Links 12/07/2024: Nations That Already Ban TikTok and Russia's 'Shadow War' Online
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Pop Music Melodies Have Gotten Simpler Over Time
Using algorithms and mathematical models, researchers examined the evolution of pitch and rhythm in hit melodies over the past seven decades. Their results, published last week in the journal Scientific Reports, suggest that both elements have become steadily less complex.
“Conservatively, they have both decreased by 30 percent,” lead author Madeline Hamilton, a computer scientist at Queen Mary University of London, tells the New York Times’ Alexander Nazaryan.
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Nature ☛ Trajectories and revolutions in popular melody based on U.S. charts from 1950 to 2023 | Scientific Reports
[...] Two major revolutions in 1975 and 2000 and one smaller revolution in 1996, characterized by significant decreases in complexity, were located. The revolutions divided the time series into three eras, which were modeled separately with autoregression, linear regression and vector autoregression. Linear regression of autoregression residuals underscored inter-feature relationships, which become stronger in post-2000 melodies. The overriding pattern emerging from these analyses shows decreasing complexity and increasing note density in popular melodies over time, especially since 2000.
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Lucidity ☛ My Glorious Ascension To Thought Leadership
This time around, it's just at a whole new level. My anonymity is totally gone. I have 318 unread emails, maybe another 500 lengthy messages on LinkedIn (which, despite the medium, are all thoughtful). I've joked before about making the Clout Number that is LinkedIn followers go up to terrorize empty suits, but I now have three thousand even though the only way to find me on LinkedIn is to navigate to my homepage, to the About Me, then to my profile. Do you know how much work that is in internet terms? There are companies that could 5x their revenue by removing that many steps from finding the purchase button. The worst part is that it's all wasted on me, I don't even know what you do with LinkedIn followers, so I've just been mocking people.
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Science
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Hackaday ☛ Celebrating The [Jack Ells] Automatic Photometric Telescope
Here at Hackaday, we take pride in presenting the freshest hacks and the best of what’s going on today in the world of hardware hacking. But sometimes, we stumble upon a hack from the past so compelling that we’ve got to bring it to you, so we can all marvel at what was possible in the Before Times.
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Hardware
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Hackaday ☛ You Can Build A Little Car That Goes Farther Than You Push It
Can you build a car that travels farther than you push it? [Tom Stanton] shows us that you can, using a capacitor and some nifty design tricks.
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The Register UK ☛ PC market grows for third quarter in a row
Canalys said in its latest report that the PC market grew 3.4 percent year-over-year in the second calendar quarter - similar to the growth seen in the first quarter and the fourth quarter of last year. Laptops and other mobile PCs led the pack with four percent annual growth while desktop shipments ticked up just one percent.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Jim Nielsen ☛ Creating Some Noise on Behalf of Silence
Reading the book, you realize, “Damn, this guy led a life that was the very antithesis of our world of hyper-stimulation.”
When the author asked him to describe his experience of solitary quietude, the best Knight could do is declare that words failed him. “Silence does not translate to words” he said.
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Lou Plummer ☛ Taking a Mental Health Day
Whenever I have been in a position to offer advice to friends or coworkers over the years, I have always advocated for self-care. The job will wait; people come first. Today, I practiced what I preach, and I'm glad I did. It will undoubtedly make the rest of the week better.
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Science Alert ☛ Does Walking to Work Burn The Same Calories as Running? Here's The Science.
This metabolic cost can be determined by analysing the oxygen our bodies consume and the carbon dioxide they produce, we can estimate the amount of energy expended, and thus the metabolic cost.
It was using this method that researchers had already answered our question back in the 1970s.
Perhaps not surprisingly, running consumes more energy than walking for the same distance covered. But why?
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Stephen Hackett ☛ Steve Jobs: The 1996 Fresh Air Interview
I know WebObjects is the butt of jokes these days, but hearing Jobs speak about in 1996 has given me a new appreciation for what NeXT was trying to do with it.
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The Walrus ☛ When Facial Recognition Helps Police Target Black Faces
When Karl first started working on the problem of facial recognition, it wasn’t supposed to be used live on protesters or pedestrians or ordinary people. It was supposed to be a photo analysis tool. From its inception in the ’90s, researchers knew there were biases and inaccuracies in how the algorithms worked. But they hadn’t quite figured out why.
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Futurism ☛ Expert Warns That AI Industry Due for Huge Collapse
Experts are growing increasingly concerned over early signs that the frenzy surrounding AI could collapse in on itself — a bubble which, if it bursts, could end in disaster.
Take James Ferguson, founding partner of the UK-based macroeconomic research firm MacroStrategy Partnership, who recently sat down with Bloomberg's Merryn Somerset Webb for an episode of the "Merryn Talks Money" podcast to argue that there are already plenty of warning signs.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ AI is poised to automate today’s most mundane manual warehouse task
Jacobi Robotics, a startup spun out of the labs of the University of California, Berkeley, says it can vastly speed up that process with AI command-and-control software. The researchers approached palletizing—one of the most common warehouse tasks—as primarily an issue of motion planning: How do you safely get a robotic arm to pick up boxes of different shapes and stack them efficiently on a pallet without getting stuck? And all that computation also has to be fast, because factory lines are producing more varieties of products than ever before—which means boxes of more shapes and sizes.
