Leftovers

• Ruben Schade ☛ It’s rare, so I have to get it?

  As a recent example, I saw a Japanese computer tower from the 1980s that had a limited run in Australia and New Zealand. I remember vaguely reading about them, and thinking they were cool. The price also wasn’t unreasonable. I thought “this is never going to come up again, I’d better get it!” I held back, it was later sold, and I felt a weird mix of disappointment and relief.

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Scoping the /now

  For a while, I’ve been thinking about starting a /now page. I still haven’t created one because I can’t decide on the cadence of updates. Do I want to do a weekly or monthly or something else? What’s a sustainable pace I could see myself maintaining it? Landing on an outdated /now page is just a bummer. It’s a promise of something interesting that falls flat.

"

• Anil Dash ☛ Systems: How the Ultra-Wealthy Think About Money

  It's important to understand in this context, nobody ever becomes a billionaire by mistake. They have to have really, really wanted it. Generally, they have to have wanted it more than they wanted to preserve any relationship in their lives, more than they've wanted to be happy or at peace. (Or, they inherited it and it didn't even occur to them to give it away.) You don't have to take my word for this; just look at the family relationships and friendships of the richest people in the world, and ask yourself how many of them resemble the most stable, fulfilling, rewarding relationships in your life. If you say to yourself, "I would easily give up a billion dollars to make sure my kid knows that I love them and want the best for them", then you are different than, say, the richest person in the world.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Johnny Decimal ☛ 15.02 Creative pattern

    When you — individually, or as an organisation — produce ‘creative output’, it is reasonable to expect that you will, over time, produce more than 100 things.

    This breaks the standard Johnny.Decimal structure, which does not allow for more than 10 areas or categories, or more than 100 IDs.

• Science

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Genetic algorithm enables precise design of phononic crystals

    In a study recently published in the journal ACS Nano, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science of The University of Tokyo have experimentally proven a new genetic algorithm for the automatic inverse design—which outputs a structure based on desired properties—of phononic crystal nanostructures that allows the control of acoustic waves in the material.

  • Science Alert ☛ Extreme Solar Blasts And a Weak Magnetic Field Are a Deadly Combination For Earth

    Here's how this could have a devastating impact on life.

  • Science Alert ☛ Ultra-Precise Atomic Clock Doubles Previous Accuracy, Could Detect Dark Matter

    "Pushing the boundaries of what's possible."

  • Science Alert ☛ Most of Us Are Right Handed But Left Eyed. Here's Why.

    It's not just humans either.

• Education

  • [Repeat] Ruben Schade ☛ A return to computing innocence

    I’ve been wrestling with the idea that there’s more going on with my interest in retrocomputing than mere nostalgia, or even a fascination with electronic history. It it escapism? A way to rekindle that joy I had as a kid tinkering with computers, having had some of wrung out and extinguished? Is it a sense of understanding at a more fundamental level how something works? Is it, like sci-fi, a critique of the present?

  • Dan Slimmon ☛ No Observability Without Theory: The Talk

    This talk was adapted from an old blog post of mine, but it was a blast turning it into a talk. I got to make up a bunch of nonsense medical jargon, which is one of my favorite things to do. Here are my slides, and the video is below. Enjoy!

  • Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Building out a books page

    I had a ton of fun reading about how Melanie put together her reading page that I thought I'd write up a quick post on how I built mine.

• Hardware

  • The Drone Girl ☛ July Fourth drone pilots exhibit more bad behavior than usual

    Fourth of July might conjure up fears of drunk drivers making the roads unsafe, or people lighting un-permitted fireworks that pose a wildfire risk. And as it turns out, July Fourth drone pilots also bring additional risk. At least so says Dedrone, a company that builds anti-drone tracking and mitigation technology.

    According to data provided to The Drone Girl from Dedrone, July Fourth is the busiest day of the year in terms of drone flights. That means more drone pilots fly on July Fourth than any other day, based on past year’s data.

  • Jeremy Cherfas ☛ Recording thunder

    So I sent the file over to the laptop and listened there, same headphones and everything. There it was in all its glory, low growls, very much softer pattering rain, occasional creaks from the screen door. Atmospheric.

  • PC World ☛ OLED laptops: The good, the bad, the ugly

    OLED displays are great for entertainment and gaming because they produce rich colors and deep blacks. That said, they’re suseptible to the dreaded burn-in, a visible impression on the screen that you can’t get rid of. They’re also a serious power suck as far as battery life is concerned. Read on to learn more.

