Links 28/05/2024: Back to MP3, NVIDIA Sued by Authors
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- 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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Barry Sampson ☛ Barry Sampson | Initial Problems
The classic example in work life would be where I was asked to comment on a document and just initial each section that I thought was okay. Shortly after submitting it I received an irate email from the document's author demanding to know why I'd scrawled "BS" on every section.
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Eric Bailey ☛ Multipage Version Zine, Issue 1
The zine is about HTML elements, and is intended to be printed out as physical media. It was a ton of fun to make, and so refreshing to get back to print media design for a bit.
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Baldur Bjarnason ☛ Links and photos (27 May 2024)
We really don’t make enough of the fact that you don’t need JS to make a nice website. Just HTML and CSS
And, whatever most programmers say about HTML and CSS, they absolutely are much more accessible to learn than JS ever has been or will be
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Standards/Consortia
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Johnny Decimal ☛ 22.00.0059 RSS feed fixed
I am over the moon to announce that this site’s RSS feed is now a first-class, fully-featured, all-singing-all-dancing full-text rich-image over-hyphenated feed!
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[Old] AboutFeeds ☛ What is a feed? (a.k.a. RSS) | About Feeds
Use web feeds to subscribe to websites and get the latest content in one place.
Feeds put you in control. It’s like subscribing to a podcast, or following a company on Facebook. You don’t need to pay or hand over your email address. You get the latest content without having to visit lots of sites, and without cluttering up your inbox. Had enough? Easy: unsubscribe from the feed.
You just need a special app called a newsreader.
This site explains how to get started.
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Lykolux ☛ Slashpages or a standard for the indie web
I’m fascinated by one of the latest discoveries. I think about it multiple times a day. First came the humans.txt, and now people start to gather /page-names created on websites. Why? Because it’s human and hand-crafted. Made by love and fun.
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The Register UK ☛ Venerable ICQ messaging service to end operations in June
Venerable instant messaging service ICQ has announced it will shut down for good in June.
A brief statement on the service's website states "ICQ will stop working from June 26" without any explanation, and suggests VK Messenger as an alternative.
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Ruben Schade ☛ XFN versus OPML blogrolls
For the last few years I’ve had a public-facing OPML blogroll again. OPML is the de facto format blog readers use to import and export subscription lists, and has attributes for RSS feeds, web links, and tags. Because it’s a native outliner format, you can have nested elements to fudge categories as well (though support for that in RSS readers is patchy).
But lately I’ve been wondering if this is the best approach, for a couple of reasons.
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Science
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Derek Kędziora ☛ Trusting the $cience
Behind the pearl clutching and handwringing, there’s a reason people don’t “believe in science” anymore.
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Hardware
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[Repeat] Tedium ☛ HDPE History: It Started With Hula Hoops
Today in Tedium: Recently I heard about a form of wood as strong as steel, an idea that sounds wild when written out. How? Wood is a material I associate with broken guitars and broken chairs. But apparently there is something special about MettleWood, where they soften the cell wells of a piece of wood, then compress it flat. It’s a repeatable process, and one that reportedly improves its resistance to things normal pieces of wood have to worry about—like fire, moisture, and termites. With manufacturing expected to pick up soon, it could lead to more wood-covered buildings—or, fascinatingly, buildings where steel foundations have been replaced with highly compressed blocks of wood. About 70 years ago, plastics went through a similar revolution, where a new process emerged, changing the public’s relationship with it. Today’s Tedium discusses how high-density polyethylene (HDPE) came to shape our relationship with plastics. — Ernie @ Tedium
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[Old] Roderick W Smith ☛ Managing EFI Boot Loaders for Linux
Most computers today boot using Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) firmware, or its version-2.x variant, Unified EFI (UEFI). The way EFI computers boot is very different from the way older computers based on the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) boot. This fact is both positive and negative. On the plus side, the EFI boot method is much more flexible and, in theory, easier to configure than is the BIOS boot method. On the minus side, EFI skills and documentation still lags BIOS skills and documentation, so people experienced in the BIOS method of booting often make mistakes when dealing with newer EFI-based computers. Even EFI support in Linux distributions continues to be a source of occasional problems, particularly with respect to obscure or unusual situations.
I've written this set of Web pages with the goal of explaining some of the basics of the EFI boot methods, most notably including how to install and manage EFI boot loaders. This document is broken into a number of sections, as detailed below.
