Leftovers

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ The Oldest Evidence For Water on Mars Reveals It Was Extremely Hot

    A sizzling insight from 4.45 billion years ago.

  • Science Alert ☛ The Moons of Mars May Actually Be Fragments of Something Much Bigger

    Remnants of a violent past.

• Hardware

  • TuMFatig ☛ 10" rack 33³ cube storage

    Since the moment I started having servers in my house, I always put them under my desk or in a bookshelf.

  • The Next Platform ☛ Intel Xeon 6 With P-Cores Makes the Case For The Host CPU [Ed: "PARTNER CONTENT" means this site has sold out.]

  • The Straits Times ☛ Indonesia rejects Apple’s $135m investment offer

    Indonesia said Fashion Company Apple still has not invested in production facilities or factories in the country.

  • New York Times ☛ China’s Huawei Takes Aim at Fashion Company Apple With Latest Smartphone

    Last year, a chip breakthrough put Huawei on top of the Chinese smartphone market. Now it is rolling out its newest phone, the Mate 70 series.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Intel’s CHIPS Act funding set to be cut by the Biden administration, reports say

    The outgoing Biden administration is reportedly going to cut downn the preliminary $8.5 million grant it awarded to defective chip maker Intel Corp. under the CHIPS Act, adding to the struggling U.S. chipmaker’s woes.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • NYPost ☛ Going to sleep at a different time every night can increase your risk of these deadly health issues: study

    The results show increased risk even if people get 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night.

  • Science Alert ☛ Nasal Spray May Slow Alzheimer's Disease, Study in Mice Suggests

    Is Alzheimer's like a treatable form of diabetes?

  • Science Alert ☛ The Blood of Exceptionally Long-Lived People Shows Crucial Differences

    The largest study of its kind.

  • Science Alert ☛ Surprise Discovery Finds Severe COVID Infection May Shrink Tumors

    A potential new approach to fighting cancer?

  • New York Times ☛ R.F.K. Jr. and Trump’s MAGA Science Agenda

    If there’s a thread tying this coalition together, it’s suspicion of expertise and elitism.

• Security

  • EIN Presswire ☛ TuxCare Endless Lifecycle Support for End-of-Life Linux Now Available through cloudimg

    TuxCare, a global innovator in cybersecurity for Linux, today announced that UK-based cloudimg now offers its customers TuxCare Endless Lifecycle Support (ELS) services.

    As one of the largest providers of Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) in AWS Marketplace, cloudimg brings further value to their customers through the optional TuxCare ELS services that provide ongoing vulnerability patches for end-of-life systems for as long as needed beyond the vendor-supported lifecycle. cloudimg users are also offered discounted pricing through the TuxCare website.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ What Graykey Can and Can’t Unlock

    This is from 404 Media:

    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.

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong police arrest 46 over illegal money lending scheme targeting domestic workers

      Hong Kong police have arrested 46 people allegedly involved in an illegal money lending scheme, in which they posed as phone retailers and offered loans to domestic workers with annual interest rates as high as 400 per cent.

    • Unmitigated Risk ☛ Rethinking Authentication: “Something You Have,” “Something You Know,” and “Something You Are” for Workloads and Machines

      Passwords have existed for millennia, and their weaknesses have persisted just as long. Their simplicity led to widespread adoption, but as their use expanded, so did the frequency of their abuse. To address this, we implemented stricter password policies—longer lengths, special characters, regular changes—much like hiding vulnerable software behind firewalls. When these efforts fell short, we evolved to multi-factor authentication (MFA), introducing the principles of “Something You Have,” “Something You Know,” and “Something You Are.”

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Straits Times ☛ Misled by Surveillance Giant Google Maps, 3 men die after driving their car off incomplete bridge in India

      Their car plummeted more than 15m before hitting the Ramganga riverbed.

    • Don Marti ☛ Don Marti: opt out of Surveillance Giant Google Page Annotations

      Ever wish Surveillance Giant Google would have one button for opt me out of all Surveillance Giant Google growth hacking schemes that you could click once and be done with it? Me too. But that’s not how it works.

      Anyway, the new one is Surveillance Giant Google Page Annotations: Google app for iOS now injects links back to Search on websites. I really don’t want this site showing up with links to stuff I didn’t link to. The choices of links on here are my own free expression.

      This opt-out has two parts and you do need to have a Surveillance Giant Google Account to do it.

    • Jasper Tandy ☛ Jasper is blogging Does anyone have a contact at the EU? If they're going to legislate on cookies, I'm going to need...

      Does anyone have a contact at the EU? If they're going to legislate on cookies, I'm going to need them to step in on share-tracking. Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, probably others; when you share a link, they add an fbclid, si, whatever, unique ID to your link that they can use to track who you shared that link with and associate you with people even if you're not friends with them on that platform.

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Eye of God’ data-leak hub limits information offered after Russia criminalizes leaking personal data

      The Telegram channel and bot “Eye of God,” which searches online databases for personal information, has restricted the amount of data it provides in response to user requests, according to investigative journalists Ilya Rozhdestvensky and Andrey Zakharov.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft denies Office docs used to train AI models

      Microsoft's Connected Experiences option in its productivity suite has been causing consternation amid accusations that the default setting might allow Microsoft to train AI models using customers' Word and Excel documents and other data.

    • Nick Heer ☛ ‘Surveilled’ Documents Ronan Farrow’s Reporting on Spyware

      So, to the question of whether the U.S. would begin using fancy spyware on citizens’ phones under any administration, the answer seems more like a question of when and not if. It is just one more tool of a long series of violations. The next Trump administration seems unlikely to be more restrained than the first but, when this happens, I bet it becomes part of the churn-and-burn media cycle. It will barely register except to those who already find this sort of stuff disturbing.

    • The Register UK ☛ UK cops shell out £20M for live facial recognition tech

      Via BlueLight Commercial, a non-profit commercial consortium representing police and other emergency services, the government has issued a tender notice to establish a national multi-supplier framework for the provision of live facial recognition (LFR) software. Commercial frameworks aim to ease the buying process and lower costs across a pre-agreed set of suppliers. However, there are no guarantees public sector organizations will spend a specific value using the mechanism.

    • SBS ☛ When a stranger flirted with Amy, she never suspected she was being secretly filmed

      But Amy is still upset she has already been seen by millions on Kim's social media accounts, which are used to promote his dating coach business.

      "I just felt like I was preyed on and used," she said.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft's Recall release throws up issues in preview

      Recall, which debuted earlier this year, is an application designed to take a snapshot of a user's screen every few seconds and store it for future retrieval. Users can "recall" what they were doing via a text query or scroll back through a timeline.

      The rollout drew deserved criticism from privacy and security professionals due to its half-baked implementation. It was clearly more of an engineering demonstration that had somehow been deemed fit for release to the public before its many creases had been ironed out. These included capturing sensitive information including passwords and lacking sufficient data security measures.

  • Confidentiality

    • Dhole Moments ☛ Beyond Bcrypt

      In 2010, bcrypt was the only clearly good answer for password hashing in most programming languages.

      In the intervening almost fifteen years, we’ve learned a lot more about passwords, password cracking, authentication mechanism beyond passwords, and password-based cryptography.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New York Times ☛ E.U. Vessels Surround Anchored Chinese Ship After Cables Are Severed in Baltic Sea

    The development arose after two undersea fiber-optic cables were severed under the sea, and investigators from a task force that includes Finland, Sweden and Lithuania are trying to determine if the ship’s crew intentionally cut the cables by dragging the ship’s anchor along the sea floor.

  • VOA News ☛ Sweden urges Chinese ship to return for undersea cable investigation

    Two subsea cables, one linking Finland and Germany and the other connecting Sweden to Lithuania, were damaged in less than 24 hours on Nov. 17-18, prompting German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius to say he assumed it was sabotage.

    Sweden, Germany and Lithuania all launched criminal investigations last week, zeroing in on Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3, which left the Russian port of Ust-Luga on Nov. 15. A Reuters analysis of MarineTraffic data showed that the ship's coordinates corresponded to the time and place of the breaches.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ New Trump budget chief wrote Project 2025's agenda for empowering the presidency

    OMB is responsible for releasing the president’s budget request every year, but also manages much of the executive branch by overseeing departments’ performance, reviewing the vast majority of federal regulations and coordinating how the various agencies communicate with Congress.

  • LRT ☛ Lithuania hands in note to Russia over war crimes against Ukraine

    “As Russia continues its aggression against Ukraine and increasingly shells Ukrainian cities and their inhabitants and critical infrastructure, reports of unarmed Ukrainian prisoners of war being shot by Russian forces and other war crimes are appearing with appalling regularity,” the ministry’s statement reads

  • The Register UK ☛ Telco engineer spying on employer for Beijing gets 4 years

    Li sought info on Chinese dissidents and pro-democracy advocates, members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, US-based non-governmental organizations, and information he obtained from his employer. He used anonymous Gmail and Yahoo! accounts, and other online services, to communicate to MSS, and even travelled to China for meetings.

  • VOA News ☛ Australia's House of Representatives passes bill that would ban young children from social media

    The major parties backed the bill that would make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to $33 million for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts.

    The legislation passed 102 to 13. If the bill becomes law this week, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the age restrictions before the penalties are enforced.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Australia passes bill banning social media for children under 16

    The law creates an enforcement “framework,” with key details to be decided later, but the legislation puts the onus on social media companies, which could be fined up to $33 million for systemic failures to prevent underage access.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Elon Musk Fuels Barrage of Harassment Against Federal Employees

    Elon Musk has taken to posting the identities of relatively unknown government officials and federal workers whose jobs he wants to eliminate, and his followers are taking it upon themselves to harass and threaten those they can find.

