Leftovers

• Scoop News Group ☛ How Threat Hunting Revealed Covert Sports Piracy in Data Science Environments[PDF]

  To keep up with the ever-evolving world of cybersecurity, Aqua Nautilus researchers deploy honeypots that mimic real-world development environments. During a recent threat-hunting operation, they uncovered a surprising new attack vector: threat actors using misconfigured servers to hijack environments for streaming sports events. By exploiting misconfigured JupyterLab and Jupyter Notebook applications, attackers drop live streaming capture tools and duplicate the broadcast on their illegal server, thus conducting stream ripping. In this blog, we explain how our threat hunting operation helped us uncover this and how we analyzed this attack using Aqua Tracee and Traceeshark.

• The Independent UK ☛ Pamela Hayden, longtime 'Simpsons' voice actor, including Bart's friend Milhouse, hangs up her mic

  Hayden, 70, who voiced Milhouse, Jimbo Jones, Rod Flanders, Janey and Malibu Stacy, will sign off from “The Simpsons” on Nov. 24 in a “Treehouse of Horror” episode.

• Idiomdrottning ☛ Against religion?

  But the difference is that they’re not doing those evil things in the name of gravity, or the blue sky, or the 2+2 being 4, the way people do evil things in the name of religion.

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Search your notes first

  Do you sometimes feel like you write your notes but then forget what you have notes about and feel like a notes system is where information goes to die (like it so often does with corporate intranets)?

  Adopt a mindset (and enhance it with some tools) of searching your notes first.

• Bryan Cantrill ☛ Blogging through the decades

  A lot had changed since 2004, and even since my WordPress lifeboat in 2010. For my blog, I wanted to get away from systems that feel like unnecessarily complicated content management systems. Fortunately, static site generators represent the approach that I wanted from a blog: blazingly fast, clean, readable on mobile, and (most importantly for someone who was fleeing captive content management for the second time), entirely git-backed. There were some good options to choose from, but I landed on Hugo, using the hugo-blog-awesome theme – and Will Boyd’s excellent wordpress-export-to-markdown for facilitating the migration.

• Career/Education

  • [Old] uni Columbia ☛ SMBlog -- 9 May 2024

    I’m in the process of retiring, and although I will not be settling back in my rocking chair—I have lots of writing I want to do—I’m no longer teaching.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Fossil collection found in Neanderthal cave suggests abstract thinking

    Collecting objects simply for their aesthetic interest is considered a very human thing to do, a modern leisure activity involving the gathering of art, stamps, coins, marbles, comic books, Pokémon or Magic cards, and figurines of every description. Just about anything can become collectible if the collector decides to indulge themselves.

  • Rlang ☛ How to Perform a Wald Test in R | wald.test function in R

    Have you ever wondered how to assess the significance of specific predictors in your regression model or decide if a variable should remain in your analysis? The Wald Test in R offers a straightforward and efficient solution to these questions. It evaluates whether coefficients in a model are significantly different from zero, helping you test hypotheses and refine your models with precision.

  • India Times ☛ NASA's Curiosity rover uncovers rare sulphur stones on Mars through Gediz Vallis exploration

    One of the most exciting findings during Curiosity's exploration of Gediz Vallis is the discovery of rare sulphur-rich stones. These stones are bright white in colour, and when Curiosity’s wheels crushed them, they revealed yellow crystals inside. This discovery is significant because sulphur is a key element when studying planetary environments, and it can be indicative of past chemical processes, including potential signs of microbial life.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Jan Lukas Else ☛ Initial thoughts about Bluesky

    While I tried Bluesky for a short period of time at the beginning of this year, I quickly deleted my account as I noticed I somehow outgrew big social networks. Even my tiny Fediverse bubble felt like too much before I unfollowed some accounts some time ago.

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ When Texting Destroyed Social Investment

    Nowadays, none of that remains. Who still drags a Walkman with him when he can enjoy endless albums streamed via 5G? That’s sad too but currently not my biggest concern. No, my concern is that smartphones and their entrance to unlimited and continuous texting completely destroyed social interest and investment.

