Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Jan Lukas Else ☛ Extended content warning - Jan-Lukas Else
I realized recently that I wrote some cringe (to put it mildly) posts in my late adolescent phase. On the one hand, I would of course like to banish these posts from my blog, after all, my opinion has changed completely in some cases since then. But on the other hand, it would be a shame to let this part of my personal development simply disappear.
The posts I wrote back then also helped me to develop in some way. It certainly helped me to process my thoughts at times. Especially in difficult times, blogging was a good distraction for me.
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Rolling Stone ☛ The Inventor of Karaoke Has Died, But His Legacy Is Louder Than Ever
What drove Negishi to invent the Sparko Box? It’s simple: Like so many karaoke aficionados, he couldn’t sing. In the Sixties, working at his Tokyo electronics company, he always loved to sing, but was mocked for his awful voice. When an employee teased him for crooning badly around the office, Negishi mused, “If only they could hear my voice over a backing track!”
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[Repeat] Tedium ☛ Switching To Linux Full-Time: My Thoughts Two Months Later
Back in January, I informed the world that I had made the move to full-time Linux, and I think that thus far the experience has been quite good.
I’ve come to enjoy the laptop I’m using it on, an HP Envy, though there are elements of the experience that they don’t tell you about in the description on Amazon. (For anyone looking to buy an HP Envy 16: The top case is an absolute dent magnet, which stinks.)
But is it a perfect experience? Perhaps not. For today’s issue, I wanted to share a few observations I’ve made in the past couple of months of making Linux my way of digital life, good and bad.
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Juha-Matti Santala ☛ On content creation and personal web
Ana Rodriquez published a blog post titled You don’t have to be a “content creator” to have a website last Thursday. It’s a great piece and I wholeheartedly agree with the main message.
Having a personal website that is not controlled by commercial platforms that is accessible via your own domain is such a powerful position to be in. Even if at the beginning the content on that site is just your name and contact information and links to other platforms.
It’s powerful because you control it and you can expand it. You can link to your own website and not have to worry about Facebook or X or LinkedIn or Medium putting your stuff behind a login or paywall. With one domain, you can change where things link to without having to let everyone know things have moved around.
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CBC ☛ Hidden cameras capture bank employees misleading customers, pushing products that help sales targets
Marketplace has spoken confidentially to current and former bank employees from all the big banks: TD, RBC, BMO, Scotiabank and CIBC. CBC is concealing their identities because they fear professional repercussions. All expressed similar concerns about enormous sales pressure they say leads to potentially costly or otherwise dangerous financial products being pushed on customers.
"I had to mislead customers into getting products that they didn't need, to reach my sales target," said a recent BMO employee.
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Eric Walker ☛ On this day...
I was talking to my uncle the other day and my Grandfather (his dad) who was an accountant and had to bill his time to his clients by the hour kept record of pretty much everything he did but in very brief formats. He had a paper journal book for every year that would lay out people he met with and events in his life. For example, I saw the entry of where my mom was born (they wrote a different name than was hers so I guess they changed it later) in the morning and then in the afternoon it seems my grandfather had to go back to work as he then billed a client a handful of hours working on something. He also wrote down how much everything cost which was interesting to see that back then it only cost $18 for delivery and two nights in the hospital. Not sure how much insurance covers then but that is a shocking number compared to even what it cost for my kids 9-14 years ago.
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James G ☛ Bee Yourself
As I was walking this morning, I noticed a hand-written note that made me stop in my tracks. The note read: Bee yourself.
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James G ☛ The Garfield cup, and other Saturday evening musings
Today I entered a familiar pattern: worrying about on what project I should work next. I came up with a few ideas: a vinyl record cataloguing system (which I made!), experiments with a new form of smaller text embedding (which I did!), an application involving zero-knowledge proofs (this one, as has always been the case, never came to fruition: I wish I could think of a real use case).
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Science
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Hackaday ☛ NASA Engineers Poke Voyager 1 And Receive Memory Dump
For months, there has been a rising fear that we may have to say farewell to the Voyager 1 spacecraft after it began to send back garbled data. Now, in a sudden twist, Voyager 1 sent back a read-out of the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS) memory after a “poke” command, which both gives some hope that the spacecraft is in a better condition than feared while also allows engineers to dig through the returned memory read-out for clues. Although this data was not sent in the format that the FDS is supposed to use when it’s working correctly, it’s nevertheless readable.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ NASA's old supercomputers are causing mission delays — one has 18,000 CPUs but only 48 GPUs, highlighting dire need for update
NASA's supercomputing capabilities are insufficient for its tasks, leading to oversubscription and overburdening. An internal audit recommends transiting from CPUs to GPUs.
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Crooked Timber ☛ Occasional paper: When Armor Met Lips — Crooked Timber
Let’s pause here and rewind: this was five hundred million years ago. That’s the late Cambrian, if you’re a geology nerd. It’s before the dinosaurs. It’s before sharks or cockroaches or ferns. This is *old*. Complex life had barely gotten started. Life in general was pretty much confined to the oceans. But there were no fish yet — just invertebrates. Half a billion years, yeah? Long, long time.
And a lot of the stuff swimming around was weirdly alien. Again, if you’re a geology nerd, you know about stuff like Opabinia, Anomalocaris, or Hallucigenia. If you don’t, then let’s just say that you wouldn’t have recognized much from those ancient seas. Not just “no fish”. There were no clams or lobsters, no starfish or barnacles or crabs or anemones, no coral or kelp. The world was new. Those things hadn’t evolved yet.
But almost from the beginning, there was this thing: shell, plus tentacles.
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Futurism ☛ China Working on Giant Rail Gun to Shoot Astronauts Into Space
If actually built, it could greatly cut down on the amount of fuel such a craft would need to get to space, allowing it to carry bigger payloads — and save a considerable amount of money as well.
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SCMP ☛ China plans to build a giant rail gun to launch hypersonic planes into space, making Nasa’s dream come true
Essentially the goal is this: to use a giant electromagnetic launch track to accelerate a hypersonic aircraft to Mach 1.6. The aircraft would then separate from the track, ignite its engine and enter near space at seven times the speed of sound.
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Education
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International Business Times ☛ US School Begs for National Guard Help as Violence, Drug Use and Fight Clubs Erupt Daily
The school district has already requested police services more than 800 times this year, compared to roughly 1,100 counted in 2023, says Brockton's Police Chief.
The school, home to more than 3,500 students and located 25 miles south of Boston, is also experiencing safety and security issues and a budget crisis.
The lack of staff members willing to diffuse a feud comes after multiple teachers have suffered severe injuries while trying to stop fights.
