Leftovers

• Techdirt ☛ FTC Rightly Warns That Tech Companies Can’t Hide Behind Questionable Claims Of ‘Security’ To Block Interoperability

  One of the things we talk about quite a lot on Techdirt is how the “easy” policy ideas that many people have aren’t quite so easy, because everything has tradeoffs. You want strict privacy laws? Well, that might create issues for free speech and competition. You want stronger liability on social media services? Well, that’s going to limit competition.

• FAIR ☛ ‘We Know What Keeps Us Safe: People Need Care and Not Punishment’

  Janine Jackson interviewed the Movement for Black Lives’ Monifa Bandele about reimagining public safety for the January 26, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

• Christopher Downer ☛ 366 Albums – January

  I thought for 2024 I would listen to an album I’ve not listened to before every day. They could be new releases, they could be old. Artists whose songs I may already know, or ones I’m totally unfamiliar with. The selection is completely random.

• Brandon ☛ From the Archive: The Recession at the Movies

  I was twenty-six at the time and thought I knew everything. In one moment, I realized I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know stress or pressure the way this guy knew it, and I didn’t know what a bad day was like that this guy experienced.

  I think about this guy every few months and that look on his face as I brought him out of the movie theater. I think about what must have been going through his mind and how embarrassed he was. And I think about how easily that could have been me.

• The Atlantic ☛ We’ve Forgotten How to Use Computers

  Double-clicking too. Once, this was the way you opened up a file or a program. Now it’s workplace jargon: “Let’s double-click on that idea.” Cringey as that sounds, the phrase attests to what a mouse’s actions could embody. Clicking, moving, dragging—these were elemental ways of interacting with machines, and also ways of understanding them. A mouse could burrow into folders and pull out data in its teeth. It could make you feel like you were crawling in there with the circuits. But that way of connecting to computers is defunct. The screen is just a window now, and we’re only tapping on the glass.

• Matt Birchler ☛ What is a compu…review?

  In my view, each style of review is valid and are worthy additions to the extensive libraries of work each writer has built over the years. The fact that they took different angles doesn’t mean one of them is more valid than the other, they’re just doing different things.

• SchwarzTech ☛ Interview with Lee Peterson

  Years ago, I conducted a few interviews on this site and really enjoyed the process. With this site celebrating 25 years, I thought it would be nice to get back into that habit, showcasing some interesting voices on the tech web. I had the opportunity last week to chat with Lee Peterson, whose work has appeared in a few different publications, as well as his own blog, LJPUK.NET.

• The Atlantic ☛ TV Is Back in Its Commercials Era

  One by one, most of the major streaming services have introduced ads to their subscription offerings. Now consumers face a choice: Pay up, or sit through commercial breaks like it’s 1999.

• Greg Morris ☛ Visit More Blogs

  At first, this seemed like a crazy idea, but the more I thought about it, the more it made perfect sense. I read 99% of the blogs I follow in my favourite app Matter. Which is great in that it boils websites down to the basic content and makes it easier to read. However, it removes all personality and expression from personal websites.

• Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Publish Your Work

  As an electrical and mechanical engineer, my late father-in-law was an expert in crafting home-grown black boxes that meticulously—and sometimes also miraculously—executed certain tasks in and around the house, such as automatically opening and closing the curtains based on the position of the sun (that included LEGO Technic radar work), routing audio and video from the doorbell to the TV or smartphone when someone pressed the button, or mediating the central heating based on too many factors. He also loved building things that weren’t really needed, just for fun: how about a full-size sixties jukebox emulated with a couple of Arduino boards, where each mechanical piece was hand-cut?

• The New Leaf Journal ☛ January 2024 at The New Leaf Journal

  This is our 18th and final full article of 2024. Below, I list our new articles with brief descriptions. Note that I wrote all of our January 2024 articles, so I will not specify the author. I designated five articles as my personal Editor’s Choice selections, a privilege afforded to me (the writer) because I am also the editor.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ We Finally Know How Ancient Roman Concrete Was Able to Last Thousands of Years

    The properties of this concrete have generally been attributed to its ingredients: pozzolana, a mix of volcanic ash – named after the Italian city of Pozzuoli, where a significant deposit of it can be found – and lime. When mixed with water, the two materials can react to produce strong concrete.

    But that, as it turns out, is not the whole story. In 2023, an international team of researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that not only are the materials slightly different from what we may have thought, but the techniques used to mix them were also different.

  • Futurism ☛ Photos Show Catastrophic Damage to Mars Helicopter

    The agency's Jet Propulsion Lab shared pictures following the rotorcraft's final flight, showing some gnarly damage — via the shadow its shattered rotor casts on the unearthly landscape.

    One picture even appears to show a small piece of the rotor lying on the dusty ground nearby.

  • Tony Finch ☛ Constructing a four-point egg

    For reasons beyond the scope of this entry, I have been investigating elliptical and ovoid shapes. The Wikipedia article for Moss’s egg has a link to a tutorial on Euclidean Eggs by Freyja Hreinsdóttir which (amongst other things) describes how to construct the “four point egg”. I think it is a nicer shape than Moss’s egg.

  • The Register UK ☛ Investors threw 50% less money at quantum last year

    Investment in quantum technology reached a high of $2.2 billion in 2022, as confidence (or hype) grew in this emerging market, but that funding fell to about $1.2 billion last year, according to the latest State of Quantum report, produced by The Quantum Insider, with quantum computing company IQM, plus VCs OpenOcean and Lakestar.

• Education

  • The Hill ☛ Education experts say they’re ready for AI this time

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is blazing a new trail this year in education as schools take concrete steps to incorporate the technology into their teaching, replacing the panic and confusion educators previously faced.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Real Problem With American Universities

    The 4,000 or so degree-granting institutions of higher learning in America don’t tend to operate like businesses, which must adapt or die. Instead, a typical college is motivated to remain the same, operating through structures that are rare outside higher education. Thus the ever-swelling prices and worrying attrition rate. In the meantime, colleges have tended to resist the spread of online learning, artificial intelligence, and other technologies that might bring them new opportunities.

    As a university professor myself, I’m dismayed by the state of higher education but unsure of how it might be fixed. I sat down with Rosenberg last week to talk about the drawbacks of academic tenure, how expertise itself erodes collaboration, and what it means that we’ve become so fixated on campus politics at just a handful of the nation’s best-known schools. In short, we discussed how universities work today—and why they often don’t. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ How We Work, AI, and Human Engagement

    In other words, action is an activity we choose, which has purpose, and is pursued in a social context. For Arendt, action is the path for humans to engage and realize their potential in context of work and labor. For Arendt, action is inherently political.

    So, what does this all mean for the way we work?

  • Greece ☛ Saving the old library building

    That building is a national treasure, in the heart of the capital, and one of its architectural jewels. It is the duty of all those responsible to cooperate so that it is not abandoned to the wear and tear of time.

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ AMD announces it has preorders for $3.5 billion of its Hey Hi (AI) GPUs; stock tumbles in after-hours trading anyway

    AMD expects declines in datacenter and client revenue in Q1, but projects improvements for the whole 2024.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Light guidance weighs heavily on AMD, sending its stock lower

    Shares of the chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. traded lower in late trading today after the company slightly disappointing fourth-quarter earnings results and offered a forecast that came up light. The company’s stock fell more than 6% in the extended trading session...

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ New Images of Colossus Released

    GCHQ has released new images of the WWII Colossus code-breaking computer, celebrating the machine’s eightieth anniversary (birthday?).

    News article.

  • Futurism ☛ Here’s What Happened to Monkeys That Got the Neuralink Implant

    All told, some 21 percent of the company's monkeys reportedly died because of brain implant issues.

    It bears noting that these primates, which Neuralink acquired from the California National Primate Research Center at the University of California, Davis, were subjects early in the company's history, with most of the experiments in question occurring in 2019 and 2020.

    Nevertheless, information about the grisly details of those early trials appears not to have been shared with Neuralink's investors.

  • Wired ☛ The Gruesome Story of How Neuralink’s Monkeys Actually Died

    Public records reviewed by WIRED, and interviews conducted with a former Neuralink employee and a current researcher at the University of California, Davis primate center, paint a wholly different picture of Neuralink’s animal research. The documents include veterinary records, first made public last year, that contain gruesome portrayals of suffering reportedly endured by as many as a dozen of Neuralink’s primate subjects, all of whom needed to be euthanized. These records could serve as the basis for any potential SEC probe into Musk’s comments about Neuralink, which has faced multiple federal investigations as the company moves toward its goal of releasing the first commercially available brain-computer interface for humans.

