Leftovers

• FSF ☛ Call for volunteers: Help us with the GNU Press shop

  People around the world are eagerly waiting to receive their GNU Press shop orders, and we need a little help sending everything out. Would you be willing to donate a little of your time to support the FSF's work while chatting and enjoying snacks with other free software supporters?

• Rlang ☛ Tech I’m thankful for (repost)

  It’s a short week here in the US. As I reflect on the tools that shape modern bioinformatics and data science it’s striking to see how far we’ve come in the 20 years I’ve been in this field. Today’s ecosystem is rich with tools that make our work faster, better, enjoyable, and increasingly accessible. In this post I share some of the technology I’m particularly grateful for — from established workhorses that have transformed how we code and analyze data, to emerging platforms that are reshaping scientific communication and development workflows.

• Harvard University ☛ Polaroid gave her a shot. She helped revolutionize photography.

  Meroë Morse had no formal background in business or science when she started at Polaroid in 1945, but within a few years she rose to become manager of black-and-white photographic research and later to director of special photographic research, a notable achievement for a woman in the 1950s and ’60s.

  A new exhibition at the Business School’s Baker Library is putting the focus on Morse and her contributions to the development of instant photography — launched commercially by Polaroid in 1948. The collection, “From Concept to Product: Meroë Morse and Polaroid’s Culture of Art and Innovation, 1945–1969,” on view in Baker’s north lobby through April 18, draws on the library’s extensive holdings of the Polaroid Corporation Collection.

• Martin Hähne ☛ Forest As System

  I find the insinuation here questionable. I am a being of the undergrowth. I love the small and indie web. Calling me unpolitical or a non-combatant because I am not re-inventing or re-design social platforms and am therefore basically an enemy, seems wrong. Maybe this is not what has been said, but I kinda got the impression. “Don’t be a badger!”, it is demanded. But what if you are a badger? I am all for digital spaces reimagined as public goods, but to think that it could only happen in the forest layer and if you’re not into forestry (but rather into gardening or whathaveyou) you’re doing it wrong, is naive to me.1

• Jon Udell ☛ The social cost of mediated experience

  The first time I heard a critique of mediated experience, the critic was my dad. He was an avid photographer who, during our family’s year in India, when I was a young child, used his 35mm Exacta to capture thousands of photos that became carousels of color slides we viewed for many years thereafter. It was a remarkable documentary effort that solidified our memories of that year. But dad was aware of the tradeoff. A favorite joke became: “Q: How was your trip?” “A: I won’t know until the film is developed!” He realized that interposing a camera between himself and the people he encountered had altered the direct experience he and they would otherwise have had.

• Andrea Contino ☛ Re-focus

  The first thing that stands out, as it has been for the past 20 years, is its completely slow and private nature, totally focused on my interests and the people who have chosen to share a slice of their interesting life online.

  Completely opposite to social media. Completely opposite to clinging to an ephemeral space where only the here and now really matters. Where memes, extremism, and exaggerations truly rule.

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Say They've Discovered the Shape of Individual Photons

    The work, published as a study in the journal Physical Review Letters, goes into extreme detail to predict how these quanta of light are emitted by atoms and defined by their environment. There are limitless possibilities for how those interactions could unfold, but the researchers say they've developed a practical method for predicting them.

  • [Repeat] Science Alert ☛ Voyager 1 Just Activated a Radio That's Been Offline Since 1981

    Last month, NASA briefly lost Voyager 1 in the expanse of interstellar space, and when the craft reappeared it was communicating with a transmitter it hasn't used in more than 40 years. NASA is now troubleshooting the issue.

• Career/Education

  • Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ Terminology isn't universal

    A little while back, I wrote that we shouldn't say "auth" but should use other terms instead. I stand by my argument in general, but it also has another side to it: my suggested terminology makes sense in some domains, but not in all domains. And that's because terminology isn't—and can't be—universal.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ Living a Life of Leisure

    The primary benefit of not having to go to work is that I'll no longer have to do customer relations. I'm not the biggest people person. Although I don't have any problems with getting along with folks at work 99% of the time, that remaining 1% is a giant PIA that sucks the joy out of too many days. When I never have to crawl under another desk to plug something in for another adult, I will truly be a happy man.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ We can’t be informed about everything

    But more broadly, is a phrase with three words. Wow Ruben, you’re on a tear with sparkling, sparkling wit today. If you find yourself getting ready to chastise someone for not knowing something that’s out of their wheelhouse, just remember that we’re all muddling through this world as best we can. Chances are, they know something about an unrelated topic that you don’t. I bet you don’t know the best hybrid floors to use for NSW strata approval. Or maybe you do.

• Hardware

  • Silicon Angle ☛ GPU-accelerated workloads: Vultr and AMD revamp AI performance

    Since graphics processing units offer unparalleled speed, efficiency and scalability for specific tasks that are computationally intensive, GPU-accelerated workloads are critical in the artificial intelligence age.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • A self-proclaimed EBM expert rushes to kiss RFK Jr.’s conspiracy-spewing posterior

    Remember a week and a half ago, when in my post about why RFK Jr. will be such a catastrophe for public health and biomedical research as Secretary of Health and Human Services, I said that I’d try to post more regularly? I’m half tempted to insert this meme from a forty-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie:

  • SBS ☛ Collapsed ceilings and black mould: Government urged to act on terrible rentals

    Cooper and roughly 20 renters from across the country arrived in Canberra on Monday, with books in their hands depicting the abhorrent conditions of properties neglected by landlords.

    From mushrooms growing in showers to homes damaged from fires due to poor electrical wiring, the photos paint a grim picture of renting in Australia.

    Many images showed black mould left unaddressed in bathrooms and kitchens, posing a danger to its tenants.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Porsha Ngumezi Died After Not Getting a D&C in a Texas Hospital

    But because D&Cs are also used to end pregnancies, the procedure has become tangled up in state legislation that restricts abortions. In Texas, any doctor who violates the strict law risks up to 99 years in prison. Porsha’s is the fifth case ProPublica has reported in which women died after they did not receive a D&C or its second-trimester equivalent, a dilation and evacuation; three of those deaths were in Texas.

  • The Korea Times ☛ Korea to combat loneliness with culture

    In response to the widespread feelings of loneliness exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Korea is launching a "Cultural Discourse Project" to address and heal loneliness through culture, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced Monday. This initiative aims to utilize cultural engagement as a means to alleviate loneliness and foster social connection among citizens.

