Leftovers

• SchwarzTech ☛ Too Many Apps, Account Fatigue, and Diminishing Privacy

  The other day, I visited my local Sam’s Club, as I have the extra membership card for the household membership. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a warehouse club like Costco, but owned by Walmart. While I don’t particularly care for Walmart as every aspect of shopping there seems to be an assault on the senses, I’ve mostly been okay with visiting Sam’s Club for a few staples every now and then. This time, there were a few weird interactions that led me to actually do some digging online later on and share a bit of a rant.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Farewell to my first coffee grinder

  Here comes the proverbial posterior prognostication: but… everything is relative. Coming from pre-ground coffee, the freshly-ground beans coming from this little machine was night and day in difference. Fresh beans, even ones from mass-produced roasteries, smelled incredible. Much like a low-end SLR can shine with the right glass, even a budget coffee brewing setup can be made so much more wonderful by just grinding the beans yourself. Taste is mostly smell, and you add so many aromatics just by making this one change.

• Science

  • Wired ☛ How NASA Might Change Under Donald Trump

    Sources familiar with the five people on the team, who have spent the last six weeks assessing the space agency and its exploration plans, were careful to note that such teams are advisory in nature. They do not formally set policy nor is their work always indicative of the direction an incoming presidential administration will move toward.

    Nevertheless, in trying to set clear goals for NASA and civil space policy, the ideas under consideration reflect the Trump administration's desire for "big changes" at NASA, both in terms of increasing the effectiveness and velocity of its programs.

  • Fabian “ryg” Giesen ☛ UNORM and SNORM to float, hardware edition

    I mentioned in a previous post that doing exact UNORM or SNORM conversions to float in hardware was not particularly expensive, but didn’t go into detail how. Let’s rectify that! (If you haven’t read that post yet, please start there if you need an explanation of what the UNORM and SNORM formats are, as well as the basic idea.)

  • ARRL ☛ Experimental Station to Commemorate Fessenden Transmission December 24

    The story of Fessenden’s alleged first voice transmissions, using an Alexanderson alternator on December 24 and December 31 in 1906, has never been proven to have taken place. “While doubt remains that such a transmission ever took place, Fessenden did perform some crude voice transmissions over a few miles distance in early December of that year near Washington, DC, as a demonstration for the US Navy,” said Justin. Fessenden is credited for his early pioneering work of human speech using RF rather than the typical spark-generated Morse code of the time.

• Career/Education

  • Terence Eden ☛ Week Notes – #??? – Lost In Space

    I have been "retired" for exactly one week. It's going pretty well so far!

• Hardware

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-16 [Older] Google’s 'Willow' chip aimed at leap in quantum computing

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Christmas chocolate prices soar while cocoa farmers struggle

    The skyrocketing price of chocolate, due to a bad cocoa harvest and fertilizer shortages, is at risk of hurting holiday sales. Farmers in Africa, whose crop brings little profit, are the ones with a bitter aftertaste.

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-19 [Older] Doctors call for more scurvy testing in B.C. in light of vitamin C deficiency data

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-21 [Older] Sleep disorders in the land of the midnight sun

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-17 [Older] Postpartum depression: new dads get baby blues too

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-17 [Older] EU-Mercosur trade deal: What's the farmers' beef over the pact all about?

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • PC World ☛ AI impersonators will wreak havoc in 2025. Here’s what to look for

    For 2025, experts are sounding the alarm about AI and its effect on online security. The technology is supercharging the speed and sophistication of attacks—and in particular, it’s making scamming others using likenesses of both famous people and everyday citizens far, far easier. Worse, security groups say this trend will continue to accelerate.

  • Simon Willison ☛ Finally, a replacement for BERT: Introducing ModernBERT

    BERT was an early language model released by Google in October 2018. Unlike modern LLMs it wasn't designed for generating text. BERT was trained for masked token prediction and was generally applied to problems like Named Entity Recognition or Sentiment Analysis. BERT also wasn't very useful on its own - most applications required you to fine-tune a model on top of it.

