Leftovers

• The Local SE ☛ Ten phrases you've definitely heard if you work in Sweden

  Sweden's global reputation as a hub for gender equality, efficiency and work-life balance can also result in some baffling conversations for those new to doing business with Swedes. Here's The Local's guide to the ten catchphrases all foreign workers need to know.

• India Times ☛ us fcc amazon outlawed products: US FCC investigating Amazon over alleged sale of outlawed products

  The US Federal Communications Commission is investigating Amazon and other retailers for the alleged marketing and selling of unlawful electronic devices, an FCC spokesperson told Reuters on Wednesday.

• Manuel Moreale ☛ Why I don’t write dev posts

  There are some 400 or so blog posts on this site. I could be wrong but I think I wrote precisely 1 dev focused post. I wrote a few blog posts here and there that are tangentially work-related because they’re about projects I worked on but that’s about it.

• Cory Dransfeldt ☛ An indie web primer // Cory Dransfeldt

  If I haven't made it clear enough recently, I love where the open web is heading and the indie web's part in it. This has grown out of the opportunity created by the ongoing fragmentation of the corporate social web and renewed interest in staking out personal spaces on the web. I've been blogging for a while and this is the longest period with which I've stuck with it and the most I've enjoyed it.

  As with most things I do, I dove headlong into building this site and figured out a lot of details along the way and after the fact. A lot of what I've done has been thoroughly inspired by the wonderful community on Mastodon and I firmly believe that it, and other, ActivityPub-based, decentralized networks are a key part of a more open web.

  These are reasons why I find this all so compelling and some pointers, tips and scattered advice on pursuing it.

• Los Angeles Times ☛ Historic covered bridges are under threat by truck drivers

  Truck drivers relying on GPS directions continually crash through Lyndon’s 140-year-old Miller’s Run bridge despite signs, including a flashing one, prominently posted to deter vehicles that are too tall or too heavy from crossing. Drivers can face a fine of $5,000 from the town, plus state penalties.

  Still, the bridge keeps getting whacked.

  “GPS is the most general excuse that is given by drivers that do hit the bridge,” said Justin Smith, Lyndon’s municipal administrator. He says the real problem is lack of common sense.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Emil on old computers for new writing

  Once again this highlights the ridiculous and entirely unearned benefit I have being an English speaker and writer in electronics. 23 Latin characters and a bunch of weird punctuation can write virtually all my words.

• TMZ ☛ Taylor Swift's L.A. Fans Caused Earthquake During SoFi 'Eras' Concert

  Tepp and co. monitored each song from her long set list with remote stations that were within 5.6 miles of the stadium and he says their records show that her performance of "Shake It Off" clocked in at the highest point through the night, with a peak magnitude of 0.851.

• Bozhidar Batsov ☛ The Story of a Nickname

  I envy everyone who picked up their nickname when they were 12 and just stuck with it. For me the journey to discovering my One True Nickname was long and somewhat messy, as at some point I was using several nicknames simultaneously. If it weren’t for password managers like 1Password and Bitwarden I would have probably struggled to remember which nickname did I use for some services.

• Science

  • US News And World Report ☛ Swedish Appeals Court Rules Space Rock Should Stay With the Owner of the Property Where It Landed

    A Swedish land owner won a legal battle Thursday to keep a 14-kilogram (31-pound) meteorite when an appeals court ruled that such rocks should be considered “immovable property" and part of the land where they are found.

    The property on which the meteorite landed contains iron and the meteorite is made of iron. Therefore, it ”cannot be easily separated from what is usually regarded as (immovable) property," the Svea Court of Appeals ruled.

• Education

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Afghanistan starts school year as over 1 million girls barred

    The United Nations children’s agency says more than 1 million girls are affected by the ban. It also estimates 5 million were out of school before the Taliban takeover due to a lack of facilities and other reasons.

    The Taliban’s Ministry of Education marked the start of the new academic year with a ceremony that female journalists were not allowed to attend. The invitations sent out to reporters said: “Due to the lack of a suitable place for the sisters, we apologize to female reporters.”

  • International Business Times ☛ Stop Looking For Remote Jobs on LinkedIn and Indeed - Here's Where To Look Instead

    In the US, remote work statistics published by international human resource consulting firm Robert Half found that a staggering 87 per cent of adults said that they were interested in leaving their jobs for a hybrid or fully remote positions instead.

    While remote jobs are favoured amongst employees, obtaining a fully remote role can be difficult.

    Workham Founder Sho Dewan, a career coaching and training company, said that applicants should stop using LinkedIn to find fully remote jobs.

• Hardware

  • Vermaden ☛ Tiny Undervalued Hardware Companions

    After playing/working with computers for more then 25 years I started to appreciate small but handy valuable stuff – like adapters or handlers or … yeah – all kind of stuff. With many of them I did not even knew they existed until I find out about them – mostly accidentally or after long searching for some problem solution. Today I will share them with You – so maybe they will end up handy also for You.

    … and while they make my life easier – they are mostly very cheap too.

  • Hackaday ☛ Chording Keyboard Leaves Your Mouse Hand Free

    [akmnos22] was getting tired of moving one hand to the mouse and back to the keyboard. Rather than integrating mouse controls into a keyboard, they decided to really lean in and create a chording keyboard — one that creates characters with combinations of key presses, like playing chords on a piano.

  • Hackaday ☛ Vastly Improved Servo Control, Now Without Motor Surgery

    Hobby servos are great, but they’re in many ways not ideal for robotic applications. The good news is that [Adam] brings the latest version of his ServoProject, providing off-the-shelf servos with industrial-type motion control to allow for much, much tighter motion tracking than one would otherwise be limited to.

  • Hackaday ☛ Why X86 Needs To Die

    As I’m sure many of you know, x86 architecture has been around for quite some time. It has its roots in Intel’s early 8086 processor, the first in the family. Indeed, even the original 8086 inherits a small amount of architectural structure from Intel’s 8-bit predecessors, dating all the way back to the 8008. But the 8086 evolved into the 186, 286, 386, 486, and then they got names: Pentium would have been the 586.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Gizmodo ☛ Relying on AI to Identify Mushrooms Could Kill You

    A photo of a mushroom’s cap, for instance, is almost never enough to identify a species with any degree of confidence, Claypool notes. It’s crucial to take into account features on the underside of the mushroom’s cap, the cap’s width, the stem, and the base of the stem. Furthermore, mushroomers must take note of where the mushroom is growing, such as on the ground or wood. If it’s growing on wood, foragers also have to identify the species of wood.

  • Public Citizen ☛ Mushrooming Risk: Unreliable A.I. Tools Generate Mushroom Misinformation - Public Citizen

    But now the emerging field of A.I. technology is tempting beginner foragers with new products designed to appeal to those who are understandably impatient to bring the foraged mushrooms they find in the wild to their kitchen tables. While some A.I. tools, when used responsibly, are genuinely useful for foragers and naturalists, others risk misidentifying deadly finds as food.

    The clear risks involved in using A.I. technology to identify wild mushrooms and generate texts and images that are marketed as informative and instructive demonstrate how high the stakes can be when it comes to trusting these systems to provide true and accurate information.

  • Documents Show Internal Clash Before U.S. Officials Pushed to Weaken Toddler Formula Rules

    Government documents obtained by ProPublica show a stark rift between trade and health officials over international efforts to regulate toddler milk. The records provide a rare, candid glimpse into U.S. policymaking around children's health.

  • New York Times ☛ Toddlers Smell Like Flowers, Teens Smell ‘Goatlike,’ Study Finds

    Two musky steroids, and higher levels of odorous acids, distinguish the body odors of adolescents and tots.

  • Soeren ☛ Daylight Saving Time Confusion

    With age comes serenity. I almost don’t care about DST anymore. The only thing I wish for is getting rid of the switch at some point, because the adjustment is not getting easier.

  • Vox ☛ Elon Musk’s Neuralink implants a brain chip in its first human — at what cost?

    But it’s important to understand that this technology comes with staggering risks. Former Neuralink employees as well as experts in the field have alleged that the company pushed for an unnecessarily invasive, potentially dangerous approach to the implants that can damage the brain (and apparently has done so in animal test subjects) to advance Musk’s goal of merging with AI.

    Neuralink did not respond to a request for comment.

    There are also ethical risks for society at large that go beyond just Neuralink. A number of companies are developing tech that plugs into human brains, which can decode what’s going on in our minds and has the potential to erode mental privacy and supercharge authoritarian surveillance. We have to prepare ourselves for what’s coming.

  • Science Alert ☛ Millions of Americans Have Cognitive Impairment And Don't Know It

    In the first study, we used Medicare data for about 40 million beneficiaries age 65 and older from 2015 to 2019 to estimate the prevalence of mild cognitive impairment in that population and to identify what proportion of them had actually been diagnosed.