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Inside Towers ☛ AI-fueled Network Improvements Could Slow Tower Build Outs
Mobile Experts uses modeling to predict how many towers, base stations, and radios that the major carriers will deploy, as well as which bands they plan to use. The firm’s report, “AI Optimization of the RAN” found that AI will have a definite impact on RAN build outs, because of the increased performance it will provide to cellular networks. That improvement is the result of the ability to optimize around 200 different settings at the site, including more accurate beamforming, modulation, and antenna tilt settings.
“When humans optimize a network, they can only grasp maybe eight to 10 different parameters and optimize those, but AI can grasp all 200 parameters and come up with the best possible solution for capacity,” Madden said.
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New York Times ☛ A.I. Helped to Spot a Copper Mining Bonanza in Zambia
The New York Times also reviewed an independent, third-party assessment of KoBold’s claims, which, while slightly more conservative than KoBold’s own, largely corroborated the size of the deposit. In a statement, KoBold said it expected the value of the mine to grow because it had yet to map the full extent of its highest-grade ore.
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Michael Tsai ☛ Calling AI a Bubble
The report is here.
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[Old] TechCrunch ☛ MIT robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks thinks people are vastly overestimating generative AI | TechCrunch
In fact, he likes to make predictions about the future of AI and keeps a scorecard on his blog of how well he’s doing.
He knows what he’s talking about, and he thinks maybe it’s time to put the brakes on the screaming hype that is generative AI. Brooks thinks it’s impressive technology, but maybe not quite as capable as many are suggesting. “I’m not saying LLMs are not important, but we have to be careful [with] how we evaluate them,” he told TechCrunch.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Meduza ☛ No exit Russia is developing a new ‘data exchange’ system to help the FSB catch conscripts trying to leave the country
In the spring of 2023, Russia passed new legislation introducing “temporary measures aimed at ensuring compliance with military summons.” Most of these new measures are targeted at “draft evaders” who ignore summonses, and they can only be applied 20 calendar days after the recipient fails to appear at a military conscription office. However, one of the “temporary measures” comes into force as soon as the summons is issued: a ban on leaving Russia.
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PC Mag ☛ Every Phone Can ID Your Router—Here's How to Stop It
If learning about the possible dangers has you worried, or if you’re just enthused about every possible enhancement to your privacy, it’s easy enough to opt out. Both Apple and Google have agreed to ignore routers with SSIDs having a certain format. Specifically, if the router name ends in “_nomap” they ignore it.
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Patrick Breyer ☛ Take action to stop chat control now!
Chat control is back on the agenda of EU governments. They will discuss “progress” on 10/11 October and are to endorse it on 12/13 December. In June we managed to stop the unprecedented plan by an extremely narrow “blocking minority” of EU governments: Chat control proponents achieved 63.7% of the 65% of votes threshold required in the Council of the EU for a qualified majority.
Several formerly opposed governments such as France have already given up their opposition. Several still critical governments are only asking for small modifications (e.g. searching for “known content” only or excluding end-to-end encryption) which would still result in mass searches and leaks of our private communications. Therefore there is a real threat that the required majority for mass scanning of private communications may be achieved at any time under the current Hungarian presidency (Hungary being a supporter of the proposal).
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NYOB ☛ noyb's Consent Banner Report: How authorities actually decide
Following several hundred noyb complaints against companies that use questionable consent banners, the European Data Protection Board established a "cookie banner taskforce" in September 2021. In January 2023, the taskforce then published a report offering its opinion and recommendations regarding the different kind of violations found in consent banners. With its new Consent Banner Report, noyb compared the taskforce's findings with the positions taken by national DPAs in guidance documents and actual decisions. This can be a helpful resources for companies implementing consent banners.
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Defence/Aggression
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India Times ☛ US Republican lawmakers concerned over Microsoft-G42 AI deal, letter says
Republican lawmakers are seeking an intelligence briefing from the Biden administration on Microsoft's $1.5 billion investment in UAE-based artificial intelligence firm G42, citing concerns over the transfer of sensitive technology and G42's ties to China.
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Los Angeles Times ☛ This country banned TikTok. What became of its influencers?
For an answer, they might turn to India, which has been surviving without TikTok since June 2020.
That month, after 20 of its soldiers were killed in a border clash with China, the Indian government gave TikTok users a day to post tearful goodbyes and steer followers to other social media accounts. Then the app went dark.
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RFERL ☛ Russia Conducting 'Shadow War' To Destabilize European Countries, Leaders Say
Russia is carrying out a "shadow war" against European countries through cyberattacks, disinformation, sabotage, and other measures and it's time to recognize it and respond, according to European leaders attending the NATO summit.
"There is a shadow war going on that is clear in all those domains," Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said at a panel discussion on July 10 on the sidelines of the summit in Washington.
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Bitdefender ☛ Exposed! The AI-enhanced social media bot farm that pumped out Kremlin propaganda on Twitter
The FBI has issued a joint cybersecurity advisory with its international partners, detailing the make-up of an AI-enhanced social media bot farm that was used to spread propaganda around the world.
