Links 11/12/2023: Buzzword Rules in the EU and Misinformation/Disinformation on the Rise
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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CBC ☛ 2023-12-04 [Older] Amazon gives customer runaround after $2,100 watch missing from delivered package
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Zach Flower ☛ Sunday Reboot — December 10, 2023
I guess all I can do at this point is accept the miss, try to carve time out for it a little bit better, and move on. So here goes, the second-but-definitely-should-be-third edition of The Sunday Reboot for December 10, 2023.
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Science
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Hardware
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Hackaday ☛ Nyan Keys: Because Your Keyboard Is Painfully Slow
You probably don’t notice keyboard latency when typing or doing mundane tasks, but if you start gaming, that’s also when you might start complaining. Every millisecond counts in that arena. Think your keyboard is fast? Think again. Because unfortunately, no matter what you’ve got in there, that key matrix is slowing you down. What you need is an FPGA-based keyboard with an overkill MCU. You need Nyan Keys.
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Hackaday ☛ Cowgol Development Environment Comes To Z80 And CP/M
Cowgol on Z80 running CP/M ties together everything needed to provide a Cowgol development environment (including C and assembler) on a Z80 running the CP/M operating system, making it easier to get up and running with a language aimed to be small, bootstrapped, and modern.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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The Conversation ☛ 2023-12-07 [Older] How bird feeders help small species fight infection
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Gizmodo ☛ Your Browser Has a Hidden Setting That Will Speed Up the Web
Hardware acceleration means your browser accelerates its performance by making full use of the hardware available on your computer, Specifically, hardware components beyond the Central Processing Unit (CPU) that form the main brains of your system.
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Games
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GamingOnLinux ☛ Humble's Roguelike Deckbuilders Bundle is back for a limited time
Humble Bundle continue bringing back popular bundles for a limited time and the next is Luck of the Draw: Roguelike Deckbuilders Encore. Only live for 48 hours (about 29 hours left at publishing time) so act fast if any of the included games interest you. This time though one game from before was swapped out with Banners of Ruin - Collection replacing Beneath Oresa.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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India Times ☛ Google AI may soon tell your life story via using your photos, searches
Titled "Project Ellmann," the idea is to use large language models (LLMs) like latest Gemini model to utilise search results, find patterns in a user's photos, create a chatbot and "answer previously impossible questions," reports CNBC.
[...]
Google Photos has more than 1 billion users and 4 trillion photos and videos.
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Defence/Aggression
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New Statesman ☛ The life and crimes of Henry K
Despite never having declared war against Cambodia or its people, the US dropped more bombs on that nation (2.8 million tonnes) than it did during the whole Second World War (just over 2 million tonnes). While the bombing had little effect on North Vietnamese forces, it did lead to the complete disorder of Cambodian society, the toppling of the government by a US-compliant military dictator, Lon Nol, and his fall in a subsequent civil war that would end with the victory of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge – génocidaires, and future US clients.
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[Old] NPR ☛ To Avoid Extreme Disasters, Most Fossil Fuels Should Stay Underground, Scientists Say
Fossil fuel producers should avoid extracting at least 90% of coal reserves and 60% of oil and gas reserves by 2050, according to a study published in Nature, to limit global temperature rise to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Even then, that gives the planet only a 50% chance of avoiding a climate hotter than that.
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[Old] Nature ☛ Unextractable fossil fuels in a 1.5 °C world
Parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement pledged to limit global warming to well below 2 °C and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C relative to pre-industrial times1. However, fossil fuels continue to dominate the global energy system and a sharp decline in their use must be realized to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 °C (refs. 2,3,4,5,6,7). Here we use a global energy systems model8 to assess the amount of fossil fuels that would need to be left in the ground, regionally and globally, to allow for a 50 per cent probability of limiting warming to 1.5 °C. By 2050, we find that nearly 60 per cent of oil and fossil methane gas, and 90 per cent of coal must remain unextracted to keep within a 1.5 °C carbon budget. This is a large increase in the unextractable estimates for a 2 °C carbon budget9, particularly for oil, for which an additional 25 per cent of reserves must remain unextracted. Furthermore, we estimate that oil and gas production must decline globally by 3 per cent each year until 2050. This implies that most regions must reach peak production now or during the next decade, rendering many operational and planned fossil fuel projects unviable. We probably present an underestimate of the production changes required, because a greater than 50 per cent probability of limiting warming to 1.5 °C requires more carbon to stay in the ground and because of uncertainties around the timely deployment of negative emission technologies at scale.
