Leftovers

• EFF ☛ The Cybertiger Strikes Again! EFF's 8th Annual Tech Trivia Night

  But how did we prepare for the Cybertiger's quiz? Well, with our 8th Annual Tech Trivia Night of course! We gathered fellow digital freedom supporters to test their tech-know how, and to eat delicious tacos, churros, and special tech-themed drinks, including LimeWire, Moderated Content, and Zero Cool.

  Nine teams gathered before the Cybertiger, ready to battle for the *new* wearable first, second, and third place prizes: [...]

• Hackaday ☛ Think Again: Tips On Finding And Flexing Your Creativity

  Technical work — including problem-solving — is creative work. In addition, creativity is more than a vague and nebulous attribute that either is or isn’t present when it’s needed. A short article by [Anthony D. Fredericks] gives some practical and useful tips on energizing and exercising one’s creativity.

• Hackaday ☛ Adaptive Chef’s Knife Provides Better Leverage

  [Colleen] struggled with using a chef’s knife to cut a variety of foods while suffering from arthritis in her wrist and hand. There are knives aimed at people with special needs, but nothing suitable for serious work like [Colleen]’s professional duties in a commercial kitchen.

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ Solar storms that caused pretty auroras can create havoc with technology — here’s how

    The same geomagnetic storms causing the auroras can cause havoc with our planet’s human-made infrastructure. These storms, caused by high energy particles from the Sun hitting our atmosphere, have the potential to knock out electrical grids and satellites. So what were the impacts of this recent burst of stormy space weather?

• Education

  • Pro Publica ☛ Help ProPublica and The Texas Tribune Report on School Board and Bond Elections in Your Community

    ProPublica and the Texas Tribune are committed to telling overlooked stories about public schools. This election season, we want to understand the effects of heated political races on the people living, learning and teaching in districts across the state.

    To see the full picture, we need to hear from people from across the political spectrum with a vested interest in public schools. You can help us identify important stories and ask the right questions as we report. Fill out the form below to join our source network. We also welcome specific tips, campaign finance reports and political mailers related to school district elections.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Texas School Board Member Disavows the Far-Right Platform She Campaigned On

    Weeks after winning a school board seat in her deeply red Texas county, Courtney Gore immersed herself in the district’s curriculum, spending her nights and weekends poring over hundreds of pages of lesson plans that she had fanned out on the coffee table in her living room and even across her bed. She was searching for evidence of the sweeping national movement she had warned on the campaign trail was indoctrinating schoolchildren.

    Gore, the co-host of a far-right online talk show, had promised that she would be a strong Republican voice on the nonpartisan school board. Citing “small town, conservative Christian values,” she pledged to inspect educational materials for inappropriate messages about sexuality and race and remove them from every campus in the 7,700-student Granbury Independent School District, an hour southwest of Fort Worth. “Over the years our American Education System has been hijacked by Leftists looking to indoctrinate our kids into the ‘progressive’ way of thinking, and yes, they’ve tried to do this in Granbury ISD,” she wrote in a September 2021 Facebook post, two months before the election. “I cannot sit by and watch their twisted worldview infiltrate Granbury ISD.”

  • Pro Publica ☛ Former Far-Right Hard-Liner Says Billionaires Are Targeting Texas Public Education

    When Courtney Gore ran for a seat on her local school board in 2021, she warned about a movement to indoctrinate children with “leftist” ideology. After 2 1/2 years on the board, Gore said she believes a much different scheme is unfolding: an effort by wealthy conservative donors to undermine public education in Texas and install a voucher system in which public money flows to private and religious schools.

    Gore points to West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who have contributed to various political action committees that have poured millions into legislative candidates who have promoted vouchers. The men also fund or serve on the boards of a host of public policy and advocacy organizations that have led the fight for vouchers in Texas.

  • The Conversation ☛ Billions are spent on educational technology, but we don’t know if it works

    In the aftermath of school closures, the market for edtech has kept on growing. The value of the sector is projected to rise to US$132.4 billion globally by 2032 (£106 billion).

    The problem is that we don’t know very much about how effective many edtech apps or programs are – or if they are effective at all.

    And some effects may be negative. Some of the so-called educational apps advertised to families show many adverts to children. They may use manipulative features to keep children on screens without teaching them anything new.