The bot farm, known as "Meliorator," created fake accounts that often purported to be based in the United States. The fake accounts spread pro-Russian narratives and disinformation on Twitter, mimicking the tone of genuine users.
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BoingBoing ☛ Why MAGA voters choose Trump over self-interest
As he researched the book, he learned that right-wing tribalism is deeply intertwined with autocratic leadership. "Understanding the tribe and understanding right-wing tribes means understanding an autocratic leader because right-wing tribalism is so much tied in with the role of an authoritarian or autocratic leader," he says in the interview. "So the very things that you and I might find repellent his corruption, for example, is part of what his followers adore about him, because his brand is impunity. You know, the fact that he's been openly corrupt, he's a liar, racist, sadistic, and has never until relatively recently been held to account or pay a significant price and it still remains to be determined if that is actually gonna happen. Those qualities of impunity, his followers find powerfully seductive and admirable."
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Deccan Chronicle ☛ NATO Expresses Concern Over Deepening Russia-China Ties
NATO leaders called on China, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council with a particular responsibility to uphold the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, to cease all material and political support to Russia's war effort.
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RFA ☛ NATO calls China ‘decisive enabler’ of Russia’s war in Ukraine
China is a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine through its support for the country’s defense industry, says a statement issued by the 32 NATO members at a summit in Washington on Wednesday.
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El País ☛ Will NATO survive another Trump presidency?
Few of those surveyed mentioned the greater danger looming over NATO. It is not the withdrawal of the United States or the distribution of defense expenses, but the erosion of the credibility of Article 5 of the Treaty, a subtle deterrence mechanism based on the military and nuclear power of the main partner of the Alliance. Trump has already shown signs of his ability to render it useless and thereby erode the value of the Alliance, devalue Ukraine’s membership request and consequently grant victory to Putin. If such a thing were to happen, the future of the Alliance, and especially of the mutual defense mechanism, would remain in the hands of the Europeans, and especially France and the United Kingdom, the two largest military powers in Europe and the only ones in the Alliance that can deploy a nuclear shield. NATO will survive, but it will be difficult to recognize it with Trump in the White House and a politically absent (if not absent altogether) United States whose democracy is waning.
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RTL ☛ Phasing out: Germany to ban Chinese telecom giants from 5G network
It was the latest move by Berlin to reduce economic reliance on Beijing that some fear have left it vulnerable, and follows warnings from the EU that the firms pose a risk to the bloc.
Parts from Huawei and ZTE will no longer be used in "core" 5G mobile networks by the end of 2026 at the latest, the interior ministry in Berlin said.
In 5G access and transmission infrastructure, the systems of the telecom firms must be replaced by the end of 2029.
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CS Monitor ☛ Hamas believes it has won. Why it wants to move on from Gaza.
After nine months of war with Israel, Hamas’ postwar strategy – based on what it sees as its impending victory – is taking shape. It includes winning power in the West Bank while evading responsibility for Gaza’s reconstruction – and for the vast devastation and loss of life from a war it incited.
It has the feel of an audacious agenda, and “victory” is not a term Hamas uses often in public, knowing it is an emotionally charged term in Gaza, where some 38,000 people have been killed. But polling suggests that simply by surviving and shaking up the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and through careful messaging, Hamas could be on track to achieve its aims.
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The Atlantic ☛ Trump Is Planning for a Landslide Win
There was always a certain danger inherent to this assault on Biden’s faculties. If Wiles and LaCivita were too successful—if too many Democrats decided, too quickly, that Biden was no longer capable of defeating Trump, much less serving another four years thereafter—then they risked losing an ideal opponent against whom their every tactical maneuver had already been deliberated, poll-tested, and prepared. Campaigns are usually on guard against peaking too soon; in this case, the risk for Trump’s team was Biden bottoming out too early.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Meduza ☛ Russia adds Yulia Navalnaya to official list of ‘terrorists and extremists’ — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ ‘Our guys’: In Russia’s Buryatia, high military death rates make the war impossible to ignore. A new report reveals how it’s become normalized. — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ ‘We can’t stop treatment, not even for an hour’: After a Russian missile hit Ukraine’s top children’s hospital, medical staff rushed to save their patients. One doctor tells her story. — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ ‘My poor country’: Filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev on the historic conviction of two theater artists for ‘justifying terrorism’ — Meduza
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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404 Media ☛ FOIA Forum with a PACER Expert! 7/31, 1PM EST
It’s nearly that time again! We’re planning our fourth FOIA Forum, a live, hour-long (maybe a little bit more; almost certainly more, come on) interactive session for our paying subscribers. But this one is extra special: we're going to be joined by Seamus Hughes, who I wholeheartedly believe is the most knowledgeable person in the world when it comes to digging up court records from the U.S. system called PACER. He is a PACER wizard.
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Tracy Durnell ☛ The importance of anecdotal evidence
The lesson it took me many years to learn after reading Silent Spring is that anecdotal evidence serves as an early warning, and that the cost of collecting “enough evidence” means that much more harm happens in the time you *know* something is very probably true but you can’t yet *decisively* prove it. Proving causality is hard, time-consuming, and expensive — especially given cuts to funding scientific research. This prove-the-harm approach allows companies to delay, delay, delay acting because the evidence is not 100% iron-clad.