  • Chris Ferris ☛ Implementing Security Invariants in an AWS Management Account - Chris Farris

    While Service Control Policies (SCPs) define the maximum permissions for an AWS Account, a Permission Boundary defines the maximum permissions for a specific principal (ie IAM Role or IAM User). While SCPs don’t apply to the payer account, permission boundaries do. So, in order to implement invariants in the payer account, we just need to apply a Permission Boundary to every principal. Simple right? That depends a lot on your organization and the nature and type of workloads in your payer account. But first, we need to consider what invariants we need to implement in an organization management account.

  • NPR ☛ In a lawsuit, CFPB says 3 top U.S. banks failed to protect consumers from Zelle fraud

    Among the CFPB allegations are that Zelle and the banks failed to implement proper fraud prevention safeguards, allowing scammers to proliferate, and that banks failed to properly investigate customer complaints about Zelle.

  • Windows TCO

    • SANS ☛ More SSH [sic] Fun!

      A few days ago, I wrote a diary[1] about a link file that abused the ssh.exe tool present in modern versions of Microsoft Windows. At the end, I mentioned that I will hunt for more SSH-related files/scripts. Guess what? I already found another one.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ The Atlas of Surveillance Expands Its Data on Police Surveillance Technology: 2024 Year in Review

      We started off with a big change: the removal of our set of Amazon Ring relationships with local police. In January, Amazon announced that it would no longer facilitate warrantless requests for doorbell camera footage through the company’s Neighbors app — a move EFF and other organizations had been calling on for years. Though police can still get access to Ring camera footage by getting a warrant– or through other legal means– we decided that tracking Ring relationships in the Atlas no longer served its purpose, so we removed that set of information. People should keep in mind that law enforcement can still connect to individual Ring cameras directly through access facilitated by Fusus and other platforms.

    • Techdirt ☛ Federal Judge Says NSO Group Violated CFAA, Holds It Liable For Malware Delivered Via WhatsApp’s Servers

      All of this failed. NSO Group was also ordered to turn over the source code of its most powerful malware — the zero-click malware known as “Pegasus” — to WhatsApp so it could examine it for proof of its misuse of the company’s servers, as well as the messaging service itself. NSO did not comply with these orders. In fact, it even asked the Israeli government to intervene, but notably not by asking it to file a motion in court. Instead, it basically begged the government to raid its offices and seize anything it didn’t want to end up in the hand of litigants, which at that point also included Apple.

    • India Times ☛ Iran [Internet] censorship: Iran lifts ban on WhatsApp and Google Play, state media says

      Iran has lifted the ban on Meta's WhatsApp and Google Play. This move is a step towards reducing [Internet] restrictions. Iran has strict [Internet] controls, but citizens often use VPNs to bypass these blocks. Social media has played a significant role in protests. The United States has encouraged tech firms to counter censorship in various countries, including Iran.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Hill ☛ Biden's border crisis and the Russian threat

    The Biden-Harris administration’s record on border security speaks for itself: Nearly 11 million illegal encounters on our border in less than four years, which amounts to five times as many as under President Donald Trump’s first term in office. What’s particularly concerning are the more than 176,000 illegal migrants that have entered from adversarial nation states such as China, many of them military aged males.

    Even if 1 percent are malicious foreign actors, our national security is compromised. Thankfully, Trump’s return to the White House will no doubt usher a return to border policies that emphasize security and assert U.S. sovereignty.

  • The Hill ☛ Neo-Ottoman Turkey’s triumph over its regional rivals

    Among the players vying for influence in post-Assad Syria, Turkey has emerged as the clear winner. Over the past decade, Ankara has pursued a policy often described as “neo-Ottomanism,” a term that encapsulates its ambition to reclaim influence over territories once governed by the Ottoman Empire. Neo-Ottomanism refers to a strategic and ideological framework in which Turkey seeks to extend its economic, political and cultural influence across regions historically under Ottoman control, including the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Further | President Musk Will See You Now (If You're Bearing Money or Power) | Opinion

    In this so-called holiday season, welcome to America's "Mump regime," governance of, by and for the oligarchs in which an erratic unelected white supremacist gazillionaire whose new hobby is buying presidents is cosplaying as shadow president to cash in - and fuck kids with cancer - alongside a senile grifter selling everything in sight: Bibles, sneakers, perfume, hotels, cabinet seats, diplomatic posts and democracy itself. Beware: Just to be clear, "We now have a criminal enterprise, not a government."

