Links 20/01/2024: Antitrust Fines and Microsoft Under Regulatory Eyes Again
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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CBC ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] The key to capturing wildlife images? Patience, says Canadian Geographic's Photographer of the Year
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Joel Chrono ☛ Looking back at 2023
I can't believe another year passed by, but here are some of the things that happened last year, which brought up a lot of changes in my life.
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Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Tom MacWright
Tom is an American programmer, with a very minimal blog—something I really appreciate—and he's currently working on Val.town, a social website to code in the cloud.
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Luke Harris ☛ Music blogs which aren’t Pitchfork
As a former converse-wearing, jean-jacket-sporting wannabe-but-don’t-wannabe hipster hailing from Austin with music opinions and an endless supply of hyphens, I’m pretty bummed about the Pitchfork “restructuring”. I looked forward to their “Best New Album/Track” posts and they’ve shaped a significant amount of my music interests (I don’t like the word “taste”) over the last ten years.
There’s always alternatives though, and a few have been around for nearly as long as Pitchfork has. I loaded up the duck-themed junk finder and typed in “music blog”, and I’m honestly surprised at how decent the results were. Then I chucked in one I remembered from a WordPress dot com featured list. I barely found it, thank past Luke for putting a link in my listen-later list. Here’s the resulting list of sites with opinionated words about, and constant recommendations of, new music. All include full-length RSS feeds.
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CBC ☛ Hey, sports fans: You spend up to 20% of every game watching gambling advertising
Anyone who watches sports is used to seeing betting ads during games, but a collaboration between CBC's Marketplace and British researchers at the University of Bristol found gambling messages fill up to 21 per cent of each broadcast, on average, based on an analysis that looked at seven games.
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The Atlantic ☛ A Dark Omen for the Future of Music
Yesterday, Condé Nast’s chief content officer, Anna Wintour, announced plans to merge Pitchfork into the men’s magazine GQ. “This decision was made after a careful evaluation of Pitchfork’s performance and what we believe is the best path forward for the brand so that our coverage of music can continue to thrive within the company,” she wrote in a staff memo. On social media, many of the site’s key writers and editors, some of whom had been on staff for more than a decade, announced they’d been laid off. Much is still unknown about Pitchfork’s future, but music fans have reason to worry we’re losing the most important culture publication of the 21st century.
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Casey Newton ☛ How platforms killed Pitchfork
As a longtime and once diehard reader of the site, my feelings tracked exactly with Cox’s. Created by Ryan Schreiber in 1996 while he worked at a record store outside of Minneapolis, Pitchfork came to prominence in the early 2000s on the back of its obsessive, audacious, and (yes) often obnoxious reviews.
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[Repeat] Tedium ☛ Out With The Pitchforks: What Condé Nast did to Pitchfork this week is a travesty, and worse, it deeply misunderstands the publication Pitchfork was becoming.
Maybe I was naïve, but I didn’t think they would come for Pitchfork, this great publication that was still telling me new things about the world of music on a daily basis, and whose reporting had surfaced some important things in recent years. The Pitchfork of the Condé Nast era has not been afraid to report on the music scene it covers with a critical eye, putting sunlight on the bad behavior of musicians it helped to bring to prominence, such as Mark Kozelek, Ryan Adams, or Win Butler.
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uni Case Western Reserve ☛ Surviving the social media craze
Not everything that you see is true. Although such a rule applies to any source of research and news, it is especially true for social media platforms. They are easy to access and use, help speed up communication and have a significant role in spreading timely and useful information. However, a major drawback is that it is difficult to correct false information. This has allowed fake news to spread, which can be used for defamation or to spread disinformation or misinformation. To prevent falsely accusing someone or being influenced by false media that is designed for propaganda, one must critically evaluate the information in regards to source and bias. Additionally, you should form your own opinion in regards to the topic rather than passively absorbing information.
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James G ☛ Follow the on-screen instructions
I use the phrase "Follow the on-screen instructions" when there is a detailed product wizard that will guide a user through everything they need to complete a task. This is a prerequisite. If the product does not clearly explain every step a user needs to complete a task, I will not refer them to the product. Instead, I will provide a detailed description of steps the user needs to take in my documentation.
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NPR ☛ Mary Weiss, lead singer of The Shangri-Las, has died
By 1968, the group disbanded in the face of litigation — that Weiss has said she was prevented from discussing even decades later — leaving her disillusioned with the industry.
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Standards/Consortia
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Ruben Schade ☛ Fixing the retrocomputing tag
As an example, my retrocomputing tag had at least five variations: [...]
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[Old] New Yorker ☛ The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet’s Time
To solve the problem of time synchronization on the ARPANET, Mills built what programmers call a protocol—a collection of rules and procedures that creates a lingua franca for disparate devices. The ARPANET was experimental and capricious: electronics failed regularly, and technological misbehavior was common. His protocol sought to detect and correct for those misdeeds, creating a consensus about the time through an ingenious system of suspicion. Mills prided himself on puckish nomenclature, and so his clock-synchronizing system distinguished reliable “truechimers” from misleading “falsetickers.” An operating system named Fuzzball, which he designed, facilitated the early work. Mills called his creation the Network Time Protocol, and N.T.P. soon became a key component of the nascent Internet. Programmers followed its instructions when they wrote timekeeping code for their computers. By 1988, Mills had refined N.T.P. to the point where it could synchronize the clocks of connected computers that had been telling vastly differing times to within tens of milliseconds—a fraction of a blink of an eye. “I always thought that was sort of black magic,” Vint Cerf, a pioneer of Internet infrastructure, told me.
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The Atlantic ☛ The Last Days of the Barcode
In this episode of Radio Atlantic, editor Saahil Desai gives an early obituary to a monumental and fading technology. Desai walks us through the surprising history of the barcode, from its origins in the grocery business to Walmart and Amazon (with a detour to the movie Deep Throat). The barcode allowed grocers to stock infinite varieties of everything, which led us to expect infinite varieties of everything and made us the highly demanding and sometimes addicted shoppers we are today. We talk about the barcode and the technology that is about to succeed it, which is more effective and more sinister.
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Licensing / Legal
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404 Media ☛ How to Upload Porn to Instagram
Users are uploading stolen porn to Instagram with one easy trick, while adult content creators are banned for no reason.
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Science
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El País ☛ Steve Brusatte, paleontologist: ‘The most terrifying thing about the tyrannosaurus was not its jaws but its intelligence’
A. What I meant was that because of its intelligence it was the dinosaur version of a chimpanzee, not that it was as intelligent as a chimpanzee. However, tyrannosaurses, of which we have discovered almost 20 new species in the last 15 years, are undoubtedly among the most intelligent dinosaurs, like raptors and birds. Some of today’s birds are extraordinarily intelligent, such as crows and parakeets. We can compare the intelligence of these birds with that of the tyrannosaurs. I’ve seen amazing tests with those birds, the way they react...
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Futurism ☛ Japanese Moon Lander Dying After Touching Down on Lunar Surface
But it's a bittersweet moment: while it's survived its journey to the surface largely unscathed and is communicating with stations back on Earth and even receiving and responding to commands, JAXA officials confirmed at a press conference that its solar cells are not generating power.
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India Times ☛ Japan's 'Moon Sniper' makes historic 'pin-point' lunar landing
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Slim) probe, dubbed the "Moon Sniper", landed on the slope of a crater just south of the lunar equator using "pinpoint technology". The craft's landing site was an area within 100 metres (330 feet) of a spot on the surface, far tighter than the usual landing zone of several kilometres.
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Is our sense of fairness driven by selfishness? We're studying the brain to find out
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] Transhumanism: billionaires want to use tech to enhance our abilities – the outcomes could change what it means to be human
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Black hole, neutron star or something new? We discovered an object that defies explanation
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] DNA from stone age chewing gum sheds light on diet and disease in Scandinavia's ancient hunter-gatherers
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DeSmog ☛ After 12 Years, Climate Scientist’s Lawsuit Against Alleged Defamers Begins Trial
A defamation lawsuit 12 years in the making brought by climate scientist Michael Mann opened January 18th in Washington, D.C. Superior Court. The two conservative commentators accused of defamation mounted separate defenses, and both continued to disparage Mann during the first day of this long-anticipated trial.
