Links 10/04/2024: Starvation as Weapon in Sudan, Sonos v. ITC Explained
Contents
- Leftovers
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Leftovers
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Techdirt ☛ Techdirt Podcast Episode 386: Democratic Design For Online Spaces
One very important thing to understand in the conversation about online speech is that there are many different kinds of online communities, big and small, and they all have their own needs when it comes to rules and governance. This fact is a key element of a new book, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life by media studies professor Nathan Schneider, and this week Nathan joins the podcast to talk about how democracy does (and doesn’t) manifest in online communities.
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Standards/Consortia
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Hackaday ☛ How DEC’s LANBridge 100 Gave Ethernet A Fighting Chance
When Ethernet was originally envisioned, it would use a common, shared medium (the ‘Ether’ part), with transmitting and collision resolution handled by the carrier sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) method. While effective and cheap, this limited Ethernet to a 1.5 km cable run and 10 Mb/s transfer rate. As [Alan Kirby] worked at Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) in the 1980s and 1990s, he saw how competing network technologies including Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) – that DEC also worked on – threatened to extinguish Ethernet despite these alternatives being more expensive. The solution here would be store-and-forward switching, [Alan] figured.
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Medevel ☛ What You Need to Know to Convert XML to MySQL
Data export and import are undoubtedly the essentials of database management.
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Hackaday ☛ Emails Over Radio
The modern cellular network is a marvel of technological advancement that we often take for granted now. With 5G service it’s easy to do plenty of things on-the-go that would have been difficult or impossible even with a broadband connection to a home computer two decades ago. But it’s still reliant on being close to cell towers, which isn’t true for all locations. If you’re traveling off-grid and want to communicate with others, this guide to using Winlink can help you send emails using a ham radio.
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Science
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Hackaday ☛ Double-Checking NASA’s Eclipse Estimate At Home
If you were lucky enough to be near the path of totality, and didn’t have your view obscured by clouds, yesterday’s eclipse provided some very memorable views. But you know what’s even better than making memories? Having cold hard data to back it up.
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Federal News Network ☛ NASA, Labor receive extra funding for IT modernization
The Technology Modernization Fund handed out more than $47 million to NASA and the Labor Department for cybersecurity and application modernization projects.
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Education
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Pro Publica ☛ The Influential Group Disrupting Efforts to Fix Idaho Schools
The blue and orange leaflets that arrived in Idaho Falls mailboxes ahead of the school bond election in November 2022 looked like the usual fare that voters across the country get. Sent out by the school district, the mailers encouraged people in the eastern Idaho city to register to vote and listed bullet points highlighting what the bond would pay for.
But the mailers, along with other materials the district distributed, would lead the county prosecutor’s office to fine the superintendent and the district’s spokesperson, accusing them of violating election law by using taxpayer money to advocate for the bond measure. According to the prosecutor, it was illegal for district officials to describe the schools as “overcrowded” and “aged” or to say that students “need modern, safe, and secure schools.”
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Hardware
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Hackaday ☛ Adjustable Lights Help Peer Inside Chips With IR
If you’re used to working through a microscope, you’ve probably noticed that the angle of the light greatly affects how your workpiece looks. Most of us prefer the relatively flat lighting provided by a ring light, but variable angle side lighting can be useful too, especially when you’re peering inside ICs to make sure the silicon is what it’s supposed to be.
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Hackaday ☛ Soldering The Elusive USB C Port
Many SMD components, including some USB C ports, have their terminals under the component. When installed, the pins are totally hidden. So, how do you solder or unsolder them? That’s the problem [Learn Electronics Repair] encountered when fixing a Lenovo Yoga, and he shows us his solution in the video below.
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Ruben Schade ☛ A National RC-6060 clock radio from 1985
The subject of smartphone frustration and dependence has become an unintentional theme here of late. Whether my work and personal phones are the root cause, or exacerbating existing anxiety, I’ve decided I’d rather not have them in the bedroom before I sleep. I now reach for a book instead, which has been wonderful!