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Environment
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 6 dead after record rains strike southwest China as country endures summer of extreme weather
Six people were killed as record rains struck southwest China, state media reported Thursday, as the country endures a summer of extreme weather. Torrential downpours struck Dianjiang county, near the megacity of Chongqing, from Wednesday night to Thursday morning, state news agency Xinhua said, citing county officials.
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Hindustan Times ☛ US announces record oil and gas pollution penalty against Marathon Oil
U.S. officials on Thursday announced a $241 million settlement with Marathon Oil over alleged air pollution violations at dozens of the company's oil and gas facilities on a North Dakota Indian reservation, saying it was part of an ongoing crackdown.
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Futurism ☛ It's So Hot That an Entire New York City Bridge That Opens for Boats Got Jammed
And the timing of this swelling couldn't have been worse. The swing bridge was in the middle of turning around to connect back with the road after letting a ship through — but got stuck before it could finish lining up with the locking mechanism on the Manhattan side. Motorists trying to get places, meanwhile, were left waiting for hours.
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CBS ☛ Third Avenue Bridge in the Bronx reopens to traffic after malfunctioning due to high heat - CBS New York
Officials believe the bridge got stuck open at around 3 p.m. because of high heat expanding the metal.
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CS Monitor ☛ Ithaca, New York, set ‘crazy’ climate goals. Here’s what happened next.
But if Ithaca’s movement to zero emissions has been far slower than pledged, there’s also another part of the story, government and climate activists say. Even with a global pandemic, a change in city government leadership, and the crushing reality of how much it actually costs to move a city away from fossil fuels, this community hugging the southern tip of Cayuga Lake is crawling toward its climate goals – and motivating other smaller cities across the country to do the same.
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Science News ☛ Landfills belch toxic ‘forever chemicals’ into the air
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have been detected in the gas exuded by some Florida landfills in quantities comparable to or even greater than in the liquids that seep from the waste, researchers report June 26 in Environmental Science & Technology Letters. These chemicals have been linked to cancer, weakened immune systems, developmental problems in children and a tide of other harmful health effects (SN: 6/15/21).
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The Barents Observer ☛ A second Trump Presidency will impact the Arctic
Environmental issues have been central to the interests of Arctic States, and related U.S. priorities will change significantly if Trump is elected. In particular, policy on climate change will be fundamentally altered. It is likely that Trump would again withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement and move away from global programs to decarbonize and limit greenhouse gas emissions. He has already promised to remove domestic regulations that limit oil and gas production, suggesting that oil executives donate $1 billion to his campaign given the benefits their companies would receive. Such actions will severely undercut international efforts to address the climate crisis. And when other countries see that history’s largest carbon polluter isn’t taking necessary yet costly actions to address climate issues, they will hesitate to act as well.
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Energy/Transportation
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DeSmog ☛ ‘All of Our Tricks Worked’: Spoof ExxonMobil Ad Nails Just How Easy It’s Been for Big Oil
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DeSmog ☛ Oil and Gas Leases on Federal Lands in Question as Lawmakers Eye Shale Collusion Allegations
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Truthdig ☛ AI Is Straining the Electrical Grid - Truthdig
The artificial intelligence boom has had such a profound effect on big tech companies that their energy consumption, and with it their carbon emissions, have surged.
The spectacular success of large language models such as ChatGPT has helped fuel this growth in energy demand. At 2.9 watt-hours per ChatGPT request, AI queries require about 10 times the electricity of traditional Google queries, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research firm. Emerging AI capabilities such as audio and video generation are likely to add to this energy demand.
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Wired ☛ AI's Energy Demands Are Out of Control. Welcome to the Internet's Hyper-Consumption Era
“The carbon footprint and the energy consumption will be linear to the amount of computation you do, because basically these data centers are being powered proportional to the amount of computation they do,” says Junchen Jiang, a networked systems researcher at the University of Chicago. The bigger the AI model, the more computation is often required, and these frontier models are getting absolutely gigantic.
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David Rosenthal ☛ More On The Halvening
At the end of May I wrote One Heck Of A Halvening about the aftermath of the halving of Bitcoin's block reward on April 19th. Six weeks later it is time for a quick update, so follow me below the fold.
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The Korea Times ☛ For whom the bell tolls
Lithium-ion battery cells combine a flammable electrolyte with a lot of stored energy. If the battery creates more heat than it can disperse (for example, because of overcharging), this can lead to a rapid uncontrolled release of heat energy, known as thermal runaway, that leads to an explosive, very high-temperature fire. Once on fire, the burning battery cells will release further highly flammable and toxic gases from their casings. What makes such fires even more dangerous is that they generate their own oxygen and therefore are very difficult to put out with traditional fire extinguishers.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Donald Trump to address major bitcoin event
The [cryptocurrency] sector is trying to bolster candidates seen as favourable to digital assets, including through substantial donations to the Fairshake political action committee. That’s part of the industry’s push-back after a regulatory clampdown spearheaded by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Wired ☛ Pressure Grows in Congress to Treat [Cryptocurrency] Investigator Tigran Gambaryan, Jailed in Nigeria, as a Hostage
On Wednesday, US congressman Rich McCormick, who represents Gambaryan's district in his home state of Georgia, submitted a resolution to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that both urges the Nigerian government to release Gambaryan and calls on the US government to recognize that Gambaryan is being illegally detained as a hostage in an effort to extort his employer, Binance. That resolution represents the latest in a series of growing calls from Congress for the White House to step up its pressure on Nigeria to release Gambaryan, a former federal agent who led many of the most significant cryptocurrency-related criminal cases of the last decade during his time as an IRS criminal investigator.