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Hardware
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Hackaday ☛ Cheap DIY Microscope Lamp Makes Tiny Macro Shots Look Great
For optical microscopes, light is everything. If you don’t have a good amount of light passing through or bouncing off your sample, you’ve got nothing for your eyeballs or a camera to pick up. To aid in this regard, [Halogenek] whipped up a nifty microscope lamp with some LEDs.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ OpenAI aims to make its own AI processors — chip venture in talks with Abu Dhabi investment firm: report
OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, has reportedly estimated that the cost of building new semiconductor manufacturing facilities and supporting infrastructure could reach up to $7 trillion. While it is still unclear whether the chip venture is an OpenAI project or Sam Altman's project (most likely the latter), the CEO has been touring around the world talking to chipmakers and seeking support from nation-states, including discussions with Singapore's Temasek, as traditional venture capitalists are unlikely to invest such vast sums.
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Hackaday ☛ A Simple Seismometer You Can Build Yourself
If you’re a child, there are certain things you’re taught even though they’re probably not directly relevant to your life. We teach young kids all about dinosaurs, and we teach older kids all about how the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. We also teach kids about natural phenomena like earthquakes, and the equipment used to measure them. Namely, seismometers. You might like to satisfy your own child-like curiosity by building one of your own, like [mircemk] did.
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Hackaday ☛ A SPIF-fy Way Of Forming Metal
Thanks to 3D printing, most of us are familiar with the concept of additive manufacturing, and by extension, subtractive manufacturing. But what is it when you’re neither adding material nor taking it away to create something? Generally speaking, that’s called forming, and while there are tons of ways to do it, one you might not have heard of is single-point incremental forming (SPIF), and it’s pretty cool.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Cloudbooklet ☛ Italy Slaps Fentanylware (TikTok) with $10.9 Million Fine for Child Safety ‘French Scar’ Game
Italy fines Fentanylware (TikTok) $10.9M for child safety violations related to 'French Scar' game, highlighting growing concerns over online safety.
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Word to Steve Kirsch: The 1990s called. They want it antivax lies about shaken baby syndrome back
Roughly three decades ago now, there arose a particularly vile and insidious antivax lie, specifically the claim that the clinical entity known as “shaken baby syndrome” (these days called abusive head trauma) was in actuality a “misdiagnosis” for vaccine injury. Although it is not clear exactly who was responsible for originating the myth or when, it is clear that two sources were very much responsible for popularizing the lie. The first was Australian geologist named Viera Scheibner. The second were fans of a man named Alan Yurko, who was initially convicted in 1999 for the death of his girlfriend’s ten week old infant. Ever since then, the lie that shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma is in reality a “misdiagnosis” for “vaccine injury” has been a major part of antivaccine lore, promoted by a number of antivaxxers over the years, as well as by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), otherwise know (to me, at least) as a medical John Birch Society disguised as a medical professional society. So I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me when tech bro turned rabid antivaxxer Steve Kirsch posted on his Substack an article entitled The new rise of “shaken baby syndrome,” complete with a photo of a brain-injured child, you know, because that’s the sort of thing vile antivaxxers like Kirsch do.
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Logikal Solutions ☛ Medical Device Developer Linux
We desperately need a Medical Device Developer Linux distro. I know I’ve blogged about this before, but with all the wet-behind-the-ears kids thinking Agile is software engineering (it’s not) and that it is okay to push whatever steaming pile of excrement came out the back end of the nightly build onto the installed base because they are the Alpha testers . . . I have to vent again.
Our featured image was provided by blog.giddyup.io.
Actually what triggered this rant was Elive sending me an email touting their latest release, claiming they don’t sell anything and wanting $10 to download a new version. Oh, the 64-bit version isn’t official, just some 64-bit software in with 32.
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The Hindu ☛ How urban dwellers in India are getting drawn to forest bathing
According to him, an increasing number of corporates now understand the importance of mental well-being and its connection with Nature. For his corporate sessions, Aashish creates a simulated forest environment within the office premises. “We give them a glimpse of forest bathing in an indoor space by bringing in elements like plants and different objects from Nature such as shells, leaves for texture and potpourri to engage the sense of smell,” says Aashish.
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The Hill ☛ Funding cuts are pushing our national parks to the breaking point
At no point during these 50-plus years has the National Park System been properly funded — and that just isn’t acceptable.
More than five months into the 2024 fiscal year, Congress finally passed several appropriations bills — including funding the National Park Service and other public land agencies. The recently passed bills thankfully helped us avoid yet another full government shutdown.
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YLE ☛ Growing number of kids on disability
Mental health and neurodevelopmental disorders make up 80 percent of children's disability cases, according to Kela.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Cloudbooklet ☛ Microsoft Pop-Up Ads in Surveillance Giant Google Chrome on Windows
Discover how Microsoft's pop-up ads in Surveillance Giant Google Chrome on backdoored Windows are stirring controversy and user concerns.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ This self-driving startup is using generative AI to predict traffic
The new system, called Copilot4D, was trained on troves of data from lidar sensors, which use light to sense how far away objects are. If you prompt the model with a situation, like a driver recklessly merging onto a highway at high speed, it predicts how the surrounding vehicles will move, then generates a lidar representation of 5 to 10 seconds into the future (showing a pileup, perhaps). Today’s announcement is about the initial version of Copilot4D, but Waabi CEO Raquel Urtasun says a more advanced and interpretable version is deployed in Waabi’s testing fleet of autonomous trucks in Texas that helps the driving software decide how to react.
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The Register UK ☛ Pre-IPO Reddit lets ads be dressed up as promoted user posts
What's really happening here is that advertisers can use the Reddit Ads Manager to create normal user posts and then pay to make them appear prominently on the site and in the app as promoted posts, aka adverts. Up until now, it's been a bit more of a fiddly affair for brands. As we understand it, they've had to book an ad that links out to an external site, such as a landing page selling some stuff, or an ad that links to a separate user post on Reddit, or a banner ad.
Free-form ads instead look just like normal posts in people's feeds, with a promoted label, rather than a link off to somewhere else, and are crafted via the Ads Manager. There's no need to create a separate user post that an ad links to; the user post is the ad in free-form mode.
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Ben Tsai ☛ Wow and meh for ai
I just had another “wow” moment with ai—it took my rambling verbal thoughts (I’m using audiopen) about a somewhat technical topic that I was not expressing very well and somehow it summarized it and pulled out relevant details.
Overall i’ve been hesitant and unwilling to be bullish on ai. Why? It’s not intelligent and it’s overhyped. I’m disheartened by what it says about us in general. We are enamored and convinced by the form, and few people are willing to mine their way to the content.
