Leftovers

• WhichUK ☛ What happens to your data when you die? Here's how to prepare

  Find out how to safeguard your photos, social control media and other digital assets, and which platforms offer tools to make the process easier

• Cyble Inc ☛ 7 Ways Social Media Is Fuelling Cybercrime In 2024

  Social media has transformed the way people communicate, share information, and interact globally. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter (now X), and Instagram have woven themselves into the fabric of daily life, offering spaces for personal expression, community building, and even business growth.

  However, alongside these benefits, social media has also become a breeding ground for cybercriminals. The vast amount of personal data, combined with the ease of access and anonymity, makes these platforms prime targets for cyberattacks. With billions of users, the potential for exploitation is immense, and as these platforms expand, so do the methods hackers use to carry out scams such as phishing, identity theft, and malware distribution.

  In this article, we’ll delve into seven ways social media fuels cybercrime, highlighting the growing threats from phishing attacks, identity fraud, botnets, and more, and what users can do to protect themselves.

• The Verge ☛ James Earl Jones, voice of Darth Vader, has died at 93

  However, his 1977 role in the very first Star Wars left a huge mark on his audience, though he wasn’t initially credited for voicing the villain as a courtesy to David Prowse, who wore Darth Vader’s suit. While Jones is best known for his distinctive voice in the Star Wars series, he has voiced Mufasa in The Lion King (1994 and 2019). Jones also appeared in Field of Dreams, The Sandlot, Coming to America, Conan the Barbarian, and much more. He is among the small group of actors who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony — the coveted EGOT.

• Danielle Baskin ☛ Goodbye.Domains

  A graveyard for good domains you let expire.

• Seth Godin ☛ Celebrating the thousand with a special package

  Ideas that spread win.

  The 1,000 fans go first, yes, but they also spread the word. Part of the creator’s job is to give the true fans something worth talking about, something that advances their mission.

• Robert Birming ☛ To write or not to write?

  I read the post "It's okay to not feel like writing, right?". My short answer to that question is: Yes, absolutely!

  But...

• James G ☛ Blogging before dinner

  Another time in which I have written a lot is before breakfast, when I have time to write on a train before getting to work.

• Anti Software Software Club LLC ☛ cohost! - "cohost to shut down at end of 2024"

  cohost will become read-only on Tuesday, October 1st. At this time, we will make best-effort attempts to keep the servers online through the end of 2024.

• Standards/Consortia

  • The Register UK ☛ Military GPS modernization way behind schedule, audit finds

    The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report yesterday filled with phrases like "multiple delays" and "significant development challenges" to describe the Space Force-led effort to transition to military-code GPS. Also known as M-Code, the tech can be encrypted and is resistant to jamming and spoofing.

    Adoption of M-Code GPS requires new equipment in three places: space, ground control, and user equipment. The Space Force has been working on all three, and 24 of the 31 satellites in the GPS constellation are now M-Code capable, but there's little hardware on the ground able to make use of the enhanced signals.

• Education

  • CS Monitor ☛ How do you cultivate a love of reading? These educators have some ideas.

    When Alden Jones took to X in July, her post went viral, likely due to her eye-catching first line: “Yes, college students have lost their ability to read.”

    Ms. Jones, an assistant professor at Emerson University in Boston, says reading hesitancy among her young adult students started in the late 2000s and accelerated during the pandemic. The difficult part, she says, is simply engaging students in reading.

    “They can’t turn their minds fully to the material in the way that [people] used to,” she says.

  • [Repeat] EDRI ☛ Call for papers: Cambridge Disinformation Summit 2025

    Research might consider policy, regulatory, enforcement, audit, fact-checking, sociological, psychological, religious, algorithmic, financial, or other frameworks for interventions, and should consider balancing free speech and other fundamental human rights.

  • [Repeat] EDRI ☛ DisinfoCon 2024

    DisinfoCon is a forum for civil society, policymakers, journalists and AI practitioners to meet, exchange and align on a values-based approach to the AI revolution affecting our democracies.

  • EDRI ☛ Freedom not Fear 2024

    Freedom not Fear (FNF) is an annual self-organised conference on privacy and digital rights. People from all across Europe meet and work towards more freedom in the digitalised world, plan actions against increasing surveillance and other attacks on civil rights.

  • Seth Godin ☛ When did we lose consciousness?

    Choice brings responsibility, and responsibility is often accompanied by fear.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Rescuing High-Res Displays From Older Macs

    When Apple started rolling out its Retina displays, it multiplied the amount of pixels compared to their standard, non-Retina displays by four. This increased pixel density while keeping the standard screen size — idea for those needing a lot of detail for their work. But, as is common with Apple, using these displays outside of the Apple ecosystem can be quite a challenge. Retina displays have been around for about a decade now, though, with some third-party hardware able to break them free of their cage. This post details how [Kevin] liberated the 5K display from a 2017 iMac for more general use with support for USB-C.

  • Adam Nowak ☛ I made a coffee table!

    It’s incredibly heavy, but it looks fantastic! My wife is happy, and I feel a strong sense of pride in this project. I’ve learned so much during this process and am looking forward to tackling my next woodworking challenge.

  • PC World ☛ I switched to an ultrawide monitor. Here's what surprised me

    A little while back, I made a big change to my desktop PC workflow — I swapped my pair of 24-inch desktop monitors for a single 35-inch ultrawide display, which stretches much further side-to-side than a traditional widescreen monitor does.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Myrna Mantaring and the bogus claim that COVID-19 vaccines caused a 1,432.33% increase in cancer

    If there’s a lesson that I’ve learned about the claims of cranks, quacks, and pseudoscientists, it’s that too much is never enough in terms of their hyperbolic claims. For example, with respect to COVID-19 vaccines and cancer, it wasn’t enough just to falsely claim that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer. Oh, no. They had to cause “turbo cancers,” cancers so much nastier, fatal, and prone to appearing in younger people than regular boring, run-of-the-mill cancers. Nor is it enough to say that the vaccines have caused the incidence of cancer merely to have doubled or tripled—or even quadrupled—any of which, if true and provable with statistics and epidemiology linking vaccination to cancers, would be alarming enough. That’s not enough for cranks. Oh, no. Behold the latest claim from Myrna Mantaring, MT, MCI, MS, MBA, CLSp MB (ASCP), who “has more than 50 years of experience in the fields of Diagnostic and Research Laboratory Technology, Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Biology” (but apparently none in epidemiology), who has appeared with antivaxxer Polly Tommey (buddy of Andrew Wakefield) on CHD.TV to claim that there has been a “143,233% increase in cancers due to COVID vaccination” in the US:

  • University of Michigan ☛ Gym culture toxicity

    Social media has distorted my view of what is attainable for the average gym-goer. What I consider to be my pinnacle of athletic performance is considered a cakewalk to others. Bodybuilders and fitness influencers are focused on showing off their unrealistic physiques as a marketing tactic to sell their latest supplements. Full-time students with part-time jobs don’t have enough hours in a day to sculpt their bodies in the gym, let alone the discretionary income to afford a membership to a facility with state-of-the-art equipment or fancy supplements sold by influencers.