  • Michael Stapelberg ☛ Ryzen 7 Mini-PC makes a power-efficient VM host

    When I saw the first reviews of the ASRock DeskMini X600 barebone, I was immediately interested in building a home-lab hypervisor (VM host) with it. Apparently, the DeskMini X600 uses less than 10W of power but supports latest-generation AMD CPUs like the Ryzen 7 8700G!

    Sounds like the perfect base for a power-efficient, always-on VM host that still provides enough compute power (and fast disks!) to be competitive with commercial VM offerings. In this article, I’ll show how I built and set up my DIY self-hosting VM host.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Does Social Media Cause Anything?

    But I want to talk about Point 2. Does social media cause anything?

  • Andreas ☛ Bad habits are easy (good habits are hard)

    Now if this sounds like I completely lost control over my life, don’t worry, I didn’t. I still regularly met with friends, went for walks, cycled around the city, wrote blog posts, even started looking at job ads and sent a few job applications away.

    But I definitely found myself slipping into a bunch of bad habits that are not good for me if I kept them up long term. Now I’m trying to get rid of them, and i’m realising that as easy as it is to slip into habits that are bad for you, it is pretty difficult to establish and keep up good and healthy habits.

  • Science Alert ☛ FDA Finally Outlaws Soda Ingredient Banned Around The World

    BVO, or brominated vegetable oil, has been used as an emulsifying agent since the 1930s to ensure citrus flavoring agents don't float to the top of sodas. Sticking a dozen bromine atoms to a triglyceride creates a dense oil that floats evenly throughout water when mixed with less dense fats.

  • New York Times ☛ An Uproar Over a Chinese Doping Case, Except in China

    Chinese state news and social control media has been virtually silent about 23 swimmers secretly testing positive in 2021, even as the issue is being debated widely abroad, including in Congress.

  • JURIST ☛ Photos of Australian children used illicitly to train Hey Hi (AI) tools, HRW reports

    Personal photos of Australian children are being misused to power artificial intelligence (AI) tools, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Tuesday. According to the report, these pictures are obtained from the web without the children’s or their families’ knowledge or consent and compiled in a data set that companies use to train their Hey Hi (AI) tools.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • OpenText plans to lay off 1,200 employees, add 800 positions to support 'growth and innovation plans'

    “The business optimization plan is intended to strategically align the company’s workforce to support its ‘growth and innovation plans,’” according to the company’s July 3 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

  • The Register UK ☛ EFF urges US trade watchdog to chase deceptive chatbots

    "The FTC should issue guidance declaring that any company that deploys a chatbot that lies to a customer has engaged in an 'unfair and deceptive practice' that violates Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, with all the fines and other penalties that entails," Doctorow wrote.

    Failure to penalize makers of lying chatbots, he argues, means there's less incentive for operators to invest in making the technology better.

  • 404 Media ☛ Google: AI Potentially Breaking Reality Is a Feature Not a Bug

    Generative AI could “distort collective understanding of socio-political reality or scientific consensus,” and in many cases is already doing that, according to a new research paper from Google, one of the biggest companies in the world building, deploying, and promoting generative AI.

  • arXiv ☛ Generative AI Misuse: A Taxonomy of Tactics and Insights from Real-World Data

    Generative, multimodal artificial intelligence (GenAI) offers transformative potential across industries, but its misuse poses significant risks. Prior research has shed light on the potential of advanced AI systems to be exploited for malicious purposes. However, we still lack a concrete understanding of how GenAI models are specifically exploited or abused in practice, including the tactics employed to inflict harm. In this paper, we present a taxonomy of GenAI misuse tactics, informed by existing academic literature and a qualitative analysis of approximately 200 observed incidents of misuse reported between January 2023 and March 2024. Through this analysis, we illuminate key and novel patterns in misuse during this time period, including potential motivations, strategies, and how attackers leverage and abuse system capabilities across modalities (e.g. image, text, audio, video) in the wild.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Training bots not welcome

    As I’ve written about, I’m not fundamentally against my writing being used to train LLMs, but I am increasingly annoyed with the attitudes of these companies, so I decided to take this symbolic step of making their lives marginally harder. Kudos to Cloudflare for productizing this.

  • [Old] Liam Proven ☛ Did you know that you can 100% legally get & run WordPerfect for free?