  • The Local SE ☛ Sweden says China blocked prosecutors' probe of ship linked to cut cables

    However, Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard also noted Monday that Swedish prosecutors had not been allowed to conduct an investigation.

    "Swedish police have been on board as observers in connection with the Chinese investigation... At the same time, I note that China has not heeded our request for the prosecutor to conduct an investigation on board," Stenergard said in a statement to AFP.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ TikTok: Why is the China-linked platform controversial and under fire?

    And now Albania has banned it for a year, Prime Minister Edi Rama calling it the “thug of the neigbourhood”.

    Here are the main controversies surrounding the TikTok.

  • El País ☛ Colombia, the world’s largest exporter of mercenaries: ‘We’re like soccer players. Headhunters look at your work and make you an offer’

    Mercenary activity will not stop in the near future, predicts Alfonso Manzur, founder of Veterans for Colombia, an organization that sageguards the rights of retired military personnel. The expert says that thousands of Colombians have worked in this business and that it is becoming more and more difficult to make a general count due to the proliferation of recruitment in countries such as Ukraine and Mexico, where security companies do not intervene. “In the first decade of the 2000s, the number of mercenaries increased by some 250,000 men, many of whom are now retiring. That is why we have seen an explosion of Colombian mercenaries in the world in recent years,” he explains.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Washington Post ☛ Newsguard launched to save us from disinformation. The right says it’s choking free speech.

    When veteran newsmen L. Gordon Crovitz and Steven Brill started their news site rating company, they were prepared for the inevitable cries of bias from both sides.

    What they didn’t anticipate was that NewsGuard, their company of about 50 employees, would become the target of congressional investigations and accusations from federal regulators that it was at the vanguard of a vast conspiracy to censor conservative views.

• Environment

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-15 [Older] 1 body recovered following landslide that displaced B.C. home

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-17 [Older] French President Macron vows to visit cyclone-hit Mayotte

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Americans Are Alarmingly Underinsured for Flood Damage

    According to new data from the Federal Reserve, nearly three-quarters of expected flood damage to American homes is currently uninsured — and Republicans and those who don’t perceive personal harm from climate change are more likely to lack adequate coverage.

  • BIA Net ☛ “They are trying to criminalize the struggle to protect nature”

    Koyuncu spoke to bianet about the ecological struggle they continue to carry out in Artvin and his arrest.

    “I joined the ecological struggle many years ago by opposing the plunder of nature in our village. Our first struggle was against the stone quarries. The quarries had received two licenses. Against the decision to issue licenses, we filed both stay of execution and annulment cases. But that was just the beginning.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-16 [Older] Berlin-Paris high speed rail route launched

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-22 [Older] Brazil: Small plane crashes into shops in Gramado

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-17 [Older] Georgia: 11 Indians found dead at Gudauri ski resort

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Federal hostility could delay offshore wind projects, derailing state climate goals

      For many East Coast states that lack a large land base for extensive onshore development, offshore wind in federal ocean waters is central to their plans for a power supply that doesn’t use fossil fuels. Lawmakers in Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia have established mandates requiring their states to produce certain amounts of offshore wind power in the coming years. Other states have passed laws to allow for offshore wind to be added to their grids or set nonbinding planning targets to prepare for the industry’s development.

      State leaders say they will continue to pursue offshore wind but realize there may be delays during the next four years.

    • The Scotsman ☛ ScotRail peak fares return triggers passenger satisfaction slump

      Only just over half of those polled were happy with ticket prices in the autumn compared to two thirds in the spring, Transport Focus reported on Monday.

    • NL Times ☛ Another bicycle manufacturer files for bankruptcy in the Netherlands

      The court in Amsterdam will declare Cargoroo bankrupt this week, Utrecht alderman Senna Maatoug (Mobility) expects. Bikes made by Cargoroo have been taken off the streets in Utrecht and cannot be booked anymore, she wrote in a letter to the municipal council.

    • Meduza ☛ Russia bans cryptocurrency mining in the Caucasus and occupied Ukraine

      The ban, which will take effect on January 1, 2025, and remain in place until March 15, 2031, applies to Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, North Ossetia, and Chechnya, as well as occupied Ukrainian territories: the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics,” and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

      Mining will also be prohibited during peak energy consumption periods in parts of the Irkutsk region, Buryatia, and the Zabaykalsky Krai. Government officials emphasized that the list of restricted regions is not final and may be revised.