  • SBS ☛ Methanol poisoning: Understanding the risks and how to prevent it

    The issue has come to a head as two Australian teenagers fight for their lives in Thai hospitals after consuming tainted alcohol in Laos.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ D-Link has another security flaw with older equipment that won't be repaired — D-Link told users to replace outdated NAS last week

    Going over the advisory, D-Link says attackers can execute code remotely (RCE) on these routers owing to a stack buffer overflow vulnerability. D-Link didn't share the exact specifics of this threat, possibly to ward off potential hackers. Even so, this unleashes a pandora's box of possible threats, including, but not limited to, data theft, malware and spyware installation, and DoS attacks.

  • Security Week ☛ D-Link Warns of RCE Vulnerability in Legacy Routers

    According to D-Link, all hardware revisions of its DSR-150, DSR-150N, DSR-250, DSR-250N, DSR-500N, and DSR-1000N router models are affected by this security defect and no patch will be released for them.

  • Macworld ☛ Apple’s most controversial dongle might be gone for good

    Back in 2016, the most hated accessory in the Apple ecosystem was a small dongle that came free with the iPhone 7 and cost $9 to replace. And now it looks like it might be gone forever.

    Of course, we’re talking about the much-maligned Lightning to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack Adapter. When Apple launched the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, it removed the headphone jack, leaving the Lightning port as the only way to plug in wired headphones. And since most people didn’t have a pair of Lightning headphones, Apple supplied a free dongle in the boxes.

  • Thorsten Ball ☛ They all use it

    Last week, at a conference, I had a random hallway conversation with another engineer. We ended up talking about Zed and he told me he’ll try it, but does it have any AI features? If so, can you turn them off?

    I told him that, yes, you can turn them off. Sensing what made him ask, I added that if you do turn them off, it’s all deactivated, no AI in the background, foreground, underground.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ CEO of LA school chatbot vendor AllHere arrested for fraud

    Los Angeles Unified School District was thrilled in March to announce its new student chatbot Ed, built by AI edtech AllHere Education of Boston. Sadly, AllHere shut down on June 14 — apparently broke, despite $3 million in payments from LAUSD — and Ed was shut down with it.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ e-Visas Factsheet

      The Home Office’s objection to allowing a digitally stored e-Visa, or a paper equivalent such as a printed QR code, is the result of the department’s desire to ensure that e-Visas can be rescinded rapidly, in a “digital hostile environment”. The Home Office accepts no liability for the ensuing problems.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft goes thin client with $349 Windows 365 Link

      Now in preview, the device is fanless and does not run any local apps or have any local storage. It does, however, allow for some local processing for "high-fidelity experiences" such as WebEx or Teams, but is squarely aimed at connecting to a Windows desktop in the Microsoft cloud.

    • The Age AU ☛ Bunnings facial recognition only used to keep staff and customers safe

      That is why Bunnings introduced facial-recognition technology: to identify known repeat offenders and people previously banned from our stores. As has been reported this week, we are now seeking a review of the privacy commissioner’s determination that our use of FRT is a breach customers’ privacy. We deeply respect the role that the commissioner plays to protect the personal information of everyday Australians. But we disagree on this occasion. We believe we have struck a balance that protects our staff and customers.

    • The Register UK ☛ Privacy agency finds .004 seconds of storage violates rights

      Australia's privacy commissioner Carly Kind on Tuesday found "Bunnings collected individuals' sensitive information without consent, failed to take reasonable steps to notify individuals that their personal information was being collected, and did not include required information in its privacy policy."

      The chain's sin was in using CCTV to capture the face of everyone who entered 63 of its stores between November 2018 and November 2021.

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ From Jealous Spouses to Paranoid Bosses, Pedometers Quantified Suspicion in the 19th Century

      The Indiana woman seemed not to know that such devices were already available, used by land surveyors and others to measure distances. But one Boston woman managed to perform exactly the kind of surveillance she described. According to a report in the October 7, 1879, Hartford Daily Courant, “A Boston wife softly attached a pedometer to her husband when, after supper, he started to ‘go down to the office and balance the books.’ On his return, 15 miles of walking were recorded. He had been stepping around a billiard table all evening.”

