Links 17/01/2025: TikTok Banned by the United Stated (SCOTUS Rejects Appeal)
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Career/Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Privatisation/Privateering
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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System76 ☛ Pioneering Japan's self-driving cars on open source software
Tier IV is on a mission to develop open source Level 4 autonomous software for self-driving vehicles. To accelerate the process, they’re putting Thelio Astra, System76’s new arm64 workstation, to the test.
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James G ☛ Creative questions challenge
I have been thinking a lot creativity. What does creativity mean to me? What factors make me feel more creative? How can I be more consistent in refining my skills in my creative pursuits?
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Chris Glass ☛ The Big Boy Graveyard
Outside Frisch’s corporate office in Walnut Hills is a fenced off area known on Google Maps as the Big Boy Graveyard. I went there today to pay homage to these souls in limbo.
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Barry Hess ☛ How To Be Here
These social machines are tireless in their effort to addict you. While the new algorithms are irresponsible and bordering on evil, let’s not forget that fifteen years ago we lamented the addiction to the never-ending stream that was Twitter. No algorithms, really, but humans still were pulled to complete all of their reading and catch up to where they left off.
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Benji Encalada Mora ☛ Blog Questions Challenge
I don't believe I was tagged by anyone but wanted to join in as it seemed like a fun writing challenge. A different version of this lives in my colophon but this is possibly a more readable and easier to understand version.
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Blake Watson ☛ Things I got from specific people
Sometimes it surprises me how things that I consider essential in my life—things that form parts of my identity—might have never found me. Only though happenstance did I learn about these things. People happened to enter my life and introduce me to these things I love. I thought it might be fun to call out a few of them. I’m indulging in a bit of nostalgia here. But that’s ok. When you have your own blog, you can do what you want. Just post.
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New York Times ☛ David Lynch Dead: ‘Twin Peaks’ and ‘Mulholland Drive’ Director Was 78
David Lynch, a painter turned avant-garde filmmaker whose fame, influence and distinctively skewed worldview extended far beyond the movie screen to encompass television, records, books, nightclubs, a line of organic coffee and his Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, has died. He was 78.
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Annie Mueller ☛ When you love something made by a terrible person
But the person that monster used to be might have created beautiful things, good things, worthy things.
Those things don’t change, really, when someone is revealed to be a monster. But our sense of them does. The association. The feel and smell. The closeness to something we know to be terrible and wrong destroys the legacy of those good and beautiful things.
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Chris Coyier ☛ The Garden vs The River
Topical URLs like these “slash pages” don’t have to be static pages. They could be tag listing pages. They could be redirects. They could be generated summaries. We’re using computers, after all.
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Baldur Bjarnason ☛ Interim note 4: time-based media
It’s hard to blame the modern podcaster. Interviewing is a dying art, even in broadcast. But it doesn’t have to be. It just requires awareness and practice.
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Hazel Weakly ☛ The Future of Observability: Observability 3.0
Back to observability: Overall, I’m excited to see how the observability product offerings get refined over the next few years to become increasingly valuable to those outside of engineering. Today, I don’t think we do a very good job as an industry of bringing the rest of the business along for the ride, which is why I wrote this post, but I don’t think there’s anything stopping us from doing this once we start treating it as important. After all, if the business can’t effectively learn, then there is no “and then what.”
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Mandaris Moore ☛ 2024 Blogging Retrospective
One of my proudest accomplishments was writing a response to all the 50 blog prompts by Lou Plummer. I had originally attempted to do one every day, but I didn’t have a regular writing habit so it didn’t take much for life to get in the way of doing it. It wasn’t until September/November that I really got serious about making this a goal.
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Harry Cresswell ☛ Blog questions challenge
Around 2017, I started taking notes on the design and web dev stuff I was learning. Mostly so I had something to refer back to when I forgot what I’d learnt. Around the same time, I read Shawn’s post Learn In Public or one similar, I can’t quite remember. Following that, it seemed sensible to publish these notes as posts on my site.
Through the process I discovered that I quite enjoyed writing – how it helps you slow down and deepen your understanding of the things you’re writing about – so I kept it going. I realised this doesn’t just apply to technical posts, but also writing about life in general. That’s when I started posting about various other topics.
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Science
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The Register UK ☛ India becomes fourth country to dock satellites in orbit
India’s Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully docked a pair of satellites, making the nation the fourth to achieve the feat.
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Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Scientists Discover Celtic Society Where Men Left Home to Join Their Bride's Community
DNA extracted from 57 individuals buried in a 2,000-year-old cemetery provides evidence of a “matrilocal” community in Iron Age Britain, a new study suggests
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Science Alert ☛ Iron Age DNA Reveals Women Dominated Pre-Roman Britain
Among the large kin group, who lived before and after the Romans launched their invasion in AD 43, more than two-thirds were descended from a single female ancestor. Meanwhile, 80 percent of the unrelated family members were male.
"This tells us that husbands moved to join their wives' communities upon marriage, with land potentially passed down through the female line," explains geneticist Lara Cassidy from Trinity College Dublin.
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Career/Education
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Robin Rendle ☛ Work is just work
So I’m asking a lot of questions out loud here: what kind of relationship do I want with my work? Is it ok to let my entire mood and personality be dominated by my job? And is it healthy to care this much about something that can never care for me in return?
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CS Monitor ☛ ‘Sesame Street’ starts its final season. Why is Big Bird homeless?
Last month, I was met with sad news: Max would not renew its deal with Sesame Workshop for new episodes. The final season starts streaming Thursday.
The current limbo of “Sesame Street” aligns with a political climate that seeks to destroy diversity initiatives and questions whether teaching children to be generous and to share will help them. It’s easier to destroy something than to build it. Crafting takes time, and more importantly, it takes love. The politics of empathy aren’t just essential to finding “Sesame Street” a home. They are a light out of darkness for a society that’s losing its way on childhood.