  • VOA News ☛ Australia plans age limit to ban children from social media

    Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, Anthony Albanese said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a "scourge."

    The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • The Register UK ☛ UK Lords push bill to tame rogue algorithms in public sector

    There are currently no legal obligations on public authorities to be transparent about when and how they use algorithms to automate decision-making without human intervention or oversight, according to Lord Clement-Jones, Liberal Democrat peer and former chair of the Lords Select Committee on AI, who is proposing the bill.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Quad7 Botnet Linked To Additional Login Botnets, TTPs

    Researchers have closely monitored the Quad7 botnet (also referred to as the 7777 botnet), a notorious cybercriminal group observed to target various small office and home office (SOHO) routers and VPN appliances, including devices from TP-LINK, Zyxel, Asus, Axentra, D-Link, and Netgear.

    The researchers state that they have discovered that the Quad7 botnet is just one component of a larger network of compromised devices, and five different login clusters were identified and linked to its operators, including the alogin, xlogin, axlogin, rlogin, and zylogin botnets.

  • Science News ☛ AI generates harsher punishments for people who use Black dialect

    Ask it and other artificial intelligence tools like it what they think about Black people, and they will generate words like “brilliant,” “ambitious” and “intelligent.” Ask those same tools what they think about people when the input doesn’t specify race but uses the African American English, or AAE, dialect, and those models will generate words like “suspicious,” “aggressive” and “ignorant.”

  • Vox ☛ Why Apple Intelligence won’t change your iPhone anytime soon

    Apple Intelligence is cool, useful, and perhaps most importantly, charmingly unfinished. Unlike some other AI projects, this upgrade to the software that powers iPhones, iPads, and Macs does not appear to threaten our very existence. Its standout features are supposed to include privacy and a Siri that actually works. But none of it works quite yet, and despite its imminent launch, it probably won’t for many months.

  • Science Alert ☛ AI Chatbots Have a Political Bias That Could Unknowingly Influence Society

    The average left-leaning bias wasn't strong, but it was significant. Further tests on custom bots – where users can fine-tune the LLMs training data – showed that these AIs could be influenced to express political leanings using left-of-center or right-of-center texts.

  • Wired ☛ Why Is AI So Bad at Generating Images of Kamala Harris?

    When we tried using Grok to create a photo of Harris and Trump putting their differences aside to read a copy of WIRED, the results repeatedly depicted the ex-president accurately while getting the vice president wrong. Harris appeared with varying features, hairstyles, and skin tones. On a few occasions, she looked more like former First Lady Michelle Obama.

  • Nicolas Magand ☛ Nine quick observations from the 2024 iPhone event

    After watching the 2024 iPhone event yesterday, I had a good night’s sleep to reflect on what I saw, and here are nine quick observations, powered by an early morning coffee, and yet untainted by other people’s opinions (that I will start reading tonight after work).

  • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ The LLM honeymoon phase is about to end

    They’re a bit coy on their website about what exactly they do but, based on what Kevin Roose wrote, what they do is large-scale sentiment analysis LLM chatbot responses to brand terms along with an analysis of how keywords, queries, and prompts affect the result.

    If what he wrote was accurate, then what they’re doing is mapping the black boxes that are these chatbots by using APIs to throw stuff in one end and performing ML sentiment analysis on what comes out the other.

  • Techdirt ☛ How ‘Analog Privilege’ Spares Elites From The Downsides Of Flawed AI Decision-Making Systems

    We live in a world where there are often both analog and digital versions of a product. For example, we can buy books or ebooks, and choose to listen to music on vinyl or via streaming services. The fact that digital goods can be copied endlessly and perfectly, while analog ones can’t, has led some people to prefer the latter for what often amounts to little more than snobbery. But a fascinating Tech Policy Press article by Maroussia Lévesque points out that in the face of increased AI decision-making, there are very real advantages to going analog:

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • [Repeat] The Register UK ☛ Would you bet your enterprise on Azure Linux?

    Azure Linux was known as CBL-Mariner before it was rebranded, and thank your lucky stars that happened in 2023. Lately, it would probably end up being called Copilot for Linux or something similar.

    Downloadable from GitHub, Azure Linux can be found running as a container host operating system for the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and supports both x86 and Arm.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Time Out England Limited ☛ Full list of UK supermarkets ditching cash payments this year, from Tesco to Asda

      These days, paying for things with cash feels like playing one big game of Monopoly. Many of us have become so accustomed to cards and contactless that we simply don’t carry physical, real life money anymore.

      But you happen find a miracle £20 note in your coat pocket, there are increasingly fewer places you can actually use it. In an effort to reduce queue times, more and more supermarkets are making the decision to go completely cashless.

      There have been concerns over those decisions, though. Martin Quinn from the Campaign for Cash warned that it could alienate elderly customers or retirees who prefer in person interactions to paying through a computer screen. He said: ‘People will rightly vote with their wallets and take their custom elsewhere. It’s an utterly soulless experience.’

    • Head Topics ☛ Asda braced for nightmare before Christmas as it switches IT system at busiest time of year...

      Many retailers, including major supermarkets like Tesco and Asda, are moving towards cashless payments to reduce queues.

    • BIA Net ☛ Turkey seeks Google's help as 108 million people’s info stolen in massive breach

      The company has reportedly complied with Turkey’s request to delete data stored in Surveillance Giant Google Drive.

    • The Register UK ☛ Predator spyware is back with dangerous new features

      Predator, like Pegasus from the NSO group and other commercial spyware, allows government actors to infiltrate devices and spy on users. The product is known for its ability to track locations, access device cameras, record calls, read messages and do other privacy-invading things.