    The letters to the SEC come from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit striving to abolish live animal testing. The group claims that Musk’s comments about the primate deaths were misleading, that he knew them “to be false,” and that investors deserve to hear the truth abou t the safety, “and thus the marketability,” of Neuralink’s speculative product.

  • Jan Lukas Else ☛ Preserving Memories: My Adventure with Digital8 Tapes and FireWire

    One of the problems I encountered during this process was that while dvgrab detected the camera, the capturing somehow didn’t transfer any frames and also on the camcorder display I saw two big gray bars. I managed to solve this by going to an unwritten space on one of the tapes and recording for a few seconds. After that, the transfer worked mostly flawlessly also with the other tapes.

    Now, after copying just six tapes, I already have many gigabytes of videos. One tape seems to sometimes be 17 gigs, but it’s only one and a half hours of video.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Strategist ☛ The mental health epidemic threatening Australia’s security

    As it prepares Australia to defend itself in a contested region, the ADF has put the call out to young people to join—to achieve its goals, it needs to recruit 18,500 more people of serving [...]

  • Steve Ledlow ☛ Year of Living Without 2024

    As mentioned in an earlier post, I wanted to take time in January to give thought to what I would do without in 2024. I thought that another round of monthly themes would come out of it; however, I’m taking a more basic approach for 2024. Rather than doing without something for a month to train my mind or body to lean into discomfort, I’m going to cut out 3 things for the entirety of the year. Those 3 things are: [...]

  • Lee Peterson ☛ Eye strain could be an issue on Apple Vision Pro

    If you’re in Apple Vision Pro and already close to a screen and look away from your virtual monitor to something far away does the same rule apply? Does it exercise the same muscles or does the fact you’re still close to a screen negate it?

  • The Atlantic ☛ Should Teens Have Access to Disappearing Messages?

    The stories are hauntingly similar: A teenager, their whole life ahead of them, buys a pill from someone on Snapchat. They think it’s OxyContin or Percocet, but it actually contains a lethal amount of fentanyl. They take it; they die. Their bereaved parents are left grasping for an explanation.

    A 2021 NBC News investigation found more than a dozen such cases across the country. And now, parents of teens and young adults who died or were injured after purchasing drugs laced with fentanyl are turning to the courts, suing Snap over features that they believe made the deals possible—and allowed them to happen in secrecy.

  • Simone Silvestroni ☛ How I learned to stop worrying and merge personal with work

    Over the last few weeks I’ve introduced changes to the website. While the design has received relatively minor tweaks, and a new typeface, structure and language have substantially shifted.

  • Former Director of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute: Still Antivax?

    Longtime readers might remember that way back in the beforetime—you know, before COVID-19 arrived—the quackery that had infested the Cleveland Clinic under the guise of “wellness,” “integrative medicine,” and “functional medicine” came up over and over and over again, dating back a number of years. Indeed, I once noted that the founder of Cleveland Clinic’s functional medicine program, Mark Hyman, wrote the foreword to a Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.-penned antivax book about mercury in vaccines and appeared together with him on The Dr. Oz Show; moreover, there’s no way The Cleveland Clinic couldn’t have known about this when Dr. Hyman was hired because it all happened around the same time. Regular readers might also remember a certain doctors at The Cleveland Clinic by the name of Dr. Daniel Neides for certain antivax writings he did, an incident that led me to use his example to demonstrate how quackery pseudoscience in one area of medicine almost inevitably leads to quackery and pseudoscience in other areas, including vaccines, and how quackery and antivax nearly always go hand-in-hand. As horrified as the respectable docs at The Cleveland Clinic were about Dr. Neides’ antivax rambling, they shouldn’t have been surprised. It was inevitable that a culture that encourages the embrace of magical thinking would inevitably attract the magical thinking of antivax doctors.

  • England and Wales Deaths in Week 3 More Than a Thousand People (Fatalities) Higher Than 5 Years Ago

    Will our government commission an inquiry to investigate the cause/s?

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Thomas Rigby ☛ We need to stop single guys designing tech

    It seems all entertainment, smart home, and Internet of Things gadgets are all designed by single men who live alone.

  • Cory Dransfeldt ☛ I don't want anything your AI generates

    I really don't. AI output is fundamentally derivative and exploitative (of content, labor and the environment).

    I can't trust the answers it provides or the text it generates. It's not a replacement for search, it simply makes search worse.

    The images it generates are, at best, a polished regression to the mean. If you want custom art, pay an artist.

  • Techdirt ☛ Microsoft Lays Off Nearly 2,000, Including A Bunch From Activision Blizzard Studios

    And here we go. We have spent the past couple of years discussing Microsoft’s acquisition, and all the trials and tribulations that led to it, of Activision Blizzard. This deal, that faced mostly flaccid opposition from several national regulatory bodies throughout the world, cost Microsoft $69 billion, with a “b”, to consummate. And that’s just the sale price. That figure does not include all the money worldwide Microsoft spent to shadowbox all those regulators and the like. We’re talking serious dollars here, in other words.

  • TechCrunch ☛ Wattpad, a storytelling platform, cuts 10% of its staff as part of company reorganization | TechCrunch

    Wattpad, a Toronto-based storytelling platform owned by Naver's Webtoon Entertainment, confirmed it laid off around 20 staff, or less than 10%...

  • Pro Publica ☛ Senators Seek to Bar Landlords From Using Algorithms to Artificially Inflate Rents

    A group of senators are set to introduce legislation Tuesday that would make it illegal for landlords to use algorithms to artificially inflate the price of rent or reduce the supply of housing.

    The proposed law follows a ProPublica investigation that found software sold by Texas-based RealPage was collecting proprietary data from landlords and feeding it into an algorithm that recommended what rents they should charge. Legal experts said the arrangement could help landlords engage in cartel-like behavior if they used it to coordinate pricing.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • EFF ☛ Worried About AI Voice Clone Scams? Create a Family Password

      It’s a classic and common scam, and like many scams it relies on a scary, urgent scenario to override the victim’s common sense and make them more likely to send money. Now, scammers are reportedly experimenting with a way to further heighten that panic by playing a simulated recording of “your” voice. Fortunately, there’s an easy and old-school trick you can use to preempt the scammers: creating a shared verbal password with your family.

      The ability to create audio deepfakes of people's voices using machine learning and just minutes of them speaking has become relatively cheap and easy to acquire technology. There are myriad websites that will let you make voice clones. Some will let you use a variety of celebrity voices to say anything they want, while others will let you upload a new person’s voice to create a voice clone of anyone you have a recording of. Scammers have figured out that they can use this to clone the voices of regular people. Suddenly your relative isn’t talking to someone who sounds like a complete stranger, they are hearing your own voice. This makes the scam much more concerning. 

      Voice generation scams aren’t widespread yet, but they do seem to be happening. There have been news stories and even congressional testimony from people who have been the targets of voice impersonation scams. Voice cloning scams are also being used in political disinformation campaigns as well. It’s impossible for us to know what kind of technology these scammers used, or if they're just really good impersonations. But it is likely that the scams will grow more prevalent as the technology gets cheaper and more ubiquitous. For now, the novelty of these scams, and the use of machine learning and deepfakes, technologies which are raising concerns across many sectors of society, seems to be driving a lot of the coverage. 

    • [Repeat] Troy Hunt ☛ Inside the Massive Naz.API Credential Stuffing List

      Whilst this post dates back almost 4 months, it hadn't come across my radar until now and inevitably, also hadn't been sent to the aforementioned tech company. They took it seriously enough to take appropriate action against their (very sizeable) user base which gave me enough cause to investigate it further than your average cred stuffing list. Here's what I found: [...]

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Dissenter ☛ In Leak Prosecutions, US Government Treats Use Of Privacy Tools As Criminal Activity

    • Tedium ☛ Cache Clearing

      I have to imagine that Google did not make a lot of money from people pinging its search engine for cached website results, but making it convenient to access was a service to searchers.

      It was also somewhat of a service to society. Often, when information-related scandals broke—such as content with egregious errors, evidence of deleted social media statements, or information at risk of appearing offline in short order—it was a great backstop that worked more effectively than the Internet Archive for capturing fresh information.

      And yet, for some reason, Google has treated this feature like it was embarrassed of it. Over the years, it has increasingly come to bury the feature in its search interface, making it harder and harder to find, despite me finding it just as useful as it was the day it launched.

    • EDRI ☛ Irish Media Regulator must address dangerous age verification in its new online safety code

      Age verification is the process of predicting or confirming an individual’s age. In recent years, governments have been increasingly pushing for the implementation of age verification tools based on claims of ensuring people’s safety online, especially so of children. This trend is especially visible in the EU’s Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR) debate, and we also see attempts in the UK and Spain for mandatory online age verification in certain contexts.