• Hardware

  • Linux Gizmos ☛ AAEON Nezha: defective chip maker Intel N97 X86 Developer Kit with LPDDR5 Support

    AAEON Nezha: defective chip maker Intel N97 X86 Developer Kit with LPDDR5 Support

    The Nezha Developer Kit by AAEON is designed for retail, industrial, and healthcare applications. It supports high-performance Hey Hi (AI) inferencing, making it suitable for autonomous robots, retail kiosks, medical devices, and industrial computers. With extensive I/O features, it caters to professionals and IoT developers.

  • CNX Software ☛ NXP i.MX 95 SMARC 2.1 system-on-modules – ADLINK LEC-IMX95 and iWave iW-RainboW-G61M

    Several companies have unveiled SMARC 2.1 compliant system-on-modules powered by the NXP i.MX 95 Hey Hi (AI) SoC, and today we’ll look at the ADLINK LEC-IMX95 and iWave Systems iW-RainboW-G61M and related development/evaluation kits.

  • New York Times ☛ Smartphones Can Now Last 7 Years. Here’s How to Keep Them Working.

    Google and Samsung used to update smartphone software for only three years. That has changed.

  • Hackaday ☛ Designing A Quality Camera Slider Can Be Remarkably Satisfying

    Camera sliders are great creative tools, letting you get smooth controlled shots that can class up any production. [Anthony Kouttron] decided to build one for an engineering class, and he ended up mighty satisfied with what he and his team accomplished.

  • The Next Platform ☛ One Cerebras Wafer Beats An Exascale Super At Molecular Dynamics

    We think that waferscale computing is an interesting and even an inevitable concept for certain kinds of compute and memory.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Reason ☛ Kat Murti: How To End the Drug War for Good

    The head of Students for Sensible Drug Policy clarifies the misconceptions around decriminalization, safe injection sites, and whether Trump or Biden is better on drug policy.

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. Suspends Funding for Group at Center of Covid Origins Fight

    The decision came after a scorching hearing in which lawmakers barraged EcoHealth Alliance’s president with claims of misrepresenting work with Chinese virologists.

  • Reason ☛ Biden Administration Strips Federal Funding From Nonprofit at Center of COVID Lab Leak Controversy

    Federal officials say EcoHealth Alliance failed to properly report on its gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and to monitor safety conditions there.

  • RFERL ☛ Belarusian Doctor Who Said Lukashenka Lied About COVID Detained In Russia

    Police in Russia's northwestern Leningrad region on May 15 detained Belarusian physician Uladzimer Martau, who is wanted in Minsk on extremism charges.

  • The Strategist ☛ Taiwan’s indispensability in preparing for pandemics

    The three years of the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a terrible loss of life and exacerbated health inequalities. The global economy slumped, and, worldwide, people’s lives were affected.

  • JURIST ☛ US DOJ says Nebraska’s excessive institutionalization violates civil rights of mentally ill

    The US Department of Justice determined that Nebraska is violating the civil rights of residents with serious mental illnesses by unnecessarily segregating them into institutional settings.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Inhospitable Hospitality: A look into the ruthless nature of cooking shows

    Everybody loves when a certain furious Scottish chef picks a fight in the kitchen. Compilation after compilation has been published celebrating the internet’s most famous chef, Gordon Ramsay (“Hell’s Kitchen”). Whether over raw beef or undercooked scallops, he always finds something to yell about.

  • Reason ☛ Don't Give Biden a Pass on Inflation. Don't Give Trump a Pass on COVID.

    Will the real president of the United States during the years 2020 through 2022 please stand up?

  • LRT ☛ Lithuanian prosecutors to investigate disposal of 2.5m Covid vaccines [Ed: Sales for ghosts, or steep PATENT licences. Who benefits?]

    Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė has ordered an investigation to see whether the purchase of a large quantity of Covid-19 vaccines at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, and the subsequent disposal of some of them without use, constituted a criminal offence.

  • ACLU ☛ States Dust Off Obscure Anti-Mask Laws to Target Pro-Palestine Protesters

    Arcane laws banning people from wearing masks in public are now being used to target people who wear face coverings while peacefully protesting Israel’s war in Gaza. That’s a big problem.