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Hardware
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Nvidia's RTX 5090, 5080 reportedly have the same L1 cache size per SM compared to RTX 4090, 4080
L1 cache capacity per SM reportedly remains the same on GB202 as is on AD102, featuring 128 kB of capacity per SM. As a result, the RTX 5090 features 21.7 MB of L1 cache capacity in total, giving the Blackwell GPU 5.4MB more L1 cache over the RTX 4090, thanks to its improved SM count of 170 compared to 128 on the RTX 4090 (21,760 CUDA cores vs 16,384).
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Howard Oakley ☛ How Low Power mode controls CPU cores
Low Power mode can have significant effects on performance, power and energy use in CPU cores of some Apple silicon chips that support it. In previous tests on the M4 Pro, this mode was found to impose a ceiling on P core frequency, even when just a single thread is running. When power used exceeds a threshold, a more complex response resembling that seen in ‘thermal throttling’ was evoked, with progressive reduction in P core frequencies until total power use fell below a threshold, then maintained that level at a significant cost to performance. This article explores how that works.
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J Pieper ☛ Low cost off axis encoders for moteus – a beginning
The moteus line of brushless controllers all have an integrated “on-axis” magnetic encoder. These encoders are designed to allow moteus to sense the position of a motor’s shaft directly, assuming that an appropriate diametrically magnetized sense magnet is attached to the rotating shaft and the moteus is mounted so that its sensor is positioned over the magnet.
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NL Times ☛ More restrictions for chip machine exportations for Dutch companies ASML and ASMI
Rules for the export of chip production equipment will once again be tightened, the Minister of Foreign Trade, Reinette Klever, has said. She added that this only concerns “a very limited amount of technology and goods.” This includes specific measuring and inspection equipment.
Only a small number of companies in the Netherlands are active when it comes to this. Two of these companies are ASML and ASMI. There have been new Dutch restrictions for the exportation of certain chip manufacturing machines from ASML from Veldhoven since September 2023. The new export control measure will come into effect on April 1.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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EcoWatch ☛ 3M Knew PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Its Firefighting Foams Were Toxic for Decades, Documents Reveal
Starting in the 1960s and continuing until 2003, 3M’s firefighting foams contained perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), two types of PFAS “forever chemicals.”
The synthetic chemical compounds have been linked to a variety of health problems like thyroid disease, hormonal and fertility problems, high cholesterol and cancer. They are called “forever chemicals” because it can take thousands of years for them to break down in the environment.
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Alan Jacobs ☛ you don’t have to be there
People: you don’t have to “watch the destruction in Los Angeles through the prism of our fractured social-media ecosystem.” Nobody is making you. And it doesn’t do you any good to watch.
But when Twitter became intolerable people decamped first for Mastodon and then Threads and then Bluesky, or went all-in on Instagram. The Twitter habit, it seems, will long survive Twitter.
I know I’ve said this many times before, but once more for the late arrivals: [...]
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Truthdig ☛ The ‘Uber Model’ Comes for Nursing
The “gig” model of labor popularized by Uber has found a new sector to upend: health care. On-demand nursing companies like CareRev, Clipboard Health, ShiftKey and ShiftMed promise understaffed hospitals more control and overworked nurses more flexibility. But this labor model and the companies that push it endanger workers and patients alike.
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Task And Purpose ☛ Marine Corps commandant rules out beards in the ranks
Whether or not service members should be allowed to grow beards has long been debated. U.S. military officials have argued that facial hair prevents troops from having a perfect seal on the gas and oxygen masks. This has not stopped other countries, such as Great Britain, from allowing its troops to have beards.
In 1970, sailors were allowed to grow beards, mustaches and sideburns, but the Navy reinstated its ban on beards in 1984. Then-Navy Secretary John Lehman said at the time that master chiefs had complained that beards made the Navy look “extremely un-uniform.”
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Google ☛ Your Single-Page Applications Are Vulnerable: Here's How to Fix Them
Single-page applications (SPAs) are popular due to their dynamic and user-friendly interfaces, but they can also introduce security risks. The client-side rendering frequently implemented in SPAs can make them vulnerable to unauthorized access and data manipulation. This blog post will explore the vulnerabilities inherent in SPAs, including routing manipulation, hidden element exposure, and JavaScript debugging, as well as provide recommendations on how to mitigate these risks.
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IT Wire ☛ iTWire - Fortinet firewalls hit with new zero-day attack, older data leak
On Wednesday, January 15, 2025, a threat actor named “Belsen Group” published a trove of Fortinet FortiGate firewall data on the dark web, allegedly from 15,000 organisations. The data released included IP addresses, passwords, and firewall configuration information — a potentially significant risk for organisations whose data was leaked.
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Wired ☛ GitHub’s Deepfake Porn Crackdown Still Isn’t Working
GitHub’s crackdown is incomplete, as the code—along with others taken down by the developer site—also persists in other repositories on the platform. A WIRED investigation has found more than a dozen GitHub projects linked to deepfake “porn” videos evading detection, extending access to code used for intimate image abuse and highlighting blind spots in the platform’s moderation efforts. WIRED is not naming the projects or websites to avoid amplifying the abuse.
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The Conversation ☛ Deepfakes of children: how the government can get to grips with them
The UK government plans to crack down on explicit deepfakes, in which images or videos of people are blended with pornographic material using artificial intelligence (AI) to make it look like an authentic piece of content. While it is already an offence to share this kind of material, it’s not illegal to create it.
Where children are concerned, however, most of the changes being proposed don’t apply. It’s already an offence to create explicit deepfakes of under 18s, courtesy of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, which anticipated the way that technology has progressed by outlawing computer-generated imagery.
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Chip Huyen ☛ Common pitfalls when building generative AI applications
As we’re still in the early days of building applications with foundation models, it’s normal to make mistakes. This is a quick note with examples of some of the most common pitfalls that I’ve seen, both from public case studies and from my personal experience.
Because these pitfalls are common, if you’ve worked on any AI product, you’ve probably seen them before.
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Pivot to AI ☛ Hacker News: Are there any real examples of AI agents doing work? The answer may not surprise you! – Pivot to AI
HN user nomad-nigiri asks: Are there any real examples of AI agents doing work?
The answer turns out to be: no.
