying to parse my W-2, which, under “Box 14: Other,” contained a mysterious $389.70 deduction from my overall pay last year. No explanation. No clues. Nothing. I tapped the chat button on my tax software for help, expecting to be sucked into customer-service hell. Instead, a real IRS employee answered my question in less than two minutes.
The program is not TurboTax, or any one of its many competitors that will give you the white-glove treatment only after you pony up. It is Direct File, a new pilot program made by the IRS. It walks you through each step in mostly simple language (in English or Spanish, on your phone or laptop), automatically saves your progress, shows you a checklist of what you have left to do, flags potential errors, and calculates your return. These features are already part of TurboTax, but Direct File will not push you to an AI chatbot that flubs basic questions. And most crucial, it’s completely free.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Quartz ☛ Reddit IPO is priced at $34 per share
Reddit begins trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.
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India Times ☛ Reddit IPO: Reddit prices IPO at $34 a share, in a positive sign for tech
The San Francisco-based social media company had estimated that its shares would be priced at $31 to $34. The $34 price put Reddit's value at $6.4 billion, below the $10 billion valuation it fetched in a private fundraising round in 2021. The company raised $748 million in the offering.
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RTL ☛ Social media company Reddit set for NYSE debut after IPO
With easy financing scarce, Silicon Valley is seeing a dearth of companies ready to make the big leap to go public, with Pinterest being the last social media company to do so in 2019.
San Francisco-based Reddit first filed for its IPO in 2021 when the market was hot thanks to a Covid-linked growth boom for tech, but the attempt stalled as the internet economy cooled.
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Scheerpost ☛ Can you Slam Wall Street and Still Win an Election? Ask Sherrod Brown
Senator Brown didn’t know about my book, his essay was written before I started my book, and despite deep research I did not see his essay until two weeks ago. So, I was surprised, but I immediately understood why we both adopted the same big picture framework to understand the economy, and similar language to share our understanding with working people.
As a labor educator, I’ve found that the big-picture framework is as important, maybe even more important, than facts and figures. In our complex world, problems hit working people from all angles — job insecurity, job loss, the high costs of housing, discrimination, kids who can’t afford to move out, and on and on. To make sense of this mosaic, a framework helps hold the pieces together. In our educational program we see clearly that working people are hungry for a coherent explanation that connects the dots. And without a compelling alternative, the pressing need for frameworks can lead towards conspiracy theories.
Brown and I are using the Wall Street War on Workers big picture framework for four reasons.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Intel wins $19.5B in CHIPS Act funding and loans for fab network expansion
Intel Corp. is poised to receive as much as $19.5 billion in federal funding and loans to expand its domestic chipmaking infrastructure.
The Commerce Department will provide the financing through a preliminary, nonbinding memorandum of terms that officials announced today. Under the agreement, Intel will receive up to $8.5 billion in direct funding and the option to draw upon as much as $11 billion worth of loans. The deal is expected to be the largest grant issued under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act.
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India Times ☛ Mustafa Suleyman Microsoft: Who is Mustafa Suleyman, the new AI chief at Microsoft?
Tech giant Microsoft made a big move in the artificial intelligence (AI) battle for supremacy. On Tuesday, the Satya Nadella-led company has roped in Mustafa Suleyman, cofounder of Google's DeepMind and Inflection AI, to lead its consumer AI business.
Reporting directly to Nadella, Suleyman will be responsible for expanding a consumer AI business.
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Security Week ☛ Microsoft Hires Influential AI Figure Mustafa Suleyman to Head up Consumer AI Business
Suleyman, co-founder of AI research lab DeepMind, said Tuesday in a LinkedIn post that he’ll become CEO of Microsoft AI, leading all of the company’s consumer AI products and research, including its generative AI service Copilot as well as its Bing search engine and Edge browser.
Microsoft is also hiring the chief scientist at Suleyman’s AI company, Inflection, and several of its top engineers and researchers, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a blog post.