    • Wired ☛ What You Need to Know About Grok AI and Your Privacy

      Image generation capabilities in its Grok-2 large language model are also causing concern. Soon after the launch in August, users demonstrated how easy it was to create outrageous and incendiary depictions of politicians including Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

      So what are the main issues with Grok AI, and how can you protect your X data from being used to train it?

    • BIA Net ☛ Turkey seeks Google's help as 108 million people’s info stolen in massive breach

      The stolen data encompasses full identification details, residential addresses, and mobile phone numbers, according to reporting from FreeWeb Turkey.

      This is not the first instance of a data breach. Over the years, multiple websites have surfaced offering similar personal information through user panels.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Register UK ☛ India to train 5000 ‘Cyber Commandos’

    The division of cyber fighters were part of four major initiatives announced by minister Amit Shah. Other plans include the establishment of a Cyber Fraud Mitigation Centre (CFMC), a centralized cyber crime coordination and data-sharing platform for law enforcement agencies – called the Samanvay platform – and the creation of a nation-level state registry of suspected cyber criminals.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Kansas election official says nearly 1,000 primary ballots tossed due to mail processing issues

    The Kansas secretary of state said in a letter to the U.S. postmaster general that approximately 1,000 August primary voters in Kansas were disenfranchised because ballots mailed before Election Day in August arrived in county offices more than three days after the deadline or without an essential postmark.

  • Common Dreams ☛ CAIR Swing State Data Shows Muslim Voters Hold Diverse Preferences, Still Up for Grabs in 2024

    Conducted in partnership with Molitical Consulting LLC, the additional survey results also show how Muslim voter preferences differ based on gender, race, party affiliation, age and likelihood of voting.

  • Defence Web ☛ Suicide bombings in Nigeria: tactic is back after a four-year break – security researcher offers 3 possible reasons

    The attacks took place in Gwoza, a town in Borno State, north-east Nigeria. Gwoza was once the seat of the Islamic Caliphate declared by Boko Haram insurgents in 2014. Boko Haram is an extremist sect which aims for Islamic rule in Nigeria and an end to secular governance.

  • Axios ☛ "Dragon drones" are spitting fire in the Russia-Ukraine war

    Be smart: Don't expect the dragon drones to swing the balance of the war. While novel and intimidating, their use is limited.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Experts react: Maduro has forced Venezuela’s opposition leader into exile. What should the world do now?

    He’s in no mood to bargain. After falsely declaring victory in July’s presidential election, Venezuela’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, has continued to tighten his grip on the country rather than engage in talks with the democratic opposition. Over the weekend, Edmundo González, who independent observers say won the election by a large margin, fled to Spain after a court issued a warrant for his arrest. “I trust that soon we will continue the struggle to achieve freedom and the recovery of democracy in Venezuela,” González said from Madrid. But how? And how can the United States and regional countries help? Our experts are on the case.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Israel strikes Gaza humanitarian area as Palestinians struggle to find true safe zone

    First responders dug through sand and rubble with garden tools and bare hands early on Sept. 10. Palestinian officials say the blast killed 19 and wounded 60, while Israel disputes the toll.

  • New York Times ☛ 2,000-Pound Bombs Likely Used in Mawasi Strike

    The large size of the two craters left in the aftermath of the attack suggest that Israel used the powerful bombs, according to experts and a New York Times analysis.

  • New York Times ☛ Fearing Airstrikes, Gaza School Shelters Try to Bar Hamas and Others

    Residents, already forced to flee their homes by intense bombardment, want to avoid becoming a target for Israeli forces hunting Hamas.

  • New York Times ☛ Israeli Bombing in Gaza Humanitarian Zone Kills at Least 19, Officials Say

    The Israeli airstrike, which the military said targeted Hamas militants, appeared to use 2,000-pound bombs, which Israel has been criticized for using in heavily populated areas.

  • The Kent Stater ☛ Dozens of casualties and more feared buried in Israeli airstrike on Gaza humanitarian zone targeting Hamas militants

    An overnight Israeli airstrike on an area that Israel itself had designated as a humanitarian zone for displaced people in southern Gaza killed and injured dozens of Palestinians, according to local officials in the besieged enclave. Israel said the operation targeted Hamas fighters there.

  • France24 ☛ Israeli strike on Gaza humanitarian zone kills 19, Hamas-run health ministry says

    An Israeli army strike on a tent camp in a humanitarian zone in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis killed at least 19 people and wounded 60 others, the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave said Tuesday after the civil defence agency provided an earlier death toll of 40. The Israeli army said it targeted a Hamas command centre in the Al-Mawasi area, which the military had designated a safe zone. Hamas said the claim that its fighters were at the scene was a "blatant lie".

  • RFA ☛ Red Cross chief calls for greater aid access after visit to Myanmar

    Mirjana Spoljaric warns that conflict has cut off ‘countless people’ from essential services.

  • RFA ☛ Myanmar junta airstrikes kill dozens, including prisoners, rebels say

    The military has responded to a string of setbacks in Rakhine state with more intense air attacks.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Latvia ☛ Latvia to follow Finnish example and restrict Russians' ability to buy land

      The three-party Latvian ruling coalition has conceptually agreed to limit the opportunities for Russian citizens to purchase land in Latvia, Edmunds Jurēvics, head of the 'New Unity' Saeima faction, told journalists on Monday after the cooperation meeting of the parties of the ruling coalition.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvia pledges to improve drone identification capability

      Following an incident involving a Russian combat drone that flew into Latvian territory, the National Security Council has decided to update and improve the procedures for more effective action in the event of a security threat posed by unmanned aerial vehicles, Latvian Radio reports September 10.

    • ADF ☛ Russia Turns to TV to Influence African Audiences

      As global outrage grew over its invasion of neighboring Ukraine, Russia in 2023 began ramping up its efforts to change the narrative. Seeking to influence public opinion, the Kremlin expanded its information warfare operations worldwide.

    • Latvia ☛ Investigation launched into Russian drone's incursion in Latvia

      The investigation into the Russian "Shahed" drone that flew into Latvian airspace and was found in the Rēzekne municipality will also assess whether the National Armed Forces followed procedures appropriate to the situation, Minister of Defence Andris Sprūds (Progressives) said on Latvian Television's "Morning Panorama" program September 10.

    • Latvia ☛ Russian diplomat presented with protest note over drone incursion

      Following the incursion of a suspected Russian military drone onto Latvian territory on September 7, the senior diplomat of the Russian Embassy in Rīga was summoned to the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on September 9 and presented with an official note of protest.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ What does Iran get for sending ballistic missiles to Russia?