The case centers around statements made in 2012 by right-wing blogger Rand Simberg and Fox TV personality Mark Steyn that attacked Mann, a scientist and professor who holds a doctorate from Yale. Simberg is an analyst at the far-right think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has a long track record of platforming climate science denialists.
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Education
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Digital Music News ☛ The Ray Charles Foundation Donates $2 Million to the Grammy Museum Foundation
This year, the Grammy Museum is celebrating its 15th anniversary as a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring music from yesterday and today. The museum offers exhibits, education, grants, preservation initiatives, and public programming to pay tribute to our collective musical heritage. Grammy in the Schools is the umbrella name for all Grammy Museum Foundation education activities that serve to fund school music programs.
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RFERL ☛ The Azadi Briefing: The Taliban's War On Books
The Taliban confiscated at least 50,000 books from publishing houses and bookshops in the Afghan capital this week.
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Tim Bray ☛ Mourning Google
Let me quote myself from a little bit further into that piece, on the subject of Google: “I’m sure that tendrils of stupidity and evil are even now finding interstitial breeding grounds whence they will emerge to cause grief.” Well, yeah.
This is in my mind these days as I’m on a retired-Googlers mailing list where the current round of layoffs is under discussion and, well, it really seems like the joy has well and truly departed the Googleplex.
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Hardware
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Linux Gizmos ☛ Jetway Unveils 3.5” SBC with Dual 2.5GbE Ports and Triple 4K@60Hz Display Support
Jetway unveiled this week the JF35-ADN1 which is a 3.5” SubCompact single-board computer powered by the Intel Processor N97 CPU. This new embedded device aims at the field of industrial robotics payment systems, machine vision and beyond with its DDR5 memory support and extensive I/O interfaces.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Chinese chipmaker Loongson wins case over rights to MIPS architecture - company's new CPU architecture heavily resembles existing MIPS
Chinese CPU manufacturer Loongson emerged on top in arbitration against its former business partner-turned-rival CIP United over whether Loongson illegally used the MIPS architecture. The court decided last year that Loongson owed royalties to CIP United. However, CIP United, in turn, owed arbitration fees, which are significantly more than the royalties.
Although MIPS Technologies, an American company, owns the MIPS architecture, CIP United was the one to file a lawsuit because it claims it has all exclusive rights to MIPS in China thanks to a license it obtained in 2019. But before this, Loongson (and its predecessor the Institute of Computing Technology) had been making MIPS CPUs since the 2000s and even acquired a license from MIPS in 2011.
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The Drone Girl ☛ The critical pre-flight step you’re probably not doing — and why it’s not as hard as you’d think
When you get a new drone, it can be tempting to get out and fly immediately. While you’ll want to start using it as soon as possible, consider that outside factors can turn an exciting flight into an expensive problem. Pre-flight planning, and in particular weather forecasting, is crucial for safe drone flights.
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Ruben Schade ☛ A 2024 Yellow Pages monitor stand
I’d like to tell you a tale. It’s a story of suspense, romance, intrigue, espionage, and a single sentence that’s full of lies and baseless assertions. It also involves a phonebook, a paper-based device that, despite the name, only dedicates a small part of its exhaustive listings to selling you phones. Or more specifically, listing vendors who sell phones, or fix them. I’m already starting to lose the plot, and I’m only a paragraph into this post.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Why you may feel depressed and anxious when you're ill – and how to cope with it
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Vox ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] A practical guide to eating less meat
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2024-01-18 [Older] 2024: A Year of COVID-19 Cover-up (Massive Mortality Levels Persist, Even Now)
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2024-01-18 [Older] Still High Excess Deaths, Even in Children
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Slapped on the wrist for misrepresenting homeopathic nosodes as vaccines
In the days before the pandemic—or, as I like to call it, the beforetime—I remember a law passed in California in 2015 known as SB 277. You might remember that this law eliminated nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. You might also recall that antivaxxers fought this law tooth and nail when it was just a bill being considered in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak. You might even recall that, when the bill passed and became law anyway, antivax pediatricians soon pivoted to setting up a cottage industry to write letters endorsing dubious, unsupported medical exemptions for their patients that parents could—and did—submit in large numbers to their children’s schools in order to avoid having to vaccinate their children. You might even remember that Dr. Robert Sears (a.k.a. Dr. Bob) sold these exemptions, even online. You might also remember that naturopaths got in on the action, some even selling homeopathic nosodes as “vaccines.”
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DeSmog ☛ Government-Backed Meat Ad Campaign Targets Gen Z in Veganuary
A £4-million multimedia ad campaign aimed at boosting British meat and dairy consumption among Gen Z “flies in the face of science”, experts have warned.
Timed to coincide with Veganuary – the popular January campaign to promote plant-based eating – “Let’s Eat Balanced” will target cinema screens, TVs, newspapers, social media channels and major supermarkets over the next two months, to communicate health benefits of lamb, beef, pork and dairy produce.
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Truthdig ☛ Long Covid Goes to Washington
U.S. senators pledged Thursday to press for more funding to research long COVID-19 during a hearing that highlighted patients suffering from the diagnosis as well as experts studying its impacts.
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India Times ☛ Meta documents show 100,000 kids sexually harassed daily on Facebook, Instagram
This was disclosed in recently unsealed sections of a complaint filed by the attorney general of New Mexico in an ongoing legal battle against the social media giant regarding the company's efforts to safeguard minors on the internet as the platforms gained enormous traction among youth, CNBC reported.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ And now for the AI PC
Instead of having to rely on cloud services like Microsoft Azure for AI tasks, users will be able to take advantage of NPUs to do many more AI tasks locally, reducing the time spent waiting for these to complete and ensuring sensitive corporate data is not processed in the cloud.
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India Times ☛ AI is the buzz, the big opportunity and the risk to watch among the Davos glitterati
From China to Europe, top officials staked their positions on AI as the world grapples with regulating the rapidly developing technology that has big implications for workplaces, elections and privacy.
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Futurism ☛ Huge Proportion of Internet Is AI-Generated Slime, Researchers Find
The [Internet]'s steady fall into the AI-garbled dumpster continues. As Vice reports, a recent study conducted by researchers at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) AI Lab found that a "shocking amount of the web" is already made up of poor-quality AI-generated and translated content.
The paper is yet to be peer-reviewed, but "shocking" feels like the right word. According to the study, over half — specifically, 57.1 percent — of all of the sentences on the [Internet] have been translated into two or more other languages. The poor quality and staggering scale of these translations suggest that large language model (LLM) -powered AI models were used to both create and translate the material. The phenomenon is especially prominent in "lower-resource languages," or languages with less readily available data with which to more effectively train AI models.
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Lords of the Fallen Publisher CI Games Lays Off 10% of its Workforce
CI Games, the publisher behind Lords of the Fallen and Sniper: Ghost Warrior, has laid off 10% of its employees across the entire company.
According to GamesIndustry.biz, which first reported the news, sources told them among those affected are Hexworks, the developers of 2023’s Lords of the Fallen and Sniper: Ghost Warrior studio Underdog.
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Games ☛ CI Games lays off 10% of staff
Sources pointed us towards affected staff posting on LinkedIn claiming the majority of the marketing team has been made redundant. GamesIndustry.biz was told that Lords of the Fallen developer Hexworks and Sniper Ghost Warrior studio Underdog had also been affected.
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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Jacky Alciné ☛ Sele's (my IndieAuth service) tracking …
Sele's (my IndieAuth service) tracking for beta testing by early February. It won't be ready for general availability though. By then, it should have WebAuthn, email sign in and rel-me provider support with new providers rolling out when I can find time to support them and based on the kind of providers people tend to advertise (though I need to filter it for rel="authn me" for reporting). I'm glad I spent some up front time abstracting the means of attestation. I'd want to add a pre-flight page to do some testing of the inital request so I can do some stuff like checking preferences for a browser or basing it on location (I'd like to opt for WebAuthn on my preferred browsers but since GNOME Web doesn't support it yet, opting for something that could use the prompting solution by pushing a request and approving it from the GNOME desktop).