      Experts like EDRi have repeatedly shown that quick tech solutions like age verification online will not ensure digital safety. We’ve been fighting biometric surveillance in the Artificial Intelligence Act and profiling of children’s behaviours online in the Digital Services Act. Yet with this new, binding Code, the Irish Media Regulator is preparing to force many big tech companies to do just that, in order to predict people’s ages.

      This superficial approach fails to recognise the threats posed by these invasive systems. Many such tools rely on toxic mass data gathering that threatens the privacy and security of everyone. As pointed out in EDRi’s position paper on age verification, focusing too much on age verification may lead to ignoring the root problems that facilitate or exacerbate online harm. It is essential to develop a holistic approach that prioritises privacy and safety by default and by design.

    • The Strategist ☛ TikTok is snooping on users. Why don’t they seem to care?

      Despite numerous scandals and calls for it to be banned, TikTok, the Chinese-owned app, continues to enjoy immense popularity in Australia.

      ByteDance, the Beijing-based company that owns and controls TikTok, is currently under investigation by the US Justice Department for spying on citizens, including journalists. In September last year, European Union regulators fined TikTok €345 million ($560m) for violating data protection laws. That was after the UK data watchdog levelled a £12.7m ($24m) fine at the company for illegally processing the data of 1.4 million children under 13 who were using its platform.

      But if you thought any of these rolling controversies would put a dent in the app’s meteoric growth, think again. Some 8.5 million Australians are active on the platform every month. That’s almost 40% of the adult population.

    • Enea ☛ How mobile devices are being tracked: Location Tracking on The Battlefield

      Mobile networks have played a key role in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia. A question that has arisen many times over the course of the war is the tracking of mobile phones – whether it is happening, how it could be done, and the impact it could have. Enea’s groundbreaking report provides an overview of the various ways mobile devices are tracked on the battlefield.

Defence/Aggression

• RFERL ☛ U.S. Charges Four Chinese Nationals For Exporting Banned Electronics To Iran

  [...] From May 2007 to July 2020, the four individuals allegedly exported items used in the production of unmanned aerial vehicles, ballistic missile systems, and other technology with military end uses to sanctioned Iranian entities. [...]

• Vice Media Group ☛ Anti-China TikTok Panic Derailed the Senate’s Big Tech Child Safety Hearing

  The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing featured testimony from CEOs including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, X’s Linda Yaccarino, Discord’s Jason Citron, Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel, and TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew. In their opening statements, executives highlighted how their platforms try to combat the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and attempted to dispel the notion that social media negatively affects adolescents’ mental health.

  Lawmakers pushed back, with Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asking the CEOs directly why they haven’t supported proposed laws such as the STOP CSAM Act, which has been criticized as being overbroad by rights groups such as the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation.

• New York Times ☛ ‘Your Product Is Killing People’: Tech Leaders Denounced Over Child Safety

  Lawmakers on Wednesday denounced the chief executives of Meta, TikTok, X, Snap and Discord, accusing them of creating “a crisis in America” by willfully ignoring the harmful content against children on their platforms, as concerns over the effect of technology on youths have mushroomed.

  In a highly charged 3.5-hour hearing, members of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee raised their voices and repeatedly castigated the five tech leaders — who run online services that are very popular with teenagers and younger children — for prioritizing profits over the well-being of youths. Some said the companies had “blood on their hands” and that users “would die waiting” for them to make changes to protect children. At one point, lawmakers compared the tech companies to cigarette makers.

• [Same URL, another revision] New York Times ☛ Senators Denounce Tech Companies Over Child Sex Abuse Online

  Senators criticized the chief executives of Meta, TikTok, Snap, X and Discord for not doing enough to prevent child sexual abuse online, amid rising fears over how the platforms affect youths.

• Silicon Angle ☛ ‘You have blood on your hands’: US senators blast social media leaders over child safety

  With regard to Meta, which seemed to be the focus of the ire that permeated today’s meeting, it has been accused of knowingly developing products that are harmful to younger people. In October last year, a group of 42 U.S. attorneys general sued the company for such harm.

  Last year, lawmakers introduced the bipartisan bill, “Protecting Kids on Social Media Act,” in an effort to save young people from the alleged perils of social media, but free speech advocates have aired concerns about a chilling effect in what might become oppressive digital surveillance.

• Deutsche Welle ☛ Facebook kills people, US Senator tells Mark Zuckerberg

  In an unusual gesture during a US Senate hearing on Wednesday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized to parents whose children have been harmed by using the company's online platforms. This came as one Senator accused the entrepreneur of inadvertently creating a "product that's killing people."

• Techdirt ☛ As Congress Grandstands Nonsense ‘Kid Safety’ Bills, Senator Wyden Reintroduces Legislation That Would Actually Help Deal With Kid Exploitation Online

  As you’ve likely heard, this morning the Senate did one of its semi-regular hearings in which it drags tech CEOs in front of clueless Senators who make nonsense pronouncements in hopes of getting a viral clip to show up on the very social media they’re pretending to demonize, but which they rely on to pretend to their base that they’re leading the culture war moral panic against social media.

• NDTV ☛ Facebook Chief Accused Of Having "Blood On His Hands", His Apology

  "Mister Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don't mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands. You have a product that's killing people," Senator Lindsey Graham told the chief executives.

  Testifying to senators were Zuckerberg, X's Linda Yaccarino, Shou Zi Chew of TikTok, Evan Spiegel of Snap and Discord's Jason Citron.

• Gizmodo ☛ ‘Senator, I’m Singaporean’: TikTok CEO Faces Off Against Tom Cotton

  Congress has yet to pass legislation regarding social media, but multiple Senators did vaguely call for an end to stalled progress—again.

• New York Times ☛ Silicon Valley Battles States Over New Online Safety Laws for Children

  Lawsuits filed by NetChoice, which represents companies including Fentanylware (TikTok) and Meta, have stalled protection efforts in three states.

• New York Times ☛ Takeaways From the Senate Hearing With Tech C.E.O.s on Online Child Safety

  Senators aggressively questioned executives from major tech companies, especially Meta and TikTok, while Mark Zuckerberg spoke directly to victims’ families.

• Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Fires Back Against Universal Music Amid Licensing Standoff — As Headlines Lament Taylor Swift Music’s Potential Exit from the Platform

  Yesterday, Universal Music announced the termination of its Fentanylware (TikTok) licensing deal.

• Digital Music News ☛ Timbaland Teams Up with Peloton & Fentanylware (TikTok) to Premiere New Wellness Music Video

  Timbaland teams up with Peloton and Fentanylware (TikTok) to premiere a new wellness music video, ahead of the release of the producer’s full album of wellness music later this year. Peloton and Fentanylware (TikTok) recently announced an exclusive partnership to bring the former’s workout content to the latter’s ever-growing community with a celebrity collaboration.

• Gizmodo ☛ Record Label Execs Tell TikTok That Exploiting Artists Is Their Thing

  Universal Music Group is expected to remove its entire library of songs from TikTok on Wednesday night, according to Reuters, as the record label has failed to renew its contract with the social media platform. The label condemns TikTok for unfairly paying artists and doing little to protect them from AI, in an open letter dated Jan. 30. It’s a shocking condemnation from the world’s largest record label since the music industry is notorious for exploiting artists itself.

• The Hill ☛ ‘You have blood on your hands:’ Zuckerberg, Big Tech CEOs face Senate grilling on child safety: live updates

  The chief executives of five major social media companies are set to appear before senators Wednesday for a highly anticipated hearing on the harms children and teens face online.

• El País ☛ US Senate blasts Meta, TikTok and other social media CEOs for not doing enough to protect children

  Sexual predators. Addictive features. Self-harm and eating disorders. Unrealistic beauty standards. Bullying. These are just some of the issues young people are dealing with on social media — and children’s advocates and lawmakers say companies are not doing enough to protect them.

  On Wednesday, the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media companies went before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify as lawmakers and parents grow increasingly concerned about the effects of social media on young people’s lives.

• The Verge ☛ TikTok’s CEO can’t catch a break from xenophobia in Congress

  Although attempts to ban TikTok last year mostly fizzled, there are real concerns about its data storage policies and Chinese government influence over its moderation. Some lawmakers touched on them, asking Chew to offer an update on Project Texas, its data security initiative. (TikTok is still working on it.) But the questions also strayed into attempts to simply highlight TikTok’s un-American origins, culminating in Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) pressing Chew aggressively and repetitively on his citizenship — which, it’s widely known, is Singaporean.