    • 404 Media ☛ Leaked Documents Show What Phones Secretive Tech ‘Graykey’ Can Unlock

      The Graykey, a phone unlocking and forensics tool that is used by law enforcement around the world, is only able to retrieve partial data from all modern iPhones that run iOS 18 or iOS 18.0.1, which are two recently released versions of Apple’s mobile operating system, according to documents describing the tool’s capabilities in granular detail obtained by 404 Media. The documents do not appear to contain information about what Graykey can access from the public release of iOS 18.1, which was released on October 28.

• Defence/Aggression

  • VOA News ☛ Foreign fighters flocking to Islamic State in Somalia 

    A new report this week by the U.N. Sanctions Monitoring Team for Somalia warns that fighters, including some from countries in the Middle East, have helped the Islamic State's Somali affiliate, also known as IS-Somalia, to more than double in size to between 600 and 700 fighters.

    "Foreign fighters arrive in Puntland [Somalia] using both maritime and overland routes," according to the report, which is based on intelligence estimates from U.N. member states.

  • Futurism ☛ Body Language Expert Says Trump Is Acting "Submissive" Around Musk

    Former police officer Darren Stanton analyzed a video of the pair at Musk's latest flatlined SpaceX rocket launch for The Telegraph, establishing that "only other figure with whom the president-elect is so submissive is Vladimir Putin."

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Wants Trump To Reverse Ban, FCC Nominee Isn't On Board

    As a potential TikTok ban looms over an impending political shift in the US, the short-form video sharing app has been pleased that a Trump presidency might put a stop to the ban — which currently hinges on the app finding a new US-based owner by January 19.

  • India Times ☛ Australia social media ban: Social media ban for children younger than 16 introduced in Australia's Parliament

    Australia's communications minister introduced a world-first law into Parliament on Thursday that would ban children younger than 16 from social media, saying online safety was one of parents' toughest challenges. Michelle Rowland said TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram were among the platforms that would face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars (USD 33 million) for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Elon Musk risks conflict of interest in Trump administration

    What seemed like a strange pairing has turned into a job opportunity for Musk and, in the past week, the two have been seen together in Palm Beach, Florida, ringside at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in New York and eating McDonald's on a jet.

  • El País ☛ Alan Mislove, researcher: ‘There are technology companies with an incredible influence on how we speak and think’

    During his time there, he observed that government departments were eager to understand how AI would impact their operations. Mislove, 44, also contributed to President Biden’s executive order on AI, which may be at risk when Donald Trump takes office. The New Orleans-born researcher recently visited Madrid to speak at the Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), one of the largest global gatherings on networks, traffic, and security, organized this year by IMDEA Networks and Carlos III University.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ I'm being informed that we are still fucked

    Is our military resilient when the attack is coming from inside the House? I doubt it. Hegseth rubber-stamps some unconstitutional order, then starts firing generals until they get to one who says yes. So either the military goes along with it, meaning now they're Trump's military instead of the USA's, which is not good, or they don't recognize the authority of their Commander in Chief, and the only way that story ends is with armed insurrection and the military installing a new president, which is also not good.

  • Scheerpost ☛ John Kiriakou: The Pro-Trump Mood in Greece

    When Afghanistan and Iraq began falling apart, private Greek citizens actually stood on the beaches to welcome them as they washed ashore in rafts and to give them food and clothes. That changed when the European Union gave Turkey billions of dollars to hold refugees in Turkey and the Turks instead began forcing them across the border into Greece and just pocketing the money.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Baltic nations investigate undersea cable cuts as potential sabotage

    “Moscow’s escalating hybrid activities against NATO and EU countries are also unprecedented in their variety and scale, creating significant security risks,” the statement signed by the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Britain said.

    Europe needed to “think and act big” to boost its security, the statement continued.

  • LRT ☛ Chinese ship under surveillance following Baltic Sea cables damage

    The Danish Navy said on Wednesday that it is monitoring a Chinese cargo ship in the Baltic Sea following investigations by several countries into damaged submarine telecommunications cables.

