Leftovers

• MWL ☛ Something coming… or some THING

  People complained that I didn’t warn them. So consider yourselves warned. I’m also wondering if I should start a Kickstarter mailing list.

• Deutsche Welle ☛ Zakir Hussain, legendary Indian musician dies at 73

  Through these partnerships, he brought Indian classical music to a global audience.

• Aftermath Site LLC ☛ For The Love of God, Make Your Own Website

  If you could figure out how to host your own website, you’d have even more freedom over the design and the content. Other than LiveJournal, this was my first introduction to the power of fandom. Ohtori.nu was a website maintained by diehard Utena fans and included scanned animation cells, critical analysis and their own translation of scripts. The fact that the site is still up and still hosting mostly the same material is a testament to the small group of people who made and maintained it.

  Social media erased the need to build a website to express yourself online. Sure, early social media like MySpace allowed for you to radically change the look and feel of your page—adding music and changing the background—but ultimately, it was still a MySpace page, with a comment wall and your top eight friends. On top of that, MySpace had total ownership of that page, meaning when the site was bought and sold, individual users had no say in the changes. By 2019, you couldn’t even look at your old MySpace accounts anymore because they lost all the data from prior to 2016.

• Science

  • Latvia ☛ Latvian scientist has groundbreaking research published in 'Nature'

    Latvian science researcher Inta Gribonika has achieved a landmark for which many scientists strive for decades – publication in the prestigious international journal Nature.

  • Don Davis ☛ Public Domain paintings by Don Davis

    These are some of my works commissioned by various NASA facilities. They are offered here to provide something like definitive digital versions of such images, and unfortunately the NASA centers can rarely do this. You paid for them and they're yours.

    My work on this page only was created in the public domain, elsewhere on my site I claim copyright on the artwork and text.

• Career/Education

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ She went to prison in Varsity Blues admissions scandal. Now she says she was a scapegoat

    What she ultimately concluded, the now 63-year-old said in her first media interview since her 2019 arrest, was that she became a scapegoat for USC’s long-standing treatment of affluent applicants, a system the Varsity Blues scandal threatened to expose.

• Hardware

  • The Next Platform ☛ LRZ Adopts Nvidia Engines For €250 Million “Blue Lion” Supercomputer In 2027

    The expansion of the computing capacity in Europe for both traditional HPC simulation as well as Hey Hi (AI) training and modeling continues apace, with the Leibniz-Rechenzentrum lab in Germany announcing late last week (when we took a day of holiday) that it would be shelling out €250 million – about $262.7 million at current exchange rates – to build a hybrid CPU-GPU cluster based on Nvidia compute engines to tackle both kinds of high performance computing.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New Yorker ☛ How Did We End Up with Such an Opaque and Costly Health-Care System?

    The murder of the UnitedHealthcare C.E.O. and the reaction it provoked have revived some long-standing debates about health care in the U.S.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ RFK Jr. meets with senators as questions swirl about Trump’s pick to lead health agency

    Kennedy, whose wide-ranging views — yes to raw milk, no to fluoride, Ozempic and America’s favorite processed foods — are raising alarms in the scientific community and beyond.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Digital Music News ☛ Has Hey Hi (AI) Already Gone Through All The Music? — Former Proprietary Chaffbot Company Co-Founder Says ‘Yes’

    Artificial intelligence companies have amassed billions in funding, hoovering up data across the internet to train their models. That data includes copyrighted music works—which Elon Musk confirmed at the DealBook Summit last year.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ How the AI behind ChatGPT actually works

    Language models are designed to estimate how likely it would be to see a particular sequence of words. This is where probabilities come in. For example, a good language model for English would assign a high probability to a well=formed sentence like “the old black cat slept soundly” and a low probability to a random sequence of words such as “library a or the quantum some”.

  • India Times ☛ Tech companies claim AI can recognise human emotions but the science doesn't stack up

    Can artificial intelligence (AI) tell whether you're happy, sad, angry or frustrated? According to technology companies that offer AI-enabled emotion recognition software, the answer to this question is yes.

    But this claim does not stack up against mounting scientific evidence.