• Digital Music News ☛ Breaking: Universal Music Publishing Group Is Terminating Its TikTok Licensing Agreement

  Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) says it is terminating its licensing agreement with TikTok, according to correspondence and an open letter issued late Thursday (January 30th). As the largest music publisher in the world, the pullout could have very serious repercussions for TikTok — and it’s unclear if a deal can be reached.

  In a letter sent to signed songwriters and artists on Thursday evening (January 30th), UMPG says the terms of its relationship are set by a contract which expires on January 31, 2024. That means that barring a last-minute agreement, Universal Music Publishing Group will start removing rights to its catalog on the massive TikTok platform. A considerable number of recordings tied to UMPG-owned copyrights will also be impacted.

• France24 ☛ Universal Music to pull songs from TikTok after negotiations breakdown

  Among the issues raised in talks were "appropriate compensation" for artists and songwriters, online safety for users, as well as the protection of artists from the harms of artificial intelligence, the letter added.

• The Register UK ☛ Universal Music accuses TikTok of 'intimidation' and threats to replace humans with AI

  An open letter published on Tuesday titled "Why We Must Call Time Out on TikTok" revealed that the contract allowing TikTok to use Universal's music catalog expires on January 31, but that negotiations have foundered on three issues: "appropriate compensation for our artists and songwriters, protecting human artists from the harmful effects of AI, and online safety for TikTok's users."

  Universal alleged that TikTok has offered to pay "a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social platforms pay."

• India Times ☛ Universal Music warns it will pull songs from TikTok

  Universal noted other problems such as large amounts of AI-generated recordings on the platform, alongside what it called a lack of effort to deal with infringements on artists' music.

• Rolling Stone ☛ Taylor Swift, Drake, and More Music May Exit TikTok as UMG Licensing Deal Nears End

  In an open letter posted online Tuesday evening, UMG said its agreement with TikTok is set to expire Wednesday, and claimed that the social media company was playing hardball on three important issues: “appropriate compensation for our artists and songwriters, protecting human artists from the harmful effects of AI, and online safety for TikTok’s users.” The company said that without a new deal in place after Jan. 31, UMG will cease licensing content to TikTok and TikTok Music services.

  “TikTok proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social platforms pay. Today, as an indication of how little TikTok compensates artists and songwriters, despite its massive and growing user base, rapidly rising advertising revenue and increasing reliance on music-based content, TikTok accounts for only about 1% of our total revenue,” the open letter read.

• The Hill ☛ Social media giants make billions advertising to our youth but fail to protect them online

  And worse, these tech companies that are failing to adequately protect our children are actually making money off them: A recent Harvard study revealed that in 2022, social media platforms generated nearly $11 billion in revenue from advertising directed at youth under 17 years of age.

  That’s an astronomical number, especially when compared to the $31.2 million that Congress allocated to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program in 2022. This means the investments going into the program working to protect children are barely a percentage point compared to the money companies are making off of them.

• Modern Diplomacy ☛ Taliban, its evolution and UN experts’ mistake

  The UN experts came to rather controversial and too strong conclusions about the Taliban. In the special statement based on research work and analysis, the UN experts noted a total lack of evolution of the Taliban towards becoming a more pragmatic and tolerant organization. I believe, this point of view is just a partial reflection of the complex and tragic realities in contemporary Afghanistan staying under the ruling of the Taliban. I’m certain that the unrecognized Islamic Emirate, though led by the radical ethnic-religious movement, has yet a potential for evolution, transformation and changes for the better. However, the corridor of this transformation is pretty much narrow and depends heavily on the established ideological and religious base of the Taliban. Indeed, to the date, large-scale violations of human rights still continue taking place in Afghanistan; meanwhile only rare opportunities for improvements can be visible now. But anyway, in the statement of the UN experts, the complex realities of the Afghan society were rather not reflected.

• VOA News ☛ US Takes Shot at Islamic State's Cyber Operations

  Washington on Tuesday unveiled sanctions against two Egyptian nationals accused of providing IS leaders with cybersecurity training so they could move funds via cryptocurrencies and expand the terror group's recruitment efforts.

  Al-Mawji Mahmud Salim and his business partner, Sarah Jamal Muhammad Al-Sayyid, are accused of creating an IS-affiliated online platform known as the Electronic Horizons Foundation (EHF).

• Security Week ☛ US Says It Disrupted a China Cyber Threat, but Warns Hackers Could Still Wreak Havoc for Americans

  U.S. officials said Wednesday they disrupted a state-backed Chinese effort to plant malware that could be used to damage civilian infrastructure, as the head of the FBI warned that Beijing is positioning itself to disrupt the daily lives of Americans if the United States and China ever go to war.

• Deutsche Welle ☛ Chinese [cracking] ring targets US infrastructure

  The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday announced that they had jointly disrupted a Chinese [cracking] scheme targeting critical US infrastructure.

  US officials claimed state-sponsored Chinese [attackers] had hijacked hundreds of US-based small office and home office routers to create a network of [Internet]-connected devices, or a "botnet."

• Barnabas Aid ☛ Islamic State Boasts of Killing Ten Christians in Northern Mozambique

  The claiming of the onslaught by Islamic State (IS – also known as ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) coincided with the launch on January 4, 2024, of the group’s new global terror campaign, “Kill Them Wherever You Find Them”, announced in an audio message by its spokesman, Abu Hadhayfah Al-Ansari.

• New York Times ☛ Wednesday Briefing: Imran Khan Gets 10 Years

  Also, a possible Israel-Hamas deal and a security proposal in Hong Kong.

• New York Times ☛ Republicans Push to Impeach Biden’s Homeland Security Chief

  Also, Chita Rivera, the electrifying Broadway star, died at 91. Here's the latest at the end of Tuesday.

• New York Times ☛ House Republicans Press Ahead on Impeaching Mayorkas Over Border Policies

  Republicans began pushing through articles of impeachment charging the homeland security secretary with refusing to uphold the law and breaching the public’s trust.

• The Straits Times ☛ Pacific Islands need to boost digital security to join undersea cable, says US official

  Pacific Islands nations that want to connect to U.S.-funded undersea cables will need to secure their digital ecosystems to guard against data risks from China, a senior U.S. State Department official said.

• RFA ☛ Papua New Guinea highlights Australia ties after China security deal report

  PNG Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko this week revealed security cooperation talks with China.

• JURIST ☛ Hong Kong begins consultation period for local security legislation

  Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee announced the commencement of a four-week consultation period for a new local security law under Article 23 of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, on Tuesday. This consultation period will allow Hong Kong citizens to voice their opinions on the new law and have them considered by lawmakers.

• RFA ☛ Hong Kong introduces security law targeting 'foreign forces' in city

  Rebooted after mass protests 20 years ago, the draft is aimed at 'undercurrents' of dissent, foreign 'interference.'

• Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong’s new national security law seeks to criminalise ‘external interference,’ cyber attacks

  Hong Kong’s new security legislation, known colloquially as Article 23, may include new national security offences, according to a consultation document published on Tuesday.

• Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong’s homegrown security law seeks to define ‘state secrets’ along China’s legislative line

  Hong Kong is seeking to define “state secrets” along mainland China’s legislative line, a consultation document for the city’s homegrown security legislation has revealed.

• Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong business groups back homegrown security law, as NGO warns of ‘further repression’

  A four-week public consultation for Hong Kong’s domestic security law began on Tuesday, after the first attempt to enact the controversial legislation required under Article 23 of the city’s mini-constitution failed following mass protests more than 20 years ago.

• New York Times ☛ Hong Kong Pushes New Security Law to Root Out ‘Seeds of Unrest’

  Warning of threats posed by spies, the city’s leader expressed confidence that the new law would enjoy public support. “They will love it,” he said.

• JURIST ☛ ICC Chief Prosecutor says there are ‘grounds to believe’ war crimes are being committed in Sudan

  The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor told the UN Security Council on Monday that “there are grounds to believe” that Sudan’s military is committing war crimes in Darfur.

• ADF ☛ UAE Role in Sudan’s Civil War Draws Criticism

  ADF STAFF The United Arab Emirates’ support for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan’s civil war is drawing criticism from observers who say it is fanning the flames of violence.

• University of Michigan ☛ Senate Assembly passes measures on CSG votes, Israel divestment

  The faculty's Senate Assembly has passed resolutions calling on U-M leadership to protect students' free speech, and to divest from companies investing in Israel's military campaign in Gaza.

• Stanford University ☛ Stanford leadership clarifies free speech boundaries

  University leadership clarified Stanford’s free speech, neutrality and academic freedom policies at this quarter's first Faculty Senate meeting. President Richard Saller also addressed a recent antisemitism panel that was disrupted by protestors.