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Overpopulation
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Locals bear the brunt of mass tourism in southern Europe
About 49,000 people live in Venice's historic city center. According to various estimates, more than 20 million tourists visit the city each year. And so, the daily lives of some provide the backdrop for the vacation memories of others.
Europe is the continent that attracts the most international tourists. And Venice is not the only European city suffering from the impact of mass tourism. There have been an increasing amount of reports on protests against tourism in Barcelona and other Spanish cities. And in the Portuguese capital Lisbon, its Czech counterpart Prague, as well as the Dutch city of Amsterdam, reports of tensions between visitors and locals have been piling up.
In each city, the reasons cited for these mounting tensions are similar: rising rents, astronomical real estate prices, and the question of who is allowed to use which resources.
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Stanford University ☛ The Dangerous Myth of Population Growth: How Billionaires Are Leading Us Astray
The fact is, though, that countries with huge populations generally are more likely to have more slum dwellers than scientists or musicians. It’s only when people have widespread prosperity, so there’s time for a creative middle class to form, that such extraordinary people have the time to develop their talents.
This literally cancerous idea — that continual population growth is a good thing — has been with us for about 2000 years, and, while it has arguably accounted for some of the positive aspects of modern civilization, it has also left our world in a shambles.
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Our World in Data ☛ Five key findings from the 2022 UN Population Prospects - Our World in Data
Since 1975 the world has been adding another billion people every 12 years.
It passed its last milestone of 7 billion in 2011. And, by the end of 2022, another one will pass: there will be 8 billion people worldwide.
While this absolute growth is similar to previous decades, the growth rate continues to fall. Since 2019, the global population growth rate has fallen below 1%.
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US News And World Report ☛ The 25 Largest Countries by Population
Nearly three-quarters of people around the world live in one of the 25 most populous countries. African countries on the list had some of the largest percentage increases in population from 2013 to 2023, ranging from a low of 12% in South Africa to a high of nearly 40% in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Meanwhile, Italy and Japan were the only countries among the largest 25 by population that experienced a decline between 2013 and 2023, with their totals falling by 2.4% and 2.3% over that time period, respectively.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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The Register UK ☛ Palantir, Oracle to offer former's tech on Big Red cloud
Palantir was founded with the help of CIA-backed investment fund In-Q-Tel and it attracted a certain controversy by providing digital profiling tools for the CIA and US immigration agency ICE. Its motor-mouth CEO Alex Karp has not shied away from justifying its roots in the context of modern politics. He has previously claimed, among other things, that the so-called "woke" political movement was a "a form of a thin pagan religion" which was "corrupting and corroding our institutions."
Under the terms of the arrangement, Oracle is set to provide distributed cloud, AI infrastructure, and sovereign AI capabilities to support Palantir's AI and data analytics platforms. Palantir already has agreements with AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, which together make up 67 percent of the entire global cloud spend.
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Federal News Network ☛ Sulmeyer looks to extend SOCOM model for CYBERCOM as lawmakers resurface cyber force idea
Lawmakers have legislatively modeled Cyber Command after SOCOM, given how successful the combatant command has been in providing the DoD with specialized capabilities that the military services don’t have the capacity to deliver on their own.
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Federal News Network ☛ With UNO, Army intends to stop battling its own network
Through the Unified Network Operations (UNO), initiative, the Army wants to create an agile, software-defined network that is easy to set up and use. This is the opposite of what soldiers currently must deal with then setting up a tactical network that requires on-premise hardware, cables and unique knowledge and skillsets.
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Michael Geist ☛ Know When to Fold Em: The Big Risk Behind Canada’s Digital Services Tax Bet
Few would dispute that tech companies should pay their fair share. Indeed, general tax revenues are preferable to the cross-industry subsidy model that the government has relied upon to support the Canadian cultural and news lobbies. But timing also matters. Canada could have waited for the international agreement to coalesce even as the retroactive DST revenues continued to accumulate. By striking now for its pot of gold, it runs the risk of creating significant harm to the Canadian economy and solidifying the growing global perspective of a government hostile toward the tech sector.
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New York Times ☛ I.R.S. Crackdown on Delinquent Millionaires Yields $1 Billion
The I.R.S. targeted 1,600 taxpayers with more than $1 million of income who owed more than $250,000 in tax debt.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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RTL ☛ Nobel Prize winner: Russia denies jailed campaigner Orlov's plea for freedom
His arrest and sentencing for breaching Russia's strict military censorship laws triggered international outcry, seen as a marker of how far the Kremlin was prepared to go in quashing dissent and targeting independent voices.
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France24 ☛ Russia issues arrest warrant for Navalny's widow
Navalnaya has vowed to continue the work of her husband Alexei Navalny, Russian leader Vladimir Putin's main opponent who died in an Arctic prison in February.
