Links 19/01/2025: Gaza Ceasefire and PR Stunt by Fentanylware (TikTok), Faking It by "Going Dark" to Incite American Addicts (Users)
Contents
- Leftovers
- Standards/Consortia
- Science
- Career/Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Privatisation/Privateering
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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New Yorker ☛ The Henri Cartier-Bresson of South Korea
Han Youngsoo chronicled the postwar transformation of mid-century Seoul, complicating popular depictions of that era as one solely of deprivation and hardship.
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Michael Burkhardt ☛ Blog Question Challenge 2025
I first established my presence on the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s. Back then it was just called ”having a web page” but at some point the concept of putting one’s thoughts online became known as “blogging.” I’ve been sporadically posting content in some form or another since those early days.
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Chris Glass ☛ Aspect ratios, Golden Arches, golden ratios
Maybe I should just use the golden radio and call it a day.
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The New Leaf Journal ☛ Putting Pumpkins Out to Pasture
But while all the pumpkins in the pile are unique, the piled pumpkins share something important in common, something even more important than that they are all decorative orange pumpkins.
The pumpkins were being given a dignified farewell. The Pumpkin Taker should always do his job this well.
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Hackaday ☛ Learn New Tools, Or Hone Your Skill With The Old?
Buried in a talk on AI from an artist who is doing cutting-edge video work was the following nugget that entirely sums up the zeitgeist: “The tools are changing so fast that artists can’t keep up with them, let alone master them, before everyone is on to the next.” And while you might think that this concern is only relevant to those who have to stay on the crest of the hype wave, the deeper question resounds with every hacker.
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Standards/Consortia
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Rachel ☛ Feed score update: new hostname in effect today
Seeing a whole bunch of unchanged behavior just reinforced the need to do a fresh start on this stuff. The people who have invested in improving their software deserve it.
Once there's a fresh set of data built up, I guess I'll write up another summary.
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Ubuntu ☛ A comprehensive guide to NIS2 Compliance: Part 2 – Understanding NIS2 requirements
If you are reading this, you probably came to the conclusion that EU NIS2 is applicable to your company. Let’s dig into the requirements and what you need to do to become compliant.
The Directive says that entities must implement cybersecurity risk management measures and that those must be “appropriate and proportionate.” While that might seem a broad requirement that is open to interpretation, there is a list of minimum cybersecurity risk management measures to be implemented.
Below I’ll discuss them in more detail and translate them into actionable measures you can implement in your company.
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Science
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Science Alert ☛ Physicist May Have Solved The Grandfather of All Time-Travel Paradoxes
What if the past can be changed?
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Quantified The Harm of Sugary Drinks, And It's Devastating
The bitter truth is revealed.
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Career/Education
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Pro Publica ☛ How Demographic Data on Private Schools Helped ProPublica Report on Segregation Academies
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Sean Goedecke ☛ Protecting your time from predators in large tech companies
If you’re a competent software engineer at a large tech company, your time is in very high demand. Lots of people will want you to do things. You should be very selective about how you handle these requests, and definitely avoid saying yes to everyone.
Helping other people feels good. That’s doubly true when those people are from other parts of the company. It feels like you’re having the kind of cross-org impact that a staff+ engineer ought to be having. But helping other parts of the org is not your main job. Delivering projects is your main job. It’s a common trap to spend your time too generously and neglect the projects that are your actual responsibility. To avoid it, you should identify the people who are trying to claim your time.
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Hardware
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Digital Camera World ☛ The best thermal-imaging cameras in 2025
The best thermal imaging cameras allow you to explore the world in a whole new way. They let you see, measure, and capture temperature differences, accurately and from a safe distance.
Beyond the visible spectrum, there is an unseen world of heat radiation. Arty infrared film photographs aside, the practical uses of thermal imaging devices – also known as infrared thermal imagers – once belonged only to military and professional budgets.
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Greece ☛ US reveals once-secret support for Ukraine’s drone industry
US officials said Thursday that they believe the investments have made Ukraine’s drones more effective and deadly. They noted that Ukraine’s sea drones had destroyed a quarter of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and that drones deployed on the front lines had helped slow Russia’s advances in eastern Ukraine.
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Burkhard Stubert ☛ EU CRA: Essential Requirements Related to Product Properties
Every manufacturer must implement the essential requirements in Annex 1 Part 1 of the EU CRA in their products. They must also document how they comply with the essential requirements in a conformity assessment. The wording of the essential requirements is very generic and hard to understand. Germany’s Federal Office of Information Security (BSI) published a Technical Guideline (PDF) that translates the legalese of the EU CRA into concrete and actionable requirements. I will add lots of examples from my work with embedded Linux devices to illustrate the requirements.
