Leftovers

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ Chinese Spacecraft That Smashed Into Moon Was Carrying Something Mysterious, Scientists Say

    Whatever was attached to the obliterated rocket, it seems to have been big enough to counterbalance its two 1,200-pound engines and make it tumble like a kid in gymnastics class. But after looking at the booster's known payloads, the AU team determined an object of a suitable mass was mysteriously missing from the list.

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Warn That AI Threatens Science Itself

    In a new essay, researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute argue that scientists should abstain from using LLM-powered tools like chatbots to assist in scientific research on the grounds that AI's penchant for hallucinating and fabricating facts, combined with the human tendency to anthropomorphize the human-mimicking word engines, could lead to larger information breakdowns — a fate that could ultimately threaten the fabric of science itself.

  • Science Alert ☛ Man Keeps Rock For Years Thinking It's Gold. It Turned Out to Be Far More Valuable.

    To break open his find, Hole tried a rock saw, an angle grinder, a drill, even dousing the thing in acid. However, not even a sledgehammer could make a crack. That's because what he was trying so hard to open was no gold nugget.

    As he found out years later, it was a rare meteorite.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ U-M’s mastodon man calls it a career after decades of solving Ice Age mysteries

    When he retires at the end of 2023, Fisher will leave U-M as one of the world’s foremost experts in mammoths and mastodons, the elephant-like giants of the Ice Age.

    His retirement marks the end of a 44-year tenure at the university, where Fisher stumbled upon his area of expertise while assisting on two mastodon paleontology digs shortly after he arrived at the school in 1979.

• Education

  • uni Emory ☛ Technology’s Influence on University Education Evolution

    The evolution of university education is like a wild, unpredictable ride, constantly adapting and reinventing itself. It’s now a vibrant, dynamic beast, feeding off the latest tech and societal shifts. In the beginning, higher education was a luxury, the playground of the elite. But now, it’s a whole different story. Universities have become melting pots of innovation and practical learning.

• Hardware

  • Matt Rickard ☛ Strategies for the GPU-Poor

    But there’s a different type of strategy in AI for the GPU-poor startups that don’t have access to large clusters of machines. Many will hypothesize that GPU-poor startups have no moat — that’s only part of the story. There are hardware/software cycles and distribution moats, often the best hardware moats. In fact, I believe that GPU-poor startups might be in better positions than their GPU-rich counterparts as soon as the next few quarters.

  • Hackaday ☛ Life Imitates ART (ART-13, That Is)

    [Mr. Carlson] has been restoring vintage military radios, and as part of his quest, he received an ART-13 transmitter. Before he opened the shipping box, he turned on the camera, and we get to watch from the very start in the video below. These transmitters were originally made by Collins for the Navy with an Army Air Corps variant made by Stewart-Warner. Even the Russians made a copy, presumably by studying salvaged units from crashed B-29s.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • IT World CA ☛ Microsoft employees angered by plans to hire OpenAI staff

    The announcement by Microsoft’s CTO, Kevin Scott, about hiring hundreds of OpenAI employees and matching their current compensation has sparked a wave of discontent among Microsoft workers. This decision comes at a time when many Microsoft employees have been grappling with job security concerns and increased workloads.

    An employee expressed their frustration, saying, “How many loyal employees who stayed at Microsoft while working 12+ hours daily and living in constant fear of being laid off all year? Now here comes OpenAI. We worked even harder when we were told there’s no budget to hire more people. 14-hour days?” This quote captures the sentiment of several employees who feel overlooked and undervalued in the wake of the OpenAI deal.

    Microsoft’s 2023 has been marked by uncertainty for its employees, with the company announcing plans in January to lay off 10,000 workers. This unease extended even to staff in cloud and AI — areas prioritized for growth. In May, CEO Satya Nadella announced a freeze on salaries and reductions in the bonus and stock award budget, exacerbating concerns about job security and compensation.