  • The Register UK ☛ $800 'AI' robot for kids bites the dust along with its maker

    The maker of Moxie, an "AI"-powered educational robot for kids, is going out of business – and the $800 bots will die with it.

    Embodied Inc. made the Moxie Robot, which is a cloud-connected interactive robot intended to be a friendly educational tool for small children. The snag is that its maker has encountered what it calls "financial challenges" and is closing down: [...]

  • International Business Times ☛ Tesla Autopilot Under Fire: Family Files Suit Against Elon Musk, Claims Misleading Features Caused Death

    The family of Genesis Giovanni Mendoza-Martinez, who tragically died in a 2023 collision, has launched a lawsuit against Tesla, claiming the company misrepresented its Autopilot technology, ultimately causing the fatal accident.

    The lawsuit has intensified scrutiny over Tesla's marketing of its semi-autonomous features, which critics argue exaggerates their capabilities.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Schools targeted with AI learning apps despite experts' doubts

    Apps infused with AI are being marketed to schools across the world and governments are rushing to embrace the technology, despite experts raising serious doubts.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EDRI ☛ Privacy camp in 2025

      The 2025 edition of Privacy Camp has been rescheduled to September 30, 2025. This change allows for a more impactful event in light of significant political shifts in Europe in 2024, including new Members of the European Parliament and a refreshed College of Commissioners.

    • Medevel ☛ Enhancing Patient Privacy with Open-Source Data Anonymization Tools : ARX Data Anonymization Tool

      Protecting patient privacy is not optional. Whether you're a medical professional, software developer, or a healthcare institution handling patient data, privacy regulations like GDPR and HIPAA aren't just guidelines — they're legal obligations.

    • Privacy International ☛ Privacy and autonomy: Redefining boundaries for Indigenous communities

    • Privacy International ☛ PI submission to EDPB on Hey Hi (AI) models

    • India Times ☛ Russian watchdog blocks Viber messaging app

      Russia's communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said on Friday it had blocked access to the Viber messaging app, the latest in a line of social media services to be banned by Russian authorities.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Amnesty International exposes Serbian police’s use of spyware on journalists, activists

      Amnesty International’s 87-page document surveys the broader picture of digital spying on civil society in Serbia. Among its key findings is the revelation of a previously unknown unique spyware for Android, dubbed NoviSpy, which has been deployed by Serbian police and the nation’s Security Intelligence Agency, known as BIA.

      Serbian use of phone-cracking tech provider Cellebrite — freshly in the news after the FBI reportedly used it this summer to access the phone of an alleged would-be assassin of President-Elect Donald Trump — in conjunction with NoviSpy appears to be a reaction to the growing difficulty of using industry-leading technologies like NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, said Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, head of the security lab at Amnesty Tech.

    • The Washington Post ☛ Authorities abroad use phone-cracking tools to install spyware, report says

      Recent reports have revealed similar practices in Russia and China, and on Monday Amnesty International exposed a series of incidents in Serbia in which activists and journalists found their phones compromised after coming in contact with police, often without being arrested or charged.

    • 404 Media ☛ Cellebrite Unlocked This Journalist’s Phone. Cops Then Infected it With Malware

      The report is significant because it shows that although Cellebrite devices are typically designed to unlock or extract data from phones that authorities have physical access to, they can also be used to open the door for installing active surveillance technology. In these cases, the devices were infected with malware and then returned to the targets. Amnesty also says it, along with researchers at Google, discovered a vulnerability in a wide spread of Android phones which Cellebrite was exploiting. Qualcomm, the impacted chip manufacturer, has since fixed that vulnerability. And Amnesty says Google has remotely wiped the spyware from other infected devices.

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Embedded Artistry LLC ☛ Reclaim Your Data: Freeing a Wi-Fi Sensor from the Cloud

        In this article we’ll investigate how a particular Wi-Fi connected sensor (in this case a radon sensor) communicates with “the cloud” and how we can use that knowledge to reduce our reliance on third-party servers. There are two reasons why we might want to do this: (1) to gain programmatic access to the data when the manufacturer doesn’t provide an API, and (2) to continue using the device if the company goes out of business or decides to shut down their servers.