    In fact, there are two free versions: one for Classic MacOS, made freeware when WordPerfect discontinued Mac support, and a native Linux version, for which Corel offered a free, fully-working, demo version.

    But there is a catch – of course: they're both very old and hard to run on a modern computer. I'm here to tell you how to get them and how to install and run them.

    WordPerfect came to totally dominate the DOS wordprocessor market, crushing pretty much all competition before it, and even today, some people consider it to be the ultimate word-processor ever created.

  • [Old] Darren Goossens ☛ Some people are really clever: WordPerfect 8 for Linux, 2022 style

    Worked without a flaw.

    WordPerfect was a great word processor, and with a bit of fiddling you can get an experience in your Linux tty a lot like using WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS — and who in their right mind wouldn’t want that?

  • [Old] WordPerfect on Linux ☛ Installing WordPerfect 8.1 for Linux on a distro current in or after 2019

    The installation procedures presented in this webpage are intended for owners of original CDs containing Corel Linux OS and WordPerfect 8.1 for Linux, with the objective of enabling them to continue using their paid-for software.

    This page underwent a major revision in July 2020, to introduce a simplified method of installing WordPerfect for Linux 8.1 on current distros. The new method involves use of an install script, recently written by Peter Stone (the operator of this site) and tested with the help of Leon Goldstein.

  • [Old] IT Pro Today ☛ Corel to release free WordPerfect 8 for Linux

    Corel Corporation announced this week that its WordPerfect 8.0 word processor would be available for free to users of Linux starting Thursday December 17th. Corel says that over 60,000 Linux users have registered for the free download, which was originally announced two months ago. Corel WordPerfect 8.0 will be available in eight languages. For more information, please visit Corel's Linux site

  • [Old] Internet Archive ☛ Corel WordPerfect 7 For Unix and Linux : Corel : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

    Recommendation: Follow the link to Edward's site before downloading anything. Tavis updated the project to enable WordPerfect 8 for Unix/Linux to run on modern versions of Microsoft Windows. Edward's site will tell you everything you need to know to get started.

  • [Old] The Register UK ☛ Tavis Ormandy ports WordPerfect for UNIX to Linux

    Immaculately complementing his port of Lotus 1-2-3 to Linux, Ormandy has now released a Linux version of the classic 1990s word processor WordPerfect – specifically, WordPerfect version 7 for Unix.

    He has even wrapped it up in a .DEB package for easy installation on Ubuntu and Debian-family distros – and since it has few external dependencies, and since it's a safe bet that we won't see any updates to this 1997 program, you can probably install it on other distros using the alien command.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Koo app shuts down: Read founder Aprameya Radhakrishna’s full ‘final goodbye’ LinkedIn post

    The decision was taken after unsuccessful negotiations for a potential sale or merger with several companies, including DailyHunt.

  • India Times ☛ Koo founders on why the social media app is shutting down

    Once considered as a rival of X (previously Twitter), Tiger Global-backed Indian social media app Koo is shutting down operations. the company founder Aprameya Radhakrishna said on social media. "As for us, we are entrepreneurs at heart and you will see us back in the arena one way or another. Till then, thank you for your time, attention, good wishes and love," Radhakrishna posted on LinkedIn.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Recording Academy CEO & will.i.am On AI at Grammy Museum

    The noted musician and tech entrepreneur says he would rather have access to 100% of his audience and share the music. “I don’t think we’re in an artist and development industry right now. That’s the reason why the ones that I pointed out are artists that have had the benefits of developing. Kendrick Lamar developed. Billie Eilish developed. And then you have like this other herd that are trying to get heard on TikTok, you heard?”

    “I don’t know if that is truly creative when you’re chasing an algorithm. When it’s 15 seconds of attention, how creative can you actually be when you’re chasing an algorithm and someone’s dictating what kind of song you should make or behavior you should do to get attention and traction on a platform whose algorithm is owned by China.”

  • The Register UK ☛ RIP: WordPerfect co-founder Bruce Bastian dies at 76

    Bastian helped create the word processing application that became WordPerfect while still a graduate student at Brigham Young University, working with Alan Ashton, his computer science professor.

    They formed Satellite Software International (SSI) in 1979 and released an initial version of the software in March 1980 under the name SSI*WP for the Data General minicomputer. It cost $5,500 at the time, according to W. E. Pete Peterson, who wrote a history of the WordPerfect Corporation in the book Almost Perfect.