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Numeric Citizen ☛ The Medium Mirage
Medium seems to suffer from another problem: AI-generated content and fake account for fake engagement to generate revenues. According to their recent article (Paywall might be enforced to read this), many accounts under the Partner Program were suspended recently to stop this fraud.
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Jamie Zawinski ☛ Exterminate all rational AI scrapers
Today I added an infinite-nonsense honeypot to my web site just to fuck with LLM scrapers, based on a "spicy autocomplete" program I wrote about 30 years ago. Well-behaved web crawlers will ignore it, but those "AI" people.... well, you know how they are.
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Pivot to AI ☛ People don’t enjoy making music, says AI music CEO being sued for stealing music
This is bizarre. The people creating music are musicians. They’re making music because they want to make music.
Shulman is reassuring his fellow AI bros who don’t understand art that he doesn’t understand art either. If you have only contempt for art and artists, Shulman is here for you.
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VOA News ☛ US imposes export controls on biotech equipment over AI security concerns
The department said the technology has many applications, including its ability to be used for "human performance enhancement, brain-machine interfaces, biologically inspired synthetic materials and possibly biological weapons."
The sanctions effectively restrict shipments of the technology to countries without a U.S. license, such as China.
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Privatisation/Privateering
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The Strategist ☛ What mercenaries can teach us about climate-fuelled disaster responses
Mercenaries are paid far better than their counterparts in national armed forces. Similarly, private firefighters in California are allegedly being paid up to US$2000 an hour for their services. Comparatively, the average public firefighting wage is US$30 an hour.
The profit-fuelled growth of such private industries at the expense of losing personnel and expertise from public services presents community risks. Private contractors will act in the interest of their stakeholders and not necessarily in the interests of affected communities. For example, private firefighters may be contractually obliged to remain on standby to respond to requests from clients, rather than helping others at risk.
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International Business Times ☛ Outrage As LA Millionaires Pay Up To $10,000 Daily For Private Firefighters To Protect Their Homes
As wildfires ravage Los Angeles, engulfing over 12,000 homes and claiming 24 lives thus far, a growing divide between the wealthy and the working class has sparked widespread outrage.
Amid this devastation, affluent homeowners have been hiring private firefighting services at costs as high as £8,200 ($10,000) per day to safeguard their mansions, fuelling debates about privilege, resource allocation, and the ethics of fire protection.
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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Netcraft ☛ The Truth of the Matter: Scammers Targeting Truth Social Users
Central European, French-speaking threat actor preys on global victims by impersonating trusted brands including: Spotify, Disney+, EasyPark, Sky, Netflix, and Google.
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Remkus de Vries ☛ How To Tell if a WordPress Plugin Can Be Trusted
You should have this question in your mind. What if it breaks your site? Or worse, what if it’s poorly maintained and becomes a security nightmare? As someone who has built websites and tested hundreds (okay, maybe thousands?) of plugins, I can tell you: this is a question we’ve all asked.
A few years back I did a WordCamp talk about this very topic, but I haven’t shared this in writing. So, let’s do that now and talk about how you figure it out, how you really know a plugin won’t mess up your life.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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NYOB ☛ TikTok, AliExpress, SHEIN & Co surrender Europeans’ data to authoritarian China
Today, noyb has filed GDPR complaints against TikTok, AliExpress, SHEIN, Temu, WeChat and Xiaomi for unlawful data transfers to China. While four of them openly admit to sending Europeans’ personal data to China, the other two say that they transfer data to undisclosed “third countries”. As none of the companies responded adequately to the complainants’ access requests, we have to assume that this includes China. But EU law is clear: data transfers outside the EU are only allowed if the destination country doesn’t undermine the protection of data. Given that China is an authoritarian surveillance state, companies can’t realistically shield EU users’ data from access by the Chinese government. After issues around US government access, the rise of Chinese apps opens a new front for EU data protection law.
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OpenRightsGroup ☛ Age verification proposals could expose people to exploitation
“The roll-out of age-verification is likely to create new cybersecurity risks. This could take the form of more scam porn sites that will trick users into handing over personal data to ‘verify their age’.
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The Record ☛ FTC hands GM a 5-year ban on selling sensitive driver info to data brokers | The Record from Recorded Future News
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday announced a settlement agreement with General Motors and its OnStar subsidiary that requires the automaker to stop sharing millions of customers’ sensitive geolocation data with consumer reporting agencies, including data brokers, for five years.
The agency also ordered the automaker to stop misleading customers about how it collects, uses and shares their data and to begin obtaining explicit affirmative consent before collecting the data.
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The Verge ☛ GM banned from selling your driving data for five years
“GM monitored and sold people’s precise geolocation data and driver behavior information, sometimes as often as every three seconds,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement. “With this action, the FTC is safeguarding Americans’ privacy and protecting people from unchecked surveillance.”
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Cryptography Engineering ☛ Let’s talk about AI and end-to-end encryption – A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering
I was particularly glad to see this paper, but this exact topic has been very much on my mind this past few months. On the one hand, my interest stems from the rapid deployment of new AI assistant systems like Google’s scam call protection and Apple Intelligence, both of which aim to put AI basically everywhere on your phone — even, potentially, right in the middle of your encrypted messages. On the other hand, it comes from a recent European debate over “mandatory content scanning” laws that would require AI to scan virtually every private message you send.
While these two subjects seem very different, at a certain point I’ve came to believe that maybe they aren’t. And worse, as someone who has been fighting in the “crypto wars” for over a decade, this has forced me to ask some questions about what the future of end-to-end encryption will look like, and if it even has a future.
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El País ☛ Porn access debate comes before the conservative-majority Supreme Court
The controversial HB 1181 law stipulates that “a commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material on an internet website, including a social media platform, more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors shall, shall use reasonable age verification methods.”
Possible verification methods include providing a copy of an ID, but also include digital systems such as facial recognition using artificial intelligence or registration through third parties. The law prohibits identity verifiers from retaining users’ personal information.
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RTL ☛ First Amendment violation?: US Supreme Court weighs Texas age-check for porn sites
Texas is one of nearly 20 US states to institute such a requirement, which critics argue violates First Amendment free speech rights.