    In the 1940s and 50s, many U.S. states passed anti-mask laws as a response to the Ku Klux Klan, whose members often hid their identities as they terrorized their victims. These laws were not enacted to protect those victims, but because political leaders wanted to defend segregation as part of a “modern South” and felt that the Klan’s violent racism was making them look bad.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Security Week ☛ Senators Urge $32 Billion in Emergency Spending on Hey Hi (AI) After Finishing Yearlong Review

    The group recommends that Congress draft emergency spending legislation to boost U.S. investments in artificial intelligence, including new R&D and testing standards to understand the technology's potential harms.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Bipartisan Senate group proposes $32B in annual federal funding for Hey Hi (AI) innovation

    A bipartisan group of senators is recommending that the federal government spend at least $32 billion a year on non-defense artificial intelligence innovation. Senators Chuck Schumer, Mike Rounds, Martin Heinrich and Todd Young detailed their proposal in a report published today.

  • Microsoft's China AI teams face relocation amid US tightened restrictions [Ed: Buzzword team, lots of hot air and hype]

    Microsoft's headquarters has reportedly instructed the head of its China division to require its Chinese AI developers to either relocate to countries such as the United States and Australia or opt for resignation.

    This directive affects several AI teams in China, including C+AI, Azure ML, and Azure Core, among others. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has stated that Microsoft's Asia-Pacific R&D group, which consists of approximately 7,000 engineers, primarily operates in China.

  • RFA ☛ North Korea opens more app stores for smartphone users

    Smartphone usage is on the rise, but government controls remain strict.

  • Hackaday ☛ Generative AI Hits The Commodore 64

    Image-generating AIs are typically trained on huge arrays of GPUs and require great wads of processing power to run. Meanwhile, [Nick Bild] has managed to get something similar running on a Commodore 64. (via Tom’s Hardware).

  • Hackaday ☛ How AI Large Language Models Work, Explained Without Math

    Large Language Models (LLMs ) are everywhere, but how exactly do they work under the hood? [Miguel Grinberg] provides a great explanation of the inner workings of LLMs in simple (but not simplistic) terms that eschews the low-level mathematics of how they work in favor of laying bare what it is they do.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Security Week ☛ Unwanted Tracking Alerts Rolling Out to iOS, Android [Ed: Android and iOS are themselves trackers and they're controlled by spying giants that work with states]

      Apple and Surveillance Giant Google have rolled out a new mobile feature that warns users of unwanted trackers moving with them.

    • Reason ☛ Here's How the CIA Plans To Use Your Ad Tracking Data

      The intelligence community is admitting that info from data brokers is sensitive but isn’t accepting hard limits on how to use it.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Google releases second Android 15 beta alongside broader ecosystem updates

      The Android team at Surveillance Giant Google LLC today unveiled the second developer beta for Android 15, the next milestone toward the finality of the company’s smartphone operating system, which included productivity improvements, performance and security updates.

• Defence/Aggression

  • BBC ☛ Suspect charged with attempted murder of Slovak PM Fico

    A suspect has been charged with the attempted murder of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, the country's interior minister has said.

    He did not name the alleged assailant, but Slovak reports have widely identified the perpetrator as a 71-year-old from the town of Levice.

    Reports say he could face up to life in prison.

    Doctors said Mr Fico, 59, was in a serious but stable condition after being shot several times in a politically motivated attack.

  • JURIST ☛ UK Foreign Office summons China ambassador over spying allegations

    The UK Foreign Office summoned the Chinese ambassador in response to spying allegations on Tuesday. A statement from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) also confirmed that three individuals have been charged with offences under the National Security Act as part of an investigation led by the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism branch.

  • RFA ☛ The deepening ‘securitization’ of Vietnamese politics

    The security bloc that dominates the Politburo views everything through the lens of security and regime survival.

  • RFA ☛ Philippines, US boost space tech cooperation for maritime awareness, security

    The new cooperation between Manila, Washington came amid heightened South China Sea tensions.

  • teleSUR ☛ Rwanda: Defense College for Military Education to be Establish

    Marizamunda underscored the imperative of adapting to evolving security landscapes, both domestically and regionally, through continuous improvement of military strategies and education.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Kindling trust, reducing risk

    Despite sparring over tariffs and myriad security disputes, the U.S. and China forge ties on two shared threats with touches of personal warmth and respect.

  • New York Times ☛ France Declares State of Emergency Amid Protests in New Caledonia

    The French authorities have undertaken a “massive” mobilization of security forces since violence broke out over a constitutional amendment that changes voting rules in the South Pacific territory.