  • France24 ☛ Danish military says it’s monitoring Chinese ship closely after undersea cables severed

    Denmark's navy said Wednesday that it was shadowing Chinese cargo vessel Yi Peng 3, which is anchored off the Danish coast. While the navy has not given any reason for its presence near the idle ship, the announcement comes a day after Finland and Sweden opened investigations into the suspected sabotage of two undersea fibre-optic cables.

  • The Local SE ☛ Swedish and Danish PMs say severed undersea cables could be sabotage

    The prime ministers of Sweden and Denmark said on Wednesday they were not ruling out "sabotage" in the severing of two Baltic Sea cables, adding there was an increased risk of hybrid attacks.

  • VOA News ☛ Finnish authorities open probe into ruptured undersea cable between Finland, Germany

    Finland's National Bureau of Investigation said it opened a criminal investigation into the rupture of the C-Lion1 cable on suspicion of "aggravated criminal mischief and aggravated interference with communications."

    Swedish police already opened a preliminary investigation Tuesday into suspected sabotage regarding the two cable breaches, and said Wednesday that "Swedish police and prosecutors are also interested in a ship that has been seen at the locations in question."

  • VOA News ☛ Danish military says it’s staying close to Chinese ship after data cable breaches

    Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 was anchored in the Kattegat strait between Denmark and Sweden on Wednesday, with a Danish navy patrol ship at anchor nearby, MarineTraffic vessel tracking data showed.

    "The Danish Defence can confirm that we are present in the area near the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3," the military said in a post on social media platform X, adding it had no further comments.

  • VOA News ☛ Spain will legalize hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants

    Spain will legalize about 300,000 undocumented migrants a year, starting next May and through 2027, the country's migration minister said Wednesday.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Meduza ☛ Kremlin has been reporting Putin’s meetings up to two months after the fact, with Russian president last seen in public on November 7

    Delays in reporting on Putin’s activities are not new, Faridaily observed, as the Kremlin regularly employs this tactic to create the illusion that the president is working continuously. However, the gap between Putin’s actual meetings and the release of reports has increased in recent weeks.

• Environment

  • Overpopulation ☛ Court ruling could lead to an environmental impact statement on US immigration policy

    United States law requires that important federal policies and projects undergo environmental impact statements. While immigration policy has never been subjected to such an analysis, that might be about to change, thanks to a recent court ruling.

  • Futurism ☛ As Climate Catastrophe Looms, New York City Declares Drought Warning

    All that — not to mention the Big Apple's new drought warning — melt into a flashing sign as world leaders at the COP29 climate summit: that absent an implausibly radical reshaping of humankind's activities on Earth, things are only going to get worse.

  • The Nation ☛ The “Dark Joke” of Having a Climate Summit in Azerbaijan

    With wealth derived from fossil fuel exports, Baku, the country’s capital city, has built gleaming glass towers overlooking the Caspian Sea. On the outskirts of Baku, oil rigs spread for miles along the hills, perpetually bobbing like dunking bird toys. In the western part of the country, crude oil is considered so potent that it is thought to have medicinal properties, and for a relatively modest price (around $20), one can bathe in a vat of it at special spas. It is hardly any wonder that the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, opened COP29 with a speech that said that oil and gas “is a gift of the God.”

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ Alberta Pledges Constitutional Showdown Over Emissions Cap

    • DeSmog ☛ It’s Not Just Oil Giants Seeking to Sway the Climate Talks. Their Favourite PR Firms Are in Baku, Too.

    • DeSmog ☛ Hungary COP29 Climate Delegates Linked to State Oil Company

    • Futurism ☛ Robodog Runs Full Marathon

      But the robodog's engineers had a solution. By simulating the course's hilly environment and its diverse terrains, they were able to develop what they're calling a "high torque transparency joint mechanism" that allows the robot to harvest energy on the downhill slopes, thereby recouping what it lost on the uphill portions.