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[Repeat] Tom's Hardware ☛ Vela AI uses Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 to enable safety-conscious smart bikes
The exact model used in the Copilot is a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. It works as the main processor and is aided by the Hailo AI in processing the images it captures using an Arducam camera module. The setup also includes a mount so it can be fixed to your bicycle's seat post or saddle rail. As an optional addition, you can use your smartphone to access the Copilot app to get even more control over the system.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Wellness surveillance makes workers unwell
"National conversation" sounds like one of those meaningless buzzphrases – until you live through one. The first one I really participated in actively was the national conversation – the global conversation – about privacy following the Snowden revelations.
This all went down when my daughter was five, and as my wife and I talked about the news, our kid naturally grew curious about it. I had to literally "explain like I'm five" global mass surveillance: [...]
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El País ☛ Daniel Noboa secretly creates database with genetic profiles of criminals in Ecuador
The government of Daniel Noboa is secretly creating a database of genetic profiles by deceiving prisoners in Ecuador’s prisons, according to three sources to which EL PAÍS has had access. The officials who carry out this task tell the inmates that these DNA samples, which will go to a state information bank, will help them be identified in the event of a massacre, something that happens in penitentiaries in the country; or in the event of identity theft. Prison workers are instructed to convince them not to consult with their lawyer and to make them believe that the procedure is part of normal prison routine. What these officials are concealing from their charges is that the latter have the right by law to refuse to have samples taken from them, and that this genetic information can be used to implicate them in crimes that they committed in the past or that they will perpetrate in the future. Performing this procedure is mandatory for toxicologists, anthropologists, forensic chemists and forensic psychologists.
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Wired ☛ Sinking Section 702 Wiretap Program Offered One Last Lifeboat
A bill introduced by senators Dick Durbin and Mike Lee to reauthorize the Section 702 surveillance program is the fifth introduced in the US Congress this winter. The authority is threatening to expire in a month, disrupting a global wiretapping program said to inform a third of articles in the President’s Daily Briefing—a morning “tour d’horizon” of US spies’ top concerns.
But the stakes aren't exactly so clear. With or without Congress, the Biden administration is seeking court approval to extend the 702 program into 2025. From the moment US representative Mike Johnson assumed the House speakership, he’s been unable to orchestrate a vote on the program. Outgunned most recently by Mike Turner, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Johnson was forced to kill a vote after a month of negotiations.
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Defence/Aggression
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ Why Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is Essential for India
In nutshell under the current laws, the migrants who have illegally entered Indian territory are not eligible to apply for citizenship. Such migrants could be arrested under the Foreigners Act and Indian Passport Act. A person can acquire citizenship by naturalisation if he/she is ordinarily resident of India for 12 years. Further, Under the Citizenship Act, 1955, one of the requirements for citizenship by naturalization is that the applicant must have resided in India during the last 12 months, as well as for 11 of the previous 14 years. The new Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 has made changes in laws, the Passport Act, and the Foreigners Act. Certain relaxations have ben introduced if undocumented immigrants belong to religious minorities (Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi, Jain, Christian) from three neighbouring countries of Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Sri Lanka has been excluded since Hindus are not persecuted there. Therefore, the Act intends to make it easier for persecuted people from India’s neighbouring countries to become citizens of India. It also exempts the illegal migrants to India before December 31, 2014, if persecuted and produce documents thereof. In case of these six minorities the amendment also relaxes the requirement of naturalization from 11 years to 5 years.
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Robert Reich ☛ Robert Reich (Friends, Should you be more worried about China...)
Should you be more worried about China siphoning off your personal data and manipulating your thoughts via TikTok, or American billionaires siphoning off your personal data and manipulating your thoughts via TikTok?
Personally, I don’t trust either.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Chinese-owned TikTok faces national security review in Canada
Canada is conducting a national security review of Chinese-owned TikTok’s proposed expansion of the popular video app in this country, Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Friday.
In a teleconference from Italy after meeting with his G7 counterparts, Champagne said the review under the Investment Canada Act had been quietly initiated in September 2023.
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New York Times ☛ TikTok Bill’s Progress Slows in the Senate
The slowdown in the Senate means that TikTok is likely to face weeks or even months of uncertainty about its fate in the United States. That could result in continued lobbying, alongside maneuvering by the White House, the Chinese government and ByteDance. It is also likely to prompt potential talks about deals — whether real or imagined — while the uncertainty of losing access to the app will hang over the heads of TikTok creators and its 170 million U.S. users.
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JURIST ☛ Canada government reveals it ordered national security review of TikTok
The Canadian government revealed on Thursday that it ordered a national security review of TikTok, a popular social control media app, back in September. The move was not made public until Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked about the national security review at a press conference in Windsor on Thursday.
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New Yorker ☛ How Gaza, Ukraine, and Fentanylware (TikTok) Are Influencing the Election
“Donald Trump’s vision, or lack of vision, of what the United States can be in the world is a risk of a kind we really haven’t had in any of our lifetimes,” Evan Osnos says.
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RFA ☛ US bill targeting TikTok sparks mixed reactions in China
TikTok, whose parent company is China’s ByteDance, has 170 million monthly American users. It has sparked security concerns in Washington that Beijing would use the app for propaganda or to sway American public opinion, particularly leading up to November’s presidential election.
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VOA News ☛ Niger Says Announces End to Military Cooperation With US
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid a rare visit to Niger a year ago in hopes of shoring up President Mohamed Bazoum, a stalwart ally in Western security efforts against jihadis.
Four months later, the military deposed Bazoum and put him under house arrest.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ TikTok: US diplomat says Beijing position 'supremely ironic'
“I find it supremely ironic that government officials here in China… have been criticising the United States for the debate we’re currently having on TikTok,” Burns said during an online seminar held by the East-West Center, a US-based research organisation.
“They won’t even let TikTok be available to 1.4 billion Chinese,” he said in response to a question about the avenues for American public diplomacy in China.
China’s government tightly controls the spread of information online and scrubs out social media content it deems politically sensitive.
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The Olive Press ☛ Madrid train bombings: How the 2004 terror attack changed Spain - as country marks 20th anniversary of its deadliest ever terrorist incident
SPAIN has been marking the 20th anniversary this Monday of the Madrid train bombings that killed 192 people and injured 2,000 others.
The Al Qaeda attack- the country’s biggest terrorist incident- is regarded as having influenced the general election held three days later which saw the PSOE socialists swept into power.
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New York Times ☛ Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses
In a caustic and discursive speech in Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump once again doubled down on a doomsday vision of the United States.
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Vox ☛ 2024-03-14 [Older] TikTok could avoid a ban with a sale. Finding a buyer won’t be easy. [Ed: TikTok is a filter/censor, not even remotely a tool of communication, and the same goes for Twitter and Facebook, banned already in China]
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-03-13 [Older] From China to USA: Rumble CEO Offers to Acquire TikTok and Ensure Data Security [Ed: Media should quit calling TikTok addicts (or worse, paid shills) "influencers". They're more like paid lobbyists or hired guns. They just illuminate the very nature of the problem.]