  • France24 ☛ France imposes state of emergency, bans Fentanylware (TikTok) in riot-hit New Caledonia

    France on Wednesday said it was imposing a state of emergency in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia for at least 12 days, boosting police deployments and banning video app Fentanylware (TikTok) in a bid to quell deadly unrest that has left four people dead.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Billionaire Frank McCourt is organizing a people’s bid to buy TikTok

    The real estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Frank McCourt, a long-time critic of how tech companies use data, is reportedly assembling a consortium to buy TikTok’s U.S. business.

  • Reason ☛ Court Declines to Dismiss Libel Suit by Anthropologist Accused of Mishandling Human Remains from Project MOVE Bombing

    The case was brought by Dr. Janet Monge against the University of Pennsylvania.

  • Reason ☛ What's Going on With Gaza's Fatality Numbers?

    Plus: Inflation reports, how robots look different than we imagined, the morning after the revolution, and more...

  • European Commission ☛ Spring 2024 Economic Forecast: A gradual expansion amid high geopolitical risks

    European Commission Press release Brussels, 15 May 2024 Following broad economic stagnation in 2023, better-than-expected growth at the start of 2024 and the ongoing reduction in inflation set the scene for a gradual expansion of activity over the forecast horizon.

  • RFERL ☛ Yerevan Police Cordon Off Area Around Venue Where Pashinian Expected To Speak

    Police barriers have been set up in areas of Yerevan leading to Freedom Square as activists calling for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian's resignation over a land deal with Azerbaijan pledged to form groups to march to the square, where Pashinian was expected to address an annual meeting of the EBRD.

  • JURIST ☛ ICC prosecutor announces plans to complete investigations into Libya war crimes by 2025

    International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan announced his plans to complete the investigations into war crimes committed in Libya by the end of 2025 on Wednesday at the Security Council.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Taliban flight to Russia reportedly delayed by Ukrainian drone attack in Tatarstan — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Every time she’s offline, I think the FSB got her’: Meet Alina, the 19-year-old daughter of a Russian mercenary whose fiancé is in exile for opposing the war — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Democracy has to be fought for’ Twelve years after the Bolotnaya Square protests, Meduza’s Russian readers reflect on what went wrong — Meduza

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Early retirement of old vehicles won't save the planet, says study

      Lifespan caps for passenger vehicles have limited effect on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and could drive up costs and material use, finds a new study published in Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability. The research shows that although light-duty vehicles (LDVs) contribute 17% to the annual greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, imposing a 15-year lifespan cap on LDV fleets under a business-as-usual scenario will not lead to any meaningful reductions in GHG emissions.

    • DeSmog ☛ Oil Companies Use Paid News Media Partnerships to Protect ‘Social Licence to Operate’, Documents Show

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ How Does Habitat Fragmentation Harm Wildlife?

• Finance

  • Federal News Network ☛ Feds convicted of sex crimes might lose their pensions

    Current law only allows for feds to lose their pensions for conviction on national security charges.

  • The Strategist ☛ Budget: ASPI’s experts give their views

    The Albanese government has unveiled its third budget. Our experts across defence, cybersecurity and technology, the Pacific, climate and critical minerals give their first impressions of what the budget has to offer—and what’s missing.

  • Breach Media ☛ How Canada’s media manufactures sympathy for the landlord class

    ‘Sob stories’ about landlords in the media disguise the exploitation of the housing market—and undermine the fight for tenants’ rights

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • European Commission ☛ EU Security Union - key achievements

    European Commission Factsheet Brussels, 15 May 2024 EU Security Union - key achievements EU Security Union - key achievements EU Security Union - key achievements

  • European Commission ☛ Commission reports on overall progress on the Security Union

    European Commission Press release Brussels, 15 May 2024 Today, the Commission adopted the Seventh Progress Report on the implementation of the EU Security Union Strategy for 2020-2025.

  • JURIST ☛ EU council adopts Pact on Migration and Asylum to reform migration system

    The Council of the European Union announced the formal adoption of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum on Tuesday, taking steps to reform the bloc’s asylum and migration system, despite opposition from Hungary and Poland.