  • Confidentiality

    • Frederik Braun ☛ Frederik Braun: Home assistant can not be secured for [Internet] access

      Home assistant allows authentication using username and password (and even two-factor authentication) as its primary security measure. While this is a solid baseline, I don't think it's sufficient in case there are security issues in home assistant itself. I want to provide defense in depth to protect against opportunistic attackers who regularly scan the [Internet] for exposed systems. This could be applied using a reverse HTTP(S) proxy. However, several limitations made this impossible: [...]

• Defence/Aggression

  • JURIST ☛ Wisconsin school shooting leaves 3 dead, 7 wounded

    Three students were killed and several others were wounded Monday at a Wisconsin school, police said, in the latest mass shooting to strike America’s educational institutions. The shooting occurred at Abundant Life Christian School in the state capital of Madison. The shooter, a student at the school, was among the deceased, police reported.

  • New York Times ☛ Austin Tice’s Mother Appeals to Netanyahu to Pause Strikes to Search for Son in Syrian Area

    Debra Tice wrote to the Israeli prime minister that her family had “credible information” that Austin Tice may be held in a prison outside Damascus, in an area where Israel had been conducting military operations.

  • New York Times ☛ Israel Carries Out Heavy Strikes on Syria’s Coast, Monitor Says

    Overnight strikes targeted former army positions, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor. Israel has said it aims to keep military equipment away from extremists.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China Customs seizes HK textbook over wrongly showing China borders

    According to the authority, the maps shown in the textbook did not accurately draw the borders near the Aksai Chin area, those near the South Tibet area, and did not include the Diaoyu Islands, including Chiwei Yu, islands in the South China Sea, and a U-shaped boundary line which consist of 10 dashes showing waters claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea.

    Both Aksai Chin and South Tibet lie on China’s border with India, and are also claimed by New Delhi, while the disputed Diaoyu Islands are claimed by Taiwan and controlled by Japan, where they are known as the Senkaku Islands. Additionally, Beijing’s claims to much of the economically important South China Sea are also subject to competing claims from neighbouring countries and have been rued to have no legal basis by an international court.

  • VOA News ☛ US Marines start partial transfer from Japan's Okinawa to Guam

    The relocation started with 100 members of III Marine Expeditionary Force stationed on Okinawa moving to the Pacific island for the initial logistical work, the U.S. Marine Corps and Japan's Defense Ministry said in a joint statement.

    Under the plan agreed between Tokyo and Washington in April 2012, about 9,000 of the 19,000 Marines currently stationed on Okinawa are to be moved out of Okinawa, including about 4,000 of them to be moved to the U.S. territory Guam in phases. Details, including the size and timing of the next transfer, were not immediately released.

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Horrified by "Mirror Life" That Could Wipe Out Biology As We Know It

    A group of the world's leading biologists have called for an immediate halt on a technology you've probably never even heard of — but is so dangerous, they say, that it could upend the order life itself on this planet, if not wipe it out.

    In a nearly three-hundred page technical report published this month, the scientists describe the horrifyingly existential risks posed by what's known as mirror life: synthetic organisms whose DNA structures are a mirror image to that of all known natural organisms.

  • Wired ☛ The Top Cybersecurity Agency in the US Is Bracing for Donald Trump

    The incidents turned a once-obscure agency with bipartisan credibility into a conservative bogeyman. House Republicans have accused CISA of spying on and censoring Americans, and the GOP senator who will soon oversee the agency wants to eliminate it.

    Now, with Trump returning to office vowing to purge disloyal civil servants and turn DHS into an immigration-crackdown machine, CISA employees are acutely worried about the fate of their still-fledgling agency, according to interviews with four current staffers and another US cyber official, all of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about a sensitive subject.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • New Yorker ☛ Greetings, Friends! The Annual Holiday Poem by Ian Frazier

      Re ’24: Let’s not forget / We’re all in brave Navalny’s debt. / He showed a soul can still be free / Whatever its surroundings be.

