20/10/2023: A Lot More Censorship and Net Neutrality Milestone
Contents
- Distributions and Operating Systems
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- 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
- Gemini* and Gopher
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Distributions and Operating Systems
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Devuan Family
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[Old] Systemd Free ☛ Not So Fast, Slick or Why Did it Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?
Recently, a guy asked me two questions:
1. If it is so easy to uninstall and switch init systems why did it take devuan 2 years to figure it out?
2. Why are so many struggling to make something so easy work?
Here’s my answer: [...]
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Leftovers
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Science
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Hackaday ☛ Variable-Nozzle Ducted Fan Provides Fluid Dynamics Lessons
Any student new to the principles of fluid dynamics will be familiar with Bernoulli’s principle and the Venturi effect, where the speed of a liquid or gas increases when the size of the conduit it flows through decreases. When applying this principle to real-world applications, though, it can get a bit more complex than a student may learn about at first, mostly due to the shortcomings of tangible objects when compared to their textbook ideals. [Mech Ninja] discovered this while developing a ducted fan based around an RC motor.
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Education
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Neil Selwyn ☛ Education and COVID – what were we not prepared to learn?
It goes without saying that the COVID pandemic and subsequent global education shut-downs were of immense sociological significance. The prolonged periods when schools, colleges and universities were rendered physically inaccessible highlighted limitations in many of our established academic understandings about education. Particularly during the early stages of the pandemic, it also felt extremely difficult to form new understandings around what was taking place. Events progressed so rapidly that by the time any scholarly analysis was published it often appeared hopelessly behind-the-curve. As David Beer reflected during May 2020, “it’s hard to do sociology and social science when you aren’t quite sure what the social is and how it is working”.
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ACLU ☛ Why School Discipline Reform Still Matters
From affirmative action to classroom censorship, race is a hot topic in our nation’s schools and in the politics of education. Unfortunately, much of the public chatter centers on efforts to restrict how or even if racial discrimination and its legacies can be taught (or explored) in classrooms and libraries. A fundamental fact, often ignored, is that a student’s race has a substantial impact on how the student experiences education, including the opportunities they are likely to be provided or denied.
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James Koppel ☛ This one weird trick^H^H^H^H^H deep technique for writing an actually good resume
There’s been a lot written about writing resumes. And also on getting awards and grants, another variation of this game. My favorite piece is Steve Yegge’s Ten Tips for a (Slightly) Less Awful Resume. 15 years later, it’s still relevant. Turns out the ways people communicate about competence don’t change very fast.
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RFERL ☛ Russia Detains RFE/RL Journalist Sparking Warnings Of A New Level Of Censorship By Moscow
Russia has detained Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, the second U.S. media worker to be held by Moscow this year, triggering a wave of criticism from rights groups and politicians saying the move signals new level of wartime censorship.
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Hardware
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IT Wire ☛ Smartphone market shows smaller fall globally in third quarter
The global smartphone market cooled further in the third quarter of 2023, with technology analyst firm Canalys saying it had undergone a fall of 1% year-on-year.
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IT Wire ☛ Global PC shipments fall again in 3Q, but expected to bottom out
Global shipments of PCs amounted to 64.8 million units in the third quarter of 2023, the technology analyst firm Counterpoint Research says, adding that this represented a 9% year-on-year decline.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ China's Phytium Launches 64-Core Server CPUs, Despite Spot on US Entity List
Phytium's Feiteng S2500 has 64 cores for datacenter applications .
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CNX Software ☛ microSD Express memory cards to support up to 2GB/s data transfers
SD Association (SDA) has announced the new SD 9.1 specification that doubles the speed of microSD Express memory card speed up to 2GB/s, defines four new SD Express Speed Classes to ensure guaranteed minimum sequential performance levels, and adds support for multi-stream access and related power and thermal management to assure the guaranteed performance. We first covered the microSD Express cards in 2019 as they were added to the SD 7.0 specification with promises of SSD performance through a PCIe 3.0 interface delivering up to 985MB/s.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Intel Is Helping Hardware and Software Vendors Build Out AI Features
Intel's program comes ahead of the launch of its Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors on December 14. It promises to provide "AI toolchains, co-engineering, hardware, design resources, technical expertise and co-marketing opportunities" to ISVs and IHVs in an effort to deliver a full suite of applications ready to utilize Meteor Lake's new tech.
The company claims that it is working with over 100 software vendors on "more than 300 AI-accelerated features", including companies such as Adobe, Audacity, BlackMagic, CyberLink, XSplit, Zoom, Topaz, Webex, and Magix.
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Hackaday ☛ Tank Boots Are A Dangerous Way To Get Around Town
Rollerskates are all well and good, but they’re even more fun when they’re powered. Then again, why stick with wheels, when you can have the off-road benefits of tracked propulsion? That’s precisely what [Joel] was thinking when he built this impressive set of Tank Boots.
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Hackaday ☛ 2023 Hackaday Supercon: The Rest Of The Talks
The 2023 Hackaday Superconference is only two weeks away, and we’re happy to announce the second half of the slate. As always, this is a great mix of well-known Hackaday faces, and folks we haven’t yet met. Whether they’re fixing up the Apollo Guidance Computer, building their own airplanes, trapping rubidium atoms, or teaching robots to sail, this is another super interesting round of talks.
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Hackaday ☛ New Type Of Ferroelectric Memory Constructed Using α-In2Se3 Material
The ferroelectrical properties of materials have found a variety of uses over the years, including in semiconductor applications. Ferroelectric memory is among the most interesting and possibly world-changing as it could replace today’s fragile and (relatively) slow NAND Flash with something that’s more robust and scalable. Yet as with any good idea, finding the right materials and process to implement it is half the battle. Here is where a recently released paper in Advanced Science by Shurong Miao and colleagues demonstrates a FeFET-based memory cell design using α-In2Se3 material on platinum-based source-drain electrodes.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ AMD's Threadripper Pro 7995WX 96-Core Cracks 100,000 in CineBench
PC Magazine provides early benchmarks for the AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX processor.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ TSMC: Our 3nm Node Comparable to Intel's 1.8nm Tech
TSMC expects the company's N3P node to offer comparable characteristics to Intel's 18A.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Pro Publica ☛ Utah Supreme Court to Hear Case of 94 Women Who Sued OB-GYN for Sexual Assault
When Carmela arrived in Utah from a village in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 1998, she was a newlywed following her husband for his job and was four months pregnant with her first child. She had never seen an OB-GYN and was hoping to find one who spoke Spanish.
The doctor she found was David Broadbent. Early on, however, she said she noticed that her visits with him left her bleeding and in pain, which felt as if she had “eaten and passed a glass bottle.”
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Pro Publica ☛ Despite MS Supreme Court Action, Poor Criminal Defendants Still Go Without a Lawyer
Three months after Mississippi’s Supreme Court directed judges in the state to ensure that poor criminal defendants always have a lawyer as they wait to be indicted, one of those justices acknowledged that the rule isn’t being widely followed.
“We know anecdotally that there’s a problem out there,” Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens said during a state House of Representatives committee meeting on the public defense system last week.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong man battling terminal cancer donates HK$800,000 to child cancer fund
A 28-year-old man battling terminal cancer in Hong Kong has donated HK$800,000 to a children’s cancer charity, with a message to youngsters fighting the disease: “please always believe in your ability to recover.” Gabriel Yeung, who was diagnosed with terminal stomach and liver cancer last year [...]