    • The Age AU ☛ Australia urged to power ahead with rollout of EV chargers

      Electric vehicle chargers need to multiply from hundreds to thousands by the end of the decade, a major energy distributor has warned, and legal reforms might be required to ensure they arrive in time.

    • [Old] IEEE ☛ Plasma Jets May One Day Propel Aircraft

      “We could lift a steel ball weighing about 1 kilogram using only about 400 watts of microwave power,” says Jau Tang, a physicist at Wuhan University in China and senior author of a new study describing the work.

      The scientists estimated the jet pressure from their device reached 2,400 newtons per square meter, comparable to that from a commercial airplane jet engine. “This result surprised me,” Tang says. “It means that if we could scale up the microwave power and the compressed air inlet stream to the standard of an actual jet engine, we could have the same strength of jet propulsion using only electricity and air but no fossil fuel.”

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2024-12-21 [Older] Quebec accused of catering to logging industry as it reviews how forests are managed

  • Overpopulation

    • RFA ☛ Illegal wells in Xinjiang spark tension and dry up the land

      The wells, dug to grow cotton and vegetables, have drained vital underground reserves, he said.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Scheerpost ☛ Luigi Mangione’s Indictment Is Another Example of the Dangers of Terror Charges

    It’s hard not to see the bloated charges in the context of Mangione’s recent ascent to quasi-folk hero status. At the scene of Thompson’s murder, police reportedly found shell casings with the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” — an apparent reference to a book about why health insurance companies deny claims. The suspect was also said to have left a backpack full of Monopoly money in Central Park. This assemblage of facts meant that broad swaths of the internet across the political spectrum erupted in praise for Mangione, who many saw as a crusader against the for-profit health care system. People shared harrowing stories about their own struggles to obtain coverage for life-saving care. As the public face of the largest health insurance company in the U.S., Thompson was flattened to a symbol of corporate greed. His total compensation in 2023 exceeded $10 million.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Space Operations Command preps for new shared domain awareness tool

    The software for that baseline capability, known as the Advanced Tracking and Launch Analysis System, or ATLAS, is being developed by L3Harris and is in the final stages of testing.

  • New York Times ☛ Russia Sentences a U.S. Citizen, Eugene Spector, to 15 Years for Espionage

    Eugene Spector was already serving a sentence for a bribery conviction when he was charged with spying, for which a court ordered him to serve an additional 13 years.

  • RFERL ☛ Russia Sentences U.S. Citizen After Closed-Door Spy Trial

    Moscow has also been accused of targeting U.S. citizens by detaining them on trumped-up charges to later use as bargaining chips in talks to bring back Russians convicted of crimes in the United States and other Western nations.

  • The Hill ☛ Russian court sentences US citizen to 15 years in jail for espionage

    Russia, the U.S. and other Western allies brokered a historical prisoner swap this August. Twenty-four prisoners were exchanged. The swap, which took place in Turkey, freed three high-profile Americans — Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, former Marine Paul Whelan and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter Alsu Kurmasheva — as well as 13 other Westerners and Russian dissidents. In return, Russia secured the release of eight prisoners who were held in various countries.

  • Axios ☛ Democrats warm to Fox News and other conservative media

    Zoom in: Some Democrats — inside and outside of Congress — have expressed post-election jealousy over how President-elect Trump used a hyper-focused media strategy to connect with specific voter demographics, particularly young men, by appearing on podcasts and YouTube shows with massive followings.

  • RFERL ☛ YouTube Practically ‘Blocked’ In Russia, Expert Says, As Traffic Plummets

    “Google’s monitoring service currently shows 8.5 traffic points from Russia. Before the “slowdown,” it was 40 points. This means it’s now at roughly 20 percent of normal levels,” Klimarev wrote on his Telegram channel, ZaTelecom, adding: “YouTube is de facto blocked in Russia.”