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Tedium ☛ Counterfeit Computing
The year the U.S. government passed the Trademark Counterfeiting Act, a law that makes it a federal offense to intentionally misuse a trademark to sell a good for counterfeit purposes. The law imposes fines of as high as $1 million for corporations, along with up to a five-year prison sentence, for selling goods violating the trademark of others in violation of the Lanham Act, a bedrock of modern trademark law. One could argue that P-P-P-Powerbook was a violation of the Trademark Counterfeiting Act, but the theoretical person arguing that is obviously an idiot.
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Krebs On Security ☛ Canadian Man Stuck in Triangle of E-Commerce Fraud
A Canadian man who says he’s been falsely charged with orchestrating a complex e-commerce scam is seeking to clear his name. His case appears to involve “triangulation fraud,” which occurs when a consumer purchases something online — from a seller on Amazon or eBay, for example — but the seller doesn’t actually own the item for sale. Instead, the seller purchases the item from an online retailer using stolen payment card data. In this scam, the unwitting buyer pays the scammer and receives what they ordered, and very often the only party left to dispute the transaction is the owner of the stolen payment card.
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EFF ☛ Companies Make it Too Easy for Thieves to Impersonate Police and Steal Our Data
Likewise, bad actors have used breached law enforcement email accounts or domain names to send fake warrants, subpoenas, or “Emergency Data Requests” (which police can send without judicial oversight to get data quickly in supposedly life or death situations). Impersonating police to get sensitive information from companies isn’t just the realm of stalkers and domestic abusers; according to Motherboard, bounty hunters and debt collectors have also used the tactic.
We have two very big entwined problems. The first is the “collect it all” business model of too many companies, which creates vast reservoirs of personal information stored in corporate data servers, ripe for police to seize and thieves to steal. The second is that too many companies fail to prevent thieves from stealing data by pretending to be police.
Companies have to make it harder for fake “officers” to get access to our sensitive data. For starters, they must do better at scrutinizing warrants, subpoenas, and emergency data requests when they come in. These requirements should be spelled out clearly in a public-facing privacy policy, and all employees who deal with data requests from law enforcement should receive training in how to adhere to these requirements and spot fraudulent requests. Fake emergency data requests raise special concerns, because real ones depend on the discretion of both companies and police—two parties with less than stellar reputations for valuing privacy.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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The Local SE ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] Sweden studies how to save cash from extinction
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Quartz ☛ Amazon wants customers to pay for a supercharged AI Alexa
According to a report in Business Insider on Thursday, the secret new Alexa barely works thanks to hallucinating AI and broken tech. It apparently sparked political tensions inside the company, particularly because many Amazon employees don’t believe that people will be willing to pay.
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Gizmodo ☛ Pornhub Has a New Kink: Consent
Pornhub’s policy update adds to a swath of protections already in place for its performers, including ID verification, facial recognition scanning, and release forms. The platform’s reputation has undergone a revamp in the last four years, and Pornhub is now a leader in safety for pornography performers
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Confidentiality
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[Repeat] The Register UK ☛ IT consultant fined for daring to expose shoddy security
Back in June 2021, according to our pals at Heise, an contractor identified elsewhere as Hendrik H. was troubleshooting software for a customer of IT services firm Modern Solution GmbH. He discovered that the Modern Solution code made an MySQL connection to a MariaDB database server operated by the vendor. It turned out the password to access that remote server was stored in plain text in the program file MSConnect.exe, and opening it in a simple text editor would reveal the unencrypted hardcoded credential.
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Defence/Aggression
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The Hill ☛ ‘Swatting’ incident was meant to intimidate, says Maine secretary of state
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows saw her office flooded with a “stream of steady, abusive and threatening” messages targeting herself, her staff and her family in the wake of her decision that former President Trump was ineligible to be on her state’s primary ballot.
In an interview with The Hill, Bellows talked about how her own home address was posted online — and then swatted — the night of Dec. 29 after she and her husband had left their home to travel for the holiday weekend.
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The Hill ☛ Number of threats to lawmakers climbed in 2023: Capitol Police
The agency constantly tracks a “wide range of threats” through the mail, via phone and over social media and the wider [Internet]. Capitol Police said it expects a higher rate of threats with the upcoming presidential election.
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The Hill ☛ ‘Wake up!’ European lawmakers warn Washington over Ukraine aid delays
“Europe is united on the end state; the end state is to have a Russia that cannot reinvade a neighbor within the next two to five years — which they are currently on track to be able to do — but actually not be able to invade a neighbor for the next 20 years,” Kearns said.
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LRT ☛ Lithuanian orthodox priests receive US award for cutting ties with Moscow
Gintaras Songaila, one of the Orthodox priests who were defrocked by the Moscow Patriarchate and reinstated by the Patriarch of Constantinople, collected the award during the International Religious Freedom Awards ceremony in Washington, DC, on Thursday.
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YLE ☛ Finland sees 18% rise in robberies during 2023
The biggest rises in robbery reports were seen in Oulu, Central Finland, Häme and Southwest Finland, the data revealed.
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Parents Want District to Improve Security More After Deadly Iowa School Shooting
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-14 [Older] Egypt, China Stress Priority of Safety, Security of Red Sea Navigation -Joint Statement
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Scheerpost ☛ 2024-01-12 [Older] Biden’s $582 Million Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia. Can It Be Blocked?
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Iraqi, Saudi Ministers Discuss Iranian Attack on Kurdistan
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Exclusive-Saudi Arabia Still Considering BRICS Membership, Sources Say
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Democracy Now ☛ Uvalde Failure: DOJ Report Finds 377 Officers Waited 77 Mins as 19 Kids, 2 Teachers Killed by 1 AR-15
A sweeping Justice Department report exposes the “cascading failures” of the police response to the 2022 Uvalde elementary school mass shooting when 19 children and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old gunman. Despite the presence of close to 400 officers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, it took 77 minutes for police to confront and kill the shooter. The scathing 600-page report lays out the “haphazard” initial response in which hundreds of law enforcement officers stood by as the massacre unfolded. Democratic Texas state Senator Roland Gutierrez, whose district includes Uvalde, says the report proves “what happened on May 24th was the worst law enforcement response to a school shooting in our nation’s history.” Gutierrez describes the events of the school shooting, where “everything that could have gone wrong happened,” and why the shooter’s AR-15-style rifle did so much damage and scared police. “We need an assault weapons ban in this country, once and for all,” says Gutierrez, who is running for U.S. Senate against Republican Senator Ted Cruz. “These politicians are cowards on this issue.”
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Democracy Now ☛ Texas Sen. Gutierrez Slams Gov. Abbott Immigration Crackdown After Mom & 2 Children Drown in Rio Grande
Texas defied a Biden administration cease-and-desist order this week to dismantle its border barrier near the city of Eagle Pass, where state troopers took over a 2.5-mile stretch and installed fencing, gates and razor wire. Last Friday, a mother and her two children drowned in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass when Border Patrol agents were denied access to the area by state officials acting under orders from Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott. “Day after day after day, people are drowning because of the obstacles that this man put in the river,” says Democratic Texas state Senator Roland Gutierrez. “No obstacle, no barrier is going to fix this problem. We need comprehensive immigration reform in this country.”
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Site36 ☛ Anti-Antifa from German Bundestag: MP assistant says to run right-wing “manhunt platform”
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CBC ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] Canada names 100 Chinese, Russian, Iranian research institutions it says pose a threat to national security
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Meduza ☛ In first, Russian woman charged with displaying ‘extremist symbols’ for rainbow flag picture — Meduza
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Insight Hungary ☛ EP to take European Commission to court over Hungary funds
MEP Daniel Freund told EUrologus that the European Parliament (EP) is taking Hungary to the European Court of Justice over the partial release of funds by the European Commission. "There is a well-founded suspicion that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has bought Hungary's agreement to start accession negotiations with Ukraine, which the Hungarian Prime Minister had previously threatened to veto," Freund told EUrologus.