  • Vox ☛ Gratitude can make your brain more charitable, generous, and altruistic

    The past two decades have seen a flurry of research on gratitude, beginning in the early 2000s with a series of landmark papers by Robert Emmons, Michael McCullough, and other psychologists. In recent years, we’ve learned through several scientific studies that there’s a deep neural connection between gratitude and giving — they share a pathway in the brain — and that when we’re grateful, our brains become more charitable.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Financial stress linked to mental health issues for many Americans

    When financial struggles affect a person's mental health, "48% of the respondents reported experiencing sleep difficulties, 40% noted an increase in anxiety levels, 38% reported a diminished social life and 34% indicated they have depression."

  • [Old] YLE ☛ Friday is Buy Nothing Day

    In Finland, the Finnish Nature Association is promoting the detox from consumerism, which it has been staging since 1993. It originally challenged people to try a one-day shopping boycott.

  • BBC ☛ ‘I had no idea being a social drinker would damage my liver by 31’

    At 31 years old, I was told by doctors that if I didn’t stop drinking alcohol, I could die.

    I was shocked because I didn’t drink every day, I never drank alone and I drank because I enjoyed it as a social activity, not because I felt alcohol-dependent.

    But by definition, my alcohol consumption from my late teens to late 20s would be considered binge drinking. It felt normal because people around me were doing the same - and now it was catching up with me.

    I’d recently become a mum and had gone to the GP because I felt tired all the time. This led to blood tests and a liver function check.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • US News And World Report ☛ Is Outlook Down? Thousands of Microsoft 365 Users Report Outage Issues

  • Techdirt ☛ Whoops: White House Microsoft Cybersecurity Partnership Gave Company An Illegal De Facto Monopoly On Government Services

    Look: I think it was nice for a change that the Biden administration at least paid some passing but inconsistent lip service to antitrust reform. It was a lovely change of pace from decades of feckless careerists who pay empty lip service to market innovation while rubber stamping mindless consolidation at every turn. And a lot of the work, like advocating for right to repair reform, made a difference.

    But, and this will probably all seem quaint in context of the mindlessly pro-consolidation corporate coddling coming under Trump 2.0, there were still ample instances where the Biden White House was caught talking out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to monopoly power.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Microsoft's "Free" Plan to Upgrade Government Cybersecurity Was Designed to Box Out Competitors and Drive Profits, Insiders Say

    In the summer of 2021, President Joe Biden summoned the CEOs of the nation’s biggest tech companies to the White House.

    A series of cyberattacks linked to Russia, China and Iran had left the government reeling, and the administration had asked the heads of Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google and others to offer concrete commitments to help the U.S. bolster its defenses.

    “You have the power, the capacity and the responsibility, I believe, to raise the bar on cybersecurity,” Biden told the executives gathered in the East Room.

    Microsoft had more to prove than most. Its own security lapses had contributed to some of the incursions that had prompted the summit in the first place, such as the so-called SolarWinds attack, in which Russian state-sponsored hackers stole sensitive data from federal agencies, including the National Nuclear Security Administration. Following the discovery of that breach, some members of Congress said the company should provide better cybersecurity for its customers. Others went further. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat who chairs the Senate’s finance committee, called on the government to “reevaluate its dependence on Microsoft” before awarding it any more contracts.

    In response to the president’s call for help, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella pledged to give the government $150 million in technical services to help upgrade its digital security.

  • The Register UK ☛ China's telco attacks mean 'thousands' of boxes compromised • The Register [Ed: CALEA and CALEA2]

  • [Old] Annie Mueller ☛ Simple rules > complex systems

    There is a pattern in many of my failures, my unsuccessful attempts at… whatever: I got too complicated. I created too many rules. I overwhelmed myself because the mental effort of remembering and following and tinkering with and optimizing and applying the rules was too much. The complication depleted my energy and intellectual capacity. I used up my power managing a complex system rather than doing the thing I wanted to do.

    Simple rules. Simple rules help you avoid complexity. Well, they help me. Maybe they will help you, too.

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Nabbing macOS Icon Artwork

    I keep a personal collection of beautiful macOS app icons, which might make you ask: “How does he get those icons?”

  • Axios ☛ Gen Z are all using AI at work, study finds

    What they found: 93% of Gen Z respondents, age 22 - 27, said they were using two or more AI tools a week — such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, Otter.ai, and other generative AI products.

    79% of millennials (28 - 39) said they used two or more of these tools a week.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ A Dissonance of Ideals: Openness, Copyright, and AI

    In this post I attempt to reveal inherent conflicts in our drive to be as open as possible, authors’ need to understand their rights, and a library’s mandate to provide their patrons with the enhanced discovery that comes with AI’s large language models (LLMs).

    In my view, authors should be enabled to make decisions about how their content is used. In our current world of Creative Commons licensing, content can be reused, but not without attribution. What does this mean for publishers and libraries under immense pressure to provide LLM services, but perhaps not fully grasping the ramifications of their actions? Are there ethical considerations at play that may help guide our approach?

  • The Verge ☛ Google is inserting search links into webpages in the Google App now

    Google calls the feature “Page Annotations” and says it “extracts interesting entities from the webpage and highlights them in line,” which can then take you out to Search results when you tap them — inserting links without explicitly asking the user or the site owner first. It seems like a curious move for a company embroiled in antitrust fights over both its search and advertising businesses.

  • Phirephoenix ☛ modernity is stupid: a rant not about politics

    I moved all my digital crap over to Omnivore on July 27th, 2024. I know this because I ran into a glitch with the import tool and had to contact the developers, so it was timestamped. On October 29th, Omnivore announced that it had been acquired by an AI company and would be shutting down on November 14th: you’ve got two weeks to get your shit out or we’re deleting the whole thing. (In their infinite magnanimity they’ve since expanded the grace period to November 30th.)

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Anthropic open-sources protocol for connecting AI models to datasets and tools

      Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic PBC today released a toolkit for connecting large language models to external systems.