  • India Times ☛ Apple approaches $4 trillion valuation as investors bet on AI momentum

    Apple is closing in on a historic $4 trillion stock market valuation, powered by investors cheering progress in the company's long-awaited AI enhancements to rejuvenate sluggish iPhone sales.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-17 [Older] Ghana: Mahama eyes economic reforms amid crises

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-17 [Older] India: What's behind BJP's 'deep state' charges against US?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-17 [Older] Vietnam plans bold reforms to streamline ministries

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-16 [Older] Bangladesh elections could be held in 2025, says Muhammad Yunus

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-16 [Older] China retail growth slows, agency calls for 2025 support

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-16 [Older] German election: Scholz loses confidence vote

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-16 [Older] Bolivian prosecutors seek arrest warrant for Evo Morales

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-20 [Older] Chief actuary disagrees with Alberta government belief of entitlement to more than half of CPP

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-20 [Older] New leaders often tighten ethics, transparency rules. Danielle Smith and UCP take different approach

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-17 [Older] Canada finance minister quits after clash with Trudeau

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-16 [Older] Bank of Canada preparing for more uncertain, shock-prone future

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-17 [Older] Canada to impose more tariffs on Chinese imports in new year

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-17 [Older] After major layoffs, Quebec's Lion Electric enters creditor protection

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-16 [Older] Conservatives decisively win B.C. federal byelection, dealing another blow to Trudeau

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2024-12-20 [Older] How Justin Trudeau Alienated Canada’s Working Class

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2024-12-20 [Older] Canada's Trudeau to Shuffle His Cabinet Amid Resignation Calls and Rising Discontent

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-20 [Older] The U.K. and Germany have done it. Should Canada also privatize its postal service?

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-15 [Older] Canada Post says workers to return Tuesday after labour board ruling

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-20 [Older] Tenants fight eviction from Halifax apartment building

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-22 [Older] Cuba: Thousands protest against US trade sanctions

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-22 [Older] China objects to US military aid to Taiwan

  • CBC ☛ 2024-12-16 [Older] After religious symbols law, Quebec eyes ban on public prayer: Where the province is headed on secularism

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-12-16 [Older] Kenya man gets 50 years in prison for killing LGBTQ activist

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • RTL ☛ Media literacy: How Finnish youth learn to spot disinformation

      "Who produced the material that you watch, what do you produce yourself and whether you have an ethical responsibility," Varmola tells AFP, as she lists the critical questions to ask when living in a global information environment increasingly characterised by misleading information.

      By teaching its citizens how to critically engage with media content to debunk hoaxes, mis- and disinformation, as well as to produce content of their own, Finland wants to promote media literacy as a civic skill.

    • India Times ☛ 'Who's next?': Misinformation and online threats after US CEO slaying

      A US health boss's murder sparked a torrent of online misinformation and calls for violence against other executives, suggesting a failure of social media moderation that analysts fear could translate into real-world harms.

      2024 was the year India became the talk of America The posts, allowed to spread unfettered across tech platforms, came in the wake of the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York on December 4 and lay bare a Wild West [Internet] landscape that is largely bereft of guardrails.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • US News And World Report ☛ Judge Rules Arkansas Law Allowing Criminal Charges Against Librarians Is Unconstitutional

    A federal judge on Monday struck down key parts of an Arkansas law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors.

    U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks found that elements of the law are unconstitutional.

  • TMZ ☛ Adam McKay Warns 'Wicked' May Be Banned Because of Political Climate

    Then, McKay makes a bold claim ... saying the way the U.S. is trending politically, he wouldn't be surprised if the movie is banned in three to five years -- given the way American politics is going.

  • RFA ☛ Junta censors tighten grip on Myanmar film industry – Radio Free Asia

    Military rulers have amended the Motion Picture Law, tripling the maximum jail time for anyone who exports a film or screens it domestically without approval from censorship officials.

    Violators of the 1996 Motion Picture Law previously faced up to one year in prison and a fine of 100,000 kyats (US$50). But the amended law, enacted on Friday, ups the maximum punishment to three years in prison and a fine of 2 million kyats (US$950).

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Hill ☛ Trump is waging a legal war on press freedom

    Seth Stern, advocacy director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, warned that the Iowa lawsuit could create an environment where “journalists can’t help but look over their shoulders knowing the incoming administration is on the lookout for any pretext or excuse to come after them.”

  • BBC ☛ Trump sues Des Moines Register newspaper over shock election poll

    Trump filed the lawsuit fresh off the victory of having ABC News settle a defamation lawsuit for $15m (£12m), over an anchor falsely saying Trump was found liable for rape last year (he was liable for sexual abuse).

