Links 25/03/2024: Nature During Human Lockdowns, China Coast Guard Attacks Boats Outside Its Border
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Ruben Schade ☛ Pardon, Plastic Bertrand
Today’s Music Monday is a presentation of one of the greatest songs of all time, and an apology!
Ça plane pour moi was one of the songs of my childhood, and I still consider it one of the greatest of all time. When I decided to add a nonsensical Capacitive Duractance section on my sidebar, it dawned on me to include before almost anything else.
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Hackaday ☛ Concrete Clears Its Own Snow
Humans are not creatures well suited to cold environments. Without a large amount of effort to provide clothing, homes, and food to areas with substantial winters, very few of us would survive. The same is true of a lot of our infrastructure since things like ice, frost heave, and large temperature swings can all negatively impact buildings, roadways, and other structures. A team at Drexel University in Pennsylvania has created a type of concrete they hope might solve some issues with the material in cold climates.
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Hackaday ☛ Building A Tiny Organic Swimming Pool With Natural Filtering
When we think of swimming pools, we typically think of large fiberglass, plastic, or concrete constructions full of pristine, clear water. They’re usually maintained in this state with the regular addition of chlorine or other chemical. These kill biological stuff and help filter out dirt and other detritus. However, [David] likes to do things differently, as he demonstrates with a tiny plunge pool built inside his greenhouse.
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Mike Haynes ☛ Webmentions | crashthearcade
I misspoke about what aspects of webmentions I was turning off for my site. I should have been more specific that it was the syndication of comments and reactions across sites, not webmentions as a whole.
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Pratik ☛ The Saga of the Bank Locker in India
What? $119 just for sending a 3 oz pile of documents to India? FedEx be crazy but since there’s a deadline looming, I swipe my card and take the hit.
So much time, money, and resources spent on something as routine as taking a clearly dead person’s name off a bank locker rental agreement! And yes, by the way, the lockers are empty since we had brought back all the stuff she had saved up for them, but we couldn’t close the account because some other paperwork wouldn’t be ready before we left. So, have we closed the locker now? Nope, the bank wants all joint account holders to be present in person to do that, just as we did when we opened the locker. So now I know at least one place (yay! an Indian bank) we will visit when we are in India next. Let’s hope my dad stays alive until then. I guess the bank will keep him alive to make sure he pays the multiple thousands of rupees in locker rent.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Why you really should strive for 'inbox zero'
We found that most respondents left their electronic records in their e-mail. Only half saved items such as bills and other documents to other locations, like their computer or the cloud. But having a disorganised inbox also led to problems, including missing bills and losing track of important correspondence.
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Amit Patel ☛ New Blog for 2024
So I’ve been thinking about what I actually want, and what I want isn’t Twitter or Blogger. I want something much closer to Hugo or Jekyll — a static site generator. I want to be able to save a file and have it become a blog post. I want to be able to grep over my existing files. I want to be able to write a perl script to fix something across pages. I decided a goal in 2024 is to switch from Blogspot to a static site generator.
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Frank Meeuwsen ☛ The Breakfast Club is 40 years young today | Frank Meeuwsen
Today is March 24, 2024. 40 years ago, 5 students were locked up for a day at Shermer High School to write an essay on Who They Are. During the day, the school princess 👸, athlete🏈, smart 🧠, weirdo 👜 and criminal ✊, get to know each other better and better and find out that they are all not so different.
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Steve Ledlow ☛ My Own Micro
They won’t appear on the front page of the blog, nor in the list of posts on the site index. They won’t appear in the RSS feed. In fact, you can’t subscribe to them in any way. They’re just something to stumble upon, or browse occassionally. They aren’t “social”. They don’t appear in any algorithum ranked flow of information. They’re slow. They’re small. They scratched an itch.
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Standards/Consortia
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El País ☛ Emojis are not a universal language: Gender, age and culture influence their interpretation
The study, published in February in the journal Plos One, had 523 participants from China and the UK, ranging from 18 to 84 years old. The authors used six emojis from four different platforms (Apple, Android, Windows and WeChat) that represented six emotions: happiness, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and anger. The article explains that women are slightly more accurate in recognizing happy, fearful, sad and angry emojis. Lead author Ruth Filik believes it is a matter of interpretation rather than accuracy. In this case, the female participants labeled the emojis the same way as the researchers more often than the men, she notes.