The Texas law was passed in 2023 by the state's Republican-majority legislature but initially blocked after a challenge by an adult entertainment industry trade association.
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Defence/Aggression
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BBC ☛ TikTok updates: TikTok faces ban in US by Sunday after Supreme Court rejects appeal - BBC News
The Supreme Court has decided to uphold a law that would ban the hugely popular social media app in the US.
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The Lawfare Institute ☛ The Constitution of Kakistocracy
The Constitution’s framers were obsessed with the quality of American public officials. Thomas Jefferson extolled "a natural aristocracy among men[,] the grounds of [which] are virtue [and] talents. … [T]he natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society." He argued, "[M]ay we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristo[crats] into the offices of government?" Similarly, in the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton recognized that personnel is policy, predicting that "judicious choice of men for filling the offices of the Union" would determine the "character of its administration," while John Jay predicted that “when once an efficient national government is established, the best men in the country will not only consent to serve, but also will generally be appointed to manage it.”
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RFERL ☛ Biden Warns Of Dangers Of 'Oligarchy' In America As Tech Billionaires Flock To Trump
U.S. President Joe Biden delivered a farewell address to nation on January 15, warning that a “dangerous oligarchy” of extremely wealthy people is taking shape in America and wielding power and influence that threatens democracy.
“I am concerned about the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few wealthy people,” Biden said, speaking from the White House.
He said the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few threatens not only democracy but basic rights and freedoms and the expectation that each person deserves “a fair shot" to get ahead.
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The Guardian UK ☛ Joe Biden warns ‘oligarchy is taking shape in America’ in farewell address
“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said.
The president outlined some of his most pressing concerns, including what he described as a “crumbling” free press, the outsized influence of the military-industrial complex, rising disinformation, and the need to remove dark money from politics. He also called for constitutional amendments to ensure presidential accountability, arguing that no president should be immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office.
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Chicago Sun Times ☛ Jimmy Carter warned us about oligarchs running government
As we remember the long, distinguished life of President Jimmy Carter we ought to acknowledge not only his incredible accomplishments but some of his serious and prescient warnings. In 2015, soon after the Supreme Court took off all limits from corporate donations in its decision in Citizens United, the president told Oprah Winfrey, “We’ve become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that’s been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I’ve ever seen in my life.”
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[Old] Rolling Stone ☛ Jimmy Carter: U.S. Is an 'Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery'
Former President Jimmy Carter had some harsh words to say about the current state of America’s electoral process, calling the country “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery” resulting in “nominations for president or to elect the president.” When asked this week by The Thom Hartmann Program (via The Intercept) about the Supreme Court’s April 2014 decision to eliminate limits on campaign donations, Carter said the ruling “violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system.”
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Kansas Reflector ☛ In farewell speech to nation, Biden warns of threat of ‘extreme wealth, power and influence’
“The free press is crumbling,” Biden said.
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The Register UK ☛ Biden warns of danger posed by the 'tech industrial complex'
Biden also noted: "Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power." You can watch the full speech below.
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The Atlantic ☛ No One Will Remember Jack Smith’s Report
But indifference to truth and honor and the rule of law has a way of catching up with a country.
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The Hill ☛ Biden won't enforce TikTok ban: Reports
An administration official told the AP Biden will leave the decision to implement the ban or not to President-elect Trump.
“Given the timing of when it goes into effect over a holiday weekend a day before inauguration, it will be up to the next administration to implement,” a White House official similarly told Politico.
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Nick Heer ☛ The TikTok Saga Has Gotten Even Stupider
Mathew Ingram wrote a great piece calling this week’s proceedings a slide into “even stupider” territory, which could refer to just about anything. How about NBC News’ reporting that the Biden Administration is looking into “ways to keep TikTok available in the United States if a ban that’s scheduled to go into effect Sunday proceeds”? Yes, apparently the government which signed this into law with bipartisan urgency is now undermining its own position.
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The Verge ☛ Biden punts the TikTok ban to Trump
But don’t get too excited just yet. Even though Trump has offered vague promises to save TikTok, there’s still not much he can do to eliminate the huge monetary risk companies like Apple and Google could face so long as the law is on the books. And for that matter, the same goes for Biden — unless he formally extends the timeline for a sale of TikTok by Chinese owner ByteDance by up to 90 days before the ban take effect.
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ABC ☛ Biden administration will leave it to Trump to implement TikTok ban
The Biden administration doesn't plan to take action that forces TikTok to immediately go dark for U.S. users on Sunday, an administration official told ABC News.
TikTok could still proactively choose to shut itself down that day -- a move intended to send a clear message to the 170 million people it says use the app each month about the wide-ranging impact of the ban.
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Kansas Reflector ☛ U.S. Senate GOP blocks lifeline for TikTok, though CEO will sit with Trump at inaugural
“We didn’t pull the rug out from under TikTok, and we didn’t ban it. Instead, Congress simply demanded that the app could no longer be owned and controlled by our nation’s worst enemy, communist China,” Cotton said.
Citing warnings from intelligence officials that the app poses national security risks, lawmakers crossed the aisle last April to pass the legislation and Biden signed it into law. An initial vote in the U.S. House in March garnered overwhelming bipartisan support at 352-65.
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Politico LLC ☛ Biden passes TikTok hot potato to Trump
The absence of a clear plan ahead of the ban has sent Congress, the White House and possibly federal enforcers into unknown territory.
Biden’s White House implied it will not enforce the ban, which imposes high fines on companies like Apple and Google that continue to host the app on their platforms.
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New York Times ☛ Trump Is Said to Consider Executive Order to Circumvent TikTok Ban
The possible executive order, reported earlier by The Washington Post, is under discussion as TikTok faces a deadline on Sunday to be banned in the United States unless it finds a new owner. The popular video-sharing app is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. Republicans have said for years that they see the app, which has been downloaded to millions of smartphones, as a national security risk. It has become a rare issue that has united both parties in Congress.
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VOA News ☛ Trump team might step in to save TikTok from pending US ban
The legality of such a move is unclear and is thrown further into doubt by the fact that the Supreme Court is poised to rule on a request by the company to overturn the law.