    Following a series of posts from Musk earlier this week highlighting the names and titles of federal workers whose jobs he called “fake,” the targets of his social media activity are facing a barrage of online abuse, according to a report from CNN on Wednesday. Many of the employees highlighted by Musk do not have public-facing jobs, and have done nothing other than hold a title that displeases the billionaire who’s anointed himself Donald Trump’s co-president and is expected to help the president-elect slash government bureaucracy.

  • LRT ☛ NATO must draw red lines for Russia over hybrid attacks – Lithuanian FM

    Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis on Tuesday called on NATO to draw strict red lines for Russia over hybrid attacks and to send a unified message about the alliance’s response to such actions.

  • The Hindu ☛ Seer makes controversial remarks on Muslims’ right to vote

    He was speaking at a protest organised by the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, a Sangh Parivar affiliate, against the alleged “takeover of farm land by the waqf board” at Freedom Park on Tuesday, November 27, 2024.

  • India Times ☛ Elon Musk uses X to push his preferred political picks, Trump isn't always swayed

    Billionaire Elon Musk has been using his social media platform X to go to bat for President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks and promote his own preferred candidates, advocating for choices he views as change agents who will help remake the U.S. government.

    In several high-profile cases, however, Musk backed people who either lost out on the roles or withdrew from consideration, suggesting some early limits to the Republican mega donor's influence even as he has emerged as one of Trump's most powerful allies.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ TikTok in Romania

    Recall the recent revelations that prominent right-wing influencers in the US had accepted money from a shadowy media organization that was later revealed to be part of the Russian state apparatus. They were paid “to churn out English-language videos that were “often consistent” with the Kremlin’s “interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition” to Russian interests, like its war in Ukraine.”

  • RFERL ☛ How TikTok Fueled The Rise Of Romania's Far-Right Presidential Candidate Georgescu

    TikTok, launched globally in 2017, is now one of the most popular websites on the Internet, even surpassing Google in 2021, with millions drawn to its short videos with algorithms working to personalize the feed of each user.

    Targeting Young Voters

    While most are drawn to TikTok to be entertained, many people, especially younger generations, are getting their news there as well. In the United States, about half of TikTok users under 30 say they use it to keep up with politics and news [sic], according to the Pew Research Center.

  • [Repeat] Atlantic Council ☛ Putin’s Ukraine obsession began 20 years ago with the Orange Revolution

    It soon became clear that Putin had miscalculated disastrously. His open and unapologetic attempt to interfere in Ukraine’s internal affairs was widely interpreted as a grave insult and an indication of his contempt for Ukrainian statehood. This electrified public opinion and helped mobilize millions of previously apolitical Ukrainians.

    Weeks later, after a deeply flawed second round of voting, Ukrainians would respond to the attempted theft of their election by flooding into central Kyiv in huge numbers. It is no exaggeration to say that Putin’s act of supreme imperial hubris was one of the key causes of the Orange Revolution.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Bullies have moved online, but is banning all under-16s from social media the answer?

    She knows what they get up to online – the texting, the bullying, the sextortion, the threats – but nothing prepared her for the hostility she faced this month in a roomful of students ages 12 and 13.

    She'd been booked to give three talks at a high school in Australia but just minutes into the first session, a group of boys started shouting insults common among misogynistic online influencers about the women pictured on Pendergast's presentation.

    Teachers tried to shush them, then a girl in the front row made the final expletive-filled comment that shattered Pendergast's veneer and saw the special guest speaker flee the room in tears.

  • VOA News ☛ Google, Meta urge Australia to delay bill on social media ban for children

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's center-left government wants to pass the bill, which represents some of the toughest controls on children's social media use imposed by any country, into law by the end of the parliamentary year on Thursday.

    The bill was introduced in parliament last week and opened for submissions of opinions for only one day.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ What the world could learn from Ukraine

    Ukrainians recently marked 1000 days at full-scale war defending their country against Russian invasion. In that time, the nation has developed many positive habits that are improving society as a whole. Such lessons could prove to be relevant for others around the world.

  • Axios ☛ Trump admin picks from the Project 2025 playbook

    Yes, but: Within a day of Trump's victory, allies and right-wing commentators claimed that Project 2025 was the agenda all along.

    Catch up quick: Project 2025 includes proposals for the president to replace thousands of career civil servants with loyalists and dissolve government agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — all in the name of streamlining government under the president's control.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Four Pakistan security forces killed as ex-PM Imran Khan supporters flood capital

    Protesters armed with sticks and slingshots took on police in Islamabad.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Why is Pakistan's former PM Imran Khan in jail?

    Pakistan's capital Islamabad was gripped by violence on Tuesday as protesters demanding the release of former Prime Minister Imran Khan clashed with security forces near the parliament.

  • JURIST ☛ Pakistan dispatch: massed protesters demanding release of ex-PM Imran Khan met with harsh response from security forces in Islamabad

    Abu Bakar Khan and Noor Ul Huda are JURIST staff correspondents in Pakistan and recent graduates of Punjab University Law College. They filed this dispatch from Lahore.

  • New York Times ☛ Fury Unfolds in Pakistan

    Scenes from the violent clashes between the security forces and protesters who are demanding the release of Imran Khan from prison.

  • France24 ☛ 4 security forces killed as ex-PM Khan supporters flood Pakistan capital

    Pakistani protesters demanding the release of ex-prime minister Imran Khan on Tuesday killed four members of the nation's security forces, the government said, as the crowds defied police and closed in on the capital's centre. Convoys of pro-Khan demonstrators have been marching on Islamabad since Sunday, hauling aside roadblocks and skirmishing with police and paramilitary forces firing volleys of rubber bullets and tear gas.

  • RFERL ☛ Pakistani Forces Launch Raids In Islamabad To Round Up Khan Supporters

    Pakistani police and security forces launched a massive crackdown on thousands of supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan in Islamabad on November 26 after they refused to call off a protest march demanding his release.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China warns New Zealand against joining Aukus amid security concerns: Report

    New Zealand has previously said it is "information-gathering" on future cooperation with the Aukus grouping.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Will India soon open the door for Elon Musk’s Starlink?

    Data security concerns, pushback from domestic telecom firms have delayed Starlink’s approval since 2021.

  • The Straits Times ☛ One killed in Bangladesh as Hindu protesters clash with police

    DHAKA - At least one person was killed in Bangladesh in clashes between security forces and Hindus protesting against the arrest of a religious leader, police said, even as neighbouring India urged that the safety of Hindus and minorities be ensured.

  • New York Times ☛ Trump Team Signs Transition Agreement but Shuns F.B.I. Clearances

    President-elect Donald J. Trump’s team will have some formal briefings with outgoing staff members, but it has so far refused to allow the F.B.I. to do security clearances for transition members.

  • ADF ☛ Phoenix Express Tests Maritime Security Cooperation in Mediterranean

    Members of the Armed Forces of Mauritania huddled close as their vessel sliced through the Mediterranean Sea toward a ship on the horizon. Once beside the ship, the military forces boarded it, one by one. With guns drawn, they searched the vessel before arresting its captain and confiscating a cache of weapons.

  • RFERL ☛ Israel, Hezbollah Agree On Lebanon Cease-Fire To End Nearly 14 Months Of Fighting

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet has overwhelmingly approved a cease-fire deal with Hezbollah, Netanyahu’s office said on November 26, marking a major development toward peace between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants.

  • Defence Web ☛ Ethiopia turns APC into self-propelled artillery

    Making best use of available equipment appears to be the thinking behind modifications turning Ethiopian Federal Defence Forces (FDF) armoured personnel carriers (APCs) into self-propelled artillery pieces. Janes reports that some Chinese WZ551 APCs in service with the East African country’s military now carry 122 mm D-30 howitzers.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Pentagon grapples with systemic industrial base challenges in space programs

    "What we’re realizing it’s probably more than COVID — there are true industrial base concerns," said Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Japan’s space agency halts Epsilon S rocket engine test after fire

    The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is checking the situation at the site.

  • The Strategist ☛ It’s not too late to regulate persuasive technologies

    Social media companies such as Fentanylware (TikTok) have already revolutionised the use of technologies that maximise user engagement.

  • NYPost ☛ Gen Zer left in tears after being rejected for job due to age, oversharing: ‘They want lying slaves’

    A ticked off TikTokker snagged a lot of sympathy after sharing a disheartening conversation with a hiring manager.

  • New York Times ☛ Intense Israeli Airstrikes Send People Fleeing Beirut in Panic

    The attack struck in the heart of the Lebanese capital after a series of evacuation warnings — the first for the city center during the war.

  • New York Times ☛ Israeli Strikes Threaten Lebanon’s Archaeological Treasures

    The country is home to thousands of years’ worth of antiquities. Some have already been damaged or destroyed in the war, alarming the conservationists trying to protect them.

  • CS Monitor ☛ After months of war, officials say Israel has agreed to a ceasefire with Lebanon

    Israel has dealt massive blows against Hezbollah since going on the offensive in September. Now, a ceasefire appears to be on the table, as fighting still rages in Lebanon and Gaza.

  • France24 ☛ 'Chaotic evening': Israel issues first central Beirut evacuation warning

    The Israeli army warned residents of four neighbourhoods of central Beirut to evacuate their homes on Tuesday, saying it is poised to strike Hezbollah targets there. FRANCE 24's Rawad Taha reports as he is evacuating Beirut city centre.

  • New York Times ☛ Thousands of Lebanese Head South as a Fragile Peace Begins

    Also, Trump picked an envoy for Russia and Ukraine. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Russia reports two killed in Ukrainian ATACMS strike on Kursk region — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Holding Kursk and waiting for January’: As a new Trump term approaches, Ukrainian officials are scrambling to establish ties with his incoming administration — Meduza

    • Latvia ☛ Latvian immigration official suspected of forgery on behalf of Russian citizen

      The Internal Security Bureau (IDB) has sent a criminal case to the prosecutor's office for the initiation of criminal prosecution against an official of the Citizenship and Migration Affairs Board (PMLP) for forgery.