    Our finding was sobering: A mere 8% of the number of cases with mild cognitive impairment that we expected based on a statistical model had actually been diagnosed. Scaled up to the general population 65 and older, this means that approximately 7.4 million cases across the country remain undiagnosed.

    In the second study, we analyzed data for 226,756 primary care clinicians and found that over 99% of them underdiagnosed mild cognitive impairment in this population.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Young people becoming less happy than older generations, research shows

    Young people are becoming less happy than older generations as they suffer “the equivalent of a midlife crisis”, global research has revealed as America’s top doctor warned that “young people are really struggling”.

    Dr Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, said allowing children to use social media was like giving them medicine that is not proven to be safe. He said the failure of governments to better regulate social media in recent years was “insane”.

  • NYPost ☛ Gen Z is already having a 'mid-life crisis' — US Surgeon General blames social media

    Those born between 1997 and 2012 are already suffering what many don’t experience until middle age — and it’s all thanks to social media, according to the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

    “What’s happening in social media is the equivalent of having children in cars that have no safety features and driving on roads with no speed limits,” he told The Guardian. “No traffic lights and no rules whatsoever. And we’re telling them: ‘You know what, do your best – figure out how to manage it.’ It is insane if you think about it.”

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Neuralink shows first brain-chip patient playing online chess

    Noland Arbaugh, the 29-year-old patient who was paralysed 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.

  • El País ☛ Regardless of the platform or algorithm, it’s humans that make social media toxic

    Social media changes over the years, but toxic human behavior persists. In academia today, a persistent debate is determining social media’s impact on our lives and democracies, especially whether it has contributed to making public debate more toxic. A new study published in Nature isolates several behaviors to try to better understand where online toxicity begins and ends. The research analyzes more than 500 million threads, posts and conversations across eight platforms over 34 years.

  • Nature ☛ Persistent interaction patterns across social media platforms and over time

    Here we analyse online conversations, challenging common assumptions about their dynamics. Our findings reveal consistent patterns across various platforms and different times, such as the heavy-tailed nature of engagement dynamics, a decrease in user participation and an increase in toxic speech in lengthier conversations. Our analysis indicates that, although toxicity and user participation in debates are independent variables, the diversity of opinions and sentiments among users may have a substantial role in escalating conversation toxicity.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Sex makes a comeback at Paris 2024 Olympics, 3 lakh condoms to be distributed at the games

    The practice of handing out condoms at the Olympics is not new. About 8,500 condoms were handed out during 1988 Seoul Olympics to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS. However, this number has only increased over the years. At the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the organisers arranged 70,000 condoms, but they soon fell short and had to order an additional 20,000. In 2016 Rio Olympics, 450,000 male and female condoms were distributed, reported the Washington Post.

  • YLE ☛ Public health authority warns of BPA in warm tap water

    It's not advisable to use hot tap water for drinking or cooking, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) said on Thursday, citing the findings of its study.

  • Futurism ☛ Using Computers Strongly Linked to Erectile Dysfunction

    Interestingly, the researchers didn't find an association between erectile dysfunction and other sedentary leisure activities like watching TV or driving.

  • The Hill ☛ Drinking water in US prisons may contain dangerous levels of ‘forever chemicals’: Study

    Due to insufficient water quality testing in and around such sites, officials have only found that 5 percent of U.S. carceral institutions are situated in watersheds that definitively contain these toxic compounds, according to the study, published in the American Journal of Public Health. But tens of thousands of people are incarcerated at those facilities — and presumptive sources of exposure were found near many more sites.

    When it comes to toxins like forever chemicals, also known as PFAS, incarcerated populations are of particular concern because they have minimal ability to reduce their exposures and are therefore especially vulnerable to acute health effects, the researchers stressed.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Elvis Act Signed Into Tennessee Law to Protect Musicians From AI

    Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed the ELVIS Act into law on Thursday in an effort to protect musicians from unauthorized artificial intelligence deep fakes and voice clones.

    The bill, short for the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act, updates the state’s Protection of Personal Rights law (which protects an individual’s “name, photograph, or likeness”), to include protections for artists’ voices from AI misuse.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Russian military intelligence may have deployed wiper against multiple Ukrainian ISPs

    Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade and Tom Hegel, researchers with SentinelOne’s SentinelLabs, first identified on Monday what’s likely an updated version of AcidRain, the malware used by the Russian military to disable thousands of KA-SAT modems associated with Viasat as the country’s armed forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The new variant, dubbed “AcidPour,” displayed an expanded set of capabilities and potential targeting capability.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s IT overhaul

    The secrecy does raise eyebrows though. It suggests to me that it wasn’t scoped properly at the start, something foundational had to be changed mid-build, or someone discovered a flaw that wasn’t trivial to change. But why hide it? Is it to avoid naming parties involved?

  • Jamie Brandon ☛ How to trade software for small money?

    Dual-licensing (eg qt) also seems rare. And I often see news stories about companies violating the gpl with seemingly no consequences (eg wix). It seems mechanically easier to sell extra proprietary features on top of an open-source core, rather than try to dual-license the whole thing.

  • India Times ☛ Open source AI model: Open-source AI models released by Tokyo lab Sakana founded by former Google researchers

    Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based artificial intelligence startup founded by two prominent former Google researchers, released AI models on Wednesday it said were built using a novel method inspired by evolution, akin to breeding and natural selection.

    Sakana AI employed a technique called "model merging" which combines existing AI models to yield a new model, combining it with an approach inspired by evolution, leading to the creation of hundreds of model generations.

  • Futurism ☛ Stability AI Is Falling Apart

    AI image generation company Stability AI is in big trouble.

    Several key AI developers who worked on Stable Diffusion, the company's popular text-to-image generator, have resigned, Forbes reports.

    Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque announced the news during an all-hands meeting last week, per Forbes, revealing that three of the five researchers who originally created the foundational tech that powers Stable Diffusion at two German universities, had left.

    It's a worrying blow to a company that once was at the forefront of the ongoing generative AI race — and a sign that even in the white-hot AI industry, success is anything but guaranteed.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Greensboro College Data Breach Leads To Class Action Lawsuit

    Greensboro College faces a class action lawsuit following a data breach affecting over 52,000 individuals. The Greensboro College data breach, which occurred in August 2023 due to a ransomware attack, has prompted Abigail Hedgecock to file a proposed federal class action against the institution.

    Hedgecock’s allegations are weighty, suggesting that the North Carolina-based college failed in its duty to safeguard the personal information of thousands. According to the complaint lodged in the US District Court, Greensboro College neglected to establish adequate data-security protocols, leaving sensitive data exposed to cyber threats.

    Moreover, the institution allegedly delayed in providing timely notice of the breach, exacerbating the situation.

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Caught Generating “Academic Papers” Using ChatGPT

    When looking through the journals highlighted by the blogger, it appears that some are predatory, as folks in academia call journals that will publish just about anything for the right amount of money — but others, it seems, aren't as clearly full of crap.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Papers Please ☛ US Department of Transportation to investigate airline data privacy

      Today the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced plans for a “a privacy review of the nation’s ten largest airlines regarding their collection, handling, maintenance, and use of passengers’ personal information.”

      The review will include airlines’ compliance (or not) with the so-called Privacy Shield framework for transfers of personal data from the European Union to the US. As DOT notes on its website, “DOT is the enforcement authority for airlines participating in Privacy Shield. DOT shares jurisdiction with the FTC regarding ticket agents participating in Privacy Shield.”

      This is a positive step, but we’re reserving judgment until we see what DOT actually does.

    • Maine Morning Star ☛ Judiciary Committee inches closer to a comprehensive data privacy law

      While still distinct in several ways, the amended versions on the table — one from the Democratic caucus and one from Keim, along with Rep. Rachel Henderson (R-Rumford) — have adopted sections from one another and incorporated feedback from dozens of trade organizations, businesses and consumer advocates shared throughout the past few months.

      There is no one federal law regulating internet privacy, although there have been several proposals. This has left a patchwork of state laws and parts of federal legislation governing the current landscape. If Maine passes a comprehensive law to regulate privacy online, it would be joining 14 other states that have done so in recent years.

    • EPIC ☛ Maine Morning Star: Judiciary Committee inches closer to a comprehensive data privacy law

      Caitriona Fitzgerald, deputy director of the research nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), has been working with O’Neil to fine tune her version and urged the committee to include a data minimization framework. Data minimization is a baseline protection that limits companies to collecting only information directly relevant and necessary for their operations.

    • Tails ☛ Tails report for February 2024

      Despite the bonus day this year, February flew by pretty quickly! Here's what we were up to:

      • We ended February more resilient and collaborative than when we started. We have new tooling to make it easier to work on shared documents, and use XMPP more effectively. We also worked to strengthen our front-end services and set up the back-end infrastructre to build redundancies into our services.