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-13 [Older] Why US lawmakers want to ban TikTok
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-12 [Older] US Lawmakers Say TikTok Won't Be Banned if It Finds a New Owner. but That's Easier Said Than Done
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-03-11 [Older] Bobby Kotick, Disgraced Former CEO of Activision Blizzard, Reportedly Wants to Buy TikTok
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-03-11 [Older] Donald Trump Calls Facebook an 'Enemy of the People' While Buying Ads on the Platform
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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France24 ☛ After two years of war, Russian economy proves resilient – but for how long?
Despite several rounds of sanctions levied by Western powers over the war in Ukraine, the Russian economy registered strong growth in 2023 after a recession the previous year. Fuelled by increased public spending – particularly military spending – other industrial sectors also benefited from the war in Ukraine, with the country's economic resurgence aided by continued revenue from oil and gas exports.
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France24 ☛ Russians head to polls for Day 2 of election marred by attacks, acts of protest
Voters across Russia cast ballots Saturday on the second day of an election set to formalize six more years of power for President Vladimir Putin, who faces no serious challengers after crushing political dissent over his nearly 25 years of rule.
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LRT ☛ Putin’s foils: The other three names on the Russian ballot
The Kremlin’s tight grip on electoral politics and the media means that President Vladimir Putin is sure to secure a new six-year term in the March 15-17 election barring a huge, unexpected development.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Police Investigate At Least 28 Cases Of 'Vandalism In Polling Stations'
Russians completed the second day of voting late on March 16 in a three-day presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some people, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.
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New Yorker ☛ Has Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Improved His Standing in Russia?
As Russians go to the polls, the economy is booming and the public feels hopeful about the future. But the politics of Putinism still depend on the absence of any means to challenge it.
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New York Times ☛ Rebellious Russians Attack From Ukraine, Reinforcing Ukrainian Drone Strikes
The surprise attacks, timed to Russia’s election, are meant to undermine the sense of stability in Russia and divert the country’s military resources from Ukraine.
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New York Times ☛ In Occupied Ukraine, Soldiers and Poll Workers Collect Votes for Putin
Russia is holding a presidential vote in the occupied regions of Ukraine to try to legitimize its rule there, expose dissenters and present a veneer of democracy.
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France24 ☛ Macron again declines to rule out Western ground operations in Ukraine 'at some point'
French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview published Saturday evening that Western ground operations in Ukraine might be necessary “at some point”, days after meeting with German and Polish leaders.
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France24 ☛ 'A fight for your way of life’: Lithuania's culture minister on Ukraine and Russian disinformation
Lithuania’s Minister of Culture Simonas Kairys spoke to FRANCE 24 about Lithuania's fight against Russian disinformation and why the Baltic nation feels so bound to Ukraine.
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France24 ☛ Russian energy infrastructures targeted by Ukrainian drones
Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructures have been increasing since early January. Our investigations reveal that at least eight sites have caught on fire after drone attacks.
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JURIST ☛ ECCHR assessment claims Russia attack on Mariupol Theater was a war crime
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) published Saturday a new legal assessment of the Russian attack on the Mariupol Theater in Ukraine, claiming that the attack was a “war crime” and deliberately done by the Russian Air Force to target Ukrainian civilians who sought refuge in the theater.
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JURIST ☛ Russia detains Russian national on suspicion of pro-Ukraine terrorism
The Kaluga Regional Court said Friday that it kept a Russian national suspected of being a member of the “Freedom of Russia” Legion, a paramilitary group of former Russian soldiers who now fight on behalf of Ukraine, in custody for two months on suspicion of terrorism. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested the unnamed individual.
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LRT ☛ ‘He was true professional’: Fellow soldiers remember Lithuanian killed in combat in Ukraine
Last week, a farewell ceremony for Lithuanian soldier Tadas Tumas, who died fighting in Ukraine, was held at St Nicholas Cathedral in Kyiv. Three fellow soldiers of the Foreign Legion shared their memories about Tumas.
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RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Praises Range Of Ukraine's Drones Following Attacks Deep Inside Russia
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has hailed the new long-range capabilities of his military’s combat drones following reports of attacks deep inside Russian territory.
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New York Times ☛ Donald Trump’s Alternate Reality Pitch, Examined
The war in Ukraine. Hamas’s attack on Israel. Inflation. The former president has insisted that none would have occurred if he had remained in office after 2020.
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New York Times ☛ 20 Killed in Russian Missile Strike on Odesa, Ukraine Says
Two missiles hit the same spot, Ukrainian authorities said, killing some rescuers who had responded to the first attack.
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New York Times ☛ Macron and Scholz Meet to Patch Up Differences on Ukraine
The leaders of France and Germany tried to heal an increasingly public rift over their approach to the war, holding talks alongside Poland’s prime minister on support for Kyiv.
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JURIST ☛ Austria orders 2 Russia diplomats to leave the country by March 19
The Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared on Wednesday two Russian diplomats as personae non gratae, requiring them to leave Austria by March 19. The ministry did not provide any details as to why the two diplomats were asked to leave Austria.
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RFERL ☛ Bulgarians Lay To Rest Patriarch Neophyte, Who Opposed Russian War
Thousands of people in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, joined with Orthodox Christian leaders on March 16 to bid a final farewell to Patriarch Neophyte, who died on March 13 after a long illness.