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The Register UK ☛ Tape is so dead, 152.9 exabytes worth of LTO shipped in 2023
Tape has huge capacity, and can easily be taken offline. Purveyors therefore commend it as an ideal medium for bulk data that isn't often accessed – a role in which it can often be cheaper than disk – and to protect data by literally putting it on the shelf and therefore out of reach of ransomware infections.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Coffee prices soar on poor harvests and new consumers
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Mercury poisoning near Grassy Narrows First Nation worsened by ongoing industrial pollution, study suggests
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] EU hits Oreo maker Mondelez with €338 million antitrust fine
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] The mysterious spike in whooping cough cases
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Ziff Davis ☛ Leading AI Tools and Search Engines Go Down Due to Microsoft Outage
A major Microsoft outage affected search engines and AI tools such as Bing, Copilot, ChatGPT, and DuckDuckGo, temporarily making them inoperable for users in multiple countries across Asia and Europe. According to Microsoft’s report, the outage began at approximately 3 a.m. EDT on May 23. Error messages were still seen as far as 4:45 a.m. the next morning.
According to user reports, the affected websites only showed blank pages or a 429 HTTP code error. While the Bing search engine worked if the user visited the website directly, Copilot went completely offline regardless of its use in Windows or Android systems. ChatGPT, Ecosia, and DuckDuckGo were affected similarly.
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What is happening with Embracer Group? The Swedes have canceled 80 games and the total layoffs amount to more than 4,500 employees
The latest internal report from Embracer Group puts two forceful figures on the table: the number of games currently in development was reduced from 221 projects in 2023 to a not inconsiderable 141, the other reading is that brutal snip implies that since last year 80 video games have been canceled. And what is worse, the collateral effect of this measure is that since the previous report 4,532 employees are no longer part of the group. How could this happen?
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Wouter Groeneveld ☛ I Miss BSD/Linux
Speaking of cool themes, my Desktop is dull thanks to macOS. I didn’t even bother to change the stupid default background on my work MacBook.
These are all valid reasons to hark back to a more configurable, free, and fun OS, yet they’re not the reason why I’m frustrated with modern operating systems—in my case, Sonoma. Here’s a short list of grips:
- Did you know that your laptop never sleeps, even if it is put to sleep as you close the lid? At 3 AM in the morning, it’s still firing away HTTP calls to various servers according to my Pi-Hole, such as fetching weather data for a widget I have tried to disable countless times.
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Baldur Bjarnason ☛ Social media.
Over the past few days I’ve been testing a much less complicated system.
I’ve always considered social media posts to be ephemera and I don’t think it would work for me to integrate them into my main blog. Link digests and turning more worthwhile threads into blog posts honestly fits my style of blogging much better than having a links category integrated into the blog itself.
I decided to lean into that and rely instead on something much simpler:
Text files.
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Baldur Bjarnason ☛ The 'AI' chaos
These two links deserved highlighting beyond just being plonked into my normal list of links.
They are both describing some of the chaos caused by the ongoing AI Bubble. One tackles what it’s doing to programmer education. The other is a behind-the-scenes view of what’s happening as tech companies lurch into “AI”.
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[Old] IT News AU ☛ Ubiquitous UEFI implementation has serious vulnerabilities
Proof-of-concept code published by Quarkslab should help produce detection signatures for the vulnerabilities.
According to the Carnegie Mellon CERT Coordination Centre (CERT-CC), the bug has been identified in implementations from American Megatrends, Insyde Software, Intel, and Phoenix Technologies; while Toshiba is not affected.
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky ☛ Instead of "auth", we should say "permissions" and "login"
Most computer systems we interact with have an auth system of some kind. The problem is, that sentence is at best unclear and at worst nonsense. "Auth" can mean at least two things: authentication or authorization1. Which do we mean for an "auth system"? It's never perfectly clear and, unfortunately, we often mean both.
This is a widespread problem, and it's well known. One common solution, using the terms "authn" and "authz", doesn't solve the problem. And this isn't just confusing, it leads to bad abstractions and general failures!
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] Elon Musk Wants to Make X's Likes Private to Hide Your Favorite 'Edgy' Content
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EDRI ☛ EDRi and Reclaim Your Face campaign recognised as Europe AI Policy leaders
This honour is a recognition of the work done by the coalition – over 110 organisations across 25 EU countries, hundreds of volunteers, and many actions taken by hundreds of thousands of supporters all over Europe. The award was presented in Brussels during the opening ceremony of CPDP Conference, and received on behalf of the coalition by Ella Jakubowska and Andreea Belu of the EDRi Brussels Office.