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NL Times ☛ Digital archive on forced labor of the Dutch during WWII visited over 400,000 times
The archive of forced laborers and people who were in Germany during or shortly after the war for other reasons has been digitized over the past 18 months. It can now be searched by name, which is much easier than it used to be when a search required entering the place of residence.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Iran begins trial of Swedish EU diplomat detained for spying
The diplomat was taken into custody in 2022 while on vacation in Iran. The family of 33-year-old Johan Floderus said he was detained without due process, with Sweden and the EU saying he is also innocent.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ French immigration bill causes uproar
Paris was planning to create a one-year green card for people working in sectors with a labor shortage. But as it stands now, the decisions on these one-year permits are left up to local authorities.
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Green Party UK ☛ 2023-12-06 [Older] Rwanda plans are an affront to democracy and human rights, say Greens
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Green Party UK ☛ 2023-12-05 [Older] Green Party response to new immigration rules
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Craig Murray ☛ Still Throwing Punches
Obviously fighting against the crushing power of the state is hard work, but we can still land a few (metaphorical) blows. This is one of the most feisty letters from a lawyer you will ever see, directly confronting Police Scotland over responsibility for the hacking of my Twitter account.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Meduza ☛ U.K. Defense Ministry: Russia likely beginning ‘more concerted campaign’ on Ukraine's energy infrastructure
The Russian army has begun what is most likely a “more concerted campaign” of airstrikes aimed at destroying Ukraine's energy infrastructure, according to the U.K. Defense Ministry’s latest report.
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Meduza ☛ Russian military police arrest Russian citizen in Armenia on desertion charges
Russian military police have arrested Russian citizen Dmitry Setrakov in Armenia and taken him to a Russian military base in Gyumri, Armenia. According to the human rights organization Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly—Vanadzor, a criminal case has been opened against Setrakov in Russia for desertion.
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Meduza ☛ Zelensky travels to Argentina to attend presidential inauguration, drum up support for Ukraine — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Netanyahu and Putin hold 50-minute phone call over situation in Middle East — Meduza
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Environment
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Energy/Transportation
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Hackaday ☛ Fast Paper Tape For The Nuclear Family
We’ve enjoyed several videos from [Chornobyl Family] about the computers that controlled the ill-fated nuclear reactor in Chornobyl (or Chernobyl, as it was spelled at the time of the accident). This time (see the video below) they are looking at a high-speed data storage device. You don’t normally think of high-speed and paper tape as going together, but this paper tape reader runs an astonishing 1,500 data units per second. Ok, so that’s not especially fast by today’s standards, but an ASR33, for example, did about 10 characters per second.
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Overpopulation
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VOA News ☛ 3 in 4 People in Africa Cannot Afford a Healthy Diet, Says UN
With a young population set to double by 2050, Africa is the only rapidly growing region where people are getting poorer, and some are beginning to celebrate coups by soldiers who promise a better life. Despite its wealth of natural resources, Africa is far from meeting its commitment to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2025.
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San Fancisco ☛ California pushes ahead with $16 billion water project — one of the most contentious in history
The idea of moving water beneath, or around, the delta dates back more than 50 years. One of the original state plans was to construct a “peripheral” canal around the region, a proposal that was rejected by voters in a 1982 ballot initiative. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger more recently tried to revive the canal proposal before Gov. Brown reimagined the concept with twin tunnels.
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Pleasanton California ☛ California's water year is off to another dry start
The SWP provides water to 29 public water agencies that serve 27 million Californians. In the San Francisco Bay Area, they include the Alameda County Water District, the Zone 7 Water Agency that supplies Tri-Valley, Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, Santa Clara Valley Water District and Solano County Water Agency.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Proposal for new water district sparks fear of Northern California 'water grab'
Richard Harriman, a lawyer in Chico, called the effort to form the district a "Trojan Horse," saying out-of-county landowners are seeking control of the area's water "for purposes that are not for the public interest in Butte County."
"It is absolute folly to think that the water is going to stay in Butte County, in that water bank, once the price of water is higher than the economic value of that water to agriculture. It will be gone. The water will follow the money," Harriman said.
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The Scotsman ☛ Readers' Letters: Why is population control not COP28 talking point?
In 1900 the UK population was 37 million, in 2000 59m, today it’s 68m and by 2050 it could be 77m. World population rose from 1.7 billion in 1900 to 6.2bn in 2000 to 8.1bn today. By net zero 2050 it will be 9.8bn, all creating greenhouse gases.
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Finance
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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India Times ☛ OpenAI working with ex-Twitter India head to navigate AI landscape: report
According to a report in TechCrunch, Jaitly is working as a senior advisor with OpenAI to facilitate talks with the government about AI policy.
