Leftovers

• Ruben Schade ☛ Overheard at a coffee shop, week 1 2025

  Where we’re coming from, we don’t need no context! Welcome to the next in our series of overheard coffee shop snippets, I’m your host Yves Drop.

  Nah I didn’t get a break, I work for a living.

  Do you drink cappuccinos? No? Wait, what?

• Science

  • Stanford University ☛ UGS debates algorithmic enrollment system proposal, passes resolution supporting undocumented students

    The proposed new enrollment system aims to assign classes more equitably to students, rather than abiding by a first-come, first-serve "winner takes all" method, according to computer science professor Phil Lewis who first proposed the system last October.

• Hardware

  • Andrew Hutchings ☛ 486 PC Build

    A lot of people my age went from the 8bit era to the 16bit era and then PCs. I took a very different route and, as such, I want to build a machine compatible with what I would have had in the 90s.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ A New York legislator wants to pick up the pieces of the dead California Hey Hi (AI) bill

    The first Democrat in New York history with a computer science background wants to revive some of the ideas behind the failed California Hey Hi (AI) safety bill, SB 1047, with a new version in his state that would regulate the most advanced Hey Hi (AI) models.

  • TCS Reports Drop in Employee Headcount by 5,370 in Q3 FY25 After 2 Consecutive Quarters of Growth in Numbers

    IT services major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Thursday reported a drop in its employee headcount by 5,370 in the third quarter this fiscal (Q3 FY25), which is a reversal after two consecutive quarters of headcount growth. The Tata Group company's headcount had increased by 5,726 employees in Q2 FY25. TCS now employs 6,07,354 people, the company said as it declared third quarter results.

  • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

    • Web Performance Calendar ☛ Not every user owns an iPhone

      So why should we care about this?

      Well, because Android users make up a huge slice of the mobile web audience. In the UK, its the greatest slice, with 52% of the market share according to statcounter. If your working in online retail thats a lot of potential customers.

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ From Aleppo to Damascus: Scenes of a post-Assad Syria

    Less than a week after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, FRANCE 24’s Wassim Nasr travelled to Syria to interview rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Crossing from Aleppo in the north to Damascus in the south, Nasr passed through towns and cities in the newly liberated country, documenting its people and landscapes along the way.

• Environment

  • DeSmog ☛ The Wrong Lesson From Trudeau’s Fall Is That Climate Action Is Unpopular

  • France24 ☛ Exclusive: Top French banks and the dirty gas business in Peru’s Amazon

    FRANCE 24 reveals, in partnership with investigative media outlet Disclose, RFI and the Pulitzer Center, that French banking group Crédit Agricole holds a €240 million stake in Repsol – a Spanish multinational responsible for gas extraction in the Peruvian Amazon – and is making substantial profits from it. According to our investigation, the gas firm is responsible for numerous environmental and health hazards.

• Finance

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft, The Washington Post, BlackRock: Full list of major US companies laying off staff in the new year

    While the US economy recovers from the shock of the coronavirus pandemic, experts have warned that not everyone will have job security in 2025. Major US companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, The Washington Post, BlackRock, Ally and others are most likely to lay off their employees in 2025. According to a World Economic Forum survey, 41% of global companies anticipate reducing their workforces over the next five years due to the rise of AI.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • JURIST ☛ Lebanon deportation of dissenting poet to UAE alleged unlawful

    The Lebanese government deported Abdulrahman Youssef al-Qardawi, an Egyptian-Turkish poet, to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday, prompting accusations from Human Rights Watch (HRW) that the deportation was unlawful and intended to silence dissent.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • BIA Net ☛ Truth concealed through repression from all sides targeting journalists

    The BİA Media Monitoring Report aims to pinpoint the specific tendencies in repression targeting journalists, and reveals how, in the detention of 31 journalists in the last 3 months, judiciary control measures have been abused, and although there are no longer legal grounds for it, censorship continues with brazen opportunism.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Trademarks

  • TTAB Blog ☛ The Top Ten TTAB Decisions of 2024 (Part I)

    The TTABlogger has once again gone out on a limb to chose the ten (10) TTAB (Tee-Tee-Ā-Bee) decisions that he considers to be the most important and/or interesting from the previous calendar year (2024). This is the first of two (2) posts; the first five (5) selections are set out below. Additional commentary on each case may be found at the linked TTABlog post. The cases are not necessarily listed in order of importance (whatever that means).

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Travis Scott, SZA, and Future Face ‘Telekinesis’ Copyright Lawsuit From Roc Nation-Signed Artist

    Did Travis Scott, SZA, and Future steal from an existing track to create “Telekinesis”? A Roc Nation-signed singer-songwriter believes so, and she’s fired off a firmly worded infringement suit as a result.

  • Press Gazette ☛ What Google’s C$100m payout to Canada news industry means for publishers elsewhere

    Why legislators may serve publishers better by protecting copyright monopoly content from Hey Hi (AI) incursions.