  • Net Media Europe ☛ Amazon Cuts Hundreds Of Jobs In Alexa Division

    More job layoffs again at Amazon’s Alexa division, on top of the 27,000 jobs already let go in the past twelve months

    Amazon is cutting more jobs within its Alexa division, and is also axing a number of unspecified initiatives within the unit.

    CNBC reported that last Friday Amazon began laying off “several hundred” people in its Alexa division as part of broader belt-tightening measures at the e-commerce giant.

    It should be noted that these fresh job losses are on top of the 27,000 jobs that Amazon has already axed since November 2022.

  • Reason ☛ 90-Day Suspension of Colorado Lawyer Who Filed ChatGPT-Written Motion with Hallucinated Cases

    Before a hearing on the motion, Crabill discovered that the cases from ChatGPT were either incorrect or fictitious. But Crabill did not alert the court to the sham cases at the hearing. Nor did he withdraw the motion. When the judge expressed concerns about the accuracy of the cases, Crabill falsely attributed the mistakes to a legal intern. Six days after the hearing, Crabill filed an affidavit with the court, explaining that he used ChatGPT when he drafted the motion.

  • Colorado ☛ People v. Zachariah C. Crabill. 23PDJ067. November 22, 2023 [PDF]

    The case file is public per C.R.C.P. 242.41(a).

  • The Register UK ☛ Broadcom re-orgs VMware into four divisions – none of which mention end-user compute products

    Broadcom's acquisition of VMware has concluded, and quickly resulted in the creation of four divisions dedicated to the virty giant's business – none of which appear to include end-user compute products.

    The changes weren't announced as such, but appeared on Broadcom's list of executives.

  • Security Week ☛ Humans Are Notoriously Bad at Assessing Risk

    Unfortunately, subjectivity introduces bias, which skews risk assessment. When too much subjectivity is mixed into risk assessment, it can produce a risk picture that is not an accurate representation of reality. This, in turn, results in a poorer overall security posture.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Larry Summers’ Ascent to OpenAI Board is Awful News for Humanity

    “As Revolving Door Project’s work has demonstrated, Larry Summers is an ignorant person’s idea of an economic genius and a naive person’s notion of an impartial expert. It is likely that OpenAI’s idea of intelligence is similar to that of Summers: to give forth something which appears intelligent by using the right buzzwords with an excessive amount of confidence.”

    “Summers involvement raises several important questions: [...]”

  • India Times ☛ IT ministry plans regulations to tackle deepfakes; data breach at Tata-owned hospitality firm

    The government will come out with new rules and regulations to control the spread of deepfake content, information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday. He chaired a meeting with social media platforms to discuss the issue of deepfakes.

  • India Times ☛ Deepfake has emerged as a new threat, new regulation soon to tackle it: Ashwini Vaishnaw

    The new regulation will focus on four main aspects such as detection and prevention of deep fakes, strengthening the reporting mechanism of such content and increasing the awareness among users, he said.

  • Federal News Network ☛ IRS cybersecurity chief says agency has made ‘tremendous progress’ on logging

    The Internal Revenue Service is gathering more network logs, automating many of its cybersecurity playbooks, and planning to conduct a tabletop exercise on artificial intelligence threats in the coming year, according to a top cyber official.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Patient privacy fears as US spy tech firm Palantir wins £330m NHS contract

      NHS England has given Palantir and four partners including Accenture a five-year contract to set up and operate the “federated data platform” (FDP).

      Palantir is known for working closely with intelligence agencies and military organisations around the world, such as the CIA and UK Ministry of Defence. Peter Thiel, its billionaire founder and chair, backed Donald Trump in his 2016 presidential election.

    • National Health Service UK ☛ New NHS software to improve care for millions of patients

      The NHS will roll out new software from spring next year to deliver better joined-up care for millions of patients, help tackle waiting lists and reduce hospital discharge delays.

      The software will bring together existing NHS data, making it easier for staff to access key information to provide improved and more timely patient care.