    • Latvia ☛ STRATCOMCOE publishes two reports on Russian influence in the Nordic-Baltic region

      The Rīga-based NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (STRATCOMCOE) has two new reports out which may be of particular interest to audiences in the Baltic states. Both were published November 25.

    • Latvia ☛ Two detained in Daugavpils for war-glorifying vandalism

      Police in Daugavpils have detained two men for drawing symbols praising Russian military aggression on windows, road signs, and several other objects, police said November 27.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ IS-K terrorists already pose a global threat. Now Russia might be making the danger worse.

      US policymakers should expect a growing blind spot coming out of Russia resulting from Moscow’s ineffective counterterrorism measures.

    • Meduza ☛ Soviet ‘victory traffic controller,’ featured in iconic 1945 photo at Brandenburg Gate, dies at 100 — Meduza

    • Atlantic Council ☛ What Russia, Iran, and the Houthis get out of Moscow recruiting Yemeni mercenaries

      Cooperation between the Houthis and Moscow is deepening, but what does that mean for the group’s position in Iran’s network of allies and Tehran’s relations with Russia?

    • CS Monitor ☛ How century-old fashion is helping Ukrainians escape the grind of war

      Women in the Ukrainian city of Sumy are escaping the war by exploring their home town's history through fashion using old photos to recreate costumes.

    • New York Times ☛ What Is Russia’s Oreshnik Ballistic Missile?

      The weapon used for the first time against Ukraine last week is capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

    • The Straits Times ☛ South Koreans oppose arms for Ukraine as envoy visits

      Ukraine has asked Seoul for a range of weapons and Seoul has said it could consider such aid.

    • RFERL ☛ 2 Wounded In Russian Attack On Kyiv, Klitschko Says

      A Russian drone strike on Kyiv early on November 27 has wounded two people and damaged a non-residential building, the mayor of Ukraine's capital, Vitali Klitschko, said on his Telegram channel.

    • RFERL ☛ Jailed Former Moscow Anti-War Lawmaker Gorinov Faces New Trial

      A new criminal trial against imprisoned former Moscow municipal deputy Aleksei Gorinov, known for his outspoken criticism of Russia's war against Ukraine, began at a Russian military court on November 27.

    • France24 ☛ Bunkers and survival manuals: The EU countries preparing their populations for war

      In this Science segment, we take a closer look at the "bunker plan" launched by Germany as a response to a worsening international threat, particularly from Russia. The goal is to identify all shelters or bunkers capable of accommodating the population in case of an attack on German soil. FRANCE 24's Julia Sieger tells us more.

    • US official confirms North Korean casualties in Russia’s Kursk

      US defense official’s confirmation comes after media report of 500 North Koreans killed by British missiles.

    • G7 urges China to oppose North Korea-Russia military cooperation

      China, a key North Korean ally, faces growing pressure to act as a responsible stakeholder in regional stability.

    • RFERL ☛ Pro-Russian Presidential Candidate Denies He Wants Romania Out Of NATO

      Calin Georgescu, the pro-Russian far-right independent candidate who scored a shock victory in the first round of Romania's presidential election, has denied that he want the country out of NATO and the European Union.

    • RFERL ☛ Germany, Russia Expel Journalists In Tit-For-Tat Moves Amid High Tensions

      The Russian state-run Channel One television company in Germany said the government has ordered two of its journalists to leave the country, prompting Moscow to revoke the accreditations of two correspondents from German media group ARD.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Russian TV calls Tulsi Gabbard ‘our girlfriend.’ Can she keep US secrets?

      Tulsi Gabbard’s comments about U.S. adversaries Russia and Syria are raising questions about how she would approach intelligence gathering and sharing, if confirmed as director of national intelligence.

    • RFERL ☛ Nordic-Baltic States, Poland To Increase Military Aid To Ukraine

      Nordic-Baltic countries and Poland have pledged to step up support for Ukraine, including making more ammunition available to strengthen deterrence and defense against hybrid attacks.

    • RFERL ☛ Trump Nominates Defense Adviser Keith Kellogg As Special Envoy For Ukraine, Russia

      U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on November 27 tapped Keith Kellogg, a retired Army lieutenant general who has long served as a top adviser to Trump on defense issues, as his nominee to be special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukraine Defense Minister Discusses Boosting Security With South Korean President

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Defense Minister Rustem Umerov's talks in South Korea focused on cooperation on the security of both Ukraine and South Korea in light of the deployment of North Korean forces in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuania allocates €5m for solar power plants in Ukraine

      The Lithuanian government allocated 5 million euros for installing solar power plants in Ukraine after Vilnius approved a support programme for the country’s energy sector.

    • France24 ☛ Did the Biden administration discuss returning nuclear weapons to Ukraine?

      Rumours about the US returning nuclear weapons to Ukraine have been circulating since November 21, when The New York Times published an article citing several unnamed US officials who "suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union". At this stage, these are baseless claims since Washington does not even have these nuclear weapons to begin with. We explain in this edition of Truth or Fake.

    • France24 ☛ Russia cements rule in occupied Ukrainian regions through propaganda and violence

      Russia currently occupies about 18 percent of Ukraine's territory. Yet reliable information about what life is like there is hard to come by, since there is no longer any access for Ukrainian media. Nevertheless, various Ukrainian initiatives aim to shed light on what is happening in the occupied territories. The picture they paint is one of violent repression, propaganda and forced Russification. FRANCE 24’s correspondent Gulliver Cragg reports.

    • Meduza ☛ Russian court jails Orthodox blogger charged with child rape after prosecutors appeal release decision — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian state news network Channel One says German authorities shutting down its Berlin bureau — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Short-circuiting sanctions: How Belarusian companies funnel Western-made microchips to Russia for missiles and fighter jets — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russia’s Central Bank to suspend foreign currency purchases through end of year — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ For money, yes A collab between rock legend Sergey Shnurov and Gen Z rapper Instasamka reveals the cringeworthy state of Russian music — Meduza

    • Latvia ☛ Photos: towers and bridges built on Latvian-Belarusian border

      The construction of infrastructure on the Latvian-Belarusian border is nearing completion along the land sections of the fence, SJSC "Valsts nekustamie īpašumi" (State Real Estate) said on November 27.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Hill ☛ Musk accuses Trump whistleblower Vindman of ‘treason,’ says ‘he will pay’

    The tech billionaire went after Vindman, who worked as a Ukraine expert on the National Security Council and later testified in Trump’s 2019 impeachment hearings, after Vindman pointedly criticized Musk in an MSNBC interview circulated online.

    “Clearly Putin has a type. He likes narcissists and egomaniacs that he knows as a case officer can easily pander to manipulate, to do his dirty work,” Vindman said in the late October interview circulated online by X users this week. “Russia has been using different levers — whether that’s corruption networks, in this case, its influencers like Donald Trump, like Elon Musk, to kind of sow discord.”

• Environment

  • Inside Towers ☛ AT&T Finishes Lead-Cable Removal From Lake Tahoe

    The removal process was complex and time-sensitive, SFGATE reported. Crews worked in 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, to complete the operation before winter storms made conditions impossible. Despite delays caused by high winds, the work was finished on November 17.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Two-way water transfers can ensure reliability and save money during drought in Western US

    A study led by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offers a solution to water scarcity during droughts amid the tug of economic development, population growth and climate uncertainty for water users in Western U.S. states. The proposed two-way leasing contracts would coordinate agricultural-to-urban leasing during periods of drought and urban-to-agricultural leasing during wet periods, benefiting both urban and agricultural water users.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Crews Remove Miles of Abandoned, Lead-Coated Telephone Cables From the Bottom of Lake Tahoe

    Scuba divers discovered the cables on the lake’s sandy, silty bottom in 2012. The cables consist of copper wires surrounded by a layer of lead sheathing. They were laid in Lake Tahoe decades ago—possibly as early as the 1920s—while telephone service was expanding across the United States. As technology advanced, telecom companies installed newer cables, but they left the old ones in place.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ NASA satellite data reveal role of green spaces in cooling cities

    A recent study published in Nature Communications used NASA satellite data to identify a major gap in global resilience to climate change: cities in the Global South have far less green space—and therefore less cooling capacity—than cities in the Global North. The terms Global North and Global South were used in the study to distinguish developed countries (mostly in the Northern Hemisphere) from developing nations (mostly in the Southern Hemisphere).

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Vets can opt for ‘green’ burials at VA cemeteries through new pilot

    The sites — with National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona in Phoenix, Pikes Peak National Cemetery in Colorado, and Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell — will provide special sections where individuals’ remains can be wrapped in biodegradable materials and buried with a minimal environmental footprint.

  • Wired ☛ Combining AI and Crispr Will Be Transformational

    In my lab, we recently used AI tools to help us find small gene-editing proteins that had been sitting undiscovered in public genome databases because we simply didn’t have the ability to crunch all of the data that we’ve collected. A group at the Innovative Genomics Institute, the research institute that I founded 10 years ago at UC Berkeley, recently joined forces with members of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) and Center for Computational Biology, and developed a way to use a large language model, akin to what many of the popular chatbots use, to predict new functional RNA molecules that have greater heat tolerance compared to natural sequences. Imagine what else is waiting to be discovered in the massive genome and structural databases scientists have collectively built over the recent decades.

  • Wired ☛ The Fossil Fuels Conversation Needs a Hard Reset

    In 2025, we will see a fundamental transformation in the language of climate politics. We’re going to hear a lot less about “reducing emissions” from scientists and policymakers and a lot more about “phasing out fossil fuels” or “ending coal, oil, and methane gas.” This is a good thing. Although it is scientifically accurate, the phrase “reducing emissions” is too easily used for greenwashing by the fossil-energy industry and its advocates. The expression “ending coal, oil, and methane gas,” on the other hand, keeps the focus on the action that will do most to resolve the climate crisis.