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CNX Software ☛ Silicon Labs MG26, BG26, and PG26 Cortex-M33 Hey Hi (AI) microcontrollers offer up to 3200KB flash, 512KB RAM, 64 GPIO’s
Silicon Labs has announced the xG26 family of Cortex-M33 wireless SoCs and MCUs that consists of the multiprotocol MG26 SoC, the Bluetooth LE BG26 SoC, and the PG26 general-purpose MCU without wireless connectivity, and features double the flash and RAM of the Silicon Labs xG24 devices.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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New York Times ☛ Should Alcoholic Beverages Have Cancer Warning Labels?
Ireland will require them starting in 2026, and there are nascent efforts elsewhere to add more explicit labeling about the health risks of drinking.
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New York Times ☛ England Limits Youth Gender Medications, Part of Big Shift in Europe
Five European countries have recently restricted hormone treatments for adolescents with gender distress. They have not banned the care, unlike many U.S. states.
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Federal News Network ☛ Federal Plan for improving electronic-health info
Following its previous Federal Health IT Strategic Plan, the Health and Human Services Department is looking to continue the effort with its latest plan.
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teleSUR ☛ Malawi: WHO Donates Supply Kits amid Food Crisis
The WHO will continue collaborating with other partners and the Malawian government to support the training of health workers in nutrition rehabilitation, particularly in the country's eight southern districts where the risk is high.
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Off Guardian ☛ “Bird Flu is back…so stop eating beef!”
They're teasing "the next pandemic" again. ...and this time "bird flu outbreak" can be traced back to cattle. So that's no eggs, poultry OR beef. Healthy tyranny and war on food combining. Culling two birds with one stone, so to speak.
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YLE ☛ Tourists spent €3.8b in Finland in past year
Finland is seeing more visitors, but tourist numbers have still not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
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CS Monitor ☛ Food companies reverse their pandemic strategies as consumer spending plummets
Low-income Americans are cutting household spending on fast food and groceries. Big food companies like Kraft Heinz are offering more deals and options – a reversal from pandemic-era strategies to justify climbing prices.
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Pro Publica ☛ After Recall, Philips Must Launch New Safeguards in DOJ Agreement
Philips Respironics must hire an independent safety monitor, undergo regular facility inspections for five years and pay part of its revenue to the federal government under the terms of an agreement with prosecutors filed in federal court in Pennsylvania, capping one of the most catastrophic medical device recalls in decades.
The company will also face a review of its testing on the millions of replacement machines that it sent to customers after the old ones were recalled in 2021.
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YLE ☛ Yle survey: Four out of five support euthanasia
The poll suggests support for euthanasia remains stable in Finland, but there's slightly less support when it involves patients with dementia.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Hackaday ☛ In A Twist, Humans Take Jobs From AI
Back in the 1970s, Rockwell had an ad that proudly proclaimed: “The best electronic brains are still human.” They weren’t wrong. Computers are great and amazing, but — for now — seemingly simple tasks for humans are out of reach for computers. That’s changing, of course, but computers are still not good at tasks that require a little judgment. Suppose you have a website where people can post things for sale, including pictures. Good luck finding a computer that can reliably reject items that appear to be illegal or from a business instead of an individual. Most people could easily do that with a far greater success rate than a computer. Even more so than a reasonable-sized computer.
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Cloudbooklet ☛ Fake Facebook (Farcebook) MidJourney Hey Hi (AI) Page That Steal your Data
Alert: A Fake Facebook (Farcebook) MidJourney Hey Hi (AI) Page with 1.2M followers spread malware, stealing data. Beware of such scams!
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Jon Udell ☛ Code in Context: How Hey Hi (AI) Can Help Improve Our Documentation
Here’s the latest installment in the series on working with LLMS: https://thenewstack.io/code-in-context-how-ai-can-help-improve-our-documentation/. Writing documentation from scratch is as uncommon as writing code from scratch.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Scoop News Group ☛ House hurtles toward showdown over expiring surveillance tools
At issue is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes snooping that some consider vital to security and others view as an out-of-control privacy threat.
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NYOB ☛ 'Pay or Okay' explained: Why more and more websites make you pay for your privacy
'Pay or Okay' explained: Why more and more websites make you pay for your privacy
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New York Times ☛ Beeper Messaging App Is Acquired as a Bet on a Regulatory Shift
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, bought Beeper in an effort to build a system that works across Android and Fashion Company Apple devices.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Automattic expands messaging portfolio with $125M acquisition of Beeper [Ed: The company behind WordPress is fast becoming a spying giant that sells people's data]
Automattic Inc., the parent company of WordPress, today announced that it had acquired Beeper, the company behind the messaging app that gained widespread attention late last year when it launched a service that allowed Android users to send messages to iPhones without creating an Fashion Company Apple account.