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-03-15 [Older] EU-frozen Russian assets to generate 15-20 BN until 2027
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-03-15 [Older] Russia Pivots South for Trade Following Western European Sanctions
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-15 [Older] Russian elections: attacks at polls; UN, EU condemn vote
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-15 [Older] 'Double tap' Russian strike on houses in southern Ukraine kills 16, injures dozens
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Defence Web ☛ 2024-03-15 [Older] Iran, Russia, and China hold naval exercise with SA as observer
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-15 [Older] Russia votes: Why does Putin bother holding elections?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-15 [Older] Ukraine updates: Kyiv says Russian strike on Odesa kills 20
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Spiegel ☛ 2024-03-15 [Older] The Election Farce in Russia: Putin's Elaborate Effort To Make His Re-Election Look Legitimate
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CPJ ☛ 2024-03-14 [Older] CPJ joins call for Russia to keep the internet on during presidential elections
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-15 [Older] Independent Vote Monitor Says Russian Elections Are 'Most Secret' Ever
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-14 [Older] Russia: Border checks get tighter for suspected dissidents
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-03-14 [Older] Vladimir Putin as a Mirror of Russian Society
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-14 [Older] Ukrainian troops, missiles strike inside Russian border regions
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-14 [Older] Lithuania warns against 'self-imposed red lines' on Russia
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-14 [Older] Russian election criticized by EU, NATO ahead of polling day
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Spiegel ☛ 2024-03-14 [Older] Language Tests and Deportations: Latvia Tightens the Screws on Its Russian Minority
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-14 [Older] Ukraine Official: Two Russian Border Regions Are Now Active Combat Zones
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-14 [Older] Putin Asks Voters, Including in Annexed Ukrainian Areas, to Determine Russia's Future
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-14 [Older] France's Macron Says Europe Must Be Ready if Russia Escalates
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-13 [Older] Moldova Says Russia Illegally Printed Ballots for Election in Separatist Region
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-14 [Older] Russians Head to Polls in a Vote Set to Extend Putin's Rule. His Foes Are in Jail, in Exile or Dead
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-03-13 [Older] Time is running out in Ukraine -Kyiv Cannot Capitalize on Russian Military Weakness Without U.S. Aid
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-13 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia ready for nuclear war, Putin says
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ANF News ☛ 2024-03-12 [Older] Russia repatriates 32 ‘Islamic State’ children in coordination with the Autonomous Administration
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-03-12 [Older] Britain secretly issued gold visas to Russian oligarchs
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-12 [Older] Moldova Summons Russian Ambassador Over Polling Stations
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-12 [Older] Russia arrests South Korean over alleged spying
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-12 [Older] Russia says military plane crashes with 15 on board
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-12 [Older] Ukraine updates: Pro-Kyiv volunteers attack western Russia
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-12 [Older] Ukraine Launches Drones at Oryol Fuel Facility, Other Regions, Russia Says
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-12 [Older] The Top Strategist of Late Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Is Attacked in Lithuania's Capital
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-03-11 [Older] Finland: Ukraine is free to bomb Russia with our weapons
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CPJ ☛ 2024-03-11 [Older] Russia holding Crimean journalists Rustem Osmanov and Aziz Azizov for 2 months on terror charges
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-12 [Older] Thousands Protest in Slovakia Against Government's Policy Toward Russia
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-03-11 [Older] Russia is Using Chinese Farming 'Golf Carts' to Send Infantry Into Battle
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Scheerpost ☛ 2024-03-11 [Older] Patrick Lawrence: The Russians in Ukraine
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-11 [Older] Germany: Taurus Ukraine dispute rolls on after Russian leak
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New Yorker ☛ 2024-03-11 [Older] Briefly Noted Book Reviews
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-11 [Older] Russian Lawmakers Seek to Nullify Soviet Transfer of Crimea to Ukraine
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-11 [Older] Russia Says Broker Will Take Bids From March 25 for Frozen Assets Swap
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-10 [Older] 'Question of dignity': Russian activists who choose to stay
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-10 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia reports drone strikes far from border
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Counter Punch ☛ 2024-03-08 [Older] A Bad Idea Whose Time, Evidently, Has Come: Stealing Russian Assets
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-10 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy Dismisses Pope's Appeal for Talks With Russia as 'Virtual Mediation'
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-10 [Older] Moldova Faces Multiple Threats From Russia as It Turns Toward EU Membership, Foreign Minister Says
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-10 [Older] Ukraine Rebuffs Pope Francis Calling for Talks With Russia
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-10 [Older] Woman Dies in Ukraine's Shelling of Russia's Kursk, Governor Says
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-03-09 [Older] Russia and Nigeria: Turning A New Page in Their Relationship?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-09 [Older] Ukrainian civilian hostages disappeared by Russian forces
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-09 [Older] NATO's Biggest Drills Since the Cold War Send a Signal to Russia and Aim for a Real-Life Feel
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-09 [Older] A Lonely Radio Nerd. A Poet. Vladimir Putin's Crackdown Sweeps up Ordinary Russians
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-03-08 [Older] Russia’s Grave Sanctions Evasion
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-03-08 [Older] Russia’s oil and gas revenue jumped in February
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Defence Web ☛ 2024-03-08 [Older] Russia’s Africa Corps – more than old wine in a new bottle
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-08 [Older] India raids network sending citizens to fight for Russia
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-08 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russian attacks kill at least 4 civilians
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-08 [Older] As UN Urges Sudan Truce, Russia and China Cite Gaza
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-08 [Older] Putin Lauds Russian Women for Motherhood, Beauty
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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The Verge ☛ How the House quietly revived the TikTok ban bill
But the road to the blockbuster vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday was months in the making. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), who chairs the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and is a lead author of the bill, said he’d worked for eight months with colleagues including Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) to prepare it.
“The fact that we didn’t leak the content of those negotiations to the media, it’s just a function of how serious our members were,” Gallagher told a group of reporters after 352 members voted in favor of passing HR 7521, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (just 65 voted against it). “We had multiple iterations. We invited technical assistance from the White House, which improved the bill.”
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Hindustan Times ☛ 'It's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower's last words were grim warning before being found dead
According to a family friend close to Barnett, "Barnett predicted that he would die and that there would be a story that would come out that he killed himself." When authorities found Barnett, they said it looked like he shot himself in the head. Speaking to ABC News, the friend who identifies herself as Jennifer said, “I know that he did not commit suicide, there's no way.”
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Environment
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Truthdig ☛ Plastics Are Being Funded by Your Tax Dollars
“Taxpayer subsidies are helping to fund dangerous and often illegal air pollution in communities of color,” Alexandra Shaykevich, EIP’s research manager and a co-author of the report, told Grist. She said the manufacturers should be held accountable for their environmental impact and those public funds redirected to beneficial projects like improving public schools. “If a company is breaking the law” she added, “it shouldn’t get taxpayer money.”
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NL Times ☛ Measurements show high concentration of harmful PFOs in water coming from Schiphol
PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid) is a synthetic chemical compound considered hazardous to health and falls under PFAS. PFOS used to be found in fire-fighting foam, for example, but this has now been banned because the substance is dangerous to people and the environment.
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NL Times ☛ Climate activists protest against Shell and VDL Nedcar
“Like the rest of the fossil industry, Shell is only interested in profits and shareholder returns. The appeal against the verdict in the Milieudefensie climate case shows that Shell completely lacks a moral compass,” said XR spokesperson Bram Kroezen.
Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb's spokesperson said the municipality had been notified of the complaint and was "supported in principle." The mayor does not yet see any reason to take action. "If public order is at stake, we will enter into talks with the protesters," the mayor’s spokesperson said. The police are present at the action.
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Energy/Transportation
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DeSmog ☛ Polluters Are Melting the Winter Sports They Sponsor
Would a chicken run be sponsored by foxes, or a mouse party by cats? Not only would that be extremely provocative, it would join actors whose survival interests are in fundamental conflict. So, why is sponsorship from major climate polluters pouring into winter sports like an oil slick, just as snow sports’ very existence is threatened by global heating?
It’s not a small problem, like the odd stone hidden in a snowball. The carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) of just seven polluting winter sports sponsors — Audi, Ford, SAS, Equinor, Aker, Volvo, Preem — would melt an area of 1,968 square kilometres of spring snow each year.