  • FAIR ☛ NYT Editor Denies His Paper’s Role in Setting the Agenda It Reports On

    By way of explaining “the essential role of quality media in informing people about their choice in a presidential election,” Kahn summed up how he sees the Times covering Campaign 2024:

  • Democracy Now ☛ Defense Attorney Ron Kuby on Trump Criminal Trial & Representing Climate & Pro-Palestinian Protesters

    In the historic criminal hush money election fraud trial of former President Donald Trump, New York prosecutors are wrapping up their case charging Trump with falsifying business records in an illegal effort to influence the 2016 presidential election. On Tuesday, Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen admitted he misled the Federal Election Commission about hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. In cross-examination, defense attorneys tried to suggest Cohen was motivated by vengeance against Trump. “He’s the one who has firsthand knowledge of the actual deal that he and Donald Trump struck in order to pay the hush money, create a phony retainer, and ultimately falsify the business records,” says criminal defense lawyer Ron Kuby. “The boss betrayed him. And now he, indeed, is out for revenge.” Kuby says Trump and his right-wing allies are using the trial as a backdrop for politics, and discusses the possibility of Trump serving prison time. Kuby is also representing climate crisis activists arrested at Citibank headquarters in New York City during Earth Week last month and pro-Palestinian activists arrested at recent protests at Fordham University and SUNY Purchase. “I tend to view these struggles … as perennial struggles with each generation kind of rising up to do their part,” Kuby says. “I just have mad respect for the young people who are literally risking their education, their careers and their futures to stand up for the planet, to stand up against the slaughter in Gaza.”

  • US News And World Report ☛ Tesla Plans to Cut 601 More Jobs in California, Notice to Government Says

    Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on April 15 that the company would lay off more than 10% of its global workforce, which stood at over 140,000 in late 2023. The electric vehicle maker has conducted several rounds of job cuts since then, as Musk wanted to slash 20% of its headcount, according to people familiar with the matter.

  • New York Times ☛ OpenAI’s Chief Scientist, Ilya Sutskever, Is Leaving the Company

    Ilya Sutskever, the OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist who in November joined three other board members to force out Sam Altman, the company’s high-profile chief executive, before saying he regretted the move, is leaving the San Francisco A.I. company.

  • The Verge ☛ OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever is officially leaving

    Whatever happened, he seems to have represented a rift that has been growing inside OpenAI for some time. Jan Leike, who has been running the Superalignment team Sutskever stood up to “steer and control” more powerful AI, has also resigned from OpenAI, The Verge has confirmed. His responsibilities will be taken over by John Schulman, another OpenAI co-founder who sided with Altman during the failed board coup from last year.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia’s by-election win gives Anwar govt room to focus on policy and sway youth, Malays

    The Malay middle ground can be swayed by good leadership, good policies and good implementation, say observers.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Reuters ☛ Stella Assange, wife of Wikileaks founder, vows to fight on ahead of crucial court date

      He had always argued that if extradited to Sweden he would then be sent to the United States over WikiLeaks' release of hundreds of thousands of secret documents and diplomatic cables.

      After being dragged out of the embassy in 2019 and jailed for skipping bail, the U.S. did begin extradition proceedings.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • University of Michigan ☛ Stop believing in a ‘right way to protest’

    About two and a half years ago, there was a controversy at my high school when someone wrote racial epithets on a wall in the bathroom.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Technology is probably changing us for the worse—or so we always think

  • Pro Publica ☛ Have You Experienced Homelessness? Do You Work With People Who Have? Tell Us About Encampment Removals.

    We are reporters at ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization. We write stories that hold powerful institutions accountable. This year, we’re investigating what happens when local agencies take belongings from people experiencing homelessness during sweeps. (Cities use terms like “abatements” and “cleanings” to describe this practice, but dozens of people who have experience with this issue said the practice is commonly described as sweeps.)

    Across the country in recent years, cities have been conducting these more often. We’ve spoken to people who have lost valuable possessions, like notes from loved ones, tents and IDs. Sweeps can make it harder to stay on medications and send more people to the hospital.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Albuquerque Is Discarding Homeless People’s Belongings, Violating City Policy

    On a recent morning, Christian Smith ran an errand, leaving a shopping cart carrying everything she owned near the Albuquerque, New Mexico, underpass where she’d been sleeping.

    When she returned, the cart was nowhere to be found.

  • Site36 ☛ Refusal of entry for Ghassan Abu-Sittah was unlawful: German Police must lift his Schengen ban immediately

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • AccessNow ☛ Shrinking democracy, growing violence: internet shutdowns in 2023

    Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition documented 283 internet shutdowns in 2023 — the highest number since 2016.

  • AccessNow ☛ MENA in 2023: internet shutdowns soar amid unprecedented violence and war

    By almost every measure, 2023 was the worst year of internet shutdowns on record. Authorities implemented at least 77 internet shutdowns in 15 countries across the MENA region.