      The new tool, known as the Federated Data Platform, will join up key information currently held in separate NHS systems to tackle some of the big challenges the health service faces coming out of the pandemic.

    • New York Times ☛ Palantir Wins Major U.K. Health Contract Despite Criticism

      The National Health Service said Palantir had been awarded the seven-year contract, worth 330 million pounds, or about $415 million, to build a new platform that integrates data from across the N.H.S. into a central repository. Called the Federated Data Platform, the system is intended to make it easier to share patient information and analyze wider health trends across the health service. The contract is for the N.H.S. in England and does not cover Scotland or Wales.

    • Digital Health ☛ NHS England awards £330m Federated Data Platform contract to Palantir

      Palantir was widely seen as the favourite to win throughout the procurement in partnership with Accenture, and has now been selected ahead of rival bidders including Oracle and IBM.

    • Reuters ☛ UK's NHS hands U.S.-based Palantir contract for patient data software

      The NHS said it expects investment in the platform to be at least 25.6 million pounds ($32 million) in the first year, with up to 330 million pounds investment expected over the contractual period of seven years.

    • EDRI ☛ Norwegian Social Service guilty of massive GDPR violations

      After getting nowhere for more than 3 years she finally decided to take the issue to court. The case was litigated twice and both times the courts found that NAV committed massive violations of GDPR, but held that the institution is not liable.

    • Site36 ☛ EU migration deal with Cairo: Military in Egypt also receives money for border surveillance

      Following Tunisia’s example, the EU Commission wants a “partnership against migrant smuggling” with Egypt. The Gaza war might has given urgency to these plans. The EU Commission wants to agree an “operational partnership to combat migrant smuggling” with the government in Cairo this year. >

  • Confidentiality

    • The Conversation ☛ The vast majority of us have no idea what the padlock icon on our [Internet] browser is – and it’s putting us at risk

      Of the 463 who responded, 63% stated they knew, or thought they knew, what the padlock symbol on their web browser meant, but only 7% gave the correct meaning. Respondents gave us a range of incorrect interpretations, believing among other things that the padlock signified a secure web page or that the website is safe and doesn’t contain any viruses or suspicious links. Others believed the symbol means a website is “trustworthy”, is not harmful, or is a “genuine” website.

      Not understanding symbols like the padlock icon, can pose problems to [Internet] users. These include increased security risks and simply hindering effective use of the technology.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Vox ☛ Why it’s important to remember that AI isn’t human

    Like other cognitive biases, anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism are resilient. Pointing them out does not make them go away. One reason they are resilient is that they are sustained by a deep-rooted psychological tendency that emerges in early childhood and continually shapes our practice of categorizing the world. Psychologists call it essentialism: thinking that whether something belongs to a given category is determined not simply by its observable characteristics but by an inherent and unobservable essence that every object either has or lacks. What makes an oak an oak, for example, is neither the shape of its leaves nor the texture of its bark, but some unobservable property of “oakness” that will persist despite alterations to even its most salient observable characteristics. If an environmental toxin causes the oak to grow abnormally, with oddly shaped leaves and unusually textured bark, we nevertheless share the intuition that it remains, in essence, an oak.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ EU deploys agents to help Finland bolster Russian border

    The current situation along Russia and Finland's 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) border — the EU's easternmost — is reminiscent of a similar situation from two years ago in which Poland, Latvia and Lithuania accused Russian-allied Belarus of having shuttled migrants to their borders in retaliation for EU sanctions leveled against Minsk.

  • RFERL ☛ EU's Frontex To Provide Additional Support To Help Finland Patrol Russian Border

    Frontex said in a statement on November 23 that the "significant reinforcement" it plans to send is expected to be on the ground as soon as next week, with the first group of officers to be provided on November 29 to expand an existing mission of 10 officers.

    The reinforcements will include border surveillance officers, support for registering migrants [sic], document experts, and interpreters, Frontex said.