The high court heard arguments in the case last week and is expected to rule shortly. The outcome is not certain. However, in oral arguments, a majority of the justices appeared to favor upholding the law.
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The Hill ☛ Supreme Court may announce TikTok case ruling Friday
The justices indicate in advance when they will hand down opinions, but Thursday’s update was highly unusual. It came with short notice and indicated the justices won’t read their opinions aloud in the courtroom, as is typical.
“The Court may announce opinions on the homepage beginning at 10 a.m. The Court will not take the Bench,” the update to the court’s homepage read.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ As US TikTok ban looms, users flock to another Chinese app
Occasionally, however, the Americans veered into riskier territory. “Is it ok to ask about how laws are different in China versus Hong Kong?” one American user asked. “We prefer not to talk about that here,” a Chinese user responded.
Such impromptu cultural exchanges were taking place all across RedNote, known in China as Xiaohongshu, as the app surged to the top of US download rankings this week. Its popularity was driven by American social media users casting about for an alternative to ByteDance-owned TikTok days ahead of its looming ban.
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Deccan Chronicle ☛ RedNote Gains Ground as TikTok Nears Potential Shutdown
The rush to find alternatives stems from TikTok’s looming ban, which could take effect as early as January 19. The US Supreme Court is set to decide whether ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, must sell its US operations to continue operating in the country. If the ruling enforces the ban, TikTok could meet the same fate it faced in countries like India, where the app was blocked and users received alerts declaring it unavailable.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Report: TikTok plans to shut down its app in the US ahead of ban - but Trump may suspend it
Update: However, this afternoon came news that President-elect Trump may suspend the ban for 60 to 90 days. So the fate of TikTok remains in flux.
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Axios ☛ Trump looks to save TikTok from potential ban, Walz says
The big picture: It's not immediately clear what action Trump could take if the U.S. Supreme Court were to uphold a bipartisan law that would, unless sold to a U.S. firm, ban the popular video app that's owned by Chinese company ByteDance.
The justices seem inclined to uphold the law, which could take effect as soon as this Sunday.
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404 Media ☛ Donald Trump Has Mark Zuckerberg By the Balls
Mark Zuckerberg can see the finish line. He is so close to getting what he has wanted for years. The U.S. government is trying to give him the greatest gift he could possibly imagine: A TikTok ban. This would be U.S. intervention against the most credible competitor Meta has seen in years, and U.S. intervention to kill a superior product to the benefit of an American company.
On Joe Rogan last week, Zuckerberg said that the U.S. government “should be defending its companies, not be the tip of the spear attacking its companies.” And yet, in this case, the U.S. government—the Biden administration that he has been railing against as he pivots to MAGA—has squarely aimed its spear at Meta’s biggest, most credible competitor in a move that would greatly benefit Zuckerberg and his company.
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ If You Can't Stand the Hypotheticals, Get Out of the Cabinet
First it was Pete Hegseth who said it, followed 24 hours later by Pam Bondi. In the days ahead, I am sure we will hear the same from Tusli Gabbard, Robert Kennedy Jr., Marco Rubio, Kash Patel . . . et cetera, et cetera. et f-ing cetera: “Senator, I am not going to talk about a hypothetical.” Implied in the body language and tone of voice is the unstated addition “. . . and how dare you ask me about mythical future possibilities, rather than focus on the here and now.” Though to be fair, sometimes, as with Bondi’s exchange with Adam Schiff, that “how dare you” is spoken out loud.
But here’s the thing: the job description of every member of the Cabinet, and every senior leader of a federal agency, is centered on hypotheticals.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Swedish Army's AI drone swarm tech allows one operator to control up to 100 devices
The Swedish Armed Forces just announced a new AI-powered drone swarm that makes it easy for a non-drone pilot to operate. It developed this system in secret alongside Saab, the makers of the Saab JAS 39 Gripen fighter jet, and it took them just 12 months to build it. According to Swedish outlet Expressen (machine translated), the I 13 infantry regiment, based in Falun, Sweden, would be the first unit to receive this tech, and it’s expected that the new technology will be tested during the Arctic Strike military exercise this coming March.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Tedium ☛ RIP Mark Discordia: The Nintendo Fan Who Became An Internet Meme
On the passing of Mark Discordia, a ’90s video game fan who got a troll’s welcome to the internet. He was a plumber who loved Mario. Nothing wrong with that.
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Environment
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Science News ☛ Megadroughts are on the rise worldwide
Over the last 30 years, Earth has experienced an uptick in both frequency and intensity of these punishing, persistent droughts that can last years to decades, researchers report in the Jan. 17 Science. Such lengthy precipitation deficits not only shrink the drinking water supply, but can also lead to massive crop failures, food insecurity, increased tree mortality and increased incidence of wildfire.
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BoingBoing ☛ We've officially passed the 1.5° global warming limit we've been warned about for years
A decade ago, I had the privilege of attending and reporting from COP21 in Paris—the year of the so-called "Paris Agreement" was put into place. As I wrote at the time: [...]
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BBC ☛ World's hottest year: 2024 first to pass 1.5C warming limit
The planet has moved a major step closer to warming more than 1.5C, new data shows, despite world leaders vowing a decade ago they would try to avoid this.
The European Copernicus climate service, one of the main global data providers, said on Friday that 2024 was the first calendar year to pass the symbolic threshold, as well as the world's hottest on record.
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The Guardian UK ☛ Climate ‘whiplash’ events increasing exponentially around world
The research found that almost everywhere on the planet has experienced between 31% and 66% more whiplash events since the mid-20th century, as emissions from fossil fuel burning heated the atmosphere. The scientists said whiplash events would rise exponentially as heating continued, more than doubling if the world heats to 3C. Humanity is on track for 2.7C of heating.
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Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ ‘Like Dystopian Sci-Fi Film’: Earth Records Hottest Year Ever in 2024, Breaches 1.5°C Threshold
Earth recorded its hottest year ever in 2024, with such a big jump that the planet temporarily passed a major climate threshold, several weather monitoring agencies announced Friday.
“The primary reason for these record temperatures is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” from burning coal, oil, and gas, said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at Copernicus. “As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, temperatures continue to increase, including in the ocean, sea levels continue to rise, and glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt.”
