Links 04/12/2023: Mass Layoffs at Spotify (Debt, Losses, Bubble) Once Again
Contents
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Leftovers
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James G ☛ Advent of Technical Writing: First Sentences
When I am writing product and software documentation (i.e. open source documentation, product guides) that explains how to do something, I like to start the document in one of two ways. This post does not cover blog post introductions, which I write differently. Read about how I write blog post introductions.
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Education
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Chris Ferris ☛ re:Invent 2023 recap
I’m back from re:Invent and still trying to adjust my sleep schedule (I’m on the East Coast and go to bed early; 6 pm Las Vegas time is my biological clock’s bedtime).
This year was one of my favorite re:Invents. I got to meet old and new co-workers and hang out with a lot of Community Builders and AWS Heroes, talk to service teams about what they should do to make their products work more for the security 99%. I got to a couple of good chalk talks on GenAI and GenAI security, which will help inform my poking at that over the holidays.
As for announcements, in the last seven days, there were 195 things posted to AWS What’s New. These are the ones I care to follow up on.
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The Atlantic ☛ What Happens When a Poor State Guts Its Public University
West Virginia’s Democrat turned Republican governor and GOP legislators have played their role in WVU’s sad drama, pointedly declining to share a penny of the state’s $1.8 billion surplus with their flagship campus. Yet this isn’t just a MAGA morality tale. Gee has waved off talk of lobbying for more state cash as a salvation for the university.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-25 [Older] Pregnant people, children face 'dire' health consequences from climate change, WHO warns
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India Times ☛ Girl kills self over pics on phone
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Omicron Limited ☛ Earth is running a fever. And UN climate talks are focusing on the contagious effect on human health
Under a brown haze over Dubai, the COP28 summit moved past two days of lofty rhetoric and calls for unity from top leaders to concerns about health issues like the deaths of at least 7 million people globally from air pollution each year and the spread of diseases like cholera and malaria as global warming upends weather systems.
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Iustin Pop: Life, getting sick and unfit
Like clockwork, like every autumn, got sick again. “Just” a flu, actually probably two in a row. I don’t really understand it - from January to September I’m feeling really awesome, and I manage to do sports five days a week, or more. Then September comes, and things start degrading, and then October or November, I get sick and it takes me ~3 weeks to recover, during which I’m not even managing reliably 5K steps a day (from walking), not even talking about running or swimming or biking.
My Garmin statistics for November compared to October (which wasn’t a good month either) are depressing. Let’s not even bring up for example July…
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Engadget ☛ 2023-11-29 [Older] Apple is reportedly ending its partnership with Goldman Sachs
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The Wall Street Journal ☛ 2023-11-29 [Older] WSJ Reports That Apple and Goldman Sachs Are Parting Ways on Apple Card
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India Times ☛ India turns to AI to capture its 121 languages
For a few weeks this year, villagers in Karnataka read out dozens of sentences in their native Kannada language into an app as part of a project to build the country's first AI-based chatbot for Tuberculosis.
There are more than 40 million native Kannada speakers in India, and it is one of the country's 22 official languages and one of over 121 languages spoken by 10,000 people or more in the world's most populous nation.
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[Old] CNBC ☛ People are using A.I. chatbots to write Amazon reviews
Now, the technology has found its way into some reviews for products sold on Amazon. A scan of listings for waist trimmers, car batteries, school textbooks, a baby car seat mirror and game-controller accessories shows what appear to be AI-generated reviews. The reviews all include the phrase "As an AI language model," a common response generated by OpenAI's ChatGPT, along with generic descriptions of the product.
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[Old] The Verge ☛ AI is being used to generate whole spam sites
The sites identified by the organization often have generic names (like Biz Breaking News and Market News Reports) and are stuffed with programmatic advertising that’s bought and sold automatically. They attribute news stories to generic or fake authors, and much of the content appears to be summaries or re-writes of stories from established sites like CNN.
Most of the sites are not spreading misinformation, said NewsGuard, but some publish blatant falsehoods. For example, in early April, a content farm named CelebritiesDeaths.com posted a story claiming that Joe Biden had died.