    • NL Times ☛ Unsafe fat bikes smuggled from China through Rotterdam port on large scale: report

      They are even more surprised by the price. The European Union has had sky-high import duties on Chinese bicycles since 1993 and expanded them to e-bikes in 2018. These anti-dump duties, intended to prevent the European market from being flooded, range from 50 to 83 percent. China produces some 200 million bicycles and e-bikes a year. The Fuji-ta factory alone produces over 25 million bicycles, more than the entire Europea annual sales.

      There is no way to legally offer a fat bike for 699 euros, Niels Willems, director of fat bike manufacturer BREKR, told AD. “Take a fat bike for 900 euros. If you deduct the import duties, VAT, and profit margin, such a fat bike must have been built for 110 dollars. That is impossible, even in China, where they produce very competitively.”

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Protect This Place: Ladakh, the Planet’s ‘Third Pole’

    • Bridge Michigan ☛ Once near extinction, lake trout are officially recovered in Lake Superior

      Seven decades after overfishing and invasive species nearly wiped them off the map, Lake Superior’s lake trout population has finally recovered.

      That’s the conclusion of a binational group of tribal, US and Canadian species managers, who announced the milestone Wednesday in light of data that shows the self-sustaining population today is roughly as big as it was in the 1930s, before overfishing and invasive sea lamprey devastated the fish.

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Inside the Terrifying True Story of the Sperm Whale That Sank the Whale-Ship ‘Essex’ and Inspired Herman Melville’s ‘Moby-Dick’

      The whale convulsed on the surface of the waves for a moment before charging again. “It appeared with tenfold fury and vengeance,” Chase wrote. It smashed its head into the bow, completely rupturing the ship’s hull before swimming away.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ New eagle camera is going live in Minnesota to the delight of global viewers

      The new camera, operated by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, is in a different location and will show a different nesting pair, the agency announced Tuesday. But the DNR will also keep its old EagleCam running because the old pair built a new nest about a half-mile away and still visit their old territory. They've been seen there as recently as Friday.

• Finance

  • FAIR ☛ It’s the Economic Reporting, Stupid

    Ask voters to verify basic facts related to major political issues, and the results are depressing. An Ipsos survey from October of this year, for instance, discovered most Americans were unaware that unauthorized border crossings were at or near their lowest point over the last several years, that violent crime was not at or near all-time highs in most major cities—and that inflation was down from a year earlier and near historic averages.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • New York Times ☛ Nvidia’s Profit Doubles as A.I. Chip Sales Soar

    The company, which dominates the market for chips used to build artificial intelligence, expects another big jump in the current quarter.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Ford looking to cut thousands of jobs in Europe

    The carmaker said on Wednesday that it would cut 14% of its European workforce with some 2,900 job cuts in Germany expected by the end of 2027. Another 800 jobs are due to be cut in the UK and 300 in other EU nations.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Tax Dodging by Super-Rich, Big Corporations Costs Nations Half a Trillion Per Year: Study

    A study published Tuesday estimates that tax dodging enabled by the United States, the United Kingdom, and other wealthy nations is costing countries around the world nearly half a trillion dollars in revenue each year, underscoring the urgent need for global reforms to prevent rich individuals and large corporations from shirking their obligations.

    The new study, conducted by the Tax Justice Network (TJN), finds that “the combined costs of cross-border tax abuse by multinational companies and by individuals with undeclared assets offshore stands at an estimated $492 billion.” Of that total in lost revenue, corporate tax dodging is responsible for more than $347 billion, according to TJN’s calculations.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Gray Zone ☛ Leaked files expose high-level UK military plot to destroy The Grayzone

  • India Times ☛ 13-year-old claims Facebook curbs on account for post on Manipur killings | India News

    Manipur's 13-year-old climate activist Licypriya Kangujam alleged Wednesday that her official Facebook account has been restricted after she raised her voice about the recent abduction and killing of six Meitei women and children in Jiribam.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong 47: Mother of jailed democrat arrested over banner outside court

    Elsa Wu, the mother of jailed pro-democracy figure Hendrick Lui, was arrested after holding a banner outside a Hong Kong court after her son and 44 other democrats were sentenced on Tuesday.