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Quartz ☛ Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr resigns after EVs bet goes bad
The investment didn’t pan out. Hertz earlier this year reported higher quarterly revenue, but it also told investors that profits took a $464 million swing to a $348 million loss.
Scherr blamed EVs. The cars were more expensive to maintain than Hertz had initially thought, and the company couldn’t make as much money selling them when it needed to refresh its offerings. Hertz said it got rid of a third of its EV fleet.
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Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : World Bank Grants $100 Million to Boost Zambia's Energy Sector, Partners with ZESCO in NEAT Program
This grant is part of the larger National Energy Advancement and Transformation Program (NEAT), a comprehensive initiative aimed at transforming Zambia’s electricity landscape by 2033. With an overall budget of $700 million, NEAT is poised to revolutionize Zambia’s energy infrastructure, ensuring financial sustainability, reliability, and resilience in the face of climate change challenges.
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Quartz ☛ Car values plummet, putting car loans underwater
Every year, the price of a new car ticks ever upwards. Loans get longer, yet monthly payments are always on the rise, leading to an epidemic of folks underwater on their loans. Now, there’s a new complicating factor: Used car prices are falling, meaning folks are getting less for their over-leveraged trade than ever.
A new report from Edmunds looked at used car prices compared with trades that have negative equity and found that a drop in the former has led to a steep rise in the latter. According to the report, this isn’t even unexpected — it’s a natural progression from the lockdown-era used car boom. From Edmunds:
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El País ☛ BYD: China steps on the gas in the Mexican auto market: ‘The long-term goal is the US’
Guillermo Rosales, president of the Mexican Association of Automotive Distributors (AMDA), explains that precisely because 90% of Mexican production travels abroad, Mexico imports vehicles to supply the domestic market. According to their figures, of the total number of vehicles sold in Mexico, 66% are imported models and the rest are assembled in the country. Car sales in Latin America’s second largest economy increased by 24.4% during 2023, with the marketing of 1.3 million vehicles. “We have a positive outlook in the domestic market, for this year we are calculating an increase of 7% compared to last year due to economic growth and the perspective of a drop in interest rates, we could even think of reaching 1.5 million units sold,” predicts Rosales.
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Wildlife/Nature
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Pro Publica ☛ As Wildfires Increase, the U.S. Is Losing More Wildland Firefighters Than Ever
Black Butte is an inactive volcano that rises from the high desert in eastern Oregon. In May 2022, a turboprop plane approached its pine-blanketed slopes, carrying about 10 men wearing bulky Kevlar outfits. They were smokejumpers with the United States Forest Service, the agency that directs the majority of the nation’s efforts to manage wildfires. Within the vast and hierarchical fire service, smokejumpers occupy a singular niche, parachuting into remote areas to fight early-stage wildfires. There are only about 450 nationwide, and the physical requirements are rigorous.
One of the smokejumpers on board was Ben Elkind. Thirty-seven years old with a long, athletic build and restless energy, he had been fighting wildfires for 14 years and jumping for the last eight of them. Despite his elite status, Elkind earned about $43,000 in 2021 over the course of the seven-month fire season. His base paycheck, though, was less than half of that. Like most wildland firefighters, he relied on overtime and hazard pay, which can be accumulated on two- or three-week shifts away from home. Many firefighters exceed 1,000 hours of overtime in a season. Elkind chose to be with his wife and two young children more that year and worked a relatively modest 700 hours of overtime, the equivalent of 17 additional weeks.
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The Hindu ☛ Male elephant translocated from Dharmapuri town to forest habitat
As the elephant continues to remain in human habitat at Morappur forest range limits over the last two days, in the interest of the safety of locals, forest officials on March 16 tranquilised and safely released the elephant around 9 a.m. in a suitable elephant habitat about 55 km away [from the village] and near water hole to ensure fodder and water availability, the release added.
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Finance
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Zach Flower ☛ Buy Me a Coffee... or Don't
But I don't want to monetize my blog to do it. I don't want to taint it with ads, and I don't want to feel compelled to inject affiliate posts just to earn a buck. I like to build and write because I like it, and I won't compromise that just to replace one financially-driven choice with another.
Instead, I want to create multiple paths for those that like what I am putting out into the world to show their support for it. While I haven't quite figured out what paths I want to create, I do know that the world is more than monetary.
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YLE ☛ Helsinki establishes own employment services
The city says the agency will also promote the integration of working-age residents.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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CBS ☛ Meta to build $800M data center in Rosemount, Minnesota
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced plans to build a new data center in Rosemount, Minnesota. The more than 700,000 square foot center will be located along County Road 42, just east of the Dakota County Technical College.
During an announcement Thursday, officials revealed the project had been under wraps for several years. They called the secret project "Project Bigfoot."
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Axios ☛ Who would buy TikTok to save it from being banned in the U.S.
Yes, but: Any TikTok suitor would need a strong stomach. Not only because it's still unprofitable, but also because of the migraine headaches inherent in owning and operating a popular social media company.
Look ahead: The most logical buyers for TikTok are ByteDance's non-Chinese investors, including General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital, and Susquehanna International Group.
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Hindustan Times ☛ WhatsApp, social media influencers emerge as go to campaign mediums as parties sound poll bugle
In the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, political parties are extensively using social media to propagate their achievements and seek support from voters.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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France24 ☛ 'A fight for your way of life’: Lithuania's culture minister on Ukraine and Russian disinformation
Upon being informed his name was listed, Culture Minister Kairys was insouciant. “I’m glad that my work in dismantling the ruins of Sovietisation has not gone unnoticed,” he said.
FRANCE 24 spoke to Kairys on why it is vital to fight Russian propaganda, and why the Baltic state feels so invested in what is happening in Ukraine.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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DeSmog ☛ Climate-Science Deniers, Right-Wing Think Tanks, and Fossil Fuel Shills Are Plotting Against the Clean Energy Transition
Morano works at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, part of a sprawling climate-denial machine assembled with funding from fossil fuel interests like ExxonMobil and the Charles Koch Foundation and dark-money groups like DonorsTrust. Between 1998 and 2014, ExxonMobil and its foundation gave more than half a million dollars to the committee, which did not respond to a request for comment. DonorsTrust gave the group nearly $8 million between 2008 and 2017, according to federal tax data. Today, as both the science and the tangible effects of a warming planet become irrefutable, it’s increasingly rare to encounter the kind of outright climate denial these groups pioneered. Instead, it’s being replaced by what misinformation experts call “climate delayism”—a coordinated campaign to undermine climate solutions.