    By 1982, a version of the word processing software had been released for the IBM PC, running on MS-DOS under the name WordPerfect. Until version 5.1 in 1990, WordPerfect was written in x86 assembly language.

  • New York Times ☛ Bruce Bastian, a Founder of WordPerfect, Is Dead at 76

    Highly customizable, with a free customer support line, WordPerfect emerged from a crowded market of upstart word processors as the go-to choice of new personal computer users. (Among its fans was Philip Roth, who used it until he retired in 2012, long after the program was supplanted in popularity by Microsoft Word.)

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft Stores all close their doors in China

    According to Chinese state-sponsored media, Microsoft claimed it would focus on sales through the channel when serving the nation. Industry experts reportedly blamed declining interest in Surface products and insufficient profit for the closures.

  • International Business Times ☛ Facial Recognition Fail: Detroit Forced To Pay $300K To Man AI Falsely Recognised As Thief

    The City of Detroit has agreed to pay a man $300,000 in a settlement after the city police's facial recognition software wrongly identified him and accused him of shoplifting. The city will also revise its policies on how law enforcement uses facial recognition technology to solve crimes.

    The lawsuit settlement involving citizen Robert Williams came from a 2018 incident where his driver's license photo was mistakenly identified as a match to a suspect in security footage from a Shinola watch store.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Stop calling the robots “smart”

    We should banish “smart” from our vocabulary when talking about LLMs. They’re not smart, they’re tools that are useful in some ways and destructive in others, but we do ourselves a disservice when we call them smart.

• Security

  • TechRepublic ☛ Millions of Fashion Company Apple Applications Were Vulnerable to CocoaPods Supply Chain Attack

    The vulnerabilities have since been patched, but had quietly persisted since the CocoaPods migration in 2014.

  • Security Week ☛ Patelco Credit Union Scrambling to Restore Systems Following Ransomware Attack

    Patelco Credit Union shuts down banking systems and suspends electronic operations in response to a ransomware attack.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Patelco Credit Union targeted in ransomware attack, disrupting customer access

    California-based Patelco Credit Union, one of the largest credit unions in the U.S., has suffered from a ransomware attack that has prevented some customers from accessing their funds.

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Latvia ☛ Warning about fake 'Smart-ID' phishing fraud

      Latvia's dedicated cybersecurity agency, CERT.lv, has issued a warning for the public to be on guard against a 'phishing' attempt that involves a fake representation of the popular 'Smart-ID' app that is widely used in Latvia for online authentication.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Proton debuts privacy-focused alternative to Surveillance Giant Google Docs and Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Word that rejects Hey Hi (AI) assistance

      Swiss privacy technology company Proton AG is looking to challenge Surveillance Giant Google LLC and Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Corp. with the launch of its new word processing tool and document editor, Docs in Proton Drive.

• Defence/Aggression

  • ACLU ☛ Supreme Court Grants Trump, Future Presidents a Loaded Weapon to Break the Law

    The Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents immunity from prosecution for criminal acts committed while in office not only gives Donald Trump a free pass for his past crimes, but sets a dangerous precedent for all future presidents.

  • New York Times ☛ Israel Kills a Top Commander of Hezbollah, Which Replies With a Rocket Barrage

    The escalation in violence across the border of Israel and Lebanon came as Western diplomats tried to head off a full-fledged war there.

  • New York Times ☛ Middle East Crisis: Israeli Strike Kills Hezbollah Commander in Lebanon, Adding to Fears of Broader War

    The strike, which was followed by a barrage of rockets from Hezbollah, came as a Biden adviser met with a French official to discuss the cross-border exchanges.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Life and death in Gaza’s ‘safe zone’ where food is scarce and Israel strikes without warning

    An Israeli airstrike slammed into a residential building next to the main medical center in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis, wounding at least seven people, hospital authorities and witnesses said Wednesday.

  • JURIST ☛ Germany arrests five for crimes related to war in Syria

    German authorities on Wednesday arrested five individuals on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The suspects, four stateless Syrian Palestinians and one Syrian citizen, are accused of killing and torturing civilians during the Syrian civil war.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • RFERL ☛ Belarusian Politician Ryhor Kastusyou Released Under Amnesty Law

      The leader of the opposition Belarusian Popular Front, Ryhor Kastusyou, who was serving a lengthy prison term, has been released after the country's authoritarian ruler signed a law on a mass amnesty to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Belarus from Nazi Germany.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia Says French National Pleads Guilty To Collecting Information On Military

      Russia's Investigative Committee said on July 3 that French citizen Laurent Vinatier, who was arrested in early June, has pleaded guilty to illegally obtaining information about the  Russian military.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia Adds French Businessman Philippe Delpal To Its Wanted List

      Russia's Interior Ministry on July 3 added French businessman Philippe Delpal, a former senior executive in the Baring Vostok investment group, to its wanted list on unspecified charges.