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C4ISRNET ☛ Sweden unveils drone swarm to be paired with ground troops
In a demonstration video shared with Defense News, a formation of 10 quadcopters is seen taking off and relaying footage of their flight trajectory above snowy forests to ground operators.
A Swedish voice-over explains that the drones’ high-resolution imagery and artificial intelligence-driven analyses enable commanders to have immediate and actionable insights for faster decision-making – military lingo describing the advantage of having flying eyes and ears for securing a perimeter.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Harvard University ☛ Are there benefits to exercising while taking new diet drugs?
“Exercising regularly can even benefit the gastrointestinal system, like gut motility, digestion and the gut microbiome. … Depression, anxiety, sleep, fatigue, pain — I can’t think of a body system that is not benefited by exercise,” she added.
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Manuel Moreale ☛ Short Long Form
So apparently we live in a world where 180 seconds is considered long-form since it was too long for a platform whose focus was short-form videos. But thank god they’re no longer focused on short-form videos and people can now create long-form content. That is, as long as they stay below 180 seconds.
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Science Alert ☛ A Salon Hair Wash Can Be a Serious Health Threat, Expert Says
A trip to the hairdresser turns into an emergency.
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Science Alert ☛ Paleo Diet Debunked: Ancient Humans Ate Plants, Study Shows
Let's look at the evidence.
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Science Alert ☛ Diamond From 400 Miles Deep Reveals a Water-Rich Environment
Hell is moist.
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Science Alert ☛ We Know Olive Oil Is Good For Us – Turns Out The Leaves Are Too
What can't this tree do?
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NYPost ☛ Chefs reveal the one McDonald’s ‘special treat’ they can’t resist: ‘A safe place for me’
From toques to take-out.
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The Strategist ☛ Will Convicted Felon crack the mystery of Covid-19’s origin?
The Covid-19 pandemic killed an estimated 7.1 million people worldwide, causing global life expectancy to decline by 1.6 years between 2019 and 2021. It disrupted economies, destroyed livelihoods, and strained social cohesion in many countries.
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New York Times ☛ Health Secretary Defends Biden’s Covid Vaccine Mandates and Social Media Efforts
In a wide-ranging interview, Xavier Becerra, President Biden’s health secretary, defended his tenure and hinted that he might run for governor of California.
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Ruben Schade ☛ Brain ABIs, and ahe allure (or not) of sleeping in
I slept in yesterday. I’d had a rough Friday at work, and I wasn’t feeling it when I got up at my usual time Saturday morning. I rolled over expecting to sleep for another half an hour, and woke up… at 10:30.
Great! I hear the normal among you say in response. Sleeping in is a wonderful treat for days off, and certainly something many of you don’t get to partake in as often as you’d want. Some of you have young children who get up when they want to, others have early commitments you’d desperately rather substitute for something commencing at a more civilised hour.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Tom's Hardware ☛ EA will shut down the Origin app on April 2025 — company asks users to migrate to the new EA app
EA is ending support for the 32-bit Origin app just as Abusive Monopolist Microsoft is ending support for the 32-bit backdoored Windows operating system.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft auto-updates consumer PCs to backdoored Windows 11 24H2 — you can defer the update for five weeks
Your PC will now automatically be updated to backdoored Windows 11 24H2.
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Ruben Schade ☛ Stuff doesn’t work
I have a draft riffing on something I read recently about how people don’t care about things. It started getting a bit long, and included a lot of semi-related stuff about tech that I thought would make more sense breaking out into its own post. Hey look, that’s this one!
Have you ever noticed that so many things in our daily lives often just… don’t work? How the years go by, and the number of things that don’t work doesn’t seem to be getting any better? Despite our years of accuumulated experience designing, building, and fixing stuff?
I decided to collate a list of things that didn’t work last Saturday:
A driver update for my graphics card broke my desktop. Software would freeze when launching, there were visual artefacts everywhere, and I had to type certain commands blind.
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Nolan Lawson ☛ Goodbye Salesfarce, hello Socket
Big news for me: after 6 years, I’m leaving Salesfarce to join the folks at Socket, working to secure the software supply chain. Salesfarce has been very good to me. But at a certain point, I felt the need to branch out, learn new things, and get out of my comfort zone.
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Futurism ☛ Amazon Says All It Needs to Do Before Releasing an AI-Powered Alexa Is to Solve the Giant Engineering Problem That Nobody Else on Earth Has Been Able to Solve
The issue? That's far easier said than done. Despite billions of dollars of investment and the construction of massive data centers to power increasingly complex AI models, even the most advanced chatbots still have a strong tendency to "hallucinate" false claims.
Some experts have long argued that the issue might be intrinsic to the tech itself. In other words, hallucinations may always be a part of the equation — an unfortunate reality that tech companies are unlikely to admit, especially in the face of all of generative AI's buzz right now.