    Trump's often hostile approach to the American press goes back to his first presidential campaign, and is expected to carry into his second term.

  • The Hill ☛ Trump's FCC pick warns ABC over affiliate agreements

    President-elect Trump’s pick to chair the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sent Disney CEO Bob Iger a letter warning that he would be “monitoring” ABC’s negotiations with local stations to ensure they can serve “local communities.”

  • CPJ ☛ 2 journalists killed, 7 injured, in attack at Haitian hospital

    The journalists were attacked around 11 a.m. Tuesday as they waited for Health Minister Duckenson Lorthe Blema to reopen a wing of the hospital, which was closed following a gang attack earlier this year.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Haiti: Gang opens fire on hospital, killing journalists

    At least two journalists and a police officer were shot dead in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, in an attack by gang members on a hospital, according to a local media collective and authorities.

    The journalists were covering the reopening of Haiti's largest public hospital when the attack occurred.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Haiti gang's attack on hospital reopening kills two journalists, many wounded

    Street gangs have taken over an estimated 85% of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, and they forced the closure of the General Hospital early this year. Authorities had pledged to reopen the facility Tuesday but as journalists gathered to cover the event, suspected gang members opened fire in a vicious Christmas Eve attack.

  • teleSUR ☛ Haiti: Violent Gang Attacks Hospital Injuring Journalists And Media Workers - teleSUR English

    A brazen attack by the “ViV Ansamm” gang on the State University Hospital of Haiti has sent shockwaves through the capital, underscoring the escalating violence and instability that plague the nation. The incident, which occurred on Tuesday, December 24th, saw armed assailants storm the hospital, injuring journalists and media workers, and taking them hostage within the facility.

  • VOA News ☛ People in Russia 'need the truth,' says journalist who sacrificed home and security to keep reporting

    As editor-in-chief of the exiled Russian investigative outlet IStories, breaking through propaganda to bring ordinary Russians the truth is Marokhovskaya’s core focus. But in doing so, Marokhovskaya and her team face legal threats and surveillance, even while based in Prague.

    Marokhovskaya had not planned to leave Russia, even when Moscow declared the journalist a so-called foreign agent in 2021.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Plutocrats and Authoritarian Leaders: Like Flies to Flypaper

    Well, first, it should be clear that they are not principled libertarians. Principled libertarians believe in formal equality of negative liberty rights. You know, my right to swing my fist stops at your nose. Whereas the authoritarian-loving tech bros want absolute impunity to do whatever they like, without regard for anyone else’s rights or interests. Here, for example, is Marc Andreessen explaining who his enemies are: [...]

  • New York Times ☛ Christians in Gaza, Huddled in Churches, Celebrate Christmas

    Some say that the community is in danger of losing its 1,600-year foothold in the enclave and that it is far from certain those who have fled will ever feel safe enough to return home.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Striking Amazon Workers Aim to Crack an Anti-Union Behemoth

    The Amazon workers who walked off the job at warehouses across the country at peak season are trying to establish a union beachhead against one of the most important — and most anti-union — employers in the world.

  • Meduza ☛ ‘Thank God he’s dead — fewer problems’ The story of Oleksandr Yakushchenko, a Ukrainian teenager deported to Russia who died by suicide after being barred from returning home

    Since the start of the full-scale war, thousands of Ukrainian orphans and unaccompanied minors have been deported to Russia and placed in care homes or with foster families. Oleksandr Yakushchenko was among them. Born and raised in Ukraine’s Kherson region, the teenager spent the last year of his life with a foster family in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai. At 18, he died by suicide. His death was not publicly reported anywhere — not on social media, in local news, or by child welfare authorities. The independent outlet iStories spoke with those who knew him to learn more about his life and death. Meduza shares his story.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Female Chechen Boxer Attacked in Switzerland

    In June, the boxer suffered a concussion and multiple rib fractures after five Chechen men attacked her on the street. Elbukaeva linked the earlier assault to her professional activities, suggesting the attackers disapproved of a woman from a Muslim-majority region participating in a sport they viewed as masculine.