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[Old] NewsGuard Technologies Inc ☛ Rise of the Newsbots: AI-Generated News Websites Proliferating Online
The websites, which often fail to disclose ownership or control, produce a high volume of content related to a variety of topics, including politics, health, entertainment, finance, and technology. Some publish hundreds of articles a day. Some of the content advances false narratives. Nearly all of the content features bland language and repetitive phrases, hallmarks of artificial intelligence.
Many of the sites are saturated with advertisements, indicating that they were likely designed to generate revenue from programmatic ads — ads that are placed algorithmically across the web and that finance much of the world’s media — just as the internet’s first generation of content farms, operated by humans, were built to do.
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India Times ☛ Misuse of technology to create deepfakes threat to society: President Murmu
President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday said that while the use of artificial intelligence (AI) was making people's lives easier, its misuse to create deepfakes poses a threat to society. She said if technology is used properly, it will benefit society, but its misuse will affect humanity.
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India Times ☛ Google rolling out bulk select feature in Gmail for Android, iOS
"We're introducing a feature that enables you to bulk select a batch of messages in the email thread-list with one tap using the Gmail app on Android and iOS devices," the company said in an update.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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The Register UK ☛ No new top boss at NSA until it answers questions about buying up location, browsing data
As we've previously reported, plenty of personal information is available for purchase from commercial data brokers by US government agencies without a warrant. The Fourth Amendment provides Americans safeguards from unreasonable search and seizures - a protection some, including Senator Wyden, would argue the Feds (and cops to that matter) violate if or when they acquire this info without a warrant.
These data brokers harvest personal data from all sorts of places, mainly apps reselling your location and other info, and then bundle it up and peddle to interested parties.
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Former Deputy Prime Minister Sir Nick Clegg cashes in £5.5 million worth of Meta shares
Sir Nick Clegg has scooped £5.5million by selling shares in Meta, the US giant where he has a top job, according to official documents.
The former deputy prime minister sold millions of shares in the company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, where he earns more than £2.8million a year as president of global affairs.
Sir Nick joined in 2018 after leading the Liberal Democrats from 2007 to 2015 and being in David Cameron’s coalition government from 2010 to 2015.
He sold £710,300 worth of shares in February, £870,000 in May and £2.4million in August.
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Defence/Aggression
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-28 [Older] Turkey Told NATO That Sweden Ratification Could Come Before Year-End, US Official Says
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BIA Net ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] 'Turkey should resolve Kurdish issue in its second century,' says HEDEP leader
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2023-11-25 [Older] Israel’s War on Gaza Has Destabilized the Entire Regional Order in the Middle East
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France24 ☛ Paris attack suspect had expressed 'hard-core Islamic State ideology'
FRANCE 24's terrorism expert Wassim Nasr discusses the suspect, who was known to French authorities, in the deadly knife attack in Paris on December 2, 2023. "This is the same kind of case of what happened in Vienna in 2020: a national, who never went to Syria, tried to go there, went to prison, went through a deradicalization [sic] program, changed his mind on the way and committed the attack."
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New York Times ☛ Deadly Paris Knife Attack Revives Terrorism Concerns
“This person was clearly ready to kill other people,” Mr. Darmanin told reporters in Paris.
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The Register UK ☛ Law secretly drafted by ChatGPT makes it onto the books
At first, the city's council president Hamilton Sossmeier disapproved of his colleague's methods and thought Rosário had set a "dangerous precedent." He later changed his mind, however, and said: "I started to read more in depth and saw that, unfortunately or fortunately, this is going to be a trend."
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Associated Press ☛ Brazilian city enacts an ordinance that was secretly written by ChatGPT
Rosário told The Associated Press that he asked OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT to craft a proposal to prevent the city from charging taxpayers to replace water consumption meters if they are stolen. He then presented it to his 35 peers on the council without making a single change or even letting them know about its unprecedented origin.
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Craig Murray ☛ Dystopia
Yesterday I scanned the MSM news. The UK openly boasted of running aerial surveillance over Gaza to identify targets for Israel, and it was revealed the USA has provided over 12,000 bombs and 57,000 shells to Israel. Israel killed over 300 more civilians, including over 100 more dead children. At the same time, Kamala Harris had been sobered up long enough to make a speech claiming that the US wished Israel to avoid casualties, in a desperate attempt to mask the blood on the hands of Genocide Joe.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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France24 ☛ Ukraine blocks ex-president from leaving country amid alleged plan to meet with Hungary’s Orban
Ukraine's security service said on Saturday it had prevented former president Petro Poroshenko from leaving the country on grounds that Russia planned to exploit a planned meeting with Hungary's prime minister to hurt Ukrainian interests.