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Futurism ☛ Large Publisher Lays Off More Than 100 Employees After Striking Deal With OpenAI
The layoffs wouldn't be so notable in a scarred and barren post-COVID media landscape, save for Dotdash's massive "strategic partnership" with OpenAI in the spring of 2024. The deal is set to lavish Dotdash with at least $16 million in annual revenue, or at least until the AI bubble bursts. In exchange, OpenAI gets to plug "trusted content" — articles written by humans, presumably, though Meredith was involved in a hazy dalliance with an AI company prior to its acquisition by Dotdash — from the media corp's 40-plus brands into its model, prioritizing answers that send users back to its content wherever possible.
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Federal News Network ☛ Army readies new AI guidance based on lessons learned
“These efforts are hyper-focused on back office, and on capabilities that are ready to go. There’s not a lot of [government R&D] work happening here,” he told reporters this week. “We’re seeing them in commercial space, a lot of us are using them personally, and it’s stuff that we can deploy on the network today. We started with an initial memo that said, ‘Hey, commanders, go do this. Run as fast as you can. Here are some guidelines, here’s some things you need to think about. Think about cybersecurity, think about resourcing.’ I think in this next phase, we’ll mature that and say, ‘Here’s what we learned over the last couple of months, and here’s where you’re best postured to use this capability against this resourcing profile and this cybersecurity profile.’”
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PC World ☛ Microsoft follows Google with price bump, forced AI 365 bundles
In the announcement post, Microsoft says that the price of Microsoft 365 will be rising from $7 to $10 per month for Personal subscribers and $10 to $13 per month for the Family bundle. Per-year prices will be rising from $70 to $100 (Personal) and $100 to $130 (Family).
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The Register UK ☛ Copilot comes to Microsoft 365 Personal / Family for $3 more
Microsoft's feedback forums notes this has been rolling out for a few months on Word. While no one asked for the assistant, there doesn't appear to be a straightforward way to get rid of it.
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Howard Oakley ☛ A brief history of help
Unix had a longer evolution, with the first of many man pages written for formatting using nroff in 1971. Although printed references were published later, deep piles of fanfold printout remained popular long after the rest of computing had discovered the value of desktop publishing. While much reference material was still confined to source code files, brief glimpses into how to use commands are still revealed in lightly formatted text man pages.
The release of Mac OS X 10.0 brought with it a primary help system, Apple Help, as part of Cocoa. Those creating help books wrote them in HTML saved in a folder structure like a local website, and a cut-down browser Help Viewer displayed them for the user. The only detailed account of this, the Apple Help Programming Guide, was first published in 2003, and last revised a decade later, 12 years ago.
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International Business Times ☛ Anduril's £819K Arsenal-1 Facility Is the Largest Single Job-Creation Project in Ohio
The autonomous systems designer plans to build the Arsenal-1 facility, which will span 5 million square feet, on a 500-acre land parcel near the Rickenbacker International Airport in Pickaway County, almost 16 miles southeast of Columbus.
The site is strategically located close to military-scale aviation facilities.
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Futurism ☛ Before Apple's AI Went Haywire and Started Making Up Fake News, Its Engineers Warned of Deep Flaws With the Tech
None of this should be surprising. Such AI "hallucinations" are a problem inherent to all large language models that nobody's solved yet, if it's even solvable at all. But releasing its own AI model sounds especially reckless when you consider that Apple engineers warned about the tech's gaping deficiencies.
That warning came in a study released last October. The yet-to-be-peer-reviewed work, which tested the mathematical "reasoning" of some of the industry's top LLMs, added to the consensus that AI models don't actually reason.
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CBC ☛ Apple pulls AI-generated news summaries after feature repeatedly produced inaccurate headlines
Apple is pulling a feature that uses artificial intelligence to produce summaries of news stories after it repeatedly sent out error-ridden headlines, drawing the ire of news organizations like the BBC and the Washington Post.
The feature, which was rolled out in the fall, generated headlines that were sometimes misleading or altogether false. Apple announced on Thursday that it would pause the software while the company works on improvements.
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Futurism ☛ Zuckerberg’s Instagram Is Hosting AI Fetish Videos of "Asian Amputees"
The account's avatar depicts a woman whose left arm is amputated above the elbow. Its feed, which has been pumping out content since December 9 of last year, is a grim procession of similarly AI-generated images and videos of left-arm amputee women (who may or may not be intended to represent the "Nok" character) striking influencer poses on rural streets.
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Futurism ☛ Apple Halts Disastrous AI System That Was Making Up Fake News Stories and Pushing Them to iPhone Users
Apple seems to have listened, a change serving as a tacit admission of nagging issues plaguing large language model-based products. Despite several years of being in development, tools like Apple's summarizing tool are still struggling with "hallucinations," a problem some experts believe could be intrinsic to the tech.