Navalnaya slammed the warrant in a statement, saying : "Vladimir Putin is a killer and a war criminal. He belongs in prison".
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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BIA Net ☛ CPJ calls for investigation into drone strike on Kurdish journalists
Two Kurdish journalists were wounded in a drone strike on a vehicle carrying them on July 8, reportedly carried out by Turkey.
The attack resulted in injuries to Çira TV reporter Medya Hasan, Çira FM reporter Murad Mîrza, and the driver of the vehicle. While Hasan and the driver are reportedly recovering well after being taken to a hospital in Şengal, Mîrza's condition remains serious following his transfer to a hospital in Mosul.
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The Nation ☛ Assange’s Case Shows Why Reforming the Espionage Act Is Imperative for Press Freedom
Missing from the government’s summation of the crime was that this information contained revelations about war crimes, state criminality, and abuses of power. It also omitted that both Manning and Assange were motivated by a belief that by exposing the horrors of war, they could spark a public debate about US foreign policy.
Speaking at his sentencing hearing, Assange explained his crime to the judge by saying, “Working as a journalist I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified in order to publish that information.” Assange stated that he believes these actions were protected by the First Amendment, but “the First Amendment and the Espionage Act are in contradiction with each other”
Assange is right on both counts. His actions were journalistic activities that are protected under the First Amendment. And if they are a crime under the Espionage Act, the 107-year-old law is in contradiction with the First Amendment.
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BIA Net ☛ Media freedom groups express support for Açık Radyo after license revocation
Eighteen local and international media and freedom of expression organizations have signed a statement condemning the decision by the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) to cancel the broadcast license of Açık Radyo. The independent radio station was shut down following a program that mentioned the Armenian genocide.
The organizations assert that there is a systematic harassment of independent media in Turkey. They demand the reinstatement of Açık Radyo's license, emphasizing the need for media institutions in Turkey to freely discuss matters of public interest without fear of sanctions.
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Axios ☛ CNN boss lays out plans for digital future, layoffs to come
• Those paid offerings, he noted, will be anchored by lifestyle journalism topics "where CNN is uniquely positioned to win."
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The Korea Times ☛ Foreign-language newspaper guild marks 9th anniversary
The Foreign Language Newspapers Association of Korea (FNA) celebrated its ninth anniversary, Tuesday, recognizing contributors who have promoted information about Korea in various languages.
The FNA was established in July 2015 to seek cooperation for the development of domestic foreign language newspapers published daily. Its members include The Korea Times, The Korea JoongAng Daily, The Korea Herald and The Aju Daily, a Chinese edition of Aju Business Daily.
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Futurism ☛ CNN Firing 100 Employees Amid “Strategic Push Into AI”
Thompson didn't elaborate further on any specific AI plans, but the mention is significant. CNN is a massive and deeply influential news organization, and where and how it uses AI — or, conversely, where and how it chooses not to — has the potential to set off significant dominoes across the journalism and broadcasting industries.
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Hollywood Reporter ☛ CNN Layoffs Will Lead to New Digital Subscriptions and TV Offerings
In his note, Thompson said that about 100 roles will be cut, representing just shy of 3 percent of CNN’s workforce. He will host a town hall with staff later in the day to further elaborate on the plan.
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CPJ ☛ Mexican journalist Victor Morales found dead on highway
“The brutal murder of Víctor Morales is a sad reminder of the ongoing violence and impunity crisis journalists in Mexico are facing and underscores the urgent need for President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum to prioritize press safety when she takes office in October,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico Representative. “Mexican authorities must do everything in their power to apprehend those responsible for this latest killing and establish the motive.”
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Spiegel ☛ Former Saudi Intelligence Chief: "We Have Nothing to Apologize For" - DER SPIEGEL
Turki: Jamal Khashoggi was unjustly killed by an uncontrolled element in the Saudi government. Fortunately, all those involved in the murder were arrested, convicted and sent to prison. The king and the crown prince have ordered that funeral services be held in the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina in memory of Jamal Khashoggi.
DER SPIEGEL: Are you not just twisting the facts?
Turki: Khashoggi's family has accepted the conviction of the murderers by the Saudi Arabian court and expressed their gratitude to the king and the crown prince.
DER SPIEGEL: One could also say: A couple of scapegoats are now behind bars and the main people responsible got off scot-free.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Privacy International ☛ Digital Health: what does it mean for your rights and freedoms
Governments have been digitising their health systems and, more broadly, healthcare. We provide an overview of the right to health situated in the digital context, exploring the perceived benefits and magnified risks of digital health initiatives that put patients' data and freedoms at risk. Without careful consideration of the impact and the dangers, the promised benefits may end up creating more harm than good.
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International Business Times ☛ From Anywhere to Everywhere: Top 8 Remote Jobs That Let You Work Without Boundaries
Here, we explore some of the most coveted jobs that allow individuals to work while travelling, providing both lucrative salaries and the opportunity to see the world.