      • In 2021 and 2022, our usability tests with human rights defenders in Mexico and Brazil prompted several improvements in the installation instructions for Tails. Fixing 16 of the identified usability issues were remaining, and we fixed them all this month. These tests, experiences, and improvements will greatly shape our future trainings.

      • We finished updating our website for Tails 6.0. Check out the rewritten recommendation on secure deletion.

    • NYOB ☛ "Pay or Okay": 1,500 € a year for your online privacy?

      The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) will soon decide about the future of free consent online. Following Meta’s introduction of a “Pay or Okay” system last year, the EDPB will issue a binding opinion. Should the approach be legitimised for Meta, companies across all industries could follow the social media giant’s lead. This could ultimately lead to the erosion of free consent online. But what’s the current situation in the member states? noyb collected data on the current implementation of the “Pay or Okay” approach in selected member states. In some of them, protecting your privacy already got extremely expensive.

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ The ICO Must Toughen Up

      The ICO has a long track record of weak enforcement and missed opportunities. With the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, the Government has not to articulated proposals to address existing issues, but rather has presented proposals that would allow Ministers to interfere with the objective and impartial functioning of the watchdog that should oversee them. This lack of independence would lead to the UK loosing [sic] its adequacy status under EU law, an outcome that would cost UK businesses 1.2 billion pounds in legal fees alone and spell troubles for the UK digital economy.

      Artificial intelligence and digital technologies now bear the risk of amplifying and reproducing harmful and discriminatory outcomes at scale. Data protection constitutes a first line of defence against data abuses and unfair assumptions that can have a life-changing impact. Undermining the effectiveness of an already weak regulator threatens our economy and our rights, endangers important cooperation initiatives with the European Union, and sets the stage for incidents and scandals that have elsewhere lead to an entire Government resigning.

    • The Record ☛ House unanimously passes bill to block data brokers from selling Americans’ info to foreign adversaries

      A bill that would bar data brokers from selling Americans’ sensitive data to foreign adversaries like China, as well as to the companies under their thumb, passed the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously on Wednesday.

      Along with companion legislation that would require TikTok to divest from its Chinese ownership or effectively be blocked from operating in the U.S., the data privacy bill advanced out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 7. The movement from committee passage to House vote moved at lightning speed compared to the typical pace for Congressional votes.

    • Wired ☛ Some of the Most Popular Websites Share Your Data With Over 1,500 Companies

      A WIRED analysis of the top 10,000 most popular websites shows that dozens of sites say they are sharing data with more than 1,000 companies, while thousands of other websites are sharing data with hundreds of firms. Quiz and puzzle website JetPunk tops the pile, listing 1,809 “partners” that may collect personal information, including “browsing behavior or unique IDs.”

      More than 20 websites from publisher Dotdash Meredith—including Investopedia.com, People.com, and Allrecipes.com—all say they can share data with 1,609 partners. The newspaper The Daily Mail lists 1,207 partners, while internet speed-monitoring firm Speedtest.net, online medical publisher WebMD, and media outlets Reuters, ESPN, and BuzzFeed all state they can share data with 809 companies. (WIRED, for context, lists 164 partners.) These hundreds of advertising partners include dozens of firms most people have likely never heard of.

    • Gizmodo ☛ House Passes Privacy Bill Banning Data Brokers From Selling Your Info to Russia and China

      The U.S. House passed a bill that would ban third-party data brokers from selling the user data of Americans to geopolitical adversaries like China and Russia. And while it still needs to pass the Senate to become law, it’s a step in the right direction as recent headlines mostly focus on a potential ban on TikTok in the U.S.

      The Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act, H.R. 7520, passed unanimously on Wednesday, 414-0, and would ban data brokers from selling or disclosing the private information of Americans to any foreign adversary or “any entity of a foreign adversary.”

  • Confidentiality

    • Ben Jojo ☛ Signed but not secure

      At the start of the year a very interesting (and some would say inevitable) event happened involving internet routing security, the first case study of a large-scale victim of misapplication of RPKI occurred.

      On January 3rd 2024, a malicious actor used credentials found on the public internet to log into Orange Spain’s RIPE account, using their access they then created invalid RPKI ROAs that switched large amounts of IP space from RPKI unknown state to RPKI invalid state by signing the IP space to an ASN that was not Orange’s.

      This resulted in a large connectivity disruption for Orange Spain (AS12479), resulting in most of the estimated 9 million+ customers being without connectivity to many websites for 3 to 4 hours.

      The following post has been adapted off the talks that I have given on this subject at Peering Days 2024 in Krakow and the NETNOD Meeting in Stockholm, Since PeeringDays does not have public video recordings, and the NETNOD recording will take some time to appear, I feel like this is the best way to present this to more people.

    • Futurism ☛ User Horrified When Glassdoor, a Site for Trashing Your Boss, Starts Adding Real Names

      Upon hearing about a real-name policy enacted since the company acquired the LinkedIn competitor Fishbowl, which requires user verification, Monica — a pseudonym Ars used to protect her identity — began looking into deleting her account or getting her information taken down to protect her real identity.

      Monica contacted Glassdoor support, and was shocked to find that instead of helping her get her information down, the company populated her account with her real name instead, even though she repeatedly asked its customer support employees to do the exact opposite.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Axios ☛ Senators get "shocking" look at TikTok's spy potential

    Why it matters: The senators were hesitant to give details about Wednesday's briefing, but said Americans would be frightened by TikTok's ability to access and track their personal data.

    • One senator said national security officials described how China can harvest user data and weaponize it through propaganda and misinformation.

    • Another lawmaker said they were told TikTok is able to spy on the microphone on users' devices, track keystrokes and determine what the users are doing on other apps.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Russia's Engagement in Africa Requires an In-depth Study - Interview

    The declaration warned external partners collaborating and supporting military governments to hold onto political power. Given the case of and with particular reference to Russia, it condemned external interference on peace and security matters in Africa. In addition, African leaders have expressed grave concern over the resurgence of military takeovers and further urged adoption of serious measures to intensify efforts at addressing the root causes of coup d’etats.

    In this interview, Samir Bhattacharya, an Associate Fellow at Observer Research Foundation (ORF), where he works on geopolitics with particular reference to Africa in the changing global order, says Africa has witnessed six military takeovers since 2022, with several abortive coups, sanctions on the military juntas have been lifted but generally the French-speaking West African countries continue to face multiple democratic challenges with a wider negative impact across the region. Here are the interview excerpts:

  • RTL ☛ National crisis: Large group of migrants force way across Texas border

    A "large group of migrants" crossing into the United States from Mexico broke through razor wire Thursday and rushed the border wall, the border patrol said, the latest episode in a simmering national immigration crisis.

    Illegal immigration is a hugely contentious topic in the United States, and an issue already figuring prominently in the campaign for the November presidential election.

  • France24 ☛ French schools sent threatening messages and beheading videos, says ministry

    The establishments – mainly secondary schools – have received "serious threats" containing "justification of and incitement to terrorism," a representative of the education ministry told AFP.

    The messages came through the ENT digital platform that serves as a link between teachers, pupils and parents; internal emails ; or the Pronote software used by the education ministry.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Why Millenials aren’t leaving Tiktok

    But "why are Gen Z kids leaving Tiktok?" is the wrong question. The right question is, why aren't Millennials leaving Tiktok? After all, we are living through the enshittocene, the great enshittening, in which every platform gets monotonically, irreversibly worse over time, and Tiktok is no exception: [...]

  • Quartz ☛ Donald Trump's Truth Social could IPO soon

    The shareholders of Digital World Acquisition (DWAC), a special-purpose acquisition company formed to facilitate a private company going public, will vote on Friday on whether to approve the merger with Trump Media and Technology Group. Trump would own at least 58% of the new company, which would list on the Nasdaq under the former President’s initials, DJT.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Record day for Channel migrant crossings this year as Rwanda Bill delayed

    More than 500 migrants arrived on Wednesday – a daily high for this year – taking the total since the turn of the year past 4,000 with small boat arrivals reaching the UK at a rate 10 per cent greater than 2023.

    The surge came as the Government tried to head off criticism of its decision to delay the return of its Rwanda Bill to the Commons until April 15, after the Easter recess, rather than try to force it through Parliament next week.

  • NYPost ☛ TikTokker tells illegal immigrants how to 'invade' American homes

    A migrant TikToker with a 500,000-strong online following is offering his comrades tips on how to “invade” unoccupied homes and invoke squatter’s rights in the United States.