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Fossil Fuel Generation Peaking, But Corporate Backtracking Threatens Climate Goals

    Half of the world’s economies, 107 of them, are past peak fossil fuel use for electricity due to growing renewable generation, new analysis concludes.

    The decline of coal, oil, and gas is on the horizon, predicts energy think-tank Ember, citing its new findings that 78 of the 107 post-peak economies replaced fossil power with clean energy, 49 of them despite rising power demand.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • CS Monitor ☛ Traveling for Thanksgiving this year? Prepare to join 80 million others on the move.

      Holiday travel is back in a big way. Airports and highways are expected to have millions of Americans traveling for what could be the busiest Thanksgiving week ever. Amid staffing shortages and strikes airport officials are prepared for the influx.

    • DeSmog ☛ Group That Calls CO2 ‘Essential’ Praises Trump Energy Secretary Pick Chris Wright

    • DeSmog ☛ Climate Denier Richard Tice’s Seat is Second Most Exposed to Global Warming, Says Insurance Giant

    • The Local SE ☛ 'Unacceptable risks': Swedish military defends opposition to Baltic wind farms

      "The Swedish Armed Forces have been clear in their evaluation regarding offshore wind energy in the Baltic Sea," the military said in an email to AFP. "It would pose unacceptable risks for the defence of our country and our allies," it added.

      The government said the towers and rotating blades of wind turbines emit radar echoes and generate other forms of interference.

    • [Repeat] Ruben Schade ☛ Can I use toll rebates for public transport?

      There’s a lot going on here, as video essayists say. But first, let’s appreciate how absurd and redundant this is. A person who drives a car for “private use”, and pays a toll, is able to claim some of it back. What’s the point of collecting it in the first place then? And why benefit drivers over non-drivers?

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Data centers are driving up your power bills — and it’s only going to get worse

      Chicago is the third-largest data center market in the US, after Dallas-Fort Worth and Northern Virginia, with more than 80 data centers presently hooked to ComEd and more than 30 planned.

      ComEd says it has “plenty” of power, so there won’t be brownouts — but your bill is still going up.

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ AI can bolster the grid, but does it also pose a threat?

      The U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced the formation of the Testing Risks of AI for National Security (TRAINS) Taskforce, which brings together partners from across the U.S. government to identify, measure, and manage the emerging national security and public safety implications of “rapidly evolving” AI technology.

      The task force will research and test advanced AI models across critical national security and public safety domains, such as radiological and nuclear security, chemical and biological security, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, conventional military capabilities, and more.

    • Wired ☛ Emergency Vehicle Lights Can Screw Up a Car's Automated Driving System

      A new paper from researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu Limited demonstrates that when some camera-based automated driving systems are exposed to the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, they can no longer confidently identify objects on the road. The researchers call the phenomenon a “digital epileptic seizure”—epilepticar for short—where the systems, trained by artificial intelligence to distinguish between images of different road objects, fluctuate in effectiveness in time with the emergency lights’ flashes. The effect is especially apparent in darkness, the researchers say.

    • Wired ☛ The [Cryptocurrency] Industry Is Helping Donald Trump Pick SEC Chair

      Trump’s shortlist is filled with former government officials, [cryptocurrency] executives, and lawyers who support the [cryptocurrency] industry: Paul Atkins, former SEC commissioner, and Brian Brooks, former acting US comptroller of the currency, are the top two contenders, sources familiar tell WIRED, but the vetting process is ongoing.

      Other candidates include SEC commissioner Mark Uyeda, former SEC general counsel Robert Stebbins, and Brad Bondi, the global cochair of investigations and white collar defense at the law firm Paul Hastings, WIRED understands. The chief legal officer for Robinhood, Dan Gallagher, was also up for the role but bowed out of the race over the weekend.

    • RFERL ☛ Black Boxes From DHL Aircraft Found Amid Search For Clues In Deadly Crash

      The flight recorders of a cargo plane belonging to global courier DHL that crashed near Vilnius on November 25 have been found as investigators continue to search for the cause of the deadly accident.

    • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : 83% Of Electrical Fittings And Connections In Lusaka Town Centre Found To be Non Compliant

      Electrical Fittings and Connections had the highest percentage of non-compliances at 83 percent followed by Fruit flavoured drinks and washing detergents at seven percent each while potable spirits had three percent.

      The overall level of compliance in Lusaka stood at 82 percent involving 145 manufacturers, 216 brands and 51 trading outlets.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • France24 ☛ Award-winning photographer Shane Gross on the importance of saving the ocean

      The winner of this year's prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year award has spoken to FRANCE 24 about his love for photography and his hope that his work will help protect the world's oceans and its ecosystems. He calls himself a marine conservation photographer, taking pictures that are not only beautiful, but also matter and tell a story. Shane Gross spoke to us in Perspective.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Biologists identify traits correlating with all bird extinctions since 1500

      His team's analysis tapped into BirdBase, a dataset of ecological traits for the world's 11,600+ bird species compiled by University of Utah biology professor Çağan Şekercioğlu and the Biodiversity and Conservation Ecology Lab at the University of Utah. The team simultaneously analyzed a broad range of biogeographical, ecological and life history traits previously associated with extinction and extinction risk for bird species that have gone extinct as well as those that lack recent confirmed sightings and have therefore disappeared.

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ These Endangered Wolves Have a Sweet Tooth—and It Might Make Them Rare Carnivorous Pollinators

      In a new study published in Ecology last week, a team of researchers studying the endangered Ethiopian wolves captured the blossom-licking behavior on camera. The wolves, feeding on the flowers’ sweet nectar, might act as pollinators because of the remnants of pollen on their muzzles.

    • The Hindu ☛ Kerala HC refuses to modify elephant parade guidelines

      The Kerala High Court has refused to modify its earlier guidelines requiring a minimum distance of 3 m between elephants during festival parades.

    • LRT ☛ Why do people in Lithuania keep eating endangered mushrooms?

      By blindly picking rare species, people are destroying biodiversity, but also putting their health at risk, according to Andrejus Gaidamavičius, an environmentalist.

    • The Scotsman ☛ Have your say: 21 incredible images up for Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Awards

      Now the public can have their say on the images, voting for their favourite picture online or using digital screens at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the museum in London .

    • The Scotsman ☛ Bumblebee population increases 116 times over in 'remarkable' Scotland project

      The bumblebee population has made an impressive comeback in a developed area by increasing to 116 times what it was two years ago thanks to a nature restoration group.

      Rewilding Denmarkfield, a 90-acre project based just north of Perth, has been working to restore nature to green spaces in an increasingly built up area for the past two years.

  • Overpopulation

    • Overpopulation ☛ A genuine humanity

      Do modern societies have a realistic path toward living in harmony with nature? How can population activists combine compassion and effective advocacy? We invite your answers to these difficult yet necessary questions. by Gaia Baracetti Sebastião Salgado is a Brazilian photographer.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ The West’s role in solving Central Asia’s water crisis

      US and Western engagement with Central Asian states on their water crisis can help reduce the region’s dependencies on Moscow and Beijing.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Is there enough land on Earth to fight climate change and feed the world?

      Now, a study published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of competing land-use and technology options to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Is Ambivalence Killing Parenthood?

      On today’s episode of Good on Paper, I talk with Anastasia Berg, a philosopher and co-author of the recent book What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice. Berg wants to rid the left of any discomfort it might have with engaging in conversations about, well, what children are for.

      “If we look at the kind of things that leftists are committed to, be it climate change or significant social and political reform—if it’s education, if it’s welfare—these are the kind of things that presuppose the possibility of a human future,” Berg argues. “And what we hope to do in part, at least, is to liberate people who identify themselves politically in that way to also just have the courage to embrace the role of children in human life without thinking that … immediately commits them to a conservative, anti-women, anti-progress, anti-equality stance.”

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ Pakistan Food Security Policy: Paradoxes to Achieve SDG 2?

      Punjab, recognized as the province with the most significant agricultural output, is distinguished by its vast cultivation of wheat and rice. Pakistan ranks as the 7th, 10th, and 20th largest producer of wheat, rice, and maize, respectively, on the global stage. The agricultural output of Pakistan serves as a reflection of its potential capacity to combat hunger and malnutrition, thereby progressing towards the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals. Pakistan has achieved nutritional diversity through its production of 4.6 million tons of potatoes, 1.6 million tons of tomatoes, 2.1 million tons of onions, 545 thousand tons of apples, and 2.3 million tons of mangoes. Pakistan holds the fifth position worldwide in terms of industrial production, boasting an impressive output of 4.8 million tons of cotton and 67.1 million tons of sugarcane. The pressing issues of hunger and malnutrition in Pakistan can be adeptly mitigated through the nation’s robust agricultural potential. Consequently, Pakistan has the potential to cultivate a strong basis for national food security and resilience through the integration of innovative solutions and coherent policies within its agricultural sector.

• Finance

  • Latvia ☛ Audit: Much of EU funding for business development has been used for roads

    During the 2014-2020 programming period of the European Union (EU) funds, local governments invested the available funding for business development mainly in the construction of roads and related infrastructure, which was not the main priority of the support program, the State Audit Office has concluded in an audit report published on November 26.

  • France24 ☛ French borrowing costs spike amid political turbulence

    Another looming political crisis is battering France's reputation on global markets. Borrowing costs spiked as investors looked to a possible vote of no confidence over the government's budget proposal. That led the spread between French and German bond yields to hit its highest level since 2012. Also in the show - Ursula von der Leyen vows to increase the EU's defence spending, as Russia ramps up its own defence budget.