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The Verge ☛ Windows 11 will soon let you grab text from images on your Android phone
Phone Link (called Link to Windows on the phone side) lets you sync calls, messages, notifications, and images — and cast your entire phone — from your Android phone to your Windows computer. It also works in a more limited fashion with iOS devices, which only sync notifications, messages, and calls over Bluetooth.
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EDRI ☛ How to Fight Biometric Mass Surveillance after the AI Act: A legal and practical guide
The EU's Artificial Intelligence Act has been adopted, laying out an in-principle ban on live mass facial recognition and other public biometric surveillance by police. Yet the wide exceptions to this ban may pave the way to legitimise the use of these systems. This living guide, for civil society organisations, communities and activists, charts a human rights-based approach for how to keep resisting biometric mass surveillance practices now and in the future
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Defence/Aggression
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] ICJ rejects Ecuador request in Mexico diplomatic dispute
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] China ends military drills near Taiwan
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Defence Web ☛ 2024-05-21 [Older] China and South Africa agree to strengthen military ties amid fresh visits
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] A Win-Win or Debt Trap? Decoding China’s Influence in Africa
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] African Union Receives Financial Support from Canada
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-05-19 [Older] French Security Forces Work to Regain Control of Airport Highway in Violence-Scorched New Caledonia
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] New Caledonia police kill protester amid 'fragile' situation
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] France's Macron heads for riot-hit New Caledonia
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Macron: New Caledonia vote reform won't be 'forced through'
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] Last colonies: Pacific Islands still owned by other nations
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] North Korean defectors repatriated by China face persecution
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Right-wing group at European Parliament excludes AfD
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] Shots fired at Toronto Jewish girls school, police investigating
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] Germany: Antisemitic incidents in Berlin hit record levels
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] German police arrest teen over synagogue stabbing plan
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-21 [Older] Greece: Trial on Mediterranean migrant shipwreck dismissed
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-21 [Older] Germany: Politically motivated crimes spike in 2023
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-21 [Older] French far-right National Rally splits with Germany's AfD
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-21 [Older] Biden says Trump using 'Hitler's language' with Reich post
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] Will anti-Pakistan rhetoric influence India's elections?
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Vox ☛ 2024-05-20 [Older] Biden promised to defeat authoritarianism. Reality got in the way.
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Scheerpost ☛ 2024-05-21 [Older] Saudi Arabia Implicated in New 9/11 Evidence
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] France: 3 Syrian officials convicted of war crimes
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] Syrian protesters rise up against Islamists in Idlib
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] B.C. can force Surrey to transition policing away from RCMP, judge rules
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] Gemany: Far-right AfD bans top EU candidate from campaigning
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] Germans not worried about war — but should they be?
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-19 [Older] Medical worker fleeing Gaza asked by Canada if he treated Hamas fighters
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] Bangladesh's military calls DW report 'false and fallacious'
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] Pakistan: Police intervene after mob attacks Christians
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] Tunisia: Thousands of migrants being 'dumped' in the desert
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] US missionaries killed by Haiti gangs
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] Hungary: Italian on trial over attack on far-right march
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-21 [Older] ICC's decision to seek warrants for both Israeli and Hamas leaders is 'troubling,' Trudeau says
"What I will say is troubling, though, is the sense of an equivalency between the democratically elected leaders of Israel and the bloodthirsty terrorists that lead up Hamas. I don't think that's helpful."
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Biden says Kenya in line to be first sub-Saharan NATO ally
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Can Taiwan defend itself against China?
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US News And World Report ☛ Iran's Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium Stock Grows, Talks Stall, IAEA Reports Say
Iran is enriching uranium to close to weapons-grade at a steady pace while discussions aimed at improving its cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog are stalled, two confidential reports by the watchdog showed on Monday.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] Hungary Will Seek to Opt Out of NATO Efforts to Support Ukraine, Orbán Says
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] Ukraine Anti-Corruption Agency Probes Suspected Leak
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Ukraine updates: Deadly daytime strike hits Kharkiv
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] Zelenskyy Says Ukraine Has Taken Back Control in Areas of Kharkiv Region, Aerial Attacks Continue
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Counter Punch ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] G7: Whether or Not to Maintain the Suspension of Ukrainian Debt Payments
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] Exclusive-World Bank Chief Banga Open to Managing G7 Loan to Ukraine
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] Biden Highlights US Commitment to Israel, Ukraine, Indo-Pacific in West Point Speech
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] G7 Agree Further Financing for Ukraine, to Discuss Details in Coming Weeks
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] Yellen Says Ukraine Loan Plan Has Support, More Work Needed
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Meduza ☛ Russia’s Foreign Ministry and Justice Ministry propose removing the Taliban from list of terrorist organizations — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Russia accuses Meduza co-founder Galina Timchenko of participation in an ‘undesirable organization’ — Meduza
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teleSUR ☛ Six NATO Countries to Create 'Drone Wall' Against Russia
This initiative will protecte the borders of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Finland, and Norway.