      The Model Context Protocol, or MCP for short, is available under an open-source license. Anthropic says the software has already been adopted by several tech firms.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Techdirt ☛ India Punishes Meta For Its ‘Take-It-Or-Leave-It’ Approach To Collecting And Sharing Personal Data

      Whether you like the results or not, there’s no denying that the EU’s GDPR legislation has tackled a wide range of privacy problems in the online world. Other countries around the globe — including the US — may lack comparable national legislation but there are alternative ways of protecting people’s privacy, as a recent ruling in India shows. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has imposed a fine of ₹213.14 crore (about $25.25 million) on Meta for exploiting its dominant position through WhatsApp’s 2021 Privacy Policy update. The Internet Freedom Foundation of India explains how what it calls a “landmark penalty” will improve the privacy of users: [...]

    • India Times ☛ Bluesky: EU says Bluesky is violating information disclosure rules

      Bluesky, the rapidly growing social media platform, is violating EU regulations by failing to disclose important details, a European Commission spokesperson told reporters during a daily briefing on Monday.

    • SBS ☛ Alana boss shared her diagnosis in public. What does the law say?

      Alana (not her real name) says she was horrified when her boss shared her private medical information with a room full of strangers and other people working in her industry .

      Experts say confusing and complicated privacy laws make it hard to define whether acts like this are illegal and even harder to challenge them.

    • Wired ☛ The Future of Online Privacy Hinges on Thousands of New Jersey Cops

      She wanted judges to be able to keep their home addresses private. New Jersey lawmakers delivered. Months after the murder, they unanimously enacted Daniel’s Law. Today, current and former judges, cops, prosecutors, and others working in criminal justice can have their household’s address and phone numbers withheld from government records in the state. They also can demand that the data be removed from any website, including popular tools for researching people such as Whitepages, Spokeo, Equifax, and RocketReach.

    • India Times ☛ Is your smartphone eavesdropping on your conversations, here's a simple test that can reveal all

      Cybersecurity experts from NordVPN have developed a straightforward four-step test to determine if your smartphone is eavesdropping on your conversations, reported Daily Mail. The test begins by selecting a unique topic that you have never searched for or discussed near your device.

    • [Old] NordVPN ☛ Is my phone listening to me? | NordVPN

      Yes, your phone is listening to you. It eavesdrops through virtual assistants via your device’s built-in microphone. In 2011, Apple introduced Siri, the first virtual assistant designed for iPhones. It paved the way for Alexa, Cortana, and many others. They listen to your voice all the time and, after you trigger a special command, recognize you so you can make calls, send texts, ask questions, and control your device. However, things are not that simple.

      Apple randomly selects a small portion of users’ conversations with Siri to analyze them and see how they can improve the quality of the service. In 2019, a report revealed that Siri can sometimes be mistakenly activated and record private matters, such as people having sex, discussing business, and even talking with their doctors, all of which might later be passed on to contractors responsible for analyzing voice recordings. Apple apologized to its users and promised to improve its policies and default settings. But Siri’s case is not an exception, as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant are using similar systems and default settings.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Gray Zone ☛ Sebastian Gorka: British intelligence asset?

  • France24 ☛ Who is the far-right populist and TikTok star now leading Romania's presidential race?

    He also beat the incumbent Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu of the Social Democratic Party, leaving the ruling party for the first time in Romania’s 35-year post-communist history without a candidate in the runoff, set for Dec. 8.

    The surprising outcome has left many political observers wondering how most local surveys were off, putting Georgescu behind at least five other candidates.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Is India facing a new kind of militancy in Kashmir?

    In 2024, Jammu and Kashmir elected its first government since it was stripped of its semiautonomous status with the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. India and Pakistan both claim the entire strategically significant Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is currently divided, with different portions administered by India, Pakistan and China.

    Some observers say the mostly peaceful election had irked militants, who Indian officials claim are backed by neighboring Pakistan to foment violence in the region.

  • Meduza ☛ ‘Incredibly difficult to prove’ Two Baltic Sea Internet cables were damaged within 24 hours. Was it Russian ‘hybrid warfare’ or just a coincidence?

    That started to change around 2015, when we first first began to see things like NATO warnings about Russian ships behaving suspiciously around undersea cables. Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, especially, we have begun to see a large uptick in incidents that are widely speculated to have involved deliberately sabotage or gray-zone activities.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘You get desensitised to it’: how social media fuels fear of violence

    “People glamourise them types of things and the smallest thing can be escalated on social media,” he said. “A fight can happen between two people and they can squash it [reach a truce], but because the video’s out there on social media and it looks from a different perspective like one is losing, pride is going to be hurt so you might go out there and get some sort of revenge and let people know, you’re not going to mess with me.”

  • Defence Web ☛ Making the Connected Battlefield a reality

    We’re seeing an explosion of asset connectivity that is starting to build a truly connected battlefield, not just on the ground, in the air, or at sea—but with some help from space too.

    There are five key developments powering the connected battlefield now, and into the future: [...]

  • RFERL ☛ EU To Target Chinese Firms With Asset Freezes, Visa Bans For Aiding Russia In Ukraine

    The European Union has proposed for the first time to target Chinese companies and individuals with visa bans and asset freezes over their dealings with Russian firms linked to Moscow's war effort in Ukraine, according to RFE/RL.

  • 404 Media ☛ Pokémon Go Data ‘Adding Amplitude to War Is Obviously an Issue,’ Niantic Exec Says

    A Niantic executive said that he “could definitely see” governments and militaries purchasing the company’s newly announced AI model for navigating the real world, which would be based on scan data generated by Pokémon Go players, but that if the use case is specific to the military and “adding amplitude to war, then that’s definitely an issue.”

  • The Atlantic ☛ The End of the Quest for Justice for January 6

    Jack Smith is dropping the charges against the president-elect for his assault on the fundamentals of American democracy.

  • USMC ☛ NATO artillery units link up their fires in Europe’s snowy north

    The name of the game here in Lapland, the northernmost region of Finland, was to have a call for fire made by one of the nations and the fires delivered by other ones to increase the interoperability of the different artillery systems. In total, this leg of the exercise included 130 pieces of artillery equipment, according to Finnish Col. Janne Makitalo, the event’s director.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Unidentified drones spotted over bases used by U.S. Air Force in Britain

    The drones were detected between Wednesday and Sunday, near Royal Air Force Lakenheath, Royal Air Force Mildenhall and Royal Air Force Feltwell, all three of which are in eastern England. The bases house thousands of U.S. service members, primarily Air Force personnel.

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Social media firms raise 'serious concerns' over Australian U-16 ban

    The landmark legislation would force social media firms to prevent young teens from accessing their platforms or face fines of up to Aus$50 million (US$32.5 million).