He said this procedure is a severe breach of the rule of law and that the lawsuit is a clear signal to the Commission President that she will "not get away with allocating billions of euros to avoid Hungary's veto."
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Meduza ☛ Russian prosecutors request 28-year prison sentence for woman charged with assassinating pro-war blogger — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Russian man who opened fire in military enlistment office sentenced to 19 years in prison — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ ‘Well-known in his field’: What we know about the University of Tartu professor accused of spying for Russia — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Oil depot in Russia's Bryansk region on fire after reported drone strike — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Kazakhstan to switch to single time zone on March 1 — Meduza
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Why are so many Russians freezing in their homes?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia says West to decide when war ends
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] US Warns of Russian Effort to Tilt 2024 Elections in Europe Against Ukraine
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Ukraine detains spy suspect over Russian toxic disaster plot
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] US Sanctions a United Arab Emirates Shipping Firm for Allegedly Violating Russian Oil Price Cap
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] A Russian Border City Cancels Orthodox Epiphany Events Due to the Threat of Ukrainian Attacks
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Explainer-How the West Might Use Russia's Frozen Reserves
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] North Korea Threat Could Change 'Drastically' Given Russia Cooperation-US Official
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Russian-Annexed Crimea Restores Power After Brief Blackout - Officials
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Spiegel ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Mine Clearing in Ukraine: "Dead Soldiers Lay Everywhere in the Fields, Ours and Russian"
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] How Kyiv shooting down a Russian spy plan could impact war
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Russia's Intense Attacks on Ukraine Has Sharply Increased Civilian Casualties in December, UN Says
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Russian Attack Outside Ukraine's Kharkiv Kills One, Regional Governor Says
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Russian Military Says Ukrainian Drones Downed Over Moscow, Leningrad Regions
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] German firms supply Ukraine as Russia ups arms production
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] Russia's queer artists fight growing persecution
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] Officials Declare State of Emergency in Russia's Voronezh City After Ukraine Drone Attack
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] Ukraine Foreign Minister Muses About 'Punching' Russia's Lavrov
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] Russia Calls Ukraine Peace Meetings 'Pointless', Says Plan Can't Succeed
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] Russian Missiles Hit Ukraine's Kharkiv, 17 Injured
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] South Africa Talks Genocide At UN, Russia Strengthens Bilateral Relations With Israel
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Russian Tourists To Be The First Travellers To Visit North Korea Since Covid-19
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Ukraine Accuses Subway Of 'Financing The Murders Of Ukrainians' By Supporting Russia
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] The West’s Nightmare: How Russia and Hamas are Winning the Geopolitical Wars
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Moldova Can't Cope With Increase in Citizenship Requests From Russians
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Russian Air Strikes Focus on Ukrainian Military Industry for Now - Kyiv
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-14 [Older] Ex-Mayor of Russia City Goes to Fight in Ukraine After Bribery Conviction - Kommersant
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-14 [Older] Russian Poet Lev Rubinstein Dies at 76 -Daughter
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-14 [Older] More Countries Join Talks on Ukraine Leader's Peace Formula. but Russia Is Absent and War Grinds On
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CBC ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] The Russians are spending big on infrastructure to absorb occupied Ukraine
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] A Huge Fire Engulfs a Warehouse in Russia Outside the City of St Petersburg
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] Huge Fire Rips Through Russian Online Retailer's Warehouse in St. Petersburg
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] Ukraine Attacked Overnight by 40 Russian Missiles, Drones Air Force
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] UK Launches New Tech Partnership With Ukraine To Prevent Economic Collapse
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] Shifting the burden: U.S. wants Europeans to fund Ukraine conflict
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Ukraine: Germany will not supply Taurus cruise missiles
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] War in Ukraine: Photos to preserve endangered cultural sites
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Ukraine Working 'Intensively' to Restore Air Travel
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Can Europe arm Ukraine -or even itself?
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Ukraine’s effort to mobilize more troops hits trouble
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Scheerpost ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] The Fall of Ukraine (w/ Kit Klarenberg)
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Ukraine updates: NATO needs 'war-fighting transformation'
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Zelenskiy Urges Ukrainians to Seize Initiative to Determine War's Outcome
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] Biden and Scholz discuss Ukraine aid in call
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] France's Macron to Travel to Ukraine in Feb to Finalise Bilateral Security Deal
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] National Security Advisers Meet in Davos to Advance Blueprint for Peace in Ukraine
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Ukraine updates: UN seeks $4.2 billion for humanitarian aid
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Ukraine: Zelenskyy heads to Switzerland in push for support
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Greek 'Nostradamus' Monk Predicted War In Ukraine And Gaza
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Switzerland Hosts President Zelenskyy and Offers to Host a Peace Summit for Ukraine
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Switzerland to Host Ukraine Peace Summit at Zelenskiy's Request
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-14 [Older] Ukraine updates: Kyiv pushes Ukraine peace plan in Davos
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-14 [Older] Ukraine Says China Needed for Peace Process After Davos Meeting
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] Ukraine updates: France's top diplomat vows support to Kyiv
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] 4 Ukrainian Citizens Were Among Those Captured When a Helicopter Went Down in Somalia This Week
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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The Scotsman ☛ Nicola Sturgeon failed to retain any Covid WhatsApp messages
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said Ms Sturgeon and her former deputy “have huge questions to answer over their conduct in the wake of this devastating revelation”.
He said: “By deleting all their WhatsApp messages, they defied the inquiry’s clear instructions from June 2021 that all relevant messages had to be retained.
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Environment
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Nico Cartron ☛ Thoughts on "in defense of RAM on Apple Silicon"
I agree with the above, which is the last paragraph of the article: at a time where we know the "cost" for Mother Nature of manufacturing a laptop or a smartphone, I find it insane that companies (not only Apple) choose to ship a laptop that won't be usable after a few months.
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] YouTube Makes Over $13 million off Climate Change Denial
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CBC ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] YouTube earns millions a year from channels that promote climate denial content, says new report
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Counter Punch ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Jeremy Brecher on How Labor and Climate Movements Build Power from Below
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Why big animals got smaller, even before climate change
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] What is climate? And how is it different from weather?
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Recent Report Reveals Climate Change Skepticism Rises Among One-Third of UK Teens
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Female Farmers And Organic Foods Are Being Hit The Hardest By Climate Change
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Montana Supreme Court Upholds Landmark Climate Ruling That Said Emissions Can't Be Ignored
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Vox ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Something weird is happening to these Alpine goats. Scientists say it’s an ominous sign.
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] There's Been a Staggering Increase in People Killed by Fungi Every Year, Study Finds
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] Climate Crisis May Cause 14.5 Million Deaths by 2050
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] US in Deep Freeze While Much of the World Is Extra Toasty? Yet Again, It's Climate Change
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Counter Punch ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Climate Change and Energy Transition: The 2023 Scorecard
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Counter Punch ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Climate Change and Wars Are Breaking Down the Foundations of Civilization
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Germany: Green lawmaker hit by car at climate protest
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] More CEOs Fear Their Companies Won't Survive 10 Years as AI and Climate Challenges Grow, Survey Says
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-14 [Older] US climate envoy John Kerry to step down: reports
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Scheerpost ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] In an Era of Climate Change, Alaska’s Predators Fall Prey to Politics
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] John Kerry, the US Climate Envoy, to Leave the Biden Administration
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] US Climate Envoy John Kerry to Leave Biden Administration
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] Kashmir Residents Suffer Through a Dry Winter Waiting for Snow. Experts Point to Climate Change
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] AP Photos: This Is What It Looks Like as Winter Blasts the US Into a Deep Freeze
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Energy/Transportation
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Pro Publica ☛ Washington State Is Leaving Tribal Cultural Resources at the Mercy of Solar Developers
In the autumn of 2021, an 800-page report crossed the desk of Washington state lands archaeologist Sara Palmer. It came from an energy developer called Avangrid Renewables, which was proposing to build a solar facility partly on a parcel of public land managed by the state. Palmer was in charge of reviewing reports like these, which are based on land surveys intended to identify archaeologically and culturally significant resources.
