Leftovers

• James G ☛ Ambassador of asterisms, &c.

  Titles have been on my mind of late. One internet friend is presently considering an idea involving titles and the web. Lord John Marbury's long title in The West Wing television show is on my mind, too. And I just had a discussion about titles, typography, and various other matters pertaining to the English language.

• Ruben Schade ☛ The PA in Buzzy Explores the Airport

  Buzzy Explores the Airport is still such a fun game after all these years. You arrive at this virtual airport where you can wander around, see the luggage being sorted, board an aeroplane, and click everything in sight. It even runs on ScummVM on modern hardware.

• Ruben Schade ☛ I pre-ordered the Tangara music player

  Is it preorder or pre-order? I guess Chief Wiggum was right, every generation hyphenates the way it wants to. The problem is, I can never decide.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Identify Speech Trait That Foreshadows Cognitive Decline

    A hidden signal.

• Education

  • Reason ☛ Pano Kanelos: 'Ideology Is the Death of Ideas'

    The president of the new University of Austin wants to reverse the decline of higher education in America.

• Hardware

  • CNX Software ☛ Firefly Core-3562JQ Rockchip RK3562J industrial SoM works in the -40 to +85°C temperature range

    Firefly Core-3562JQ is a system-on-module based on Rockchip RK3562J SoC – the industrial-grade version of the Rockchip RK3562 quad-core Cortex-A53 Tablet SoC – designed to operate in the -40 to 85°C industrial temperature range and suitable for digital signage, industrial control systems, industrial PLCs, energy data concentrators, smart healthcare, self-service terminals, and more.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Intel's plan to postpone chip plant in Italy confirmed by the country's Industry Minister

    Intel has shelved plans to build an advanced packaging and chip assembly plant in Italy. The Italian Industry Minister announced the postponement at a presser in Verona, in the north of the country, this week.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science Alert ☛ Mysterious, Rapid Surge in Legionnaires' Disease Linked to Cleaner Air

    A strange new risk factor emerges.

  • New York Times ☛ Severe Malnutrition in Young Children in Gaza Is Rising Fast, UNICEF Says

    Experts have been alarmed by not only the number of children suffering from malnutrition, but how quickly their health is deteriorating.

  • New York Times ☛ Another Gaza Aid Convoy Ends in Violence, With at Least 20 Killed

    The Gaza Health Ministry accused Israel of a “targeted” attack. Israel’s military denied the accusation, blaming Palestinian gunmen for the violence.

  • teleSUR ☛ Kenya To Boost Healthcare, Under-Served Population

    According to the REACH initiative partners, Kenya has enlisted over 107,831 CHWs, of whom 25,000 will be trained in the first phase.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Brazil is fighting dengue with bacteria-infected mosquitos

    As dengue cases continue to rise in Brazil, the country is facing a massive public health crisis.

  • Reason ☛ The Text Of The Policy Approved By The Judicial Conference

    I obtained a copy of the report approved by the Judicial Conference. First, why on earth could this memo not have been issued contemporaneously with the press release? This may be one of the most-botched governmental rollouts since HealthCare.gov.

  • European Commission ☛ Factsheet on European Health Data Space

    European Commission Factsheet Brussels, 15 Mar 2024

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • TechSpot ☛ Tech layoffs are becoming the new normal

    The big picture: Job cuts in the tech industry last year were attributed to the need to economize, driven by inflation and a hiring spree during the pandemic. So, what's the explanation this year, especially when many of these firms have accumulated a significant amount of cash?

    IT jobs are no longer the safe bet they once were. Since the start of the year, 209 tech companies have laid off 50,312 employees, according to Layoffs.fyi. Last year, a total of 1,191 tech companies gave 269,180 employees their walking papers.

    These aren't just startups who are letting their workers go. Alphabet, Amazon, Cisco, eBay, Meta, Microsoft, SAP, and Unity Software have all downsized their staff in recent months and in sizable numbers. PayPal is yet another example: it announced in January that it planned to eliminate 2,500 jobs or nine percent of its workforce.