      On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed that Tehran has delivered shipments of ballistic missiles to Moscow, raising new concerns about the depth of the Iran-Russia relationship.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Russian and Chinese strategic missile defense: Doctrine, capabilities, and development

      In a follow up to Matthew R. Costlow and Robert M. Soofer's paper, US Homeland Missile Defense: Room for Expanded Roles, former Forward Defense Program Assistant, Jacob Mezey, seeks to inform debates about missile defense policy by placing arguments that US ballistic missile defenses are uniquely destabilizing in the context of efforts by Russia and China to deploy similar systems.

    • France24 ☛ Russia launches largest navy drills of post-Soviet era alongside China in Sea of Japan

      Russia launched its largest navy drills of the post-Soviet era on Tuesday alongside Chinese warships, the latest sign of deepening military cooperation between the two global powers. The drills will continue until September 16 and will involve more than 400 warships, submarines and other maritime vessels.

    • LRT ☛ Two Lithuanian companies fined for breaching Russia sanctions

      Two Lithuanian companies were fined for working with sanctioned Russian producers of coal and rubber.

    • RFERL ☛ Non-Russian Ethnic Groups Rally In Warsaw In Memory Of Defender Of Udmurt Language

      Members of several of Russia’s ethnic groups held a demonstration on September 10 in Warsaw to remember ethnic Udmurt scholar and activist Albert Razin on the anniversary of his death by self-immolation in 2019.

    • RFERL ☛ Georgian Dream Picks Ivanishvili As Top Candidate For October Poll

      TBILISI – The ruling Georgian Dream party on September 10 selected Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire and former prime minister, as its lead candidate for a parliamentary election on October 26.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Man Gets 12 Years In Prison For Axing Off Wife's Hand, Rape, And Other Violent Crimes

      The Russian Investigative Committee said on September 10 that a court in the Perm region sentenced a man to 12 years in prison for axing off his wife's right hand.

    • RFERL ☛ Tajikistan Warns Citizens Against Traveling To Russia

      The Tajik Embassy in Moscow on September 10 warned citizens against traveling to Russia for the time-being, citing beefed-up security measures and increased document checks by Russian border guards.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Jails Recommend Foreigners Apply For Transfers Home After Hostage-Taking Incidents

      Foreign nationals serving terms in Russian prisons have been asked to write requests to serve the remainder of their terms in their homeland following two recent hostage-taking crises in Russian penitentiaries, IStories said on September 10.

    • RFERL ☛ Ailing Anti-War Saxophonist Transferred From Russian Jail To Hospital

      A Russian saxophonist known for his anti-war stance has been transferred from a detention center to a prison infirmary in Samara after reports of an extension of his pretrial detention exposed a serious medical condition.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Scientist Loses Appeal Against 14-Year Prison Term On Treason Charge

      A court of appeals in St. Petersburg on September 9 rejected an appeal filed by physicist Anatoly Maslov against the 14-year prison sentence he was handed in May on a high treason charge.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvia extends enhanced border security mode

      The Cabinet of Ministers meeting on Tuesday, September 10, decided to extend the enhanced border security regime at the Latvian-Belarusian border.

    • RFERL ☛ Belarusian Historian Ihar Melnikau Goes On Trial On Extremism Charge

      The Minsk City Court on September 10 started the trial of Belarusian historian Ihar Melnikau on a charge of facilitating extremist activities. It is unknown what the charge stems from.

    • New York Times ☛ Ukraine Strikes Russia With Large Drone Attack, Killing 1 Person

      A woman in the capital region was killed during the attack, officials said. Russian air defenses shot down 20 drones around Moscow and almost 150 nationwide, according to the Defense Ministry.

    • New York Times ☛ U.S. Accuses Iran of Sending Ballistic Missiles to Russia

      Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke in London, where his British counterpart also promised a punitive response. They plan to visit Ukraine together.

    • New York Times ☛ How Nail Salons Lift Morale in Ukraine

      In Ukraine, even a visit for a manicure, which often involves navigating power outages and air-raid sirens, can turn into an act of defiance.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Drones Threaten Moscow And Its Airports As Russian Drones Target Kyiv

      Ukrainian officials said a widespread Russian drone-and-missile attack had targeted Kyiv and critical infrastructure in Ukraine's northeast, while Russian officials said an overnight swarm of attack drones from Ukraine killed a woman near the capital and grounded flights at three Moscow airports.

    • RFERL ☛ Beside ICC Prosecutor, Ukraine Accuses Russian Commander Of Ordering Attack On Children's Hospital

      Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin accused an unnamed Russian Air Force commander of ordering a devastating air strike on a children's hospital in Kyiv in July, during a September 10 visit to the scene of the tragedy alongside the International Criminal Court's (ICC) visiting top prosecutor.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Engineer Jailed For 3 Years Over Pro-Ukrainian Key Chains

      A local court in the Moscow region on September 9 sentenced an engineer at a military factory in the city of Dubna to three years in prison for writing pro-Ukrainian messages on key chains.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukrainian PM Pushes For New, Bigger Peace Summit

      Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal on September 10 expressed hopes for a second peace summit that could dramatically increase the number of national countries from a similar gathering in Switzerland three months ago aimed at ending the current war with Russia.

    • RFERL ☛ Hungary Welcomes Deal To End Russian Oil Spat With Ukraine

      Hungary's government on September 10 welcomed a deal reached by energy company MOL aimed at guaranteeing the supply of Russian oil through Ukraine after Kyiv restricted transit.

    • RFERL ☛ U.S. Levels More Sanctions On Iran After Alleged Missile Transfer To Russia

      The United States on September 10 issued new sanctions on Iran in response to Tehran's military support to Russia, including the alleged recent delivery of ballistic missiles, for use in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Biden Says U.S. Is Working To End Ban On Ukraine's Use Of Long-Range Weapons

      U.S. President Joe Biden said on September 10 that his administration is working out a way to lift restrictions on Ukraine's use of long range weapons in its war against Russia.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuanian serving in Russian forces to lose his citizenship

      Kęstutis Kvietkus, who has served in the Russian forces in Ukraine, will lose his Lithuanian citizenship. The Migration Department head, who signed the proposal, says Lithuanian citizens are not allowed to serve in foreign militaries without the government’s permission.

    • France24 ☛ Russia says it shot down more than 140 Ukrainian drones in barrage that killed at least one

      Ukraine on Tuesday struck Russia with a wave of drone attacks, killing at least one woman in the Moscow region, wrecking dozens of homes and forcing flight cancellations and delays at major airports servicing Moscow, Russian officials said.