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New York Times ☛ Intel to Receive $8.5 Billion in Grants to Build Chip Plants
The award, to be announced by President Biden at a plant in Arizona, is the biggest the government has made under a new program that aims to rebuild the nation’s semiconductor manufacturing industry.
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Security Week ☛ White House Calls on States to Boost Cybersecurity in Water Sector
Water and wastewater systems across the US are targeted with disabling cyberattacks that could “disrupt the critical lifeline of clean and safe drinking water,” the White House says in a letter (PDF) to US governors requesting their partnership.
Threats to water systems, the letter reads, include Iranian and Chinese state-sponsored threat actors, which have carried out malicious cyberattacks targeting the US critical infrastructure.
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Vox ☛ Reddit’s biggest risk ahead of its IPO is its own users
All eyes are on the subreddit r/wallstreetbets ahead of its parent site’s IPO, which could provide an early window into how the user base and investors are responding.
The subreddit has previously made and ruined fortunes, temporarily driving up the price of stock in down-and-out companies like GameStop, the movie theater chain AMC, and Y2K smartphone maker BlackBerry.
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[Repeat] Press Gazette ☛ Facebook referrals drop leads to decline in mobile off-platform revenues
Off-platform revenues on mobile fell by 86% in the final quarter of 2023 among a sample of UK online news publishers, according to a new survey.
The year-on-year decline was attributed to Facebook’s decision to deprioritise news in user feeds.
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US News And World Report ☛ French Regulators Fine Google $272 Million in Dispute With News Publishers
France’s competition watchdog hit Google on Wednesday with another big fine tied to a long-running dispute over payments to French publishers for their news.
The French Competition Authority said it issued the 250 million euro ($272 million) penalty because of Google's failure to comply with some commitments it made in a negotiating framework.
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Daniel Pocock ☛ How much does Google pay to destroy a man and his family?
I've started creating this page to keep track of the kill money that I feel Google is laundering through the bank accounts of Software in the Public Interest, Inc and the Debian "Project". This page may be updated from time to time as more of this dirty money is uncovered.
On 20 March 2013, a report in the French senate expressed great concern that European countries are becoming digital colonies under the reign of foreign companies like Google.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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JURIST ☛ US Supreme Court hears oral arguments on Texas councilwoman First Amendment retaliatory arrest case
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on the case Gonzalez v. Trevino, which concerns the arrest of a Castle Hills, Texas councilwoman who argues that she was arrested in retaliation for her critical speech about the city’s government. The case is an appeal from the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which ruled against the councilwoman.
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The Register UK ☛ Top Chinese TV-maker wants Beijing to ‘improve’ censorship
Another suggestion was to foster privately funded film and television product houses, with the goal of making some globally competitive.
That's a playbook China used to propel outfits like Tencent to strong positions in the global gaming market, even as Beijing continues to frown on domestic gamers – especially minors.
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Craig Murray ☛ Scotland’s Hate Speech Act and Abuse of Process
On 1 April Scotland’s notorious Hate Crime Act comes into force. I have explained before why it is so noxious. It has been condemned by every civil liberties body you can think of. Police Scotland have made matters still worse by telling their officers that the measure of whether a Hate Crime has been committed should be whether the person reporting it feels offended or threatened, and that the officer should make no objective judgment as to whether that is reasonable from the facts of the case.
But I want to concentrate on one very specific aspect of this legislation. It will apply to social media, and indeed it is highly probable that a very significant proportion of the “Hate Speech” will be found on social media.
It is a well establsihed principle in Scots law that anything published on the internet, which can be read in Scotland, is deemed to be published in Scotland. The act of publication is not deemed to be the person actually publishing the item, let us say in Tahiti. The act of publication is deemed to be the reader opening the item on their device in Scotland.
[...]
But the internet posed a dilemma for the courts. Either they had to accept a massive increase in freedom of speech, or claim jurisdiction over the entire internet. How do you enforce an injunction if somebody can simply publish the information from their home in Tahiti and you cannot touch them? Needless to say, the stupid and arrogant judges of Scotland went for the universal jurisdiction path and not the freedom path (to be plain, so have the courts in England and Wales).
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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VOA News ☛ South African Media Outlet Files Complaint Over Op-Ed
One of South Africa’s leading news websites has filed a complaint with the country’s Press Council, alleging that another media company is trying to discredit reporters who investigated the owner's business practices.
News24 and industry analysts claim that the Independent Media group is failing to respect the usual “firewall” that exists between owners and editorial departments.
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JURIST ☛ DRC journalist freed after serving six month jail sentence
Bujakera’s lawyer Yana Ndikulu announced the news in a statement to the journalist’s employer Reuters while fellow DRC journalist Patient Ligodi confirmed the news in a post on social media platform X. Bujakera, who was originally detained in pre-trial custody back in September of last year, was ultimately sentenced to six months in jail and a fine of one million Congolese Francs ($364). Prosecutors who had been seeking a 20-year sentence against the journalist appealed the sentence before dropping their petition and allowing the beleaguered journalist to go free.
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CPJ ☛ CPJ calls on Senegal’s presidential candidates for press freedom reforms as 5 journalists freed
In recent years, CPJ has tracked a decline in press freedom in Senegal, characterized by repeated arrests and prosecutions of journalists, attacks by security forces on reporters covering protests, [Internet] shutdowns, and other censorship tactics. CPJ’s 2023 prison census placed Senegal among the top five jailers of journalists in Africa.
On March 12, Senegalese authorities released five journalists jailed since last year, including Ndèye Maty Niang, also known as Maty Sarr Niang, and four journalists from the Allô Senegal media outlet who continue to face prosecution, according to Niang and Famara Faty, a lawyer for the Allô Senegal journalists, who both spoke to CPJ.
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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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BIA Net ☛ Journalist Levent Gültekin given sentence for 'insulting the president'
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Turkey Representative and bianet Media Freedom Rapporteur Erol Önderoğlu stated that Gültekin is the 75th journalist convicted of insulting President Erdoğan since his election in 2014.
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VOA News ☛ Detained Congolese Journalist Bujakera Has Been Freed, Lawyer Says
The prosecutor in the case earlier this month had asked the court in Kinshasa to sentence Bujakera to 20 years in prison.
Local and international rights groups including Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International had condemned Bujakera's detention, calling it an attack on press freedom. Reuters had also called for his release.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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The Hill ☛ Homeland Security’s broken terrorist prevention program needs to end
Outside studies, meanwhile, have found that the $20 million a year program does nothing for national security, promotes junk science, discriminates against communities of color and sometimes funds activities that have more to do with shaping societal views than preventing terrorism. Yet DHS has again asked Congress for $20 million to fund the program.
In the coming days, when lawmakers vote on the Department’s budget, they should pull the plug on this harmful initiative.
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ Finland’s Right-Wing Government Is Trying to Crush Labor
Proposed labor reforms [sic] in Finland have sparked strikes, shutting down everything from ports to kindergartens. The right-wing government refuses to negotiate in its drive to dismantle the Finnish model of collective bargaining.
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404 Media ☛ Girls Do Porn Ringleader Pleads Not Guilty
Michael James Pratt, the ringleader of the sex trafficking enterprise Girls Do Porn, which forced and coerced dozens of women into having sex on camera, was extradited to the U.S. and pleaded not guilty in federal court this week.
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Quartz ☛ Nvidia powers AI nurses Hippocratic AI
Hippocratic directly promotes how it can undercut the living wages of real nurses as a feature, not a bug. One page of the company’s website compares a human nurse’s $90 per hour salary to an AI agent’s $9 an-hour running costs. Hippocratic claims its AI nurses outperform human nurses regarding bedside manner, education, and narrowly miss on satisfaction, according to a survey.