  • GO Media ☛ Be Careful: Update Minecraft And Your Worlds Might Get Destroyed

    If you are playing Minecraft on PC using the Xbox app, be careful before you update the popular open-world survival game. Developer Mojang says you might end up destroying your saved worlds—unless you do some digital repairing.

    On March 15, at around 2:30 am EST, Mojang’s official support account on Twitter warned all PC players using the Xbox app not to update Minecraft through the app. “If you do so, your worlds may be lost,” said Mojang, like some sinister and overly dramatic comic book villain.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Security Week ☛ Tech Support Firms Agree to $26M FTC Settlement Over Fake Services

      Restoro and Reimage agree to a $26 million settlement after selling fake antivirus and tech services to undercover FTC agents.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Reddit reveals FTC inquiry into deals licensing its users’ data for Hey Hi (AI) training

      Reddit said Friday that the Federal Trade Commission has opened an inquiry into the social control media platform’s sale, licensing or sharing of its users’ posts and other content to outside organizations for use in training artificial intelligence models.

• Defence/Corruption/Conflict

  • The Straits Times ☛ North Korean leader Kim oversees air warfare drills, urges preparation for combat: KCNA

    Pyongyang's drills took place after joint annual drills involving South Korea and the US were held.

  • RFA ☛ Nursing homes for North Korean war heroes are becoming resorts

    Built to show Kim Jong Un cares about the veterans, the facilities are now catering to wealthy elite.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Which country trusts institutions the most? You’d be surprised.

    In a survey of trust in institutions, China shows up at the top while the U.S. is nearer the bottom. We explore global trust in six graphics.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Trade in spotlight as China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi set to visit Australia, New Zealand

    China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi will next week visit Australia and New Zealand, officials said Thursday, with the diplomatic blitz expected to focus on easing trade.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Australia PM to talk wine tariffs with China Foreign Minister in Canberra

    Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Saturday the removal of Chinese tariffs on Australian wine would be on the agenda when he meets China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi next week in Canberra.

  • RFA ☛ Hanoi asks Beijing to abide by law while drawing baseline in Gulf of Tonkin

    Analysts say China’s newly announced baseline is not in line with U.N. Law of the Sea.

  • YLE ☛ Vaasa police foil student's school shooting plan

    The suspect was taken into custody earlier this week after police received a tip-off about a video in which a 23-year-old woman talked about launching a violent attack on an educational institute.

  • New York Times ☛ Shabab Militants Lay Siege to Hotel in Somali Capital

    The attack in the capital, which left three dead and 27 injured, points to Al Shabab’s ability to continue terrorizing the country, despite a Somali government offensive and American airstrikes.

  • RFA ☛ Blood Money launches campaign to ban aviation fuel to Myanmar junta

    Airstrikes have killed nearly 1,000 civilians during the country’s 3-year civil war.

  • France24 ☛ No, these images show real dead Palestinian babies, not dolls

    A video of a Palestinian mother holding her dead baby twins in her arms after they were killed in Israeli airstrike began to circulate widely online after it was posted on March 3. Some accounts, however, have claimed that the scene was staged and the dead babies are, in fact, dolls. However, the two dead babies are real. News agencies AP and Reuters reported details about their identities and forensic doctors interviewed by our team confirmed that the video does indeed show human remains.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • France24 ☛ Russian presidential election: The dashed hopes of Russian exiles in France

      Exiled Russians who have fled to France since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine have few illusions about the outcome of Russia's presidential election. Voting began this Friday, with the main aim being to ensure a high turnout, rather than deciding on Vladimir Putin's re-election, which is a certainty. The vote is overshadowed by last month's death in prison of Putin's main opponent Alexei Navalny – widely denounced as a political assassination by the Russian opposition. Navalny's death also brought much shock and sadness to Russians exiled in France, with many of them taking part in protests.

• Environment

  • Science Alert ☛ Ancient Volcanic Eruption Near Japan Shook The World With a Record Blast

    Let's hope the next one's a long way off.