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Social media sites call for Australia to delay its ban on children younger than 16

    An advocate for major social media platforms told an Australian Senate committee Monday that laws to ban children younger than 16 from the sites should be delayed until next year at least instead of being rushed through the Parliament this week.

  • India Times ☛ Social media sites call for Australia to delay its ban on children younger than 16

    Sunita Bose, managing director of Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocate for the digital industry in Australia including X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, was answering questions at a single-day Senate committee hearing into world-first legislation that was introduced into the Parliament last week.

    Bose said the Parliament should wait until the government-commissioned evaluation of age assurance technologies is completed in June.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ TikTok influencer arrested after allegedly showing off stolen Target goods in her videos

    Velez was charged after the retail chain's loss prevention team notified the authorities about an alleged shoplifter who was caught scanning a fake barcode that listed lower prices for the items in their cart at a self-checkout register.

  • Digital Music News ☛ The Fate of TikTok in 2025 May Be in Elon Musk's Hands

    Now it appears CEO Shou Chew is seeking to learn the way the winds will blow in Washington come January 20 with the new administration. Trump was the first president to lead a ban on TikTok in the United States, though the incoming president has appeared more favorable towards the app in recent years.

  • NL Times ☛ Authority concerned about social media, streaming services detracting from Dutch media

    The Dutch Media Authority (CvdM) is concerned about the increasing use of social media and streaming services, saying it comes at the expense of the use of Dutch media. The CvdM called it “a worrying development” in its Media Monitor 2024, “because Dutch television channels not only inform citizens but also play a connecting role in society.”

    According to the CvdM, social media can partly take over the informative role, but only if reliable journalism becomes more visible and easily findable online. “This requires targeted action from both legislators and media companies.”

  • The Register UK ☛ China's telco attacks mean 'thousands' of boxes compromised

    The Biden administration on Friday hosted telco execs to chat about China's recent attacks on the sector, amid revelations that US networks may need mass rebuilds to recover.

  • The Barents Observer ☛ Norway's self-imposed military restrictions are out-dated, professor argues

    The professor calls for a debate about the overall questions of what set of policies and guiding lines are best fitted to ensure the key Norwegian security goals: to avoid war and ensure Norwegian independence, territorial integrity an preservation of the democratic system of governance including ensuring political room of maneuver.

    "My argument is that there is a need to revisit the self-imposed restriction and to assess their appropriateness and function in this new geopolitical situation."

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ U.K. closely monitoring Russian spy ship as it passes near British Isles — 'undersea cables are a shared concern' says Ministry of Defense

    The U.K.’s Defence Committee highlighted the strategic importance of undersea infrastructure in its latest session, especially after the suspected sabotage of two undersea [Internet] cables connecting Finland and Sweden to Central Europe last week. Ministry of Defence Secretary John Healey said, “Clearly, there is a recognition in recent months, not least because we have seen damage to essential undersea cables in different parts of the North Atlantic, the North Sea, and the Baltic, that this is an area the requires attention.”

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • TruthOut ☛ Trump Claims He Has a Presidential Mandate. The Data Says Otherwise.

    Presidents-elect throughout history have claimed that they have a mandate in order to shore up support for their causes, and to justify laws to drastically reshape U.S. governance or society. But experts have said that the evidence that Trump does not have a mandate is clear.

    It’s hard to consider a presidential election victory a mandate, for example, when the candidate in question doesn’t win a majority of votes in the popular vote count. That’s the case for Trump in 2024, as his 77,034,011 votes make up just 49.86 percent of the total votes cast. While he attained more votes than his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, more people voted for her and third party candidates than for Trump.

  • The Age AU ☛ Laos poisoning: Nana Backpacker Hostel brushed off dying friend, backpacker says

    A grieving backpacker who has taken it upon himself to try to uncover the truth about a suspected mass methanol poisoning in Vang Vieng, Laos has recounted his search for his friends through a second-rate health system and against hostel staff who told him almost nothing.

    The man’s account is contained in the results of a survey he opened soon after his Danish friends Anne-Sofie Coyman, 20, and Freja Sorensen, 21, died in a Laos hospital. He has found that the Nana Backpacker Hostel was the common denominator among eight hospitalisations identified by more than 20 respondents.

• Environment

  • Wired ☛ COP29 Agreement Says Someone Should Pay to Help Developing Countries, but Not Who

    Frantic hours of further negotiations followed. After several postponements, the Azerbaijani COP presidency, led by the country’s minister of ecology and natural resources, Mukhtar Babayev, convened the assembly twice in the evening. Eventually, an agreement on climate finance was approved—but for only a fraction of what had been hoped for.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Protecting nature can safeguard cities from floods

    The work is published in the journal Ecosystem Services. It offers a global roadmap for integrating nature-based solutions into urban planning and flood management.

    The research reveals that preserving the most important 5% of watersheds—about 201,000 square kilometers, or 2% of Canada's land—can significantly reduce rainwater runoff, protect homes and livelihoods, and safeguard croplands.

  • Vox ☛ COP29 summit on climate change: What did this year’s negotiations accomplish?

    The negotiations also once again failed to reach an accord on reducing consumption of fossil fuels that are contributing to the warming of the planet.

  • The Hill ☛ Plastic waste and oil industry: A threat to human health and the environment

    Now, the oil industry is causing another life-threatening problem. Plastic waste has invaded the bodies of virtually every breathing lifeform on the planet.

    The jury is still out on whether the international community will solve it.

  • New York Times ☛ World Seeks an End to Plastic Pollution at Talks in South Korea

    On the heels of contentious climate talks in Azerbaijan, negotiators from around the globe are descending on Busan, South Korea, this week with another formidable goal: the world’s first treaty designed to tackle plastic pollution’s explosive growth.

    On the table is a proposal that aims to cut down on the millions of tons of plastic waste discarded each year. And a broad coalition of nations is seeking to go a step further and rein in plastic production, with a focus on restricting single-use plastic.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ Alberta Conservatives Are Making Up Their Own Climate Facts

    • DeSmog ☛ Ministers Helped ‘Stage Manage’ Shell’s Relocation to UK, Emails Show

    • RTL ☛ California vows to step in if Trump kills US EV tax credit

      California will revive its own subsidy programs for electric vehicles if Donald Trump guts US federal tax breaks for such cars, the state's governor said Monday.