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Science
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Bartosz Milewski ☛ Neural Networks, Pre-lenses, and Triple Tambara Modules, Part II
I will now provide the categorical foundation of the Haskell implementation from the previous post. A PDF version that contains both parts is also available.
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Education
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India Times ☛ ai talent china us: In one key artificial intelligence metric, China pulls ahead of the US - talent
New research shows that China has by some metrics eclipsed the United States as the biggest producer of AI talent, with the country generating almost half the world's top AI researchers. By contrast, about 18% come from U.S. undergraduate institutions, according to the study.
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BoingBoing ☛ What is the Royal Order of Adjectives?
There is a Royal Order of Adjectives, and you follow it without knowing what it is—a particular sequence to use when more than one adjective precedes a noun. There are exceptions, of course, because English is three languages in a trenchcoat. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, in general, the proper order is: [...]
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Cambridge Dictionary ☛ Adjectives: order
When more than one adjective comes before a noun, the adjectives are normally in a particular order. [...]
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The Straits Times ☛ Female maths teacher in Malaysia under probe for hugging, kissing teen student
The student's mother made a police report after noticing red marks on her son's neck.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Science Alert ☛ Expert Warns 'Hot Tub Lung' Is a Real Condition – And So Are The Risks
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Science Alert ☛ Seeing Demons: Man's Rare Brain Condition Transforms Faces Into Monsters
The mysterious phenomenon of prosopometamorphopsia.
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Warn The Price of Food Is Expected to Increase Every Year From Now on
The new analysis shows that global warming could cause food price inflation to increase by between 0.9 and 3.2 percentage points per year by 2035. The same warming will cause a smaller rise in overall inflation (between 0.3 and 1.2 percentage points), so a greater proportion of household income would need to be spent on buying food.
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Wired ☛ Are You Noise Sensitive? Here's How to Tell
In the 1970s, the Environmental Protection Agency treated noise just like any other environmental pollutant. Society was conscientious of the effects of sound as a form of pollution, and the government regulated it as such. Unfortunately, since the Reagan Administration phased out funding for Noise Abatement and Control in 1981, our world has grown exponentially louder. Some of these noises are being piped directly into our ears (thank you, ear pods!), but others are a product of noise pollution.
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The Straits Times ☛ South Korea's medical professors join protests, reduce hours in practice
SEOUL - Medical professors in South Korea said they will cut back on the hours they spend in practice starting on Monday to support trainee doctors on strike for more than a month over a government plan to boost medical school admissions.
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New York Times ☛ Queen Camilla Takes Center Stage With King Charles and Princess Kate
The woman whose very existence once seemed to threaten the royal family’s stability has emerged as a stabilizing force during a major health crisis.
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New York Times ☛ To Live Past 100, Mangia a Lot Less: Italian Expert’s Ideas on Aging
Valter Longo, who wants to live to a healthy 120 or 130, sees the key to longevity in diet — legumes and fish — and faux fasting.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Matt Cool ☛ Escaping the App Store with Progressive Web Apps
Beyond the financial costs, native app development also comes with a loss of control. App stores have strict guidelines and approval processes that developers must navigate. They dictate what features and content are allowed, and they can reject or remove apps at their discretion.
This lack of control can be frustrating for developers who want to create innovative solutions or address specific needs. It’s disheartening to pour time and effort into an app, only to have it rejected or removed from the store due to changing guidelines or arbitrary decisions.
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Wired ☛ Large Language Models’ Emergent Abilities Are a Mirage
And even if emergence in today’s LLMs can be explained away by different measuring tools, it’s likely that won’t be the case for tomorrow’s larger, more complicated LLMs. “When we grow LLMs to the next level, inevitably they will borrow knowledge from other tasks and other models,” said Xia “Ben” Hu, a computer scientist at Rice University.