  • APNIC ☛ [Podcast] Measuring RPKI and BGP with Oregon RouteViews

    Doug Madory discusses RPKI, BGP, and measurement using Oregon RouteViews.

  • Arduino ☛ This small device enables users to feel braille through haptics

    For the visually impaired community, most of their interactions on mobile phones are confined to text-to-speech (TTS) interfaces that read portions of the screen aloud. Refreshable braille displays also exist as a tactile means of communication, but their prices can get close to $15,000, putting them out of reach for most people.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Hackaday ☛ You Can Now Jailbreak A PS4 With An LG TV

    You might think that jailbreaking a PS4 to run unsigned code is a complicated process that takes fancy tools and lots of work. While developing said jailbreaks was naturally no mean feat, thankfully they’re far easier for the end user to perform. These days, all you need is an LG TV.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • JUVE ☛ Taylor Wessing strengthens Irish offering with first patent-specialist partner [Ed: Pure spam or marketing placement instead of actual journalism. JUVE wants people to think that some person in the 30s changing a job is news, not pure spam.]

    The Dublin office of international firm Taylor Wessing has shored up its pharmaceutical expertise through the hire of Eoin Martyn (38), who joins from national firm McCann FitzGerald.

  • Unified Patents ☛ Four separate CellSpinsoft data transfer patents challenged

    On April 30, 2024, Unified filed a third ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 8,904,030. The ‘030 patent monopoly is generally directed to uploading data to a remote server, where the data comes from a device that does not have network connectivity. The data is transferred from the capturing device to a mobile device via Bluetooth and then the mobile device uploads the data.

  • Unified Patents ☛ AiPi entity Pedersen message distribution patent monopoly found invalid

    On May 10, 2024, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) issued a final written decision in Unified Patents, LLC v. Peter Henrik Pedersen holding all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 6,965,920 unpatentable. Owned and asserted by Peter Henrik Pedersen, believed to be associated with AiPi Solutions, the '920 patent monopoly is generally directed to the specification and management of how messages are distributed to recipients.

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Navigating the USPTO’s Regulatory Wave: Key Comment Deadlines for Summer 2024

    Over the past two months, the USPTO has issued an unusually large number of public comment requests related to various proposed rules and procedure changes. This wave of RFCs includes significant proposals aimed at adjusting patent monopoly fees for fiscal year 2025, refining terminal disclaimer practices, and addressing the impact of artificial intelligence on prior art and patentability. The agency is also seeking feedback on formalizing the Director Review process following Arthrex and various changes to IPR proceedings, including discretionary review. And there’s more…

    Each of these is important in its own right, but has the potential of being lost in the forest of pending action.  In the details below, I highlight the due dates for comments, which all fall in May, June and July 2024.  This heightened regulatory activity is indicative of a broader trend across the Biden administration, as agencies seek to solidify regulatory changes before the upcoming election.

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ The Legacy of A.B. Dick and Motion Picture Patents: How these 100+ Year Old Ruling Reshaped Patent Law

    I see the US Supreme Court’s 1912 decision in Henry v. A.B. Dick Co. as a major turning point in American patent monopoly and antitrust law. 224 U.S. 1 (1912).  The Court’s 4-3 decision favored the patentee and allowed the patent monopoly owner to place restrictions on the use of its patented product even after sale. But, that decision sparked a major reform effort.  Just a few years later, the Supreme Court reversed course in Motion Picture Patents Co. v. Universal Film Mfg. Co., 243 U.S. 502 (1917), effectively overruling A.B. Dick and signaling a new largely anti-patent-monopoly era.

• Copyrights

  • Public Domain Review ☛ Same as It Ever Was?: Eternal Recurrence in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy

    While Friedrich Nietzsche popularised the notion of an “eternal return” — in which one’s life would occur again, forever, exactly as it did before — the concept was itself a repetition. Claire Hall explores various shades of this idea in ancient philosophy, from Pythagorean metempsychosis to Stoic predictions about a cosmological reset.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Piracy Block Reversed For Tech Site That Reported Site-Blocking Workarounds

    Italian tech website Giardiniblog.it usually receives around a million visits per month. As of today, the 18-year-old site appears to have lost around 36% of its traffic after being permanently blocked by ISPs for publishing site-blocking workarounds. Following a legal appeal, AGCOM nullified its own blocking order, but the basis for blocking the site in the first place has mission creep written all over it.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ VPN, DNS, Give Up, or Go Legal: Aussies' Reactions to Pirate Site-Blocking in 2023