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Silicon Angle ☛ Stanford’s AI transparency index shows foundational models are shrouded in secrecy
Constellation Research Inc. Vice President and Principal Analyst Andy Thurai told SiliconANGLE he isn’t shocked to see such low transparency ratings as most foundational model creators are intentionally secretive. “OpenAI is very clear about the transparency of its models — it won’t ever be transparent about GPT-4,” Thurai said. “This is because it doesn’t want competitors to catch up and compete, and it doesn’t want additional questions on how enterprises use its models.”
The analyst said it was more surprising that the open-source LLMs scored so low in terms of transparency. But by and large, he said most LLM creators take the same approach, advising customers to use them at their own risk and trying to limit their liabilities, even though it is to the detriment of their growth.
“Black box models and decision-making is one of the reasons why AI hasn’t gained as much traction as it should have over the years,” Thurai said. “By continuing on this path, it’s likely large organizations will continue to shy away from using them. The lack of transparency also makes it tricky for policymakers to create guidelines on the proper usage of AI, as they don’t know what is involved in making those models.”
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New York Times ☛ Researchers Say Guardrails Built Around A.I. Systems Are Not So Sturdy
The paper will also add to a wonky but important tech industry debate weighing the value of keeping the code that runs an A.I. system private, as OpenAI has done, against the opposite approach of rivals like Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
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Chris Hannah ☛ Matter as a Read Out Loud Service #
While I don’t use it fully, I’ve found one feature to be very useful for when I want to read long-form posts, but while I’m doing something like playing a game or doing chores. I’m sure it has a fancy name, but it’s the text-to-voice feature.
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Project Censored ☛ Students or Data Mines? Education Trains AI by Exploit
Until now, most of our knowledge of AI has come from post-apocalyptic pop culture narratives where programs become sentient and overtake humanity and free will. In reality, AI is far from how it is presented in such dystopian movies. In “Machine Unintelligence,” computer scientist Meredith Broussard reminds us that the autonomous AI popularized by films was abandoned by serious researchers decades ago. Gary Smith refers to the public’s continued faith in the development of the film version of AI, “The AI Delusion.” It behooves us to remember that the machine learning possible today is dictated by human-created algorithms. It is humans, not autonomous machines, who set the parameters for what AI can and cannot do. However, the focus on AI sentience serves as an effective smokescreen for what is really happening.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Patrick Breyer ☛ Chat control vote postponed: Huge success in defense of digital privacy of correspondence!
Tomorrow, Thursday 19 October, the Justice and Home Affairs Council will not adopt its position on the EU regulation on “combating child sexual abuse”, the so-called chat control regulation, as planned, which would have heralded the end of private messages and secure encryption. This is because there is currently not the required majority for the highly controversial and unprecedented regulation. Germany, Austria, Poland and Estonia, among others, are clearly positioning themselves against the current draft, but France also has questions. This is now the second time that the planned vote has been postponed.
Pirate Party MEP, digital freedom fighter and negotiator for his group in the European Parliament, Patrick Breyer, cheers: [...]
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Defence/Aggression
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Futurism ☛ Doctors Recommend Not Hitting Your Face With Hammers, Regardless What You Saw on TikTok
And there's always the Slender Man Effect, in which something that's initially a hoax can lead to so much hype, information, and media coverage that people end up actually doing the thing, so medical professionals are understandably concerned that young guys might end up taking hammers to their faces in a misguided attempt to break or fracture their bones to achieve an ideal facial structure.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ EU probes Meta and TikTok over Hamas-Israel online content
The European Commission has requested details from Meta and TikTok on their efforts to combat disinformation during the Israel-Hamas conflict.
It gave the social media companies a week to outline their measures to counter the spread of terrorist, violent content and hate speech on their platforms.
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Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Music Moves Out of Beta — and Adds New Features — in Australia, Mexico, and Singapore
Following full-scale launches in Indonesia and Brazil, TikTok Music, the namesake video-sharing app’s standalone music-streaming platform, has officially moved out of beta in Australia, Mexico, and Singapore.
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RFERL ☛ Finnish Police Complete On-Site Probe At Damaged Baltic Sea Pipeline
A gas pipeline and telecoms cable connecting the two countries were damaged on October 8. Helsinki is investigating the pipeline incident, while Tallinn is probing the cable incident.
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New York Times ☛ To Win the War, Defeat Hamas and Stop Settlements
Both Israelis and Palestinians must behave in ways that we can support. No more blank checks.
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Atlantic Council ☛ As NATO grows, it needs new ways to expedite its decisions
NATO needs to adapt its decision-making methods so it can function more efficiently. It is the only way the Alliance can absorb still more members without adding more risk to its own functioning. And it may be the only realistic way NATO will be able to proceed with membership for Ukraine and other countries beyond.
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El País ☛ FBI: Thousands of remote IT workers sent wages to North Korea to help fund weapons program
Federal authorities announced the seizure of $1.5 million and 17 domain names as part of the investigation, which is ongoing. Jay Greenberg, special agent in charge of the St. Louis FBI office, said any company that hired freelance IT workers “more than likely” hired someone participating in the scheme. An FBI spokeswoman said Thursday that the North Koreans contracted with companies across the U.S. and in some other countries. “We can tell you that there are thousands of North Korea IT workers that are part of this,” spokeswoman Rebecca Wu said.
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El País ☛ Power of social media on display in Argentina’s elections
A study by Context analyzed the fake news that circulated online during Argentina’s recent elections. It suggests that narratives challenging certain established rights (such as the right to abortion), democratic accords regarding the military dictatorship, and rights to education and access to scientific information, have had a significant impact on election outcomes. These messages have a widespread reach, attracting followers and amplifying those ideas.
The effectiveness of Milei’s message can also be seen in the realm of online political advertising. An investigation by Civic Compass analyzed over 17,000 ads (including texts, images, and videos) across all Google-owned platforms. It confirmed that Javier Milei and his party did not pay anything for these ads via their verified accounts, unlike their opponents who spent over $800,000 through various accounts linked to the two main political parties.
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India Times ☛ Meta, TikTok given a week by EU to detail measures against disinformation
Meta and TikTok have been given a week by the European Commission to provide details on measures taken to counter the spread of terrorist, violent content and hate speech on their platforms, a week after Elon Musk's X was told to do the same.
The European Union's executive body said on Thursday it had sent a request for the information to the two companies as researchers point to the proliferation of disinformation following Hamas' attack against Israel more than a week ago.
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Vice Media Group ☛ U.S. Marines Strapped a Rocket Launcher to a Robot Dog You Can Buy on Amazon
As first reported by The Warzone, members of the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR) were at Twentynine Palms to demonstrate the rocket-launching dogs as part of a proof-of-concept demonstration. Companies like Boston Dynamics and Ghost Robotics are pioneering the use of robot dogs for domestic and military use, but that’s not what ONR brought to Twentynine Palms. No, the dog they used was the relatively cheap Chinese-made Unitree Go1, which anyone can buy on Amazon for about $5,000.
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Democracy Now ☛ Annexation, Ethnic Cleansing & Genocide: Mustafa Barghouti Decries Israel’s Deadly Campaign in Gaza
As the death toll in Gaza nears 3,800 from two weeks of Israeli aerial bombardment, we go to the occupied West Bank to speak with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. “With the passage of each minute, more Palestinians are killed,” says Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. Barghouti has been a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council since 2006 and is also a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization Central Council. He discusses Biden’s visit to Israel, the “clearly Israeli” strike on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, Israel’s plans to annex Gaza, and the collapsed civilian society there, where residents have no access to clean water, no hospital beds for critical medical care and no safe haven. “The game is clear: They want to ethnically cleanse, completely, the Gaza Strip.”