    • New York Times ☛ Putin Stays Silent on Syria in Meeting With Russia’s Military

      In an hourlong televised meeting with his top military brass, Vladimir Putin left Syria unmentioned and made it clear that winning in Ukraine was his top priority.

    • Meduza ☛ After Putin meets again with Russia’s business leaders, Kremlin releases footage hiding their faces, apparently to avoid further sanctions — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Putin orders military to build integrated information network for battlefield coordination, but Z-bloggers say Russia has failed here, so far — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Putin says 2024 was ‘landmark year’ for Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine and blames U.S. for pushing Moscow to ‘red lines’ — Meduza

    • European Commission ☛ EU adopts 15th sanctions package against Russia for its continued illegal war against Ukraine

      European Commission Press release Brussels, 16 Dec 2024 The Commission welcomes the Council's adoption of the 15th sanctions package against Russia. The focus of this package is to keep cracking down on Russia's shadow fleet, as well as combating sanctions' circumvention.

    • Latvia ☛ Suspected Russian spy linked to Italian right-wingers and mysterious Latvian 'Financier'

      Alleged Russian intelligence officer Aleksey Stovbun, who was identified as being active in Latvia as part of an investigation by the State Security Service (VDD), has also been involved in contacts with right-wing politicians in Italy and pro-Kremlin lobbying, LTV's "De facto" investigative program reported December 15, citing Ukrainian sources.

    • France24 ☛ Ukraine faces 'existential' war: 'Someone wants to kill us & we want to live, preserve our country'

      Ukraine is fending off new missile attacks on its energy system, the latest in Russia's campaign targeting the war-torn country's power grid during the winter season. As Ukraine pleads for more air defence from its Western allies, FRANCE 24's Mark Owen welcomes Lisa (Yelyzaveta) Yasko, Member of the Ukrainian Parliament and Head of the Ukrainian Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukrainian PM Says Deal To Transit Russian Gas Won't Be Extended In 2025

      Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said a deal allowing the transit of Russian gas through his country wouldn't be extended into 2025, but he said he is ready to discuss other methods of providing supplies to Western Europe.

    • US hits North Korea with new sanctions

      19 individuals and entities were blacklisted for ties to its missile program and deployment of troops to Russia.

    • RFERL ☛ EU Ministers Approve New Sanctions Targeting Russian 'Shadow Fleet'

      European Union foreign ministers have adopted a 15th package of sanctions against Russia targeting tankers transporting Russian oil as the bloc looks to curb the circumvention of previous measures aimed at hindering Moscow's ability to wage war against Ukraine.

    • RFERL ☛ Ukraine, U.S. Say North Korean Soldiers Killed, Wounded In Russia's Kursk

      Ukrainian intelligence said at least 30 North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia have been killed or wounded in the western Russian region of Kursk, the first time Kyiv has given such a detailed report on North Korean losses since Pyongyang sent troops to help Moscow.

    • RFERL ☛ Russian Troops Remaining In Syria Reportedly Lack Food, Water

      Russian military personnel still in Syria are experiencing a lack of food and drinking water as an evacuation of troops and equipment continues, according to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry (GUR).

    • The Strategist ☛ Taiwan rushes to build up its nascent drone industry

      The drone message from the war in Ukraine has not been lost on Taiwan.

    • Meduza ☛ North Korean troops killed in combat against Ukraine for the first time, Pentagon says — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Trump says decision to let Ukraine fire long-range strikes into Russia was ‘mistake’ that he ‘might’ reverse — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘The most vulnerable’: As the war rages on, Ukrainian volunteers bring holiday gifts to children living on the front lines — Meduza

    • BIA Net ☛ Turkey not involved in planning of Syrian offensive to topple Assad, says FM

      In an interview with the Saudi media, Fidan touched upon Turkey’s relations with Syrian groups, as well as its dialogue with Russia and Iran regarding the Syrian issue.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ Michta in 19FortyFive on why the United States must revisit the basics of geostrategy

      On December 15, Andrew Michta, director and senior fellow of the GeoStrategy Initiative, published an article in 19FortyFive on what ideas should underlie the next US national security strategy.