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Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Congestion Pricing Set to Cut Traffic, Raise $1B/Year for New York Transit; Trump Vows to Axe It
Eighteen years in the making, congestion pricing has proven a tough sell.
“An ingrained pro-motoring ideology that casts any restraint on driving as a betrayal of the American Dream,” along with “exasperation over the region’s balkanized and convoluted toll and transit regimes,” were “formidable obstacles” to the initiative, NYC-based policy analyst Charles Komanoff wrote in an April 2024 op-ed for the Washington Spectator.
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Energy/Transportation
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Inside Towers ☛ Biden Signs Order to Bolster Energy Resources for AI Data Centers
The EO directs the federal agencies, particularly DoD and DoE, to accelerate large-scale AI infrastructure development at government sites, while imposing requirements and safeguards on the developers building on those locations and adapting new clean power facilities. Those agencies will help facilitate the infrastructure’s interconnection to the electric grid and help speed up the permitting process.
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BIA Net ☛ Public transport fares go up by 35% in Istanbul
Following a meeting of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) Transport Coordination Center (UKOME), a price increase of 35% was announced for public transport fares.
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Finance
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FAIR ☛ ‘The Idea That China Growing Wealthier Is a Threat to Us Is Wacky’: CounterSpin interview with Dean Baker on China trade policy
Janine Jackson interviewed CEPR’s Dean Baker about China trade policy for the January 10, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Techdirt ☛ Platforms Systematically Removed A User Because He Made “Most Wanted CEO” Playing Cards
On December 14, James Harr, the owner of an online store called ComradeWorkwear, announced on social media that he planned to sell a deck of “Most Wanted CEO” playing cards, satirizing the infamous “Most-wanted Iraqi playing cards” introduced by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 2003. Per the ComradeWorkwear website, the Most Wanted CEO cards would offer “a critique of the capitalist machine that sacrifices people and planet for profit,” and “Unmask the oligarchs, CEOs, and profiteers who rule our world… From real estate moguls to weapons manufacturers.”
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Futurism ☛ CEO Behind "Fortnite" Trashes Execs Suddenly Swearing Allegiance to Donald Trump
The CEO of Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, is sounding off on his fellow tech executives for falling in line behind Donald Trump.
"After years of pretending to be Democrats," Epic CEO Tim Sweeney posted on X-formerly-Twitter, "Big Tech leaders are now pretending to be Republicans, in hopes of currying favor with the new administration."
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US Navy Times ☛ Navy relieves CO of Naval Information Warfare Training Group Norfolk
The release did not provide additional details on Quemada’s dismissal. The Navy uses the “loss of confidence” statement as a blanket term when relieving commanding officers.
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Air Force Times ☛ Trump picks intel community official as next Air Force secretary
As principal director of the NRO, a position he’s held since 2020, Meink oversees the spy agency’s day-to-day operations. He’s played a key role in discussions around how to collaborate with the Space Force to provide ground target tracking capabilities from space, as well as the NRO’s efforts to leverage space-based commercial imagery services and launch a proliferated satellite constellation.
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New York Times ☛ Biden Tightens Cybersecurity Rules, Forcing Trump to Make a Choice
President Biden issued an executive order on Thursday requiring software companies selling their product to the federal government to prove they included ironclad security features that can thwart Chinese intelligence agencies, Russian ransomware gangs, North Korean cryptocurrency thieves and Iranian spies.
But it is unclear whether the Trump administration, intent on deregulation even while it vows to take on China in particular, will keep the overhauled cybersecurity rules.
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Stephen Hackett ☛ Mastodon Moving Assets to a Non-Profit Organization — 512 Pixels
Non-profit governance is not a magic bullet, but if the organization is led by level-headed folks who understand that their decisions have real-world consequences, Mastodon may just be okay.
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Pivot to AI ☛ Meta AI case lawyer quits after Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Neo-Nazi madness’; Llama depositions unsealed – Pivot to AI
Stanford law professor Mark Lemley, a partner at Lex Lumina, is withdrawing from the Kadrey v. Meta case over Meta training its Llama LLM on copyrighted material. He’s “fired Meta as a client” because Mark Zuckerberg has gone full “Neo-Nazi”:
"I have struggled with how to respond to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness … I cannot in good conscience serve as their lawyer any longer."
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Joe Biden warns against rising 'oligarchy' in final speech
Biden appeared to take aim at billionaire Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who have thrown their support behind Donald Trump following his election win.
Musk, Zuckerberg and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos are also reportedly expected to have front-row seats on the platform alongside Trump’s Cabinet picks and other elected officials during the inauguration on January 20.
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Hamilton Nolan ☛ Looting Season in America
The beaver, in this goofy metaphor, is American capitalism. The homeowner is all of us. Over time, you can bet your ass, that capitalism is going to build monopolies and capture the government and create an oligarchy. That is its nature. Maybe we should try a different system? “No!” say America’s leaders, Democrat and Republican alike. “We love the capitalism. We’re sure it will be nicer to us next time around.”
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The Register UK ☛ Ohio to get giant Anduril autonomous weapon plant
Dubbed Arsenal-1, Anduril claims the planned five million square foot (464,000 square meter) facility is intended to produce tens of thousands of autonomous military systems a year. Designed to be product agnostic, the hyperscale factory will use a common set of equipment that can quickly switch between products as the defense industry demands them.
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C4ISRNET ☛ Anduril to build ‘Arsenal-1′ autonomous weapons plant in central Ohio
The Cosa Mesa, California-based defense technology company plans to begin construction of what it’s calling “Arsenal 1” as soon as state and local approvals are secured. The 5 million-square-foot facility will be located on a 500-acre site near Rickenbacker International Airport in rural Pickaway County, about 16 miles southeast of Columbus.