  • Seth Godin ☛ Understanding pricing

    Price is based on the purchaser’s worldview and situation, not the producer’s. The price paid will always be less than the value it creates for the purchaser. And the price is never more than the amount the purchaser can exchange.

  • Justin Duke ☛ Klarna: nineteen years, twenty billion kroner

    I tend to ignore the entire genre of what we now refer to as BNPL businesses — Affirm, Afterpay (RIP), Klarna, et al — not for any particular sin I feel that they are committing, but because they in my mind are much less interesting companies with less volatile upside than the Stripes and Squares and Adyens of the world.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Don Marti ☛ Don Marti: prediction markets and the 2024 election link dump

    Eric Neyman writes, in Seven lessons I didn’t learn from election day, Many people saw the WSJ report as a vindication of prediction markets. But the neighbor method of polling hasn’t worked elsewhere. More: Polling by asking people about their neighbors: When does this work? Should people be doing more of it? And the connection to that French dude who bet on Trump

  • Semafor Inc ☛ AI company Mistral is latest European startup to eye expansion in Silicon Valley

    Mistral, which creates open-weight large language models, is building an office in Palo Alto, California, and one founder is considering moving to the new office from Paris, the Financial Times reported.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ EU lawmakers greenlight von der Leyen's top team

    The team of 26 commissioners is scheduled to begin work on December 1, led by the already re-elected von der Leyen.

  • International Business Times ☛ British Woman Denied Passport And Licence Because She 'Legally Doesn't Exist' Due To Mum's Mistake

    Caitlin, born at home in 1997 without medical intervention, only became aware of the issue at 18 when she tried to enter the workforce. Lacking identification, she was met with endless obstacles. A year later, her estranged mother confirmed her worst fears—there was no official record of her birth. Despite living her entire life in the UK, Caitlin has been categorised by authorities as a "white British immigrant" because she cannot prove her citizenship, as reported by Metro.

  • Metro UK ☛ Woman who legally 'doesn't exist' can't work, get a passport or live on her own | UK News

    A British woman who discovered she ‘legally doesn’t exist’ after never getting registered as a baby says she feels like she’s been ‘wiped from the face of the earth’.

    Caitlin Walton, 26, from Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, is classed by the government as an immigrant because she has no legal proof she was born in the UK.

  • Wired ☛ The Beginning of the End of Big Tech

    Next year will be Big Tech’s finale. Critique of Big Tech is now common sense, voiced by a motley spectrum that unites opposing political parties, mainstream pundits, and even tech titans such as the VC powerhouse Y Combinator, which is singing in harmony with giants like a16z in proclaiming fealty to “little tech” against the centralized power of incumbents.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ The next census will gather more racial, ethnic information

    Crunching and sorting through those specific details — known as data disaggregation — will help illuminate disparities in areas such as housing and health outcomes that could be hidden within large racial and ethnic categories. But some experts say the details also might make it harder for Black people from multiracial countries to identify themselves.

    Racial data gleaned from the census is important because local, state, tribal and federal governments use it to guide certain civil rights policies and “in planning and funding government programs that provide funds or services for specific groups,” according to the Census Bureau.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Walmart rolls back DEI policies following pressure from conservatives

    Walmart’s moves underscore the increasing pressure faced by corporate America as it continues to navigate the fallout from the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in June 2023 ending affirmative action in college admissions. Emboldened by that decision, conservative groups have filed lawsuits making similar arguments about corporations, targeting workplace initiatives such as diversity programs and hiring practices that prioritize historically marginalized groups.

  • The Register UK ☛ Indonesia tells Apple it needs to invest more to sell iPhone

    Indonesia's Ministry of Industry has snubbed Apple's proposal to invest 1.6 trillion Rupiah ($100 million) in an iPhone accessory and component factory, saying it's not enough to justify lifting a ban on sales of the iPhone 16 in the world's fourth-most populous nation.

    In October, industry minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita declared the handset is illegal to use or import in the nation because it had not been approved for use.

    The minister cited Apple's unfulfilled promises to invest in Indonesia and lack of locally produced components as reasons for the ban.

  • The Hill ☛ Trump, DOGE would make a huge mistake waging war on remote work

    But this is a terrible idea. Far from increasing efficiency, it threatens to waste taxpayer dollars and undermine the government’s ability to serve the public effectively, as the latest Office of Management and Budget report suggests.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Trump wants a DOGE. An Obama-era tech official has some tips.

    Jennifer Pahlka, a former top tech official in the Obama White House, understands the idea behind the coming Trump administration’s Department [sic] of Government Efficiency — or DOGE. But in her opinion, co-leads Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are going about it wrong.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ The US won’t gain a lead in the competition for Africa’s critical minerals without innovation

    The competition for Africa’s critical minerals is intensifying. If the United States wants to differentiate itself from competitors—notably, China—it will need to lead with its values and form partnerships with African countries that are economically feasible, environmentally sustainable, and ethical (the values central to an “E3” model). The only way to do that is by driving innovation along the critical minerals supply chain, specifically in processing and refining.

    The E3 model would offer the United States an advantage because of how starkly it contrasts with China’s method of partnership. China has been criticized for making usurious loans for infrastructure projects and demanding long-term commodity offtakes in the face of predictable defaults.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Enough Wealth to Warp the Universe

    Next to the US, China has the largest annual defense budget on earth, at $296 billion. Musk could pay the entire Chinese defense budget and still have $50 billion left. Or, he could pay the total combined annual defense budgets of India, Saudi Arabia, the UK, and Germany—the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh biggest defense budgets on earth—and still have more than $40 billion.

  • Wired ☛ It's Time to Make the Internet Safer for Kids

    Likewise, it will soon seem absurd that we once allowed children of any age to go everywhere on the [Internet] that adults go, doing everything that adults do, without the knowledge or consent of their parents. The year 2025 will be the one where humanity remembers children are different from adults and that they need protection and age-gating in some parts of the digital world.

  • The Verge ☛ Intel awarded almost $8 billion to protect US chipmaking interests

    The Biden administration is giving Intel $7.865 billion in CHIPS Act funding to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing in the US. The agreement confirmed by the US Department of Commerce today is the largest award granted under the CHIPS Act to date, though notably smaller than the up to $8.5 billion earmarked for the chip maker in March.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Intel gets $11 billion CHIPS Act grant as Biden administration winds down

    Intel will receive $7.86 billion to build out its core manufacturing facilities, plus an additional $3 billion that was announced in September for projects with the Defense Department.

    The awards are part of the Chips and Science Act, a law passed in 2022 with strong bipartisan support that allocates $52 billion in direct grants and potentially billions more in tax credits to incentivize tech companies to build more computer chip factories in America. The package was largely motivated by national security concerns about U.S. dependence on semiconductor suppliers in Asia.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • 404 Media ☛ Russian Disinformation Campaign Spreads Lies About Ukraine's ‘Stalker 2’

      The campaign is spreading a fake vertical video with a WIRED watermark on Telegram and in emails directly to journalists, which falsely claims the game is being used to enlist more Ukrainian soldiers and is secretly collecting private data from players.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Building peace by disrupting lies

      One not-so-hidden explanation for this is disinformation. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington has tracked a fourfold increase in sophisticated campaigns of deception across nearly 40 countries on the continent since 2022. They attack the credibility of elections, undermine health systems, and promote autocratic leaders. Russia is behind nearly half of them.

      A new voice has now pierced that fog of dishonesty. “I helped keep my country in chaos,” said Ephrem Yalike Ngonzo, a journalist in the Central African Republic paid to spread false information provided by a Russian contact. “I want to denounce everything, to make amends, to free myself from my shame and my regrets,” he told the French paper Le Monde last week.

    • [Repeat] Atlantic Council ☛ Russia's evolving information war poses a growing threat to the West

      It is important to acknowledge that Russian information warfare is highly innovative and continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Russia’s information offensives initially focused on the Kremlin’s own media platforms such as RT and Sputnik, but these outlets have proven relatively easy to identify, discredit, and restrict. In recent years, Russia has increasingly sought to promote its narratives via partners and proxies, as the recent scandal involving prominent US podcasters highlighted.

      The pioneering use of social media [astroturfer] farms to fuel divisions and distort public opinion remains a major component of Russian information warfare. In addition, the Kremlin engages in the large-scale creation of fake websites mimicking prominent news outlets, adding a veneer of credibility to Russian disinformation.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Louisiana librarian discusses book bans at Montgomery event

    Amanda Jones, a school librarian and educator for more than two decades in Livingston Parish, Louisiana faced harassment and threats after speaking out against censorship at a July 2022 meeting of the local library board. As Jones tells it, she faced memes accusing her of want to give pornography and erotica to young children.

    “They put my face on these memes and circulated them all around our community,” Jones said in an interview Saturday.

    The harassment continued for weeks until Jones had enough and decided to respond. First with a lawsuit, then with a book titled “That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America” that details what she experienced for the more than two years after she first spoke out.

  • CBC ☛ 'Imprisoned in my own home': Sikh activists claim India is using no-fly list to harass them

    "I mean, our system is being manipulated by Indian officials for anyone that is speaking out against India," he told judge Simon Noël.

    "And me being a Canadian in Canada, being a champion of human rights, of freedom of speech, I don't think I should have to meet a foreign official to settle issues in Canada ... That scares me."

  • RFA ☛ Chinese censors delete fried rice gags linked to death of Mao’s son

    Chinese [Internet] censors have deleted a social media post about egg fried rice that could have been read as a reference to the death of late supreme leader Mao Zedong’s son in the 1950-1953 Korean War, the anniversary of which is jokingly referred to as “China’s Thanksgiving.”

    Fried rice in China is often seen as a reference to an apocryphal story told in China that Mao Anying, a Korean War military officer, was trying to cook egg fried rice instead of taking shelter when he was killed by U.S. bombers on Nov. 25, 1950.