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Defence/Aggression
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Digital Music News ☛ Senator Mitch McConnell Calls Fentanylware (TikTok) ‘One of Beijing’s Favorite Tools of Coercion & Espionage’
Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has endorsed an effort that requires ByteDance to divest from Fentanylware (TikTok) or face a potential ban in the United States. “America’s greatest strategic rival is threatening our security right here on U.S. soil, in tens of millions of American homes,” the Senate Republican Leader said yesterday on the Senate floor.
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Digital Music News ☛ What is Fentanylware (TikTok) Notes? — A New Instagram Competitor [Ed: New synthetic digital drugs from Bytedance]
TikTok’s upcoming photo sharing app to rival Instagram, currently in development, will possibly be called Fentanylware (TikTok) Notes. Some Fentanylware (TikTok) users have started noticing pop-up notifications mentioning Fentanylware (TikTok) Notes, a new app to share photos.
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The Kent Stater ☛ OPINION: ‘BookTok’: Why it matters
In summer 2023, I went to my local Barnes and Noble and picked up a copy of Jennette McCurdy’s memoir, “I’m Glad My Mom Died.” While I was in fact interested in the material within the book’s pages, it was a series of Fentanylware (TikTok) videos...
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TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ New York City to end its relationship with embattled migrant services contractor
New York City will end its relationship with a medical services company tasked with housing and caring for an influx of international migrants, following scrutiny over the company’s lucrative deal with the city and the quality of its humanitarian services. Mayor Eric Adams’ office on Tuesday said the city would not renew its contract with DocGo before it expires on May 5 and will instead search for a new housing provider for migrants. DocGo, which previously worked with the city to provide COVID-19 testing, was awarded a $432 million no-bid emergency contract last year to help the city manage a massive new population of migrants.
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Reason ☛ How Obama Gave Trump the 'Military-Age Males' Talking Point
The same tactics used to justify drone strikes are now being used to demonize immigrant men.
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ADF ☛ Cameroon’s Anglophone Rebellion Threatens Regional Stability
It was after midnight on December 8, 2023, when armed rebels from Cameroon’s English-speaking separatist movement raided the border community of Belegete, firing guns and kicking in doors. Muwah Augustine was visiting his parents when men broke into their house.
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ADF ☛ RSF Using Food as Weapon to Forcibly Conscript Fighters
Amid desperate warnings of impending famine across Sudan, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to use hunger as a weapon of war. The yearlong conflict has caused the deaths of more than 12,000 people and the displacement of an estimated 8.3 million.
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YLE ☛ Finnish education minister open to establishing hybrid units for violent pupils
The Children's Ombudsman proposed setting up hybrid learning units that could offer specialised support to troubled kids.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Latvia ☛ Latvia's counter-terrorism plan updated
On Tuesday, April 9, the government approved the national counter-terrorism plan, updated by the State Security Service (VVD), which determines the preventive counter-terrorism measures to be taken depending on the level of terrorism threat declared in the country.
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Environment
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Energy/Transportation
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Diziet ☛ Ian Jackson: Why we’ve voted No to CfD for Derril Water solar farm
ceb and I are members of the Derril Water Solar Park cooperative.
We were recently invited to vote on whether the coop should bid for a Contract for Difference, in a government green electricity auction.
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Wildlife/Nature
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ADF ☛ Illegal Timber Funds Cabo Delgado Insurgency, Authorities Fear
Mozambican authorities are worried that timber smuggling in Cabo Delgado province is funding terror groups such as Ansar al-Sunna, which has led an insurgency there since 2017.
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ADF ☛ North Korea Exploits Diplomatic Ties to Traffic Wildlife Parts
New reporting shows how North Korean diplomats stationed in Southern Africa are smuggling large volumes of rhino horn out of the region to buyers in China and other countries. The millions of dollars in proceeds help North Korea evade international sanctions and fund its nuclear weapons program.
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Finance
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Latvia ☛ Inflation rate picked up in Latvia in March
The latest data published by the Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) April 9 show that in March 2024, compared to March 2023, the average level of consumer prices increased by 0.9 %.