This evolving consideration of emergence isn’t just an abstract question for researchers to consider. For Tamkin, it speaks directly to ongoing efforts to predict how LLMs will behave. “These technologies are so broad and so applicable,” he said. “I would hope that the community uses this as a jumping-off point as a continued emphasis on how important it is to build a science of prediction for these things. How do we not get surprised by the next generation of models?”
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[Repeat] Privacy International ☛ AI-powered employment practices: PI's response to the ICO's draft recruitment and selection guidance
One of the sectors to integrate AI-powered tools into their day-to-day operations is the employment and recruitment sector. PI has responded to the ICO's recent consultation on its draft guidance for employers and recruiters on deploying AI in recruitment. Our response focuses on the processor/controller designation of recruiters and the third party LLMs they outsource and candidates' employment rights that may be undermined by algorithmic decision-making (ADM).
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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Terence Eden ☛ There’s nothing you can do to prevent a SIM-swap attack
You probably have your phone-number tied to all sorts of important services. If you want to recover your email, log in to a bank, or prove your identity - you'll probably need to receive a call or SMS. If an attacker can take over your phone number, they're one step closer to taking over your accounts.
I keep saying "your phone number", but that's a clever lie. The phone number does not belong to you. It belongs to the network operator and they define which SIM the number points to.
This means a suitably authorised person at the telco can point "your" number to a new SIM card. That's helpful if you've lost your SIM but bad if an attacker wants to divert your number.
What can you do to stop this attack? Nothing.
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Defence/Aggression
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The Straits Times ☛ Philippines minister dares China to put maritime sovereignty claim to arbitration
This comes after it accused China’s coast guard of using a water cannon against a civilian boat.
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JURIST ☛ China Coast Guard accused of hostile attack on Philippines supply boat in disputed South China Sea
Philippine officials accused a Chinese Coast Guard ship on Saturday of hitting a Philippine supply boat with water cannons in the heavily disputed waters of the South China Sea, causing heavy damage to the vessel and injuring several crew members.
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The Atlantic ☛ Beijing Is Ruining TikTok
Nor can ByteDance really alleviate another major concern in Washington: that the platform could be used to spread pro-China propaganda and manipulate American public opinion. Chinese authorities could lean on ByteDance to act as a tool in its campaign to shape perceptions of China and to promote the Communist Party’s values, ideas, and narratives around the world.
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The Strategist ☛ OSINT capability should be dispersed through government
Stealing other countries’ secrets is the form of intelligence gathering that gets most attention—and resources. But a mass of information is publicly available and just waiting to be collected, to produce what’s called open-source intelligence (OSINT).
Governments, including Australia’s, are working on how better to collect it, and one idea is to set up a central agency for the task. If that’s a solution, however, it’s not the full solution. Potentially valuable public information and the ways it is used are so varied that individual parts of the government each need to collect it and turn it into OSINT.
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NPR ☛ Nearly 300 abducted Nigerian schoolchildren freed after over two weeks in captivity
No group has claimed responsibility for the Kaduna kidnapping, which locals have blamed on bandit groups known for mass killings and kidnappings for ransom in the conflict-battered northern region, most of them former herders in conflict with settled communities.
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VOA News ☛ Nearly 300 Abducted Schoolchildren in Nigeria Freed
At least two people with extensive knowledge of the security crisis in Nigeria's northwest told The Associated Press that the identity of the abductors is known.
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The Straits Times ☛ US military command in Japan to be revamped: Financial Times
The plan will strengthen operational planning and military exercises between the two countries.
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The Straits Times ☛ UK deputy PM set to address lawmakers on Chinese cyber security threat
LONDON - British deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden is set to address the country's lawmakers about the cyber security threat posed by China on Monday as worries about possible interference grow before an election expected later this year.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Security law: Australia, UK, Taiwan urge travellers to exercise caution in Hong Kong, as gov’t blasts ‘scaremongering’
Warnings over travel to Hong Kong following the enactment of the new, domestic security law amount to “political manoeuvres” and “scaremongering” remarks, the city’s authorities claim.
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Latvia ☛ U.S. dedicates 228m dollars to military aid for Baltic states
On March 22 the US Congress passed government funding legislation, which includes 228 million dollars' worth of security aid for the Baltic States in 2024, the Estonian Ministry of Defense pointed out March 23.