    • France24 ☛ Assad says he wanted to stay in Syria but Russia evacuated him

      Ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad says he had no plans to leave the country after the fall of Damascus a week ago but the Russian military evacuated him after their base in western Syria came under attack. The comments are the first by Assad since he was overthrown by insurgent groups. FRANCE 24's Clemence Waller reports

    • LRT ☛ Suspected Russia spy expelled from Lithuania’s conservative party

      Eduard Manovas, who is suspected of spying for Russia, has been expelled from the conservative Homeland Union–Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD), the party has announced.

    • RFERL ☛ Assad Breaks Silence, Says He Left Syria As Russian Base Came Under Attack

      Ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he only left the country in the late hours of December 8 after a Russian air base allegedly came under attack by rebel forces and officials in Moscow ordered "an immediate evacuation."

    • RFERL ☛ Hungary, Slovakia Block EU Sanctions Against Georgian Leaders

      Hungary and Slovakia – both with populist, pro-Russian leaders -- on December 16 blocked a proposed package of European Union sanctions against leading Georgian officials for that government's violent crackdown on pro-West protesters over recent weeks.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Georgia elects pro-Russia president as EU hopes dim

      Mikheil Kavelashvili’s victory is still challenged by the opposition who claim the election was rigged with Russia’s help. “There is no legitimate parliament and thus no legitimate election,” said Georgia’s outgoing president Salome Zourabichvili.

    • New York Times ☛ Syrian Rebel Leader Calls for Lifting of Sanctions, as Assad Defends Exit

      Ahmed al-Shara urged nations to remove sanctions from Syria and the terrorism designation from his group so Syria could rebuild. Bashar al-Assad also gave his first account of fleeing to Russia.

    • Meduza ☛ Assad regime sent $250 million in cash to Russia between 2018 and 2019 — The Financial Times — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘They might be in America, but they’re not free’: A Russian preacher tells the story of how his son ended up in U.S. immigration detention — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ U.S.-based activist Natalia Arno, head of Free Russia Foundation, reportedly attacked in London — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian defense minister says Moscow must be prepared for possible military conflict with NATO within next decade — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Kadyrov proposes removing Syrian group HTS from Russia’s list of terrorist organizations — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Commercial mobilization’: Even as Russia’s enlistment numbers fall, Moscow swaps army recruitment billboards for restaurant ads and holiday banners — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Another right denied A new Russian law bans migrant children from school if they don’t know the language — but offers no way for them to learn it — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian parliamentary ethics commission says it’s inoffensive to say women risk damnation if they don’t use their ‘baby factories’ — Meduza

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ In Unprecedented Move, Judge Keeps CIA Employee Facing Espionage Act Charges In Jail

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Former FBI informant to plead guilty about scheme involving Bidens

    A former FBI informant is set to plead guilty on Monday to lying about a phony bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.

• Environment

  • RFERL ☛ Environmentalists Warn Of Disaster As Russian Officials Race To Grounded Tankers In Kerch Strait

    Environmentalists are warning of a potential disaster posed by two Russian oil tankers that ran aground in the ecologically sensitive waters off Ukraine's Moscow-annexed Crimean coastline as Russian officials raced to the site to assess the damage.

    The incidents, which occurred on December 15, left one sailor dead and forced the evacuation of 26 crew members from the vessels Volgoneft-239 and Volgoneft-212.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Michigan Advance ☛ State to deploy electric recycling trucks in Southeast Michigan, replacing diesel fleet

      The vehicles obtained through this funding will serve to replace aging diesel vehicles, while reducing air pollution and cutting costs, EGLE noted in its announcement Thursday, adding that this development would help meet the goals laid out in the MI Healthy Climate plan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s blueprint for Michigan to achieve 100% carbon neutrality by 2050.

      Last December, Whitmer also signed a directive to convert 100% of the state’s fleet of vehicles to zero-emissions vehicles by 2040.

    • International Business Times ☛ From Viral Star to [Cryptocurrency] Scapegoat: Is Haliey Welch Dead, Going 'Tuah' Prison or Lying Low?