Developers have proposed dozens of similar solar and wind projects across the state — a “green rush” of sorts amid rising fears of climate change. With the projects came more reports.
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Georgia's Governor Says More Clean Energy Will Be Needed to Fuel Electric Vehicle Manufacturing
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] US Unveils Solar Energy Plan for Western Public Lands
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Meduza ☛ Average prices for economy flights in Russia increased by over 20 percent in 2023, says Rosstat — Meduza
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DeSmog ☛ Drax Wants to Capture State Subsidies, Not Carbon
After a year-long planning process, Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Claire Coutinho on Wednesday gave the green light to Drax’s carbon capture (CCS) proposal for two of its large biomass units.
The measure will not improve the UK’s energy security, or help cut emissions in line with net zero. But it could secure them billions for the continued burning of wood pellets.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Load shedding could cost ANC dearly at the polls, minister admits
The country has battled a 15-year power crisis that’s left the nation without electricity for up to 12 hours a day. It’s crippled the economy and will be top of mind for voters when they head to a general election later this year, which marks the third decade that the ANC has been in power.
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Wildlife/Nature
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] Valley of lost cities found in the Amazon – technological advances in archaeology are only the beginning of discovery
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Rare Baby Pygmy Hippo Stars in Zoo Photoshoot
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CBC ☛ Deep in the Amazon, researchers have uncovered a complex of ancient cities — using laser technology
Using the laser-scanning technology, researchers have uncovered a complex network of farmland, roads and neighbourhoods in Ecuador's Upano River Valley.
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-01-13 [Older] Footprints of Lost Cities Found in the Amazon Rainforest
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Finance
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Scoop News Group ☛ SEC Chair Gensler sounds alarm on risks of large AI-fueled financial models
The SEC last July proposed rules to prohibit investment firms from using predictive data analytics, including AI, that put their interests above those of their clients. Those rules followed March 2022 recommendations from the agency’s Investor Advisory Committee, which called for ethical guidelines regarding AI models used by investment firms and financial institutions. Advertisement
The SEC’s AI rulemaking received swift industry pushback, but Gensler has held steady in his beliefs about the dangers of AI-washing in the financial sector.
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Hindustan Times ☛ Macy's to slash 2,300 jobs and shut down five stores amid pressure to go private
The US department store chain, Macy's, has announced plans to close five stores and eliminate 2,350 jobs, which constitutes 3.5% of its employees.
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Dead By Daylight Studio Behaviour Interactive Has Reportedly Laid Off 45 People
Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive has reportedly laid off 45 people, Kotaku has learned. The publication says those with knowledge of the situation at the studio said the layoffs only affected people at Behaviour’s Montreal, Canada studio, with those 45 affected let go last week, between January 9 and 11.
However, Kotaku notes it was also told layoffs at the company began in December. The layoffs reportedly included cuts in various departments at the studio. Last month, Behaviour Interactive announced it was working with Until Dawn developer Supermassive Games on The Casting of Frank Stone, a new single player game set in the Dead by Daylight universe.
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US News And World Report ☛ Retailer Wayfair Jumps on Job Cut Plans, Upbeat 2024 Core Profit Forecast
Wayfair said on Friday it would lay off 1,650 employees, or about 13% of its workforce, and forecast annual core profit above estimates, sending the online furniture retailer's shares up as much as 15%.
The company said the job cuts, which affect 19% of its corporate employees, would lead to annual cost savings of $280 million.
CEO Niraj Shah said Wayfair's aim is to maximize the company's free cash flow and potentially reduce its total share count.
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CTV News ☛ Ontario workers included in global Wayfair layoff
They make up part of the 13 per cent reduction to Wayfair's global workforce, which also includes cutting 19 per cent of corporate staff.
Wayfair chief executive Niraj Shah says he's making the cut because the Boston-based company "went overboard" in hiring during a strong economic period.
He says Wayfair has since veered away from its core principles and now needs to eliminate excess and "get efficient."
Wayfair's layoff is expected to deliver annualized cost savings of more than $280 million and follows cuts at Google, Amazon and Duolingo.
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Vox ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] The Biden administration’s plan to slash bank overdraft fees, explained
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FAIR ☛ Reporting on California’s Fast-Food Minimum Wage Raise Comes With Side Order of Fear
What’s scarier than a shark attack? An increase in the minimum wage.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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NL Times ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Utrecht Mayor against speech by Australian radical Islamist Mohamed Hoblos; Won’t ban him
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TruthOut ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Trump Wants CNN, NBC “Licenses” to Be Revoked for Not Airing Iowa Victory Speech
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Counter Punch ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] Substack’s No-Platforming Climbdown Isn’t “Censorship,” But It’s Still a Bad Idea
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Green Party UK ☛ 2024-01-16 [Older] Greens challenge Labour on wealth tax
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Green Party UK ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Green Party call on government and Labour to use Davos super-rich summit to back wealth tax
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Green Party UK ☛ 2024-01-12 [Older] Greens call for urgent Parliamentary debate on dangerous escalation
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The Nation ☛ The Pain and Paradox of E. Jean Carroll’s Crusade Against Trump
Here is the paradox of E. Jean Carroll’s brave and extraordinary second legal showdown with serial sexual abuser Donald Trump: To convince a jury that he should pay her damages for defamation—denying he even knew her, let alone sexually assaulted her; in effect, saying that she was too unattractive for him to rape—this dignified, accomplished woman has to prove that she was, in fact, damaged.
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The Nation ☛ Embracing Our Humanity
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Tom's Hardware ☛ OpenAI's Sam Altman raising billions to build AI chip empire: Report
But apparently, Sam Altman wants to do something different: to build a 'network of AI chip factories,' as Bloomberg describes it. The venture, involving discussions with potential investors like Abu Dhabi-based G42 and SoftBank Group, aims to address the ongoing and anticipated AI-related chip supply shortage. Apparently, Altman believes that established foundries like TSMC, Samsung Foundry, and Intel Foundry Services will be unable to meet the demand for AI-oriented chips in the coming years.
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Reuters ☛ Google to invest $1 billion in UK data centre
The investment follows Google's $1 billion purchase of a central London office building in 2022, close to Covent Garden, and another site in nearby King's Cross, where it is building a new office and where its AI company DeepMind is also based.
It also comes weeks after Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab unveiled plans to pump 2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) into Britain over three years, including in growing its data centre capacity, to underpin future AI services.
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Network World ☛ Google to invest $1 billion to set up its first data center in the UK
The new data center facility will deploy an air-based cooling solution, in line with its commitment to run its data center on Carbon-Free Energy (CFE). “Capturing data center heat represents an opportunity for energy conservation and can benefit the local community,” said the press release. Google has set the target of net-zero carbon emissions across its operations by 2030.
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Evening Standard UK ☛ Google to open new $1 billion UK data centre amid heightened scrutiny of cloud market
The investment comes amid a period of increasing regulatory scrutiny of the world's biggest cloud providers. In October, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority said Britain's £7.5 billion cloud services market is to be the subject of a full investigation over concerns that dominant players like Amazon and Microsoft unfairly disincentivise customers from using smaller providers.
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DataCenter Dynamics ☛ Google to build new UK data center campus in Hertfordshire
The search giant this week announced it has started building a new facility on a 33-acre site in Waltham Cross, north of London.
Google purchased the land in the borough of Broxbourne in October 2020, and the company said it aims to invest $1 billion in the project. Details on facility location or specifications weren’t shared, but Google said the site would be “ready” for off-site heat recovery.