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Common Dreams ☛ Not In My Brother's Name
Amidst the horrors in Gaza, progressive Israelis find themselves harrowingly caught between sorrow and the abiding, hard-won conviction their country "cannot fight its way to peace." Thus does the grieving brother of Hayim Katsman, an academic, peace activist and tender of fruit trees at Kibbutz Holit killed in the Hamas attack, resolutely decry the ongoing carnage. "I know my brother wouldn't have wanted this," he says. "Do not use our death and our pain to bring the death and pain of other people."
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ACLU ☛ Taking Action to Stop Police Sexual Violence
Last month, a 47-year-old Black woman named Ternell Brown filed a complaint against the Baton Rouge Police Department in Louisiana for hauling her to a warehouse and subjecting her to a sexually abusive search after a traffic stop. This is the same police department that in 2016 fatally shot Alton Sterling while he was lying on the ground, leading to uprisings. And now, three Baton Rouge officers have been arrested for allegedly destroying video evidence of excessive force during a strip search.
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Federal News Network ☛ Man who crashed into Chinese Consulate in San Francisco was armed with knife, crossbow, police say
San Francisco police say a man who crashed a car at the Chinese Consulate earlier this month was armed with a crossbow and arrows and swung a knife at officers before a police sergeant killed him. San Francisco Police Acting Commander Mark Im says an officer opened fire after Zhanyuan Yang failed to comply with orders to get on the ground and swung his knife toward the officer and a security guard.
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RFERL ☛ Bosnia Raises Terrorism Threat Level Due To Gaza Conflict
Bosnia-Herzegovina has stepped up security measures amid what the government said were ''growing concerns over potential repercussions'' stemming from the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
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The Straits Times ☛ China ready to boost Pakistan ties but urges security guarantee -Xi
China is willing to strengthen co-operation and promote solidarity with Pakistan but has urged it to guarantee the safety of Chinese organisations and personnel working there, China's foreign ministry said, quoting President Xi Jinping.
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The Straits Times ☛ UN renews Haiti sanction regime amid calls for faster action
The United Nations Security Council on Thursday renewed for one year its sanctions regime on Haiti, which currently includes just one individual, as Haiti and China called for faster action.
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Defence Web ☛ Saab supplying MAW 400 sensors to Hanwha Systems for Korean C-130H fleet protection
Saab has secured a contract to supply its latest MAW 400 missile approach warning sensors for integration into Hanwha Systems’ self-protection system that will be used on Republic of Korea Air Force C-130H Hercules transports.
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JURIST ☛ ICC prosecutor withdraws charges against former Central African Republic minister
International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors stated on Thursday that they have attempted to withdraw all charges against Maxime Mokom, a former minister of disarmament in the Central African Republic (CAR).
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New York Times ☛ Israel-Hamas War: Biden Urges U.S. to Remain ‘Beacon to the World’ in Aiding Allies at War
In an Oval Office speech, the president said that if terrorists and dictators weren’t stopped, “the cost and the threats to America” would keep rising. The address set the stage for his planned request to Congress for tens of billions of dollars in aid for Israel and Ukraine.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Site36 ☛ 50 naval drones for Ukraine: German Defence Ministry for the first time gives details
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Atlantic Council ☛ Experts react to Biden’s ‘inflection point’ address on Ukraine and Israel
Biden tied together the conflicts in Israel and Ukraine as part of a larger struggle for democracy and freedom. Here's what Atlantic Council experts had to say about the Oval Office address.
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Meduza ☛ Satellite images show damage to Russian-occupied Berdyansk airfield after Ukraine’s October 17 strike — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Russian Investigative Committee head says naturalized citizens who refuse to fight in war should lose citizenship — Meduza
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Atlantic Council ☛ Ukraine needs electoral reform now for resilient postwar elections
Prioritizing electoral reform now will position Ukraine for postwar democratic resilience and will underscore the nation’s dedication to sustaining and improving its democratic traditions, even in the face of great adversity.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Zelenskyy should say a Churchillian “no” to wartime elections in Ukraine
If Winston Churchill were still with us, he would surely be advising Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ignore mounting international pressure to call elections in wartime Ukraine, writes Alan Riley.
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France24 ☛ Biden says support for Israel and Ukraine is vital to US security
President Joe Biden made an impassioned call for the United States to show global leadership by backing Israel and Ukraine, saying in a speech from the Oval Office Thursday that defeating Hamas and Russia was a vital US interest.
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France24 ☛ 'Russia benefits from the war in the Middle East': Ukraine's FM Kuleba
Amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told FRANCE 24's Marc Perelman that "Russia benefits from the war in the Middle East". However, he said that Ukraine's partners were "confident" that "politically", the Israel-Hamas conflict "should not overshadow what is happening in Ukraine". He also voiced optimism that US backing for Kyiv would remain steadfast despite "dissenting voices" and the looming US presidential campaign.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Russian War Report: Ukraine inflicts heavy damage on Russian positions
Ukraine used US-provided ATACMS missiles to strike two Russian-occupied airfields in Zaporizhzhia oblast and Luhansk.
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LRT ☛ Blue/Yellow launches new project to raise €10m for Ukraine
The Blue/Yellow NGO has launched a new digital instrument to raise 10 million euros for Ukraine, the organisation said on Thursday.
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Meduza ☛ Missile factory to open in close proximity to Moscow residential area — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Two Russian citizens held hostage by Hamas — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Tatarstan lawmaker apologizes after criticizing Ramzan Kadyrov for praising son who beat defenseless prisoner — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Ukrainian parliament moves to ban religious organizations with ties to Russia — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ Russia Says It Is Coordinating Middle East Policy With China
Russia says it is coordinating its policy in the Middle East and North Africa with China.
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RFERL ☛ Finland Blocks Russian Property Acquisitions Over Defense Concerns
Finland's Defense Ministry said on October 19 that it had blocked three planned property transactions involving Russian buyers on grounds that allowing the acquisitions to take place could hamper the defense of Finnish territory.
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YLE ☛ Finland rejects three property purchase applications by Russians
The three properties were in municipalities close to the Finnish-Russian border.
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NYPost ☛ Putin filmed in China accompanied by officers with Russian nuclear briefcase
Putin, after a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, was filmed walking to another meeting surrounded by security and followed by two Russian naval officers in uniform each carrying a briefcase.
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Atlantic Council ☛ War risk insurance can contribute to Ukrainian victory over Putin’s Russia
War risk insurance can play a key role in helping Ukraine to achieve victory on the economic front of the war with Russia, writes Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko.
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teleSUR ☛ China Calls for Closer Energy Partnership With Russia
These countries have complementary advantages and great potential for energy cooperation.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Russia’s Vladimir Putin hails ‘unprecedented’ energy ties between Beijing and Moscow during China visit
Moscow, Russia Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed Thursday the “unprecedented” energy links between Moscow and Beijing despite failing to secure a much-sought agreement on a major new gas pipeline.
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LRT ☛ UEFA fines Lithuania for anti-Putin chant, players urge fans to carry on
UEFA has fined Lithuania’s Football Federation 10,000 euros for an anti-Putin chant. However, one of the national team leaders, Justas Lasickas, has urged the fans to continue.