  • New York Times ☛ Court Temporarily Halts S.E.C.’s New Climate Rules

    Two fracking companies had challenged requirements that some businesses disclose more information about the risks they face from climate change.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • CS Monitor ☛ Brazil’s Lula is losing his war against illegal miners in the Amazon

      Brazil’s President Lula is backing expensive operations to combat illegal mining and other crimes in the Amazon.

    • Stanford University ☛ Brake the cycle: SUDPS enforces bike traffic laws

      Following many campus bike accidents, SUDPS increased its enforcement of bike traffic laws.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Kev Quirk ☛ The Case of the Jumping Eel

      My largest, and one of my favourite, fish (my fire eel) jumped out of his tank last night. He's managed to survive...so far.

      I generally work from home on a Friday, and today was no different. So I got up, got myself and the kids ready, and headed to my home office. The room was dark, and I could see a large black thing on the floor. My first reaction was that one of the the dogs has shit in the house. Then I realised it was way to big to be a dog shit.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Kent Stater ☛ Campus Race to Zero Waste continues amidst Water Sustainability Forum

      As the campus-wide Race to Zero Waste continues, students and faculty of Kent State along with members of the community were invited to learn from experts about building better water systems.

• Finance

  • Latvia ☛ Latvian bank profits doubled last year

    The Latvian banking sector made a profit of EUR 622.215 million last year, which is almost twice as much as the profit of banks in 2022, according to data published by the Latvian Central bank (Bank of Latvia) on March 14.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Gold beans all the rage with China’s Gen Z as deflation bites

    The gold beans and other forms of gold jewellery are increasingly viewed as the safest investment bet.

  • RFA ☛ China stiffens regulation after recent stock market collapse

    Draft guidelines cover increased scrutiny of public listing candidates and gatekeeper intermediaries.

  • YLE ☛ Bank of Finland: Economy will recover sooner than forecast

    The central bank says that the Finnish economy is still in recession but will begin to bounce back towards the end of the year, and the recovery will be faster than previously projected.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Samsung expected to win $6B+ in CHIPS Act funding [Ed: This is not capitalism. This is bailout or handout. It's taxpayers basically paying directly to workers of a private company, not the public sector. This is corruption that Big Media has "normalised" and persuaded us is "beneficial". To whom? Media owners. So this is more like the Chinese government holding the corporations, or perhaps the other way around. There's no real business going on, it's all grifters and crooked people with connections and demands.]

    Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is reportedly poised to receive more than $6 billion from the federal government to expand its chip manufacturing infrastructure in the U.S. Bloomberg reported the development late Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Reason ☛ Nathan Wade Resigns From Trump Prosecution in Georgia

    Neither Wade's letter of resignation, nor District Attorney Fani Willis' letter accepting his resignation, grapple with what a complete unforced error their relationship was.

  • New York Times ☛ Supreme Court Sets Rules for Blocking Citizens From Officials’ Accounts

    In two unanimous rulings, the justices tried to distinguish between private conduct, which is not subject to the First Amendment, and state action, which is.

  • New York Times ☛ Biden Embraces Schumer’s Speech Castigating Netanyahu

    President Biden did not explicitly endorse any of the specific criticisms in the speech. But his comments were the latest step in his escalating public critique of the Israeli prime minister.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Off Guardian ☛ Winning the Meme War – #SolutionsWatch

    Famous Criminal Bill Gates, GAVI and governments around the world are scrambling to censor the infowarriors of the internet age who are unlocking minds and awakening the masses, so it only makes sense that they’re cracking down on the most simple, effective and popular medium of information exchange: memes.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 2 British firms helped UK-based Hong Kong activists campaign for city, court hears in Jimmy Lai trial

    A key prosecution witness in the national security trial of media mogul Jimmy Lai has named two British public relations agencies as helping UK-based Hong Kong activists campaign and meet with politicians in the wake of the 2019 protests and unrest.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • YLE ☛ Majority of Finland's 2023 Pride events dealt with hate incidents

    Two out of three Pride events organised in Finland were subjected to hate incidents, according to a report by gender and sexual minority rights group Seta.