  • NL Times ☛ Renowned journalist Frits Barend involved in incident with pro-Palestine demonstrator

    Barend, whose family is Jewish, was sat next to the demonstrator. The demonstrator shouted in the video that he was being attacked by Barend something that the journalist denies. “That is not correct, that is rude. I went to the film, and I was sat next to him. He wanted to walk away and almost had to climb over me. He struggled to do that. He made a huge drama of this.”

    He did admit that he shouted something after the demonstrator had given his speech. "Then I started shouting: Free the hostages, if you do this in Gaza, you will be killed." This is also reflected in the images that have appeared online. Barend also said that he called IDFA management after the incident.

  • Michał Sapka ☛ This site now has an IRC channel

    My IP was unbanned from libera.chat (I wasn’t the one who got banned!), so I want to use it more. After all, where else am I meet with my cyberpals? Discord? Let’s have some self respect!

  • Scheerpost ☛ House Again Moves to Pass ‘Nonprofit Killer’ Bill Giving Trump ‘Unchecked Power’

    The bill, H.R. 9495, is slated for a markup in committee on Monday that will likely be followed by a floor vote requiring a simple majority vote to pass, potentially this week.

    Numerous advocacy and rights groups have warned that the bill is extremely dangerous as it would give the Treasury Secretary the power to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit that it deems a “terrorist supporting organization,” with little need for evidence.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Democratic bills aim to rein in library book challenges in Michigan

    The bills, which have 23 Democratic co-sponsors, would apply to community and district libraries, but not school libraries. They are expected to receive a hearing in early December in the House Government Operations Committee, said Rep. Carol Glanville, D-Walker, a sponsor of one of the two-bill package.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ What happened when New Zealand's Stuff Ltd split business in two

    New Zealand’s biggest news publisher Stuff has seen an “extraordinary” pace of growth in the past 18 months after splitting the business in two and launching digital subscriptions for its legacy newspapers.

    In April last year, Stuff Ltd restructured into two distinct businesses with different strategies: Masthead Publishing, which launched digital subscriptions for its legacy titles, and Stuff Digital for the un-paywalled flagship Stuff website.

  • CPJ ☛ Haitian journalist attacked as gang violence again surges in country

    Gang members shot at journalist Wandy Charles and his family outside his home in a suburb of the capital, Port-au-Prince, on November 11, shortly before the local gang overran the area. Gang violence has again surged through sections of Haiti’s capital after Prime Minister Garry Conille was ousted on November 11, six months after he took office.

    In a separate attack, suspected gang members burned the home of Lookens Jean-Baptiste, a reporter with radio Tropic FM, on November 5 in Port-au-Prince’s Fort National district. “They found out I was a journalist, and they think we all have connections with the police,” Jean-Baptiste told CPJ.

  • VOA News ☛ Sharing information 'is delivering freedom,' Jimmy Lai says at Hong Kong trial

    Jimmy Lai's court appearance on Wednesday marked the first time the former publisher provided testimony in a high-profile trial that started nearly one year ago. The case was initially expected to last about 80 days. His international legal team now expects the trial to continue into 2025.

    Lai is accused of collusion with foreign forces and sedition. The British national rejects the charges, but if convicted, he faces life in prison.

  • VOA News ☛ Myanmar photojournalist goes free after two years of imprisonment, torture

    Photojournalist Kyaw Swa Tun, who was released last week from Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison after serving more than two years, has recounted the brutal treatment he endured at the hands of prison guards in an exclusive interview with VOA.

    “When the authorities learned I was a journalist,” he said, “I was isolated, tortured privately and subjected to threats of further harm if any news about the prison leaked out.”

  • VOA News ☛ Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai tells court he championed 'freedom'

    Jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai insisted his newspaper had championed democracy and "freedom" as he took the witness stand for the first time in his collusion trial on Wednesday.

    Lai's case is one of the most prominent prosecuted under the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020, with Western countries and rights groups demanding his release.