    • RFERL ☛ In Tit-For-Tat Move, Russia Declares Romanian Diplomat Persona Non Grata

      The Russian Foreign Ministry said on July 3 it summoned Romanian Ambassador Cristian Istrate and informed him that a diplomat of the Romanian embassy in Moscow was declared persona non grata.

    • RFA ☛ North Korea and Russia to build road bridge over Tumen River

      Experts predict it will increase trade and tourism between two nations connected only by rail.

    • JURIST ☛ UN urges release of US journalist Evan Gershkovich detained in Russia

      The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, is arbitrarily detained for espionage and should be released on Tuesday. The submission criticized the Russian government for the serious unjustifiable deprivation of his freedom and rights during the criminal procedure.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvian linguists nay de-capitalizing 'russia'

      Linguists do not support the proposal to allow the lowercase spelling of "Russia", the State Language Center said in a statement on July 3.

    • Meduza ☛ The fight for the skies F-16s are coming to Ukraine. Meduza breaks down how the military plans to use them and what impact they could have on the battlefield. — Meduza

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Ukraine war fuels rise of killer Hey Hi (AI) robots — report details rapid evolution using consumer drones and Raspberry Pi

      The era of killer Hey Hi (AI) robots may be closer than we think, thanks to autonomous weapons being developed in Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ 5 Killed In Russian Attack On Dnipro; Zelenskiy Renews Call For Air-Defense Systems

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has renewed his plea to the West for advanced air-defense systems and long-range weapons after at least five people were killed in a Russian drone and missile attack on Dnipro on July 3.

    • RFERL ☛ NATO Allies Pledge $43 Billion In Military Aid For Ukraine In 2025

      Media reports say NATO allies have agreed to provide 40 billion euros ($43 billion) in military aid to Ukraine for 2025 but failed so far to commit to a multi-year military financial package for the war-wracked country.

    • RFERL ☛ 3 Sons Of Russian Orthodox Priest Get Lengthy Prison Terms For Plans To Fight On Ukraine's Side

      The Second Western District Military Court in Moscow on July 3 sentenced three sons of an Orthodox priest Igor Ashcheulov to lengthy prison terms for their intention to join Ukrainian armed forces and fight against the Russian troops invading Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ UN Watchdog Sounds Alarm Over Drone Attacks Near Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Plant

      Drone attacks targeting the Russian-held Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine must stop, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on July 3 after the plant's Russian management reported strikes near the facility and the injury of eight ZNPP employees

    • RFERL ☛ Russia Sentences Crimean Resident To 16 Years For Preparing To Blow Up Railway

      A Russian court sentenced a resident of Ukraine's occupied Crimean Peninsula on July 3 to 16 years in prison after being charged with preparing a detonation.

    • JURIST ☛ Ukraine court convicts leader of occupied Luhansk region

      The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) announced on Tuesday that Leonid Pasichnyk, the leader of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic in the occupied territory of Ukraine’s Luhansk province, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.

    • JURIST ☛ Kazakhstan dissident dies in Ukraine following assassination attempt

      Aydos Sadykov, a renowned critic of Kazakhstan’s political regime, passed away two weeks after surviving an assassination attempt in Kyiv, his wife announced on Tuesday. His wife Natalia Sadykova blamed Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev for the assassination, stating that Sadykov’s death is on Tokayev’s conscience.

    • JURIST ☛ Human Rights NGOs urge Austria to investigate sexual crimes by Russia military in Ukraine

      The Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), an organisation led by human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, and Centre for the Enforcement of Human Rights International (CEHRI), a non-profit organisation that advocates for liability for international crimes, filed a case in Austria calling for investigations into sexual violence and murder in Ukraine by Russian soldiers on Monday.