      Once celebrated as the quirky internet sensation "Hawk Tuah Girl," Hailey Welch now finds herself at the centre of a firestorm, with speculations ranging from prison time to a dramatic disappearance.

      Welch's meteoric rise and sudden plunge into controversy have captivated the internet, sparking countless Google searches about her whereabouts following the collapse of her $HAWK meme coin.

      Here's how the story of a Southern belle turned cryptocurrency promoter unravelled—and where Welch might be now.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Time to Confront the Aquarium Trade’s ‘Gray Areas’

• Finance

  • Meduza ☛ Mass layoffs hit Russian IT workers as businesses try to conceal cutbacks amid claims of a robust economy — The Bell — Meduza

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ The US lost its lead in semiconductors. It may never regain it

    His vision involved funnelling billions of dollars into expanding chip-making factories in New Mexico and Oregon, and building plants in Ohio and Germany. To help enable this, the federal government committed US$7.9-billion in subsidies as part of President Joe Biden’s Chips Act 2022.

    Three years later, the company is in crisis. The board gave Gelsinger a choice: retire or be removed, so he chose the former.

  • The Local SE ☛ Swedish court rules that foreign income can count towards permanent residency

    The Migration Agency approved her application for temporary residence but rejected her permanent residency application on the basis that she did not meet the maintenance requirement.

    The applicant lives in Malmö and works at Copenhagen University in Denmark, with a salary of over 30,000 Danish kronor – that’s equivalent to over 46,000 Swedish kronor.

  • The Hill ☛ Glenn Ivey: Donald Trump is moving FBI in ‘very political direction’

    Ivey previously argued that Wray should have forced Trump to fire him, because his resignation takes the “onus off Trump for breaking with tradition” and replacing him with Patel.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Papers Please ☛ Identification as the enabler of ID-based surveillance and control

    Edward Hasbrouck of the Identity Project was a guest today with Prof. David Farber (Keio Univ. Cyber Civilization Research Center) and Prof. Dan Gillmor (Arizona State Univ.) for the CCRC / IP-ASIA weekly online gathering on current issues, discussing the work of the Identity Project and the evolution of ID-based surveillance and control: [...]

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Axios braces for future Trump legal action

    News organizations are bracing for the incoming Trump administration to go after journalists’ sources and take legal action against them.

    In an email shared with Semafor, Axios’ senior counsel told staff that the news organization anticipates the new administration will attempt to force reporters to out their sources, will ramp up lawsuits against news organizations for defamation, and could charge journalists with crimes using the Espionage Act.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Graduates encouraged to value truth in a rapidly changing world

    While she warned against emulating Marshall’s risky research, McCauley said his commitment illustrated an important lesson.

    “You’ve earned more than a degree here. You’ve earned something far more valuable: the ability to distinguish between cheap opinions and expensive truths. Use this wisdom well,” she said. “When others rush to judgment, take the time to investigate. When they offer simple answers, have the courage to embrace complexity. Because while the truth may be expensive, its value is beyond measure.”

  • US News And World Report ☛ Journalists Anticipate a Renewed Hostility Toward Their Work Under the Incoming Trump Administration

    For the press heading into a second Trump administration, there's a balancing act between being prepared and being fearful.

    The return to power of Donald Trump, who has called journalists enemies and talked about retribution against those he feels have wronged him, has news executives nervous. Perceived threats are numerous: lawsuits of every sort, efforts to unmask anonymous sources, physical danger and intimidation, attacks on public media and libel protections, day-to-day demonization.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • AccessNow ☛ Georgia protests: digital safety tips for peaceful gatherings

    Amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent and peaceful protests in many EECA countries, most recently Georgia, CyberHUB-AM and Access Now’s Digital Security Helpline have prepared a guide to support protestors to stay safer online.

  • BIA Net ☛ Strike bans in Turkey during Erdoğan's rule

    In two decades, the government postponed 21 strikes, affecting over 200,000 workers.

  • BIA Net ☛ Metal workers defy Erdoğan’s strike ban after failed negotiations

    About 1,500 workers working at several factories continue their strike despite a presidential decree.