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RFERL ☛ U.S. Soldier Faces New Charge In Russia
Russian media reports said U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Gordon Black, who was arrested in the Far Eastern city of Vladivostok in early May on suspicion of theft, has been additionally charged with threatening to kill his partner, a Russian woman.
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RFERL ☛ EU Puts Sanctions On Russian Officials For Persecuting Opposition
European Union foreign ministers agreed to impose sanctions on 19 Russian officials and Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) over their involvement in the persecution of opposition politicians and activists.
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LRT ☛ Lithuania revokes all weapon permits issued to Russian, Belarusian citizens
Following the parliament’s decision a year and a half ago to ban Russian and Belarusian citizens living in Lithuania from possessing weapons, all permits issued to them have been revoked.
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Reason ☛ In Crimea's Fields the Poppies Blow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jElbMaWkB80 In Flanders Fields is of course well known to many English speakers: In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below…. I was reminded of this by Poppies, a Russian poem by…
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Meduza ☛ ‘The military takes almost everyone’: Russia is offering criminal suspects a choice: face trial or go fight in Ukraine — Meduza
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New York Times ☛ Onstage, Witches and Cossacks Strike a Chord With Ukrainians
A play based on an 19th-century literary classic is a smash hit among Ukrainians who see in the story cultural and historical echoes of what they face after two years of war.
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RFERL ☛ Former German Soldier Found Guilty Of Spying For Russia
A German former soldier was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail on May 27 for sharing secret military information with Russia in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine Claims Drone Attacks On Russian Radar Station Near Kazakh Border
A Ukrainian military intelligence official claimed to RFE/RL that one of its drones targeted a Russian Voronezh-M early warning radar system, in one of Kyiv's deepest attacks inside Russian territory since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor more than two years ago.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine, Spain Sign $1 Billion Bilateral Security Deal
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez have signed a bilateral security agreement that provides for Madrid to provide Ukraine with 1 billion euros ($1.08 billion) in military aid this year.
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LRT ☛ Why do some Lithuanians feel anxiety over Russian language in the streets?
Hearing more Russian in the streets of Lithuanian towns makes some locals uncomfortable. The recent migrants from Ukraine and Belarus are putting an effort to learn Lithuanian, although language courses are not always available.
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LRT ☛ Re-elected Lithuanian president names second term priorities
President Gitanas Nausėda, who was re-elected for a second term on Sunday, said that he intends to remain active in economic policy and promote military and political support for Ukraine.
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France24 ☛ Kyiv says talks on France sending military instructors to Ukraine are ongoing
Ukraine on Monday walked back an announcement that French military instructors would soon arrive in the country, saying that it was still in talks with Paris and other allies on the issue.
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Latvia ☛ Braže calls on countries blocking help to Ukraine to 'relent'
Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs Baiba Braže went into a meeting of her European Union counterparts at the Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels May 27 with Ukraine top of the agenda.
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RFERL ☛ HRW: Lawyers In Belarus Under 'Unprecedented Pressure' Since 2020
Human Rights Watch said on May 27 that lawyers in Belarus have been under "unprecedented" pressure since mass unrest followed the official results of a 2020 presidential election that handed authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka victory.
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Meduza ☛ Having a brawl: Wagner mercenaries reportedly involved in massive street fight in Russia’s Chelyabinsk — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Sees 'No Faith' In Putin As EU Mulls Russia Peace Talks
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is not optimistic about alleged plans by the European Union to organize peace talks with Russia.
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RFERL ☛ Russia To Build 'Vital' Nuclear Power Plant In Uzbekistan
Russia and Uzbekistan have signed an agreement for Moscow to build a small nuclear power plant in the Central Asian country.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Russia is bombing book publishers as Putin wages war on Ukrainian identity
Russia's recent targeted bombing of a major Ukrainian book publishing plant in Kharkiv is part of the Kremlin's wider war against Ukrainian national identity, writes Maria Avdeeva.