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NPR ☛ Europe reaches a deal on the world's first comprehensive AI rules
The EU took an early lead in the global race to draw up AI guardrails when it unveiled the first draft of its rulebook in 2021. The recent boom in generative AI, however, sent European officials scrambling to update a proposal poised to serve as a blueprint for the world.
The European Parliament will still need to vote on the act early next year, but with the deal done that's a formality, Brando Benifei, an Italian lawmaker co-leading the body's negotiating efforts, told The Associated Press late Friday.
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Silicon Angle ☛ EU reaches provisional agreement on landmark legislation to regulate AI
Lawmakers from France, Germany and Italy have opposed directly regulating generative AI models, also known as large language models, and instead believe that the companies developing them should self-regulate based on government-induced codes of conduct. They were reportedly concerned that excessive regulation might stifle innovation in Europe, which is desperately trying to compete with American and Chinese companies in the AI race. France and Germany are both home to some of the most promising generative AI startups, including Mistral AI and DeepL GmbH.
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JURIST ☛ EU reaches deal on world-first artificial intelligence rules
The primary objective of the AI Act is to regulate AI based on its potential risks to society, employing a risk-based approach where stricter rules apply to higher-risk AI systems. This landmark legislation has the potential to set a global standard for AI regulation, similar to the impact of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the field of data protection.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Open-source generative AI startup Mistral AI raises $415M in funding
The Paris-based startup’s value has risen more than sevenfold just six months after bursting onto the scene in June, when it raised $113 million in a seed funding round just four weeks after it was founded. Its three co-founders all have significant pedigree in the AI industry. Timothée Lacroix and Guillaume Lample both previously worked as researchers at Meta Platforms Inc’s Paris AI Lab, while Arthur Mensch spent time working at DeepMind, an AI research lab that has been a part of Google LLC since 2014.s
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France24 ☛ French start-up Mistral AI emerges as leading force in European artificial intelligence
French artificial intelligence start-up Mistral AI announced Sunday it had raised 385 million euros ($414 million), becoming one of Europe's two AI leaders.
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Germany Trade & Invest ☛ Germany Mints Majority of New European Unicorns
The German companies also booked some of the year’s biggest financing rounds. Aleph Alpha took in USD 500 million in Series C and USD 108 million in Series B financing. Helsing AI added USD 222 million and DeepL USD 100 million, both in Series B rounds.
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India Times ☛ Factbox: What are Europe's landmark AI regulations?
European Union policymakers and lawmakers clinched a deal on Friday on the world's first comprehensive set of rules regulating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in tools such as ChatGPT and in biometric surveillance.
They will thrash out details in the coming weeks that could alter the final legislation, which is expected to go into force early next year and apply in 2026.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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NPR ☛ Oil companies are embracing terms like 'lower carbon.' Here's what they really mean
But this language isn't always straightforward. Here are five key, but sometimes confusing, phrases about climate change commonly used by oil companies — and why they matter.
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India Times ☛ Microsoft says it does not own any portion of OpenAI
"While details of our agreement remain confidential, it is important to note that Microsoft does not own any portion of OpenAI and is simply entitled to share of profit distributions," said company spokesman Frank Shaw.
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India Times ☛ Elon Musk says conspiracy theorist Alex Jones will be reinstated on X after poll
Alex Jones, who has promoted conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook school shooting, was ordered last year to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to relatives of the victims for falsely claiming they were actors who staged the shooting as part of a government plot to seize Americans' guns.
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Gizmodo ☛ Alex Jones is Back on X, Thanks to Elon Musk
This weekend, Musk passed around a poll on X to see if users wanted Jones back on the platform. Nearly two million votes were cast—out of which some 70 percent voted for Jones to return. Musk had previously stated that he would never let Jones back on X, claiming that his promulgation of Sandy Hook conspiracy theories should disbar him from a place on the platform. However, in the lead up to a Tucker Carlson interview with Jones that was streamed to X last week, Musk backtracked. “In general, since this platform aspires to be the global town square, permanent bans should be extremely rare,” he said, while announcing the poll to reinstate Jones.
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India Times ☛ Elon Musk restores X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones
Elon Musk has restored the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones following a poll on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that came out in favor of the Infowars host who repeatedly called the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax.
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New York Times ☛ Elon Musk Brings Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones Back to X
Mr. Jones spent years promoting the claim that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 was a hoax. Last year, he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion to the families of eight victims of the massacre for defamation.