• University of Michigan ☛ Michigan elected officials discuss future of gun violence legislation at first Michigan Gun Violence Prevention Summit

  Content warning: This article contains mentions of gun violence and domestic abuse. The first Michigan Gun Violence Prevention Summit was held virtually on Monday and Tuesday, with nearly 800 attendees.

• New York Times ☛ Biden Says U.S. Response to Deadly Drone Strike in Jordan Has Been Decided

  The president vowed to retaliate after the attack, which killed three American soldiers on Sunday. On Tuesday, he confirmed a decision without providing details.

• RFERL ☛ U.S. Names Three Soldiers Killed In Jordan Attack, Points Finger At Iranian-Backed Militia

  The United States has released the names of the three American soldiers killed by a drone strike in Jordan that Washington has blamed on Iran-backed forces and vowed to respond to the attack, which the Pentagon said carried the "footprints" of the Tehran-sponsored Kataib Hizballah militia.

• Pro Publica ☛ Indiana Legislation Jeopardizes Lawsuit Against Gunmakers

  For nearly a quarter century, some of the world’s largest gunmakers have tried unsuccessfully to beat back a lawsuit brought by the city of Gary, Indiana, accusing them of turning a blind eye to illegal gun sales.

  The lawsuit was one of dozens that cities filed against gun manufacturers in the late 1990s, but it is the only one to survive a barrage of legal challenges and legislation aimed at limiting the gun industry’s liability for crimes committed with their products.

• Pro Publica ☛ Police Say They Won’t Reopen Case of Alaska Woman Found Dead on Mayor’s Property

  The police department in Kotzebue, Alaska, says it will not reopen its investigation into a woman’s death on the property of a former Northwest Arctic Borough mayor. The case had been the subject of an Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica investigation into the 2018 death of Jennifer Kirk and the death of another woman, who was found strangled on the same property two years later.

  Kirk, 25, died May 23, 2018, at a home owned by then-Mayor Clement Richards Sr. According to police reports, the Alaska medical examiner’s office initially told a city police investigator that “signs of strangulation” had been found on Kirk’s body. The man who said he found her body — Anthony Richards, one of the mayor’s sons — had previously been charged with strangling Kirk and pleaded guilty to assaulting her, though he said he was not involved in her death.

• Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

  • RFERL ☛ CIA Director Says Ukraine War 'Corroding' Putin's Grip On Power

    Russia's war against Ukraine has eroded President Vladimir Putin's grip on power, hollowed out the Russian military, and stoked an "undercurrent of disaffection" within the country, according to the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

  • The Straits Times ☛ Dissident Russian rockers held in Thailand fly to Israel, says band

    Bi-2 has criticised Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine.

  • Latvia ☛ LIVE: Russia's War on Children conference in Rīga

    Taking place on January 31 and February 1 at the Latvian National Library, the conference “Russia’s War on Children” (Krievijas karš pret bērniem) brings together lawyers, journalists, representatives of advocacy NGOs, diplomats and other defense, foreign law and war crimes experts to discuss the possibilities for returning abducted children to Ukraine.

  • Latvia ☛ 'Russia's War On Children' conference taking place in Latvia

    Taking place on January 31 and February 1 at the Latvian National Library, the conference “Russia’s War on Children” (Krievijas karš pret bērniem)  will bring together lawyers, journalists, representatives of advocacy NGOs, diplomats and other defense, foreign law and war crimes experts to discuss the possibilities for returning abducted children to Ukraine.

  • AntiWar ☛ Richard Sakwa Explains How We Ended Up In a New Cold War

    The war in Ukraine is a complicated tangle of three wars in one. It is a civil war between Ukraine’s European leaning west and its Russian leaning east. It is a war between Ukraine and Russia. And it is a war between Russia and NATO.

  • AntiWar ☛ Remote Warfare and Expendable People

    In war, people die for absurd reasons or often no reason at all. They die due to accidents of birth, the misfortune of being born in the wrong place — Cambodia or Gaza, Afghanistan or Ukraine — at the wrong time.

  • France24 ☛ Russia and Ukraine exchange hundreds of war prisoners

    Russia and Ukraine exchanged hundreds of prisoners of war on Wednesday, just a week after Moscow said Kyiv had shot down a plane carrying dozens of captured Ukrainian soldiers.

  • France24 ☛ UN top court rejects most of Ukraine’s ‘terror financing’ case against Russia

    The United Nations’ top court on Wednesday mostly rejected Ukraine’s claims that Russia was financing “terrorism” in eastern Ukraine, saying only that Moscow had failed to investigate alleged breaches.

  • JURIST ☛ ICJ mostly rejects Ukraine claims of Russia discrimination, terrorism financing

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) found Wednesday that Russia failed to investigate Ukrainian claims that Russians were financing terrorism in Ukraine, in violation of Russia’s obligations under Article 9 of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (ICSFT).

  • JURIST ☛ Ukraine government submits revised bill aimed at strengthening mobilisation

    The Ukrainian Government presented their revised bill to parliament Tuesday, which aims to strengthen its military mobilisation rules and maintain its fighting force in the face of the ongoing Russian invasion.

  • RFA ☛ Has the US announced a complete cutoff of aid to Ukraine?

    Verdict: Misleading

  • RFERL ☛ EU Summit To Tackle Ukraine Aid Package Blocked By Hungary Kicks Off

    A special European Union summit kicks off in Brussels on February 1 to discuss a 50 billion euro ($54 billion) aid package for Ukraine that was vetoed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in December.

  • RFERL ☛ Russian Missiles Strike Hospital In Kharkiv Region, Causing Damage

    Russian missiles struck a hospital in the Velikiy Burluk settlement of Ukraine's eastern region of Kharkiv, causing damage but no casualties, regional Governor Oleh Synyehubov reported early on February 1.

  • RFERL ☛ Top Biden Official Confident Congress Will Pass Ukraine Aid As Senators Struggle To Agree On Bill

    A senior U.S. diplomat visiting Kyiv expressed confidence that Congress would back new aid for Ukraine as senators back in Washington struggled to finalize a bipartisan deal that would release up to $61 billion in aid for the embattled country.

  • RFERL ☛ NATO Chief Plays Down Concerns A Trump Reelection Would Weaken Alliance

    NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has played down fears that the reelection of former U.S. President Donald Trump would weaken the defense alliance as it works to ensure robust support for Ukraine.

  • RFERL ☛ Moscow, Kyiv Swap Prisoners As Ukraine Declares Air Raid Alert For Its Whole Territory

    Russia and Ukraine held another prisoner swap on January 31 that Kyiv said involved 207 Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs). Russia said 195 of its troops were taken back in the process in exchanged for the same number of Ukrainian soldiers.

  • RFERL ☛ New EU 'Safeguards' To Cap Tariff-Free Ukraine Farm Imports

    The EU said on January 31 that it plans to extend tariff-free entry for Ukrainian farm products for a year from June, but with "safeguards" to stop cheaper imports flooding the market at the expense of Europe's own farmers.

  • RFERL ☛ Russia Passes Bill On Confiscating Property Of Those Convicted Of Opposing War

    The Russian parliament's lower chamber, the State Duma, has approved the third and final reading of a bill allowing for the confiscation of property and assets of individuals convicted on charges related to laws Russia adopted after it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

  • RFERL ☛ Russian Anti-War Candidate Submits Application To Run For President

    Russian politician Boris Nadezhdin, who has openly called for a halt in Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, has submitted an application to the Central Election Commission (TsIK) to register as a candidate for the March 17 presidential election.

  • RFERL ☛ Top UN Court Gives Mixed Ruling On Kyiv's Terrorism-Financing Case Against Russia

    The International Court of Justice issued a mixed ruling on Kyiv's terrorism-financing complaint against Russia over Moscow's activities in eastern Ukraine and on "racial discrimination" by Russia after it illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014.

  • RFERL ☛ EU Ministers Meet, Urging More Ammo For Ukraine

    Defense ministers from the European Union's 27 member states have opened an informal meeting in Brussels to discuss the need to beef up the bloc's defense industry and its military support to Ukraine, which has pleaded for months for military supplies in its war to repel invading Russian forces.

  • Vice Media Group ☛ Ukraine Is Getting a New American-Made Bomb Before the Pentagon. Here’s What We Know.