  • Meduza ☛ Governor of Russian border region declares state of emergency in anticipation of migrant crisis as Finland announces closure of all but one crossing — Meduza

  • Site36 ☛ Europol deletes NoBorder initiatives from terror report, Dutch police doesn’t see them as “extremists”

    The mention of Abolish Frontex and a “No Border Movement” in a Europol report was due to different interpretations of “terrorism”. They have now been removed from the current TE-SAT. Europol has deleted the Abolish Frontex campaign and the international “No Border Movement” from its current EU situation report on terrorism.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • YLE ☛ APN Podcast: Can Finland close the Russian border?

      What can Finland do to deal with flows of migrants arriving on the eastern frontier? This week's podcast examines the issue.

    • JURIST ☛ Finland closes all but one border crossing to asylum applicants entering from Russia

      The Finnish government announced a comprehensive border closure policy on Wednesday for its border with Russia, closing a number of land border crossings.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuania not under direct military threat, says military chief after FM’s warnings of Russian attack

      There is no direct military threat to Lithuania at the moment, the country’s armed forces commander General Valdemaras Rupšys said in comments of the foreign minister’s warnings about prospects of Russia attacking NATO’s eastern flank members.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuanian president tells minister to ‘calm down’ after talks of imminent Russian attack

      Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda has called on Gabrielius Landsbergis to “take a seat and calm down” after the latter said in an interview that it was only a matter of time before Russia launched an attack against the Baltics and other NATO members.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvian parliament backs EU accession talks for Ukraine and Moldova

      Latvia's parliament, the Saeima, on November 23 adopted a statement supporting the start of EU accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova.

    • AntiWar ☛ The Historic High Points in the American-Russia Relationship

      Even before the start of Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022 former Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz and Senator Sam Nunn have co-authored an article in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs explaining that the risk of nuclear use has become disturbingly plausible—and proposing concrete steps to reduce the risk.

    • Off Guardian ☛ A Guffaw In Need of Being

      The rains of November are cold but the snows of November are colder. It is said that an entire generation of young men from the Ukraine are gone now. They have died in the war. Now, I thought the war in the Ukraine was the “War for Civilization Itself.”

    • RFERL ☛ Former Ukrainian Agency Chief Detained Under Suspicion Of Graft

      A specialized court in Ukraine has accepted a request by anti-corruption prosecutors and ruled to place the ex-chief of the country's special communications agency in custody, setting his bail at 25 million hryvnyas ($687,000).

    • RFERL ☛ EU Executive Approves $1 Billion In Funds For Hungary

      The European Union executive on November 23 approved Hungary's revised economic recovery plan, paving the way to pay out 900 million euros ($1 billion) to Budapest as the bloc seeks to overcome Prime Minister Viktor Orban's veto on more aid to Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Sentenced In Russia To 18 Years For 'Terrorism'

      A military court in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don has sentenced Ukrainian citizen Dmytro Holubyev to 18 years in a maximum-security prison for terrorism.

    • RFERL ☛ At Least Four Civilians Killed In Separate Russian Strikes In Southern Ukraine

      At least four civilians were killed and five wounded as Russian forces targeted civilian and infrastructure facilities in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson on November 23, officials reported, as Ukraine braces for an uptick in attacks on its energy facilities during the upcoming winter.

    • Latvia ☛ Public called to make or donate more candles for Ukrainians

      As the winter season begins, everyone is called on to help prepare candles to send to Ukraine, volunteers told Latvian Television November 24.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Air Defenses Repel Fresh Russian Drone Attack, Kyiv Says

      Russian forces struck Ukraine again overnight with drones and guided missiles, Kyiv said early on November 24, even as Russia said it shot down 16 Ukrainian drones over occupied Crimea and the southern Volgograd region.