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RFERL ☛ NATO Diplomats Discuss Growing Concern Over Hungary's 'Deepening Relationship With Russia' At Budapest Meeting
NATO ambassadors met on October 19 in Budapest as concerns grow over Hungary’s relations with Russia following talks between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week.
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RFA ☛ Kim Jong Un vows to bolster Russian ties, testing Biden’s strategy
The purported tighter cooperation is aimed at building leverage against the U.S. and its regional partners.
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RFERL ☛ North Korea's Kim Expresses Resolve To Fulfill Agreements Made With Kremlin
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed his resolve to fulfill agreements made last month with Russian President Vladimir Putin as he met visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, state media KCNA reported on October 20.
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teleSUR ☛ The IOC Discriminates Against Russian Athletes: Putin
"The Olympic Games themselves can be wielded as a tool of political pressure against individuals who have no connection to politics," he said.
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The Straits Times ☛ North Korea’s Kim vows to ‘faithfully’ fulfil agreements made with Russia’s Putin
There were discussions on ways to ramp up cooperation.
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RFERL ☛ U.S., EU To Seek Unity In The Face Of Crises At Summit
U.S. President Joe Biden welcomes European leaders Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen in Washington on October 20, at a summit set to deliver a message of unity on conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Migrants Who Got Russian Citizenship 'Should Lose It' If They Refuse To Fight In Ukraine
Investigative Committee chief Aleksandr Bastrykin has said that migrants who obtained Russian citizenship should be stripped of it if they refuse to fight in Ukraine.
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LRT ☛ Two Hungarians face fines for desecrating Ukrainian flag in Vilnius
Vilnius prosecutor has asked the court to impose fines on two Hungarian citizens for desecrating the Ukrainian flag.
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RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Parliament Votes In Favor Of Bill To Ban Churches Affiliated With Russia
The Ukrainian parliament has given initial approval to legislation that would ban religious organizations associated with Russia, a measure that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) says is aimed directly at banning it from Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Kazakhstan Says It Restricted Export Of War-Related Goods To Russia
Kazakhstan has restricted the export of goods to Russia that can be used for military purposes following demands from the West that the Central Asian nation and its neighbors abide by sanctions imposed on Moscow over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ In Major Address, Biden Lays Groundwork For Massive Aid To Ukraine, Israel
Laying the groundwork to ask U.S lawmakers for tens of billions of dollars in military assistance for Ukraine and Israel, President Joe Biden linked Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Hamas militants who attacked Israel, saying both were threats to global democracy and security.
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The Straits Times ☛ Biden to seek $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel - source
October 20, 2023 8:00 AM
U.S. President Joe Biden will ask Congress for $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel, a source familiar with his plan told Reuters.
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New York Times ☛ Full Transcript: Biden’s Speech on Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine Wars
The president laid out what he characterized as the stakes for democracy as he pleaded with Americans to stand firmly behind Israel and Ukraine.
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New York Times ☛ Biden’s Moment: A President Convinced of America’s Role in the World
In a fractured political moment at home and abroad, it is unclear whether President Biden can bring many Americans along.
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Latvia ☛ President: Baltic Sea should be closed if Russia is behind Balticconnector case
If Russia's responsibility is proven in the investigation regarding the damage to Balticconnector, NATO should decide on the closure of the Baltic Sea for ships, the President of Latvia Edgars Rinkēvičs said in an interview with the Latvia Telelvision broadcast "Today's Question" on October 19.
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Latvia ☛ Taxi driver accused of spying for 'Baltic Antifascists'
On October 16 this year, the State Security Service (VDD) urged the Prosecutor's Office to commence criminal proceedings against a taxi driver who, on behalf of the criminal organization “Baltic Antifascists” in Latvia, purposefully and systematically collected information against Latvia's national security interests for the Russian special services, the VDD said Thursday.
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Latvia ☛ Estonia sends third team to help on Latvia-Belarus border
A third Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) team was sent by Estonia October 19 to monitor the situation on the Latvian-Belarusian border on Thursday, reports ERR News.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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American Oversight ☛ Wisconsin Court Sets Hearing Date in American Oversight’s Impeachment Panel Lawsuit
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Environment
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[Old] Ability Magzine ☛ To Mosquitofish, or Not to Mosquitofish?
The mosquitofish, Gambusia affinis, is native to southern and eastern portions of the United States. They have been one of the most effective non-insecticidal and non-chemical methods of controlling mosquitoes for over eighty years. Mosquito fish are approximately 1/4 inch in length when born and grow to a maximum size of about three inches. They are ready to begin the work of destroying mosquito larvae at once. Mosquitofish can eat mosquito larvae as fast as the larvae hatch from eggs, as many as 100 per day. Mosquitofish live 2-3 years and can tolerate a wide range of temperatures.
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RFA ☛ Rubber farms cause deforestation 3 times more than estimated: Study
Mature rubber plantations spanned a combined area of 14.2 million hectares in Southeast Asia. Over 70% of these plantations were concentrated in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Notable rubber-producing regions also included China, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. Rubber plantations abandoned before 2021 were excluded from the study, even though they may have contributed to deforestation.
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Nature ☛ High-resolution maps show that rubber causes substantial deforestation
Understanding the effects of cash crop expansion on natural forest is of fundamental importance. However, for most crops there are no remotely sensed global maps1, and global deforestation impacts are estimated using models and extrapolations. Natural rubber is an example of a principal commodity for which deforestation impacts have been highly uncertain, with estimates differing more than fivefold1,2,3,4. Here we harnessed Earth observation satellite data and cloud computing5 to produce high-resolution maps of rubber (10 m pixel size) and associated deforestation (30 m pixel size) for Southeast Asia. Our maps indicate that rubber-related forest loss has been substantially underestimated in policy, by the public and in recent reports6,7,8. Our direct remotely sensed observations show that deforestation for rubber is at least twofold to threefold higher than suggested by figures now widely used for setting policy4. With more than 4 million hectares of forest loss for rubber since 1993 (at least 2 million hectares since 2000) and more than 1 million hectares of rubber plantations established in Key Biodiversity Areas, the effects of rubber on biodiversity and ecosystem services in Southeast Asia could be extensive. Thus, rubber deserves more attention in domestic policy, within trade agreements and in incoming due-diligence legislation.
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Energy/Transportation
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Latvia ☛ Rail Baltica cleared to receive another billion euros
The massive Rail Baltica infrastructure project is set to receive an additional 1.1 billion euros for the next phases of the project implementation, according to an announcement October 18 from RB Rail, the joint venture responsible for the project.
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David Rosenthal ☛ The Invisible Hand Of The Market
In Not "Sufficiently Decentralized I explained how the SEC's William Hinman kneecapped his agency's ability to regulate Bitcoin and Ethereum, handing the baton to the CFTC. Matt Levine explains the result: [...]
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Vox ☛ Airlines say they’ve found a route to climate-friendly flying
Passengers aren’t buying it, either. Over the summer, a group of flyers filed a class-action lawsuit against Delta. The airline said in 2020 that it had become the “the first carbon neutral airline on a global basis.” But plaintiffs say that claim is based on buying carbon offsets that failed to deliver. Environmental activists this summer filed a similar suit against KLM alleging greenwashing. The United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority censured Ryanair, Lufthansa, and Etihad for misleading or overstated sustainability claims. Some airlines have since dropped their environmental ad campaigns.