  • The Hill ☛ Elon Musk’s corporate philosophy: ‘Do as I say, not as I sue’

    Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and owner of X, has a well-documented disdain for legal regulations and scrutiny. He has famously railed against government interference and positioned himself as a free-speech champion.

    But when it comes to protecting his own interests, Musk is more than willing to leverage the very systems of power he claims to oppose — filing lawsuit after lawsuit to bully competitors, employees, and critics into submission.

    One of the more egregious examples of Musk’s hypocrisy lies in his aggressive use of forced arbitration to silence employees. Through this legal trickery, Musk’s companies compel workers to resolve disputes in closed-door, secret arbitration rather than in open court. This tactic not only shields his companies from public scrutiny but also prevents workers from banding together in class action lawsuits.

  • The Times Of Israel ☛ French teen apologizes at trial for lies that led to her teacher's beheading

    A teenager whose lies about her teacher are accused of contributing to the educator’s murder by an Islamist radical apologized to his family in a French court on Tuesday.

  • RTL ☛ Teen who lied about beheaded French teacher's class says 'sorry'

    They include Brahim Chnina, the 52-year-old Moroccan father of the adolescent testifying Tuesday.

    Then aged 13, the adolescent falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.

    She was not in the classroom at the time.

  • France24 ☛ Teen who lied about beheaded French teacher's class says 'sorry'

    Eight people have been on trial since early November, charged with contributing to the climate of hatred that led to an 18-year-old of Chechen origin beheading teacher Samuel Paty outside Paris in 2020.

  • Citizen Lab ☛ Banned Books: Analysis of Censorship on Amazon.com - The Citizen Lab

    • We analyze the system Amazon deploys on the US “amazon.com” storefront to restrict shipments of certain products to specific regions. We found 17,050 products that Amazon restricted from being shipped to at least one world region.

    • While many of the shipping restrictions are related to regulations involving WiFi, car seats, and other heavily regulated product categories, the most common product category restricted by Amazon in our study was books.

  • VOA News ☛ Police in Turkey detain demonstrators seeking more protection for women against violence

    The demonstrators tried to enter the main pedestrian street, Istiklal, to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, in defiance of a ban on all protests in the area.

    Earlier, police barricaded all entrances to Istiklal and to the city's main square, Taksim, while authorities shut down several metro stations to prevent large gatherings.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ How Capital Economics made leap to personalised multimedia publishing

    Specialist Economic data publisher transformed its content architecture with Drupal-based system.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Mail publisher ‘strongly denies’ lawyer’s allegation of document deletion

    The mother of murdered teen Stephen Lawrence was "alerted" to the potential case by a text from Prince Harry.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Scott Trust says ‘talks continue to progress’ over Observer sale to Tortoise

    Guardian owner appears to be pressing on with plan to sell Observer to Tortoise Media.

  • New York Times ☛ Moscow Expels 2 German Journalists Over Allegations of Closing Russian TV Bureau

    In a lengthy written statement, the city government confirmed that it had denied the two journalists’ residency permits last Friday, saying they were hurting German and European interests and noting it had similarly revoked another foreign journalist’s residency permit in February for spreading “Russian propaganda and disinformation.” The agency said that its decision could still be challenged in court.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russian Journalist Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison for ‘Collaboration’ With Foreign Organization - The Moscow Times

    Novak, the former editor-in-chief of the regional news outlet Zab.ru, was arrested in Moscow in December 2023 and transferred around 4,700 kilometers (2,900 miles) east to Chita, the capital of the Zabaikalsky region, for a closed-door trial that began in October.

    On Monday, Novak wrote on her Telegram channel that she was barred from contacting her mother in Chita, who is listed as a witness in the case.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Donald Trump asks NYT to apologise for writing ‘phony junk’ about him, calls out ‘third rate writer’ Maggie Haberman

    The outlet responded in a statement to Fox News Digital, with a spokesperson saying, "As an independent news organization The New York Times doesn’t produce stories that are ‘good’ or ‘bad’, only reporting that is true. Maggie Haberman and her colleagues have an unrivaled record of providing deeply-reported and authoritative coverage. Every president has complaints about coverage but this work has been widely recognized as fair, accurate and unflinching.”

  • BIA Net ☛ Detention period for nine journalists extended for one day

    The investigation led to the detention of several individuals after pre-dawn raids in four cities yesterday. Due to a confidentiality order on the case, lawyers have been unable to access the charges against their clients. Despite the order, the state-run Anadolu Agency (AA) reported that the investigation is being conducted on “terrorism” grounds.

  • BIA Net ☛ Journalist Erdoğan Alayumat strip-searched in police custody

    “We will continue to show that journalism is not a crime, no matter where we are. We will persist until those in power understand this,” Alyumat said in a message conveyed through his attorneys.

  • CPJ ☛ Police detained multiple journalists in house raids across Turkey

    Turkish authorities should stop treating journalists like terrorists by raiding their homes and detaining them, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.

  • VOA News ☛ Russia jails journalist over claims she discredited the military

    In a closed-door trial Tuesday, a Russian court sentenced a journalist to four years in prison for her work with foreign media outlets.

  • BIA Net ☛ bianet reporter among detained journalists as police raid homes across three cities

    Five journalists and a film director have been taken into custody during morning raids on their residences. Two journalists, including bianet reporter Tuğçe Yılmaz, were not present at the addresses at the time of the raids. Yılmaz was later taken into custody after visiting a police department to provide a statement.

  • Greg Morris ☛ Don’t Forget to Quickly

    There’s an old adage: today’s news is tomorrow’s chip paper. For anyone outside the UK, it essentially means that news—and the attention it garners—moves on fast. Nowhere is this truer than when it comes to products, influencers, and technology. That said, some topics tend to be very cyclical (note-taking apps on micro.blog, anyone?), and fortunately, the discussion about Substack has cycled back to the forefront.

  • VOA News ☛ Israel sanctions oldest newspaper over critical coverage 

    Israel’s Cabinet unanimously voted Sunday to boycott the country’s oldest newspaper, Haaretz, citing its critical coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict and comments by the outlet’s publisher calling for sanctions on top government officials.

    In a statement on Sunday, the office of Shlomo Karhi, the communications minister, said that his proposal against Haaretz had been unanimously approved by the other ministers.

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ calls on Israel to lift government boycott of Haaretz newspaper

    “We deplore the Israeli government’s attempt to silence a respected Israeli outlet like Haaretz by hurting their advertising and subscription revenue,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “Israel’s increasing deployment of restrictions on critical media is further disturbing evidence of its efforts to prevent coverage of its actions in Gaza.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • BIA Net ☛ In photos: Women defy bans, police violence to mark Nov 25 in İstanbul

    Nearly 200 demonstrators were detained amid a harsh police response.

  • EDRI ☛ Centering public interest in EU technology policies and practices: A civil society call to the new European leadership

    Read the joint statement of civil society organisations following the Tech & Society Summit (1st October, Brussels).

  • France24 ☛ 20 Ugandans win damages in Covid-era LGBTQ arrests

    A Ugandan court awarded damages to 20 people who were arrested, paraded in public and tortured on suspicion of being homosexuals, in a decision hailed by rights groups on Monday. Uganda passed one of the world's harshest anti-gay laws last year. But the case relates to the arrest of a group of youth in April 2020 -- officially on the grounds they were breaking social distancing rules during the Covid pandemic. The victims' hands were bound with ropes and they were marched barefoot to a police station as onlookers jeered and threatened them. FRANCE 24's Clément di Roma reports.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Amazon’s Anti-Union Model and the Damage Done

    Canadian postal workers are striking for fair wages and better working conditions. This is putting them in direct conflict with the business model Amazon champions, where workers are treated as disposable and unions are crushed.

  • The Washington Post ☛ OSHA sued for details on Amazon worker deaths during New Jersey heatwave

    Safety advocates are suing the federal workplace safety regulator in an attempt to reveal more details about three fatalities at Amazon warehouses during a summer 2022 heat wave in New Jersey. The complaint filed Tuesday against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said the agency has failed to respond to public records requests seeking documents about the incidents.

  • The Hindu ☛ Child marriages on the rise in Vizianagaram, Srikakulam districts, says SCPCR Chairman

    Andhra Pradesh State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (APSCPCR) Chairman Kesali Apparao on Wednesday asked the representatives of various service organisations to take appropriate steps to stop child marriages, which have been on the rise in Vizianagaram and Srikakulam districts.

  • The Washington Post ☛ TSA PreCheck vs. Clear: Which is better for cost, privacy to travel?

    Clear fits the bill: The $199-per-year subscription lets you walk straight to the front. Just make sure you read the fine print.

  • Scheerpost ☛ Cities Cut Red Tape To Turn Unused Office Buildings Into Housing

    Nearly a fifth of office space across the country sits empty, a record high vacancy rate that’s expected to keep growing.

    Seeking both to boost their economies and ease their housing shortages, cities are taking steps to encourage the conversion of unused office space into much-needed housing. They include reductions in approval times, exemptions from affordable housing rules and changes in building code requirements. Some cities and states also are providing tax incentives or subsidies to developers.

  • Techdirt ☛ ‘Bivens Is Dead’ Says The 10th Circuit, Confirming You’re Only Wasting Your Time When Suing Federal Officers

    Way back in the day (1971, to be precise), the Supreme Court created a cause of action to sue federal officers over rights violations. The original case, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, involved Webster Bivens and the warrantless search of his Brooklyn home by FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics — the precursor to the DEA) agents, which was then followed by his warrantless arrest.

    With nothing else to go with at that point, the Supreme Court sided with Bivens, creating an implied cause of action that roughly aligned with Section 1983 of the US Code, which did the same thing for local law enforcement officers and other government employees who weren’t federal employees.