    The Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb will reportedly be the latest weapon to be deployed by Ukraine before anyone else—even the U.S. military.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Estonia's PM Kallas says EU should agree to a long-term aid package for Ukraine

    February 01, 2024 4:27 PM
    
    

    European Union member states should agree to a long-term aid package for Ukraine, Estonia's prime minister Kaja Kallas said on Thursday ahead of the summit regrouping leaders of the 27 EU member countries on the subject.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Belgium's PM De Croo 'confident' agreement on aid to Ukraine can be reachead

    February 01, 2024 4:02 PM
    
    

    Belgium's Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said on Thursday he was confident the leaders of the 27 European Union member states would find an agreement on financial aid to Ukraine.

  • YLE ☛ Sanna Marin joins task force steering Ukraine's Nato accession

    The former Finnish Prime Minister joins other big names like former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

  • YLE ☛ Wednesday's papers: Strike wave begins, floating votes, continuing support for Ukraine

    Finland's papers report the start of a wave of strikes aimed at pressuring the government to change its labour market policy plans.

  • New York Times ☛ Hungary’s Refusal to Sanction Russia Tests E.U. Ahead of Ukraine Summit

    Hungary has again broken with its peers on support for Ukraine. This time, the E.U. may have had enough.

  • New York Times ☛ Hungary Is Blocking E.U. Money for Ukraine. Here’s What You Need to Know.

    Hungary and the other members of the European Union have long been at odds, but tensions are higher than ever.

  • New York Times ☛ With Fate of Ukraine’s Top War General in Question, All Eyes Turn to Zelensky

    Portraits of Gen. Valery Zaluzhny hang in coffee shops and bars inside Ukraine, but his strained relationship with President Volodymyr Zelensky may cost him his post.

  • New York Times ☛ Ukraine Strained by Stalled Aid in War Against Russia

    The government says it can juggle its finances for a few months, but warns of an economic crisis if Western assistance remains stuck.

  • New York Times ☛ Ukraine and Russia Complete First Prisoner Exchange Since Plane Crash

    The swap came a week after the crash of a Russian military transport plane that Moscow said was carrying Ukrainian prisoners.

  • Meduza ☛ Putin says Russian military transport plane was shot down by Patriot missile system — Meduza

  • New York Times ☛ Thursday Briefing: Iran Is ‘Not Looking for War’

    Also, a coming E.U. decision on Ukraine funding.

  • Meduza ☛ Russia and Ukraine exchange prisoners in first official swap since military plane crash — Meduza

  • Meduza ☛ Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers submits updated bill on amending mobilization rules to parliament — Meduza

  • France24 ☛ Russian war critic Nadezhdin submits bid to challenge Putin for presidency

    Russian anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin said on Wednesday he had submitted 105,000 signatures in his support to the Central Election Commission (CEC) to underpin his bid to challenge Vladimir Putin in an upcoming presidential election.

  • Latvia ☛ Russian grain import ban in Latvia a symbolic step, say politicians

    The planned ban on Russian grain imports is a more symbolic move that politicians say could help convince other Member States of the need for a common ban. One of the largest grain processors in the Baltics thinks that transit should also be restricted on Baltic scale, Latvian Television reported on January 30.

  • Off Guardian ☛ DISCUSS: Is “World War 3” really on the horizon?

    There’s a lot of “World War Three” in the news right now. Grant Shapps, the UK’s defence minister has claimed we have “moved from a post-war to a pre-war world”, whatever that means.

  • JURIST ☛ European Parliament opens investigation into Latvia member over Russia agent allegations

    According to officials, the European Parliament (EP) opened an investigation Tuesday into Tatjana Ždanoka, a Latvian member of the assembly who has been accused of working as a Russian agent for several years.

  • LRT ☛ Russia detains Lithuanian border trespasser, Foreign Ministry not informed

    Russian services claim that a Lithuanian citizen has been detained after illegally entering the country from Estonia. The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, however, says it has no information on the incident.

  • LRT ☛ Closing Russian schools in Lithuania ‘not on the table’ – minister

    Lithuanian Education, Science and Sport Minister Gintautas Jakštas, who earlier this month unveiled plans to phase out Russian schools, said on Wednesday that the issue “is not on the table” now.

  • LRT ☛ Russia links cloud business of impeached Lithuanian president’s son-in-law – LRT Investigation

    The State Security Department (VSD) has confirmed to the LRT Investigation Team the information about threats related to the business connections of Aivaras Stumbras, the son-in-law of impeached Lithuanian President Rolandas Paksas.

  • RFA ☛ Russian warship conducts exercise in South China Sea

    Frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov carried out anti-submarine drills as the Russian Navy reaffirmed its presence in the region.

  • RFERL ☛ At Least 50 People Died In Custody Across Russia Last Year, Report Says

    At least 50 people died in Russian pretrial detention centers, special detention centers, courts, police stations, and police cars last year, according to Next, a group that analyzed reports from government departments and the media.

Environment

• Overpopulation ☛ Biodiversity and the role of human population: a debate

  It is the rich minority’s consumption that mainly affects the status of the Earth’s life support system, according to a response in Svenska Dagbladet by David Collste at Stockholm Resilience Center and Jennifer Hinton at the University of Lund to an Op-ed by Malte Andersson and Frank Götmark. But will the poor majority consent to remain poor, and does it make sense to worry about consumption but not the number of consumers? ask Andersson and Götmark in reply. See their responses below — and share your own opinion in the comment section.

• Tom's Hardware ☛ Startups are raking in up to $85,000 per day by recycling gold and copper from electronics thrown in the trash — e-waste 'gold mining' efforts are expanding

  E-waste is quickly becoming one of the biggest environmental hazards affecting our world today. More than 50 million tons of electronics get tossed in the trash, with much of that garbage being sent to third-world countries (most notably India) for recycling. It's an environmental nightmare that's projected to become substantially worse over the next decade due to our insatiable desire for new phones, laptops, gaming PCs, TVs, and anything that requires electricity to run.

• The Register UK ☛ Alphabet just banked $3.0 billion by stretching the life of its servers

  Google's parent company, Alphabet, has revealed it banked $3.0 billion by extending the working life of its hardware.

  Alphabet first decided to extend the life of its kit in 2021, when it stretched the life of servers from three to four years, and networking kit from four to five years. In 2023 it decided both types of hardware could run for six years before replacement.

• ADF ☛ New Report Sheds Light on ‘Dark’ Industrial Fishing Vessels

  About 75% of the world’s industrial fishing vessels are not publicly tracked, with many of them hiding their positions at sea by turning off their automatic identification systems (AIS).

  The practice, known as “going dark,” mostly is concentrated in West and North Africa and South Asia, according to a new report by Nature magazine. Researchers determined this by using artificial intelligence, collecting AIS data and analyzing 2 million gigabytes of satellite data from the European Space Agency between 2017 and 2021.

  Global Fishing Watch spearheaded the Nature study.

• Gregory Hammond ☛ Why I Want To Live In A 15-Minute City

  Imagine a city where you weren’t more than 15 minutes away from work, or 15 minutes away from anything you need. For some, it’s hard to believe as many people are used to having everything be further away, or you feel everything should be further away as you don’t want it “in your backyard“, or you want to have space. There are many positives to being in a 15-minute city that I think many people could benefit from.

• Energy/Transportation

  • New York Times ☛ G.M. Profits Hurt by Electric Car Business and Strike

    The automaker has placed a bet on electric vehicles, but it has struggled to produce and sell the vehicles in large numbers.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Where did the bike lanes come from? A deep dive into Ann Arbor’s bike infrastructure

    In fall 2019, Ann Arbor opened the city’s first two-way protected bikeway along William Street. Since then, the city has installed more bikeways, including two-way bikeways on Division Street and First Street in 2021. The city has recently also improved existing bike lanes along State Street, greeting returning students in fall 2023 with a freshly painted, protected bike lane running from the Michigan Union to Oosterbaan Field House. The Michigan Daily set out to investigate the motivation for these improvements and what might come next.

    In an interview with The Daily, Maura Thomson, Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority communications manager, said the city decided on median-protected bikeways after spending time gathering community feedback on the idea.

  • The Atlantic ☛ America Is Missing Out on the Best Electric Cars

    But you know what EV you can’t easily buy in the U.S.? A Changli Freeman, which at $1,200 is one of the cheapest cars in the world. As a professional car reviewer, I couldn’t travel to test-drive interesting cars during the early pandemic, so I did the next best thing: went to the website Alibaba, and bought a Changli. After I paid $2,000 for shipping and customs, the car arrived at my doorstep months later in a massive cardboard box. It barely looks like a car, and barely is one: It has a top speed of about 25 miles per hour and battery range of about 27 miles, according to my own tests. But it’s not a toy: It has a roof rack, a radio that plays MP3s, and even a backup camera. I use it for far more of my basic transportation needs than you’d guess was possible.