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Privatisation/Privateering
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NPR ☛ Private firefighters are helping out in LA wildfires. It raises ethical questions
The post was deleted, but not before drawing attention to a little-known industry: Fire protection crews who are not paid by taxpayer dollars, but by companies and individuals.
But as it turns out, it's really home insurers, in particular, who have been making use of their services.
Here's a look at what these companies do — as well as some thorny ethical issues they raise.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Hackaday ☛ Stealth AirTag Broadcasts When Moved: An Experiment
A simple yet intriguing idea is worth sharing, even if it wasn’t a flawless success: it can inspire others. [Richard]’s experiment with a motion-powered AirTag fits this bill. Starting with our call for simple projects, [Richard] came up with a circuit that selectively powers an AirTag based on movement. His concept was to use an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a microcontroller to switch the AirTag on only when it’s on the move, creating a stealthy and battery-efficient tracker.
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Techdirt ☛ FTC Bans GM From Selling Driver Location Data For 5 Years
Not surprisingly, GM was subsequently sued. Several times. Forcing it to spend much of last year going on an apology tour, which included pinky swearing that they will stop spying on their customers and selling data to data brokers and insurance companies.
Fast forward to this week, and the FTC has announced a new settlement with GM and OnStar, banning the companies from collecting and selling sensitive user location data for five years.
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ The TikTok Ban Won’t Help
The TikTok ban is about US tech hegemony, not national security or protecting Americans’ data, which homegrown social media companies make a business of collecting and selling.
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The Record ☛ ‘Surveillance pricing’ means higher costs for consumers, preliminary FTC report says
The six queried firms sell tools that businesses use to constantly tweak pricing, allowing retailers to algorithmically adjust and target what they charge consumers based on a variety of individual characteristics.
The report, ordered by the agency’s outgoing Democratic majority, is at the “staff perspective” stage and is not yet final. Incoming FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson and fellow Republican Melissa Holyoak objected to its publication, saying it should not have been released before the agency’s investigation had concluded.
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Silicon Angle ☛ FTC orders GoDaddy to strengthen security practices after years of data breaches
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has ordered well-known web hosting provider GoDaddy Inc. to implement a robust information security program to settle charges that the company failed to secure its website-hosting service against attacks that could harm its customers.
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India Times ☛ Telegram boss admits 'seriousness' of French allegations: source
Telegram founder Pavel Durov blamed French authorities for failing to notify Telegram about alleged criminal activity. He stated that Paris was satisfied with the platform's cooperation, but other investigative agencies used incorrect email addresses for reporting crimes. Durov also emphasized that he had taken appropriate action to address the reports.
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EFF ☛ VPNs Are Not a Solution to Age Verification Laws
The company’s response reflects broader concerns over privacy and digital rights, as many fear that these measures are a step toward increased government surveillance online.
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Defence/Aggression
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Pro Publica ☛ Jefferson Griffin Voted Absentee in the Military. Now He Wants to Discard Similar Votes.
As a member of the Army National Guard in 2019 and 2020, Jefferson Griffin voted in North Carolina elections using military absentee ballots.
Now, as he seeks to overturn the results of a state Supreme Court election that went against him, Griffin is asking that same court to disqualify the votes of around 5,500 people who voted in the same manner as he had.
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France24 ☛ Palestinians 'happy' and 'terrified' as ceasefire due to take effect
People in Gaza are both "happy" and "terrified" as the ceasefire deal announced by mediators is due to come into effect Sunday morning, Palestinian journalist Shrouq Al Aila told FRANCE 24. Gazans are happy as "it feels like there is an end to this madness” but are also terrified because “since the announcement of the ceasefire, here, on the ground, we saw nothing”, Aila added, citing ongoing Israeli strikes.
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France24 ☛ ICC chief prosecutor meets with Syria's new leader al-Sharaa
The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor Karim Khan met with Ahmad al-Sharaa, Syria's new leader, to discuss options for pursuing justice for victims of torture and war crimes perpetrated by the regime of ousted president Bashar al-Assad.
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France24 ☛ Syria's new leaders reckon with reintegrating vestiges of Assad regime
Syria's new leadership has seized abandoned military housing previously occupied by former high-ranking soldiers who fled following the ouster of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad. But questions remain over how to rehome the large numbers of low-ranking ex-soldiers who don't have the means to relocate.
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JURIST ☛ HRW urges Thailand not to forcibly repatriate 48 detained Uyghur men to China
Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged Thailand not to forcibly repatriating 48 Uyghur men to China on Friday. The group stated that the detainees have been imprisoned for more than 10 years and may face a high likelihood of severe human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance and torture.