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The Hill ☛ Zuckerberg says Meta training next generation of AI models
The CEO said Meta is bringing together its two efforts, FAIR and GenAI, to support its newest model, Llama 3. Zuckerberg said the company is building a massive infrastructure, including 350k H100 GPUs, graphics processing units, by the end of 2024.
The company will have about 600,000 total GPUs by the end of the year, he said.
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The Register UK ☛ Zuckerberg wants to build artificial general intelligence with 350K Nvidia H100 GPUs
Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg is redirecting Meta-wide efforts to build artificial general intelligence and wants to secure a whopping 350,000 or more Nvidia H100 GPUs by the end of the year to make that happen.
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Quartz ☛ Reddit is finally, actually going to go public
Reddit is a place on the [Internet] where people like to yell. Literally: There’s a 30,000-member-strong section of the site dedicated to “heavy metal screaming, extreme vocals, and death growling techniques” called r/screaming. But back in December, the platform did something more quietly—it confidentially filed for an initial public offering.
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Reuters ☛ Exclusive: Reddit seeks to launch IPO in March
Reddit, which filed confidentially for its IPO in December 2021, is planning to make its public filing in late February, launch its roadshow in early March, and complete the IPO by the end of March, two of the sources said.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Site36 ☛ No murder over Gaza postings: Judiciary sees no third-party involved in death of Jordanian student
Baé then asked the police press office on 23 December whether a politically motivated murder was registered there and received a negative response. He took this as evidence that the police wanted to cover up the incident. However, there is an explanation for the press office’s response: “No homicides were reported to us in response to enquiries that evening from the on-call units of the homicide squad and the state security service that even came close to this,” a police speaker told “nd”. The Public Prosecutor’s Office was also initially unable to assign a murder case to these “apparent social media rumours”, the speaker explained. The police then also spread this information on X.
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Atlantic Council ☛ The real reason the Saudi government is investing in sports. Hint: It’s not to impress you.
Many Americans still associate Saudi Arabia with three things: the September 11 terrorist attacks, its war in Yemen, and the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Many also rightly have serious concerns about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. So it’s unsurprising that when Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), wanted to buy the PGA in June 2023, the US public reaction was to connect this to what it knows of the Kingdom. Considering how lasting those negative associations have been, it’s difficult to imagine how an investment in a US sports tournament could “wash” that away.
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VOA News ☛ Putin Drives Russian Influence Campaign With Rigged 2020 US Election Claim
With the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries underway, Putin has set a tone for the Russian influence campaign to erode faith in U.S. democracy.
During a January 16 meeting in Moscow, Putin falsely claimed the 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged. He further claimed that sham 2022 referendums Russia claimed to have held in occupied Ukraine were “legitimate.”
Putin’s disinformation narrative focused on invalidating the legitimacy of mail-in ballots.
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India Times ☛ Election wave and AI disinformation raise stakes in 2024
Taiwan voters backed Lai Ching-te for president last week despite a massive disinformation campaign against him, which experts say was orchestrated by China.
Beijing regards Lai as a dangerous separatist for asserting Taiwan's independence, and TikTok was flooded with conspiracy theories and derogatory statements about him in the run-up to the vote.
An AFP Fact-Check investigation found several such videos originated on Douyin, China's version of the app.
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CBC ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] How green are those Stanley tumblers that everyone wants thanks to TikTok?
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Engadget ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] TikTok details its plan to counter election misinformation in 2024
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] China's TikTok users face punishment under points system
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Iowa Is the Latest State to Sue TikTok, Claims the Social Media Company Misrepresents Its Content
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Iowa Sues TikTok Alleging Parents Misled About Inappropriate Content
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HRW ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] Saudi Government Uses European Football to Sportswash its Reputation
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Techdirt ☛ Appeals Court: Ban On Religious Ads Is Unconstitutional Because It’s Pretty Much Impossible To Define ‘Religion’
Things become heated and tangled when it comes to free speech, religion, and the government’s attempt to control either of these things. Government entities tend to feel the best way to avoid the appearance of favoring any religion is to stay out of it completely.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong national security police arrest man over ‘seditious’ online forum posts
Police said on Friday that they had searched Tsang’s home with a warrant and seized some electronic communication devices which they suspected were used to publish the alleged posts.
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Meduza ☛ Multiple people arrested in Russia’s Bashkortostan as protests supporting jailed activist spread to regional capital
Residents of Ufa, the capital of Russia’s Republic of Bashkortostan, staged a protest on Friday in support of Fail Alsynov, a prominent local activist who was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of “inciting ethnic hatred” earlier this week, independent Russian media reported.
The Telegram channels SOTAvision and RusNews estimated that at least 2,000 people joined the demonstration. To complicate the authorities’ efforts to quell the protest, attendees did round dances, avoided clustering in a single area, and walked from side to side to stay in motion. When questioned by police, the protesters said they had come to look at the city’s monument to Bashkortostan’s national hero, Salawat Yulaev.
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International Business Times ☛ Thai Man Gets 50-Year Jail Sentence For Criticising The Monarchy
A Thai man has been given a 50-year prison sentence for criticising the monarchy in social media posts. The man, identified as 30-year-old Mongkol Thirakot, was initially given a 28-year sentence by a lower criminal court for a Facebook post made three years ago.
He was later found guilty on 11 more counts by an appeals court, which added an extra 22 years to his sentence.
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NBC ☛ Thai man faces a record 50 years in jail for insulting the monarchy
Thailand’s lèse-majesté law, one of the strictest in the world, protects the palace from criticism and carries a jail sentence of up to 15 years for each perceived violation, a punishment condemned by international human rights groups as extreme.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Rocky road for those Hong Kong academics who are out of tune with the times
Unlike the other local universities Chinese University was difficult for the government to pressure, because a majority of its council members were actually staff of the university itself, a legacy of its origins as a refuge for academics fleeing the liberation of the mainland.
This was changed by getting the Legislative Council to amend its governing ordinance, reducing the proportion of staff and increasing the proportion of outsiders, most of whom are government appointees. A similar change was reported last week in the ordinance governing the Baptist University. This was explained as providing “accountability to the public”, as if the public were going to appoint anyone to anything.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Israel-Hamas war: Footballer released after Turkey detention
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BIA Net ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Teacher E. K. dismissed on allegations of 'disparaging Century of Turkey'
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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JURIST ☛ EU concerned over recent raids and detentions of journalists in Kyrgyzstan
The statement by the EU delegation, along with the embassies of 13 other EU nations, calls for the “Kyrgyz authorities to uphold their international human rights obligations and commitments and to protect freedom of expression and the integrity of journalists and media outlets.”
The US State Department also issued a press statement Thursday, saying that they are “deeply concerned” by the actions by Kyrgyz authorities. The State Department also said, “A free and independent press is essential for protecting human rights, maintaining effective democratic institutions, and promoting peace and security.”
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Axios ☛ Sports Illustrated's future is at risk, as is that of its publisher
Sports Illustrated editorial staffers were warned on Friday that layoffs were coming that could affect the entire staff, according to multiple memos reviewed by Axios, after their publisher missed a $3.75 million licensing payment for the Sports Illustrated name.
Why it matters: This could be the end of one of America's most iconic media brands, which was founded 70 years ago.
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RFA ☛ China is the world’s worst jailer of journalists, CPJ says
In its 2023 prison census, conducted on Dec. 1, the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, found that there was a spike in arrested journalists, with 320 believed to be behind bars – close to a record high.
More than half of those jailed journalists were charged with false news, anti-state or terrorism charges in retaliation for their coverage, the group’s research found.
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VOA News ☛ Iran’s 17 Surveillance Tapes Show Journalists Accused of Spying Are Being Prosecuted for Independent Reporting
Polygraph.info has translated and analyzed all 17 video clips, which appear to be a combination of the Iranian judiciary’s “explanatory” narrations and surveillance audio recordings, presumably of the two journalists. We are unable to confirm the veracity of the audio recordings or that the voices in them belong to Hamedi and Mohammadi.