    • Meduza ☛ Russian man serving 22-year prison sentence for murder and cannibalism reportedly released to fight in war against Ukraine — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Three killed in Russian shelling of village in Ukraine’s Kherson region — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘That woman will take them to Moscow’ High-ranking Russian politician Sergey Mironov and his wife adopt child deported from Ukraine — Meduza

    • France24 ☛ North Korea to deploy new weapons to border after successful launch of spy satellite

      North Korea said Thursday it would deploy new weapons and stronger armed forces to the border with the South, as Seoul's spy agency said Pyongyang had received Russian help to successfully put a military spy satellite into orbit.

    • LRT ☛ Rare Russian books stolen from libraries in Baltics, Poland

      Millions of euros worth of 19th-century Russian literature have been stolen in Poland, Lithuania, and other Baltic countries over the past two years, replacing the originals on the shelves of libraries with fakes.

    • RFERL ☛ Armenia Says No Intention Of Quitting Russian-Led CSTO Despite Summit Snub

      Armenia is not considering quitting the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a senior official in Yerevan said on November 23, despite Yerevan's decision not to attend a CSTO summit in Minsk on November 23.

    • RFERL ☛ CSTO Summit In Minsk Forges Ahead Without Armenia

      Leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) discussed "urgent problems of international and regional security" at a summit in Minsk on November 23 that was notable for the absence of a representative from member-state Armenia.

    • YLE ☛ Friday's papers: Chinese pupils, Russian cargo and a wintry forecast

      A venture to rescue smaller upper secondary schools, especially in sparsely populated areas in Finland, has run into problems, according to Helsingin Sanomat.

    • New York Times ☛ Finland Steps Up Border Closings in Dispute With Russia

      The escalation comes as Finland tries to address a rise in the arrivals of migrants and asylum seekers that officials blame on Moscow.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia To Impose Hefty Fines For Distribution Of Unlabeled 'Foreign Agent' Materials

      Russia is to introduce legislation that will impose fines of up to 500,000 rubles ($5,660) on third parties that "intentionally or unintentionally" promote or distribute materials produced by "foreign agent" entities without appropriately labeling them, Deputy Justice Minister Oleg Sviridenko said.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Supreme Court Confirms Right Of Conscripts To Perform Alternative Service

      Russia's Supreme Court has issued a ruling confirming the right of a mobilized Russian man to perform alternative civil service.

    • Latvia ☛ Cars with Belarusian plates might be banned from driving in Latvia

      Justice Minister Inese Libina-Egnere (New Unity) promises to continue to look for a solution so that cars with Belarusian numbers cannot also participate in Latvian traffic, she said in an interview with Latvian Radio on November 23.

    • Meduza ☛ Belarusian citizens now required to get permission before leaving country to take up permanent residence abroad — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Militarizing the economy Russia’s next budget allocates over a third of spending to ‘defense.’ Here’s how it was developed. — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russia’s Supreme Court confirms draftee’s right to exemption from military service based on his Christian faith — Meduza

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Bloomberg ☛ BP Needs a Fresh Strategy, Not Just a New CEO

      Oil giant BP Plc has been searching for a new chief executive officer to replace Bernard Looney for almost three months. The wait, even if unnerving, wouldn’t be a problem if it was worth it — alas, it won’t be, as the search process is deeply flawed.

• Finance

  • Danish tech firm Danelec buys cash-strapped AI innovator Nautilus Labs [Ed: "HEY HI" is a bubble, a misnomer in most contexts, and nothing but a pile of deb to impress gullible shareholders]

    After burning through $48m of Microsoft funding, the innovative AI platform developed by New York tech firm Nautilus Labs has been bought out by Danish technology provider Danelec

  • BBC ☛ Black Friday: Amazon staff in Coventry strike - BBC News

    Workers striking in Coventry are supported by demonstrations in other European countries and the US.

  • BBC ☛ HSBC down: Thousands face mobile and online banking outages - BBC News

    The firm says it is "really sorry" for the problem, which comes on the busy shopping day Black Friday.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Bloomberg ☛ Orban's Putin-Lite Act Gets a Dutch Echo

    The illiberal democracy in Hungary can’t be reformed. It must be contained.