    • France24 ☛ Western powers unveil new sanctions on Iran for arming Russia with ballistic missiles

      The US, UK, France and Germany on Tuesday announced new sanctions on Iran for supplying Russia with short-range ballistic missiles to use in its war in Ukraine. US sanctions targeted Russian and Iranian entities while France, Britain and Germany canceled bilateral air agreements with Iran.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Escalation management is the appeasement of the 21st century

      The West's emphasis on avoiding escalation following Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the modern equivalent of the appeasement policies that emboldened Hitler and set the stage for WWII, writes Peter Dickinson.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Ukraine’s biggest wartime government shakeup prompts muted reaction in Kyiv

      Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presided over his government’s largest wartime reshuffle in early September, with nine ministries getting new permanent leadership, writes Andrew D’Anieri.

    • Latvia ☛ Braže invites Korea to join drone coalition for Ukraine

      During a visit to the Republic of Korea (someties referred to colloquially as 'South Korea' to differentiate it from the communist dictatorship occupying the north of the peninsula) as a part of a regional tour, Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs Baiba Braže invited the country to join the 'drone coalition' for Ukraine led jointly by Latvia and the United Kingdom.

• Environment

  • EcoWatch ☛ Antarctic Sea Ice Nears Record Low for Winter

    Scientists at the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP) announced that the Antarctic sea ice coverage has reached a new low point for winter, even surpassing the levels of 2023, which were the lowest since satellite records began.

  • The Register UK ☛ The Great Pacific Garbage Patch could be fixed in ten years

    Speaking in San Francisco last Friday, Ocean Cleanup founder and CEO Boyan Slat said that since last May the System 3 collection machine – which uses a 1.4 mile (2.25km)-long boom to scoop plastic into a collecting net – had collected a million pounds (over 450,000kg) of plastic trash, cleaning up an area about the size of New Jersey over 22 trips. That's still only half a percent of the total, but Slat argued that it proved the point that existing tech will do the job.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ Toronto Politician Moves to Ban Misleading Fossil Fuel Ads on Transit

    • The Strategist ☛ Cables under the sea: Pacific island countries need integrated electricity grids

      Pacific islands suffer from poor electricity access and reliability, with as few as 60 percent of households connected. Local energy production depends on fossil fuel imports, whose vulnerability to price shocks and supply disruptions poses a disproportionate economic burden on PICs. Fuel for electricity generation often exceeds 10 percent of GDP of multiple states, and shortages sometimes leave communities subject to prolonged blackouts.

    • University of Toronto ☛ How ATX power supply control seems to work on desktop motherboards

      All of the information I've dug up so far is for Intel ICH/PCH, but I suspect that AMD's chipsets work in a similar manner. Something has to do power management for suspend and sleep, and it seems that the chipset is the natural spot for it, and you might as well put the 'power off' handling into the same place. Whether AMD uses the same registers and the same bits is an open question, since I haven't turned up any chipset documentation so far.

    • Michigan News ☛ Stellantis recalls 1.5M Ram trucks over software issue that can disable stability control - mlive.com

      Stellantis says the affected trucks may have anti-lock brake software that could inadvertently shut down the electronic stability control system. That system is responsible for controlling the throttle and brakes to avoid skidding, however the brakes would still work in that situation.

      Electronic stability control systems are required to work during almost all phases of driving as part of safety standards in the U.S., according to Stellantis. The automaker says it is unaware of any injuries or crashes that have occurred as a result of the problem.

    • University of Toronto ☛ Ways ATX power supply control could work on server motherboards

      Yesterday I talked about how ATX power supply control seems to work on desktop motherboards, which is relatively straightforward; as far as I can tell from various sources, it's handled in the chipset (on modern Intel chipsets, in the PCH), which is powered from standby power by the ATX power supply. How things work on servers is less clear. Here when I say 'server' I mean something with a BMC (Baseboard management controller), because allowing you to control the server's power supply is one of the purposes of a BMC, which means the BMC has to hook into this power management picture.

    • BBC ☛ E-bike rage in Brent, the borough that's had enough - and how it might be solved - BBC News

      Brent Council has threatened to ban them as residents complain of impassable pavements and bad driving.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Madrid moves to ban app-rented e-scooters over safety concerns

      Madrid will ban e-scooters rented through mobile apps after the city’s three licensed operators failed to implement limits on their clients’ circulation or to control their parking, the Spanish capital’s mayor has said.

      José Luis Martínez-Almeida said on Thursday the licences of Lime, Dott and Tier Mobility would be cancelled from October, adding that the city had no plans to grant new licences to any other operators.

      “The market was found to be incapable of meeting the requirements set by the mayor’s office to ensure the highest level of safety for citizens,” he said in a statement.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Korea Times ☛ Men marry, women stay single when financially stable

      Young men who are financially better off than their peers are more likely to get married, while the opposite tends to be true for women, data showed Tuesday.

    • San Fancisco ☛ More than half of California ‘abnormally dry,’ drought experts say

      The affected areas include parts of the Central Valley, which are back in abnormally dry conditions for the first time since April 2023, according to the National Weather Service’s Hanford branch.

• Finance

  • FAIR ☛ ‘We’re Hitting Record Highs, But Still Leaving African Americans in Economic Insecurity’: CounterSpin interview with Dedrick Asante-Muhammad and Algernon Austin on the Black economy

    Janine Jackson interviewed the Joint Center’s Dedrick Asante-Muhammad and CEPR’s Algernon Austin about the Black economy for the September 6, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • Former Sony Europe president Chris Deering believes layoffs in the gaming industry are not due to corporate greed

    In January alone, more than 4,000 layoffs were added at companies such as Sony PlayStation (and its studios), Microsoft (and its studios, with the closures of Arkane Austin and Tango), Bungie, Embracer Group, and even smaller teams like Ascendant Studios o Surgent Studios.

  • Daily Star ☛ Asda cull dozens of products from budget Essentials range as shoppers left fuming

    Asda confirmed that dozens of products from their Just Essentials range have been removed. One customer, who is a full-time carer, shared how this will impact him

  • Asda shop workers push for equal pay in legal battle

    THOUSANDS of Asda shop workers have begun a crucial phase in their legal battle for equal pay, a case that could potentially result in over £1.2 billion in compensation.