      The president-elect has said repeatedly he would scrap what he called the "electric vehicle mandate" -- actually a $7,500 federal rebate for anyone who purchases an EV.

    • Axios ☛ Ether: Why the second largest cryptocurrency can't keep up with bitcoin

      Between the lines: The reality of this must be doubly discouraging for Ethereans — the community behind the Ethereum blockchain network — because it had been working so hard to improve itself over Crypto Winter.

      • For example, it launched a new way of securing the network that used less energy (a validation system called proof-of-stake).

    • The Local DK ☛ You can soon check your dog (and bicycle) in to Copenhagen Metro with Rejsekort app

      The app version of Rejsekort, which was fully rolled out in September, will get expanded functionality in 2025 to allow users to check in dogs and bicycles.

      The updates will also allow children to be checked in when travelling with an adult, operator the Metro Company said in a press release on Monday.

    • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : Net Metering Program Offers Hope for Zambia’s Energy Future

      The Energy Regulation Board (ERB) is actively promoting the net metering program, which enables consumers to generate their own electricity and supply any surplus to the national grid. This initiative has been met with enthusiasm as a practical step toward a sustainable and inclusive energy future for Zambia.

      Announcing the program’s progress, ERB Director General Elijah Sichone explained that participants could not only reduce their electricity bills but also contribute to strengthening the country’s energy system. “The program empowers consumers to generate their own power and share the excess with the national grid, easing pressure on the system while supporting energy security,” Sichone said.

    • New York Times ☛ How Trump Could Upend Electric Car Sales

      Electric car sales could fall 27 percent if consumers lose the tax break, according to estimates published last week by two economics professors, Joseph Shapiro of the University of California, Berkeley, and Felix Tintelnot of Duke University. Registrations of electric models are on track to hit 1.2 million this year, and estimates are that there would be about 317,000 fewer registered annually without the credit.

    • Wired ☛ How to Create a Future of Cheap Energy for All

      He pointed out that the European Union spent €60 billion in subsidies to citizens and businesses during the recent energy price spike. “What we need is to convince people that it is necessary to change the whole structure of the energy market—but how to create cheaper energy with so many political obstacles?”

    • Wired ☛ Cybertruck's Many Recalls Make It Worse Than 91 Percent of All 2024 Vehicles

      And on this metric, the Cybertruck might be wanting. “Cars with ongoing recalls well after launch suggest a much higher lifetime recall total,” says Brauer. He calculates that the Cybertruck’s six recalls to date are “worse than 91 percent” of other 2024 vehicles. All this was possibly foreshadowed in 2023 when a leaked Tesla report showed the Cybertruck had basic design flaws.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Walrus ☛ Want to Raise a Kid in Canada? That’ll Be $293,000

      I spoke to more than a dozen families across Canada about their financial experiences in having, and not having, children in the past few years. Transportation, child care, food, and housing—the four horsemen of our country’s cost-of-living crisis—came up as unsurprising obstacles.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Study finds land sinking at record pace in San Joaquin Valley

      As agricultural wells have drained water from aquifers, underground clay layers have compacted and the ground surface has been sinking as much as 1 foot per year in some areas.

      New research now shows that large portions of the San Joaquin Valley have sunk at a record pace since 2006.

    • The Hill ☛ Colorado River negotiations continue amid shift to Trump administration

      “Elections don’t add water to the river,” John Entsminger, Nevada’s lead Colorado River negotiator, told The Hill. “The same problem we were facing on November 4, we’re facing today, and it’s the same problem we’ll be facing into the indefinite future.”

• Finance

  • Vox ☛ Cash App and Venmo work like checking accounts. But be wary.

    Neobanks are fintech companies that offer services like checking accounts in partnership with chartered banks, which are FDIC-insured. Neobanks sometimes enlist intermediaries known as banking-as-a-service, or BaaS, companies, which are not FDIC-insured. Still, you will often see the FDIC logo on neobank websites, just like you see it stuck to the glass doors of many brick-and-mortar banks. That logo instills trust, and thanks to their partnerships, neobanks can claim some FDIC protections. But because they do not have bank charters, these neobanks and BaaS companies are not directly FDIC-insured. Instead, neobank customers can be eligible for something called pass-through deposit insurance coverage.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ How and why I took the websites / domain names of rival candidates

    Black Friday came one week early for some candidates in the Irish General Election. On Friday, 22 November, a number of my rival candidates and some high profile candidates in other districts discovered that I had registered their domain names and created web sites comparing their profile to my own.

    This didn't involve any wrongdoing on my part and it was entirely preventable if the other candidates had been proactive and registered the names themselves as soon as they decided to run. In some cases, the candidates had previously owned the domain names and forgotten to renew them. Looking at the registration dates with the whois system, it is clear that I only did this in the middle of November, long after many of these people had publicly announced an intention to run.

    I'm also aware that something like this could backfire if it is not done very carefully. There was a high profile case where Ming Flanagan's Twitter account was misused by one of his employees. The employee deliberately impersonated Ming and sought to bring him into disrepute. In the context of the election, there is an acute focus on the actions of all political candidates. Given that some of the domains concern the Monk, for example, GerryHutch.com, the chances of publicity, either good are bad, are even higher.

    [...]

    The social control media systems that many candidates are using today are simply a full-colour version of the telegraph. The surveillance and control mechanisms are still there.

    [...]

    Social control media appears to have subdued political elites very effectively in a lot of small countries like Ireland.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ India’s First Nikon Centre of Excellence Opens at IIT Hyderabad

    The facility is equipped with state-of-the-art systems, including an AXR point scanning confocal system with NSPARC super-resolution and TRIF imaging capabilities. It also features a Nikon inverted microscope Ti2-E for fluorescence imaging and a Nikon SMZ 800 for macro imaging, enabling research into biological systems at multiple scales, from single cells to human tissues.

  • Derek Kędziora ☛ Wander alone like a rhinoceros

    One of the key antidote’s to the ills of the modern web that Jaron Lanier proposes is a return to individuals. He’s not talking about radical individualism; he means the writing and thought of an individual, with all of his or her personality and idiosyncrasies on full display. This contrasts with the nameless mashups who repackage generic “content” and memes.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Halcyon nabs $100M to block ransomware with capsule neural networks

    Halcyon Tech Inc., a startup using capsule neural networks to fend off ransomware attacks, today announced that it has closed a $100 million Series C round.