  • Digital Music News ☛ US Department of Justice Officials Meeting with Senators

    Though the Senate’s vote is less certain, the move follows Congress voting overwhelmingly in favor of legislature that would either ban TikTok in the United States or force a sale from its China-based parent company, ByteDance. Those in favor of divesting TikTok from ByteDance, led by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, are emphasizing the prospect of a forced sale rather than an outright ban in the US. The closed-door briefings are, according to Bloomberg, specifically for Senators who have not yet been persuaded of the DOJ’s belief in a need for action to be taken against the platform.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Iraq War Remade the World in Its Grisly Image

    The 2003 invasion of Iraq has been swept to the margins of collective memory. We must refuse to forget it — and seek to understand what led to it, who benefited, who suffered, and how it transformed the world.

  • NPR ☛ Senators push to declassify TikTok intel and hold a public hearing ahead of ban vote

    Blumenthal declined to say what evidence was presented that detailed that ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, was sharing Americans' private data with the Chinese government, but he said, "All of it should be made public."

    Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., agreed some information could be released, but he maintained that what is known publicly already demonstrates the threat to users' personal data security and to national security. Pressed on the details of evidence about data directly shared with Chinese government officials, Cotton pointed to the terms and conditions stating that the app can access data once it's downloaded. "TikTok and ByteDance and Chinese leaders go to great lengths to try to conceal what they are doing," he said. He also pointed to TikTok's lobbying campaign of targeting messages to users during last week's House debate, urging them to try to influence American political debate.

  • New York Times ☛ India’s TikTok Ban: What Lessons Does It Hold for the U.S.

    In India, a country of 1.4 billion, it took TikTok just a few years to build an audience of 200 million users. India was its biggest market. Then, on June 29, 2020, the Indian government banned TikTok, along with 58 other Chinese apps, after a simmering conflict between India and China flared into violence at their border.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Investigation launched by Network Rail into London King's Cross station Ramadan messages

    Commuters were greeted with a series of Islamic verses next to train times at the London station on Tuesday as part of a diversity initiative for the holy festival, which runs from March 10 to April 9 this year.

  • Futurism ☛ US Military Commander Worries China Could Launch Attack From Moon

    He went on to refer to two main areas of concern: beyond geostationary orbit or "xGEO," which is an area of space past where conventional satellites operate, and cislunar space, which is the space between Earth and the Moon. Given how many satellites the US military and countless other public and private entities have floating outside the atmosphere, it's legitimate to be worried that someone might attack them.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Dave Rupert ☛ How do you verify that? - daverupert.com

    One simple question I’ve started asking a lot is: “How do you verify that?”

  • The Dissenter ☛ FBI Whistleblower Responds To US Supreme Court Decision Allowing No-Fly List Lawsuit

• Environment

  • Wired ☛ The World’s E-Waste Has Reached a Crisis Point

    “What was really alarming to me is that the speed at which this is growing is much quicker than the speed that e-waste is properly collected and recycled,” says Kees Baldé, a senior scientific specialist at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research and lead author of the report. “We just consume way too much, and we dispose of things way too quickly. We buy things we may not even need, because it's just very cheap. And also these products are not designed to be repaired.”

    Humanity has to quickly bump up those recycling rates, the report stresses. In the first pie chart below, you can see the significant amount of metals we could be saving, mostly iron (chemical symbol Fe, in light gray), along with aluminum (Al, in dark gray), copper (Cu), and nickel (Ni). Other EEE metals include zinc, tin, and antimony. Overall, the report found that in 2022, generated e-waste contained 68 billion pounds of metal.

  • France24 ☛ Trashed electronic devices are growing 'catastrophe' for environment, UN warns

    Less than one quarter of the 62 million tonnes of e-waste produced in 2022 was recycled, resulting in heavy metals, plastics and toxic chemicals leaking from junked devices.

    "This is a big catastrophe for the environment," Kees Balde, lead author of the latest Global E-waste Monitor, told AFP.

    It also poses health risks, particularly in poorer countries where a lot of e-waste is sent from wealthier parts of the globe.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Fossil Fuel Cash Is Weakening Democrats’ Climate Support

    When it comes to attempts to stop climate efforts, she says these fossil fuel–backed Democrats are “usually at the scene of the crime.”

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ 76% of Africa's energy needs could come from renewables by 2040

      The database shows that some countries, such as Nigeria and Zimbabwe, have enough projects in the pipeline to transition away from fossil fuels by 2050. And that 76% of all electricity required on the continent could come from renewable resources by 2040. This would happen if the capacity of existing hydro, solar and wind power plants were fully utilised and if all plants currently on the drawing-board were built.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ New York City’s plan to stop e-bike battery fires

      The vehicles have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially among delivery drivers, tens of thousands of whom weave through New York streets. But the e-bike influx has caused a wave of fires sparked by their batteries, some of them deadly.

      Now, the city wants to fight those fires with battery swapping. A pilot program will provide a small number of delivery drivers with alternative options to power up their e-bikes, including swapping stations that supply fully charged batteries on demand.

      Proponents say the program could lay the groundwork for a new mode of powering small electric vehicles in the city, one that’s convenient and could reduce the risk of fires. But the road to fire safety will likely be long and winding given the sheer number of batteries we’re integrating into our daily lives, in e-bikes and beyond.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • YLE ☛ Finland gets EU funding to save the Arctic fox

      In the early 2000s, there were only around 40-60 Arctic foxes in Finland, Sweden and Norway, but conservation work has increased the number to around 550.

  • Overpopulation

    • RTL ☛ Low water levels: Panama Canal administrator hopes traffic normalizes by February 2025

      According to authorities, 2023 was the second-driest year in the canal watershed's recorded history.

    • Mongabay ☛ Panama canal drives forest conservation, offers insight on value of ecosystems

      An ambitious initiative in Panama is attempting to do just that. The Agua Salud Project is a joint effort between the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), the Panama Canal Authority, Panama’s National Environmental Authority, and the HSBC Climate Partnership. The effort aims to “understand and quantify” the ecological, social, and economic services provided by forests in the watershed of the Panama Canal, the economic lifeblood of Panama. The significance of the research is amplified by the importance of forests in the functioning of the canal, which requires vast quantities of freshwater to power its system of locks. Erosion — worsened in deforested areas — is a substantial cost for the canal.

      Authorities now understand the risks to the canal posed by deforestation and have banned forest clearing in much of the canal’s watershed. Yet as forests are restored, there remains a lack of information on what types of vegetation are best at reducing erosion and maintaining water flows. Agua Salud is now helping inform them.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ What will Mexico City do when its water taps run dry?

      And massive leaks in Mexico City’s crumbling, 8,000-mile-long pipeline grid, regularly damaged in seismic shifts, further drain reserves. An extraordinary 30% to 40% of the water pumped into the aging system is lost to leaks and another culprit — illicit connections. Lawmakers have vowed to crack down on what they say is a growing number of individuals and gangs tapping illegally into water ducts.

      “We cannot allow huachicoleo,” Mayor Batres told reporters in January, using a term normally reserved for clandestine siphoning of gasoline from pipelines.

      But many are desperate, as the water tankers — most holding about 2,600 gallons — quickly run out as they make their rounds to scorched colonias such as the outlying precincts in the Iztapalapa district, home to almost 2 million people.

    • [Old] Los Angeles Times ☛ Colorado River in Crisis: The Southwest’s shrinking water lifeline

      The Colorado River can no longer withstand the thirst of the arid West. Water drawn from the river flows to nearly 40 million people in cities from Denver to Los Angeles and irrigates more than 5 million acres of farmland.

      For decades, the river has been entirely used up, leaving dusty stretches of desert where it once flowed to the sea in Mexico. Now, chronic overuse and the effects of climate change are pushing the river system toward potential collapse as reservoirs drop to dangerously low levels. A water reckoning is about to transform the landscape of the Southwest.

• Finance

  • Mario Kart Live Developer Warns Of Layoffs After "Major Project" Axed

    Following a whole host of game companies making some serious job cuts over the past few months, the US-based studio behind not only this Mario Kart game but also Hot Wheels: Rift Rally and the shortlived multiplayer experience Knockout City has now announced it's in the early stages of a reorganisation.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ UN General Assembly seeks guidelines to address risks of AI

    The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday unanimously adopted the first global resolution on artificial intelligence to encourage protecting personal data, monitoring AI for risks, and safeguarding human rights, U.S. officials said.

    The nonbinding resolution, proposed by the United States and co-sponsored by China and 121 other nations, took three months to negotiate and also advocates strengthening privacy policies, the officials said, briefing reporters before the resolution's passage.