    The employment tribunal, which started on Monday (9), will determine if the roles of predominantly female shop workers are of equal value to those of mainly male warehouse staff, who currently receive higher pay, the Guardian reported.

    The hearing is expected to last around three months, with a ruling anticipated early next year. This case has been ongoing since 2008, when a group of shop workers in Manchester first challenged the disparity in pay between shop floor roles and warehouse jobs.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • International Business Times ☛ 'I Just Want To Close The Wealth Gap!': Comedian Asks Nancy Pelosi What Stocks To Buy And Is Escorted Away

    As security personnel were preparing to escort Strenger away, he added that "the police are an instrumental institution of white supremacy and racism" while opining that "they should be defunded." He didn't stop there. The comedian highlighted that Pelosi "makes six figures a year in Congress and has a hundred million dollar net worth" and asked the crowd if they didn't want to know what "stocks she should buy." As he was being escorted, Strenger said: "I just want to know what stocks to buy. I want to close the wealth gap. What's the problem? I just want to close the wealth gap."

  • The Drone Girl ☛ Drone Star State: why Texas is hot on drone deliveries

    In fact, I just got back from a trip to Dallas to check out Wing’s drone delivery operations myself. You’ll have to stay tuned until next week to hear about my adventures getting my first ever, real drone delivery. But for now, consider this an ode to Texas.

    Here’s are a few reasons why Texas might be the very best place to launch not just any drone company, but in particular a drone delivery company: [...]

  • Futurism ☛ Trump Loses $4 Billion as Truth Social Stock Crashes

    In just ten days, Trump will have a big decision to make. September 19 marks the end of a six-month lockup period, which means he'll be free to sell off his stake, which could bludgeon the value of the already-eviscerated stock even further.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Jorge Ramos Will Leave Univision After 40 Years

    Ramos has co-anchored Noticiero Univision since 1986 and has hosted a weekend magazine show called Al Punto. He, for decades, has been one of the leading voices in Spanish-language media, earning 10 Emmy Awards throughout his career. He was infamously kicked out of a news conference by Donald Trump in 2015 after Ramos pressed him on immigration policy.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Business Insider names WSJ business editor as next editor-in-chief

    Heller has worked at the Wall Street Journal for more than 20 years and currently leads its global business and tech coverage as business editor.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • US News And World Report ☛ Trump Repeats False Claims Over 2020 Election Loss, Deflects Responsibility for Jan. 6

      Donald Trump is persisting in saying he won the 2020 election and continues to take no responsibility for any of the mayhem that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the building to block the peaceful transfer of power

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Dissenter ☛ City Of Columbus Silences Data Breach Whistleblower

    A cybersecurity specialist exposed false statements made by the city of Columbus, Ohio, about a ransomware attack, which compromised the personal data of hundreds of thousands of people. Embarrassed city officials sued the whistleblower and further silenced them with a restraining order.

    On July 18, the city of Columbus was targeted by an international ransomware group. All city systems were shut down to try and prevent the group from holding data hostage.

  • VOA News ☛ Tanzanian authorities deny rights abuses as critics keep disappearing

    Investigations by international human rights groups and witness testimonies provide evidence of government agencies' involvement in the disappearances of at least three prominent opposition figures as well as mass arrests.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Rich countries silencing climate protest while preaching about rights elsewhere, says study

    A Climate Rights International report exposes the increasingly heavy-handed treatment of climate activists in Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the US.

    It found the crackdown in these countries – including lengthy prison sentences, preventive detention and harassment – was a violation of governments’ legal responsibility to protect basic rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and association.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Josh Withers ☛ All the News Fit to Print Is Not All the News

    For the past week, a globally well-known person has been on the Gold Coast for a reason unrelated to their popular life as one of the world’s foremost YouTubers and technology reviewers. Instead, they were here to represent the USA in the World Ultimate Championships, with their mixed team eventually walking away with gold medals in the finals.

  • VOA News ☛ Critics denounce Vietnam's sentencing of journalist as 'intimidation' of media

    A Hanoi court sentenced journalist and political activist Nguyen Vu Binh to seven years in prison on Tuesday, in a move critics described as a "brazen intimidation" of the media.

    Binh, 55, has contributed to media outlets including TNT Media Live and VOA's sister network Radio Free Asia, or RFA. He covered issues including corruption, land rights, police abuse and human rights.

  • CPJ ☛ Vietnamese journalist sentenced to 7 years on propaganda charges

    “Journalist Nguyen Vu Binh was arrested and sentenced to seven years for airing independent views, which Vietnamese authorities continue to treat as a criminal offense,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “Binh should be released now, along with all the other journalists wrongfully held behind bars in Vietnam.”

    Since 2015, Binh has written regularly for U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese language service about corruption, land rights, police abuse, the environment, and human rights. Binh’s last article before his arrest criticized the government’s persistent crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

  • VOA News ☛ Freed from Russian jail, American journalist is focused on colleagues still imprisoned

    When it was time for Kurmasheva’s release, her captors obscured that she was being freed, telling the journalist she was heading to a destination other than Moscow.

  • CPJ ☛ Mexico City police arrest 2 journalists at human rights protest

    Police beat at least two journalists and arrested two others during a protest for human rights in Xochimilco, a southern borough of Mexico City, on Thursday, September 5, according to members of the media who witnessed the incidents.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • JURIST ☛ Saskatchewan Privacy Commissioner finds police officers improperly accessed investigation files

    The Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Canadian prairie province of Saskatachewan found on Monday that Saskatoon Police Service (SPS) officers had improperly accessed investigation files without authorization. The privacy breach involved three police officers who viewed sensitive investigation records of nine individuals for personal reasons, potentially compromising ongoing investigations.

  • Site36 ☛ German police are racist: New study on structural discrimination in everyday police work presented

  • The Atlantic ☛ Why Police Officers Rarely Change Jobs

    What the researchers found is that when police are stuck in the same law-enforcement agency, stuck with the same peers and commanding officer, they are also more likely to adhere to the “blue wall of silence”—an unwritten code to never implicate another officer of wrongdoing. As the authors write, “Unlike in other professions, it is terribly difficult for police officers to quit in protest or even to object to the orders they receive. If the policies and priorities of senior law enforcement management are misguided, the entire law enforcement organization is stuck with them.”

    In today’s episode of Good on Paper, Rappaport joins me to discuss both of his papers and the factors keeping police locked in place.