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JURIST ☛ UN raises alarm over rising ethnic violence in Sudan
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk sounded an urgent alarm on Friday over the escalating ethnic violence in Sudan. Reports of ethnically motivated attacks, hate speech, and violence against civilians have become increasingly common in the ongoing conflict that has already devastated the lives of millions.
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The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia takes on Asean mantle but tempers expectations on Myanmar, South China Sea
The region is dealing with a civil war in Myanmar and confrontations in the South China Sea.
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The Straits Times ☛ Dictator wants to visit China as president: Wall Street Journal
It said he has told advisers he wants to travel to China after he takes office.
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The Straits Times ☛ Asean and China must start tackling thorny issues of South China Sea code, Philippines says
The bloc and China pledged in 2002 to create a code of conduct, but progress has been slow.
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The Straits Times ☛ Taiwan delegation to take ‘highest blessings’ to Convicted Felon inauguration
Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, enjoyed strong support from the first Convicted Felon administration.
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The Straits Times ☛ China ‘gives face’ by sending V-P to Convicted Felon’s inauguration, but it may not matter much
Expectations are low that this would be a game changer for the strategic rivalry.
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France24 ☛ Court extends detention of South Korea's impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol
A South Korean court extended the detention of impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol early Sunday, a ruling that gives prosecutors time to formalise a criminal indictment for insurrection, a charge for which Yoon could be jailed for life or executed if found guilty
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JURIST ☛ Protesters breach Seoul courthouse after impeached South Korea President Yoon arrested
Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol breached Seoul’s Western District Court early Sunday after the court authorized a warrant for Yoon’s formal arrest and the president was taken into custody, according to national media outlet Yonhap News.
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The Straits Times ☛ Bread, soup, soy milk: South Korean leader’s life in jail
These days, he is alone in a jail cell, eating simple food.
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The Straits Times ☛ South Korean court extends impeached president’s detention, angering supporters
Under the new warrant, Mr Yoon can be detained for up to 20 days.
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NYPost ☛ TikTok to go dark for 170M US users after app announces services will be ‘temporarily unavailable’
TikTok officially went offline for more than 170 million Americans on Sunday as company officials put the China-owned app’s future in the hands of President-elect Convicted Felon.
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Software Freedom Conservancy ☛ Everyone is asking the wrong questions about TikTok
Social media as a phenomenon was designed to manufacture drama to sell advertising, and in this moment, the meta-drama is bigger than the in-App drama.
The danger of pervasive software is clear: powerful entities — be they governments or for-profit corporations — should not control the online narrative and remain unregulated in their use of personal data generated by these systems. However, the approach taken by Congress and upheld by SCOTUS remains fundamentally flawed. When there is power imbalance between a software systems' users and its owners, the answer is never “pick a different owner”.
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New York Times ☛ TikTok C.E.O. Plans to Attend Convicted Felon Inauguration
Shou Chew will join tech moguls like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk at President-elect Donald J. Convicted Felon’s inauguration as the fate of the app hangs in the balance.
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New York Times ☛ Dictator Is Said to Consider Executive Order to Circumvent Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban
The move is under discussion as the Chinese-owned app faces a Sunday deadline to find a new buyer or shut down in the United States.
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New York Times ☛ Tik Tok Travel Ban Could Change Travel
The app gave places like an ice cream shop/wine bar fame, and sometimes overwhelmed them with crowds. Influencers and destinations await the fallout.
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New York Times ☛ In TikTok’s Final Hours, Users React to a Nationwide Ban of the App
Users in the United States react to a nationwide ban of the app.
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France24 ☛ TikTok app to 'go dark' in the US on Sunday
TikTok says it will "go dark" in the United States on Sunday unless the government provides assurances a new law calling for its ban won't be used to punish service providers. The US Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law supported by President Joe Biden and Congress that requires the app's owner ByteDance to either sell Fentanylware (TikTok) or cease US operations by January 19.
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New York Times ☛ Biden and Convicted Felon Weigh In as Fentanylware (TikTok) Threatens to ‘Go Dark’ on Sunday [Ed: Fentanylware (TikTok) going "dark" as a PR stunt should be more evidence for SCOTUS that the core issue isn't privacy but psychological manipulation, to name just one]
The Chinese-owned company said it would cut off its services unless the U.S. assures Apple, Surveillance Giant Google and other companies that they would not be punished for hosting and distributing TikTok.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ ‘More sad than shocked’: Tiktok content creators contemplate a future without the app ahead of ban
“I almost, like, don’t know how to define myself without TikTok,” content creator Ayman Chaudhary sighed, reflecting the consternation of millions over US authorities’ scheduled banning Sunday of the hugely popular app.
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Myanmar military regime enters year 5 in terminal decline
Myanmar’s military approaches the fourth anniversary of the coup d’etat that put them in power in terminal decline.