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[Old] The Guardian UK ☛ Want to be a criminal in America? Stealing billions is your best bet to go scot-free
So this is a story of a corporation that stole millions of dollars from its own employees. How much news coverage did it generate? There was a single 221-word story in Bloomberg Law, an industry publication. And that’s it. There has been no coverage in the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, or the dozens of other publications that covered the story of a man stealing a few hundred dollars of merchandise.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Techdirt ☛ Big Telecom Prepares For The Final Killing Blow Against Net Neutrality
Back in April the Biden FCC once again voted along party lines to restore net neutrality rules stripped away by the Trump FCC in a flurry of sleazy industry behavior that included using fake and dead people to create the illusion of public support. The Trump FCC was also caught making up a DDOS attack to explain away public outrage (net neutrality historically actually has fairly broad bipartisan support).
With the return of the rules, the telecom industry is once again taking the matter to court, filing a flurry of lawsuits in late May claiming the FCC lacks the authority not just to enforce net neutrality, but to protect broadband consumers at all. In June, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals won the lottery to hear the industry’s net neutrality challenge; a boon for telecoms: [...]
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The Register UK ☛ China’s IPv6 growth rate slows, fresh upgrade blitz launched
The nation is, however, closing in on goals to achieve an IPv6 user population of 800 million by 2025, plus 70 per cent of mobile traffic running over the protocol. A target to have 15 percent of fixed traffic on IPv6 has been met.
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APNIC ☛ A multifaceted look at Starlink performance: The good, the bad and the ugly
To understand the global performance of Starlink and what factors impact its operations, we conducted a thorough multifaceted active and passive measurement study published in ACM The Web Conference 2024. This blog post summarizes the key learnings from our extensive measurement study which explored: [...]
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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The Verge ☛ The AI-focused COPIED Act would make removing digital watermarks illegal
The Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media Act (COPIED Act) would direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create standards and guidelines that help prove the origin of content and detect synthetic content, like through watermarking. It also directs the agency to create security measures to prevent tampering and requires AI tools for creative or journalistic content to let users attach information about their origin and prohibit that information from being removed. Under the bill, such content also could not be used to train AI models.
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Los Angeles Times ☛ Redbox DVD kiosk business will shut down and fire 1,000
The business’ parent company, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, received court approval on Wednesday to change its bankruptcy filing from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7, with plans to liquidate its assets and lay off 1,000 employees.
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[Old] Elektronisk Forpost Norge ☛ Net information about the Jon Johansen (“DVD Jon”) case
The autumn of 1999 Jon Lech Johansen (“DVD Jon”) with others decrypted the copy control system on DVD records to make it possible to view the DVDs at the Linux operating system. The program that made this possible was called “DeCSS” and released on the Internet. This resulted in him being sued by DVD Copy Control Association in USA, arrested by Norwegian police and charged by The Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (ØKOKRIM).
The case has been heavily written about all over the world, and this page contains links to a great deal of these. It contains only links to articles in English, if you want to read the complete list with links to documents in other languages, please visit the original Jon Johansen page.
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[Old] Wired ☛ Hacker 'DVD Jon' Goes on Trial
The charges were filed after Norwegian prosecutors received a complaint from the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the major Hollywood studios.
The prosecutors agreed with the movie industry that Johansen's program, in effect, left their property unlocked and open for theft. Called DeCSS, it compromised an industry-developed software scheme called the Content Scrambling System usually called CSS that was designed to prevent unauthorized duplication.
Johansen has said he wanted only to watch DVDs on his Linux-based computer, which lacked the DVD-viewing software of Windows and Macintosh users. However, DeCSS also lets people copy and share DVD files on the Internet, thus allowing others to obtain movies for free.
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Macworld ☛ Mac Security: How secure is a Mac, is macOS more secure than Windows?
Another thing to note is that the M-series chips that Apple started using in November 2020 are considered more secure than Intel processors. However, malware known as Silver Sparrow was found on the M1 Mac shortly after launch.
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Vox ☛ I left Spotify for Apple Music. Here's why.
Spotify raised its prices in July for the second time in as many years. And while that price hike is part of why I quit, it’s still not the whole story. Basically, Spotify just started annoying me. I’d get peeved by ads for concerts popping up without warning and not being able to find a way to turn them off. The app also didn’t work as well as it used to. It froze sometimes, struggled to play music over my earbuds, and almost never connected to my Sonos speakers when I wanted it to. These are little gripes, but they add up, especially when you’re paying money for a service. And Spotify wants me to pay even more!
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Digital Music News ☛ An Estimated 73% of YouTube Music Subs Use Bundled Plans
As Spotify grapples with criticism and litigation over its unprecedented embrace of bundling, another telling stat has emerged: 73% of YouTube Music’s estimated subscribers use plans that are classified as bundles for royalty purposes.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Apple will open access to its iOS payment system to end EU antitrust probe
Apple’s iPhones and iPads feature an NFC, or near-field communication, chip that allows users to pay at stores with their handsets. NFC makes it possible to make purchases by holding a mobile device near a payment terminal. The technology uses a digital wallet, an app that stores the user’s credit card details, to process transactions.
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RTL ☛ Binding commitment: EU accepts Apple plan to open iPhone tap-to-pay to rivals
Now competitors will have access to the standard technology behind contactless payments to offer alternative tap-to-pay tools to iPhone users in the European Economic Area (EEA), which includes the EU but also Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
Only customers with an Apple ID registered in the EEA would be able to make use of these outside apps, the European Commission said in a statement.