  • Techdirt ☛ Fifth Circuit Rejects Dog-Killing Cop’s Pleas For Qualified Immunity

    And here it is bucking its own trend by denying qualified immunity to Deputy James Killian, who went on a (dog-)killing spree while responding to a domestic disturbance report. On December 2016 (welcome to the extremely slow roll of justice, folks) the deputy was dispatched to handle a call about a “big fight going on” between Rubicela Ramirez and her boyfriend, Francisco Gonzales. What followed Killian’s arrival on the scene was both a literal and Constitutional bloodbath.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Register UK ☛ Russia reportedly readies submarine cable 'sabotage'

    Knocking out [Internet] and telecommunications traffic traveling across these fiber-optic cables would have a devastating effect on government, military, and private-sector communications.

    More than 95 percent of international data flows through those submarine cables, which puts them at increasing risk of both cyber and physical attacks — and not only during times of international conflict, former US Navy intelligence officer and current Cailabs US President Jeff Huggins told The Register in an earlier interview.

  • APNIC ☛ Looking for 240/4 addresses

    Why not redesignate the reserved 240.0.0.0/4 address block for private use?

  • APNIC ☛ Event Wrap: TLNOG 1

    APNIC participated in the inaugural Timor-Leste Network Operators’ Group Community Event, held in Dili, Timor-Leste from 19 to 22 August 2024.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• European Commission ☛ Remarks by Executive Vice-President Vestager following the Court of Justice rulings on the Fashion Company Apple tax State aid and Surveillance Giant Google Shopping antitrust cases

  European Commission Speech Brussels, 10 Sep 2024 Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age and Commissioner for Competition, delivered remarks at the press conference following the Court of Justice rulings on the Fashion Company Apple tax State aid and Surveillance Giant Google Shopping antitrust cases.

• France24 ☛ EU court rules Google, Fashion Company Apple must pay billions of euros in antitrust, tax cases

  A top European Union court on Tuesday told Surveillance Giant Google it would have to pay a €2.4 billion fine brought forth by the bloc's antitrust regulators seven years ago, just as the court rejected Apple's final legal challenge against an order from the European Commission to repay €13 billion in back taxes to Ireland.

• New York Times ☛ Google’s Legal Scorecard Before New Antitrust Fight

  Google’s luck in U.S. courts ran out in December when a federal jury sided with Epic Games, a video game developer, and its antitrust claims against Google’s operation of its app store. Eight months later, a federal judge sided with the Justice Department and said Google broke the law to rig the search market.

• New York Times ☛ U.S. Argues Google Created Ad Tech Monopoly

  Google used its acquisition of the advertising software company DoubleClick in 2008 to dominate technology that auctions off ads on web pages as users visit, Julia Tarver Wood, the government’s lead trial lawyer, said in opening statements. Google now has an 87 percent market share in that ad-selling technology, allowing it to charge higher prices and take a bigger portion of each sale, which harms news publishers and other website owners, she said.

• The Register UK ☛ Google loses appeal to top EU court, must cough up €2.4B

  The European Union's Court of Justice (ECJ) has dismissed Google's appeal of a €2.4 billion ($2.65 billion) 2017 antitrust ruling, finding it had abused its dominance in favor of its own Google Shopping service, diverting traffic that would otherwise have gone to rival comparison services.

  The 2017 decision at the time was the culmination of a years-long antitrust investigation that began in 2010.

• VOA News ☛ Google loses final EU court appeal against $2.7 billion fine in antitrust shopping case  

  "By today’s judgment, the Court of Justice dismisses the appeal and thus upholds the judgment of the General Court," the court said in a press release summarizing its decision.

  The commission's punished the Silicon Valley giant in 2017 for unfairly directing visitors to its own Google Shopping service to the detriment of competitors. It was one of three multibillion-dollar fines that the commission imposed on Google in the previous decade as Brussels started ramping up its crackdown on the tech industry.

• The Washington Post ☛ Google antitrust trial over online ads opens in Virginia

  The case could be a boon for major news organizations, including Gannett, News Corp. and the Guardian, as well as The Washington Post. Such outlets pay Google a cut of revenue for brokering their website ads, and many have struggled with their finances in the digital age. Google’s rivals in this sector, Meta and Amazon, also stand to gain if Google loses the case.

• Silicon Angle ☛ EU's top court rules against Apple, Google in multibillion-dollar cases

  The European Union’s top court has ruled against Apple Inc. and Google LLC in a pair of cases that focused on their tax and e-commerce practices, respectively.

  The Apple case revolved around the effective tax rate that applied to the company in Ireland until 2014. Google, in turn, turned to the European Court of Justice, or CJEU, over a €2.4 billion fine it received seven years ago. Antitrust officials issued the penalty over the search giant’s Google Shopping e-commerce service.

• BBC ☛ Apple told to pay Ireland €13bn in tax by EU

  The European Commission accused Ireland of giving Apple illegal tax advantages in 2016, but Ireland has consistently argued against the need for the tax to be paid.

  The Irish government said it would respect the ruling.

• Six Colors ☛ Apple will have to pay Ireland €13 billion in back taxes

  Ireland, for its part, was trying to avoid collecting on these taxes, deeming the subsidies beneficial for bringing big businesses to Ireland. Though given that much of Apple’s Irish entities were reputedly present in name only, it’s a question of how much they actually created in jobs and revenues. (A question raised in general about localities offering tax incentives to large corporations.)

• VOA News ☛ Google, Apple lose court fights against EU, owe billions in fines, taxes

  The European Union's top court rejected Google's appeal against the $2.7 billion penalty from the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's top antitrust enforcer, for violating antitrust rules with its comparison shopping service.

  Also Tuesday, Apple lost its challenge against an order to repay $14.34 billion in back taxes to Ireland, after the European Court of Justice issued a separate decision siding with the commission in a case targeting unlawful state aid for global corporations.

• New York Times ☛ Google and Apple Face Billions in Penalties After Losing E.U. Appeals

  In the Apple case, the court sided with a European Union order from 2016 for Ireland to collect 13 billion euros, worth about $14.4 billion today, in unpaid taxes from the company. Regulators determined that Apple had struck illegal deals with the Irish government that allowed the company to pay virtually nothing in taxes on its European business in some years.

• Common Dreams ☛ Apple tax ruling: EU tax havens’ love affair with multinationals exposed

  Today, the European Court of Justice ruled that Ireland illegally provided state aid to Apple through a tax deal which upholds the European Commission’s 2016 decision. As a result, Apple must now pay back €13 billion in unpaid taxes.