  • JURIST ☛ India Supreme Court to take up petitions challenging controversial citizenship laws

    The Indian Supreme Court announced Friday it will take up a batch of petitions on Tuesday, which seek to challenge the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) and the recently introduced Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024. The CAA is an Indian law that fast-tracks citizenship for persecuted minorities from neighboring countries.

  • New York Times ☛ Tesla Settles Discrimination Suit With Former Factory Worker

    The carmaker and energy company settled with a Black man who had worked at its California factory and had won a $3 million judgment against the company.

  • New York Times ☛ National Association of Realtors Agrees to Slash Commissions to Settle Lawsuits

    The National Association of Realtors will pay $418 million in damages and will amend several rules that housing experts say will drive down housing costs.

  • New York Times ☛ 4 Ways a Settlement Could Change the Housing Industry

    The influential National Association of Realtors agreed to make several changes to its policies to settle class-action lawsuits brought by home sellers who say they were forced to pay inflated commissions to real estate agents.

  • ACLU ☛ Fighting Back Against Discriminatory Laws That Impact People Living with HIV

    As a Black transgender woman and a former sex worker, it’s not unusual for me to face harassment and profiling from police. Regardless of whether we’re engaged in sex work or not, police frequently target transgender women like myself for searches and arrest, using anything from condoms to cash as “proof” we were engaged in sex work.

  • ACLU ☛ Why Allowing Chaplains in Public Schools Harms Students

    A 2023 Texas law allowing public schools to hire chaplains, or accept them as volunteers, to provide student support services has inspired more states to consider copycat legislation. In March 2024, the Florida Legislature passed a school chaplain bill, which now awaits the governor’s signature. Similar bills have been introduced in 13 other states: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Utah.

  • JURIST ☛ Hong Kong court upholds opposition activists national security data request convictions

    The Hong Kong Court of First Instance upheld pro-democracy activists Chow Hang-tung, Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong’s convictions of failing to comply with notice to provide information under Article 43 of the China-imposed National Security Law.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ New security law would not impact confidentiality of confession, Hong Kong Catholic Diocese says

    The enactment of Hong Kong’s homegrown security law would not change the confidential nature of confession, the city’s Catholic Diocese has said.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • JUVE ☛ Swiss government approves radical revisions to patent monopoly examination procedure

    The Council of States in Switzerland comprises the upper house of the Federal Assembly, and the lower house of the National Council. Earlier this week, the legislative body waved through radical changes to how the IPI, based in Bern, will examine novelty and inventive step when granting patents in the future.

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • JUVE ☛ English UPC cases rise, but German still dominant language [Ed: UPC is totally illegal and unconstitutional; England opted out, making it totally unfounded in law. JUVE has meanwhile taken many bribes to help legitimise this kangaroo court with lies, puff pieces, and spam. To be very clear, the UPC is the spread of EPO corruption to the EU. This court is there not because it's legal but because of the crime, and JUVE moreover played an active role and participated in this crime. It profited from it.]

      A high-ranking Unified Patent Court judge recently told a conference audience that the official internal language at the UPC is English. But this is not the case when it comes to the language of proceedings at the new court, where German dominates. Recently, however, English has caught up considerably.

• Trademarks

  • TTAB Blog ☛ TTABlog Test: Is VEUVE OLIVIER for Sparkling Wines Confusable with VEUVE CLICQUOT for Champagne?

    Petitioner MHCS sought cancellation of a registration for the mark VEUVE OLIVIER for sparkling wines, claiming a likelihood of confusion with the registered mark VEUVE CLICQUOT for champagne. Priority was not an issue because MHCS filed its underlying application first. The Board found the goods to be, in part, legally identical, since champagne is a type of sparkling wine. But what about the marks? How do you think this came out? MHCS v. Les Grands Chais De France, Cancellation No. 92075021 (March 8, 2024) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Martha B. Allard).

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Exclusive: Twitter/X Attorneys Seek Answer Deadline Extension as NMPA Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Proceeds

    Closer to March’s beginning, a federal court opted against dismissing outright the copyright monopoly lawsuit filed against Twitter/X by the NMPA. Now, the social platform has officially moved to extend the deadline for its answer.