  • Truthdig ☛ Nevada Voters Have Banned Slavery. Why Hasn't California? - Truthdig

    Under state law, most incarcerated people in both Nevada and California, with few exceptions, are required to work, typically for less than 40 cents an hour, although the passage of Nevada’s Question 4 means that this law may no longer be constitutional in the state, said Christopher Peterson, legal director of ACLU of Nevada. If incarcerated people refuse to work, they risk being written up, which could influence parole hearings and even land them in solitary confinement. Both states employ incarcerated workers for critical jobs, including fighting wildfires and overseeing prison maintenance. Incarcerated people often leave prison with debt from legal and medical fees, phone calls and commissary purchases, no matter how hard they work.

    Neither California’s Proposition 6 or Nevada’s Question 4 faced open opposition from those states’ legislatures or ballot committees, and the measures received little attention, despite Proposition 6’s tumultuous history. California legislators considered a similar measure in 2022 but withdrew support after Department of Finance officials argued that the initiative’s language could have allowed incarcerated people to demand minimum wage, something that would have cost the state $1.5 billion annually. California, which has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, generates hundreds of millions of dollars from prison labor.

  • RIPE ☛ Rob Lister - Embracing Neurodiversity in the Internet Community

    Overcoming the various challenges involved in keeping the Internet running calls for different ways of thinking about those challenges. In this episode, Rob Lister talks to us about how and why the technical community can and should embrace neurodiversity.

  • Vox ☛ What is the Land Back movement? How tribal sovereignty and the fight to address the climate crisis are connected.

    In recent years, hundreds of thousands of acres of ancestral territories have been returned to tribes. The movement is part of a larger reckoning, too: Last year, the US government concluded its Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, a decade-long effort to acknowledge historical wrongs and return land to tribal ownership. Over the course of the program, nearly 3 million acres in 15 states were consolidated and restored to tribal trust ownership.

  • Boston Globe ☛ Brown University transfers land in Bristol, RI, to Pokanoket tribe

    “In 1621, Metacom’s father agreed to sign a peace treaty with English settlers in the first good-faith agreement between Indians and the colonists,” he said, “and 400 years later we have this good faith agreement between Brown and the descendants of Metacom.”

  • BIA Net ☛ In photos: Women defy bans, police violence to mark Nov 25 in İstanbul

    In İstanbul, women marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Nov 25 despite heavy police intervention. Women’s groups had initially planned to hold the demonstration in Taksim, a historical site for such events.

  • Security Week ☛ Interpol Clamps Down on Cybercrime and Arrests Over 1,000 Suspects in Africa

    Interpol arrested 1,006 suspects in Africa during a massive two-month operation, clamping down on cybercrime that left tens of thousands of victims, including some who were trafficked, and produced millions in financial damages, the global police organization said Tuesday.

  • International Business Times ☛ Thai Influencer-Turned-Fraudster Arrested In Indonesia After Failing To Sing National Anthem While Posing As Local

    Nutty's run came to an end on October 18, 2024, when she and her mother were arrested in Indonesia's Riau province. Disguised as locals, they had illegally entered Indonesia after crossing from southern Thailand into Malaysia. Their downfall came when Nutty attempted to apply for an Indonesian passport. Immigration officials became suspicious due to her foreign accent and asked her to sing the national anthem and recite the country's Pancasila, Indonesia's state philosophy. Her inability to do so revealed her true identity.

  • France24 ☛ Taiwan's Olympic boxing champion Lin Yu-ting 'quits event' over gender questioning

    Taiwan's Olympic boxing champion Lin Yu-ting pulled out of the World Boxing Cup Finals in Britain on Wednesday, the country's sports chiefs said, saying that organisers had questioned her gender eligibility. The featherweight was one of two women boxers kicked out of last year's world championships after the Russian-led International Boxing Association accused them of being men.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • IT Wire ☛ Vocus, Google partner on cable network linking Australia with SEA and US

    Australia Connect complements Pacific Connect with four additional network links connecting Melbourne to Perth, Perth to Christmas Island, Christmas Island to Singapore, Christmas Island to Darwin.

  • The Register UK ☛ New Bosun cable to connect Darwin to Christmas Island

    That cable, named Bosun after an iconic Christmas Island bird, will connect into comms company Vocus Group's Australia Singapore Cable that runs up through Indonesia and onto Singapore.

  • APNIC ☛ Gigabit data rates on Starlink — what’s the catch?

    Lowering the orbit is a double-edged sword. Bringing the satellites down also reduces the number of satellites within view of each dishy. On the one hand, it reduces the risk of having a satellite with a spare beam that it can’t use, because the only potential clashes would now be between the satellites in view of the dishy’s cell, and there are now fewer of them. On the other hand, it increases the risk of not having a beam available at all when there is a dishy that needs service.

  • India Times ☛ 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 km (930 miles) west of the Australian mainland, with a small population of 1,250, but strategically located in the Indian Ocean, 350 km (215 miles) from Jakarta.

  • The Scotsman ☛ The island birthplace of Christianity in Scotland being fast-tracked into the 21st century

    The fibre cables will follow existing 19th and 20th-century roads leading north from the main village of Baile Mòr and through the Iona Conservation Area to provide telecoms links to farms in the northern, southern and western extents of the island.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Howard Oakley ☛ Inside M4 chips: Matrix processing and Power Modes

    From early work by Dougall Johnson on the M1, it has been known that some of the functions in Apple’s vast Accelerate maths libraries can run code on the AMX. Thanks to the guidance of Maynard Handley, a year ago I concluded that one of those is the vDSP_mmul function in the vDSP sub-library. This article reports tests of that function in a Mac mini M4 Pro running Sequoia 15.1.1, leads on to an explanation of previous results using floating point and NEON tests, and considers the effects of Power Modes.

  • Digital Music News ☛ IFPI Beats Stream Ripper Appeal in Germany After 2023 Legal Win

    Closer to the present, against the backdrop of slowing subscription-revenue growth at the majors as well as allegations of massive streaming-fraud schemes, the focus has in some ways shifted to putting fake stream providers out of business.

    March delivered a fresh round of fake stream takedowns in Canada, for instance, before August brought the court-ordered demise of Germany’s PimpYourFollower.de. In a testament to the inherent difficulty associated with stopping the sale of non-organic streams, monthly listeners, and more, though, a replica site called RatingHero24.de promptly took its place.

  • The Verge ☛ Google’s connecting Spotify to its Gemini AI assistant

    Spotify is the second non-Google app to gain Gemini abilities following the rollout of WhatsApp support that started in October.

  • The Register UK ☛ M4 MacBook Pro features soldered storage and battery glue

    Hopes were therefore high for Apple's M4 MacBook Pro – before being dashed. Sure, MacRumors spotted a reference to repair parts for speakers, but replacing the battery on an M4 MacBook Pro appears to be just as tricky a repair as on the previous generation. Storage is also unhelpfully soldered to the logic board.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Washington Post ☛ FTC launches antitrust investigation into Microsoft over cloud and AI

  The FTC sent a demand for documents to Microsoft on Wednesday that asks for detailed information on several of the company’s businesses. Those of interest include its cloud computing services, artificial intelligence tools and cybersecurity software, according to a person familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the agency’s private plans.

• Nick Heer ☛ U.S. Federal Trade Commission Launches Broad Microsoft Investigation

  Obviously, the FTC’s concerns with Microsoft’s business practices stretch well beyond bundling Teams. According to this Bloomberg report, the Commission is interested in cloud and identity tying, too. On the one hand, it is enormously useful to businesses to have a suite of products with a single point of management and shared credentials. On the other hand, it is a monolithic system that is a non-starter for potential competitors.

• New Yorker ☛ What Google Off-loading Chrome Would Mean for Users

  If these proposals are implemented, Google’s granular proprietary information about the landscape of the Internet would become more or less open-source. New search engines would have more of a shot at catching up to Google, using Google’s own data. Startups could offer new interfaces for Google Search or new ways to filter the company’s search results. In a blog post from November 21st, Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer, wrote that the D.O.J.’s proposal was “extreme” and would “deliberately hobble people’s ability to access Google Search.” In reality, it would allow users to make more of an independent choice about which search engines and online software to use.

• Deccan Chronicle ☛ Meta faces April trial in FTC case seeking to unwind Instagram merger

  Facebook owner Meta Platforms will face trial in April over the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's allegations that the social media platform bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush emerging competition, a judge in Washington said on Monday.

• [Repeat] New York Times ☛ The ‘Rocket Docket’ Judge Who Will Decide the Fate of Google’s Ad Technology

  The trial lasted just three weeks. In contrast, a landmark antitrust trial last year over Google’s search dominance took 10 weeks. Another antitrust trial over Google’s app store policies, a case brought by Epic Games, ran for a month. The Microsoft antitrust trial in the late 1990s lasted more than eight months.

  Now Judge Brinkema, 80, is moving the Google ad tech case to its next phase in the federal court where she works, which is known as a “rocket docket.” On Monday, she heard closing statements from the Justice Department and a group of states, which brought the ad technology case, and from Google’s lawyers. Earlier this year, she told lawyers that she would use closing arguments to answer her remaining questions before she issued her decision, which is expected in the coming months.

• PC Mag ☛ Mozilla: DOJ's Plan for Chrome Risks Hurting Smaller Browsers

  The Justice Department's proposal to force Google to rein in and even sell off its Chrome browser business may seem like a win for competitors such as Mozilla’s Firefox browser. But the company says the plan risks hurting smaller browsers.

  “We strongly urge the Court to consider remedies that improve search competition without harming independent browsers and browser engines,” a Mozilla spokesperson tells PCMag.

• Business Insider ☛ Google Thinking on Apple Ad Ambitions Revealed in Project Black Walnut

  Apple used to hate the ad business. Now, it looks like it's taking it more seriously. So, how big could Apple's ad business get?