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JURIST ☛ Slovakia truckers announce plans to block Ukraine border in protest of EU rules for Ukrainian competitors
Slovak truck drivers joined Polish truck drivers on Friday and announced that they would block the Vysne Nemecke border crossing with Ukraine to protest EU policies towards Ukrainian competitors, which they call unfair.
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RFERL ☛ Ulyanovsk Police Target Russian Wives Pleading For Return Of Mobilized Husbands
Police in the western Russian city of Ulyanovsk joined ongoing official backlash over a bumper-sticker protest involving women purportedly calling for their husbands deployed for the war in Ukraine to be sent home.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine Says Kherson Takes 'Heavy Fire' From 'Temporarily Occupied Left Bank' Of Dnieper River
Ukraine's military leadership in the southern city of Kherson said on December 3 that the city was under "heavy fire" from Russian forces from the "temporarily occupied left bank" of the Dnieper River, and one person had been killed in the attacks.
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RFERL ☛ NATO's Stoltenberg Stresses Ukraine Support 'In Both Good And Bad Times'
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has stressed that it is in the defense alliance's interest to back Kyiv and it must "support Ukraine in both good and bad times," as Russia's full-scale invasion continues in its 22nd month.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine And Poland Open Border Crossing To Ease Blockade
Ukraine and Poland will open a border crossing for empty trucks on December 4 in a bid to ease a blockade by Polish hauliers, whose protests have paralyzed traffic for weeks.
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RFERL ☛ Kyiv Police Cannot Confirm Whether Ukrainian Lawmaker Detained For Alleged Treason Injured In Custody
Kyiv police said on December 3 that following an investigation they were unable to confirm allegations that detained Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinskiy was physically injured while in custody.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine Says Apparent Shooting Of Surrendering Soldiers A Russian War Crime
Ukraine's military has decried the apparent killing of two surrendering Ukrainian troops by Russian forces and said it considers the incident evidence of a war crime.
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RFERL ☛ Hundreds Of Ukrainian Monuments Threatened Or Damaged By War Documented
Scientists from the German cities of Marburg and Hanover, along with Ukrainian photographers, have documented 250 architectural monuments that have been threatened or damaged by the Russian war in Ukraine.
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New York Times ☛ Ukrainian Refugees in Germany Weigh Tough Choice: Stay or Go Home
As refugees, they were welcomed with safety, services and jobs. As the war grinds on, giving that up is not a simple decision.
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Meduza ☛ ‘They posed no threat’ Video appears to show Russian soldiers shooting surrendering Ukrainian soldiers at close range — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Former Ukrainian president denied permission to leave country amid concerns his trip could fuel Russian propaganda, says SBU — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Traffic fully restored on railway in Russia’s Far East after explosion reportedly organized by Ukrainian intelligence — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Kyiv mayor says AFU Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi ‘told the truth’ in saying war has reached ‘stalemate’ — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ Renowned Russian Director Sokurov Says Official Ban Means His Career 'Is Over'
One of Russia's best-known film directors, Aleksandr Sokurov, says his "professional career...is over" because of Russia's ban on his new film. Sokurov told News.ru he's "not working on new projects" after the Culture Ministry refused to allow distribution of Fairytale (Skazka).
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Environment
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Omicron Limited ☛ As Dubai hosts climate talks, its air pollution soars
The air quality index reached 155 micrograms per cubic meter of PM2.5 pollution—the fine particulate matter that is most harmful, as it can enter the bloodstream—according to WAQI.info, a real-time pollution tracker.
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BIA Net ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] Turkey's climate goals 'critically insufficient'
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Copenhagen Post ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] COP28: Denmark supports climate-monitoring and damage funds with DKK 350 million
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] The Biden Administration Is Undermining Global Carbon-Reduction Efforts
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NL Times ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] The Netherlands pledges €15 million to the new climate damage fund at COP28 in Dubai
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Truthdig ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] Fascism and Climate Change Go Hand in Hand
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Counter Punch ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] Can We Keep Both Fascism and Climate Doom at Bay for Decades to Come?