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RFERL ☛ Moscow Terrorist Attack 'Serious Intelligence Failure,' Says Ex-U.S. Envoy To Russia
Alexander Vershbow, who served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow from 2001 to 2005, a period that saw two of the worst terrorist attacks in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, said it was “hard to explain” how the perpetrators were able to take so many lives considering the United States had warned the Kremlin weeks earlier of just such a possible assault.
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New York Times ☛ Russia’s Battle With Extremists Has Simmered for Years
That moment appeared to have come on Friday night with the bloody assault on a Moscow concert hall that left more than 130 people dead. “The fiercest in years,” said a statement of responsibility issued on Saturday by a branch of the Islamic State via its news agency, referring to the long history of brutal terrorist attacks pitting jihadist forces against Moscow.
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The Telegraph UK ☛ I used to be unequivocally pro-immigration. How naive I was
And this now poses a security risk. Islamism makes up 75 per cent of the counter-terrorism caseload, yet for too long we have shied away from acknowledging the true nature of this threat. It should have been obvious that allowing organisations like Hamas to garner support within multicultural societies would create fertile ground for radicalisation and undermine efforts to combat terrorism. There has been a 589 per cent increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents following October 7. The Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Jewish abuse and attacks, said the increase was a “watershed moment”. As a result, it is surely necessary to reevaluate whether Britain really is a poster child for multiculturalism. There are, clearly, prejudices and tensions in our society which have been allowed to fester.
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YLE ☛ Justice Chancellor rejects government's border bill: "Still needs work"
Interior Minister Mari Rantanen (Finns) promised to consider feedback from legal experts before the bill goes to Parliament in April.
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The Straits Times ☛ North Korea's Kim visits tank unit, calls for airtight combat readiness
SEOUL - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has inspected a tank unit and called for stepping up its combat readiness including greater "ideological and mental power," state media KCNA said on Monday.
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The Straits Times ☛ North Korea says Japan's Kishida showed intention to meet Kim Jong Un recently
SEOUL - North Korea's Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said on Monday that Japanese Prime Fumio Kishida recently conveyed his intention to meet the North Korean leader soon through "another channel", state media KCNA reported.
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RFA ☛ Japan proposes Kishida, Kim summit: North Korean leader’s sister
Kim Yo Jong’s remarks came a month after she said North Korea was open to enhancing ties with Tokyo.
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AntiWar ☛ Cutting the Pentagon Down to Size
Reprinted from TomDispatch. It’s one of the stranger phenomena on this planet. By 2023, the U.S. was estimated to spend more money on its “defense budget” than the next 10 countries combined. Yes, the next 10!
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Digital Music News ☛ Moscow Concert Hall Terror Attack Leaves 130+ Dead as Gunmen Storm Building — Multiple Suspects Arrested and Detained
A terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall has left more than 130 people dead. Gunmen stormed the complex and set the venue on fire. The terror group ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the attack.
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teleSUR ☛ Death Toll From Terrorist Attack in Moscow Rises to 137
The security forces have so far arrested 11 people linked to the attack, four of whom personally participated in the massacre.
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The Straits Times ☛ Moscow court puts first suspect in concert hall attack under pre-trial custody for two months
MOSCOW - Moscow's Basmanny district court ruled on Sunday that the first suspect in Friday's deadly concert hall attack in which at 137 people were killed should be put into custody for two months pending trial, Interfax news agency reported citing the court.
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New York Times ☛ ISIS Affiliate Linked to Moscow Attack Has Global Ambitions
The Islamic State in Khorasan is active in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran and has set its sights on Europe and beyond.
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New York Times ☛ Monday Briefing: Two Charged in Moscow Attack
Plus, the hotel guest who wouldn’t leave.
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New York Times ☛ Piknik, a Longtime Russian Rock Band, is Now at the Center of a Tragedy
The group was set to play the first of two sold-out concerts when gunmen opened fire at Crocus City Hall.
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New York Times ☛ In Russia, Reactions to Moscow Concert Attack Reflect State of Anxiety
Russian state news outlets barely mentioned the claim of responsibility made by the Islamic State group.