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Environment
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] Papua New Guinea village hit by large landslide
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Science Alert ☛ Gigantic Iceberg in Antarctica Tears Loose in Major Calving Event
The iceberg has been officially designated A-83 by the U.S. National Ice Center, which assigns names based on the Antarctic quadrant where the iceberg was first sighted.
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Energy/Transportation
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New York Times ☛ Biden Doesn’t Want You Buying an E.V. From China. Here’s Why.
Instead, the president is taking steps to make Chinese electric vehicles prohibitively expensive, in large part to protect American automakers. Mr. Biden signed an executive action earlier this month that quadruples tariffs on those cars to 100 percent.
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CBS ☛ Biden's Chinese EV tariffs don't address national security concerns
Brown argues EV technology could allow China to collect information about traffic patterns, critical infrastructure and drivers' lives, Brown says. China, he points out, doesn't allow American-made vehicles near its government buildings.
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Asia Financial ☛ US to Target Chinese Connected Cars Over National Security
“The national security risks are quite significant … We decided to take action because this is really serious stuff,“ Raimondo said.
She added that connected vehicles “have thousands of sensors, thousands of chips – they’re controlled by software, which is coming from Beijing in the case of Chinese-made cars. They know where the driver goes, what the driving patterns are, what you’re saying in your car. It’s a lot of data around US persons that goes right back to Beijing.”
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Omicron Limited ☛ Starlinks can produce surprisingly bright flares for pilots
How can sunlight reflecting off SpaceX's Starlink satellites interfere with ground-based operations? This is what a study recently posted to the arXiv preprint server hopes to address as a pair of researchers investigate how Starlink satellites appear brighter—which the researchers also refer to as flaring—to observers on Earth when the sun is at certain angles, along with discussing past incidents of how this brightness has influenced aerial operations on Earth.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Charge your laptop in a minute? Supercapacitors can help; new research offers clues
Their findings modify Kirchhoff's law, which has governed current flow in electrical circuits since 1845 and is a staple in high school students' science classes. Unlike electrons, ions move due to both electric fields and diffusion, and the researchers determined that their movements at pore intersections are different from what was described in Kirchhoff's law.
Prior to the study, ion movements were only described in the literature in one straight pore. Through this research, ion movement in a complex network of thousands of interconnected pores can be simulated and predicted in a few minutes.
"That's the leap of the work," Gupta said. "We found the missing link."
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PNAS ☛ A network model to predict ionic transport in porous materials
Porous electrodes enhance the capacitance of electrochemical devices by maximizing surface area. However, the relationship between device performance and the porous material structure remains poorly understood. This study introduces a model to predict electrolyte transport in complex networks of slender pores. We derive modified Kirchhoff’s laws and equivalent circuit equations for electrolyte transport in charged confinement. Our framework accelerates numerical computations by six orders of magnitude without compromising accuracy. We leverage this model to investigate the influence of connections and pore size distribution on the charging time scale of electrical double layers and predict structure–property relationships. These findings hold potential for improving supercapacitor design and enabling 3D-printed microscale electrodes for wearable energy storage and supercapacitors in Internet-of-Things applications.
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-18 [Older] Squirrels caused 80 outages in Toronto last year: hydro officials
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] Ottawa removes regulatory red tape for Trans Mountain pipeline
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-18 [Older] New head of Alberta oilsands group wants clarity from Poilievre on industrial carbon pricing
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] Can Europe diversify its supply of critical raw materials?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Explained: What causes a tornado?
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Wildlife/Nature
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] What is biodiversity and why does it matter?