  • India Times ☛ GM to cut spending by $1 billion on robotaxi unit Cruise in 2024

    General Motors is cutting spending by about $1 billion on its troubled robotaxi unit Cruise in 2024. Last week, Cruise disclosed probes by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission stemming from an October 2 accident in San Francisco. GM CEO Mary Barra said the company will "refocus and relaunch Cruise" and will soon disclose a timetable for resuming operations.

  • DJ Adams ☛ Ghost cratch fitted

    Here are a few photos of the finished item.

  • CBC ☛ His truck was stolen — twice. Authorities knew where it was. But it still took 17 days to get it back

    "You can track them all over the place, but if you don't have the police presence to reel them in, you're wasting money," Walker said. "What's the point?"

    Walker said he believes if it hadn't been for his incessant efforts in contacting the various agencies and the inquiries made last week by CBC, his truck would still be sitting in an unopened container.

• Wildlife/Nature

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Radio Bulletin Helps Chhattisgarh Villagers Avoid Elephant Conflict

    Sponsored by Chhattisgarh forest department, the short bulletin, first of its kind radio programme in the country, throws light on the locations of the elephant herds and their movements in the regions, thus sounding alert to the locals not to cross the paths of the wild animals.

  • The Revelator ☛ What One Researcher Learned Studying Grizzlies for 40 Years

Finance

• Silicon Angle ☛ Alphabet’s stock falls as advertising revenue falls short of Wall Street’s targets

  Shares of Alphabet Inc. fell more than 5% in after-hours trading today after it reported a solid fourth-quarter earnings beat but missed expectations on advertising revenue. The company reported its fastest quarter in terms of revenue growth since early 2022, with sales rising by 13% from a year earlier, to $86.31 billion.

• Latvia ☛ Latvian Capital Markets Forum happening February 7

  Next week, on February 7, the Bank of Latvia will be hosting the Latvian capital market forum 2024 uner the slogan "Capable companies – a more capable country".

• France24 ☛ France offers police €1,900 Olympics bonus to stave off strike action

  French police working on the Paris Olympics will receive a one-off bonus of up to 1,900 euros ($2,060), the interior ministry said Tuesday under a major public pay deal intended to placate trade unions.

• Barry Hess ☛ How Do Search Ads Run the World?

  Even though I had visited these pages several times this afternoon, it took me half an hour to figure where all they were and document it. That should help in the future if…

• Business Insider ☛ Why don't many executives take pay cuts to avoid layoffs? An ex-Microsoft HR VP explains.

  Take Google or Microsoft for example, two companies with very similar math. These companies both have around 200,000 employees. Both have laid off somewhere around 10,000 employees in the last year or so. And both CEOs are paid similar amounts, with salaries of around $2 million a year.

  For these companies, cutting 10,000 employees saves them in the neighborhood of a billion dollars a year in costs. Cutting the CEO's salary entirely would save just 0.2% of that.

• Firstpost ☛ Microsoft, Google want to push hard into AI. Ballooning costs, shareholders may hold them back [Ed: Missing the point there's no gold to be found, it's mostly a distraction with hype]

  Microsoft and Google have been investing heavily into AI and AI bots. However, because of ballooning costs, and pressure from shareholders, they might have to slowdown and justify their expenditure

• Game Rant ☛ Sega of America Is Laying Off Staff

  Sega of America is laying off 61 of its staff, continuing a tragic trend within the gaming industry. Unfortunately, 2024 is already proving alarming for developers, particularly with tech giants like Microsoft cutting as many as 1,900 staff. Now it appears Sega might be preparing to announce its own layoffs in its American division.

  Over the past year, Sega has been ramping up efforts to grow its industry presence through its many IPs such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Yakuza, Persona, and a host of others. Interestingly, Sega also gained the rights to Angry Birds in August 2023, thanks to its Rovio acquisition. By December, the company confirmed that it was working on multiple new Sonic mobile titles along with its Angry Birds for PC and console efforts, as part of Sega's global expansion ambitions. Despite this seemingly promising roadmap, Sega is also looking to trim its staff in the coming months.

• SEGA of America Will See a Layoff of 61 Employees

  SEGA of America is set to lay off 61 employees on March 8, 2024. The layoff was revealed in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice filed in Orange County, California. The news, initially brought to attention by the Twitter/X account @WhatLayoff, sheds light on the challenging employment landscape in the gaming industry.

• Business Insider ☛ Google's layoffs already impacted its culture. Now they're affecting its bottom line.

  It's never too early to learn the value of a dollar. Check out this third-grade teacher who charges her students "rent" and lets them spend fake money on homework passes and other perks.

  In today's big story, we're looking at highlights from two of the world's biggest tech companies' earnings reports, including how much layoffs cost for one of them.

• Square Enix Absorbs I Am Setsuna Developer Amidst Industry-Wide Layoff Spree

  For the second year, Square Enix is absorbing one of its subsidiaries into the company, as reported by Gamebiz.

  In what the company describes as an "absorption-type merger", Square Enix will absorb Tokyo RPG Factory, a JRPG-focused subsidiary studio. As a result, the surviving company will inherit all assets and liabilities of Tokyo RPG Factory, which will cease to exist as an independent entity.

  Tokyo RPG Factory, established in 2014, is known for developing solid JRPG outings like I Am Setsuna, Lost Sphear, and Oninako. These games, released for platforms like PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PS Vita, and PC, aimed to recapture the essence of the "golden age" of Japanese role-playing games. The studio's establishment a decade ago was part of Square Enix's strategy to revisit and reinvigorate the classic JRPG genre - a former specialty of theirs for most of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• YLE ☛ Häkkänen: Dual citizenship should only be granted reciprocally

  The Minister of Defence is calling for Finland to reconsider its laws on multiple citizenships.

• JURIST ☛ Trump lawyer alleges conflict of interest in E. Jean Carroll defamation case

  A defense lawyer for former US President Donald Trump filed a letter in US District Court on Monday that argued a judge in a recent defamation lawsuit should have recused himself from the case.

• Pro Publica ☛ Did Drug Traffickers Funnel Millions of Dollars to Mexican President López Obrador’s First Campaign?

  Years before Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected as Mexico’s leader in 2018, U.S. drug-enforcement agents uncovered what they believed was substantial evidence that major cocaine traffickers had funneled some $2 million to his first presidential campaign.

  According to more than a dozen interviews with U.S. and Mexican officials and government documents reviewed by ProPublica, the money was provided to campaign aides in 2006 in return for a promise that a López Obrador administration would facilitate the traffickers’ criminal operations.

• Futurism ☛ AI Companies Lose $190 Billion After Dismal Financial Reports

  In short, has Wall Street really hit peak AI? Are we looking at a bubble that's about to burst? At the end of the day, it's all going to hinge on whether AI companies can figure out a way to make money.

• Reuters ☛ AI companies lose $190 billion in market cap after Alphabet and Microsoft report

  AI-related companies lost $190 billion in stock market value late on Tuesday after Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab, Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), opens new tab delivered quarterly results that failed to impress investors who had sent their stocks soaring.

  The selloff following the tech giants' reports after the bell underscored investors' elevated expectations following an AI-fueled stock market rally in recent months that propelled their shares to record highs with the promise of incorporating the technology across the corporate landscape.

• BW Businessworld Media Pvt Ltd ☛ PayPal To Cut 2500 Jobs Amidst Industry Competition, Cost Concerns

  The layoffs at PayPal align with a broader trend in the tech industry, where companies like Block, the owner of Cash App and Square, has recently undertaken similar measures. Google, too, has not been immune, with layoffs in its Assistant and hardware divisions. The wave of job cuts extends across various prominent tech entities, including Discord, eBay, Riot Games, TikTok, Microsoft, iRobot, Amazon, Unity, and Duolingo, collectively resulting in thousands of job losses in January alone.

• The Nation ☛ Dumbo-GOP

• Democracy Now ☛ Biden’s Middle East Policy “Leading Us into a War Whose Aims We Have Not Defined”

  President Biden says he holds Iran responsible for the drone killing of three U.S. soldiers at a base in Jordan and that he has decided on a U.S. response. Tehran has denied any involvement in the attack and threatened to “decisively respond” to any U.S. retaliation. Responsibility for the strike was claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a term used to describe a loose coalition of militias that oppose U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. “This is leading us into a war whose aims we have not defined, whose exit we cannot envision,” says Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, who warns that “continued warfare in Gaza by the Israelis is a direct threat to U.S. national interests.”

• EDRI ☛ Council to vote on EU AI Act: What’s at stake?