  • India Times ☛ Artificial intelligence: UN adopts first global artificial intelligence resolution

    "Today, all 193 members of the United Nations General Assembly have spoken in one voice, and together, chosen to govern artificial intelligence rather than let it govern us," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Congressional Research Service looking at AI for bill summaries

    “One of the things that we’re very excited about is a process that we’re looking at right now to develop five models that would help us with bill summaries,” Robert Newlen, CRS’s interim director, said at a hearing before the Committee on House Administration’s modernization subcommittee.

    Newlen acknowledged that the agency had a “huge backlog of bill summaries and analysis for Congress.gov” and said CRS believes AI has the potential to help. But Newlen also noted they’re approaching use of the tools with caution.

  • The Record ☛ Biden taps cyber policy veteran for new Pentagon post

    President Joe Biden on Thursday announced he intends to nominate Michael Sulmeyer, the U.S. Army’s principal cyber advisor, to be the Pentagon’s first digital policy chief.

    Recorded Future News first reported last year that Sulmeyer — who has served in various senior roles at the National Security Council, U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency — was in contention to be the department’s assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy.

    The post was created in the fiscal year 2023 defense policy bill following years of congressional irritation that the Pentagon lacks a civilian leader who is accountable for digital security policy.

  • The Texas Tribune ☛ Pornhub disabled in Texas over age-verification requirements

    In the latest installment of the dispute between adult content websites and Texas lawmakers, Pornhub suspended service to Texans on Thursday arguing a state law infringes on adults’ rights to access protected speech.

    Pornhub, one of the most visited websites in the world, sued Attorney General Ken Paxton last year to block enforcement of a 2023 state law that requires websites that host pornography to institute age-verification measures and display health warnings on its pages.

  • Scripps Media Inc ☛ Pornhub suspends site in Texas due to state’s age-verification law

    The appeals court previously reversed an injunction of a U.S. District Court judge, which had blocked the law from going into effect in August. The 5th Circuit’s temporary stay required pornography websites to impose age-verification measures and display health warnings that said pornography is proven to harm brain development.

    In the most recent decision on March 7, the 5th Circuit decided the age-verification component of the law could stand, but ruled that the law’s required health warnings unconstitutionally compelled speech.

    In response to the 5th Circuit’s decision, Pornhub blocked Texans from their site.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Look to the EU for [Internet] regulation

    Regulating the [Internet] isn’t easy. And it shouldn’t be. Like any other industry, the [Internet] is vast, and no one solution can solve all of its problems. However, in order to have an industry that doesn’t just continue to grow, but also benefits its consumers, regulation is a necessity.

    While [Internet] regulation in the United States has been described as old and outdated, this isn’t the case worldwide. Most notably, the European Union has committed to creating new [Internet] regulations in an attempt to manage the ever-growing tech industry. While the U.S. cannot copy all of the EU’s regulations due to discrepancies in their respective legal systems, it still provides an insightful case study to see how effective [Internet] regulation can be. Given this, the U.S. should closely monitor the recent technology regulations and lawsuits in the EU to inform their own policy.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ VC inflows into African start-ups slump 31%

    Venture capital inflows into African technology and start-up firms declined 31% in 2023 to US$4.5-billion as economic headwinds including weak currencies and high inflation dissuaded investors, a survey showed.

    The number of deals, which flowed in as both equity and debt, dropped to 545 from a record 781 in 2022, with number of active investors in the region down by a third, London-based African Private Capital Association said in its report.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Social media influencers may be booked for promoting offshore betting platforms

    The ministry of information and broadcasting on Thursday issued an advisory cautioning social media influencers against endorsing offshore online betting and gambling platforms. The ministry said that such advertisements have significant financial and socio-economic implications for consumers, particularly the youth.

  • India Times ☛ reddit ipo: How Reddit stacks up against social media peers

    Despite its cult-like status, the company has failed to replicate the success of Meta Platforms' Facebook and Elon Musk's X.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Reddit valued at $6.4 billion in Wall Street IPO

    American social media company Reddit makes its trading debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday after its initial public offering (IPO) saw strong demand from investors.

    Reddit's debut comes at a time when the US technology sector has seen a substantial slowdown in IPOs since the US Federal Reserve started hiking interest rates. The last big social media company to go public on exchanges was Pinterest in 2019.

  • Quartz ☛ Reddit stock begins trading as IPO kicks off

    Reddit stock was set to begin trading on the public market Thursday as the company kicks off its highly anticipated initial public offering, the first time a social media company has gone public since Pinterest in 2019. Reddit priced its IPO at $34 per share Wednesday evening, valuing the company at $6.4 billion.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • NPR ☛ After decades of secrecy, the 'Ghost Army' is honored for saving U.S. lives in WWII

      Members of the so-called "Ghost Army" used inflatable tanks, phony uniforms, fake rumors and special effects to deceive German forces during World War II, diverting attention from larger units and saving hundreds of thousands of American lives in the process.

      But their contributions remained classified for decades, with many veterans taking the secret to their graves.

    • New York Times ☛ At Long Last, a Gold Medal for America’s World War II ‘Ghost Army’

      Mr. Bluestein was a sophomore at Cleveland School of the Arts in 1943 when he left to join the U.S. Army. He then trained in a secret unit that landed at Normandy, France, shortly after D-Day in June 1944.

      “What we did is we attracted the Germans’ attention so that the real units could do whatever they had to do elsewhere,” Mr. Bluestein, age 100, said in an interview.

    • Techdirt ☛ Auto, Tech Industries Falsely Claim ‘Right To Repair’ Reforms Are A Threat To National Security

      The auto industry (falsely) claims reforms would result in stalkers getting hold of your private data (you’re to ignore that the auto industry is inherently one of the worst industries in America when it comes to consumer privacy and security standards). Apple claims that right to repair reforms would turn states into dangerous “hacker meccas” (which doesn’t sound all that bad to me, but what do I know).

      A bipartisan FTC study found none of these claims were true, yet they’re pretty much all pervasive as auto, agriculture (John Deere is a notorious pest on this front), medical device makers, and tech sector giants try to fend off a rush of popular state and federal reform laws.

      But there’s a new wrinkle in the lobbying mix: false claims that right to repair reforms are a threat to national security. That’s the claim being pushed by The Hill (which I won’t link to) by former Trump National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. The Hill has a long history of laundering dodgy corporate lobbying claims in their op-ed section under the guise of original thinking, and this one is no exception.

    • The Record ☛ Two Russians sanctioned by US for alleged disinformation campaign

      The U.S. Treasury Department announced on Wednesday that it is sanctioning two Russian nationals and two companies for a disinformation campaign that allegedly sought to “impersonate legitimate media outlets.”

      The sanctions name Ilya Andreevich Gambashidze and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tupikin as the founders of two Russia-based companies that U.S. officials believe are involved in a “persistent foreign malign influence campaign at the direction of the Russian Presidential Administration.”

    • EFF ☛ Disinformation and Elections: EFF and ARTICLE 19 Submit Key Recommendations to EU Commission

      Online election disinformation and misinformation can have real world consequences in the U.S. and all over the world. The EU Commission and other regulators are therefore formulating measures platforms could take to address disinformation related to elections. 

      Given their dominance over the online information space, providers of Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs), as sites with over 45 million users in the EU are called, have unique power to influence outcomes.  Platforms are driven by economic incentives that may not align with democratic values, and that disconnect  may be embedded in the design of their systems. For example, features like engagement-driven recommender systems may prioritize and amplify disinformation, divisive content, and incitement to violence. That effect, combined with a significant lack of transparency and targeting techniques, can too easily undermine free, fair, and well-informed electoral processes.

      The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) contains a set of sweeping regulations about online-content governance and responsibility for digital services that make X, Facebook, and other platforms subject in many ways to the European Commission and national authorities. It focuses on content moderation processes on platforms, limits targeted ads, and enhances transparency for users. However, the DSA also grants considerable power to authorities to flag content and investigate anonymous users - powers that they may be tempted to mis-use with elections looming. The DSA also obliges VLOPs to assess and mitigate systemic risks, but it is unclear what those obligations mean in practice. Much will depend on how social media platforms interpret their obligations under the DSA, and how European Union authorities enforce the regulation.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Techdirt ☛ How To Misrepresent A Supreme Court Hearing: National Review Edition

    I wrote a long post on Monday about the oral arguments in the Murthy v. Missouri case. I highlighted how skeptical most of the Justices seemed regarding the arguments from the states, especially given the extensive problems in the record, which multiple Justices picked up on. Most other legal expert commentators came to a similar conclusion, that the Supreme Court seemed skeptical of the argument from the states.

  • Futurism ☛ Reddit CEO Defends His Absurdly High Pay While Not Paying Mods

    Not long after, Huffman accused moderators — volunteer power users who have historically kept many communities from melting down into a toxic cesspool — of being "landed gentry."