Now the new hot ticket is sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF. The aim is to develop a fuel that can easily swap in for conventional hydrocarbons, but that is produced with sources like crop waste that emit little to no carbon dioxide on balance. “SAF is the most critical lever in achieving our net zero goal,” Southwest writes on its website. In 2021, United flew the first flight, from Chicago to Washington, DC, with one engine fully powered by SAF. Boeing, NASA, and United recently announced they’ve begun measuring the pollution from burning SAF. The Inflation Reduction Act is giving SAF a boost with nearly $250 million in competitive grants and tax credits.
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DeSmog ☛ FERC Approves Gas Pipeline Expansion in Pacific Northwest
On October 19, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved a certificate for TC Energy’s GTN Xpress project, authorizing the expansion of fracked gas supply into the Pacific Northwest. The approval came despite vocal opposition from many members of Congress and the governors of Washington and Oregon.
The 1,300-mile GTN pipeline runs from the U.S.-Canadian border, down through Idaho, Washington, and Oregon and then terminates at the Oregon-California border, bringing fracked gas from British Columbia to the U.S. West Coast.
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DeSmog ☛ 95 UK Universities That Have Pledged to Divest from Oil and Gas Use Banks Funding Climate Crisis
Almost 100 universities that have pledged to shed ties to the fossil fuel industry still bank with financial institutions that have collectively provided $419 billion (£345 million) to polluting interests between 2016 and 2022.
The new research, conducted by campaign group Make My Money Matter and obtained using Freedom of Information requests, shows that 95 universities still hold a bank account with one of five leading global fossil fuel funders: Barclays, HSBC, Santander, NatWest, and Lloyds.
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Silicon Angle ☛ New York sues the developers of the Gemini Earn crypto lending service
New York Attorney General Letitia James today sued the three companies behind Gemini Earn for allegedly defrauding investors. The companies in question are Gemini Trust Company LLC, Genesis Global Capital LLC and the latter firm’s parent organization, DCG Inc. -
New York Times ☛ New York Attorney General Sues Crypto Firms in $1 Billion Fraud Case
Letitia James has accused Gemini Trust, Genesis Global Capital and Digital Currency Group of misleading investors in a program promising low risk and high returns.
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Finance
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NBC ☛ Bezos-backed freight firm Convoy shuts down after slashing hundreds of jobs. Read the CEO's memo to employees
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New York Times ☛ San Francisco’s Brand Is in Trouble. Can a $4 Million Ad Campaign Fix It?
The city’s standing has plunged since the pandemic. Some wealthy business leaders have a $4 million plan to rehab its image.
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WhichUK ☛ Which? Money podcast: the lasting impact of ID fraud
Our experts discuss why identity fraud happens and, more importantly, how it can be stopped
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YLE ☛ APN Podcast: Scammed students
Students moved from Kenya to Tampere to study physiotherapy, but it turned out that everything was not quite as it seemed.
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New Yorker ☛ Jerome Powell Is Still Puzzling Over the Strength of the U.S. Economy
Even as the Fed chair and his colleagues have raised interest rates to bring down inflation, spending and hiring have picked up recently, and G.D.P. growth looks strong.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ ASEAN countries ‘a priority’: Hong Kong’s John Lee eyes future visits, trade, stronger ties with Southeast Asia
Hong Kong will eye stronger economic and trade ties with the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the city’s leader said on Thursday.
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BIA Net ☛ Six detentions in Şırnak
During the search of a house, the police confiscated a photograph of Pelda Sağlam, a YPJ (Women's Defense Units) member who lost her life in clashes with ISIS in Kobanî in 2014.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Fact check: Who's behind the deadly Gaza hospital blast?
But the Facebook page featured in the screenshot does not bear the verification checkmark, and its account name is different from the official name of the IDF's Arabic-language Facebook page.
An IDF spokesperson told the fact-checking portal Check Your Facts — a member of the Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) — that the account in question does not belong to the Israel Defense Forces.
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France24 ☛ EU questions Meta, TikTok over halting disinformation on Israel-Hamas war
The EU announced probes Thursday into Facebook owner Meta and TikTok, seeking more details on the measures they have taken to stop the spread of "illegal content and disinformation" after the Hamas attack on Israel.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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University of Michigan ☛ U-M seeks feedback on principles in support of free speech
U-M is seeking community input on a statement of principles that reaffirms and reemphasizes its commitment to diversity of thought and freedom of expression.
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BIA Net ☛ X faces new sanctions in Turkey
Following the implementation of the social media law on October 1, 2020, which has been criticized for "digital censorship," the platform could face restricted access for failing to appoint a representative and comply with reporting obligations.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Salman Rushdie: 'Writers have no armies'
Salman Rushdie is making a rare public appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair after he was brutally attacked in August 2022 and subsequently lost sight in one eye.
The author of the Booker-prize winning "Midnight's Children" (1981) and "The Satanic Versus" (1988), the work that triggered a fatwa or death sentence by the then-Iranian Ayatollah, is at the book fair to discuss his latest novel, "Victory City" — and to receive the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade on October 22.
DW caught up with the author to discuss his recovery and the power of literature.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Exclusive: Public submit 50 reports about suspected ‘objectionable content’ at Hong Kong gov’t libraries
In 2021, an HKFP report revealed that 29 out of 149 books about the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown were removed from the shelves over the past 12 years. Local media reported in May this year that political titles by authors including academics Simon Shen and Ma Ngok, former lawmaker and barrister Margaret Ng, and the late prominent democrat Szeto Wah had been purged from the shelves of local public libraries.
According to Ming Pao, around 40 per cent of books and recordings about political topics or figures had been removed from public libraries since 2020. Of 468 political books and recordings identified by the newspaper, at least 195 had been removed – 96 of them in the past year, the newspaper reported.
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ACLU ☛ The Supreme Court Will Set an Important Precedent for Free Speech Online
Do social media sites have a First Amendment right to choose which information they publish on their websites?
That’s the question the Supreme Court will address this term when it reviews two laws from Texas and Florida that would force businesses such as Facebook and YouTube to carry certain content that they do not want to feature. Under the guise of “prohibiting censorship,” these laws seek to replace the private entities’ editorial voice with preferences dictated by the government.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Julian Assange To Be Made Honorary Citizen of Rome - Slashdot
Jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will become an honorary citizen of Rome by early next year following a vote this week by its local assembly, the city's former mayor Virginia Raggi said on Thursday.
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Meduza ☛ RFE/RL journalist with dual U.S.-Russian citizenship arrested in Kazan — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ Russian Prosecutors Seek To Take RFE/RL Journalist Into Custody
Russian prosecutors have asked a court in Kazan to place detained RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva in custody, according to the court's press service.
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CS Monitor ☛ Russia detains U.S. journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. Why she faces jail.
Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist working for a U.S. government-funded media company, has been detained in Russia. Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty editor Alsu Kurmasheva is the second American journalist to be held in Russia this year.
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The Straits Times ☛ Prosecutors to ask Russian court to place Radio Free Europe journalist in custody
Russian prosecutors will ask a judge at a court hearing on Friday to place detained Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva in custody, the court's press service said.
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Techdirt ☛ Hey Ricky Schroder: Porn Is Protected By The 1st Amendment
Do you all remember Ricky Schroder? He is a former child actor who became prominent thanks to TV series like Silver Spoons and NYPD Blue. While I could reminisce about old TV for hours, it is worth noting that Ricky Schroder has become a darling for the far-right. You might remember him from his greatest hits of yelling at a Costco worker in Los Angeles for refusing him access to the store in 2021 for not wearing a facemask, per the local mask requirements created to protect against the spread of COVID-19. In recent months, Schroder entered right-wing political advocacy and lobbying by establishing the so-called ‘Council on Pornography Reform.’ Conservative news outlet The Western Journal was the most recent media to cover Schroder’s work to “protect the kids” and push legal textualism.