  • BIA Net ☛ International press freedom groups call for withdrawal of Turkey’s ‘agents of influence’ bill

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) participated in the mission. The mission’s requests to meet with government officials were either declined or ignored.

    During the meetings, discussions centered on judicial pressures against journalists, the Constitutional Court's role in protecting freedom of expression, RTÜK's revocation of Açık Radyo's terrestrial broadcasting license, its tendency to impose fines on critical broadcasters, and digital censorship targeting online journalism.

  • The Dissenter ☛ Biden's Legacy: Leaving FOIA In Shambles

    Despite promises, when it came to FOIA and the public’s right to know, the Biden administration was just as bad or slightly worse than the Trump administration during its last fiscal year in office. In fiscal year 2023, United States government agencies censored, withheld, or claimed that they could not find any records two-thirds of the time.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ During World War II, This Farmer Risked Everything to Help His Japanese American Neighbors | Smithsonian

    When the U.S. government sent the Tsukamoto family to an incarceration camp in 1942, one neighbor stepped up to save the farms they left behind...

  • Federal News Network ☛ Network connectivity: An urgent matter of national security

    Law enforcement personnel rely on a mixed bag of legacy, modern and cloud-based networks for essential communications.

    By transforming legacy network architectures into agile, responsive and dependable networks, agencies can maximize the value of novel edge technologies, such as enhanced biometric capture, non-intrusive inspection, and intelligent hardware ready for its introduction to AI-driven capture, collection and decision-making.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ 31,000 acres returned to Penobscot Nation promise conservation without land-use restrictions

    The nonprofit Trust for Public Land is set to return 31,000 acres purchased from a timber investor in Maine to Penobscot tribal management. It will be the largest return of its kind to an Indigenous tribe in U.S. history, without any easements or other restrictions.

  • RFA ☛ Popular Tibetan poet Gendun Lhundrub released after serving 4-year sentence

    A prominent Tibetan writer and poet was released from prison earlier this month after serving a four-year sentence, and Tibetan netizens have celebrated by widely sharing one of his poems on social media, two sources told Radio Free Asia.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Bipartisan Senate bill targets supply chain threats from foreign adversaries

    The Federal Acquisition Security Council Improvement Act from Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., is aimed at better combatting security threats posed by technology products made by companies with ties to foreign adversaries, most notably China.

  • RIPE ☛ Does the Internet Route Around Damage? - Baltic Sea Cable Cuts

    This week's Internet cable cuts in the Baltic sea have been widely reported, even as attempts to understand their cause and impact are ongoing. We turn to RIPE Atlas to provide a preliminary analysis of these events and examine to what extent the Internet in the region is resilient to these events.

  • APNIC ☛ Just how widely adopted is IPv6 in Australia?

    This variation extends to the projects that measure IPv6 adoption, each offering slightly different perspectives and biases based on their measurement methods and analysis.

    If we look at Australia, for example, we can see that IPv6 adoption, according to Akamai, APNIC, Cloudflare, and Google, is slightly above or well below the global IPv6 adoption average of 40%.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Carr Has Vowed to Take on ‘Censorship’ and Scrutinize TV Broadcasters

    President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Brendan Carr as the next FCC Chair signals big changes in communications policy. Carr, a former general counsel of the agency and frequent critic of the current administration, has vowed to battle against social media companies and TV licensees that Republicans believe are too liberal, reports The Washington Post.

    Carr will be able to serve as the FCC Chair within moments of Trump being sworn into office on January 20, 2025, as the role does not need legislative confirmation, according to The Desk. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has been in the role since 2021, when President Joe Biden began his presidential term. Her term is set to expire in June of next year, notes Datacenter Dynamics.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• India Times ☛ Apple: Apple urges judge to end US smartphone monopoly case

  Apple asked a federal judge on Wednesday to dismiss the US Department of Justice's case accusing the iPhone maker of unlawfully dominating the smartphone market, in the latest Big Tech antitrust showdown.

• Nick Heer ☛ ‘The App Store Era Must End’

  A blistering but entirely fair analysis. If you are a developer or you are familiar with this history, I do not know that there is a new argument here. But to see them in a single document is compelling.