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Counter Punch ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] How the BRICS+, Africa Climate Summit, G20 and UN Prepare Us for Planetary Arson
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International Business Times ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] Sunak, Cameron and King Charles Will Take Separate Jets To Attend Climate Summit
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] Britain's King Charles to Push for Global Action on Climate in COP28 Speech
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Gizmodo ☛ 2023-11-30 [Older] Most People Globally Support ‘Whatever It Takes’ to Limit Climate Change
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-30 [Older] German court rules federal government violated climate law
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Truthdig ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] The Fallacy of ‘Climate Friendly’ Beef
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TruthOut ☛ 2023-11-30 [Older] Meat Lobbyists Attend COP28 to Contradict Climate Research
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] Climate glossary: Cutting through the COP28 jargon
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International Business Times ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] Sunak Accused of Misrepresenting UK Climate Aid Ahead of COP28 Attendance
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HRW ☛ 2023-11-30 [Older] Climate Inaction Not an Option for Maldives at COP28
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International Business Times ☛ 2023-11-30 [Older] NASA Partners With IBM To Announce AI Project To Address Climate Challenges
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Engadget ☛ 2023-11-30 [Older] NASA and IBM are building an AI for weather and climate applications
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-29 [Older] Young Activists Who Won Montana Climate Case Want to Stop Power Plant on Yellowstone River
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Counter Punch ☛ 2023-11-28 [Older] Poverty and Climate Overheating: Flip Sides of One Coin
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Counter Punch ☛ 2023-11-24 [Older] Why the United Arab Emirates is a Poor Choice for a Global Climate Summit
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The Local SE ☛ 2023-11-24 [Older] Swedish court waives fine for activist due to 'climate emergency'
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TruthOut ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] Leak Shows UAE Planned to Use COP28 Climate Talks to Strike Fossil Fuel Deals
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] COP28 host used climate talks to push for oilpatch deals, including in Canada
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] Australia: More than 100 climate activists arrested after port blockage
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The Age AU ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] UAE aimed to pursue gas deals ahead of hosting COP28 climate talks: report
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Vox ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] Earth will soon cross a scary climate change threshold. What happens next?
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NL Times ☛ 2023-11-26 [Older] Dutch professor: UN climate summit is a circus, little progress
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TruthOut ☛ 2023-11-25 [Older] Building Less Parking Space Helps Us Fight Climate Change and the Housing Crisis
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] New England's Decades-Old Shrimp Fishery, a Victim of Climate Change, to Remain Closed Indefinitely
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] Climate Protesters Twice Interrupt Wagner's `Tannhäuser' at Metropolitan Opera
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-12-01 [Older] At Climate Summit, Turkey, South Africa Hit Out at Israel Over Gaza War
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Mexico News Daily ☛ 2023-11-30 [Older] Mexico to call for more climate change damage funds at COP28
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-30 [Older] New climate fund offers hope to developing countries
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Vox ☛ 2023-11-30 [Older] There’s less meat at this year’s climate talks. But there’s plenty of bull.
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NL Times ☛ 2023-11-29 [Older] Tomorrow Film Festival launches, showcasing inspiring films about climate change
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-29 [Older] Canada looks for breakthrough on climate change 'loss and damage fund' at COP28
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-29 [Older] COP28: What to expect from the UN climate summit
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-29 [Older] Climate Contradictions Key at UN Talks. Less Future Warming Projected, Yet There's More Current Pain
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-29 [Older] Vice President Harris Will Attend COP28 Climate Conference in Dubai
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-29 [Older] US Lists Wolverine as Threatened Species, Citing Climate Change
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-11-28 [Older] Gas deals beyond 2050 show reality gap on Europe Climate Goals
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CoryDoctorow ☛ 2023-11-28 [Older] Pluralistic: Insurance companies are making climate risk worse (28 Nov 2023)
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-28 [Older] Africa's youth demand funding to deal with climate chaos
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The Conversation ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] Stones inside fish ears mark time like tree rings – and now they're helping us learn about climate change
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TruthOut ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] Biden Reportedly Plans to Skip COP28 Climate Summit Kicking Off This Week
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] Climate change in 11 charts
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] President Joe Biden Plans to Skip U.N. Climate Talks Beginning This Week in Dubai
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Vox ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] The state of the climate crisis
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Vox ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] The future of the planet hinges on understanding these 5 key phrases
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Vox ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] Want to fight climate change effectively? Here’s where to donate your money.