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Digital Music News ☛ Following Supreme Court Decision — And Convicted Felon’s Call with the Chinese President — Fentanylware (TikTok) CEO Thanks President-Elect for Vowing to Help the App Remain in the US
Following Convicted Felon’s call with Chinese president Pooh-tin Jinping, Fentanylware (TikTok) CEO Chew thanks the President-elect for vowing to help the platform remain in the US.
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Cloudbooklet ☛ RedNote: The Fentanylware (TikTok) Alternative Dominating Now! [Ed: Fentanylware (TikTok) addicts rushing to RedNote and people running away from X (Melon) to BlueSky or from Musk-Trump to somewhere else are addicts, not rational people. If they thought lucidly, they'd identify the issue: it's not a brand, it's the modality. Social control media is toxic.]
Meet RedNote, the app that’s not just a Fentanylware (TikTok) Alternative but a game-changer in the social control media realm.
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Don Marti ☛ Supreme Court files confusing bug report
The Supreme Court pretty much ignores TikTok’s dreaded For You Page algorithm and focuses on the privacy problem. So we don’t know if some future ban of some hypothetical future app that somehow fixed its data collection issues would hold up in court just based on how it does content recommendations. (Regulating recommendation algorithms is a big issue that I’m not surprised the Court couldn’t agree on in the short time they had for this case.) We also get the following, on p. 9—TikTok got the benefit of the doubt and received some First Amendment consideration that future apps might or might not.
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The Register UK ☛ EU orders X to hand over info on recent algorithm changes
Brussels today announced it is demanding internal documentation on the recommendation systems of the site formerly known as Twitter and any recent changes by February 15. The Commission also wants access to some of X's commercial APIs "that allow direct fact-finding on content moderation and virality of accounts."
In addition, the Commission has issued a retention order to X requiring it to preserve documents regarding both planned and recent changes to the site's content recommendation engines between now and the end of 2025.
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Nick Heer ☛ U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Law Banning TikTok if It Is Not Sold
The opinion (PDF) is predicated solely on data collection concerns. The justices did not even consider questions about TikTok’s recommendations system, finding that national security alone is worth a change in TikTok’s ownership.
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The Verge ☛ TikTok says it’s shutting down in the US after failing to avoid a ban
TikTok is officially going dark in the United States now that a federal ban on the app is set to go into effect on January 19th. Around 6PM PT, the app began notifying people in the US, including Verge staffers, with a message that said the ban would “make our services temporarily unavailable.”
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The Register UK ☛ US Supreme Court upholds TikTok sell-or-ban law
The US Supreme Court has upheld a law requiring TikTok to either divest from its Chinese parent ByteDance or face a ban in the United States. The decision eliminates the final legal obstacle to the federal government forcing a shutdown of the platform for US users on January 19.
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The Verge ☛ Biden White House says TikTok’s threat to go dark is a ‘stunt’
Given that the ban’s deadline is before Trump is sworn in, it’s not clear whether Trump can actually extend it. He can choose not to enforce the ban, just as Biden says he will, but that still leaves TikTok’s US service providers, like Apple, Google, and Oracle, at legal risk.
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JURIST ☛ European Commission requests information from X under the Digital Services Act
The European Commission adopted three new investigatory measures. First, the EU obliged X to provide information on its recommender system, including any changes made to this algorithm. Moreover, the EU issued a “retention order,” which requires the Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) to maintain and preserve any information regarding future changes made to its recommender system until December 31, 2025. Lastly, the commission requested information on some of X’s commercial Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that allow fact-finding for content moderation practices.
Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen commented: “Today we are taking further steps to shed light on the compliance of X’s recommender systems with the obligations under the DSA.” Virkkunen stated that the request for information aims to “make the online environment fair, safe, and democratic for all European citizens.”
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New York Times ☛ What if No One Misses TikTok?
Sure, there are the people calling themselves “TikTok refugees” and joining Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social media app, as a half-joking protest of the U.S. government’s decision to ban TikTok on national security grounds. (The joke part is: OK, Congress, you want to stop us from using a sketchy Chinese social media app? We’ll download an even sketchier Chinese social media app and use that instead.)
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India Times ☛ TikTok faces US ban deadline as users brace for fallout
TikTok announced it will shut down in the US on Sunday unless President Biden's administration assures companies like Apple and Google they won't face enforcement when the ban takes effect. The Supreme Court upheld the ban in a unanimous decision, and the White House indicated Biden wouldn’t intervene before the deadline.
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Vox ☛ Trump’s “shock and awe” approach to executive orders, explained
That’s because executive orders can help him circumvent Congress, where Republicans currently have the narrowest majority in the House in 100 years and they still need at least seven Democrats to pass most legislation in the Senate. There are limits to what he can accomplish via executive order, and some of his agenda requires legislation to implement, especially if it demands new appropriations (which Congress controls). But just as in his first term, Trump can quickly undo major pillars of his predecessor’s legacy via executive order as he has promised.