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Press Gazette ☛ How the Telegraph’s ‘digital by default’ approach won it website of the year
She explained: “What I mean by that is we’re not commissioning, we’re not producing, we’re not publishing for print and then putting it online. We are commissioning and publishing for online and then putting it in print.”
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JURIST ☛ Taliban court frees French-Afghan journalist after 284-day imprisonment
Behboudi, 29, originally from Afghanistan, became a refugee in France in 2015, where he co-founded Guiti News with fellow Afghan exiles. On January 5 earlier this year, he returned to Afghanistan for a journalistic assignment. A mere two days later, authorities apprehended him while he awaiting the issuance of press accreditation. He was subsequently held at the PD3 (Police District 3) police station in Kabul, as per the report of RSF. A few days later, on January 19, the journalist was transferred to the custody of the Taliban intelligence service, the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) where he faced allegations of espionage. RSF managed to designate two Afghan attorneys to advocate for him and obtain access to the case dossier.
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JURIST ☛ Russia arrests second US journalist for failure to register as a ‘foreign agent’
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a statement calling on Russian authorities to release Kumasheva immediately. The CPJ warned that Kumsheva’s arrest is part of a recent crackdown against independent journalism in Russia, especially related to the war in Ukraine. CPJ cited a colleague of Kurmasheva who stated, “Alsu was detained simply because she is an employee of Radio Liberty. In fact, now any independent journalist in Russia risks the same thing.” The CPJ went on to state:
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NYPost ☛ Prosecutors to ask Russian court to place Radio Free Europe journalist in custody
Russian prosecutors will ask a judge at a court hearing on Friday to place detained Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva in custody, the court's press service said.
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JURIST ☛ Russia arrests second US journalist for failure to register as a ‘foreign agent’
US-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was arrested in Russia Wednesday for failing to register as a “foreign agent.” Kurmasheva, a reporter for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), holds dual citizenship in Russia and the United States. According to a statement from RFE/RL, Kurmasheva traveled to Russia in May for a family emergency.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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RFA ☛ Myanmar activists sentenced to decades in prison
Families say they were targeted and tortured by the junta
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Reason ☛ Anti-Masking Laws and Selective Law Enforcement at George Mason University
Police at my university decline to enforce the law.
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Vice Media Group ☛ Cops Are Suing a Teen for Invasion of Privacy After Allegedly False Arrest Goes Viral
19-year-old Tayvin Galanakis posted his traffic stop arrest, despite not being intoxicated, on YouTube where it gained millions of views. [...]
Around two weeks after the arrest, Galanakis posted the footage to YouTube with his own commentary added as captions. The two arresting officers claimed those captions, as well as clips and statements Galanakis posted to TikTok and Facebook, constituted defamation and “intentional infliction of emotional distress.” The officers’ lawsuit claims that Galanakis had “publicly posted knowingly false and shocking statements” about both officers’ “training, experience, and qualifications to be a certified law enforcement officer,” as well as “mocked the mental fitness and capacity” and “questioned the competence, fitness, and moral character” of both officers.
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Iowa Capital Dispatch ☛ After traffic-stop video goes viral, Newton police sue citizen for defamation
With regard to the claim that Galanakis filed two false complaints against Winters, Judge Locher ruled there was only one communication from Galanakis that could be construed as a complaint, and “because Winters does not allege these statements are untrue they cannot be defamatory.” The judge noted that “Winters does not appear to allege that any of them are false. To the contrary, he admits the accuracy of some of them in his pleadings, and others are supported by the police videos posted online.”
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NPR ☛ UAW members aren't all assembling cars. More and more are unionized grad students
More recently, it's academic workers who have been joining the UAW by the thousands, helping the union maintain its numbers as its share of autoworkers has dwindled. The University of California system alone now has 48,000 UAW members, outnumbering workers from Stellantis (formerly Chrysler).
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El País ☛ Hollywood’s actors strike is nearing its 100th day. Why hasn’t a deal been reached and what’s next?
“We only met with them a couple of times, Monday, half a day Wednesday, half a day Friday. That was what they were available for,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher told The Associated Press soon after the talks broke off. “Then this past week, it was Monday and a half a day on Wednesday. And then “Bye bye. I’ve never really met people that actually don’t understand what negotiations mean. Why are you walking away from the table?”
The reasons, according to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, included a union demand for a fee for each subscriber to streaming services.
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Vice Media Group ☛ Starbucks And Its Worker Union Are Suing Each Other In Legal Showdown
Starbucks and the union organizing the company’s baristas filed lawsuits against each other on Wednesday after the union rejected the company’s demand to stop using its name and logo. Starbucks is suing the union for trademark infringement, while the union is suing Starbucks for defamation.
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Meduza ☛ Alexey Navalny speaks up in defense of his jailed lawyers, calls on Russian legal community not to be silent — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Daria Trepova, charged with terrorism after ‘war correspondent’ Vladlen Tatarsky’s murder, writes from jail — Meduza
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Techdirt ☛ Fifth Circuit: The Government Doesn’t Need To Pay You For The Home It Destroyed To Effect An Arrest
“By any means necessary” has been determined to be the same thing as “minimal intrusion” by far too many courts. When cops are searching for suspects, they’re pretty much free to destroy anything that stands between them and their (wanted) man, even if it means a wholly innocent house gets leveled in the process.
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JURIST ☛ Irish Ombudsman report calls for improvements in child safety within direct provision system
The Irish Ombudsman for Children’s Office (OCO) published a special report Thursday that criticizes the Irish government’s failure to properly safeguard vulnerable children in the country’s overwhelmed international protection system. The special report focuses on three key recommendations made by the OCO in 2021 following an investigation into how the state houses asylum-seeking families.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Techdirt ☛ Big Telecom Allied GOP Lawmakers Pretend New FCC Net Neutrality Push Is ‘Unlawful’
As noted last month, the Biden FCC is finally getting ready to restore net neutrality rules stripped away during the Trump administration amidst a lot of bullshit and fraud. And unpopular telecom giants, with the usual support of the GOP, are already busy trying to undermine the effort with a whole new list of manufactured grievances they’ve been seeding in a lazy U.S. press.
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New York Times ☛ F.C.C. Moves Toward Restoring Net Neutrality Rules, Igniting Regulatory Fight
The regulations, which would bar broadband providers from blocking or slowing down services like Google and Netflix, were repealed during the Trump administration.
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Mozilla ☛ Mozilla Privacy Blog: The Revival We Need: The FCC Takes On Net Neutrality
Today, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took an important step towards restoring net neutrality protections.
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Vox ☛ Net neutrality is back, but it’s not what you think
Five years after net neutrality’s (temporary) demise, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to fulfill the Biden administration’s vision of re-implementing the Obama-era policy. That means the effort to reclassify broadband internet from an information service to a common carrier, subject to increased oversight and regulations just like phone companies, is back, too.
The agency just got its third Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, after waiting nearly two years for the Senate to confirm a Biden appointment (a previous Biden nominee, Gigi Sohn, withdrew in March). The 2–2 deadlock that prevented the agency from making any politicized changes has now been broken, and FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel clearly doesn’t want to waste any more time. Net neutrality, which she’s a longtime proponent of, is first on the agenda.