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ After a writer expressed sympathy for Israelis in an essay, all hell broke loose at a literary journal

    In a statement to The Times on Tuesday, Chen said: “Removing any stories and silencing any voices is the opposite of progress and the opposite of literature.”

    “Today, people are afraid to listen to voices that do not perfectly mirror their own,” she said. “But ignorance begets hatred. My essay is an opening to a dialogue that I hope will emerge when the shouting dies down.”

  • BIA Net ☛ Censorship on bianet article lifted after top court ruling

    The access ban imposed on a bianet article regarding Abidin Karataş, who passed away at Medicana International Hospital in İzmir after undergoing angiography, has been lifted.

    This decision comes following the Constitutional Court's annullment of Article 9 of Law No. 5651, which allowed access bans and the removal of content on grounds of "violation of personal rights."

  • Standards/Consortia

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Why New York City is testing battery swapping for e-bikes

      Battery swapping is a growing technology in some parts of the world, but it’s not common in the US, so I was especially intrigued by the two companies who had set up battery swap cabinets.

      Swobbee runs a small network of swapping stations around the world, including at its base in Germany. It is retrofitting bikes to accommodate its battery, which attaches to the rear of the bike. Popwheels is taking a slightly different approach, providing batteries that are already compatible with the majority of e-bikes delivery drivers use today, with little modification required.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ National World still 'best qualified' to own The Telegraph, David Montgomery claims

    National World chairman David Montgomery has claimed the publisher remains the “best qualified” candidate to buy Telegraph Media Group.

    Montgomery revealed in a statement accompanying the publisher’s full-year results on Thursday that National World remains in the running as the UAE-linked Redbird IMI acquisition led by former CNN boss Jeff Zucker looks to be in doubt.

    The Government is introducing legislation to ban foreign states from owning UK newspapers and current affairs magazines.

  • Slate ☛ Pitchfork: The oral history of the music magazine everyone loved to hate.

    In January, Condé Nast announced that it was folding Pitchfork into GQ, laying off much of the staff of the influential, independent-minded music publication. The outcry was immediate. Why was one album-review website, founded nearly three decades ago in a suburban Minnesota bedroom, loved by so many music fans—and hated by so many others? Pitchfork transformed indie rock, but did pop transform Pitchfork? And does the Condé news really mean that Pitchfork is dead?

    Over the past two months, Slate spoke to more than 30 Pitchfork writers, editors, and executives, past and present—as well as critics, industry luminaries, and some of the musicians whose careers Pitchfork made and destroyed—to tell the story behind the raves, the pans, the festivals, the fights, the indie spirit, the corporate takeover, and, of course, the scores. This is the complete oral history of Pitchfork.

  • Reason ☛ Don't Make Journalism School Free

    Mochkofsky likened journalists to doctors and firefighters, but the profession has far more in common with the latter than the former. Journalism is akin to a craft or a trade; it is distinctly unlike science. Aside from some minimal abilities that should be acquired during primary education—i.e., competent writing—the technical skills required to do it are best learned on the job from seasoned professionals during the course of an internship. These skills are not so complicated that they must be studied in a classroom with textbooks and formal instructors.

    I've always found that writing itself is much like exercising: If you do it regularly, you get stronger and better at it, and if you stop doing it, you get weaker and worse at it. News stories aren't meant to be observed under a microscope; the best way to learn how to write them is to just start doing it.

  • CPJ ☛ Journalist Md Shofiuzzaman Rana arrested, 5 correspondents confined in Bangladesh government office

    Rana was held in jail for a week after police arrested the journalist on March 5. Rana, who works for the Bangla-language newspaper Desh Rupantor, was arrested at a local government office in the northern Sherpur district after he filed a right to information (RTI) application regarding a government-run development program, according to news reports, the local press freedom group Bangladeshi Journalists in International Media, and Mustafa Mamun, acting editor of Desh Rupantor.

  • CPJ ☛ Haitian journalist Lucien Jura kidnapped as violence escalates in capital

    Jura was abducted from his home in Pétion-Ville on the outskirts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Monday, March 18, according to news reports. That same day, gangs attacked several homes in the area, leaving at least 10 dead.

    On Tuesday, Jura confirmed his kidnapping in a brief phone call with the secretary-general of the Haitian group SOS Journalists, Guy Delva. Delva told CPJ that he called Jura’s cellphone, and one of the kidnappers answered.

  • The Nation ☛ The US Government’s Plot to Murder Julian Assange

    A Yahoo! News investigation last year revealed newly installed CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s swift and furious reaction: He instructed the agency to make plans to kidnap and murder WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Assange was already the focus of investigations by the CIA, the FBI, and the departments of Defense, Justice, and State over his publication in 2010 of the government’s own communications proving its culpability in war crimes. “But what really set Mike Pompeo…off was that Vault 7 leak,” Yahoo! News investigative reporter Michael Isikoff told Democracy Now!. “This was on his watch. This was his agency.” The campaign against Assange went into overdrive.

  • ABC ☛ US pursuing Julian Assange with 'as much determination as ever', despite report of plea deal, says lawyer

    In short: Julian Assange's lawyer says US authorities have not indicated they intend to resolve the case against him.

  • CNN ☛ Justice Department held plea deal discussions with Assange

    Such discussions are a routine feature of criminal cases, and there haven’t been recent talks about a plea in the WikiLeaks founder’s case. There is not currently an official plea offer from US prosecutors, the source said.

    “We have been given no indication that the Department of Justice intends to resolve the case, and the United States is continuing with as much determination as ever to seek his extradition on all 18 charges, exposing him to 175 years in prison,” Barry Pollack, an attorney for Assange, said in a statement to CNN.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ US reportedly considering plea deal offer for Julian Assange

    The report said a plan under consideration would be to drop the current 18 charges under the Espionage Act, if Assange pleaded guilty to mishandling classified documents, a misdemeanor offence. Assange would be able to enter the plea remotely from London and would likely be free soon after the deal was agreed to, as he has already spent five years in custody in the UK.

    However, Assange’s legal team said they were not aware of any change in the prosecution strategy.

  • Reuters ☛ Assange team sees no sign of resolving US charges after reported plea deal talks

    "It is inappropriate for Mr. Assange's lawyers to comment while his case is before the UK High Court other than to say we have been given no indication that the Department of Justice intends to resolve the case and the United States is continuing with as much determination as ever to seek his extradition on all 18 charges, exposing him to 175 years in prison," Assange's lawyer, Barry Pollack, said in an emailed statement.

  • Sydney Morning Herald ☛ Julian Assange supporters welcome possible plea deal with US

    Such a deal would potentially allow Assange to enter a plea to the misdemeanour charge remotely, and walk free without travelling to the US, which has been seeking his extradition from the United Kingdom for years.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • CBC ☛ This layoff could have been an email. Is there a good way to lose your job as a remote worker?

    Four years after remote work became the norm for a huge section of the labour force, it appears some companies are still struggling with the etiquette of letting someone go virtually. And amid a gradually cooling labour market and mass layoffs in several sectors, such as media and the tech industry, it's become a common situation to be let go online.

    On Wednesday, hundreds of Bell employees were supposedly laid off in 10-minute group virtual meetings, a move the union representing them called "beyond shameful." In a news release, the union claimed that Bell's human resources and labour manager read a notice and didn't allow anyone to un-mute to ask questions.

  • Reason ☛ Texas SWAT Team Held Innocent Family at Gunpoint After Raiding Wrong Home

    A Texas SWAT Team raided an innocent family's house in 2019, barging into the family's home and holding them at gunpoint before realizing they were at the wrong address. But when the family sued, officers were granted qualified immunity.

    In a request for additional review filed earlier this month, the Institute for Justice (I.J.), a civil liberties law firm, seeks to challenge that, arguing that police had more than enough opportunities to know they were raiding the wrong home.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Mississippi federal court sentences ‘Goon Squad’ officers

    Two white former Mississippi sheriff’s deputies who belonged to a group calling itself “the Goon Squad” were sentenced on March 19 to lengthy prison terms for U.S. civil rights violations and other felonies stemming from their torture and sexual abuse of two Black men.

    Hunter Elward, 31, received a prison sentence of 20 years and Jeffrey Middleton, 46, was sentenced to 17-1/2 years in back-to-back proceedings in a federal courthouse in Jackson, Mississippi, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

  • JURIST ☛ Fourth Mississippi ‘Goon Squad’ member sentenced for involvement in assault of Black men

    In January 2023, the six deputies who pleaded guilty beat, tortured and sexually assaulted two Black men, named Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, for hours during a warrantless house raid. During the raid, the deputies shot Jenkins in the mouth as part of a mock execution. Jenkins was then left to bleed with a broken jaw and a lacerated tongue. After the assaults, the deputies planted drugs and guns on the men to cover up their acts. The warrantless raid came after a neighbor voiced concern over possible drug activity at the home.