For fossil fuel ideologues, sowing misinformation about wind and solar power is proving to be an effective stall tactic. Public opinion surveys show that renewable energy remains popular with a bipartisan majority of Americans; in a poll from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland, seven out of 10 people said they’d be comfortable with a wind farm in their own community. But in New Jersey—where Morano’s group has gone so far as to buy billboards reading “Save Whales Stop Windmills”—nearly half of all the state’s residents now believe that such a connection probably exists, according to an August poll from Monmouth University.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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New York Times ☛ Russia Strengthens Its Internet Controls in Critical Year for Putin
Russia, they said, is turning to techniques that go beyond its established practices of hacking and digital surveillance, taking a more systemic approach to change the way its domestic internet functions. In doing so, the country is using methods pioneered by China and Iran, forming an authoritarian model for regulating the internet that contrasts with the more open approach of the United States.
Russia “has reached a new level of blocking in the last six months,” said Mikhail Klimarev, a Russian telecommunications expert and executive director of the Internet Protection Society, a civil society group.
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RFERL ☛ Iranian Religious Scholar, Women's Rights Activist Arrested, Husband Says
[...] Vasmaghi had been summoned by the authorities in the past and is an outspoken critic of the clerical establishment and the compulsory hijab. [...]
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RFERL ☛ Russia Asked Imprisoned 70-Year-Old Rights Defender Orlov To Fight In Ukraine
The Memorial human rights group said on March 15 that imprisoned 70-year-old veteran human rights defender Oleg Orlov was offered exoneration if he agreed to join Russia's war effort in Ukraine. [...]
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RFERL ☛ Dissing The Tajik President Online Can Send You Straight To Jail
Sharifbek's case has stunned many Tajiks as a glaring example of the government's complete lack of tolerance of any dissent and its retaliation against anyone who dares to voice discontent with officials or their actions.
Tajikistan has over the years jailed dozens of independent journalists, activists, and political opponents while also shutting down media outlets critical of the government or its policies.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Craig Murray ☛ Assange Truth and UN Shenanigans - Craig Murray
I spent the last week at the UN, trying to ram home some truths about the Assange case as input to the UN’s Periodic Review (every 7 years) of the UK’s human rights record, in terms of its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
I had a very short opportunity to address the UN Committee on Human Rights, which is a body of elected experts. In such a short time frame you have to go with just a couple of points. I am open to criticism of my selection, but I maintain that this was much plainer speaking than is generally heard. The reasons for this are interesting.
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Bridge Michigan ☛ Bridge reporters win Journalist of the Year award for 4th year in a row
The two earned the honor Thursday at an awards ceremony that also saw Bridge Michigan win 14 other honors. Bridge’s sister publication, BridgeDetroit, earned eight awards in the statewide contest honoring the best in Michigan journalism.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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[Old] Le Monde ☛ France's century-long crusade against religious symbols at school, from the crucifix to the abaya
Since the secular school system was introduced in the late 19th century, there have been several laws on religious symbols at school. In the past the focus was on Christian symbols, whereas today the controversy is centered on clothing associated with Islam.
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New York Times ☛ Uber and Lyft Threaten to Pull Out of Minneapolis After City Council Vote
The council voted 10 to 3 on Thursday to override a mayoral veto of an ordinance that requires ride-hailing services to pay drivers a minimum rate of $1.40 per mile and 51 cents per minute to ensure that they earn the equivalent of local minimum wage of $15.57 per hour.
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Quartz ☛ Uber and Lyft to leave Minneapolis after city hikes drivers' minimum wage
Much of the fight in Minneapolis comes down to questions about how to calculate the minimum wage in order to give rideshare drivers the same $15.57 per hour wage mandated for other workers in the city. Since drivers are only paid for the time they’re driving passengers, and they’re on the hook to pay for their own expenses like gas and insurance, figuring out average driver wages over time can be tricky.
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International Business Times ☛ Yazidi Women Are Still Being Sold By ISIS, Ten Years On From Genocide
This year marks ten years since Islamic State (IS) fighters killed, raped and enslaved thousands of the Yazidi population, an ancient religious minority that had lived in parts of Iraq and Syria for nearly 6,000 years.
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Hengaw Organization for Human Rights Hengaw Organization for Human Rights ☛ Woman, Life, Freedom: Kurdish Athlete Mehran Akrami Dies Under Torture During Women, Life, Freedom Movement
Mehran Akrami, a Kurdish athlete from Takab city who was apprehended by security agencies in Saqqez city during the Women, Life, Freedom movement, has tragically passed away due to torture inflicted by the intelligence forces of the city. With a notable background in taekwondo, Akrami held several provincial and national medals. His demise adds to the toll of 12 Kurdish individuals who lost their lives under similar circumstances during the aforementioned movement.
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India Times ☛ eu gig worker rules: Can EU's gig worker rules tame management by algorithm?
Low pay, few labour rights and dangerous working conditions - for millions of European gig workers, it can be a rough job. But a deal thrashed out by EU ministers this week addresses one of their biggest headaches - management by algorithm.
Drivers and delivery riders for online platforms such as Uber and Deliveroo say the opaque nature of algorithmic management tools can result in random job assignments and performance ratings, and even account deactivation - hitting their earnings and morale.
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JURIST ☛ Japan high court hold same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional
Japan’s Sapporo High Court affirmed on Thursday that the country’s current ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. This ruling from the High Court upholds the Sapporo Lower Court 2021 decision that found the ban unconstitutional.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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This weekend I am contributing to Transitous. You should too.
Transitous is a new community-driven routing service. Add your own city and help make it great.
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Wired ☛ The FCC Now Says Broadband Speed Should Be at Least 100 Mbps
The Federal Communications Commission this week voted to raise its internet speed benchmark for the first time since January 2015, concluding that modern broadband service should provide at least 100 Mbps download speeds and 20 Mbps upload speeds.
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[Repeat] Netcraft ☛ Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown | Netcraft
A staggering 12.6 million domains on TLDs controlled by Freenom (.tk, .cf and .gq) have been shut down and no longer resolve, leading to a significant reduction in the number of websites hosted by Cloudflare.
The disappearance of these websites was spotted during our monthly Web Server Survey and represents a 98.7% drop from the number of Freenom domains that were resolvable last month.
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Jan Lukas Else ☛ “Cloudflare loses 22% of its domains in Freenom .tk shutdown”
Reading about Freenom and .tk domains brings back memories: The first domains I registered were free .tk domains because I was too cheap to pay for domains as a high school student and also had no credit card to do so.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Deccan Chronicle ☛ Netflix, Amazon to buy Telugu movies, filmmakers on new high
After a gap, international digital brands like Netflix and Amazon Prime reportedly plan to increase the intake of Telugu movies from April. 2024. “Telugu producers could heave a sigh of relief after going through few sleepless nights,” says a producer and adds, “Netflix and Amazon Prime are pooling up funds and they would begin to buy Telugu films from April next and it would come as a booster shot to hapless Telugu producers,” he adds.