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The Washington Post ☛ TikTok bans in other countries have led to disparate outcomes
On June 29, 2020, two weeks after a deadly melee between Chinese and Indian troops along the countries’ contested border, the administration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi abruptly banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese-owned apps, citing data security concerns. Of those apps, TikTok was by far the most popular, a cultural sensation with 200 million users in India — the video-sharing app’s largest market in the world at the time.
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New York Times ☛ A Big, Bold TikTok Ban
Yet allowing a Chinese company — and, by extension, the Chinese government — to control a U.S. communication platform and vast amounts of Americans’ personal data also has major downsides. Congress and the Supreme Court have decided that the risks are large enough to justify the disruption. It’s a sign of the intensity of the U.S.-China competition for global influence.
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Variety ☛ TikTok Will Shut Down Unless US Guarantees Non-Enforcement of Ban
On Friday morning, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal by TikTok and parent ByteDance to halt a law that will ban the popular video app in the U.S. as of Sunday unless China-based ByteDance divests its stake in the app to a party that is not located in a country deemed a “foreign adversary.”
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Futurism ☛ Elon Musk, Who Is Definitely Not Secretly Trump's Boss, Will Have Office on White House Compound
Multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk has grown so close to president-elect Donald Trump that he'll be moving with him — well, sort of — following next week's inauguration.
Musk, who was put in charge of a so-called "Department [sic] of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) last year by Trump, is expected to be assigned space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is part of the White House complex and a five-minute walk from the West Wing, the New York Times reports.
That's despite the fact that DOGE is an entirely advisory body and not an actual government "department."
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The Jewish Chronicle ☛ Pro-Hezbollah Imam invited to speak at Trump inauguration alongside Yeshiva University president - The Jewish Chronicle
A new report by the Middle East Forum stated that the Dearborn imam is “pro-Hezbollah.”
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NYPost ☛ Imam who refused to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization scheduled to deliver a benediction at Trump’s inauguration
A Muslim cleric who refused to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization and has a “significant history of extremism” has been tapped to deliver a benediction at President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next week.
Husham Al-Husainy, the imam of the Karbalaa Islamic Educational Center in Dearborn, Mich., is among four religious leaders listed in an Inauguration Day program, obtained by the Washington Reporter on Monday, who are scheduled to speak immediately after Trump’s Jan. 20 address.
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ME Forum ☛ Antisemitic, Pro-Hezbollah Imam Invited to Deliver Prayer at Trump Inauguration
Husham Al-Husainy is the imam of the Karbalaa Islamic Educational Center in Dearborn, Michigan.
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The New Arab ☛ US imam Husham Al-Husainy 'to speak at Trump inauguration'
Frustrated by the Biden’s administration failure to reach achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, and its staunch military support for Israel and the subsequent war in Lebanon, the state’s Arab-American community shunned the Democrats and largely cast their votes for Trump.
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The Atlantic ☛ Trump Triggers a Crisis in Denmark—And Europe
The result: Mid-morning, I found myself standing on the Knippel Bridge between the Danish foreign ministry and the Danish Parliament, holding a phone, waiting to be told which direction to walk. Denmark in January is not warm; I went to the Parliament and waited there. The meeting was canceled anyway. After that, nobody wanted to say anything on the record at all. Thus have Americans who voted for Trump because of the putatively high price of eggs now precipitated a political crisis in Scandinavia.
In private discussions, the adjective that was most frequently used to describe the Trump phone call was rough. The verb most frequently used was threaten. The reaction most frequently expressed was confusion. Trump made it clear to Frederiksen that he is serious about Greenland: He sees it, apparently, as a real-estate deal. But Greenland is not a beachfront property. The world’s largest island is an autonomous territory of Denmark, inhabited by people who are Danish citizens, vote in Danish elections, and have representatives in the Danish Parliament. Denmark also has politics, and a Danish prime minister cannot sell Greenland any more than an American president can sell Florida.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Donald Trump talks trade, TikTok with Xi Jinping
Trump in the election campaign threatened China and other US trading partners with huge tariffs, but he has also said he is open to talks with Xi, a leader he has long openly admired.
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Associated Press ☛ Denmark wants court to dissolve Danish arm of Bandidos motorcycle club, citing violence
“The freedom of association was not created to protect vicious criminals,” Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard said at a news conference Wednesday, adding that the Bandidos had engaged in especially “brutal behavior.”
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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JURIST ☛ Russia sentences three lawyers for aiding Alexei Navalny amid international condemnation
Amnesty International on Friday condemned a Russian court’s sentencing of three lawyers for aiding the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), calling the decision “shameful.”