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New York Times ☛ A.I. Military Start-Up Anduril Plans $1 Billion Factory in Ohio
The company said its Columbus plant could eventually produce tens of thousands of autonomous systems and weapons each year.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Cyble Inc ☛ Biden Cybersecurity Order: Ambitious Plans Include AI
The lengthy Biden cybersecurity order builds on plans that began nearly four years ago in the wake of the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack. It comes during a week when his top cybersecurity officials – including CISA officials Jen Easterly and David Mussington and U.S. cyberspace ambassador Nathaniel Fick – have been urging the incoming Trump Administration to continue the fight against cyber threats and disinformation from Russia, China and others. Mussington also cited climate change as a threat to critical infrastructure resilience.
In other last-minute moves by the Biden Administration, the U.S. held an informal UN Security Council meeting on efforts to stop the spread of spyware, and Biden himself took aim at the “tech industrial complex” and its effect on disinformation and “extreme wealth” in his farewell address on January 15.
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Macworld ☛ Apple tweaks AI notification summaries in iOS 18.3 following outcry
In response to some outcry over inaccurate summaries, Apple is tweaking the way notification summaries work.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Disinformation in 2024 was rife, and it's likely to bring more risks in 2025
One year ago, in the 2024 Global Risks Report, WEF shone a spotlight on the risk posed by pervasive mis- and disinformation around the world, listing it as the top global risk for the immediate term or next two years.
The impacts and realities of these risks have been on display in local communities throughout the past year. As we kick off 2025, it's worth reflecting on the extraordinary breadth of disinformation we've witnessed, month by month. Below are just a few of the numerous examples of disinformation in cities.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ Groups Call for Unconditional Release of Saudi Activist, Salma al-Shehab, After Sentence Reduction
Al-Shehab, a women's rights activist and mother of two, was arrested in January 2021 and sentenced for merely expressing support for dissidents online. Despite this reduction, her health remains fragile, and her wrongful imprisonment has separated her from her children and derailed her academic pursuits. We urge the Saudi authorities to ensure her full freedom, including her right to travel and complete her PhD studies. The call for her release is not just about one individual but about the broader need for systemic reform within the Saudi judicial system to protect fundamental human rights.
Read the full letter here: [...]
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CPJ ☛ Egypt arrests journalist, wife of jailed cartoonist after interview
“The arrest of Mougheeth and Serag marks a dangerous escalation by Egyptian authorities to silence anyone daring to expose their repression,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim MENA program coordinator. “Targeting the relatives of detained journalists and retaliating against those who report abuses follows a troubling pattern. These oppressive tactics must end immediately, and Serag, Mougheeth, and Ashraf Omar must be released without delay.”
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Matt Birchler ☛ Meta, moderation, and whose freedoms come first
Let me just start by repeating the same thing I say every time social media platform moderation comes up: Meta is a private company that creates products that they themselves own — they are not public goods or utilities. US law gives them basically full control over what content they want to allow and to encourage on their platforms. In turn, users have the choice to weigh Meta’s decisions and to choose which products they use based on their own personal criteria.
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El País ☛ Mohammad Rasoulof, the Iranian filmmaker persecuted by the regime
The director, who has been exiled in Germany since May, releases ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig,’ a portrayal of the Women, Life Freedom movement in Iran and how dictatorships are sustained by middle management
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The Telegraph UK ☛ Planet Normal: The Muslim Brotherhood relies on the West's self-censorship, says Ayaan Hirsi Ali
“So the people who were born here, are the ones who are least assimilated because they are the ones who are most exposed to the radicalisation that is happening within these mosques and within these Islamic Centres.
“And over time they started to apply for licences for Muslim schools and so on. The radical Left and the radical Islamists, have formed this alliance that has emboldened and empowered the Islamists to come out openly.”
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The Moscow Times ☛ Cable Damage Slows Internet for Millions of Customers Across Russia
The damage follows a widespread [Internet] outage on Tuesday that impacted telecom providers and platforms such as Google, WhatsApp and TikTok across the country.
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EPIC ☛ In Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the Supreme Court Should Preserve Legislatures’ Power to Protect Kids Online – EPIC – Electronic Privacy Information Center
Neither side is right, as my colleagues and I wrote in an amicus brief filed in the case. No Supreme Court precedent explains how to determine whether an age verification requirement places a substantial enough burden on adults’ access to information to warrant heightened First Amendment scrutiny. What the precedent does recognize is the need for an up-to-date factual record and extensive factual and legal findings in accordance with the facial challenge standard set out in Moody v. NetChoice, all of which this case lacks.
The need for a nuanced Supreme Court decision in this case is underscored by the fact that the outcome of the case could have broad repercussions for legislatures’ abilities to enact age-based protections for kids online. Many existing and proposed laws that provide kids with protections from abusive data and design practices involve age determination, an umbrella term for age assessment tools that includes age estimation and age verification. Industry challengers and courts often conflate different age determination requirements, even though the technology and the statutory mandates are substantively different.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Common Dreams ☛ Rights orgs demand Biden pardon Assange
President Joe Biden was repeatedly warned that prosecuting WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange under the Espionage Act posed an existential threat to investigative reporting by criminalizing routine journalistic conduct that the First Amendment has long protected.
He ignored those warnings, perhaps believing his administration would remain in the White House and have some say over how prosecutors exercise their new powers. That was a serious mistake. Now, a coalition of press freedom and civil liberties organizations are urging him to use his pardon power to lessen the damage to press freedom caused by Assange’s 2024 conviction pursuant to a plea deal.
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The Nation ☛ The Media Is Giving Away Its Rights Even Before Trump Tries to Take Them
What makes the ABC case so troubling is that, as craven a display of preemptive obeisance as it was, it was hardly singular. We have seen a lot of this cowardice from the media these past few months—from the decisions of the owners of the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post to forgo endorsing a presidential candidate to the choice of morning-show hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski to travel to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump’s ring. The most powerful forces in the media seem to have decided that keeping Trump happy is their prime mission.
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RFERL ☛ Opposition Accuses Georgian Ruling Party Of Cover Up Over Beating Of Former PM
Berdia Sichinava, a senior member of the "For Georgia” party, said on January 16 that the Sheraton Hotel, where former Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia was beaten, should make security footage public after government-aligned media broadcast edited video he says alters the real events of a day earlier.
The ruling Georgian Dream party is "trying to portray the attackers as victims and victims in society through propaganda tools," he said.