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Vox ☛ 2023-11-26 [Older] Mud libraries hold the story of the Earth’s climate past — and foretell its future
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-11-25 [Older] Global Trade Disruptions in the Grip of a Severe Climate Crisis
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-11-25 [Older] Underfunded and Unprepared: The Urgency of Climate Finance in Building Resilience
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-25 [Older] Tackling Climate Change and Alleviating Hunger: States Recycle and Donate Food Headed to Landfills
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-25 [Older] Australia Climate Change Activists Disrupt Shipping at Coal Port
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-24 [Older] 'Regressive' carbon capture tax credit open to projects that extract more oil, climate experts say
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-24 [Older] Climate: Is 1.5 degrees Celsius still achievable?
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The Age AU ☛ 2023-11-24 [Older] Inside the new climate assault on the oil majors
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-24 [Older] UN Chief Gives Interview From Melting Antarctica on Eve of Global Climate Summit
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BIA Net ☛ 2023-11-28 [Older] Snowfall covers various cities as temperatures plummet across Turkey
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BIA Net ☛ 2023-11-28 [Older] Weekend deluge claims numerous lives across Turkey
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TruthOut ☛ 2023-11-28 [Older] Report: Saudi Arabia Plans to Get African Countries “Hooked” on Fossil Fuels
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Truthdig ☛ 2023-11-29 [Older] In Lead Up to COP28, Saudis Push Oil on Poor Nations
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India Times ☛ Bitcoin breaks $40,000 as momentum builds
Reports in October that the US Securities and Exchange Commission won't appeal a court ruling that found the agency had been wrong to reject an exchange-traded fund application from [cryptocurrency] firm Grayscale Investments have also driven bets that an eventual approval is nigh.
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The Verge ☛ It’s not just electricity — Bitcoin mines burn through a lot of water, too
The study was conducted by Alex de Vries, a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam whose previous research has tracked cryptocurrencies’ electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Those issues have moved legislators to push for more oversight of crypto mines’ environmental impact. But until recently, most of that attention has been on whether energy-intensive cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin might throw off countries’ climate goals.
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New Scientist ☛ A single bitcoin transaction uses enough water to fill a swimming pool
The environmental impact of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is increasingly being scrutinised, due to the vast amounts of electricity they consume. Now it seems that water use is also a big problem
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teleSUR ☛ 47 people die in landslides in Tanzania
After suffering an unprecedented drought, East Africa has been hit by weeks of torrential rains and floods.
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Finance
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-25 [Older] Germany grapples with its 'debt brake'
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University of Michigan ☛ Don’t buy Christmas gifts this year
Content warning: this article contains mention of depression and suicide Santa Claus was not always the white-bearded, red-suited and stocking-capped fellow we know today. This archetype, like many other beloved elements of Christmas, has consumerist roots. Santa’s modern look was standardized by a 1931 Coca-Cola advertisement.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Scheerpost ☛ 2023-11-29 [Older] Newsguard: Ex-CIA Agent Calls Out Deep State for Censoring Media
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2023-11-28 [Older] Defending the Killing of Palestinian Children Won’t Get You Punished in Hollywood
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Scheerpost ☛ 2023-11-27 [Older] Chris Hedges Report: Zionist Anti-Palestine Censorship Is Surging w/ Dylan Saba
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2023-11-26 [Older] Israel’s War on Gaza Has Unleashed a Wave of Repression Against Pro-Palestine Artists
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France24 ☛ Six pupils go on trial over 2020 murder of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty
The young radicalised Islamist murdered Paty after messages spread on social media that the teacher had shown his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Paty had used the magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history.
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Off Guardian ☛ What We Are Not Allowed to Say
Censorship imperils cultures and civilization. When governments and elites prohibit speaking or writing without threats, shaming, or epithets meant to shut down discussion, free thinking dies. People also die. A censorship industrial complex grew around Covid hysteria, which began as a war on a virus.