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France24 ☛ Russian court sentences Navalny lawyers to years behind bars
Russia on Friday sentenced three lawyers who had defended Alexei Navalny to several years in prison for bringing messages from the late opposition leader from prison to the outside world. Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin were found guilty of participating in an "extremist organisation" by a court in the town of Petushki.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ How Mark Zuckerberg Fell for the Republican Right
For some, Zuckerberg’s recent decision to ditch fact-checkers in exchange for community notes, open the floodgates to hate speech, and begin ditching diversity and trans-inclusive initiatives might feel like a betrayal. But for those who didn’t fall for the expertly orchestrated public relations campaign that accompanied his makeover, it was hardly a surprise.
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RFA ☛ Is a video of a North Korean soldier captured by Ukraine digitally altered?
But experts contacted by Asia Fact Check Lab who examined the video say it appears to be authentic. The intricate details in the video show it was neither AI-generated nor tampered with, they said.
Also, several AI content detection tools indicated that it was unlikely the video had been digitally modified. Ukrainian authorities also rejected the claim.
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Environment
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Energy/Transportation
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Hackaday ☛ Putting Cheap Motorcycle Tachometers To Work
With so much data being thrown at our eyeballs these days, it’s worryingly easy for the actually important stuff to slip by occasionally. So when [Liam Jackson] wanted a way to visualize the number of test failures popping up in the continuous integration system at work, he went with a novel but effective solution — universal motorcycle tachometers.
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Finance
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Breach Media ☛ Canada’s best response to The Insurrectionist’s aggression? Socialism
We need to start reversing 40 years of neoliberalism with economic planning and public ownership
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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New Yorker ☛ Big Money and Convicted Felon’s New Cabinet
“The Insurrectionist is a master of picking appointees for very senior positions who never would have gotten those jobs under anyone else,” the staff writer Susan B. Glasser says. “I think it’s part of creating not just a government of laws and rules but a government built around the principle of personal loyalty to one man.”
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New Yorker ☛ The Unfinished Business the Biden Administration Is Handing Back to The Insurrectionist
The staff writer Evan Osnos offers a behind-the-scenes perspective on President Biden’s handling of world crises—from Gaza and Ukraine to China’s designs on Taiwan.
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Federal News Network ☛ IRS commissioner to step down before his term ends, letting Convicted Felon advance his own pick
Werfel applauded IRS employees for supporting two of the “best filing seasons in decades," after tapping into billions in Inflation Reduction Act funds.
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JURIST ☛ US Senate moves forward with tougher immigration detention rules for theft-related charges
The Senate voted on Friday to invoke cloture on the Laken Riley Act, a bill requiring the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detain non-citizens charged with theft-related offenses in the United States.
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The Straits Times ☛ Japan foreign minister to highlight defence spending, investment at Convicted Felon inaugural
TOKYO - Japan's foreign minister said on Friday he would highlight the economic and national security value that the United States' key Asian ally offers during his visit to Washington for President-elect The Insurrectionist's inauguration on Monday.
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NYPost ☛ Dictator told advisers he wants to visit China during his first 100 days in office: report
The soon-to-be 47th president, who will be sworn in on Monday, voiced interest in traveling to China within his first 100 days in office.
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The Strategist ☛ China’s secretive build-up presents Convicted Felon with a difficult nuclear challenge
After disappearing from debate over the last couple of decades, nuclear politics are set to return with a vengeance. China has begun an unexpected and secretive nuclear force buildup.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Chinese sculptor’s The Insurrectionist as Buddha statues go viral, again, ahead of inauguration
By Sam Davies The Insurrectionist is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China the US president-elect sits in divine contemplation.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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The Straits Times ☛ Misleading mooncake ads, vulgar content: China’s influencer network firms face regulatory clean-up
One Chinese influencer company had sold "Hong Kong" mooncakes that were made in mainland China.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Jimmy Lai paid retired US army general to advise Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen on Convicted Felon’s attitude, court hears
Jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai has told his national security trial that he paid a retired US army general to give advice to former Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen regarding the attitude of The Insurrectionist’s first administration to the self-ruled island.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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JURIST ☛ Los Angeles deputy pleads guilty to assaulting transgender man exercising free speech rights
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy, Joseph Benza III, pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge on Friday. He assaulted a transgender man, Emmett Brock, who exercised his First Amendment rights by making an obscene hand gesture while driving.
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Trademarks
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Priority by Two Days: TTAB Grants Cancellation in Domain Name Dispute Turned Trademark Battle
As someone quite familiar with the subject matter, I was looking forward to writing about the trademark battle of Nerdio, Inc. v. NerdIO Limited. The appeal was recently dismissed based upon a joint stipulation, but I still wanted to dig into the TTAB file for a few nuggets. Nerdio, Inc. v. NerdIO Limited, Cancellation No. 92075281 (TTAB May 14, 2024).
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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