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New York Times ☛ Moscow Concert Hall Shooting: Security Questions Emerge as First Charges Are Filed in Russia Attack
Russian officials formally charged four men in the attack, which killed at least 137 people at a Moscow-area concert hall on Friday. American officials blamed a branch of the Islamic State.
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New York Times ☛ Russia’s Battle With Extremists Has Simmered for Years
The Islamic State has long threatened to strike Russia for helping the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, stay in control.
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New York Times ☛ Screams and Blank Stares of Shock: Horror at a Russian Concert
The violent attack on Moscow’s outskirts on Friday was a scene of chaos and terror. “You’re just running to figure out where else to run,” one attendee said.
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RFERL ☛ Four Suspects In Russian Concert Attack Sent To Pretrial Detention
Four suspects charged with acts of terrorism in connection with the attack on a concert hall outside Moscow that left 137 people dead have been sent to pretrial detention for two months pending trial, a Moscow court ruled late on March 24.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Day Of Mourning Reportedly Marred By Xenophobic Incidents
Several apparent xenophobic incidents targeting Central Asian migrants have been reported in Russia as the country observes a day of mourning for the victims of a March 22 terrorist attack on a concert hall outside of Moscow that left 133 people dead.
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RFERL ☛ Anti-Migrant Sentiment Rises In Russia As Four Tajiks Charged In Moscow Attack
Russia has charged four Tajiks in connection with the deadly terrorist attack on a concert venue near Moscow on March 22 that left at least 137 people dead.
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JURIST ☛ Russia watchdog labels ‘LGBT public movement’ as terrorist organization
A Russian state financial watchdog labelled the “LGBT public movement” as a terrorist organization on Friday, as reported by Russian state media outlet TASS. This development comes three months after the Supreme Court of Russia ordered the LGBT+ movement to be declared as extremist.
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France24 ☛ France raises terror alert level after Moscow attack claimed by IS group
France’s government increased its security alert warning to the highest level Sunday after the deadly attack at a Russian concert hall and the Islamic State (IS) group’s claim of responsibility.
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France24 ☛ Russia charges four men over Moscow concert hall attack
Three of the four suspects charged with carrying out the concert hall attack in Moscow that killed more than 130 people admitted guilt for the incident in a Russian court Sunday.
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Latvia ☛ LTV looks at companies transporting manganese ore through Latvia
While politicians are still talking about possible sanctions on manganese ore, Russia's own decision to nationalize the largest recipient of the ore - the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant - has had a tangible effect on the movement of these cargoes through Latvia. Latvian companies now have problems handling cargo related to this plant due to the sanctions imposed against Russia, concludes Latvian Television's "De facto" aired March 24.
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New York Times ☛ Russians Mourn People Killed in Terrorist Concert Hall Attack
Russian state media pushed the idea that Ukraine was the obvious culprit, but at least three of the four suspects charged on Sunday are from the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Missiles Target Kyiv As Poland Claims Its Airspace Was Violated
Russian missiles struck the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in a predawn attack on March 24, the third “massive” attack on the city in the last four days.
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RFERL ☛ 1 Killed In 'Massive' Ukrainian Strike On Sevastopol
Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of Russia-occupied Crimea, said one person was killed and four were wounded in a "massive" Ukrainian missile attack on the port of Sevastopol on March 24.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine Says It Destroyed 2 Russian Ships, Comms Center
The Ukrainian military said on March 24 that its forces have destroyed two Russian landing ships and other targets belonging to the Black Sea Fleet.
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France24 ☛ Slovakia's pro-West diplomat Korcok to face off with Fico ally Pelligrini in presidential runoff
Slovak ex-foreign minister Ivan Korcok and current parliament speaker Peter Pellegrini will face off in April's presidential election runoff, near-final results showed Saturday.
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France24 ☛ 'Massive' Russian air attack hits Western Ukraine, Kyiv; Poland says its airspace violated
Ukraine's capital Kyiv and the western region of Lviv came under a "massive" Russian air attack early Sunday, officials said, and Poland demanded an explanation from Russia after one of its missiles strayed briefly into Polish airspace.
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The Strategist ☛ The meaning of Sweden’s NATO accession
On March 7, Sweden officially joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, ending its 200-year-old policy of neutrality.