    Evolution Equity Partners led the investment. It was joined by Bain Capital Ventures, Dropbox Ventures and other institutional investors, including several of Halcyon’s existing backers. The Austin-based software maker is now worth $1 billion.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Reach CEO Jim Mullen says ‘I have kept my word’ on redundancies amid job cuts

    Reach chief executive Jim Mullen has written to staff saying “I have kept my word” on job cuts at the group as parts of the business enact redundancies.

    Mullen previously wrote to staff at the start of 2024 to say that, after making more than 700 job cuts in 2023, the business planned to end 2024 with “the teams that we have starting the year”.

  • India Times ☛ Google Research India head disagrees with Nandan Nilekani, says India must build LLMs

    Speaking at the Bengaluru Tech Summit, held between November 19-21, Gupta said, “There’s a technologist that I deeply respect, Nandan Nilekani, who made this statement: India should forget about foundation model building, just focus on the use cases. And I would say, with the person I respect, I respectfully disagree.”

  • India Times ☛ How Apple CEO Tim Cook’s ‘cheatsheet’ on Donald Trump may become the go-to guide for tech CEOs

    Citing sources familiar with their interactions, The Wall Street Journal reports that During Trump’s first term, Cook directly engaged, often bypassing traditional channels to interact with the President-elect personally through phone calls and meals.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang receives honorary doctorate from HKUST

    Tech giants around the world have invested tens of billions of dollars into Nvidia’s technology to train their generative AI models and support their heavy computing needs.

  • New York Times ☛ Former BP Chief Joins A.I. Data Center Developer

    Bernard Looney, the former chief executive of BP, one of the world’s largest energy companies, said Sunday that he would become chairman of a data center start-up in the United States, a move that comes amid a ravenous appetite for electricity to power the boom in artificial intelligence.

  • IT Wire ☛ Nokia awarded multi-billion 5G extension deal from Bharti Airtel

    Nokia has won a multi-year, multi-billion USD extension deal by giant Indian operator Bharti Airtel to deploy 4G and 5G equipment across key cities and states across the subcontinent.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Some in the venture capital community backed Trump. Here’s what’s next

    The Bay Area bubble of Silicon Valley, which is home to institutional tech giants like Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe, had been previously seen as a left-leaning region, like many other California communities. But the 2024 election was a unique one, venture capitalists and founders say.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • El País ☛ From Bannon to Musk: The decade that made misinformation the new normal

      The flood of toxic misinformation that swept through Spain following the more than 200 deaths in the Valencia flood disaster is a stark confirmation of the world envisioned by Bannon and Musk. Disinformation spreads unchecked across cell phones, social networks have become toxic, and the media has lost its credibility. Citizens, polarized and disoriented, point the finger at the other side, accusing them of lying. The information ecosystem, more fragmented than ever, has left society without a shared reality to build consensus or meaningful discourse.

      As Renée DiResta from Georgetown University explains, we now have a truth tailored to each person: “The collision between the propaganda machine and the rumor mill has created a ‘choose your own adventure’ epistemology: some media have already written the story you want to believe; some influencer is demonizing the group you hate.”

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Sinwar is dead, but Hamas finally got its victory

      Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood have amplified this rebranded image of Sinwar through coordinated propaganda campaigns designed to silence any voices that dare to call him what he truly was—a ruthless terrorist.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ Gossip pages, influencers displace Kenyan media

      Alternative media outlets and influencers led the discourse on nationwide protests in Kenya on Instagram and Facebook, often outpacing legacy media outlets in reach and engagement.

      Their performance comes against the backdrop of mass layoffs and major losses by the country’s largest legacy media companies — pointing to the evolution of news [sic] consumption in Kenya.

    • The Register UK ☛ Google blocked 1000 pro China websites from services

      Google’s Threat Intelligence Group has blocked a network China-related firms from its search results for operating fake news services and websites.

      "Collectively these firms bulk-create and operate hundreds of domains that pose as independent news websites from dozens of countries, but are in fact publishing thematically similar, inauthentic content that emphasizes narratives aligned to the political interests of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)," declared Google.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ Who’s Afraid of Political Cartoons?

    Nearly a decade ago, Islamist extremists embarked upon a campaign of terror in the city of Paris, starting at the office of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine. A dozen people were killed in the attack, among them five of France's most prominent cartoonists, and in the week that followed, memorials of a scale not seen since the end of World War II ensued, with world leaders, arm-in-arm, declaring "Je Suis Charlie."

    The shadow of January 7, 2015 is long, and yet a new set of anxieties have supplanted its effects. When asked, cartoonists' chief concern today is not attacks from fundamentalist terrorists, but rather aggression from the state and its agents, official and otherwise. Across the Middle East in particular, these threats are most pronounced. But they are also now looming in the United States with Donald Trump's return to power and a bill moving through Congress that would grant the executive branch vast new powers to harass civil society in the name of fighting "terrorism."

    Cartoonists suffer no more especially than anyone else, but as the work of these cartoonists across the Middle East shows, they can express that suffering with powerful precision through their art.

  • BIA Net ☛ Nearly 200 detained as women attempt anti-violence protest in İstanbul

    Police have sealed off all side streets leading to İstiklal Avenue with barricades since midday. After unsuccesfull attempts to gather in Taksim, women gathered near the Karaköy pier. At least 169 demonstrators were detained during the events as police responded violently.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Manipur Extends Mobile Internet Ban in 9 Districts for Two More Days

    The Manipur government has extended the suspension of mobile [Internet] services in nine districts for an additional two days, following a review of the law and order situation. The mobile [Internet] ban, initially imposed on November 16, will now remain in effect until 5:15 PM on November 27. The suspension includes mobile [Internet], mobile data services, VSATs, and VPN services across the districts of Imphal West, Imphal East, Bishnupur, Thoubal, Kakching, Kangpokpi, Churachandpur, Jiribam, and Pherzawl.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Plan excludes nat. security cases and criminal trials from remote hearings

    Hong Kong national security cases will be barred from being heard remotely under a bill to introduce court proceedings with real-time remote communication link-ups.

    Gazetted by the government on Friday, the Courts (Remote Hearing) Bill will also exclude criminal trials and juvenile court proceedings from remote hearings. The first reading of the bill at the Legislative Council (LegCo) has been scheduled for next Wednesday.