• Macworld ☛ Once again, the only way forward is the Mac

  If Apple’s locked-down approach in the App Store era is our future, it’s a bleak one indeed. But there’s good news: Apple has also built a system that provides security, flexibility, and responsibility while letting device owners run the software they want to run.

  It’s called the Mac. When we consider the future of computing devices, the Mac is the model we should aspire to, not the iPhone.

• MB ☛ Xmas List Conundrum

  For a long time we used Amazon Lists primarily because (back then), Amazon had a browser extension that let you add stuff from other websites. It worked really well and happiness abounded. Then, for whatever reason, Amazon stopped supporting and removed the extension which sucked.

• Deutsche Welle ☛ What is Google without Chrome?

  US antitrust officials are reportedly considering a proposal to force Google to sell its Chrome browser after the company was found guilty of illegally monopolizing the search market. How important is Chrome for Google?

• India Times ☛ Google compliance EU rules: Google faces call from DuckDuckGo for new EU probes into tech rule compliance

  Under the EU's Digital Markets Act adopted in 2022, Google and six other tech companies are required to make it easier for users to switch to rival services and banned from favouring their products on their platforms, among other obligations.

• New York Times ☛ U.S. Proposes Breakup of Google to Fix Search Monopoly

  The Justice Department and a group of states asked a federal court late Wednesday to force Google to sell Chrome, its popular web browser, a move that could fundamentally alter the $2 trillion company’s business and reshape competition on the [Internet].

• Patents

  • EFF ☛ Oppose The Patent-Troll-Friendly PREVAIL Act

    Good news: the Senate Judiciary Committee has dropped one of the two terrible patent bills it was considering, the patent-troll-enabling Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA).

    Bad news: the committee is still pushing the PREVAIL Act, a bill that would hamstring the U.S.’s most effective system for invalidating bad patents. PREVAIL is a windfall for patent trolls, and Congress should reject it.

  • Techdirt ☛ It’s Perfectly Fine To Patent Inventions Obtained By Immoral Means Says European Patent Office

    Despite widespread beliefs to the contrary, patents are not a measure of innovation, nor are they needed for companies to thrive — something even Elon Musk understands. But one aspect of patents that is rarely considered is their morality. The European Patent Office’s Board of Appeal wrestled with this issue in an interesting case involving the plant extract simalikalactone E and its use to treat malaria. As the patent admits: “simalikalactone E (SkE) was isolated from Quassia amara (Simaroubaceae), a medicinal plant widely used in the Amazon for the treatment of malaria.” In other words, the use of the plant extract to treat malaria was already known among Amazonian peoples, who naturally did not try to patent it. Related to this, an objection was raised to the patent, on the grounds that it was contrary to “morality”, as defined by Article 53 of the European Patent Convention: [...]

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Z-Library Helps Students to Overcome Academic Poverty, Study Finds

    A recent study published in the Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice sheds light on people's motivations to use Z-Library. Expensive books and limited access to academic material play a key role among those surveyed. That includes a group of Chinese postgraduate students who believe that shadow libraries help to overcome (academic) poverty.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Hackathon Winners 'Remote Brick' Pirate IPTV Box Using Scalable Technique

    A team of hackers from Brazil have taken first place in a hackathon organized by the country's telecoms regulator. The challenge was to develop a solution to prevent non-approved 'pirate' set-top devices from functioning in people's homes. The team say they were able to remotely transfer code which completely disabled a target device. Once implemented, "there will be a general failure in most of the irregular boxes in use," the hacker predicted.

  • Press Gazette ☛ DMG Media invests in AI start-up Prorata as Guardian and Sky sign up

    Daily Mail publisher DMG Media has made a “significant investment” in Prorata.ai, a generative artificial intelligence platform that plans to share revenue with publishers each time their content is used to answer a user query.

    The deal gives Prorata access to DMG Media’s content, which includes the archives of the Mail, Mail Online, Metro, the i and New Scientist.

    Guardian Media Group and Sky News all also announced on Wednesday that they have made their content available to the start-up.