  • JURIST ☛ Third Mississippi 'Goon Squad' member sentenced for involvement in assault of Black men

    The law enforcement agents then exited the home, providing no medical aid or assistance to either victim. Outside the home, the agents destroyed surveillance footage and falsely charged Jenkins with crimes.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ White ex-cops get 10 to 40 years in torture of 2 Black men

    A federal judge Thursday finished handing down prison terms of about 10 to 40 years to six white former Mississippi law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty to breaking into a home without a warrant and torturing two Black men in an hours-long attack that included beatings, repeated uses of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Internet outages : Several Subsea Cables in 10 African Countries are Badly Damaged and Need to be Repaired

    Internet outages in at least 10 countries in Africa, many undersea cables damaged, expected to take 5 weeks to repair. At least 10 countries in West Africa have experienced network outages since Thursday (14th), with South Africa also affected.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Jarrod Blundy ☛ All eBooks Are Not Created Equal

    I thought it was going to be great. I could load it up, along with other guidebooks and reference books, onto my Kobo, and have them all at my disposal on a small, lightweight, and waterproof device that’s easy-to-read in the sun. I’d toss that in my climbing pack any day! But nope, it turns out I purchased a license to read the book through an app, and not even a good one at that. Sure, I can read it on my iPad and iPhone, but it’s not the DRM-free version that I’d been expecting. I suppose I’ll do some digging for a version I can load onto my Kobo, but it left a sour taste in my mouth — like I’d been duped.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• El País ☛ US sues Apple for monopolistic practices with the iPhone

  The 88-page lawsuit — announced by Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday — was filed in a federal court in New Jersey by the Department of Justice and the attorneys general of 16 states. The suit accuses the technology giant of violating antitrust laws by blocking rivals from accessing the hardware and software functions of its smartphone, thereby hindering their ability to offer alternative products and services to those of the company led by Tim Cook.

  “Consumers should not have to pay higher prices because companies violate the antitrust laws,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “If left unchallenged, Apple will only continue to strengthen its smartphone monopoly.”

• RTL ☛ Technological straitjacket: Apple's 'Walled Garden' under fire in lawsuit

  Switching from the iPhone becomes a little like losing your wallet: a major hassle that requires burdensome reprogramming, new accessories and learning a new way to interact with your pocket computer.

  Give up the iPhone and you will have to give up your Apple Watch, or accept a world where your Airpods are glitchy, less reliable and a TV could miss a crucial update.

  This "lock-in" effect is the main thrust of the US case against Apple -- that the iPhone maker blocks the exits to hike up prices on customers who feel they can't go anywhere else.

• Deutsche Welle ☛ US sues Apple over 'smartphone monopoly'

  The civil suit, joined by 15 states and the District of Columbia, charged Apple with using its dominance in the smartphone ecosystem to get more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses and merchants.

  The lawsuit said it was focused on “freeing smartphone markets from Apple's anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct and restoring competition to lower smartphone prices for consumers, reducing fees for developers, and preserving innovation for the future."

  "Apple repeatedly chooses to make its products worse for consumers to prevent competition from emerging," the suit said.

• India Times ☛ Apple, Meta, Google set to face EU Digital Markets Act probes

  EU antitrust regulators are expected to investigate Apple, Meta Platforms and Alphabet's Google, using powers under the Digital Markets Act, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

• France24 ☛ US files antitrust lawsuit against Apple over iPhone 'monopoly'

  The Justice Department, which was also joined by the District of Columbia in the lawsuit, alleges that Apple uses its market power to get more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses and merchants.

  The civil lawsuit accuses Apple of an illegal monopoly on smartphones maintained by imposing contractual restrictions on, and withholding critical access from, developers.

• Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ US strikes at Apple's core

  The justice department said that Apple charges as much as US$1 599 for an iPhone and makes larger profits than any others in the industry. Officials also said that Apple charges various business partners — from software developers to credit card companies and even its rivals such as Google — behind the scenes in ways that ultimately raise prices for consumers and drive up Apple’s profits.

• CBC ☛ U.S. government sues Apple for smartphone antitrust violations

  The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, alleges that Apple has monopoly power in the smartphone market and uses its control over the iPhone to "engage in a broad, sustained, and illegal course of conduct."

  The lawsuit — which was also filed with attorneys general from 15 states as well as D.C. — takes direct aim at the digital fortress that Apple Inc., based in Cupertino, Calif., has assiduously built around the iPhone and other popular products such as the iPad, Mac and Apple Watch to create what is often referred to as a "walled garden."

• USDOJ ☛ Office of Public Affairs | Justice Department Sues Apple for Monopolizing Smartphone Markets | United States Department of Justice

  The Justice Department, joined by 16 other state and district attorneys general, filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Apple for monopolization or attempted monopolization of smartphone markets in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

  The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, alleges that Apple illegally maintains a monopoly over smartphones by selectively imposing contractual restrictions on, and withholding critical access points from, developers. Apple undermines apps, products, and services that would otherwise make users less reliant on the iPhone, promote interoperability, and lower costs for consumers and developers. Apple exercises its monopoly power to extract more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses, and merchants, among others. Through this monopolization lawsuit, the Justice Department and state Attorneys General are seeking relief to restore competition to these vital markets on behalf of the American public.

• The Verge ☛ US sues Apple for illegal monopoly over smartphones

  The US Department of Justice accused Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in an expansive new antitrust lawsuit that seeks to upend many of the ways Apple locks down iPhones.

  The DOJ, along with 16 state and district attorneys general, accuses Apple of driving up prices for consumers and developers at the expense of making users more reliant on its phones. The parties allege that Apple “selectively” imposes contractual restrictions on developers and withholds critical ways of accessing the phone as a way to prevent competition from arising, according to the release.

• Wired ☛ Apple's iMessage Encryption Puts Its Security Practices in the DOJ's Crosshairs

  In its sweeping antitrust lawsuit, the DOJ on Thursday laid out a broad set of allegations against Apple, accusing it of monopolistic practices in how it uses its walled-garden operating systems and app stores to deprive consumers of apps and services that might make it easier for them to wean themselves from their Apple addictions—keeping out of the App Store so-called super apps with cross-platform, broad functionality; limiting streaming and cloud-based applications; and handicapping the functionality of competitors' devices like smartwatches.

  The DOJ's complaint also homes in on Apple's approach to security and privacy, arguing that it uses those principles as an excuse for its anticompetitive practices, yet jettisons them whenever they might hurt the bottom line. “In the end, Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests,” the complaint reads.

• Six Colors ☛ U.S. versus Apple: A first reaction

  The U.S. Department of Justice, 15 states, and the District of Columbia sued Apple on Thursday. While I am not a lawyer, I’ve written extensively about Apple for 30 years and just read all 88 pages of the full complaint. Here are some initial reactions:

• Wired ☛ The US Sues Apple in an iPhone Antitrust Blockbuster

  Apple’s App Store has been a particular point of contention for years. The company has faced legal challenges, most notably from Fortnite developer Epic Games, over both its restrictiveness and the fees it charges developers for in-app purchases. The App Store is a focal point of the suit, a key component of the allegedly anticompetitive “moat” the company has built around its products.

  The suit directly seeks to prevent Apple from “using its control of app distribution to undermine cross-platform technologies such as super apps and cloud streaming apps, among others,” stop the company from “using private APIs to undermine cross-platform technologies like messaging, smart watches, and digital wallets,” and end Apple's alleged practice of “using the terms and conditions of its contracts with developers, accessory makers, consumers, or others to obtain, maintain, extend, or entrench a monopoly.”

• Wired ☛ The Antitrust Case Against Apple Argues It Has a Stranglehold on the Future

  The suit and messaging from the DOJ and 15 states and the District of Columbia joining it take aim at Apple’s most prized asset—the iPhone—and position the case as a fight for the future of technology. The suit argues that Apple rose to its current power thanks in part to the 1998 antitrust case against Microsoft, and that another milestone antitrust correction is needed to allow future innovation to continue.

  Like the Microsoft case, the suit against Apple is “really dynamic and forward looking,” says John Newman, a law professor at the University of Miami. “It's not necessarily about Apple seeing direct competitors,” he says. “It's more about them trying to grab the territory you would need if you were going to even try to compete against Apple.”

• New York Times ☛ U.S. Justice Dept. Sues Apple, Claiming iPhone Monopoly in Antitrust Case

  The department joined 16 states and the District of Columbia to file a significant challenge to the reach and influence of Apple, arguing in an 88-page lawsuit that the company had violated antitrust laws with practices that were intended to keep customers reliant on their iPhones and less likely to switch to a competing device. The tech giant prevented other companies from offering applications that compete with Apple products like its digital wallet, which could diminish the value of the iPhone, and hurts consumers and smaller companies that compete with it, the government said.