  • VOA News ☛ From VOA Persian: Iranian official says 25% of university professors have emigrated

    With statistics indicating more of the country's skilled workforce is leaving or planning to leave, accelerating Iran’s longtime “brain drain,” Hosein Simayei Sarraf, the Iranian minister of science, has admitted that "25% of university professors" have emigrated in recent years. [...]

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Muses About Buying MSNBC

    Should he choose to take the president-elect's son up on his joking exhortation, however, the billionaire may run into even more hurdles than he had to jump to buy Twitter — including shoring up his finances after that disastrous purchase, which wiped out the social network's value and screwed those that invested in the takeover.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ ‘Soviet-Minded Men Rule Everything in Russia’: Journalist Ekaterina Kotrikadze

    The Moscow Times sat down with Kotrikadze ahead of the event to discuss the state of women’s rights in Russia, how Russian propaganda weaponizes women, and whether Russian journalism is still a male-dominated industry.

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

  • Meduza ☛ Where other headlines end, Meduza begins We’re launching the first advertising campaign in our 10-year history. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

    For the first time in its 10-year history, Meduza is launching an ad campaign — and it’s aimed not at Russian readers, but at Western ones. The goal is to raise awareness about the challenges Russian journalism faces in exile (an industry practically on the verge of collapse). This international campaign has been carefully designed to attract new readers in Europe and North America while also bolstering Meduza’s crowdfunding efforts.

  • BIA Net ☛ Turkish-Cypriot journalist faces 10 years in jail over article on Turkey's alleged election interference

    Turkish-Cypriot journalist Ali Kişmir, president of the Press Labor Union (BASIN-SEN), is set to appear in court tomorrow in Nicosia, facing charges that could result in up to 10 years in prison. Kişmir is accused of "insulting and defaming the honor of the Security Forces" over a 2020 article in which he criticized alleged Turkish interference in Northern Cyprus’s presidential elections.

    Kişmir’s trial marks the first time in two decades that a journalist has been tried in a high criminal court in Northern Cyprus.

  • RFERL ☛ RFE/RL Journalist Andrey Kuznechyk Marks 3 Years In Belarusian Prison

    RFE/RL journalist Andrey Kuznechyk marked his third year in prison on November 25 on charges, he, his employer, and human rights organizations call politically motivated.

  • The Nation ☛ Wall Street Embraces MBS’s Money Man

    After the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, business leaders made a show of shunning Saudi Arabia, doing deals only behind closed doors. Now it’s all out in the open.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Observer sale: Press freedom groups asks questions of Scott Trust

    The chair of the Scott Trust has offered to meet a consortium of press freedom groups which has raised concerns over the sale of The Observer.

    The board of the Trust, a limited company which owns Guardian Media Group, was expected to meet on Monday 25 November, to discuss proposals to sell The Observer to Tortoise Media.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Online abuse of women journalists targeted by South Yorkshire Police

    These words, spoken on a new campaign video issued today (Monday November 25) by South Yorkshire Police (SYP), will resonate with hundreds of women working in our industry who have been faced with online violence simply because of their gender and the job they do.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Papers Please ☛ Do you need ID to read the REAL-ID rules?

    [“The welcoming, friendly and visually pleasing appearance” of the TSA’s headquarters at 6595 Springfield Center Drive, Springfield, VA.]

    We spent most of a day last week outside the headquarters of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), trying and failing to find out what the rules are for the TSA’s new digital-ID scheme.  What we did learn is that, by TSA policy and practice, you can’t read the REAL-ID rules, get to the TSA’s front door, or talk to any TSA staff unless you already have ID, bring it with you, and show it to the private guards outside the TSA’s gates.

    The problems we have faced just trying to get access to the text of the TSA’s rules raise issuess about (recursive) incorporation by reference of third-party, nongovernmental text in regulations, secret law, and access to Federal services and rights by those without ID, as well as the underlying issues of REAL-ID, mobile driver’s licenses, and digital IDs.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Illinois AG: It’s Illegal for Schools to Use Police to Ticket Students

  • IT Wire ☛ iTWire - Sextortion attacks on the rise and growing in sophistication

    The research found cyber criminals are now including their victims’ full names, telephone numbers and residential addresses, as well as images taken from Google Maps of their home to make the attacks more threatening and convincing. Victims are then left with a difficult conundrum – do they ignore the demands and risk potential exposure, or pay the price for peace of mind?

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Michał Sapka ☛ RE: Self-Hosting Isn't a Solution; It's A Patch

    Self-hosting is not the goal in itself, as it would make no sense. You can’t self-host for self-hosting sake, as no one will be able to use it. Only by allowing interoperability, you give it a raison d’etre. WWW is decentralized, Email is decentralized, IRC is decentralized and so on. And while I love the idea of self-hosting all of it, unless people who won’t, can access it, it makes non sense. This site could have been hidden behind a firewall, never to be exposed to a random visitor. But while it is self-hosted in my living room, I allowed it to be accessed from the wild, open net. It may go down any minute (and it will; I have no UPS), it will not matter in the grand scheme of things and millions of other sites will be there, unmoved by my sheer lack of better things to do.

    Imagine world where all of the web relies on a single provider. It’s a VC’s wet dream. We are close to that (please, don’t use AWS), but we are not there yet. The web is decentralized, interoperable and you may self host how much of it as you want.

  • VOA News ☛ Google to build subsea cable linking Australia's Darwin to Christmas Island

    Australia's Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island will be connected by subsea cable to the northern garrison city of Darwin, a project backed by Alphabet's Google that Australia says will boost its digital resilience.

    Christmas Island is 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) west of the Australian mainland, with a small population of 1,250, but strategically located in the Indian Ocean, 350 kilometers (215 miles) from Jakarta.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• VOA News ☛ Google's US antitrust trial over online ad empire winds down

  The U.S. Justice Department told a federal judge that Google illegally dominated online advertising technology in seeking a second antitrust win against the company.

  The closing arguments in Alexandria cap a 15-day trial held in September in which prosecutors sought to show Google monopolized markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges, which sit between buyers and sellers.

• MIT Technology Review ☛ Google's antitrust gut punch and the Trump wild card

  Last week, the US Department of Justice released its recommendations for proposed remedies in its antitrust case against Google. While no one thought the DOJ would go easy on Google, the remedies it did suggest are profound and, if enacted, could be catastrophic to its business.