    According to a new survey published by the Australian government, when internet users try to access any of the pirate sites blocked by their ISPs, six in every ten instantly give up looking for pirated content. Fifteen percent seek out content on legal platforms and a persistent one-in-ten dig in and attempt to bypass the blockade.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ ISP Must Unmask Alleged Pirates But Rightsholders Can't 'Harass' Them

    Internet provider Frontier Communications must share the personal details of subscribers with movie and music companies, as part of two ongoing piracy liability lawsuits. The ISP previously redacted the sensitive information, citing privacy concerns, but the court finds that, with proper safeguards, the interests of copyright holders weigh stronger.

  • EFF ☛ Fair Use Still Protects Histories and Documentaries—Even Tiger King

    The case, Whyte Monkee Productions v. Netflix, was brought by a videographer who worked at the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, the Oklahoma attraction run by Joe Exotic that was chronicled in Tiger King. The videographer sued Netflix for copyright infringement over the use of his video clips of Joe Exotic in the series. A federal district court in Oklahoma found Netflix’s use of one of the video clips—documenting Joe Exotic’s eulogy for his husband Travis Maldonado—to be a fair use. A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed that decision and remanded the case, ruling that the use of the video was not “transformative,” a concept that’s often at the heart of fair use decisions.

    The appeals court based its ruling on a mistaken interpretation of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith. Warhol was a deliberately narrow decision that upheld the Supreme Court’s prior precedents about what makes a use transformative while emphasizing that commercial uses are less likely to be fair. The Supreme Court held that commercial re-uses of a copyrighted work—in that case, licensing an Andy Warhol print of the artist Prince for a magazine cover when the print was based on a photo that was also licensed for magazine covers—required a strong justification. The Warhol Foundation’s use of the photo was not transformative, the Supreme Court said, because Warhol’s print didn’t comment on or criticize the original photograph, and there was no other reason why the foundation needed to use a print based on that photograph in order to depict Prince. In Whyte Monkee, the Tenth Circuit honed in on the Supreme Court’s discussion about commentary and criticism but mistakenly read it to mean that only uses that comment on an original work are transformative. The court remanded the case to the district court to re-do the fair use analysis on that basis.

    As EFF, along with Authors Alliance, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, and Public Knowledge explained in an amicus brief supporting Netflix’s request for a rehearing, there are many kinds of transformative fair uses. People creating works of history or biography frequently reproduce excerpts from others’ copyrighted photos, videos, or artwork as indispensable historical evidence. For example, using sketches from the famous Zapruder film in a book about the assassination of President Kennedy was deemed fair, as was reproducing the artwork from Grateful Dead posters in a book about the band. Software developers use excerpts from others’ code—particularly declarations that describe programming interfaces—to build new software that works with what came before. And open government organizations, like EFF client Public.Resource.Org, use technical standards incorporated into law to share knowledge about the law. None of these uses involves commentary or criticism, but courts have found them all to be transformative fair uses that don’t require permission.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Personal/Opinions

    • 🔤SpellBinding: ACFHISU Wordo: DIZZY

    • I Live In A City. Or A Town.

      You see, the Swedish word for "town" is "stad". The Swedish word for "city" is "stad". Yes, we only have one word for something larger than a village or a suburb.

      This makes it a little hard in English conversations. The town (or city) that I live in has a population of about 120,000. It's tiny by international standards, but it's something like the seventh or eighth largest settlement in the country. It doesn't have a central business district, but only the three largest towns/cities have that in any meaningful interpretation of the phrase.

  • Technology and Free Software

    • RSS added, Dillo updated

      You may be reading this on Gemini or on the world wide web. In any case, this blog is actually a gemlog aka a gemini capsule, or whatever you want to call it. I actually write and host this in the Gemini protocol's gemtext format, and I browse/read my own and many other sites on Gemini. But I do also convert my own gemlog to html via my own Geminut program for those that are using web browsers and not gemini clients.

    • Kobo Clara BW Review

      Previously I wrote about getting back into reading, and to accomplish that I got myself one of the new Kobo e-readers that recently released — the Kobo Clara BW. After about two weeks of daily usage I’ve got some thoughts on the device, but the short story is that I really like it!