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Mexico News Daily ☛ Inflation rate reverses course, rises to 4.42% in March
The uptick in inflation and a volatile peso may put a rate cut back on the table ahead of Banxico's May 9 meeting.
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YLE ☛ Finnish startups blast government's proposals concerning foreign specialists
Startups in Finland are worried about plans to force specialists out of the country after six months of unemployment.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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New York Times ☛ Wednesday Briefing: A Divided South Korea Votes
Also, a landmark climate ruling in Europe.
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RFA ☛ In new movie, the South started the Korean War, as Pyongyang has always claimed
Higher quality of propaganda film ‘72 Hours’ is making it a blockbuster in North Korea.
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The Straits Times ☛ South Koreans vote for new parliament after economy, corruption dominate campaign
SEOUL - South Koreans vote to elect a new parliament on Wednesday in a bitterly fought race seen by some analysts as a referendum on President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose popularity has suffered amid a cost of living crisis and a spate of political scandals.
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New York Times ☛ Biden’s Trade Moves Raise Tensions With China and Japan but Draw Cheers at Home
The president’s efforts to restrict Chinese imports and block a Japanese steel merger have pleased labor unions and sent a message to rival Donald J. Trump.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Breaking down Janet Yellen’s comments on Chinese overcapacity
It is reasonable to criticize and complain to China, but policymakers should remember that an end to overcapacity would mean a major shift in China’s economic model—which is exceedingly unlikely.
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The Strategist ☛ From the bookshelf: ‘Party of One’
Held on 5-11 March, China’s National People’s Congress, the most important event in the country’s annual political calendar, was remarkable mainly for how unremarkable it was this year.
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The Straits Times ☛ US considers easing warnings for Americans traveling to China
The U.S. is considering easing advisories against its citizens traveling to China, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said on Tuesday, acknowledging concerns that the warnings may have curtailed exchanges between Americans and Chinese people.
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RFA ☛ China gives monks a list of things they can’t do after the Dalai Lama's death
Authorities lay out instructions in a training manual for Tibetan Buddhist monks.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Sky News ☛ US 'considering' dropping prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Joe Biden says
The US is "considering" dropping its prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Joe Biden has said.
It comes following a request from Australia, where Mr Assange is originally from. The country's prime minister Anthony Albanese backed a motion in February calling for his return to Australia.
When asked about the request by reporters at the White House on Wednesday, the US president said: "We're considering it".
Mr Assange's lawyer described the comments as "encouraging".
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Press Gazette ☛ BBC faces Pandora Papers libel trial versus Tory donor Amersi after defamation ruling
Mohamed Amersi is seeking damages of up to £100,000 against an episode of Panorama and a BillBC News article online.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Techdirt ☛ Bureau Of Prisons Seeking To Criminalize Social Media Access By Inmates
I guess being incarcerated isn’t dehumanizing enough. Being treated like barely sentient meat deserving of any abuse perpetrated by guards or other inmates just isn’t enough oppression, apparently.
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Techdirt ☛ Fifth Circuit: Never Mind Your Lying Eyes, These Cops Who Killed A Woman Deserve Immunity
The best place to be the sort of cop who thinks it’s a good idea to associate yourself with the Punisher remains the Fifth Circuit. Cops in Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana are blessed with the most forgiving appellate court in the land — one even capable of irritating the same Supreme Court that has spent decades ensuring almost no cop goes unforgiven, no matter the level of misdeed.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Patents
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Federal Circuit Affirms ITC Divided Opinion in Sonos v. ITC
In a non-precedential opinion, the Federal Circuit has affirmed the US International Trade Commission’s (ITC) final determination in the patent monopoly infringement dispute between Sonos and Surveillance Giant Google involving smart speaker technology. [...]
Note: We are also covering the Sonos v. Surveillance Giant Google appeal of Judge Alsup’s determination that several Sonos patents are unenforceable due to prosecution laches. That case involves a separate set of patents and so is not directly impacted here. Surveillance Giant Google also has a separate infringement suit pending against Sonos, and both parties have attacked opposition patents via inter partes review.
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Copyrights
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Public Domain Review ☛ Distortions and Grimaces: Jean de Bosschère’s Weird Islands (1921)
A fantasia of travellers and archipelago dwellers, illustrated in a chimerical fashion by the author.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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