  That's a question lots of people in the advertising world have been wondering about. And that includes Google. And now, thanks to documents unearthed during Google's antitrust court case, we can see how Google has been thinking about Apple's potential as it edges into an industry Google has dominated for decades.

• The Register UK ☛ DOJ’s break-up plan for Google risks collateral damage

  The floated fixes should also be evaluated for how they will affect other aspects of Google's business that face unresolved legal challenges, like the government's ad tech antitrust case.

  Something needs to be done to rein in Google's unlawful behavior, but the fixes proposed by the Justice Department will create collateral damage while leaving competitors, alleged monopolists among them, free to continue engaging in similar self-serving behavior.

• Free Law Project ☛ Case No. 1:20-cv-03010-APM, Case No. 1:20-cv-03715-APM [PDF]

  The Court’s opinion describes the decade-long harm Google inflicted on the markets for general search and search text advertising and the depths of that harm. At the same time, it also provides a roadmap to the components necessary to restore competition to these markets that have “revolutionized how we live” and how search advertisers reach potential customers. Id. at 1. While following that map requires a comprehensive remedy, making those changes would unleash a significant opportunity for existing competitors and innovative technologies to offer consumers who use general search services and the advertisers who sell to them meaningful choices and competitive rates for the first time in over a decade. Plaintiffs’ proposed remedy is grounded in longstanding precedent demanding robust remedies for monopolization. Having found a violation of the law, courts are empowered to “prevent future violations and eradicate existing evils.” United States v. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d 34, 101 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (quoting United States v. Ward Baking Co., 376 U.S. 327, 330–31 (1964)). Any remedy requires a “comprehensive” and “unitary framework” to restore competition with provisions “intended to complement and reinforce each other.” See New York v. Microsoft Corp., 531 F. Supp. 2d 141, 170 (D.D.C. 2008). And a remedy for Google’s unlawful monopolization must simultaneously (1) unfetter these markets from Google’s exclusionary conduct, (2) pry them open to competition, (3) deny Google the fruits of its statutory violations, and (4) prevent Google from monopolizing these and related markets in the future. See Microsoft, 253 F.3d at 103 (quoting Ford Motor Co. v. United States, 405 U.S. 562, 577 (1972) and United States v. United Shoe Mach. Corp., 391 U.S. 244, 250–51 (1968)); see also Zenith Radio Corp. v. Hazeltine Rsch., Inc., 395 U.S. 100, 132–33 (1969) (antitrust remedies can extend to related markets); Int’l Boxing Club of N.Y., Inc. v. United States, 358 U.S. 242, 262 (1959) (same). The Proposed Final Judgment serves all of these ends.

• Reuters ☛ Brazil antitrust body rules Apple must lift restrictions on in-app payments

  MercadoLibre's complaint, filed in 2022 in Brazil and Mexico, accused Apple of imposing a series of restrictions on the distribution of digital goods and in-app purchases, including banning apps from distributing third-party digital goods and services such as movies, music, video games, books and written content. In the complaint, MercadoLibre criticized the California tech giant for requiring developers that offer digital goods or services within apps to use Apple's own payment system and stopping them from redirecting buyers to their websites.

• Matt Birchler ☛ Here we go again…is Chrome “the new IE”?

  So let me just say at the jump that corporate blogs should typically be taken very un-seriously. They’re marketing for the company writing them, and they’ve never found a problem that can’t be solved by buying more of that company’s product. Frankly, it would be irresponsible for them to post anything else.

• The Verge ☛ US v. Google redux: all the news from the ad tech trial

  Google and the Department of Justice are facing off again, this time in a trial about whether Google has a monopoly in advertising technology markets.

  The trial started on September 9th in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. The DOJ argues that Google has unfairly locked up the market for ad tech tools that publishers and advertisers rely on to monetize their websites and market their goods. Google retorts that it’s created efficient products that work well for customers and says it faces plenty of competition.

• Greece ☛ Hoteliers consider collective legal action against Booking.com

  Hoteliers in Greece are considering collective legal action against the online booking platform Booking.com, aiming to challenge its pricing-policy restrictions, which they allege are costing the industry millions of euros.

  The Hellenic Chamber of Hotels is leading a compensation effort following a European Court of Justice ruling last year that determined pricing policies imposed by the online booking platform are detrimental to the interests of hoteliers.

• Patents

  • Unified Patents ☛ IP Investments Group entity, DataCloud Technologies, firewall patent monopoly challenged

    On November 25, 2024, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 8,370,457, owned by DataCloud Technologies, LLC, an NPE and an IP Investments Group entity.

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • JUVE ☛ UPC Milan divisions reject Insulet’s PI applications [Ed: An illegal and unconstitutional fake 'court' still promoted by this Web site that was paid to lie about it]

      Insulet has already seen success in this litigation series against competitor Medtrum at the Regional and Higher Regional Courts Düsseldorf, as well as in damages proceedings. However, the company has now suffered a setback.

• Trademarks

  • Dev Class ☛ Redis Inc seeks control over future of Rust redis-rs client library, amid talk of trademark concerns

    Armin Ronacher, who controls the redis-rs entry on crates.io, the Rust package registry, posted about an email from Redis product manager Mirko Ortensi, followed by a call, in which the company expressed its desire for a Rust client with official support. The proposal was to take over redis-rs in order to add “enterprise-grade features” but continuing with community contributions and compatibility with the official community edition of Redis.

    Ronacher said he understood from the call that “the name of the library constitutes a trademark violation in their mind” and that the options were either to transfer the code to Redis, or to rename the crate. He said he did not wish to be in any kind of trademark dispute. He also expressed concern for those who use the library with Valkey, an open source alternative to Redis.

  • RTL ☛ In US, a guitar trademark feud gets political

    Trump Guitars, whose website boasts a picture of the US president-elect holding a six-string, has received a "cease and desist" letter from Gibson, whose guitars have been favorites of musicians including Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry.

    The letter warns Trump Guitars owner 16 Creative that the design of their product "infringes upon Gibson's exclusive trademarks, particularly the iconic Les Paul body shape," US outlets said.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Gibson Hits Trump Guitars with Cease and Desist Over Design

    Ever on-brand, Donald Trump is champing at the bit to endorse a plethora of gaudy new official (and unofficial) merchandise to capitalize on his recent win and forthcoming return to the White House. To that end, he recently endorsed a collection of Americana-laden Trump Guitars. But, equally on-brand, Gibson wasted no time slapping the product line with a cease and desist for their resemblance to the popular guitar brand’s recognizable Les Paul body design.

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Supreme Court Requests DOJ Input on High-Stakes Cox Communications Copyright Infringement Case

    As both Cox Communications and the major labels seek a Supreme Court review in their marathon legal battle, the nation’s highest court has asked the Justice Department to weigh in. That request emerged as part of a Supreme Court order list yesterday, about three weeks after the internet service provider defendant submitted a reply brief. ]

  • Torrent Freak ☛ €3bn Pirate IPTV Network Serving 22m Users "Dismantled" in Massive Operation

    A two-year pirate IPTV investigation directed by the Catania District Attorney's Office in Italy, involving Europol, Eurojust, and law enforcement agencies across Europe, culminated in the early hours of this morning. Operation Takendown reportedly dismantled an international pirate IPTV network serving 22 million users and generating an estimated €3 billion per year. At least 11 suspects were detained, over 100 are under investigation.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Court Rejects Appeal of Youtube-dl Hosting Provider 'Uberspace'

    Hosting provider Uberspace has suffered another setback in a German court. The court of appeal ruled against youtube-dl's former hosting provider, holding it liable for alleged violations of YouTube's copyright protection measures. The owner of the company is currently considering further appeal options. Meanwhile, youtube-dl remains available on GitHub.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Hugging Face scrapes Bluesky, surprised when Bluesky users object – Pivot to AI

    We’ve been on Bluesky since it was invite-only and we can assure you: Bluesky users loathe the AI bubble bros.

    So along came Daniel van Strien, a “machine learning librarian” at Hugging Face, proudly promoting his public API scrape of one million Bluesky posts.

  • Walled Culture ☛ How copyright chaos reigns among the UK’s top cultural institutions

    The perennial attempts to widen the reach of copyright in the pursuit of yet more revenue is something that is to be expected from companies. After all, maximising profits is basically what companies do. But as previous Walled Culture posts have lamented, there is also a widespread tendency among non-profit cultural institutions – museums, art galleries, libraries etc. – to use copyright to generate revenue from images of their holdings, to the detriment of public access. The problem here is that the majority of their collections are unequivocally in the public domain, and yet these cultural institutions are trying to claim that a digital reproduction of those public domain objects is not in the public domain.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Taylor Swift Theory of Book Publishing

    For the companies that produce and sell books, this could be interpreted as a warning sign, because every dollar spent on what is sure to be a massively successful product (Swifties are such prodigious spenders that economists feared her tour would trigger a surge in European inflation) is a dollar that publishers are missing out on. Instead, her decision is less a bellwether for a big-name-oriented industry than a sign of the times—a symptom, not a cause, of a shift in the relationship between these businesses and the famous.

  • The Washington Post ☛ OpenAI stops Sora video model access after artists leak in protest

    The group’s stunt was an unusual move in the AI industry, where feedback from early testers is tightly controlled by companies, and harsh criticism is rarely made public. Typically companies hand-select which outsiders receive early access to examine a system, in some cases requiring these users to sign nondisclosure agreements or obtain approval before publicly sharing any images, videos, or text responses generated by the system.

  • The Verge ☛ Artists claim to leak OpenAI’s Sora AI video model in protest

    OpenAI first teased its text-to-video AI model, Sora, back in February and hasn’t provided any meaningful updates on when it will be released since then. Now, it looks like some artists leaked access to the model in protest of being used by the company for what they claim is “unpaid R&D and PR.”