The narration in the videos and the audio recordings are missing key details and appear to be taken out of context. It is possible that the vague nature of the clips was intentional and designed to misinform and create uncertainty.
Nothing in the video clips proves that Hamedi and Mohammadi cooperated with any foreign intelligence agencies.
Below are summaries of each of the recordings: [...]
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BIA Net ☛ Activism to preserve the public interest in media
Media activism and media and information literacy are intrinsically connected, as only media-literate citizenship is conductive to mobilization that can bring substantial media and communication reforms. The overview includes examples of media activism from the region of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia) and Turkey, as well as from the EU countries and the rest of the world. The mapping of good practices was conducted in June– October 2023, based primarily on secondary research and, where needed, primary research, i.e. analysis of the content of online sources and information requests to media-related institutions. The research relies on inputs from the seven country researchers: Ilda Londo (Albania), Anida Sokol (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Florent Spahija (Kosovo), Milica Bogdanović (Montenegro), Vesna Nikodinoska (North Macedonia), Milica Janjatović Jovanović (Serbia) and Sinem Aydinli (Turkey).
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BIA Net ☛ Mobilizatino for Protecting the Public Interesst in the Media
This report starts with a discussion on the definitions and conceptualizations of media activism, followed by a short overview of the history of media activism. After that, we present and briefly analyze good examples of media activism, and in the concluding section we discuss the opportunities and challenges, and propose a typology of media activism.
Finally, this report seeks to present good examples of media activism, including those that were successful in bringing changes of media policies and practices, but also those successful in reframing public policies and raising public awareness, harnessing wider support, involving novel topics or types of actions, or successful only insomuch as they exist as a challenge to existing policies and practices.5 We do not claim to have selected the best, most effective examples of media activism, but we aimed for diversity in terms of thematic focus, types of actions, the groups the participants belong to, geographical locus, and political context.
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BoingBoing ☛ Bouclier Wintour: Conde Nast chief wore sunglasses indoors to fire staffers at Pitchfork
Conde Nast global chief Anna Wintour wore her sunglasses to lay off staff at famed music publication Pitchfork, informing the rest they would be working at GQ henceforth. She was indoors. Allison Hussey, among those thusly discarded, posted the anecdote on Twitter.
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CPJ ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Ukrainian investigative journalist Yuriy Nikolov threatened, journalists with Bihus.info under alleged surveillance
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] Prominent Ukrainian Journalist Says Unknown Intruders Tried to Storm His Home
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BIA Net ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Turkey’s state-run news agency reports 2019 PKK militant killing as 'breaking news’
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Craig Murray ☛ In Conversation With Stella Assange
Stella produced these two videos of us as part of her “in conversation” series. Topics include campaigning for Julian with Generation Z, spying and diplomacy, Margaret Thatcher, and state action against whistleblowers.
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The Dissenter ☛ US House Of Representatives Passes Reporter's Shield Law—Again
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Scheerpost ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Food Insecurity in Prison Makes People Like Me Vulnerable to Labor Exploitation
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Bruce Schneier ☛ Speaking to the CIA’s Creative Writing Group
This is a fascinating story.
Last spring, a friend of a friend visited my office and invited me to Langley to speak to Invisible Ink, the CIA’s creative writing group.
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Pro Publica ☛ FEMA Leader Overseeing New Mexico Wildfire Compensation Fund Steps Down
The director of a federal office overseeing a nearly $4 billion compensation fund for victims of a New Mexico wildfire that was accidentally triggered by the U.S. Forest Service is stepping down.
Angela Gladwell’s reassignment comes as the Federal Emergency Management Agency restructures its disaster response in the state amid sustained criticism of its handling of disaster aid and payments for damages, which Source New Mexico and ProPublica have reported on for the past year.
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BIA Net ☛ New arrangement in Hagia Sophia: 'Turkish citizens' and others
Tourists passing through the heaven-hell door, observing the mosque's sanctuary floor, and viewing the Ottoman-era additions can also examine the Byzantine-era mosaics in this section. However, for some reason, this practice is prohibited for citizens of the Republic of Turkey.
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International Business Times ☛ Go In To The Office Or AI Will Replace You, Says PwC's UK Boss
Kevin Ellis says as AI is poised to take on routine tasks traditionally given to younger workers, junior staff should seek promotions by regularly working in the office.
Generative AI is removing "tasks that in the past our more junior staff trained and cut their teeth on," the chair of PwC UK said during an interview at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.
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Gizmodo ☛ DeepMind Co-Founder: AI Is Fundamentally a "Labor Replacing Tool"
We got another dose of that this week, when the founder of Google’s DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman, sat down for an interview with CNBC. Suleyman was in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum’s annual get-together, where AI was reportedly the most popular topic of conversation. During his interview, Suleyman was asked by news anchor Rebecca Quirk whether AI was “going to replace humans in the workplace in massive amounts.”
The tech CEO’s answer was this: “I think in the long term—over many decades—we have to think very hard about how we integrate these tools because, left completely to the market...these are fundamentally labor replacing tools.”
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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[Old] Google ☛ Our Grace Hopper subsea cable has landed in the UK
Last year, we announced a new subsea cable — named Grace Hopper after the computer science pioneer — that will run between the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain. The cable will improve the resilience of the Google network that underpins our consumer and enterprise products. The 16-fibre pair Google-funded cable will connect New York (United States) to Bude (United Kingdom) and Bilbao (Spain).
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[ih] Dave Mills has passed away
His daughter, Leigh, just sent me the news that Dave passed away peacefully on January 17, 2024. He was such an iconic element of the early Internet. Network Time Protocol, the Fuzzball routers of the early NSFNET, INARG taskforce lead, COMSAT Labs and University of Delaware and so much more.
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LWN ☛ Dave Mills RIP
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Digital Music News ☛ Germany Reports 12% Streaming Growth in 2023, Reaching 1 Trillion All-Time Cumulative Streams
Current music — that which was produced in the 2020s — contributed to more than half of all streams last year, at 52%. Nine of the ten most-streamed artists in Germany over the past decade were German-speaking. Songs from the 2010s accounted for 30% of all streams, while the 2000s accounted for 8%. Previous decades made up 10%.
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The Register UK ☛ HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies
HP CEO Enrique Lores admitted this week that the company's long-term objective is "to make printing a subscription" when he was questioned about the company's approach to third-party replacement ink suppliers.
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Techdirt ☛ Ubisoft Says It Out Loud: We Want People To Get Used To Not Owning What They’ve Bought
We’ve done a metric ton of posts here over the years pointing out one unfortunate trend that has come along with the move from physical products to digital purchases: you don’t own what you’ve bought. In some cases, it’s you don’t own what you think you’ve bought, because nobody actually reads EULAs and all the documentation that comes with buying things online these days, and often buried in all of that is where the language about how things are licensed, rather than owned, are. Still, the fact is that the public too often doesn’t understand how it happens that products stop working the way they did after updates are performed remotely, or why movies purchased through an online store suddenly disappear with no refund, or why other media types purchased online likewise go poof. There is a severe misalignment, in other words, between what consumers think their money is being spent on and what is actually being purchased.
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] The Most Unhinged Monopoly Variations You Can Buy Right Now
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] Amazon Wants You to Start Paying for Alexa
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Gizmodo ☛ OpenAI, Microsoft’s Partnership May Be Killed Off Before the Dawn of AGI
Regulators started looking more closely at the companies during the November implosion of OpenAI when Microsoft briefly hired Altman after he was canned by his own company’s board and offered jobs to the entire 700-person staff. Altman is back at OpenAI, and the company has returned to business as usual, but that November charade may have cost them the partnership and AGI.
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Mike Rockwell ☛ A Sour Solution
What Apple has done by locking down the platform is far worse than anything Microsoft ever did with Windows.
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The Register UK ☛ Intel finds a friend in fight against $1.2B EU antitrust fine
The EC obviously wasn't happy with this ruling and quickly launched an appeal of their own. However, Court of Justice advocate general Laila Medina took issue with some of the arguments raised by the Commission in its latest attempt to hold Intel accountable for what it sees as an abuse of market position.