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CS Monitor ☛ After LBGTQ+ activism ban, Russian police raid gay bars in Moscow
Russian security forces raided gay clubs and bars across Moscow less than 48 hours after the country’s top court banned what it called the “global LGBTQ+ movement” as an extremist organization.
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JURIST ☛ Russia court prolongs detention of Russian-American journalist in ‘foreign agent’ case
A district court in Kazan, Russia extended on Friday the detention of Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist holding both Russian and United States citizenship, according to Russian state media. Kurmasheva faces allegations of failing to adhere to Russia’s stringent foreign agent registration law.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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The Register UK ☛ 'Return to Office' declared dead
Yet some employers, according to data from Envoy and Hanover Research, appear to regret their return-to-office strategies. And around 42 percent of companies, according to workplace consultant Unispace, have reported losing more employees than expected after my-way-or-the-highway mandates seem to have sent workers packing.
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[Old] SSRN ☛ The Evolution of Work from Home
Full days worked at home account for 28 percent of paid workdays among Americans 20-64 years old, as of mid 2023, according to the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes. That’s about four times the 2019 rate and ten times the rate in the mid-1990s that we estimate in time-use data. We first explain why the big shift to work from home has endured rather than reverting to pre-pandemic levels. We then consider how work-from-home rates vary by worker age, sex, education, parental status, industry and local population density, and why it is higher in the United States than other countries. We also discuss some implications of the big shift for pay, productivity, and the pace of innovation. Over the next five years, U.S. business executives anticipate modest increases in the share of fully remote jobs at their own companies and in the share of jobs with hybrid arrangements, whereby the employee splits the workweek between home and employer premises. Other factors that portend an enduring shift to work from home include the ongoing adaptation of managerial practices and further advances in technologies, products, and tools that support remote work.
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New York Times ☛ Why Doctors and Pharmacists Are in Revolt
And doctors are not the only health professionals who are unionizing or protesting in greater numbers. Health care workers, many of them nurses, held eight major work stoppages last year — the most in a decade — and are on pace to match or exceed that number this year. This fall, dozens of nonunion pharmacists at CVS and Walgreens stores called in sick or walked off the job to protest understaffing, many for a full day or more.
The reasons for the recent labor actions appear straightforward. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists said they were being asked to do more as staffing dwindles, leading to exhaustion and anxiety about putting patients at risk. Many said that they were stretched to the limit after the pandemic began, and that their work demands never fully subsided.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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GO Media ☛ PlayStation To Delete A Ton Of TV Shows Users Already Paid For
The promise of digital media is that it can last forever, pristine and undisturbed by the forces of entropy constantly buffeting the material world. Unfortunately, a mess of online DRM and license agreements means that we mostly don’t own the digital stuff we buy, as most recently evidenced by the fact that Sony is about to delete Mythbusters, Naked and Afraid, and tons of other Discovery shows from PlayStation users’ libraries even if they already “purchased” them.
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GO Media ☛ PS5 Slim Disc Drive Comes With Bizarre Online Requirements [Update]
The surprise requirement was discovered through a new leak of the PS5 slim’s box as retailers begin stocking the console for its November launch. Shared with Call of Duty news account CharlieIntel, the images show a disclaimer on the box that reads, “Internet connection required to pair Disc Drive and PS5 console upon setup.”
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Reuters ☛ Spotify to reduce staff by 17% in second layoff this year | Reuters
Spotify will reduce its total headcount by around 17% across the company, it said in an email on Monday, after laying of 6% of this staff in January citing higher costs.
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Monopolies
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2023-11-24 [Older] Amazon’s Climate Pledge Was a Lie
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Copyrights
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[Old] Reuters ☛ Focus: ChatGPT launches boom in AI-written e-books on Amazon
But already there are concerns over authenticity, because ChatGPT learns how to write by scanning millions of pages of existing text. An experiment with AI by CNET resulted in multiple corrections and apparent plagiarism before the tech news site suspended its use.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Copyright Infringement? Jury to Decide Over Landmark Destiny 2 'Cheating' Suit
Most people agree that using cheats to win in online games is unfair to those who don't . But do these tools actually break the law? Next week, the landmark case between cheat seller AimJunkies and Destiny 2 creator Bungie will go to trial. Among other things, the jury must decide whether AimJunkies infringed the game's copyrights.
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.