• PC Mag ☛ Apple Owes Ireland $14.4 Billion From 'Illegal' Tax Benefits, Court Rules

  It's the culmination of a 10-year court battle. In 2014, the European Commission opened an investigation into Apple's tax payments in Ireland, where Cupertino has its EU headquarters. Two years later, the Commission ruled that Ireland afforded Apple "undue tax benefits" that are "illegal under EU state aid rules."

  Apple appealed and won in 2020, but the commission appealed that decision, and the European Court of Justice ruled in its favor today.

  In an SEC filing, Apple said the ruling means it will incur a one-time $10 billion tax charge at the end of its fourth fiscal quarter, ending Sept. 28.

• VOA News ☛ Google faces new antitrust trial after ruling declaring search engine a monopoly

  The regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends.

  They allege that Google also controls the ad exchange market, which matches the buy side to the sell side.

  "One monopoly is bad enough. But a trifecta of monopolies is what we have here," Justice Department lawyer Julia Tarver Wood said during her opening statement.

• The Guardian UK ☛ Apple loses EU court battle over €13bn tax bill in Ireland

  The European court of justice (ECJ) ruling, which had been eagerly awaited, comes after years of legal wrangling over whether the European Commission was right to demand in 2016 that €13bn in “illegal” tax breaks for Apple should be repaid because it gave the iPhone maker an unfair advantage.

  The ECJ ruled that a lower court win for Apple should be overturned and backed the commission’s 2016 decision that Ireland had granted Apple unlawful aid relating to the tax treatment of profits generated by its activities outside the US, which Ireland is now required to recover.

• Deutsche Welle ☛ EU top court rules against Apple, Google

  The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on Tuesday that Google had violated antitrust laws and that Apple needed to pay the European Union €13 billion ($14.3 billion) in back taxes. Both cases are seen as an effort by Brussels to close tax loopholes exploited by the US tech giants.

• The Register UK ☛ Apple owes billions in Irish back taxes

  "In particular, the General Court erred when it ruled that the Commission's primary line of reasoning was based on erroneous assessments of normal taxation under the Irish tax law applicable in the case, and when it upheld the complaints raised by Ireland and by ASI and AOE regarding the Commission's factual assessments of the activities of the Irish branches of ASI and AOE and of activities outside those branches."

  EC Vice President Margrethe Vestager said: [...]

• The Washington Post ☛ Apple, Google lose E.U. appeals, face billions in back taxes and fines

  The European Court of Justice ruled that Apple must repay about $14.35 billion for illegally receiving tax benefits in Ireland, and the court upheld a $2.65 billion E.U. antitrust fine for Google, in two legal battles that the companies have fought for years.

  The cases have been winding slowly through European courts while the California-based giants have ballooned in size and moved into new lines of business. The long lag time underscores concerns about whether governments and courts can keep pace with multinational corporations worth trillions of dollars as they constantly evolve to respond to artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Futurism ☛ Disney Sued for Bringing Actor Back From the Dead for "Star Wars" Movie

      Along with suing Disney, Francis' production studio Tyburn Films is also suing its subsidiary Lucasfilm, which owns the rights to the "Star Wars" franchise, the since-deceased executors of Cushing's estate, and Associated International Management, the agency that represented the actor until his death more than 30 years ago.

    • Times Media Limited ☛ Peter Cushing’s Star Wars resurrection at centre of legal battle

      The makers of Rogue One are being sued by a film producer who was one of Cushing’s oldest friends. Kevin Francis claims the actor agreed not to grant permission for anyone to reproduce his appearance through special effects without his authorisation.

    • Techdirt ☛ NO FAKES – A Dream For Lawyers, A Nightmare For Everyone Else

      Under NO FAKES, any human person has the right to sue anyone who has either made, or made available, their “digital replica.” A replica is broadly defined as “a newly-created, computer generated, electronic representation of the image, voice or visual likeness” of a person. The right applies to the person themselves; anyone who has a license to use their image, voice, or likeness; and their heirs for up to 70 years after the person dies. Because it is a federal intellectual property right, Section 230 protections – a crucial liability shield for platforms and anyone else that hosts or shares user-generated content—will not apply. And that legal risk begins the moment a person gets a notice that the content is unlawful, even if they didn’t create the replica and have no way to confirm whether or not it was authorized, or have any way to verify the claim. NO FAKES thereby creates a classic “hecklers’ veto”: anyone can use a specious accusation to get speech they don’t like taken down.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Verizon Asks Court to Dismiss Music Labels' Piracy Liability Lawsuit

    Verizon is pushing back against a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by several major music labels, arguing that inaction in response to piracy notices doesn't equate to liability. Citing a recent Supreme Court ruling, Verizon is calling for an end to these "lucrative" piracy liability lawsuits.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Sky Calls Out IPTV Piracy Facilitators, Including Cloudflare & Facebook

    UK broadcaster Sky has submitted its report to the European Commission providing its overview of the latest piracy threats. These submissions guide the EC as it updates its 'Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List' and this time around some rightsholders want intermediaries to receive special attention. Sky's submission dedicates more space to Cloudflare than even the most egregious pirate IPTV hosting providers, and Facebook doesn't get off lightly either.

  • Roy Tang ☛ Archiving Other People's Posts

    I was still able to find an archived copy of the page via archive.md and have backed it up locally. But that led me to asking: is it right for me to keep a copy of this post if the original writer has expressly intended to remove it from the [Internet]? And furthermore, can I put up a copy of the page on my own site for sharing to other people?

  • Digital Music News ☛ Jack White Sues Donald Trump Campaign Over Song Use

    “Oh, don’t even think about using my music, you fascists,” Jack said on Instagram, along with a copy of Martin’s post. “Lawsuit coming from my lawyers about this (to add to your 5 thousand others.) Have a great day at work today, Margo Martin.” Notably, Martin is also named in the lawsuit.

    Jack White is only the latest in a long line of musicians who have publicly expressed discontent with their music being used by Donald Trump and his campaign. Recently, these include Abba, Celine Dion, and Foo Fighters.

  • Digital Music News ☛ APM Sues Johnson & Johnson Over ‘Rampant Infringement'

    “As a direct and proximate result of [Johnson & Johnson’s] direct infringement of [APM’s] copyrights, Plaintiff is entitled to recover its actual damages, including Defendant’s profits from infringement, as will be proven at trial,” attorneys for APM write. Alternatively, the company claims it is entitled to recover up to $150,000 in statutory damages per infringed work.