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-19 [Older] Wildfires and tornadoes have a tangled relationship. Ontario researchers work to learn why
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-20 [Older] N.B. Liberal MP calls for loosened right whale protection measures to help fishermen
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-20 [Older] 'Bee safe' label on pesticides needs to be re-evaluated, University of Guelph researchers say
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-20 [Older] Environment Canada adopts B.C. model to warn of smoke hazards
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-21 [Older] B.C. orca calf's extended family spotted near Vancouver Island
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] B.C. village declares, then rescinds, wildfire state of emergency
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Overpopulation
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Finance
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] Latin American voters ditch socialism for free enterprise
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] Brazil, France, Spain, Germany and S. Africa Push To Tax Billionaires 2% Yearly; US Says No
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] Over 25% African Businesses Are Female-Led; But Only Get $1 For Every $25 Males Raise In Funding
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] International students more likely to live in unsuitable housing: StatsCan
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Seafood chain Red Lobster will ask Canadian court to enforce U.S. bankruptcy in Canada
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Most Albertans now say it's difficult to meet monthly expenses, for first time in years of polling
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Nothing highlights the generation gap quite like when I, a boomer, stay with the adult children in my life
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] Kenya's Ruto visits Washington: A new era of diplomacy?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Georgia at a cultural crossroads
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] German president warns democracy faces new challenges
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Germany: Controversy over 'culture of remembrance' reform
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Germany's AfD given boot from EU Parliament far-right group
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Germany's constitution and its 75-year history
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Censorship/Free Speech
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-05-21 [Older] Meta Deleted Facebook Account of Slovak PM's Shooter After Attack
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] Belarusian band Irdorath back on stage after imprisonment
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Uproar over Zambia's plan to regulate online broadcasting
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[Old] Associated Press ☛ US secretly built ‘Cuban Twitter’ to stir unrest
“And if I had been, I would have said, ‘What in heaven’s name are you thinking?’” Leahy said on MSNBC. “If you’re going to do a covert operation like this for a regime change, assuming it ever makes any sense, it’s not something that should be done through USAID.”
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Jason Becker ☛ Communities are bundles of belief
In the US, our political system is structured to guarantee two political parties. And many folks are often dissatisfied by their choices, because a system with two parties incentives generating a set of opposing bundles of belief that come as close as possible to splitting the population evenly. In this optimization problem, very few people can point to one political party and feel satisfied with the bundle of beliefs they are signing up for. Few individual preferences are met while we optimize for a very specific compromise. In politics, we require parties to take a stand on virtually every matter and make values clear in all things.
It’s not always the right decision to require the same of every community we walk in.
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Los Angeles Times ☛ South Africa's election might be a defining moment. What to know
South Africans don’t vote directly for their president, but rather decide the makeup of Parliament, which is called the National Assembly. They do that by choosing parties and those parties get seats in Parliament according to their share of the national vote. The 400-member National Assembly then elects the president, meaning whichever party has a majority chooses the head of state.
That has always been the ANC since the first all-race elections in 1994, but this time it may need to strike agreements with other parties to get the required 201 votes from lawmakers to reelect the 71-year-old Ramaphosa and form a government.
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ Žižek’s Left-Wing Case for Christian Atheism
Slavoj Žižek is many things to many people: the “Elvis of cultural theory,” the most “formidably brilliant” left philosopher in the world, a fraud, a Marxist, an apologist for anti-wokism, and more. But probably few people think “Christian theologian” when Žižek comes to mind. Yet the iconoclastic Slovenian thinker has spent decades engaging deeply with Christian theology and history, from books like The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? to his debate with “radical orthodox” theologian John Milbank.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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CPJ ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] Journalists assaulted at MK election rally ahead of South Africa elections
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CPJ ☛ 2024-05-22 [Older] Syrian student journalist Atia Abu Salem on hunger strike in Jordanian prison
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] Indonesia broadcasting bill elicits press freedom fears
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The Atlantic ☛ Pat McAfee and the Threat to Sports Journalism
McAfee is an athlete, not a reporter, and when it comes to stuff like accuracy, he’s careful to set the bar very low. He has become the epitome of athlete encroachment on terrain historically controlled by nonathlete journalists, and to put it mildly, the journalists are not happy about it. McAfee couldn’t care less.
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ANF News ☛ Kurdish journalist and activist Gorji sentenced to 21 years in Iran
The list of charges against Jina Modarres Gorji is long. This includes, among other things, the founding of the 'Zhivano' association, which she initiated. The organization, based in Sine, advocates for women's rights and for putting feminist perspectives at the center of struggles for political, environmental and social change. The association is a thorn in the side of Iran's fascist and patriarchal regime. The ruling states that the organization was designed to overthrow the regime and that the “feminist ideology” was the central driving force behind this goal.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-25 [Older] Germany: Uproar over racist video from island of Sylt
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] German police investigate 'racist' video on vacation island
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] Judge slams Quebec youth protection after Inuk teen placed in 64 different foster homes
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CBC ☛ 2024-05-23 [Older] N.L. university has to weed out false Indigenous claims, report says— but the path forward is unclear
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Lou Plummer ☛ An Undercover Liberal at a Gunshow
The next morning, Sunday, he was back at the show. He was a little cleaned up and was no longer wearing his heating and air cap. He had on another one. This hat said “NC Chapter of the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan”. At this point I bolted. What had started as an interesting sociological experiment had turned into cooperation with psychopathy and I wanted no more part of it. It was 30 years ago and I remember it as it happened last week. These attitudes and these people were on the fringes for a long time. Now they've elected one of their own as president and are poised to do it again.