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Digital Music News ☛ Fans Sue Madonna & Live Nation for Starting Show Two Hours Late
“Confronted with limited public transportation, limited ride-sharing, and/or increased public and private transportation costs” when the show let out at 1 AM, Fellows and Hadden “had to get up early to go to work and/or take care of their family responsibilities the next day.”
The two men are suing Madonna, Live Nation, and the Barclays Center for “unconscionable, unfair, and/or deceptive trade practices,” in promising the public that the concert would begin at 8:30 PM while knowing the performance would not begin at the scheduled time, arguing breach of contract.
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Patents
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2024-01-17 [Older] USPTO Further Transitions to DOCX Format [Ed: With Microsoft Vidal in charge, USPTO now acts as agent of Microsoft, promoting proprietary vendor lock-in and doubling down on corruption; how does Microsoft lock-in "improve user experience"?]
The Office indicated that the transition to the DOCX format is intended "to modernize [the Office's] patent application systems to improve user experience, provide applicants a more streamlined process, harmonize across country borders, and strengthen [the Office's] ability to examine applications quickly and effectively." The Office stated that it had "worked carefully with stakeholders to shape both the transition to DOCX as well as the timing," and that the Office's systems will "provide[] pre-prosecution checks that improve the robustness and reliability of patents."
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IP Kat ☛ 2024-01-14 [Older] Don't shoot yourself in the foot: European file history in US patent claim interpretation (K-fee v Nespresso)
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2024-01-15 [Older] Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. v. Personal Genomics Taiwan, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2024)
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Kangaroo Courts
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2024-01-15 [Older] Webinar on Unified Patent Court from a U.S. Perspective [Ed: This 'court' is illegal and unconstitutional. It may be dismantled if this act of corruption crushes the EU, yet Watchtroll promotes it, so it's clear who this was designed to benefit]
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Software Patents
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NPR ☛ Apple Watch users are losing a popular health app after court's ruling in patent case
Apple decided to drop the health feature after losing a patent case brought by the medical technology company Masimo, which alleged that Apple infringed on its patent for a blood oxygen sensor that can read someone's pulse. Apple has repeatedly denied the allegation.
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Trademarks
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IP Kat ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] A butterfly is not conceptually similar to a bird, says EUIPO
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IP Kat ☛ 2024-01-15 [Older] COCO CHANEL’s independent distinctive role
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Right of Publicity
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Bruce Schneier ☛ Zelle Is Using My Name and Voice without My Consent
I wrote to Zelle about it. Or, at least, I wrote to a company called Early Warning that owns Zelle about it. They asked me where the ads appeared. This seems odd to me. Podcast distribution networks drop ads in podcasts depending on the listener—like personalized ads on webpages—so the actual podcast doesn’t matter. And shouldn’t they know their own ads? Annoyingly, it seems time to get attorneys involved.
What would help is to have a copy of the actual ad. (Or ads, I’m assuming there’s only one.) So, has anyone else heard me in a Zelle ad? Does anyone happen to have an audio recording? Please email me.
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ ACE Shuts Down Popular Pirate Sites, 27+ 'Instant Pirate Sites' Fall Over
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, in partnership with TrueVisions, Thailand’s leading pay-tv provider, announced the shutdown of all domains associated with two popular pirate sites. ACE has labeled one of the targets a Piracy-as-a-Service (PaaS) platform, which enabled anyone to become an instant owner and operator of a pirate site. In this case, 'anyone' only applies to people with $225 to spend.
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EFF ☛ The No AI Fraud Act Creates Way More Problems Than It Solves
Existing laws offer multiple ways for performers to address this issue. In the U.S., a majority of states recognize a “right of publicity,” meaning, the right to control if and how your likeness is used for commercial purposes. A limited version of this right makes sense—you should be able to prevent a company from running an advertisement that falsely claims that you endorse its products—but the right of publicity has expanded well beyond its original boundaries, to potentially cover just about any speech that “evokes” a person’s identity.
In addition, every state prohibits defamation, harmful false representations, and unfair competition, though the parameters may vary. These laws provide time-tested methods to mitigate economic and emotional harms from identity misuse while protecting online expression rights.
But some performers want more. They argue that your right to control use of your image shouldn’t vary depending on what state you live in. They’d also like to be able to go after the companies that offer generative AI tools and/or host AI-generated “deceptive” content. Ordinary liability rules, including copyright, can’t be used against a company that has simply provided a tool for others’ expression. After all, we don’t hold Adobe liable when someone uses Photoshop to suggest that a president can’t read or even for more serious deceptions. And Section 230 immunizes intermediaries from liability for defamatory content posted by users and, in some parts of the country, publicity rights violations as well. Again, that’s a feature, not a bug; immunity means it’s easier to stick up for users’ speech, rather than taking down or preemptively blocking any user-generated content that might lead to litigation. It’s a crucial protection not just big players like Facebook and YouTube, but also small sites, news outlets, emails hosts, libraries, and many others.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Vietnam's Pirate Site Blocklist Quietly Adds Torrent Sites
Vietnam has become a focal point in the international battle against online piracy. Rightsholders have repeatedly spurred on the government to take action and while grave concerns remain, Vietnam has recently expanded its site-blocking efforts by targeting popular torrent sites.
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Vox ☛ 2024-01-18 [Older] How copyright lawsuits could kill OpenAI
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IP Kat ☛ 2024-01-17 [Older] When is a derivative work original and thus protectable by copyright? Classicist’s critical edition makes its way to Luxembourg in fresh Romanian CJEU referral
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Techdirt ☛ There’s Still Time To Join The Public Domain Game Jam!
Join our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1928! »
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El País ☛ Mickey Mouse smokes, drinks and kills: why Disney’s most famous rodent is no longer under its control
Mickey Mouse has changed dramatically since entering the public domain. That is to say, since he was no longer subject to copyright laws because, 75 to 100 years after its creation, intellectual [sic] property [sic] is no longer subject to use restrictions. Due to this, Mickey (or a Mickey, but will get to that shortly) can be used outside the iron fist of Disney, the multinational company that brought him to life. Now you can see him smoking, killing and committing acts of terrorism. The iconic mouse, the ultimate symbol of the American entertainment empire and one of those fabulous designs that can be recognized by its silhouette alone, is being reinterpreted by various artists dedicated to creating their own, extreme versions of the rodent. One on hand, they are reinterpreting a cultural legend. On the other, theirs is a kind of long-awaited revenge on the gigantic Disney corporation, and the iron fist with which it has protected use of its creations for decades.
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Futurism ☛ Novelist Wins Award, Then Reveals She Used ChatGPT
"I would say about five percent of the book quoted verbatim the sentences generated by AI," she added.
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Creative Commons ☛ UK Court Clears Path for Open Culture to Flourish
In setting the copyright originality threshold, the court stated: “What is required is that the author was able to express their creative abilities in the production of the work by making free and creative choices so as to stamp the work created with their personal touch.” Crucially, the court affirmed that “this criterion is not satisfied where the content of the work is dictated by technical considerations, rules or other constraints which leave no room for creative freedom.” For a thorough analysis of the case, see Professor Eleonora Rosatti’s take for the IPKat.
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Vox ☛ How copyright lawsuits could kill OpenAI
The New York Times claims that OpenAI trained its model with copyrighted Times content and did not pay proper licensing fees. That, the lawsuit says, enables OpenAI to “compete with and closely mimic” the New York Times, perhaps by summing up a news story based on Times reporting or summing up a product recommendation based on Wirecutter reviews.
Even worse is what the lawsuit calls “regurgitation,” which is when OpenAI spits out text that matches Times articles verbatim. The Times provides 100 examples of such “regurgitation” in the lawsuit. In its rebuttal, OpenAI said that regurgitation is a “rare bug” that the company is “working to drive to zero.” It also claims that the Times “intentionally manipulated prompts” to get this to happen and “cherry-picked their examples from many attempts.”
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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