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The Verge ☛ Spotify is letting authors market like musicians
This week, Spotify announced a new feature to let audiobook authors and publishers tease their new releases. Countdown Pages, which debuted for music artists last year and has been used by the likes of Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift, let fans pre-save an upcoming title and have it pop into their library when it’s released. The page is adorned with a large countdown clock — with a timer going down to the second — to get listeners excited. The feature’s not revolutionary, but it is in line with how Spotify differentiates itself as an audiobook provider.
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The Register UK ☛ Microsoft pushes Bing, GPT-4 in Chrome pop-up adverts
Microsoft is cheerily popping up adverts over Chrome on Windows PCs to push its search engine and AI assistant.
As users have pointed out this week, while using Google's desktop browser on Windows 10 or 11, a dialog box suddenly and irritatingly appears to the side of the screen urging folks to make Microsoft's Bing the default search engine in Chrome.
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The Hindu ☛ India antitrust body to probe Google’s in-app billing amid dispute with startups
India's antitrust body on Friday ordered a probe into Alphabet Inc.'s Google in an ongoing dispute with local startups over its in-app billing system, saying the U.S. company implemented its policies in a "discriminatory manner".
Indian startups have been at odds with Google for months over the fee it charges for in-app payments.
The dispute escalated earlier this month after Google removed more than 100 Indian apps from its app store for violations related to billing, though it restored them after the Indian government intervened.
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Patents
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Software Patents
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[Old] Smithsonian Magazine ☛ A Brief History of the GIF, From Early Internet Innovation to Ubiquitous Relic
And therein lay one major problem: because the LZW algorithm that made GIFs possible was actually under patent, owned by a company called Unisys Corp. And in 1995, after years of developers having a free-for-all with their GIFs, suddenly Unisys wanted to make good on their patent. They announced they would be charging a small royalty (.45 percent and .65 percent on different products) for software that used the algorithm, including TIFF and PDF as well as GIF. Their patent wouldn’t run out until 2003 in the U.S. and 2004 everywhere else.
Developers’ reactions ranged from the practical—creating a new file format named PNG (at one point named PING for “Ping Is Not Gif”) that didn’t use the LZW algorithm—to the theatrical. On the latter end of this spectrum was “Burn All GIFs” day, held on November 5, 1999, when developers gathered together to delete their GIF files. “Burn All GIFs Day may be the first time in human history that anyone has ever thought it worthwhile to stage an organized political protest, even a small one, over a mathematical algorithm,” wrote The Atlantic at the time. Even though Unisys only asked large companies to buy licenses rather than individual non-commercial users, developers still felt like the patent was a threat.
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[Old] The Atlantic ☛ Web Citation - 99.11.03
Burn All GIFs Day may be the first time in human history that anyone has ever thought it worthwhile to stage an organized political protest, even a small one, over a mathematical algorithm. An algorithm, broadly speaking, is a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem. In junior high school people learn the algorithm for finding the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle: square the lengths of the other two sides, add the results together, and find the square root of the sum. Another way of saying this is that one applies the Pythagorean theorem. The GIF dispute is based on another algorithm, this one known as LZW, after the initials of its inventors (Lempel, Ziv, and Welch). First unveiled in 1984, LZW is an algorithm for making files smaller without losing any information. It is simple, effective, and easily understood by computer programmers, some of whom used it to develop the GIF format in 1987.
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[Old] GNU ☛ Why There Are No GIF Files on GNU Web Pages - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
Many people think that Unisys has given permission for distributing free software to make GIF format. Unfortunately that is not what Unisys has actually done. Here is what Unisys actually said about the matter in 1995:
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[Old] Marketplace ☛ The patent history behind GIFs, and the fight to make them free of fees - Marketplace
Steve Wilhite, inventor of the graphics interchange format, also known as GIF, died this month at the age of 74. Animated or not, GIFs may now be a common, free feature of the internet, but the tech that powered Wilhite’s format was patented by the technology company Unisys. For a few contentious years during the internet’s youthful era, Unisys wanted to charge fees for all the sparkly GIFs we were sharing.
This fight — over who controls how information moves around the web and who gets paid in the process — continues to this day in various forms.
I spoke with Jason Eppink, an artist and a former curator at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, who gave me a GIF history lesson. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.
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[Old] LOC ☛ GIF Graphics Interchange Format, Version 89a
GIF became notorious in 1994, when UniSys began charging fees to license the LZW compression algorithm. Unisys's US patent expired in June 2003, and its European and Japanese patents expired in June 2004.
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Trademarks
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El País ☛ AC/DC wasn’t fair to the designer of the band’s multimillion-dollar logo
The agreement with Huerta was for a single album, Let There Be Rock, which was an important work in the band’s career, containing songs that they still have in their repertoire today, such as Whole Lotta Rosie, Dog Eat Dog, Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be, or the one that gives the album its title. However, the group decided (without consulting Huerta) to continue using the logo. Since 1979, only that one has been printed: Highway To Hell (1979), Back In Black (1980), For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) (1981)… all the way up until the latest one, Power Up (2020). Of the group’s 17 albums, 13 carry Huerta’s design. Nobody from AC/DC’s circle has denied Huerta’s version of events.
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India Times ☛ meta brazil: Meta wins appeal of court order to stop using its name in Brazil
Facebook-parent Meta on Friday won an appeal overturning a previous court ruling that barred it from using its name in Brazil due to confusion with another company.
Mark Zuckerberg's tech company was in late February ordered to stop using its name in Brazil within 30 days after a Brazilian computer services provider won a favourable ruling arguing it already owned rights to the name and had as a result of the U.S. branding been wrongly cited in over 100 lawsuits.
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Copyrights
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Press Gazette ☛ News generative AI deals revealed: Who is suing, who is signing?
He said: “It is reassuring that certain digital companies appreciate the value of integrity, quality and creativity, and while certain other media companies prefer litigation, we prefer consultation, as the former is merely creating a gold rush for lawyers. Courtship is preferable to courtrooms – we are wooing not suing. But let’s be clear, in my view those who are repurposing our content without approval are stealing.”
But not all publishers want deals: Reach chief executive Jim Mullen told investors on 5 March that the UK’s largest commercial publisher is not in any “active discussions” with AI companies and suggested other publishers should hold off on deals to allow the industry to come at the issue with a position of solidarity.
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Torrent Freak ☛ AGCOM Runs Massive Piracy Blocking Operation But Has 'Trouble' Configuring Its Domain Name?
Italian telco watchdog AGCOM has taken on the task of rolling out one of the largest piracy-blocking schemes the Internet has ever witnessed. The organization fiercely defends its IP-address blocking efforts and has full confidence in its technical expertise. Curiously, however, AGCOM's domain name is only partly functioning, as it explicitly requires a www subdomain.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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