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Zimbabwe ☛ Malawi offering free [Internet] in schools, hospitals, markets etc, Zim please copy this
As part of the Digital Malawi Programme, they launched a program to provide free [Internet] in all public facilities, including schools, courts, police stations, prisons, hospitals, and markets.
So far, at least 500 public facilities have been connected to the [Internet] under the program.
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India Times ☛ US FCC votes to advance plan to reinstate net neutrality rules
The US Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to advance a proposal to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules and assume new regulatory oversight of broadband [Internet] that was rescinded under former President Donald Trump.
The commission voted 3-2 on a proposal to reinstate open [Internet] rules adopted in 2015 and reestablish the commission's authority over broadband [Internet].
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Common Dreams ☛ Demand Progress Applauds FCC for Advancing Rulemaking to Reclassify Broadband Under Title II, Restore Net Neutrality
“By restoring Title II oversight, the FCC can prevent net neutrality violations at the hands of powerful ISPs, as well as expand affordable broadband access and stop dangerous privacy abuses. Given the widespread public support for these reforms, it’s vital the FCC continue to move decisively toward reinstating strong Title II protections, and that members of Congress stand with their constituents by publicly supporting this effort."
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uni Stanford ☛ FCC starts process to bring back common sense net neutrality protections and broadband oversight
The order was a radical departure from decades of careful work by FCC chairs of both political parties, who recognized and acted against the danger [Internet] service providers (ISPs) posed to the free markets that rose out of and depend on the Internet.
Under the leadership of Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC is now on the path to restoring commonsense net neutrality protections that ensure that we, the people who use the [Internet], get to decide what we do online, without interference from the companies we pay to get online.
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APNIC ☛ Internet governance in 2023
It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for me in mid-October 2023. I presented during a couple of panels at the 18th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2023, held in Kyoto, Japan, and also listened to a couple of sessions in their packed agenda. Then I followed the presentations at NANOG 89, the meeting of the North American Network Operator’s Group, where I listened to a presentation by John Curran, the President and CEO of ARIN, who gave his impressions on the current state of Internet governance.
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uni Stanford ☛ Campus Wi-Fi performs at par or above FCC recommendations
Stanford installed its original Wi-Fi network at Main Quad in 2001. As more people ventured into cyberspace, the capabilities of the network needed to expand in return. By 2004, Stanford’s campus had roughly 545 access points and more than 1,100 concurrent users at any given point during the daytime. Today, some 33,000 devices access Stanford’s network through one of 17,000 Wi-Fi access points per day.
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Techdirt ☛ Astronomers Say Starlink, Amazon Light Pollution Keeps Getting Worse
For years, scientific researchers have warned that Elon Musk’s Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband constellations are harming scientific research. Simply put, the light pollution Musk claimed would never happen in the first place is making it far more difficult to study the night sky, a problem researchers say can be mitigated somewhat but never fully eliminated.
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Internet Society ☛ Network Usage Fees: The European Commission Plays Politics with the Global Internet
The European Commission is playing politics with the global Internet. It’s time it clearly rejected the idea of “network usage fees” once and for all. What is the European Commission doing?
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Zimbabwe ☛ Malawi offering free internet in schools, hospitals, markets etc, Zim please copy this
Zimbabweans are good at talking the talk but are a bit lacking when it comes to walking the walk. We’ve had discussions for years about things that need to be accomplished, only to see other countries quietly accomplish those tasks before us. The Malawian government understands that it needs to get its citizens online.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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NPR ☛ Netflix raises prices for its premium plan
In an effort to bring in even more revenue, Netflix also announced it's raising the price for its most expensive streaming service by $2 to $23 per month in the U.S. — a 10% increase — and its lowest-priced, ad-free streaming plan to $12 — another $2 bump. The $15.50 per month price for Netflix's most popular streaming option in the U.S. will remain unchanged, as will a $7 monthly plan that includes intermittent commercials.
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El País ☛ Netflix raises prices after increasing subscribers with new password policy
The company is trusting that subscriber loyalty is strong enough for it to raise prices. “While we mostly paused price increases as we rolled out paid sharing, our overall approach remains the same — a range of prices and plans to meet a wide range of needs, and as we deliver more value to our members, we occasionally ask them to pay a bit more,” said Netflix, which has decided to raise prices with immediate effect in the United States, the United Kingdom and France.
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Security Week ☛ Google Play Protect Gets Real-Time Code Scanning [Ed: But Android itself is arguably malware and many of the "official" apps for it are malware or at least spyware. It's like Windows Defender being a scam. It protects Microsoft, not the user.]
Google improves Android devices’ proactive protections against malware with real-time scanning at code level.
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Monopolies
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Patents
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Uncle Sam paid to develop a cancer drug and now one guy will get to charge whatever he wants for it
The argument for pharma patents: making new medicines is expensive, and medicines are how we save ourselves from cancer and other diseases. Therefore, we will award government-backed monopolies – patents – to pharma companies so they will have an incentive to invest their shareholders' capital in research.
There's plenty wrong with this argument. For one thing, pharma companies use their monopoly winnings to sell drugs, not invent drugs. For every dollar pharma spends on research, it spends three dollars on marketing: [...]
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[Old] Boston University ☛ Pharmaceutical Marketing and Research Spending: The Evidence Does Not Support PhRMA’s Claims
How much did Merck make on its prescription drug business alone?
We found that in 1999 Merck garnered a 37.4 percent before-tax return on revenue on its prescription drug business. Thus, profits before taxes consumed more than one-third of every dollar that patients and insurors struggled to pay Merck for prescription drugs.
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JUVE ☛ Brigitte Carion-Taravella: “The current situation with SPCs is a mess” [Ed: Instead of covering news they do lobbying again. Worse yet, JUVE took bribes to promote an actual crime, and persistently lie for the criminals who committed it.]
Brigitte Carion-Taravella currently manages Sanofi’s French and Belgium patent team for biologics support.
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JUVE ☛ Arnold & Siedsma becomes fifth member of the EPLN network [Ed: And yet more marketing SPAM from JUVE, nor journalism.]
EPLN is a network of European IP boutiques. German IP firm Meissner Bolte and French firm Santarelli launched the network in early 2023. In May, Italian IP firms SIB and SIB LEX also joined the network.
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Unified Patents ☛ Phelan Group automotive patent reexam granted
On October 17, 2023, less than three months after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding a substantial new question of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 10,259,470, owned and asserted by the Phelan Group, LLC, an NPE. The '470 patent generally relates to a vehicle control system for authenticating and monitoring a driver and their operation of a vehicle to improve safety.
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Unified Patents ☛ Fractus LTE antenna patent challenged
On October 10, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 11,349,200, owned and asserted by Fractus S.A., an NPE. The ‘200 patent generally relates to a wireless device that includes an antenna system that has a level of complexity above a certain threshold.
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Unified Patents ☛ Atlantic IP entity, Foras Technologies, parallel processor patent reexam granted
On October 17, 2023, less than seven weeks after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding a substantial new question of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 7,624,302, owned and asserted by Foras Technologies, Ltd., an NPE and entity of Atlantic IP Services Limited.
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ One or More: One Simple Trick to Invalidate this Patent
We have another precedential Federal Circuit decision that turns on the meaning of the simplest word in the English language: “A.”
Cytonome’s US Patent No. 10,583,439 covers a microfluidic device for processing particles of interest in a sample fluid. The claim requires
an inlet configured to receive a sample stream; [and]
a fluid focusing region configured to focus the sample stream;. . .‘439 Patent, claim 1 (emphasis added). At the PTAB, patent holders typically seek a narrow claim construction in order to separate their claims from the closest prior art.