  • Futurism ☛ CEO Says He Hasn’t Hired Anyone in a Year as He Replaces Human Workers With AI

    The head of the "buy now, pay later" firm Klarna is now bragging that artificial intelligence has begun to successfully replace his human workforce.

    In an interview with Bloomberg, Klarna CEO and founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski said that he hasn't hired any new humans in a year amid the company's push to embrace AI.

  • New York Times ☛ Amazon Disregarded Internal Warnings on Injuries, Senate Investigation Claims

    For years, worker advocates and some government officials have argued that Amazon’s strict production quotas lead to high rates of injury for its warehouse employees. And for years, Amazon has rejected the criticism, arguing that it doesn’t use strict quotas, and that its injury rates are falling close to or below the industry average.

    On Sunday, the majority staff of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which is chaired by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, published an investigation that found that Amazon itself had documented the link between its quotas and elevated injury rates.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Bernie Sanders releases Senate investigation into Amazon injury rate

    The report was released late Sunday by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension, or HELP, Committee, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).

    “In its endless pursuit of profits, Amazon sacrifices workers’ bodies under the constant pressure of a surveillance system that enforces impossible rates,” Sanders said in a written statement.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Verge ☛ Europe’s Starlink competitor is go

    The EU has signed a deal for its IRIS² constellation of 290 communication satellites that will operate in both medium and low-earth orbit. The Starlink rival will provide secure connectivity to governmental users as well as private companies and European citizens, and bring high-speed internet to dead-zones. The public-private deal valued at €10.6 billion (about $11 billion), according to The Financial Times, is expected to come online by 2030.

  • IT Wire ☛ Nokia and Elisa deploy 5G Cloud RAN with Red Hat OpenShift

    Finnish telecoms equipment vendor Nokia has completed a commercial 5G Cloud RAN deployment using the Red Hat OpenShift cloud application platform with the Finnish telco and digital service provider, Elisa in Espoo, Finland.

    The commercial deployment completed end-to-end 5G voice and data calls with Nokia’s 5G Cloud RAN solution including its AirScale Massive MIMO radios, baseband software, and AI-powered MantaRay network management solution.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Unified Patents ☛ Cloud Byte clown storage patent monopoly challenged

    On December 16, 2024, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 7,739,544, owned and asserted by Cloud Byte LLC, an NPE. The ‘544 patent monopoly relates to a disk array rebuild system and method.

  • New GAO Report Highlights Growing Threat of Third-Party Funding in Patent Cases

    On December 5th, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report detailing its findings from an investigation into third-party funding of patent monopoly litigation.

  • Unified Patents ☛ Litigation financier HPCF entity, Piranha, ad related patent monopoly challenge instituted

    On December 13, 2024, two months after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on all challenged claims of U.S. Patent 11,463,768, owned and asserted by Piranha Media Distribution, LLC, an NPE and entity funded by HPCF Litigation Finance US I LLC. The ‘768 patent monopoly relates to providing advertisements in digital media.

• Copyrights

  • [Repeat] Ruben Schade ☛ Is stuff online worth saving?

    At various times I’ve defined myself as a digital archivist or unproductive hoarder, depending on how full my OpenZFS pools are, and the budget I have to buy more drives and/or controllers at a given time. My philosophy in life has always been “if you liked it, keep it”. The Web is an ephemeral place, and we’re learned recently even the Internet Archive is not immune from overzealous lawyers and bad-faith actors. I have backup copies of entire blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, and books that no longer exist anywhere else, and where copyright would preclude me from resurfacing any of it.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ The Pirate Bay's Million-Dollar Bitcoin Donations: Hidden Goldmine or Spent Treasure?

    For over a decade, The Pirate Bay has been accepting Bitcoin donations. In dollar terms, this provided a relatively modest but consistent revenue stream. However, if the torrent site had held onto its early Bitcoin, it could have amassed a small fortune, worth $14 million today. The same applies to BitcoinTorrentz, which once charged today's equivalent of $8,000 per gigabyte transferred.