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Latvia ☛ Ukrainian-support posters in Rīga vandalized
A video has been released on social networks showing several people across from the Embassy of Russia in Rīga damaging a stand dedicated to supporting Ukraine, pulling off some of the posters posted on the display.
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New Yorker ☛ How Will Putin Respond to the Terrorist Attack in Moscow?
The Russian President has a long history of spinning lapses in security for his own political gain.
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RFERL ☛ Moscow Terrorist Attack 'Serious Intelligence Failure,' Says Ex-U.S. Envoy To Russia
A former U.S. envoy to Moscow said the worst terrorist attack on Russian soil in nearly two decades represents “a serious intelligence failure” and warned that President Vladimir Putin could use it to justify further mobilization and oppression.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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The Strategist ☛ OSINT capability should be dispersed through government
Stealing other countries’ secrets is the form of intelligence gathering that gets most attention—and resources.
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Environment
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Energy/Transportation
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Ruben Schade ☛ Taking the XPT from Sydney to Melbourne
Clara and I are in Melbourne for leave and a few other things, so we decided to do something a bit different and take one of Australia’s remaining intercity passenger services, the XPT. Trains have lower carbon emissions, and it would be a way to see some of the Australian landscape we normally fly over, or never see in our urban jungle.
We arrived at Sydney Central Station at the crack of dawn, and checked in our luggage on platform 1. Central has dozens of platforms, so they reserve this one for trains that are a bit more special. Naturally, Clara got a photo of me doing my usual awkward pose: [...]
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New York Times ☛ Germany’s Solar Panel Industry, Once a Leader, Is Getting Squeezed
Domestic manufacturers are caught between China’s low prices and U.S. protectionist policies, even as demand increases.
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Hackaday ☛ Fail Of The Week: A Potentially Lethal Tattoo Removal Laser Power Supply
Caveat emptor is good advice in general, but in the wilds of eBay, being careful with what you buy could be life-saving. To wit, we present [Les Wright]’s teardown and very ginger power-up of an eBay tattoo-removal laser power supply.
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Science Alert ☛ Largest Gold Nugget Ever in UK Found: Treasure-Hunter Reveals His Secret
This could be you.
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Ignited a Thermonuclear Explosion Inside a Supercomputer
Extreme.
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Science Alert ☛ Physicists Capture Elusive 4D 'Ghost' in CERN Particle Accelerator
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Wildlife/Nature
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Science Alert ☛ Turns Out Nature Didn't 'Heal' While Humans Were in Lockdown
Overall, Burton and team detected no global systemic shift in mammal activity during the pandemic.
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Science Alert ☛ Evolutionary Origins of Hair Identified in The Most Unlikely of Animals
Croak?
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Finance
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Dr Gena Gorlin ☛ All about the money - by Dr. Gena Gorlin
There are two types of concerns I get when talking to founders (and other ambitious people) about money:
1) They care about getting rich, but feel like they shouldn’t.
2) They don’t care about getting rich, but feel like they should.
Let me address each one in turn.
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Euro Area Is in ‘Very Resilient Place,’ Eurogroup’s Donohoe Says
The euro area is in a “very resilient place” and is likely to avert recession with a “very low level of growth” this year, according to the head of the Eurogroup, which brings together the bloc’s finance chiefs.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Discovery Bay ferry firm seeks 60% fare hike to HK$73.6 for a single, amid years of taxpayer bailouts, subsidies
Discovery Bay Transportation Services has asked the government’s Transport Department to approve a 60 per cent hike in ferry fares, citing a poor financial position despite years of taxpayer bailouts and subsidies. If approved, single adult journeys to the Lantau residential area from Central will rise from HK$46 to HK$73.6 for non-resident Octopus card users.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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India Times ☛ tim cook ai climate battle: Apple’s Tim Cook tells China forum AI is key for climate battle
Apple Inc. chief executive officer Tim Cook said artificial intelligence is an essential tool for helping businesses reduce their carbon footprint, as he joined a climate change dialog Sunday at the China Development Forum.