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ Get Capitalists’ Grubby Hands Off Our Hobbies
A critical reflection on the hobby, as “productive leisure,” does not mean the uncritical embrace of doing nothing. Besides viewing it as a form of organized freedom, Adorno also didn’t like the hobby because the term implies a limited degree of seriousness. In other words, it means that you shouldn’t take your activity “too seriously” and that you voluntarily remain an “amateur.” Adorno himself passionately composed and listened to music and therefore viewed the word “hobby” as a derogatory way of talking about these activities.
Reflecting on the seemingly innocuous theme of the hobby ultimately leads to an important question: What would leisure look like if it was no longer shaped by the dynamics of exploited and alienated labor? For the Left, establishing nonexploitative labor and more control in the workplace also implies the struggle for sufficient and equal free time for all. And it is not too utopian to speculate that in such truly free time — that could be spent on serious pursuits, or just relaxation — the classical “hobby” might just lose its appeal as a refuge from the horrors of modern work.
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Techdirt ☛ Court Tells FBI It Can’t Just Take A US Private Vault Customer’s Money Without Explaining Its Actions
US Private Vaults is a private company, in multiple senses of the word. Despite the use of the acronym “US,” US Private Vaults is not a government entity. The service it offers aligns roughly with storage services federally insured banks offer: a secure place to hold valuables that is only accessible by those who have keys to the safety deposit boxes.
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Techdirt ☛ Supreme Court Shrugs Off Opportunity To Overturn Fifth Circuit’s Batshit Support Of Texas Drag Show Ban
The laziest court in the land has again decided it’s not worth its time to undo another horrible decision issued by an appellate court that far too often feels the Fifth (Circuit) is superior to the First (Amendment).
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Papers Please ☛ It’s not a crime not to show ID
In September of 2023, in a case that originated in Huntsville, Alabama, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that “It was… clearly established at the time of Mr. Edgar’s arrest that [a police officer] could not demand he produce physical identification. And because Officer McCabe’s demands for an ‘ID’ or a ‘driver’s license’ went beyond what the statute and state law required of Mr. Edger, she violated clearly established law. Under this set of facts and these precedents, no reasonable officer could have believed there was probable cause to arrest Mr. Edger for obstructing governmental operations by violating [Alabama Code] § 15-5-30.”
Apparently, the police in Andalusia, Alabama didn’t understand this already clearly-established state and Federal law, and didn’t get any training about this decision.
On February 23, 2024, a police officer in Andalusia arrested Ms. Twyla Stallworth in the doorway of her own house for declining to show ID and (correctly) telling the officer that she wasn’t required to show ID, least of all in her own home. “Provide ID or go to jail,” arresting officer John G. Barton of the Andalusia Police told Ms. Stallworth.
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Pro Publica ☛ How NY’s Guardianship System Can Be Fixed
Three decades ago, New York’s guardianship system was in desperate need of an overhaul.
Investigators had found that the legal arrangements, which were supposed to protect people who could not care for themselves, had actually deprived individuals of their rights and were poorly monitored, enabling guardians to abuse, neglect and defraud those under their care. In response, state lawmakers passed progressive legislation to codify wards’ civil liberties and safeguard their welfare.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ The [Internet] revolution happening in Olievenhoutbosch
What many readers may find surprising is that Riot Network, which is deploying the network, is an entirely for-profit commercial venture. And its founders and backers – among them former Dimension Data executive and Sentech CEO Setumo Mohapi – believe that this, along with direct community involvement, has been key in delivering cheap, uncapped broadband into low-income communities. They think the model is replicable countrywide – and even across the African continent.
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Techdirt ☛ FCC Finally Updates America’s Pathetic Definition Of ‘Broadband’ To 100 Mbps
For decades, the FCC has maintained an arguably pathetic definition of “broadband,” allowing the telecom industry to under-deliver substandard access. After some industry lobbying to ensure it wasn’t too stringent, the agency is finally getting around to an update, and has announced that they’ll soon classify “broadband” as anything faster than 100 Mbps downstream, 20 Mbps upstream.
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Why South Africa may be stuck with 2G for longer
The December 2027 deadline, set by the department of communications & digital technologies, for operators to switch off their 2G and 3G networks, may prove difficult considering the number of users and devices still reliant on these legacy carriers.