  • Michael Geist ☛ Canadian Government Quietly Backs Down on its Implementation Plans for a Digital Services Tax

    The federal government has quietly backed down from its plans to implement a new digital services tax as of January 2024 that the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated would generate billions in revenue. It did not make the headlines or receive much promotion, but after months of insisting that a digital services tax would take effect in Canada in January 2024, the government has now removed that implementation deadline in the Fall Economic Statement. The battle over the proposed tax had sparked increasing anger between Canada and the U.S., with dozens of U.S. Senators and Representatives signing letters urging the government to delay its plans. The Canadian plan remains to establish a retroactive three percent tax that will hit a wide range of businesses, but given fears moving ahead now would jeopardize a global agreement that is designed to address the digital services tax issue, Canada has seemingly faced the obvious reality and backed down.

  • India Times ☛ EU lawmakers back rules forcing Big Tech to tackle child pornography

    To avoid mass surveillance, EU lawmakers beefed up detection orders to allow judicial authorities to authorise time-limited orders to find and delete CSAM. These can only be issued if there is reasonable grounds of suspicion of child sexual abuse.

    Companies would also be able to choose the technology used to detect such offences, as long as this is subject to an independent, public audit.

  • Matt Rickard ☛ Duties of a Board of Directors

    There are three primary duties for a board of directors. IANAL (“I’m Not A Lawyer”), but a reasonable summary for entrepreneurs.

  • Vice Media Group ☛ Despite OpenAI Chaos, Wall Street Is Still Betting Big on AI

    The unicorn startup has CEO Sam Altman back, but the weird struggle exposes just how strange the company is.

  • [Repeat] Ruben Schade ☛ Is it safe to read tech news again?

    The tech world was all a dither over one specific company and its beleaguered CEO this week, with all the suspense and intrigue of a damp sponge. Even non-technical news outlets were keen to report on what amounted to a game of musical chairs, regurgitating the same opinions and speculation.

  • New York Times ☛ Five Days of Chaos: How Sam Altman Returned to OpenAI

    Now OpenAI, which for two days appeared to be on the brink of collapse just a year after introducing the popular ChatGPT chatbot, will replace a heavily criticized board of directors with a more traditional group including former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and a former executive from the software giant Salesforce.

    More board members, who could be plucked from OpenAI’s biggest investor, Microsoft, and the A.I. research community, are expected to join soon. Mr. Altman was not named to the board on Tuesday night, and it was not clear if he ever will be.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Report: OpenAI board’s ouster of Sam Altman followed potential AGI breakthrough

    Whether such a document was indeed penned is unclear. This morning, The Verge cited a source as saying that OpenAI’s board had never received the letter described in the Reuters report.

  • El País ☛ OpenAI researchers warned of breakthrough that threatens humanity before Altman’s dismissal

    According to The Information, some OpenAI employees believe that Altman’s words were alluding to an innovation made by the company’s researchers earlier this year that would allow them to develop much more powerful artificial intelligence models, according to a person familiar with the matter. The technical breakthrough, led by OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, raised concerns among some employees that the company did not have adequate safeguards in place to commercialize such advanced AI models.

  • Reuters ☛ OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster, sources say

    Some at OpenAI believe Q* (pronounced Q-Star) could be a breakthrough in the startup's search for what's known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), one of the people told Reuters. OpenAI defines AGI as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks.

  • India Times ☛ YouTuber sues Google Spain for wrongful dismissal

    The lawsuit seeks to demonstrate an employment relationship between Jota, a creator of political satire content whose real name has not been disclosed, and Alphabet's YouTube because he regularly provided his services and received remuneration derived from advertising revenue

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough

    Ahead of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s four days in exile, several staff researchers wrote a letter to the board of directors warning of a powerful artificial intelligence discovery that they said could threaten humanity, two people familiar with the matter have said.