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India Times ☛ EU antitrust regulators accept Apple's offer to open up mobile payments system
"Apple's final commitments would address its competition concerns over Apple's restriction of third-party mobile wallet developers' access to NFC payments in stores for EEA iOS users," the European Commission said in a statement.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ EU OKs Apple plan to open tap-to-pay to rivals
The alternatives will be available to Apple registered throughout the European Economic Area, which includes the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
Apple had risked a fine of up to 10% of its global annual turnover. Total revenue in the year to September 2023 stood at $383 billion ($352).
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Apple buckles to EU pressure on mobile wallets
Apple’s decision to settle the EU antitrust probe marks a rare move by the company which has pushed back against the EU competition watchdog scrutinising its business practices. It currently faces three investigations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) over its business practices.
The European Commission, which acts as the EU antitrust enforcer, said Apple’s offer would be valid for 10 years. More than 3 000 banks and issuers in Europe offer Apple Pay.
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VOA News ☛ EU accepts Apple plan to open iPhone tap-to-pay to rivals
The case dates back to 2022 when Brussels first accused Apple of blocking rivals from its popular iPhone tap payment system in a breach of EU competition law.
"Apple has committed to allow rivals to access the 'tap and go' technology of iPhones. Today's decision makes Apple's commitments binding," EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
"From now on, competitors will be able to effectively compete with Apple Pay for mobile payments with the iPhone in shops. So consumers will have a wider range of safe and innovative mobile wallets to choose from," she said.
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The Register UK ☛ European Commission accepts Apple's 'tap and go' pledges
During the investigation, the EC made the preliminary conclusion that Apple was indeed abusing its position to keep rivals at bay.
Earlier this year, Apple announced some major changes to its mobile operating system, which included developer access to NFC hardware for contactless payments. It also offered a commitment to allow a third-party payment app to be set as default by users as well as "a monitoring mechanism and separate dispute settlement system to allow for independent review of Apple's decisions restricting access."
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New York Times ☛ Apple Settles E.U. Case by Opening Its Payment Service to Rivals
Apple will for the first time allow banks, payment services and other app developers to use the underlying technology behind Apple Pay to make rival tap-and-go payment services, settling a long-running European Union antitrust investigation, regulators said on Thursday.
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US News And World Report ☛ EU Accepts Apple Pledge to Let Rivals Access 'Tap to Pay' IPhone Tech to Resolve Antitrust Case
The commission had charged the company with denying others access to Apple Pay, which it said is the biggest NFC-based mobile wallet on the market.
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India Times ☛ Microsoft clinches deal to settle CISPE antitrust complaint
Microsoft has clinched a multi-million-euro deal to settle CISPE's antitrust complaint about its cloud computing licensing practices, the U.S. tech giant said on Wednesday, averting an EU antitrust investigation that could have led to a hefty fine.
CISPE, whose members include Amazon and a score of small EU cloud providers, filed a complaint with the European Commission in late 2022 alleging that Microsoft's new contractual terms imposed on Oct. 1 were harming Europe's cloud computing ecosystem.
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ DAZN: Force Cloudflare to Join Piracy Shield, Prosecute IPTV Buyers ASAP
This week, Romano Righetti, Director of External and Public Affairs for DAZN, spoke about the challenges presented by IPTV piracy. Righetti says that at times it may appear that Italy's Piracy Shield blocking system is malfunctioning or ineffective, but that's not true. It's all down to pirates' use of "sophisticated services" offered by American intermediaries. Fortunately, the solution is straightforward; force companies like Cloudflare into compliance and prosecute users.
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Torrent Freak ☛ BREIN Shuts Down Pirate IPTV Service, Users Get a 'Warning'
BREIN has shut down pirate IPTV service IPTVpremium, with help from anti-cybercrime outfit Irdeto. The operator has signed a confidential settlement with potential fines if he engages in copyright-infringing activity going forward. In addition, existing users have received a notice informing them about the unlawful activity they were part of.
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404 Media ☛ A Beloved Tech Blog Is Now Publishing AI Articles Under the Names of Its Old Human Staff
Worse, the new version of TUAW has “recreated” the archives of the site by running old, real articles through a summarization tool and then republishing new, “bastardized versions” of the old articles under the bylines of real writers who didn’t actually write them, Warren said. The names and bios of dozens of real journalists who actually worked for TUAW a decade ago are listed on the website, and all of them have had their real images replaced with AI-generated ones, and their old work misattributed to other people and turned into AI slop by a summarization tool that has destroyed their original work.
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Simon Willison ☛ Early Apple tech bloggers are shocked to find their name and work have been AI-zombified
They're using AI-generated images against real names of original contributors, then publishing LLM-rewritten articles because they didn't buy the rights to the original content!
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The Verge ☛ Early Apple tech bloggers are shocked to find their name and work have been AI-zombified
According to TUAW’s “About Us” page, TUAW is now apparently owned by Web Orange Limited, which bought the website “without its original content” from “Yahoo IP Holdings LLC” earlier this year.
So, instead of that “original content,” the new TUAW has seemingly used AI to plagiarize it — as you can easily see by comparing actual archived TUAW posts at Engadget to ones on the new website.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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