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Trademarks
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Techdirt ☛ Starbucks Joins The List Of Companies Using Trademark Law To Bully Its Own Union
The trend continues. One of the things we’ve noticed more frequently as of late has been larger companies attempting to use trademark law as some kind of cudgel against employee unions. This has taken several forms, from Wal-Mart attempting to shut down a union website for accurately calling itself a union of Wal-Mart employees, Medieval Times trying to shutter a website and merch for its performers’ union for the same reason, and Trader Joes attacking its employees’ union ostensibly for similar reasons, but really it just wanted to cause as much trouble and pain for the union as possible.
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ ISPs Launch Legal Challenge Against Italy's New Pirate IPTV Blocking Law
An ISP organization has launched a legal challenge against new Italian legislation that authorizes large-scale, preemptive piracy blocking. Fulvio Sarzana, a lawyer representing the Association of Independent Providers, informs TorrentFreak that the measures appear to violate EU provisions on the protection of service providers and the right to mount a defense.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Kiwi Farms' Copyright Battle Could Spell Bad News for DMCA Transparency
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has concluded that Kiwi Farms operator Joshua Moon can be held liable for copyright infringement. The highly controversial site previously refused to remove links to infringing content in response to DMCA notices. While this inaction doesn't automatically lead to liability, the appeals court concludes that posting and mocking the notices can.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Bad Pirate IPTV User! Mandatory PSA Targets Uninformed "Common Man"
In addition to preventing pirate IPTV services from being watched anywhere in the country, a new Italian law requires authorities to run educational anti-piracy awareness campaigns. Released this week, the first PSA uses a famous Italian footballer to inform the "common man" that piracy has consequences. As things stand, he has absolutely no idea what he's doing.
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Mexico News Daily ☛ AI in the arts: Legal battles, ethical dilemmas and copyright
Learn about the evolving landscape of creativity in the age of AI and its impact on artists, Indigenous cultures, and copyright law.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Universal Music Group sues AI startup Anthropic over song lyric copyright infringement
Universal Music Group filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against artificial intelligence startup Anthropic on Wednesday citing widespread scraping of its clients’ song lyrics being used to train its ChatGPT rival chatbot Claude.
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Digital Music News ☛ Rolling Stones ‘Living in a Ghost Town’ Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Dismissed — For Now
A federal judge has dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against the Rolling Stones over their 2020 single ‘Living in a Ghost Town,’ ruling that the plaintiffs would need to file the case in a court within the appropriate jurisdiction.
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Digital Music News ☛ KISS Alleges Infringement of Classic Concert Footage in Newly Filed Lawsuit
KISS members Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley claim their copyright of classic concert footage has been infringed on by parties claiming to own various bootleg performances from 1974 to 1977, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.
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Digital Music News ☛ YouTube Could Soon Rollout an AI Tool for Creators That Generates Artists’ Voices for Content [Ed: That's not Hey Hi, it's CG, and the terms have lost their meaning completely. Voice synthesis is nothing new at all.]
According to Bloomberg, YouTube originally planned to release the voice-generation tool at its Made On YouTube event. However, finalizing deals with record companies for the rights to popular artists’ voices is taking longer than expected.
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Public Domain Review ☛ Your Flannelette Cure: Fire Tests with Textiles (1910)
Photographs of fire tests carried out at the turn of the century to keep women’s clothing from catching on fire.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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🔤SpellBinding: ACINTYV Wordo: CLANG
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Nimble 5e Is A Promising Looking D&D Patch
I am not a fan of WotC's D&D. Specifically, the system. It's heavy, clunky, archaic, unbalanced, messy. It's just not fun to use. But I love a lot of things D&D has. The worlds, the monsters, the lore, the adventure. It's a shame it's all locked behind a difficult and frustrating to use system.
I've spent a lot of time looking at hacks and tweaks to make the system more palatable. They often end up causing more problems that need further tweaking, becoming more hassle than they're worth.
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Technology and Free Software
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Migrated from GssG to Kiln
Hola! Happy Hacking to all hackers, DIY, Creators and tinkers out there.
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Setting up PF firewall in FreeBSD
In this configuration, pf blocks the nets listed in the `blocked` file, allows connections to the ssh server only from the networks listed in the `allow` file and drops ping. There are too many botnets connecting to the ssh server, so I allow only my machines to connect to it. I don't use ping so I drop it. My machines get 100 pings per second from everywhere on the internet, the botnets are using ping to guess to the geographical location of the machines.
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(Almost) All Billing Should be Usage-Based
I recently came across an interesting SaaS product I wanted to try out. I always go to the pricing page first though; I don't want to try out something that I'm not going to be able to stick with. Pricing was broken into a typical tier system; Free, Starter, and Professional.
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Virtual XP and Computer Consolidation
Something isn't working correctly with my installation of Oracle VirtualBox on my primary desktop, and as a result USB passthrough support is broken. I needed to find a way to move files to and from the XP virtual machine. The quickest solution I could come up with was to spin up a basic FTP server on a Raspberry Pi, connect the XP VM to the local network, and use the built-in FTP support of Windows Explorer to move files. I find it amusing that in 2023, I still find use cases for deploying FTP in my local environment.
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How not to reverse engineer a file format
As a teaching assistant, I need to correct student papers handed in as PDF files. For this I use Xournal and a Wacom tablet so I can write corrections and notes by hand. For some reason, I started writing my corrections in green color instead of the more common red. Before I handed in my corrected papers, the professor teaching the course sent out an email reminding us to use red color for corrections if possible. Oops.
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The Lambda Lab Garden
This server started as an experiment back in April 2019. While I've written previously about the madness [1] which led me to put it online, I've said almost nothing about the overarching goals I had in mind.
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Small Operating Systems? (publ. 2023-10-19)
I was wondering if folks in Geminispace had any stories or thoughts to share about tiny operating systems, past or present.
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Internet/Gemini
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GeminiLoggBookOberDadaisticus: Outreach
The web and gemini remain complementary, partly overlapping because of cross-posting and proxy services in either direction. This capsule, for instance, is mirrored as a web page even though I use it primarily to interact with the geminisphere.
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On Community
Gemini is not a community. Perhaps on BBS where you can get a conversation going and enough people and sustain it over time. Gemini is more like a library where one can browse (or submit) random texts, hopefully without the problems of "La biblioteca de Babel" (Borges, 1941). Community happens more with realtime chats like IRC or `com` on SDF, presently in "anonradio", previously the "roof" room. These chats are more like a campfire where you can get communal chatter. (They are talking about languages on com, at the moment.) Email is not a community; this is more like drum messages or smoke signals sent to nearby tribes. These analogies are not perfect, given the evolving newness of computers, and the evolution of humans in response to the new communication environment. Computer-based communication may lack phatic expressions (frowned on in some IRC channels, as it notifies lots of folks, and the channel has a technical oriented) or moreover the non-verbal channels; only some of that will transfer over video, and even less by text.
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Programming
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Agile is Fine, Until You Look Back
I've been a software developer for a while. I'm starting my eighteenth consecutive year, if I have my counting right, though I've been coding long before that, even professionally. I spent a couple of summers working on veterinary multimedia software in my undergrad days, in Visual Basic. My university education was extremely Java-heavy (it was a certain era, okay?). Before that I got the classic microcomputer programming education of BASIC, Pascal, and C.
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.