    The previously unreported letter and AI algorithm were key developments before the board’s ouster of Altman, the poster child of generative AI, the two sources said. Prior to his triumphant return late on Tuesday, more than 700 employees had threatened to quit and join backer Microsoft in solidarity with their fired leader.

    The sources cited the letter as one factor among a longer list of grievances by the board leading to Altman’s firing, among which were concerns over commercialising advances before understanding the consequences. Reuters was unable to review a copy of the letter. The staff who wrote the letter did not respond to requests for comment.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • International Business Times ☛ Xi Critic Who Fled China On A Jet Ski Faces Death, Claims His Father

    The 35-year-old man, identified as Kwon Pyonghad, had been campaigning against human rights abuses in China for years. He fled China for South Korea on August 16 this year.

    He has been charged with violating the Immigration Control Act. A court in South Korea will be holding a hearing on his case on Thursday, and will decide if he should be sent back to China or not.

  • FAIR ☛ Musk’s Lawsuit Is About Destroying Free Speech

    After threatening to sue liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America (CNBC, 11/18/23), Twitter’s principal owner Elon Musk did just that, arguing in papers filed in a Texas court that the group “manipulated” data in an effort to “destroy” the social media platform, causing major advertisers to pull back (BBC, 11/20/23).

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ A Thanksgiving wish for free speech in Kansas and this nation, no matter our differences

    We can only enjoy free speech if we zealously protect it for everyone, not just the folks with whom we agree. I worry that in an increasingly fractured political landscape, those on both the left and right want the other side to simply shut up. If that can’t be managed, other approaches — ones that fall afoul of the First Amendment — look appealing.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian authorities charge writer Masha Gessen with spreading ‘disinformation’ about army — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ ‘When cracks appear, we’ll see people in the streets’ Evgenia Kara-Murza on her husband’s imprisonment and Russia’s future — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Russian authorities to begin issuing multi-thousand-dollar fines against ‘third parties’ who spread ‘foreign agent’ content — Meduza

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Burkina Faso conscripts 2 journalists critical of junta, another fears kidnapping

    Burkinabe authorities must revoke the military conscription of journalists Issaka Lingani and Yacouba Ladji Bama and ensure the safety of journalist Boureima Ouedraogo in the face of kidnap threats, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Wednesday.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Americans Want More Time to Spend More With Their Loved Ones. Capitalism Doesn’t Let Them.

    Americans are so overworked that Thanksgiving is one of the rare occasions we have to gather with our friends and family. We need an economic system that actually provides us the free time to spend precious days and hours with our loved ones.

  • Democracy Now ☛ Lakota Historian Nick Estes on Thanksgiving, Settler Colonialism & Continuing Indigenous Resistance

    Lakota historian Nick Estes talks about the violent origins of Thanksgiving and his book Our History Is the Future. “This history … is a continuing history of genocide, of settler colonialism and, basically, the founding myths of this country,” says Estes, who is a co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation and a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.

  • The Nation ☛ Solidarity and Artivism

    Rain Dove (they/them), fashion model, activist, and nonbinary advocate, gathered with artists in Brooklyn on November 4 [...]

• Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • YLE ☛ Return of media piracy [sic] fuelling other crimes, expert says

    • Torrent Freak ☛ AimJunkies Maintain That Cheating is Legal, Appeals Bungie's $4.3 Million Arbitration Award

      The legal battle between game developer Bungie and cheat seller AimJunkies is taking a detour through the Court of Appeals. In its opening brief, AimJunkies hopes to reverse a multi-million dollar damages award for DMCA violations, arguing that the arbitration process was biased and against the rules.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Google Asked to Deindex iptv-org, The World's Largest Free IPTV Repo

      The goal of the iptv-org repo on GitHub is to offer an index of IPTV streams already freely available on the web. While the volume ebbs and flows, that generally means a library of 8,000 TV channels or more, available to users in seconds, and totally free. The project has weathered several storms over the years and thanks to Spanish football league, LaLiga, another one is brewing right now.