  First, some background. The case was first filed back in 2020. Then in August, Judge Amit Mehta ruled in favor of DOJ (and against Google), finding that Google ran its business as an illegal monopoly. Now, the DOJ has made its case for what it thinks Google should have to do in the wake of that verdict. Next, Google will propose its own set of remedies to the court. Finally, Judge Mehta will have to decide which, if any, of these remedies to enact.

• The Verge ☛ Google and the DOJ make their final arguments in the ad tech monopoly case

  Over about three hours of closing arguments, attorneys for each side delivered their last arguments before US District Court judge Leonie Brinkema, who is expected to rule on it by the end of 2024. If she declares Google’s ad tech system a monopoly, the case will progress to a second trial for remedies — a process currently playing out in a separate DC District Court case over Google search.

• The Washington Post ☛ Justice Dept., Google make closing arguments in ad-market antitrust case

  Federal prosecutors and lawyers for the internet giant laid out their closing arguments in federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia, in a case that centers on Google’s dominant role in brokering online display ads, the ubiquitous advertising rectangles that appear along the tops and sides of webpages across the internet.

  The Justice Department, which filed the lawsuit with a group of state attorneys general in early 2023, said in its closing argument Monday morning that Google had illegally monopolized the online ad market to the detriment of website publishers, advertisers and general consumers.

• New York Times ☛ U.S. Says Google Is an Ad Tech Monopolist, in Closing Arguments

  The legal case concerns a system of software that is used by advertisers to place ads on websites around the internet. Aaron Teitelbaum, a lawyer for the Justice Department, told Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia that the company had linked its products together in a way that made it hard for publishers and advertisers to use alternatives.

  “Google is once, twice, three times a monopolist,” he said. “These are the markets that make the free and open [Internet] possible.”

• Ars Technica ☛ FTC to launch investigation into Microsoft’s cloud business - Ars Technica

  The FTC also highlighted fees charged on users transferring data out of certain cloud systems and minimum spend contracts, which offer discounts to companies in return for a set level of spending.

• Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Second Google antitrust trial draws to a close

  Publishers testified at trial that they could not switch away from Google, even when it rolled out features they disliked, since there was no other way to access the huge advertising demand within Google’s ad network.

• India Times ☛ Google antitrust trial: Google's US antitrust trial over online ad empire draws to a close

  Analysts view the ad tech case as a smaller financial risk than the case where a judge ruled Google maintains an illegal monopoly in online search, and where prosecutors have argued the company must be forced to sell its Chrome browser.

• Associated Press ☛ Google Chrome: DOJ seeks to force sale of browser in monopoly case

  U.S. regulators want a federal judge to break up Google to prevent the company from continuing to squash competition through its dominant search engine after a court found it had maintained an abusive monopoly over the past decade.

  The proposed breakup floated in a 23-page document filed late Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice calls for sweeping punishments that would include a sale of Google’s industry-leading Chrome web browser and impose restrictions to prevent Android from favoring its own search engine.

• Casey Newton ☛ Google wants to keep Chrome

  This summer, a federal judge ruled that Google illegally maintains its monopoly in search and search advertising by paying Apple and others tens of billions of dollars a year to be their default search engine. On Tuesday, I wrote about the government’s proposed remedies for this state of affairs: most dramatically, forcing the company to spin out the Chrome browser.

• US News And World Report ☛ Google's US Antitrust Trial Over Online Ad Empire Draws to a Close

  The closing arguments in Alexandria, Virginia, cap a 15-day trial held in September where prosecutors sought to show Google monopolized markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks, and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ After SAG and WGA strikes, Hollywood workers demand more

      SAG-AFTRA is seeking a contract that will require game developers to obtain informed consent and compensate video game performers when using the technology to digitally replicate their voices, movements or likenesses.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Animation Guild reaches tentative deal with Hollywood studios

      Negotiations began in August for a new contract that would increase wages, address the shrinking of crews and establish protections against AI, which many animators see as an existential threat to their craft. Studios are eager to save money amid an industry contraction, and AI tools in animation and special effects offer some obvious opportunities to do so.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Court Expands Google and Cloudflare DNS Blocking to Combat Piracy

    A highly controversial court order that required Cisco, Cloudflare, and Google to poison DNS earlier this year was just the beginning. To further combat sports piracy, broadcaster Canal+ sought several follow-up orders. Cisco had discontinued its OpenDNS service in France due to the legal restrictions, so only Google and Cloudflare put up a defense, but without the desired result.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate Sites Play Possum While Boosting Counter-Enforcement Measures

    Pirates refusing to quit and pirate sites coming back to life isn't unheard of but, for those caught in the act, the consequences can be severe. That's mostly the case in the United States and Europe but the global piracy landscape today is significantly bigger. According to broadcaster beIN, previously shuttered streaming sites are quickly getting back in the game.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 2 arrested over illegal streaming of football matches at HK eatery

    Two Hong Kong men have been arrested on suspicion of illegally streaming overseas football matches at a restaurant. It marks the first time local authorities have made arrests following new communication rights granted to copyright owners last year.

  • The Verge ☛ Supreme Court sides with Google in Oracle’s API copyright case

    In a ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court found that Google could legally use elements of Oracle’s Java application programming interface (API) code when building Android.

    “Google’s copying of the API to reimplement a user interface, taking only what was needed to allow users to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, constituted a fair use of that material,” the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-2 opinion, with one justice (Amy Coney Barrett) not taking part in the ruling. It overturned an earlier federal decision, which found that Google’s use of the API had constituted infringement.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Personal/Opinions

    • 25 November 2024

      Read this morning that our government is evaluating the options for bunkers, and is planning an app where you can find the bunker nearest to you... man, this all doesn't feel right. I thought i was a member of the last generation learning the whole cold war stuff (how does an air raid siren sound etc.), now the whole drill is seemingly coming back.

      If you think about it, its in a way funny: Most of the old science fiction / cyberpunk stories have in their lore a WWIII or something like that, now it seems the authors of those stories had a bit more foresight than i would have granted them.

      In other news: I am currently preparing a new latop for my dad. My dad is 84, living in an retirement home after a injury made it imossible for him to live with us in this old house (stairs, oh so much stairs...), and he is - while still a clever man - not THAT sharp anymore since he had some heart problems some time ago. So, he wants a super simple system that is quiet usable without internet and robust enoough that he doesn't need to care about. After some research i opted for EndlessOS.