  • RFA ☛ Tibetans demand apology from the British Museum for use of ‘Xizang’

    The British Museum’s use of the term “Xizang” to label Tibetan artifacts in its Silk Roads exhibition has prompted criticism from Tibetans and rights groups who have demanded that the museum remove the Beijing-promoted term and issue a formal apology.

    Using “Xizang” — a term China formally adopted in 2023 in all its official documents to refer to Tibet — plays into Beijing’s attempts to undermine and erase Tibet’s historical and cultural identity, advocates say.

  • India Times ☛ Women blast through global tech's glass ceiling in India

    Google’s appointment of Preeti Lobana as the head of its Indian operations last week topped a fast-growing trend of women executives taking charge at technology corporations across the country. A slew of women leaders — from Salesforce India chief Arundhati Bhattacharya, who was recently elevated as the head of its Asean region, to Sandhya Devanathan who helms Meta’s India business — are among those reversing the long-held narrative of gender disparity at the highest echelons of the industry.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ Supreme Court Won’t Help Big Telecom Kill NY Law Requiring Affordable Broadband For Poor People

    During peak COVID in 2021, when everybody was freaking out about how shitty and expensive U.S. broadband was for telecommuting and home education, NY state officials had an idea: what if we pass a law demanding that ISPs try to provide cheap broadband (a piddly 25 Mbps for $15) to low income families.

    Some particulars of NY’s Affordable Broadband Act: ISPs with less than 20,000 subscribers are exempt. Only Americans on existing low-income programs could qualify. And the price increases had to be capped at two percent per year, though this was to be renegotiated on an ongoing basis. This was a limited form of rate regulation, and not particularly radical.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Ugly Truth About Spotify Is Finally Revealed

    In early 2022, I started noticing something strange in Spotify’s jazz playlists.

    I listen to jazz every day, and pay close attention to new releases. But these Spotify playlists were filled with artists I’d never heard of before.

    Who were they? Where did they come from? Did they even exist?

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Digital Music News ☛ TICKET Act Gets Dumped by Congress as Budget Cuts Roll

  The bill, which was designed to increase ticket pricing transparency, also aims to ban speculative ticketing in the United States. It passed in the House of Representatives earlier this year and needed to pass through the Senate in order to be written into law. Although it carried bipartisan support, the bill’s progress was hindered after it arrived in the Senate last week. That’s when Trump and his advisors (including Musk) demanded another wave of spending cuts.

• India Times ☛ Apple seeks to defend Google's billion-dollar payments in search case

  Apple does not plan to build its own search engine to compete with Alphabet's Google, whether or not the payments continue, the company's lawyers said in court papers filed in Washington on Monday. Apple received an estimated $20 billion from its agreement with Google in 2022 alone.

  Apple wants to call witnesses to testify at an April trial. Prosecutors will seek to show Google must take several measures, including selling its Chrome web browser and potentially its Android operating system, to restore competition in online search.

• Copyrights

  • Techdirt ☛ Lane Kiffin Defeats Keith Bell In ‘Winning Isn’t Normal’ Copyright Case

    But if you’re trying to do the copyright bullying schtick, it’s best not to go after a person or entity with the resources to fight back. Which is exactly what Bell did when he sued Lane Kiffin, a rather well known and successful college football coach, for tweeting out a picture of the passage. The court did its fair use analysis, ultimately finding in favor of Kiffin in his motion to dismiss.

    But, man, there is some real meat in this ruling. The court goes to great lengths to compare this suit to a couple of others among the many that Bell has filed, noting that he doesn’t seem to take any lessons from his previous losses in those copyright suits. The court also noted that Bell’s own website made the passage freely available in several places at the time of Kiffin’s use and up to the date of the ruling. Bell never disputed that assertion made by Kiffin directly, but rather merely asked the court to not make that assumption. In other words: I’m not answering, but you can’t assume the answer is “yes.”

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Cloudflare Must Block 'Piracy Shield' Domains and IP Addresses Across its Service

    In a landmark ruling, the Court of Milan has ordered Cloudflare to block pirate streaming services that offer Serie A football matches. The court found that Cloudflare's services are instrumental in facilitating access to live pirate streams, undermining Italy's 'Piracy Shield' legislation. The order, which applies in Italy, affects Cloudflare's CDN, DNS resolver, WARP and proxy services. It also includes a broad data disclosure section.