Cook took part in a discussion at the annual Beijing event as the culmination of a week of public displays of his company’s commitment to China. He earlier met Commerce Minister Wang Wentao and announced plans to invest further in Apple’s supply chain, stores and research in the country.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Russian businesses get shut out from Microsoft cloud services at the end of this month – new EU sanctions come into effect
As a result of the above implementation of EU sanctions, organizations in Russia will no longer have access to best-in-class Microsoft products including Office 365 apps, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, Azure, SharePoint, Visual Studio, SQL Server, as well as LinkedIn apps and Media Player development kits.
There have been no reports indicating that Microsoft will be restricting its cloud services to individuals, and hence they remain accessible to the general Russian public for now. Meanwhile, the Russian government has made efforts to promote domestic alternatives to ensure the continued smooth operations of private companies and organizations.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Emad Mostaque resigns as CEO of troubled generative AI startup Stability AI
Stability AI Ltd.’s colorful co-founder and Chief Executive Emad Mostaque has resigned, heaping yet more pressure on the troubled British artificial intelligence startup that has recently been hit with a wave of executive departures and money troubles.
Mostaque (pictured) will be replaced by Stability AI Chief Operating Officer Shan Shan Wong and Chief Technology Officer Christian Laforte, who will serve as interim co-CEOs until a permanent successor can be found, the startup said in a blog post late Friday.
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The Register UK ☛ Russia's Cozy Bear tries to phish Germans with party invites
The Kremlin's cyberspies targeted German political parties in a phishing campaign that used emails disguised as dinner party invitations, according to Mandiant.
Russia's Cozy Bear, also known as APT29 and Midnight Blizzard, engineered the messages to infect marks' Windows PCs with a backdoor first observed in January and dubbed WINELOADER. These were intended to provide long-term access to the political parties' networks and data, the Google-backed security biz asserted on Friday.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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RFERL ☛ In Belarus, One-Fourth Of 'Political' Criminal Cases Were About Lukashenka Insults
One-quarter of the 5,012 criminal cases that were brought by Belarusian authorities in 2023 under a handful of articles to suppress political speech and activities concerned alleged insults against longtime leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka, according to an analysis of police data. [...]
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RFA ☛ You heard it here first
When Hong Kong’s Legislative Council unanimously passed a strict national security law under Article 23 of its mini-constitution, China's state broadcaster CCTV beat out its competitors by posting the results of the vote nearly 20 minutes before the Council's 89 lawmakers had started voting. [...]
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Article 23: A timeline of Hong Kong's new security law
It was not the first attempt to enact such legislation, which is written into the city’s mini-constitution under Article 23 of the Basic Law. But where earlier efforts were met with mass protest and thwarted by a lack of support in the legislature, in 2024 the opposition-free legislature managed the entire process – from public consultation to final approval – in just 48 days.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Article 23: Hong Kong's new, local security law comes into effect
Separate to the 2020 Beijing-enacted security law, the new legislation – gazetted midnight on Saturday – targets treason, insurrection, sabotage, external interference, sedition, theft of state secrets and espionage. It allows for pre-charge detention of to up to 16 days, and suspects’ access to lawyers may be restricted, with penalties involving up to life in prison.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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APNIC ☛ Delay Tolerant Networking performance
Guest Post: Delay Tolerant Networking over heterogeneous Internetworks must be engineered to achieve peak performance. What can be done?
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Hackaday ☛ Retrotechtacular: Right To Repair 1987
In 1987, your portable Osborne computer had a problem. Who you gonna call? Well, maybe the company that made “The Osborne Survival Kit,” a video from Witt Services acquired by the Computer History Museum. The narrator, [Mark Witt], tells us that they’ve been fixing these computers for more than three years, and they want to help you fix it yourself. Those days seem long gone, don’t they?
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Patents
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft aims to boost ray-tracing performance in VRAM-constrained scenarios — patent monopoly describes a new level of detail system for RT effects
Microsoft has published a performance-optimizing patent monopoly for ray-tracing, that is designed to reduce the memory footprint of workloads via an RT level of detail system.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ SMIC and Huawei could use quadruple patterning for China-made 5nm chips: Report
Something that almost killed defective chip maker Intel is now patented in China. But it remains to be seen how viable it will be.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.