According to a report by Ookla, which owns the popular Speedtest.net app, the prevalence of legacy infrastructure and the high cost of migrating customers is constraining network’s from “sunsetting” legacy technologies in South Africa – and Africa as a whole.
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Gizmodo ☛ Texas Man Arrested for Using Boarding Pass He Photographed Off Fellow Traveler's Phone
But it’s not clear whether the boarding pass Fleurizard used to get through security was the same one he presented to actually get on the plane at the gate on Sunday. Court documents indicate authorities saw Fleurizard taking photos of “multiple passenger’s phones and/or boarding passes while they were not looking.” However, this activity was done “in the boarding area,” according to the documents, suggesting he got through TSA security by using a different boarding pass.
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New York Times ☛ Delta Passenger Boarded Flight Using Photo of Another Ticket
A Texas man was arrested in Salt Lake City on Sunday after he boarded a Delta Air Lines flight without a ticket by using a photo he had taken of another passenger’s boarding pass while they were not looking, according to court documents.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Digital Music News ☛ Tencent Music Paying Subscribers Hit 106.7M—Up 20.6%
The platform reported revenue of 6.89 billion yuan ($957.06M) for Q4 2023, a 7.2% decline compared to the same period in 2022. Despite the revenue decline, the number of paying subscribers rose to 106.7 million, for a 20.6% jump in the Q4 2023 quarter compared to Q4 2022.
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India Times ☛ EU tech rules: Google defends Digital Markets Act changes, cites complex trade-offs
Under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which kicked in on March 7, users can remove any Google pre-installed software or app if they want while Google will need their consent to use their data across its various services or for personalised ads.
Google is not allowed to favour its services or products over rivals on its platform.
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India Times ☛ Google app billing policy: Google billing issue: CCI denies interim relief to Indian internet firms
The denial of interim relief by CCI comes in the backdrop of an investigation it ordered into Google’s Play Store billing norms on March 15, saying the US-based giant’s policies prima facie violated the competition law.
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Silicon Angle ☛ DOJ reportedly planning to sue Apple over antitrust violations this week
The investigation into Apple started in 2019 under the Trump Administration, with the DOJ coming close to going to court before being delayed in December 2021. It was reported in 2021 that the DOJ would make a decision on legal action in March 2022, which still hasn’t come to pass.
In January, it was reported that Justice was investigating whether Apple used unfair tactics to protect the iPhone’s market share. As part of their investigation, Justice officials were said to have reviewed the overall smartphone market and several of the other segments where the company competes.
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The Verge ☛ Apple’s compliance plan in Epic case is insufficient, Meta, Microsoft tell court
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told Apple in 2021 that it could not prevent app developers from using “buttons, external links, or other calls to action” informing users of payment options outside of their apps. Epic and other developers have taken issue with Apple’s 15 to 30 percent fees on in-app purchases, which Apple makes difficult to avoid by also preventing them from directing users to payment options at a lower price outside of the iOS ecosystem. Apple has defended the fees as reasonable compensation for its own services on the App Store.
But the companies that filed the brief Wednesday, all of which say they’ve been subject to Apple’s rules against steering users away from its own payment processing, say Apple’s idea of compliance would not fix the problem. Its proposal to let developers point to an external purchase link is complex and burdensome, the companies say.
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The Register UK ☛ India's competition regulator orders Google Play probe
"Google is offering an illusory choice for users to opt for an alternative billing option next to Google Play's billing system," stated the regulatory body in its assessment of Google's User Choice Billing (UCB) pilot.
"It appears that Google has used its virtual monopoly power to reap trading benefits which it would not have reaped if there had been effective competition. Given this complete dependence of app developers on Google Play store, the price being charged by Google appears to be unfair in itself," argued CCI.
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International Business Times ☛ Pop-Up War: Microsoft Injects Ads for Bing and Edge into Chrome
In an attempt to encourage people to switch to its search engine, Bing, Microsoft is once again showing pop-up ads within Google Chrome.