• Environment

  • Democracy Now ☛ Science, Not Scaremongering: St. Vincent & Grenadines PM on Hurricane Beryl & Climate Crisis

    As the earliest Category 5 storm ever observed in the Atlantic carves a path of destruction through the Caribbean, we get an update on damage from Hurricane Beryl from the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, where the storm hit Tuesday. He describes the disaster scenes he witnessed and discusses the rising challenge of extreme weather fueled by the climate crisis. “The developed countries, the major emitters, are not taking this matter seriously,” says Gonsalves. He says the world must dramatically reduce emissions and that the current political and economic system is “driving all of us towards, if not extinction, to a terrible, inhospitable place called Earth.”

  • France24 ☛ Hurricane Beryl strikes Jamaica, Cayman Islands and Mexico brace for impact

    Category 4 Hurricane Beryl devastated the southern coast of Jamaica on Wednesday evening. The Cayman Islands and Mexico are bracing to be next.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • France24 ☛ AC-free ambition for Paris Olympics melts away as organisers order 2,500 cooling units

      The Paris Olympic village will be fitted with 2,500 temporary cooling units when athletes arrive later this month, organisers said Tuesday, in a blow to the event's eco-friendly credentials. The organising committee had initially announced they would steer clear of air conditioning in the athletes' accommodation, instead using a geothermal cooling system.

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ No more fizz? How a steelworks strike puts carbonated beverage production at risk

      The strike began in late May at the ArcelorMittal steelworks in Michoacán, and is having downstream affects on various industries nationwide.

• Finance

  • Federal News Network ☛ How important to recruiting is a traditional pension plan?

    Government employee recruitment often relies on the appeal of the mission. Still people want to be paid and have some financial security.

  • LRT ☛ Bank reps meet with Lithuanian PM, voice dissatisfaction with extended windfall tax

    Representatives of Lithuania’s five largest banks – Citadelė, Luminor, OP Corporate Bank, SEB Bank, and Swedbank – have met with Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė and expressed concerns over the “unpredictability” of the country’s investment environment.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Democracy Now ☛ How to Replace Biden & Beat Trump: Longtime DNC Member Jim Zogby Proposes Process to Pick New Nominee

    As Democrats discuss whether President Joe Biden should stand down as the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate following his disastrous debate performance, we speak with James Zogby, senior member of the Democratic National Committee, about his call for an open and transparent nomination process to select new candidates leading up to the Democratic National Convention next month, where the final nominee would be voted on. “I want to see a unified, energized party with a lot of excitement because they were part of a historic process of change,” says Zogby, who is president of the Arab American Institute.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • EDRI ☛ Webinar: “Countering climate disinformation: strengthening global citizenship education and media literacy”

      Currently responsible for around 75 per cent of global CO2 emissions, cities – and in particular the transport systems and office buildings – play a pivotal role in the world’s response to the climate crisis

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Why male voices dominate when it comes to news on social control media

    Sophia Smith Galer, Marverine Cole and Amy Ross Arguedas share their views.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • EDRI ☛ 2024 EPIC Champions of Freedom Awards

    EPIC established the Champions of Freedom Awards to recognize individuals who have helped safeguard the right to privacy, open government, and democratic values with courage and integrity.

  • Pro Publica ☛ NYPD Restores Thousands of Missing Records From Officer Discipline Database

    The New York Police Department restored more than 2,000 previously missing discipline records to its public database of uniformed officers last month, weeks after a ProPublica report revealed data reliability issues that dogged the site for almost two years.

    The department also revamped the site, including removing case numbers, which will make it more difficult for the public to identify or track missing cases. When the revamped site was published two weeks ago, the number of cases dropped again.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Judge Denies Ken Paxton’s Efforts to Shut Down a Texas Migrant Shelter

    An El Paso judge on Tuesday denied Texas’ efforts to shut down a migrant shelter network that Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed was violating state law by helping people he suspected of being undocumented immigrants.

    Although the case centered around immigration, it was one of more than a dozen instances ProPublica and The Texas Tribune recently identified in which Paxton’s office has aggressively used the state’s powerful consumer protection laws to investigate organizations whose work conflicts in some way with his political views or the views of his conservative base.

  • Michael Geist ☛ Court Issues Injunction Against University of Toronto Encampment on Trespass Grounds, Finds “No Doubt That Some of the Speech on the Exterior of the Encampment Rises to the Level of Hate Speech”

    Ontario Superior Court of Justice Markus Koehnen issued his much anticipated ruling involving the encampment at the University of Toronto late yesterday, granting the University its requested order that can be used to remove the encampment. Under the order, protesters have until 6:00 pm today to clear the encampment. If they fail to do so, the court ruled that the University can levy the full range of sanctions, including “physical enforcement of the order, prosecution for trespass, liability for contempt of court and the full range of disciplinary sanctions at the University.” The basis of the order lies in trespass with the court concluding that “there is ample judicial authority that says protesters have no right to set up camp on or otherwise occupy property that does not belong to them, no matter how much more effective their protest would be if they were able to do so.”