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Press Gazette ☛ How much UK digital news subscriptions cost in 2025
The price of digital news subscriptions in the UK have remained fairly stable over the last year as prices charged for print newspapers have skyrocketed, Press Gazette analysis reveals.
Of the 21 major news websites included both this year and last year in our research, 11 kept their annual subscription charges the same and two others changed only slightly, possibly due to currency fluctuations.
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RFERL ☛ Belarus Parades Jailed RFE/RL Journalist Ihar Losik On State TV
Belarus state TV has aired a propaganda program parading imprisoned RFE/RL journalist Ihar Losik, who has not been heard from in nearly two years.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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CS Monitor ☛ Hearing Afghan women
But in a sign of the potential risks for India in legitimizing the Taliban, the talks included softer issues such as cricket, visas for health care and education, and humanitarian aid for Afghan refugees.
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France24 ☛ 'Shafted': French comedy series sends up toxic masculinity
Spanish series "Machos Alfa" was so successful on DRM spreader Netflix that it has now been adapted for a French audience, with local stars bringing some comic relief to this very timely subject. Dheepthika Laurent tells us why the series is worth a watch, and highlights another French show that has inspired an American version, coming to screens on the Disney+ platform. "HPI" was a huge hit in France, focusing on a mother of three whose sharp intellect sees her become a detective; we find out more about the American version of the show. Also, the wait is over for fans of the chilling psychological drama "Severance" as the second season arrives on Fashion Company Apple TV+; we discuss the stylish, existential details that made the series a hit. Plus, FBI spy drama "The Night Agent" returns for a second season of intrigue and mystery after a chart-topping first season on Netflix.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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David Rosenthal ☛ A Prophet Of The Web
To give you some idea of the context in which it was written, unless you are over 70, it was more than half your life ago when in November 1989 Tim Berners-Lee's browser first accessed a page from his Web server. It was only about the same time that the first commercial, as opposed to research, Internet Service Providers started with the ARPANET being decommissioned the next year. Two years later, in December of 1991, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center put up the first US Web page. In 1992 Tim Berners-Lee codified and extended the HTTP protocol he had earlier implemented. It would be another two years before Netscape became the first browser to support HTTPS. It would be two years after that before the ITEF approved HTTP/1.0 in RFC 1945. As you can see, Lynch was writing among the birth-pangs of the Web.
Although Lynch was insufficiently pessimistic, he got a lot of things exactly right. Below the fold I provide four out of many examples.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Starlink touts $9 a month 5GB data cap plan to Australian users — marketed as a 'Backup' option
Unfortunately, this plan isn’t available to new users, so you either must have an existing account or have previously subscribed to Starlink to take advantage. Starlink’s email to its customers requires you to log into your Starlink account and choose the “Backup” plan option under “Activate Service” for a preexisting Starlink dish. So, you won’t see this option listed under Starlink’s Service Plans when you’re applying for a new line.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Variety ☛ Inside Cable TV's Decline Amid the Rise of Streaming & Cord-Cutting
Meanwhile, “cord cutting,” once pooh-poohed by the cable industry as a myth, has become a real threat: The number of pay-TV households peaked in 2010 at 105 million; now it’s down to approximately 82.9 million. And a study last year by eMarketer forecast that number to dip to 72.7 million by 2023. Now, it’s cable that’s on the ropes — and struggling for survival.
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Patents
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Scoop News Group ☛ USPTO releases AI strategic plan
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is planning to examine the intersection of artificial intelligence innovation and advancing intellectual [sic] property [sic] policies as part of a new AI strategy the agency released Tuesday.
In the document, the USPTO said it intends to study AI-related implications for IP [sic] protections and potential uses for the technology to safeguard trademark rights. The agency plans to advocate for the development of “sound judicial precedents and legislation that promote both AI innovation and respect for IP [sic] rights [sic], while not unnecessarily constraining future AI innovation.”
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ Poppy Playtime Sues Google for Failing to Remove Copyright Infringing 'Scam' Apps
Poppy Playtime is a massively popular horror game released by the indie studio Mob Entertainment. The game is available across various platforms, including the Google Play Store, where copyright-infringing versions are also available. Despite several complaints, Google allegedly failed to remove these unauthorized apps, which prompted the game developers to take legal action.
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Techdirt ☛ The NHL Just Can’t Get Social Media Right
The point is that the NHL is the pro-sports version of our curmudgeonly uncle that hates modernity and all this new-fangled techno-gizmos the young whipper-snappers are always staring at instead of going outside and playing with a stick or something. And so, perhaps it’s no surprise that a whole bunch of content creators on YouTube that focus on the NHL were suddenly hit with a flurry of copyright notices and demonitizations.
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The Telegraph UK ☛ The extraordinary untold story of the lost David Bowie tapes
Ochester met with two lawyers, one of whom compared his predicament to being trapped in a box, ‘I own the tapes, as physical objects, but I don’t own the contents of the tapes, because I don’t own the music and publishing rights.’ Those rights have changed hands several times, and are now both owned by divisions of the Rhino Entertainment Company.
In Ochester’s most hopeful scenario, he will have some degree of continuing involvement while a producer, preferably Tony Visconti, mixes the multitrack recordings on the tapes into finished songs and then releases them to the public. ‘What I do is find lost and forgotten music and bring it back into the world,’ says Ochester. ‘I think Bowie fans and scholars should hear what I have.’
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BoingBoing ☛ Stack Exchange accused of violating Creative Commons to hide Luigi Mangione's posts
Mangione's activity on the site had nothing to do with the allegations against him; like many other users of Stack Overflow, he was looking for advice on things like iOS constraints for creating in-app buttons. But as Substacker (and Stack Overflow user) Evan Carroll pointed out, the administrators of Stack Exchange recently took the liberty of renaming Mangione's account—removing any identifying features, and reverting the account to the default name of "user4616250."
Some Stack Overflow users, including Carrol, believe that this move violates the site's Creative Commons agreement by removing any identifying attribution from Mangione's posts. When Carroll raised concerns with the site's administrators, he had his own account suspended.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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