These intrusive pop-up ads, reminiscent of malware practice, first appeared in 2023. They bypassed other applications and windows, displaying prominently on top of them. Following a temporary pause to address "unintended behaviour," pop-up notifications have resurfaced on Windows 10 and Windows 11 OS-powered machines.
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Random Oracle ☛ Browser in the middle: 25 years after the MSFT antitrust trial
In May 1998 the US Department of Justice and the Attorneys General of 20 states along with the District of Columbia sued Microsoft in federal court, alleging predatory strategies and anticompetitive business practices. At the heart of the lawsuit was the web browser Internet Explorer, and strong-arm tactics MSFT adopted with business partners to increase the share of IE over the competing Netscape Navigator. 25 years later in a drastically altered technology landscape, DOJ is now going after Google for its monopoly power in search and advertising. With the benefit of hindsight, there are many lessons in the MSFT experience that could offer useful parallels for the new era of antitrust enforcement, as both sides prepare for the trial in September.
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Patents
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EFF ☛ EFF Seeks Greater Public Access to Patent Lawsuit Filed in Texas
You’re not supposed to be able to litigate in secret in the U.S. That’s especially true in a patent case dealing with technology that most internet users rely on every day.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happening in a case called Entropic Communications, LLC v. Charter Communications, Inc. The parties have made so much of their dispute secret that it is hard to tell how the patents owned by Entropic might affect the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specifications (DOCSIS) standard, a key technical standard that ensures cable customers can access the internet.
In Entropic, both sides are experienced litigants who should know that this type of sealing is improper. Unfortunately, overbroad secrecy is common in patent litigation, particularly in cases filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ Music Industry Threatens 'Deepfake AI Music' Service With Legal Action
BPI, the UK's leading music industry group, views Voicify as one of the world’s largest and most egregious 'deepfake' AI music sites. The group is now threatening to sue the vocal cloning service if it continues to operate in its current form. While the site hasn't commented on the allegations directly, it recently rebranded to "Jammable" citing legal troubles.
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Torrent Freak ☛ ISP's Landmark Piracy Liability Case Doesn't Get a Do-Over in Appeals Court
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied rehearing requests filed by Internet provider Cox and several record labels, who are engaged in a landmark piracy liability battle. The ISP warned that the current precedent threatens the Internet connectivity of millions of people, but the court sees no reason to reconsider its earlier findings.
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Techdirt ☛ Pokémon Co. Is Now DMCAing Years Old Videos Showing Pokémon Modded Into Other Games
The war on video game mods that involve Pokémon continues! I can’t say for sure that the Pokémon Company’s renewed focus on taking down anything relating to these mods for 3rd party video games was kickstarted by the release of Palworld, sometimes pitched as “Pokémon with guns”, and a mod for the game that put actual Pokémon into the game, but it sure feels that way. Even before the game’s release, of course, the company has always acted as a jealous protector of anything related to its intellectual property, even as it has had no issues with using the work of others itself.
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Techdirt ☛ Copyright Troll Richard Liebowitz Finally Disbarred
Remember Richard Liebowitz? The lawyer who was not very good at his job but really dove deep into the world of copyright trolling? He was suspended from practicing law a few years ago, but now he’s finally been officially disbarred. There are many, many Liebowitz stories out there. It’s hard to beat the time he lied about his dead grandfather as an excuse for his bad lawyering. This resulted in him literally having a friend of his parents send the most pathetic “please excuse young Richard, he doesn’t really law well” letter to the court.
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Hackaday ☛ A Tape Echo For Anyone
If you’ve ever looked into how artists from the 1960s made their music, you’ll learn about the many inventive ways in which the tape recorder enabled new effects. One of the simplest of those is the tape echo, as distinct from a reverb which introduces the many delayed echoes of a large auditorium, an echo provides a single delayed version of the original. It’s something [Mark Gutierez] shows us as he makes a tape echo from a cheap Walkman-style cassette player. It’s hardly the highest quality of its ilk, but it does the job.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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