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The Register UK ☛ Don't be fooled: Google faked its Gemini AI voice demo
But in reality, the model was not prompted using audio and its responses were only text-based. They were not generated in real time either. Instead, the video was crafted "using still image frames from the footage, and prompting via text," a Google spokesperson told Bloomberg.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Meduza ☛ Riot police conduct ‘preventative’ raid on LGBTQ+ club in Yekaterinburg, Russia — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ Russia Scolds German Ambassador For War Remarks In Moscow Cathedral
The Russian Foreign Ministry has criticized Germany's ambassador in Moscow, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, for his remembrance of war victims and plea for peace during a church Christmas concert. [...]
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VOA News ☛ China Hardening Against Dissent, Rights Groups Say
Rights groups say the punishment of Liu's family highlights Beijing's increasingly harsh crackdown on dissent both within China and beyond. As the groups mark the 75th anniversary of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Sunday, they fear that the situation in the world's second most populous country is getting worse, not better.
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VOA News ☛ Russia Puts Prominent Russian-American Journalist on Wanted List
Between late February 2022 and early this month, 19,844 people have been detained for speaking out or protesting against the war while 776 people have been implicated in criminal cases over their anti-war stance, according to the OVD-Info rights group, which tracks political arrests and provides legal aid.
Gessen, who holds dual Russian and American citizenships and lives in the U.S., is unlikely to be arrested, unless they travel to a country with an extradition treaty with Russia. But Russian court could still try them in absentia and hand them a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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RFERL ☛ Russian Activists Protest Crackdown On Journalists, Including RFE/RL's Detained Kurmasheva
She was temporarily detained while waiting for her return flight on June 2 at the airport in Kazan, the capital of the Tatarstan region, where both of her passports were confiscated. She was not able to leave Russia as she awaited the return of her travel documents.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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RFA ☛ Taiwan calligraphy exhibit honors Tibetans who self-immolated
On Sunday, Tibetans around the world will be protesting outside Chinese embassies around the world to mark International Human Rights Day.
There is no Chinese Embassy in democratic Taiwan, so the Dalai Lama Foundation will exhibit 166 works of calligraphy by Ho Tsung-hsun, with prayers and chants from five Buddhist teachers honoring the "heroes and martyrs" of the Tibetan resistance movement instead.
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NDTV ☛ Jailed Iranian Activist's Children Accept Nobel, Chair Kept Empty For Her
Mohammadi, who has campaigned against the compulsory wearing of the hijab and the death penalty in Iran, has been held since 2021 in Tehran's Evin prison.
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RFERL ☛ Mohammadi Blasts Iran's 'Despotic' Regime In Smuggled Nobel Acceptance Speech
The teenage children of imprisoned Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi accepted the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for their mother at a ceremony in Oslo on December 10, delivering a speech in which she blasted the "despotic" regime in Tehran.
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El País ☛ Children of imprisoned Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi accept the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf
Ali and Kiana Rahmani, Mohammadi’s twin 17-year-old children who live in exile in Paris with their father, were given the prestigious award at Oslo City Hall, after which they gave the Nobel Peace Prize lecture in their mother’s name.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Nobel winner Mohammadi blasts Iran's 'tyrannical' regime
On Saturday, Narges Mohammadi posted on an Instagram page managed by friends that she had embarked upon a three-day hunger strike.
"On the day of the Nobel Prize ceremony, I want to be the voice of Iranians protesting against injustice and oppression," the 51-year-old posted.
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France24 ☛ Awarded Nobel Peace Prize in prison, Narges Mohammadi blasts Iran's 'tyranny'
At a news conference in Oslo on Saturday, Kiana Rahmani read out a message from her mother, in which the imprisoned activist praised the role international media played in “conveying the voice of dissenters, protesters and human rights defenders to the world.”
“Iranian society needs global support and you, journalists and media professionals are our greatest and most important allies in the difficult struggle against the destructive tyranny of the Islamic Republic government. I sincerely thank you for your efforts, for all you’ve done for us,” Mohammadi said in her note.
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The Strategist ☛ As the Taliban pursue women activists, Australia must prioritise visas for human rights defenders
But in Afghanistan, the Taliban are cracking down on women’s human rights defenders more than ever, and Australia is no longer giving these brave people priority processing to help them escape.
This is not okay.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ Spammers Use Epic Games Website to Promote 'Piracy' Scams
Scammers are using the Epic Games website to trick people into signing up for fishy pirate streaming subscriptions or downloading dubious files. This SEO 'hack' scam, which exploits the gaming company's public developer community, became prevalent after search engines began to downrank regular pirate sites.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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