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New York Times ☛ Street Wars: Have E-Bikes Made New York City a ‘Nightmare’?
But Orlandi is also hoping for compassion. “People got to understand, we’re working,” he said. Delivery apps, he noted, keep track of how quickly workers make their drop-offs — and ding them if they take too long.
“Sometimes you’ll be going somewhere and Grubhub will send you another order, and then no matter what you do, you’re going to be late,” he said. “So that’s why you’ll see a lot of people rushing.”
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JURIST ☛ EU approves directive on corporate due diligence for sustainability and human rights
The Council of the European Union approved the EU Directive on corporate sustainability due diligence (CSDDD) on Friday. The CSDDD introduces obligations for EU and non-EU companies related to compliance with human rights and their impact on the environment. The approval by the Council means that the CSDDD is adopted as legislation and its approval comes after the proposal was initially blocked in February.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] Harris Announces Plans to Help Give 80% of Africa Access to the Internet, up From 40% Now
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-05-24 [Older] Decoding China: Who will shape the internet of the future?
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APNIC ☛ Calling time on DNSSEC?
Should we drop DNSSEC and just move on?
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Ben Jojo ☛ Reclaiming IPv4 Class E's 240.0.0.0/4
Class E space as defined in RFC1112 lives at the end of IPv4 address space between 240.0.0.0 and 255.255.255.254, Right after the space used for IPv4 multicast. This space in this state has existed since 1989, however it has been mostly ignored as a relic of time until the existing IPv4 unicast space allocations had been mostly assigned.
Class E is not actually the only space that is now being reviewed. During the standardisation of where IPv4 blocks would go, several unnecessarily large allocations were made due to technical limitations at the time. Some obvious ones include 0.0.0.0/8 (A block where 0.0.0.0/24 would have been sufficient in hindsight), and 127.0.0.0/8 (the local loopback block, where 127.0.0.0/16 would have been sufficient).
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Zimbabwe approves Starlink
The decision “is expected to result in the deployment of high speed, low cost, LEO (low-Earth-orbit) [Internet] infrastructure throughout Zimbabwe and particularly in all the rural areas,” Mnangagwa said in a statement.
He said Starlink will provide services through its sole and exclusive local partner, IMC Communications.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Brandon ☛ Back to MP3s
The prices have gone up, my convenience has gone down, and now I have to fight just to hit play on some music. I mentioned a couple weeks ago on Mastodon that my patience was running low, and then last week, I got an email that my Car Thing would stop working in December.
The Car Thing was Spotify's only attempt at making hardware. They put together this four-inch screen that would help bridge the gap for folks with old cars that didn't have touch navigation, like me. I balked at the $99 price tag, but after a few months they discounted it to $30 and I snatched one up. It was a great investment. I drive safer, it worked pretty well (although the last six months it's been hit or miss) and I could say things like, "Hey Spotify, play Patience by Guns N Roses" and it would. Or I could use this nifty little turn wheel to pull up recent playlists, albums, or podcasts.
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ NVIDIA Denies Copyright Infringement Claims in Authors' AI Lawsuit
NVIDIA has responded to a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by several American authors. The chipmaker admits the use of "The Pile" dataset, which included the controversial Books3 database. However, NVIDIA denies all copyright infringement allegations and also rejects the use of the term "shadow library", which is often used for pirated book repositories.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Expend4bles: 3,000 Canadians Targeted in Federal Court Piracy Sweep
The first installation of The Expendables franchise was released in 2010, followed by The Expendables 2 in 2012, and The Expendables 3 in 2014. It would be another nine years before Expend4bles shook things up with a new title format but little else had changed. Expendables movies come with a three-point guarantee: lots of explosions, a solid 6/10 aggregate score on the Internet Movie Database, and thousands of people being monitored on BitTorrent so they can be sued at a later date. Almost 3,000 now face action in Canada's Federal Court.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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