  • Citizen Lab ☛ Citizen Lab submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders: Challenges faced by women human rights defenders working in conflict, post-conflict or crisis-affected settings

    In response to the United Nations’ call for input to the report of the Special Rapporteur, we made a submission underlining the challenges faced by women human rights defenders (WHRDs) who live in exile or in the diaspora, and the threats they encounter.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • JUVE ☛ Moderna takes first win in UK trials with Pfizer and BioNTech [Ed: Instead of treating people or dealing with COVID-19 they stockpiled patents]

    In the global dispute between Moderna on one side and Pfizer and BioNTech on the other, all opponents saw a measure of success in the UK High Court yesterday. In a combined judgment, High Court judge Richard Meade ruled that Moderna’s EP 3 718 565 is not valid (case IDs: HP-2022-000022 and HP-2022-000027).

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ The Emperor’s New Judgments: Rule 36 and the Invisible Cloth of Patent Law

    The Federal Circuit’s practice of issuing no-opinion affirmances under Rule 36 is facing renewed scrutiny in two recent petitions for rehearing en banc. In UNM Rainforest Innovations v. ZyXEL Communications Corp. and Island Intellectual Property LLC v. TD Ameritrade, Inc., the petitioners argue that the court’s use of one-word Rule 36 judgments allowed it to sidestep key legal and factual issues raised on appeal. These petitions highlight ongoing concerns about the Federal Circuit’s frequent use of Rule 36 and its impact on patent monopoly law development. 

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • JUVE ☛ Local division Düsseldorf grants first ever injunction against bathtub manufacturer [Ed: UPC is illegal and unconstitutional; this publisher, however, profits from legitimising the crime post hoc]

      Bette may no longer sell certain shower trays in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. The local division Düsseldorf issued the ruling today (case ID: ACT_459767/2023).

    • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ First ever permanent injunction at the UPC as the Düsseldorf Local Division issues its final decision in Franz Kaldewei v Bette [Ed: This is an illegal kangaroo court that delegitimises the EU and shows how criminal elements in the litigation industry took over the system itself]

      In a decision issued today, the Düsseldorf Local Division has ordered the first ever permanent injunction at the UPC following a hearing on 16 May 2024. The injunction covers seven UPC member states: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxemburg and the Netherlands.

  • Software Patents

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Report: China leads the world in generative Hey Hi (AI) patents [Ed: Software Patents are worthless junk though]

      Data from the United Nations shows that China is far ahead of any other country in terms of generative artificial intelligence inventions, having filed six times as many patents as the U.S. The World Intellectual Property Organization, which operates a global system for countries to share recognition of patents [...]

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Warner Music Joins Sony Music in Warning Hey Hi (AI) Companies Against Unlicensed Training: ‘We Will Take Any Necessary Steps to Prevent the Infringement’

    Warner Music Group has officially joined Sony Music Entertainment in warning Hey Hi (AI) companies against mining its catalog to train generative models. WMG forwarded the relevant notice to a number of high-profile artificial intelligence players, several of which are grappling with litigation over alleged copyright monopoly infringement.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Suno Releases a Mobile App Amid RIAA Suit — Complete With a Warning About ‘Legal Liability’ for Uploading Protected Audio

    Why not make it even easier to “create” music? As it fends off a massive copyright monopoly infringement lawsuit filed by the major labels, Suno has launched a mobile app.

  • Public Domain Review ☛ “A Truer and Deeper Knowledge”: Anna Maria van Schurman’s The Learned Maid (1659)

    A 17th-century treatise on women’s right to education, written by an exceptional polyglot.

  • Digital Music News ☛ National Independent Venue Association Backs California’s SB 785 — ‘Predatory Resellers Have Made the Ticket-Buying Experience a Nightmare’

    The National Independent Venue Association backs California’s SB 785 bill to ban deceptive and predatory ticketing resale practices. The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) has released a statement regarding California’s proposed Senate Bill (SB) 785 currently up for consideration by the California Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection.