Leftovers

• Smithsonian Magazine ☛ On This Day in 1964, 73 Million Americans Tuned in to Watch the Biggest Act in Music | Smithsonian

  The debut episode was a television hit. Its 73 million viewers represented more than 60 percent of all television viewers in the U.S. that evening. The episode instantly became the most-watched TV event of its time.

• Lou Plummer ☛ Buy Less Stuff, Go More Places

  During my year-long project to see if it was possible to manufacture happiness, one of the exercises I undertook was to make a list of my own rules to live by. One of those rules was Buy Less Stuff, Go More Places.

• Nicolas Magand ☛ The nice feeling of trusting tools

  This little anecdote makes me smile thinking about it, and I think it is a testament to both how we kind of expect the worst in technology — I know I do — and to how we take reliable tools for granted, to the point of not noticing how great they actually are.

• Andy Hawthorne ☛ The Problem With Being a Content Creator

  There was clear definition of the craft.

  But now?

  Now everyone's a "content creator."

  It's like calling yourself a "stuff maker" or a "thing doer."

  It's so vague it's meaningless.

• Science

  • YLE ☛ ESA and Finland establish Arctic satellite centre in Lapland

    Sodankylä is already home to much of Finland's satellite infrastructure, hosting the Arctic Space Centre (FMI-ARC) and the National Satellite Data Centre (NSDC).

    According to Petteri Taalas, Director General of the FMI, the centre will significantly enhance Finland's role in international space activities.

• Career/Education

  • The Strategist ☛ Something old, something new: the very practical rules of Chinese aircraft development

    An engineer who started at Chinese fighter specialist Chengdu Aircraft in the late 1990s could have successively joined new development programs for four combat-aircraft types—the JF-17, J-10, J-20 and J-36. That engineer could also have worked on major upgrades and engine changes for the first three of those. All have entered service or are on track to do so. Working at rival Shenyang Aircraft would provide a similar experience level, with Xi’an Aircraft not far behind.

    That engineer’s US counterpart might have worked on one new program from inception to service entry—if he or she had chosen the right company to start with.

    It is that growing experience gap, rather than individual systems, that should worry us more than it does.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ The business end of the university

    I sat in my designated place on a front table and introduced myself to the woman on my right. I was tempted, I told her, to performatively read Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society, which I happened to have in my bag. I love that book, she said.

    To my left was a (conservative) Liberal party bloke, a staffer as I recall. I introduced myself and quickly told him that I had recently published my first book, a history of universities.

  • Mahesh Balakrishnan ☛ The Art of Managing Skunks

    While these systems were technically difficult to build and operate (particularly given their critical roles in the stacks of the respective companies), I found that much of the challenge lay in the management of these projects. Even the most innovative companies on the planet have incentive structures (for line managers and engineers) that are incompatible with clean-slate skunkworks innovation. In my discussions with various managers over the last few years, I found myself converging on a set of key principles, which I outline in this article. I hope these rules are helpful for other engineers and managers looking to define a shared set of principles for their own skunkworks projects.

    Some caveats: I am an engineer, not a manager, and have never managed anything in my life beyond a handful of interns and graduate students; this is just my wish-list as a technical project lead / architect for what I need from managers. These rules may be highly specific to building new storage services at large companies. At some point, the project has to exit skunkworks mode and these rules cease to apply. My sample size is N=2 and it’s difficult to establish that these rules are causally related (or even just correlated) to project success.

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Meta develops 'hat' for typing text by thinking — uses AI to read brain signals for keypresses

    However, don’t think this is a comfortable hat that one could just wear anywhere, day to day. Instead, it’s a massive and expensive machine that needs to be used in isolation to work effectively. Forest Neurotech founder Sumner Norman likens it to “an MRI machine tipped on its side and suspended above the user’s head,” with one device estimated to cost $2,000,000.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] A cure for HIV: 'One of the hardest goals in science'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] Major tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas city area, US

  • CBC ☛ 2025-01-26 [Older] 'We are greatly disappointed': Canada-wide ban on vaping flavours increasingly unlikely, health groups warn

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-01-26 [Older] Canadian CEOs Want More Guns, Less Bread

  • Robert Birming ☛ The Freedom of Less

    "The birds outside the window are my Netflix."

    That's how one woman, who chose to live without electricity or running water, described her simple life. She lives on as little money as possible, prioritizing time for the things she loves.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Chemical Companies Want Trump’s EPA to Keep Their Secrets

    On January 30, more than a dozen chemical industry groups sent a letter to Zeldin demanding he take “urgent action” to roll back EPA oversight of facilities that are at the highest risk for chemical disasters. The trade groups also requested the agency “immediately shut down” a government website that makes public where these facilities are located and what dangerous toxins they hold.

  • Vox ☛ Your Super Bowl chicken wings have a surprising origin story

    Not only was Steele’s timing lucky, but so was her location. The Delmarva Peninsula, where Steele’s farm was located, was also the perfect place for large-scale chicken farming to take off. There was cheap, abundant land a relatively short distance from the hungry consumers of Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City.

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • Unmitigated Risk ☛ From the Morris Worm to Modern Agentic AI Threats

      The parallels to the Morris Worm are striking. Just as Robert Morris never intended to crash 6,000 machines, today’s non-adversarial AI developers don’t set out to create systems that bypass safety controls. Yet in both cases, we’re confronting the same fundamental challenge: how do we maintain control over increasingly sophisticated systems that can act in ways their creators never envisioned?

      Since, as they say, those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it, I’ve put together some thoughts on different aspects of this reality: [...]

    • Howard Oakley ☛ Last Week on My Mac: A brief history of what we take for granted

      This misleads us into thinking that today’s Artificial Intelligence is somehow capable of replacing human research and discovery when all it can really do is rehash what we have created in the past. If any of today’s much-vaunted large language models could have started to tackle the problems addressed by ColorSync during the 1990s, do you seriously think that they would have come up with the solutions embedded in Mac OS X less than a decade later? For without prior knowledge won by humans, we’d still be wrestling with the number of rs in the word strawberry.

      Let’s celebrate human achievement and empower that instead.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Microsoft research: Use AI chatbots and turn yourself into a dumbass

      You might think using a chatbot to think for you just makes you dumber — or that chatbots are especially favored by people who never liked thinking in the first place. It turns out the bot users report this themselves.

      The new paper from Microsoft Research, “The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers,” surveys 319 people who resort to chatbots on the job: [...]

  • Social Control Media

    • El País ☛ Ignorance and justification for Franco on TikTok: The cocktail that pushes young people towards historical revisionism

      Historical revisionism and justification of the Franco dictatorship have crept into the generation that has grown up in freedom through the widest gap: that of ignorance. In the face of the bombardment on social networks that the Vox deputy Mariscal boasted about, there is no sufficient wall of knowledge and it is increasingly common to see young people at protests carrying the pre-constitutional flag or raising their arms in fascist symbology: 26% of males aged 18 to 26 declared in a recent 40dB survey for EL PAÍS and SER radio network that they preferred authoritarianism to democracy “in some circumstances.”

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • XDA ☛ 5 reasons you should use PowerShell even if you don’t use Windows [Ed: They have filed this under "Linux" to promote Microsoft]

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Futurism ☛ Afraid to Cut Anything From the Military Budget, Elon Is Now Sending a DOGE Boy to Make Cuts at Veterans Affairs

      "Musk and his associates already have the personal financial information of every veteran receiving disability or education benefits because of their illegal data mining at the Department of Treasury," wrote Murray, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. "Will they now look at private health records of veterans? What else will they do that could put the health and safety of our veterans at risk?"

    • Military.com ☛ Elon Musk Aide Is Now Working at VA and Accessing Its Computer Systems | Military.com

      The unfettered access to sensitive personal data has alarmed privacy advocates and cybersecurity experts who question the legality of allowing non-departmental personnel entry to financial information, bank accounts and more.

      Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said Tuesday that Musk's access to Treasury Department databases gives him access to information that includes addresses, bank accounts and disability benefits.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk's DOGE Boys Now Infiltrating an Agency That's Been Investigating Tesla and SpaceX

    Billionaire Elon Musk's barely legal lackeys at his DOGE group have infiltrated their latest victim: the US Labor Department.

    It's a particularly hairy situation, even by the fraught standards of DOGE, because the department has investigated several of Musk's enterprises, including Tesla and SpaceX.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Trump’s Purges May Mean Less Oversight for Musk’s Businesses

    At the same time, he and his companies are poised to benefit from Trump’s late-night purge of inspectors general, which could disrupt ongoing inquiries into SpaceX, Tesla, and Musk’s other business entanglements.

  • India Times ☛ US judge blocks Elon Musk's DOGE department [sic] from Treasury data: Court order

    US district judge Paul A. Engelmayer's order limits access to Treasury Department payment systems and other data to "all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department." The temporary order, valid until February 14, requires anyone who accessed Treasury data since Donald Trump’s inauguration to "immediately destroy any and all copies."

  • VOA News ☛ Emboldened by Trump, Iranian dissidents demand overthrow of rulers

    Thousands of opponents to Iran's authorities rallied in Paris on Saturday, joined by Ukrainians to call for the fall of the government in Tehran, hopeful that U.S. President Donald Trump's 'maximum pressure' campaign could lead to change in the country.

    The protest, organized by the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, which is banned in Iran, comes as two of the group's members face imminent execution with a further six sentenced to death in November.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Russian drone operators reportedly received explosive headsets — plans dashed by packaging

    These goggles reportedly contained a small amount of plastic explosive — about 10 to 15 grams — but its placement near the temple of the operator makes it quite deadly. Since they were set to detonate once the goggles had been activated, it almost certainly guarantees that a drone pilot might have been wearing them when the explosive charge detonated.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Iranian generals tell Ayatollah: We need nuclear weapons

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] India: Several dead after stampede at Kumbh Mela

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] India Maha Kumbh stampede: Why these crowd events happen

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] India: Could Maha Kumbh stampede have been prevented?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] What is the role of women in India's military?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] Germany: Far right decide vote on anti-migration proposal

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] Greenland and Denmark: how past scandals weigh on relations

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] ECOWAS formally loses members Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] DR Congo: 'Diplomacy has failed'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] France tells Rwanda to 'immediately' leave DR Congo

  • CBC ☛ 2025-01-27 [Older] Newcomer, humanitarian from Congo dies in Ottawa after being found outside in the cold

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] Is Elon Musk aiding a British right-wing extremist?

  • HRW ☛ 2025-01-27 [Older] Canada’s Dangerous Retreat on Migrant Rights

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] Spain: Explosion at Rheinmetall munitions factory injures 6

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] Italy sends migrants to Albania in third try to start scheme

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] Germany: What is the 'AfD firewall'?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] Immigration: German voters want to accept fewer refugees

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-01-26 [Older] Canada’s Nazi Problem

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] Family of released Hamas hostage: 'We are deeply emotional'

  • Project Censored ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] TikTok Running on Borrowed Time

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] What Is a Sovereign Wealth Fund, and How Could It Buy TikTok: Donald Cheeto Mussolini's Big Bet

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] EU top diplomat: 'Sabotage is on the rise in Europe'

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] Norway releases cargo ship in Baltic cable sabotage probe

    • CPJ ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Ukrainian journalist Pavlo Borysko injured while reporting on war

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Ukraine receives French and Dutch fighter jets

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] EBRD Plans to Invest at Least $1.56 Billion in Ukraine's War-Hit Economy This Year

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Ukraine Receives F-16 Jets From Netherlands, Defence Minister Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Ukraine Receives F-16s From Netherlands, First Mirage Jets From France

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Ukraine: Explosion near army recruitment center kills one

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Factbox-What Are Ukraine's Rare Earths and Why Does Cheeto Mussolini Want Them?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Ukraine Says It Has Potential to Buy, Store LNG From US

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Ukraine's Military to Roll Out Units of Robotic Vehicles

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] Ukraine: Zelenskyy puts Ukrainian war dead at over 45,000

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] Ukraine Reports Top-Level Contacts With Cheeto Mussolini Administration Aides

    • CPJ ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Ukraine’s security service opens criminal case after Ukrainska Pravda report

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Slight increase in Ukrainian refugees with paid work in Netherlands

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Kremlin Says It Is Too Early to Discuss Four-Way Peace Talks Format Proposed by Zelenskiy

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Police in Ukraine's Pokrovsk Plead With Reluctant Residents to Leave

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Ukraine's Military Urges Tough Response After Attacks on Draft Officers

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-02 [Older] Ukraine Says US Push for Truce, Elections Is 'Failed Plan' Unless It Consists of More

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-02 [Older] Ukrainian Men Charged Over Killing of Army Draft Officer

    • Latvia ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Latvia among 12 countries asking G7 to act on Russian energy revenues

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Baltic states finally turn off Russian electricity

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Russia Claims It's Taken Another Eastern Ukraine Town. Kyiv Officials Make No Comment

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Russia Opens Criminal Case Over Alleged Assault Involving British Embassy Employee

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Russian Political Prisoner Boris Kagarlitsky on Cheeto Mussolini’s Uncertainty

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Arrested ASML employee had contact with Russian intelligence service: Prosecutor

    • The Local DK ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Denmark steps up checks tracking Russia's 'shadow fleet'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Russia Says Cheeto Mussolini's 'Shocking' Remarks on Gaza Fuel Middle East Tensions

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Russian TV Falls for Fake Report on DeepSeek's 'Soviet Code'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Russia Says US Needs to Formulate Its Stance on How to End the Ukraine Conflict

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Russia's Spies, in Retaliation Against the CIA, Urge Americans to Get in Touch

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Russia to Supply More Electricity to Breakaway Georgian Region

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Germany: Police suspect Russia behind car vandalism

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] A Special Tribunal to Prosecute Russian Leaders Over Ukraine Wins Backing From European Institutions

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Ukraine Accuses Russia of Staging Bomb Attacks on Its Draft Offices

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Ukraine Brings Back 150 POWs in Latest Swap With Russia, Zelenskiy Says

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini, Tariffs and Russia: A Very Muddled Policy

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] India-Germany submarine deal: What does it mean for Russia?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] Azerbaijani Plane That Crashed in December Was Hit by Russian Pantsir-S Missile, Government Source Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] Family of American Killed on Malaysian Airlines Flight Can Sue Russian Bank, US Court Rules

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] Crashed Azerbaijani Plane Was Riddled With Holes After Incident Over Russia, Report Says

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Dutch military could soon board Russian vessels threatening North Sea

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Divide and conquer: Russia's disinformation campaigns in Africa

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Pro-Russia paramilitary leader killed in Moscow blast

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Ukraine Strikes a Major Russian Oil Refinery for a Second Time in 3 Days, an Official Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Exclusive-Saudi Arabia, UAE Seen as Possible Venues for Cheeto Mussolini-Putin Summit, Two Russian Sources Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Factbox-Russian Energy Facilities Targeted by Ukraine's Drones

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Russian Court Grants Transfer of Grain Trader's Assets to the State

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Russian Court Order Puts State Agency in Charge of Moscow's Domodedovo Airport

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Senior Pro-Russian Paramilitary Leader Wounded in Moscow Blast Dies in Hospital, Kommersant Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] UN Body Reports 'Alarming Rise' in Russian Execution of Captured Ukrainian Soldiers

    • Latvia ☛ 2025-02-02 [Older] Regional parliament speakers to discuss Russian sabotage and helping Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-02 [Older] Anti-war Russian Orthodox priests struggle in German exile

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-02 [Older] Russia launched 1,400 airstrikes this week, Zelenskyy says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-02 [Older] Russia and Ukraine Trade Blame Over an Attack on a Boarding School in Russia’s Kursk Region

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-02 [Older] Ukrainian Drone Attacks Kill Two in Russia's Belgorod, Governor Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-01 [Older] Zelenskyy says Russia attacking 'own civilians' in Kursk

• Environment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] Is nature struggling to adapt to milder winters?

  • Doc Searls ☛ Fire and Rain

    Much has been written about what geologists call debris flows. These tend to happen when mountains of poorly bound slopes of loose rock and soil get drenched in rain after the vegetation holding everything in place has been burned away. Many of these slopes are like mile-wide dump trucks waiting to hoist their beds and open their tailgates. The towns know about this, and are ready with debris basins and other risk abatements. But so are the mountains, which are much bigger, and similar to volcanoes in their tectonic youth and tendency to slide down and outward almost as fast as they go up.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-28 [Older] Poland and Canada Sign Nuclear Power Cooperation Agreement

    • CBC ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] Shell exits oilsands, boosts stake in Scotford upgrader and Quest carbon facility

    • VOA News ☛ Baltic states switch to European power grid, ending Russia ties 

      After disconnecting on Saturday from the IPS/UPS network, established by the Soviet Union in the 1950s and now run by Russia, the Baltic nations cut cross-border high-voltage transmission lines in eastern Latvia, some 100 meters from the Russian border, handing out pieces of chopped wire to enthusiastic bystanders as keepsakes.

      EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, herself an Estonian, earlier this week called the switch "a victory for freedom and European unity."

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] B.C. ostrich farm gets stay of execution for birds ordered killed due to avian flu fears

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] Germany: 2025 economic growth forecast lowered

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] ECB cuts interest rates with economy 'to remain weak'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] Brazil's Lula vows 'reciprocity' if Cheeto Mussolini imposes tariffs

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] Competitiveness Compass: How EU aims to keep up with the world's top economies

  • CBC ☛ 2025-01-25 [Older] Why 'buying Canadian' isn't as easy as it sounds

  • CBC ☛ 2025-01-27 [Older] At federal inquiry, Canada Post blames workers leaving early and union points to mismanagement

  • CBC ☛ 2025-01-27 [Older] Canadian farm goods retailer Peavey Mart closing all stores

  • CBC ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] Peavey Mart closures a hit to rural customers and local economies, says Sask. councillor

  • CBC ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] Walmart rolls out $6.5B expansion plan, including dozens of new stores

  • CBC ☛ 2025-01-28 [Older] Canadian, eh? Why some Heinz ketchup bottles still say 'Product of USA'

  • CBC ☛ 2025-01-29 [Older] Bank of Canada cuts interest rate, warns it can do little to offset U.S. tariff impact

  • CBC ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] Vancouver Canadian Charter challenge seeks to give homeless campers daytime sheltering rights

  • CBC ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] Montreal says it will only allow Airbnbs across city in summer, crack down during rest of year

  • India Today ☛ Meta plans to layoff 5 per cent of employees starting today

    Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, is set to initiate company-wide layoffs this week. Reuters has reported that the company will send notices to employees starting at 5AM PST, starting today. According to the internal memos obtained by Reuters, Mark Zuckerberg's company will also accelerate the hiring of machine learning engineers, simultaneously. It also states that the layoffs will affect most countries, including the US.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Revolution Town

    A friend of mine who has been editing some of the very best coverage of DOGE’s breathtaking vandalism of the federal government says that all of this “amounts to a historical event on par with the Russian Revolution.” If so, it is a disappointing revolution from the perspective of the resistance. This revolution is taking place inside of computer servers inside of locked rooms inside of locked buildings. It presents no face to the outside world. Despite all of the sporadic rallies and protests of the past week, the streets of DC lack activity, and the people of DC seem chastened, shell shocked, unable to find a base from which to launch a counterattack. This is a revolution by the rich against the poor carried out wholly by bureaucratic intermediaries on each side. The billionaires’ chosen bureaucrats are wiping out the bureaucrats whose job it is to maintain the beleaguered social safety net for the poor. The screws are being loosened on America’s wheels. It may take some time before the wheels fall off, but when they do, remember that the vandalism happened here and now.

  • India Times ☛ France to invest 109 billion euros in AI, Macron announces

    President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that France will announce investments amounting to 109 billion euros ($112.5 billion) in artificial intelligence over the coming years during the Paris AI summit opening Monday.

  • The Zambian Observer ☛ EFF Labels Elon Musk ‘Enemy’ After Julius Malema Criminal Declaration Call

    The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) branded tech billionaire Elon Musk an “enemy of South Africa” on Sunday, responding to his demand that EFF leader Julius Malema be declared an international criminal. The strongly-worded statement also threatened to block Starlink’s operations in South Africa unless it meets local ownership requirements.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Many teachers don’t want to do this, but they’re trapped’: film shows extent of Putin indoctrination in Russian schools

      The recordings would turn into Mr Nobody Against Putin, a thrilling documentary that premiered last month at the Sundance film festival, where it won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award.

      The idea for the film emerged in the early days of the war, when Talankin began reaching out to independent outlets, offering them his footage. Eventually his story reached David Borenstein, a US filmmaker who co-directed the project alongside Talankin.

      Under the cover of following orders to meet the school’s propaganda quota, Talankin proceeded to take on a secret and extremely risky mission to document Putin’s information war at home. In a country where all independent journalism has been banned, Talankin said he had an unparalleled front-row seat to history. “Any journalist trying to film what was going on in schools would be immediately jailed. I was put in this unique situation,” he said.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Axios ☛ NOAA told to search its grants for climate change terms

    Why it matters: NOAA is one of the world's top weather and climate agencies, and provides funding to universities and researchers to improve the understanding and prediction of extreme weather and climate change.

    Any potential challenges to NOAA's peer-reviewed grants are "myopic and misguided," said Rick Spinrad, who led NOAA during the Biden administration.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Semafor Inc ☛ ‘Almost like surrender’: Steve Bannon on the media in Trump’s ‘Days of Thunder’

    That was a cleaned up version of something Bannon, Trump’s former guru and now the ringmaster of MAGA media, told Michael Lewis a year earlier: “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh**.”

    So is that what’s happening right now, as Donald Trump blitzes the country with executive orders, Elon Musk hacks at federal agencies, and controversial appointees sail through the Senate? I visited Bannon Wednesday at his Capitol Hill townhouse to whether this period — he’s been referring to it on his podcast, War Room, as the “Days of Thunder” — is what he had in mind.

  • ANF News ☛ Journalist Değer: We did not bow to corruption and fascism

    JinNews correspondent Öznur Değer was arrested following a raid on her home in the Kızıltepe (Qoser) district of Mardin (Mêrdîn) in the early hours of Friday morning.

    She was subjected to torture before being taken into custody. After appearing in court, she was transferred to Mardin E-Type Closed Prison. Lawyers Ali Kahraman and Seher Acay later visited her.

  • ANF News ☛ Police take three more journalists into custody

    Varlı said that the reason for the detention was the news about the Sabah newspaper reporter's visit to Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor Akın Gürlek. In his post he said: "Our newspaper BirGün executives were taken to Vatan Police Department. The reason was a report on the pro-government Sabah journalist's visit to Akın Gürlek. We underline that Sabah and the pro-government journalist had spoken about the meeting themselves."

  • New York Times ☛ Opinion | Don’t Believe Him

    If you want to understand the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, you should listen to what Steve Bannon told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019:

    Steve Bannon: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. …

    All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. So it’s got to start, and it’s got to hammer, and it’s got to —

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-30 [Older] Sebastian Coe: Transgender athletes threaten women's sport

  • CBC ☛ 2025-01-25 [Older] Why a unionized warehouse in Quebec posed a threat to Amazon

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] Germany offers maternity leave for women after miscarriage

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] Serbia's students gear up for massive protest in Novi Sad

  • The Washington Post ☛ Ukrainians vanish into Russian prisons. These people search for them.

    Nadezhda would later discover that the man who called her that day was part of a constellation of volunteers and insiders in Russia risking their lives — occasionally for money, but usually for nothing — to pass on crucial information about the Ukrainians who have vanished into Russia’s sprawling penal system.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • CBC ☛ 2025-02-01 [Older] People debate if AI art is real. Here's how it's changed my life

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations

    The case against Meta is still ongoing, so we will have to wait until the court releases its decision to say if the company committed direct infringement. And even if the writers win this case, Meta, with its huge financial war chest, will likely appeal the decision, meaning we will have to wait for several months, if not years, to see the final court judgment.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Zuckerberg approved Meta’s use of ‘pirated’ books to train AI models, authors claim

    Mark Zuckerberg approved Meta’s use of “pirated” versions of copyright-protected books to train the company’s artificial intelligence models, a group of authors has alleged in a US court filing.

    Citing internal Meta communications, the filing claims that the social network company’s chief executive backed the use of the LibGen dataset, a vast online archive of books, despite warnings within the company’s AI executive team that it is a dataset “we know to be pirated”.

  • The Register UK ☛ Case No. 3:23-cv-03417-VC

    With just two hours left before the fact discovery cut-off on Friday, December 13, 2024, Meta produced some of the most incriminating internal documents it has produced to date relevant to Meta’s copyright infringement claim and fair use defense, as well as Plaintiffs’ proposed new claims. These documents concern Meta’s torrenting and processing of pirated copyrighted works, including that: Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, approved Meta’s use of the LibGen dataset notwithstanding concerns within Meta’s AI executive team (and others at Meta) that LibGen is “a dataset we know to be pirated,” Stein Reply Decl. (“Reply Ex.”), Ex. A at 211699, 211702; top Meta engineers discussed accessing and reviewing LibGen data but hesitated to get started because “torrenting from a [Meta-owned] corporate laptop doesn’t feel right �����,” Reply Ex. B at 204224; one of those engineers “filtered . . . copyright lines” and other data out of LibGen to prepare a CMI-stripped version of it to train Llama, Reply Ex. C at 204220-21; and, by January 2024, Meta had already torrented (both downloaded and distributed) data from LibGen, Reply Ex. D.1 And just yesterday, when asked about the type of piracy described in the TACC, Mr. Zuckerberg testified that such activity would raise “lots of red flags” and “seems like a bad thing.” Reply Ex. E (Zuckerberg Dep. Tr.) at 102:10–14; 98:24–99:2.

  • Cyber Security News ☛ Meta Trained Its Llama AI Models Using 81.7 TB of Books From Torrent Libraries

    Meta Platforms, Inc. is facing serious allegations in a copyright infringement lawsuit, with plaintiffs claiming the tech giant used 81.7 terabytes of pirated books from shadow libraries to train its Llama AI models.

    The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses Meta of illegally torrenting copyrighted material from sources such as Z-Library and LibGen, despite internal concerns over the legality and ethics of such actions.

  • Literary Hub ☛ It sure looks like Meta stole a lot of books to build its AI. ‹ Literary Hub

    And in the Northern District of California, Wired reports, recently unredacted court documents reveal that Meta used a database of pirated books to train its AI systems. These documents were unsealed as part of a copyright lawsuit, one of the earliest of many similar cases, called Kadrey et al. v. Meta Platforms. The plaintiffs in this case are a number of writers and performers, including Richard Kadrey, Christopher Golden, Junot Diaz, Laura Lippman, Sarah Silverman, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and—jump scare!—Mike Huckabee.

    The new documents quote Meta employees frankly admitting to using stolen stuff from a notorious piracy site: [...]

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Gazprom: 23,000 Sites/Telegram Channels Blocked, 770 Lawsuits Won in 2024

    Using tools broadly similar to those preferred by its Western counterparts, in 2024, Russia's Gazprom-Media suppressed online piracy by blocking 17,400 websites and 5,700 Telegram channels. Filing lawsuits at an average rate of more than 14 each week, Gazprom claims victory in 775 infringement lawsuits. Whether that amounts to 'winning' the piracy war is another matter.