  The Justice Department’s lawsuit is seeking to put an end to those practices. The government even has the right to ask for a breakup of the Silicon Valley icon.

• Reuters ☛ Exclusive: EU's Vestager warns about Apple, Meta fees, disparaging rival products

  A new fee structure includes a core technology fee of 50 euro cents per user account per year that major app developers will have to pay even if they do not use any of Apple's payment services, which has triggered criticism from rivals such as Fortnite creator Epic Games. Vestager said the new fees have attracted her attention. "There are things that we take a keen interest in, for instance, if the new Apple fee structure will de facto not make it in any way attractive to use the benefits of the DMA. That kind of thing is what we will be investigating," she told Reuters in an interview. Vestager expressed her reservations on Meta's new fees.

• Manton Reece ☛ Early thoughts on United States vs. Apple

  I’m reading through the lawsuit document intro and skimming the rest. I only have strong opinions about the App Store and developer aspects of the case. Some of the arguments in the case about messaging apps and watches seem more flimsy to me, but perhaps good things will come from the broader scope.

• The Verge ☛ Apple CarPlay is anticompetitive, too, US lawsuit alleges

  Buried in the 88-page antitrust lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice against Apple is a reference to everyone’s favorite phone-projection system, CarPlay.

  The DOJ says that, like smartphones, vehicle infotainment systems have become a new way in which Apple exhibits anticompetitive behavior to harm consumers as well as its competitors.

• Quartz ☛ Apple tried to connect Apple Watch to Android

  Apple was hit with a major antitrust lawsuit filed by the DOJ on Thursday. The iPhone maker was accused of creating a monopoly with the iPhone, but other devices were mentioned including the Apple Watch. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland says the smartwatch made it hard to use the Apple Watch on a non-iPhone, but it appears that Apple did try to give it a shot.

  Apple spent three years looking to add Android support to the Apple Watch, according to a report from 9to5Mac on Thursday. The company cited “technical limitations” as the reason it didn’t happen.

• Vox ☛ The antitrust lawsuit against Apple that could dethrone the iPhone, explained

  Apple was one of the last remaining big tech companies that had yet to be hit with an antitrust suit of this magnitude: There are also pending suits against Facebook parent Meta, Amazon, and Google.

  “Antitrust has changed and is essentially back in an FDR-style,” said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and architect of the Biden administration’s antitrust policies. “I think a signature of the FDR-style antitrust was that they didn’t play around the edges. If they thought an industry was anti-competitive, they sued everybody, including the largest monopolists, for stuff that was core to their business.”

• Los Angeles Times ☛ How the DOJ's lawsuit against Apple will affect consumers

  The lawsuit, filed Thursday, accuses Apple of stifling competition and leveraging its clout and ownership of the popular App Store to increase prices for customers. If the DOJ succeeds in its case, the implications for Apple’s business could be significant — potentially changing the ways the company charges app developers and customers for products and services. Advertisement

  “This is a good thing for consumers because the Department of Justice is basically checking Apple’s use of its market power to make sure it’s not an abuse of its market power,” said Jamie Court, president of L.A.-based nonprofit Consumer Watchdog.

• Los Angeles Times ☛ U.S., California file antitrust lawsuit against Apple over smartphones

  IPhones are the most popular smartphone in the United States, accounting for more than 60% of sales, analysts say. Its main competition comes from phones made by Samsung and other manufacturers that run Alphabet’s Android operating system.

  Apple generated annual net revenues of $383 billion in 2023 and a net income of $97 billion. IPhone sales made up the largest chunk of the company’s revenue in its most recent quarter.

• NPR ☛ The U.S. sues Apple, saying it abuses its power to monopolize the smartphone market

  Apple, one of the world's richest companies, is now under fire from the U.S. government. The Department of Justice and 16 states filed a lawsuit against the Silicon Valley giant on Thursday, accusing the company of abusing its power as a monopoly to edge out rivals and ensure customers keep using its products.

  The heart of the lawsuit centers around claims that Apple stopped smaller companies from accessing the hardware and software in its iPhones, which led to fewer options for customers.

• Gizmodo ☛ Apple Will Reportedly Face Antitrust Lawsuit

  But that’s in the U.S. Over in the European Union (EU), Apple has been getting spanked by regulations. Not only did regulators make Apple go all-in with USB-C cables for the iPhone 15 last year, but the EU also made Apple open up its software to allow third-party app stores onto its devices.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Tennessee ☛ PHOTOS: Gov. Lee Signs ELVIS Act Into Law

      While Tennessee’s preexisting law protected name, image, and likeness, it did not specifically address new, personalized generative AI cloning models and services that enable human impersonation and allow users to make unauthorized fake works in the image and voice of others. Artists and musicians at all levels are facing exploitation and the theft of their integrity, identity, and humanity. This threatens the future of Tennessee’s creators, the jobs that they support across the state and country, and the bonds between fans and their favorite bands.

      The ELVIS Act builds upon existing state rule protecting against the unauthorized use of someone’s likeness by adding “voice” to the realm it protects.

    • Gannett ☛ ELVIS Act: Gov. Lee signs law, protects Tennessee residents from AI

      Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill into law alongside musicians and other state representatives on the stage of the Lower Broadway honky-tonk Robert's Western World.

      The ELVIS Act, short for the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act - HB 2091, advocates on behalf of the state's music creators by enacting voice protections. The bill arrives in the midst of AI advances where deepfakes and unauthorized uses of artists' voices and likenesses.

    • Penske Media Corporation ☛ Tennessee Adopts ELVIS Act, Protecting Artists' Voices From AI Fakes

      Tennessee governor Bill Lee signed the ELVIS Act into law Thursday (Mar. 21), legislation designed to further protect the state’s artists from artificial intelligence deep fakes. The bill, more formally named the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act of 2024, replaces the state’s old right of publicity law, which only included explicit protections for one’s “name, photograph, or likeness,” expanding protections to include voice- and AI-specific concerns for the first time.

    • El País ☛ Tennessee just became the first state to protect musicians and other artists against AI

      “We employ more people in Tennessee in the music industry than any other state,” Lee told reporters shortly after signing the bill into law. “Artists have intellectual property. They have gifts. They have a uniqueness that is theirs and theirs alone, certainly not artificial intelligence.”

      The Volunteer State is just one of three states where name, photographs and likeness are considered a property right rather than a right of publicity. According to the newly signed statute — dubbed the Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act or “ELVIS Act” — vocal likeness will now be added to that list.

    • Deadline ☛ Tennessee Governor Signs ELVIS Act To Bolster AI Protections For Artists' Voice And Likeness

      The law includes an exemption for news, public affairs, or sports broadcasts or accounts, to the extent that it is protected by the First Amendment. There also is a fair use exemption for the purposes of comment, criticism, scholarship, satire or parody.

      Tennessee is the first state to pass a law designed to curb the use of AI deepkaes.

• Copyrights

  • Walled Culture ☛ Of true fans and superfans: the rise of an alternative business model to copyright

    One of the commonest arguments from supporters of copyright is that creators need to be rewarded and that copyright is the only realistic way of doing that. The first statement may be true, but the second certainly isn’t. As Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) notes, most art was created without copyright, when the dominant way of rewarding creators was patronage – from royalty, nobility, the church etc. Indeed, nearly all of the greatest works of art were produced under this system, not under copyright.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ AGCOM Admits 'Piracy Shield' Blunder, Cloudflare Urges Users to Complain

    It may have taken almost a month but Italian telecoms regulator AGCOM has finally admitted that Cloudflare was wrongfully blocked by its fledgling anti-piracy system, Piracy Shield. There was no apology for the journalists accused of reporting 'fake news', or an apology for Cloudflare after disrupting its business. Meanwhile, Cloudflare will draw attention to overblocking by urging customers affected by the blunder to file official complaints.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ EU Commission Encourages Use of New Anti-Piracy Toolbox

    The European Commission has published its 'Recommendation on measures to combat counterfeiting and enhance the enforcement of intellectual property rights'. Produced in response to rising levels of IP-infringing activities, the EC says its 'toolbox' of measures also apply to those fighting online piracy. Let's take a look inside.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Technology and Free Software

    • What Counts as Open-Source Hardware?

      I am a big believer in free and open-source software: it's one of the primary reasons I switch to Linux years ago. As part of my interest in decentralized infrastructure, I'd like to see open-source hardware and firmware receive a similar amount of attention.

      My ClockworkPi DevTerm RPi-CM4 is often cited as an example of open-source hardware. Schematics, datasheets and 3D model files for the components used in it are freely available on ClockworkPi's GitHub page^. Other open-source hardware projects include the Reform laptop^^ and the RISC-V processor architecture.