  Despite making very few compromises in the negotiations, the governments of France and Germany have argued that the AI Act will be too restrictive, specifically in terms of the rules on general purpose AI systems (GPAI), and both countries raise issues relating to law enforcement agencies. France in particular wanted to have very little transparency and oversight of police and migration control agencies’ use of AI systems. In fact, during its Presidency, France succeeded in introducing a blanket exemption for any use of AI for “national security” purposes, giving Member States a huge loophole to exploit when they wish to deploy AI-based surveillance technologies and bypassing all AI Act human rights safeguards. More recently, France has faced allegations of industry lobbying with conflict of interest in relation to the country’s strong stance against regulation of GPAI.

• India Times ☛ PayPal laying off about 2,500 employees to 'right-size' the company

  Last year around the same time, PayPal announced to cut around 2,000 jobs, or 7 per cent of its workforce. The online payments company said it was forced to make the decision as it faces "the challenging macro-economic environment."

• India Times ☛ PayPal is cutting thousands of jobs: Read CEO’s letter to employees

  The brutal layoff spree in the tech industry is showing no sings of going away anytime soon. PayPal has announced that it will lay if 9% of its total workforce. As per a report by Bloomberg, PayPal has close to 29,900 employees. This means that around 2,500 roles will be eliminated.

• India Times ☛ AI companies lose $190 billion in market cap after Alphabet and Microsoft report

  The selloff following the tech giants' reports after the bell underscored investors' elevated expectations following an AI-fueled stock market rally in recent months that propelled their shares to record highs with the promise of incorporating the technology across the corporate landscape.

• Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

  • France24 ☛ No, the Israeli army didn't drop booby-trapped cans of food into Gaza [Ed: Social control media breeds mental problems, based on lies]

    In a video that has gone viral, a man in Gaza accuses the Israeli army of dropping booby-trapped cans of food into the besieged Palestinian enclave, claiming that the Israeli army left them behind to try and trick Gazans into trying to eat them. These cans do contain fuses used to set off mines, but the labels clearly state that they contain "fuses". They will not, however, explode when they are opened, says an expert.

  • The Hill ☛ Taylor Swift conspiracy theories engulf conservative social media

    That’s attracted attention from the political world, with the Biden campaign said to be interested in a “dream” endorsement from Swift, according to an article published Monday by The New York Times. Swift endorsed Biden in 2020 and has been somewhat active in politics, also endorsing Democrat Phil Bredesen against Republican Marsha Blackburn when the latter was first elected to the Senate in 2018.

    Swift’s incredible popularity is also bringing to the forefront various ugly sides of 21st century American life, from explicit AI-generated deepfakes of the superstar that briefly closed down Taylor Swift searches this week on X to unfounded conspiracy theories.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Reason ☛ She Was Arrested for Her Journalism. A Federal Court Says She Can't Sue.

  Priscilla Villarreal, also known as "Lagordiloca," has sparked a debate about free speech and who, exactly, is a journalist.

• JURIST ☛ Thailand Constitutional Court rules attempts to change royal insult law are illegal

  The case stems from a petition that alleged the MFP violated the “lèse-majesté” law during the country’s 2023 elections. The campaign saw the party run on a platform of reform, including promises to make changes to Section 112 of the Criminal Code. The law stipulates, “Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, the Queen, the Heir-apparent or the Regent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years.” One man recently received 50 years in jail for social media posts that were deemed to be defamatory towards the royal family.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• CPJ ☛ CPJ presents joint report on declining press freedom in Greece

  The Committee to Protect Journalists joined seven other international press freedom organizations on Tuesday in a joint report after a mission to Athens in September 2023.

• CPJ ☛ Media Report: Stemming the Tide of Greek Media Freedom Decline

  This report provides a detailed analysis of the most serious challenges facing media freedom in Greece, exploring the four major systemic themes identified by the delegation. It also provides an assessment of the impact of different measures taken by the government in the last few years to try and address these issues, and offers the first international assessment of the work of the government’s Task Force for the safety of journalists, which was established in 2022 after a recommendation by the European Commission. The report also provides multiple detailed recommendations in each of the chapters to both the Greek government and journalists and media workers for steps that can be taken to achieve progress and further stem the tide of media freedom decline in the country. The mission partners hope it will contribute to the debate within Greece about the factors behind the recent period of crisis and offer suggestions for positive reform moving forward.

• Press Gazette ☛ News media job cuts 2024 tracked: Year starts with at least 650 redundancies

  The biggest job losses were planned at Canada’s Bell Media and CBC, Reach in the UK, and News Corp internationally.

  But in 2024 so far the tide has yet to slow, with hundreds affected by closures and rounds of redundancies in January alone at a range of publication types in the UK, Ireland, US and Canada.

• Press Gazette ☛ MPs question media ownership rules amid Telegraph sale probe

  Alicia Kearns, the Conservative chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, warned against the newspaper group’s purchase by investment fund Redbird IMI, which is majority owned by the vice president of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

  Culture minister Julia Lopez also faced calls to avoid “selling England by the pound” as she took questions in the Commons about the proposed takeover on Tuesday.

Civil Rights/Policing

• New York Times ☛ Farmers Block Traffic Near Paris With Tractors Before Macron’s Speech

  Protesters blocking roads in and out of Paris, who say farms are squeezed by low prices and excessive regulation, seemed unmoved by promises from Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

• RFERL ☛ 'All Doors Are Closed' For Single And Unaccompanied Afghan Women Under The Taliban

  Single and unaccompanied women, including an estimated 2 million widows, say they are essentially prisoners in their homes and unable to carry out the even the most basic of tasks.

• RFA ☛ Ahead of Tibetan New Year, China urges monks to ‘expose, denounce’ Dalai Lama

  Tibetan New Year, known as Losar, this year falls on Feb. 10, the same day as China’s Lunar New Year, the biggest holiday of the year.

• Vice Media Group ☛ Austin Gave Poor Families a Basic Income. It Changed Their Lives.

  Austin gave 135 low-income households $1,000 each month for a year, and tracked how they used the money and affected their lives. The result, one year later, was that they mostly used the money to pay their rent and other housing costs, according to a new report.

• OpenRightsGroup ☛ Are British Data Rights falling behind our EU neighbours?

  The EU appears ahead when it comes to regulating big tech. British citizens will have to wait until the Digital Markets, Competitions, and Consumer Bill comes into force to see whether Apple will face the same kind of regulation in the UK market it now faces in Europe. The Bill grants the Competitions and Markets Authority the powers to regulate, but it’s still being determined whether they will, in this instance, follow an EU or North American model.

  However, What is certain is that changes to Apple’s App Store model would be much harder for the UK to implement independently. However, Apple has become the last of a long list of examples where tech companies provide products that comply with higher regulatory standards in the EU while distributing lower-quality products and services elsewhere. This opens up the option for the UK to follow the EU’s lead, but the choice exists because of the intervention of EU regulators controlling a much bigger market.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Public Knowledge ☛ Public Knowledge Legal Director John Bergmayer To Testify Before House Energy and Commerce on Sports and Streaming Services

  Public Knowledge Legal Director John Bergmayer testifies before the House Energy & Commerce Committee that sports leagues and streaming services should put viewers first.

• Meduza ☛ The Russian Internet’s domain problems and how the war in Ukraine narrows the Kremlin’s options for online controls

  On January 30, the Russian Internet failed for several hours. More specifically, websites using the .RU Top Level Domain stopped loading for Internet users both in Russia and abroad. The incident affected online giants like the search engine Yandex, the social network Vkontakte, and the e-commerce platform Ozon, as well as the websites of several major banks and online marketplaces. Russia’s Digital Development Ministry later confirmed the suspicions of specialists, announcing that the entire .RU domain temporarily lost its DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions), meaning that the digital signatures used to ensure normal web browsing suddenly broke. Meduza explains how this likely happened, where the RuNet is headed, and why the chaos of Russia’s Internet repressions after invading Ukraine has given way to a more coherent online isolation plan.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Techdirt ☛ Automakers Look To Neuter Maine ‘Right To Repair’ Bill Under The Pretense Of Privacy Concerns

  Last November, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) to pass a new state right to repair law designed to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical data to consumers and third-party independent repair shops.

• Digital Music News ☛ Spotify Premium Subscriber Goes Viral on Fentanylware (TikTok) After Realizing He’s Paying for Ads

  Digital services started with the promise of offering ad-free content for subscribers. But Spotify has slowly embraced the idea of ads for even its Spotify Premium tier—irking some long-time subscribers. Now a viral rant on Fentanylware (TikTok) has people considering what Digital Music News pointed out two years ago.