Links 14/01/2025: LA Crisis and EU, UK Respond to "X.com" Threat From South African Oligarch
Contents
- Leftovers
- Standards/Consortia
- Science
- Career/Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Ruben Schade ☛ Reverse sunk cost, and working with what you have
I dub this a classic reverse sunk cost fallacy. The government doesn’t want to be seen investing into something they’re going to retire soon (aka, the sunk cost fallacy), so they only give it what’s necessary to continue operating. But for how long?
I’ve since realised I do this myself. I have multiple pieces of kit, from computers and cameras, to file systems and FreeBSD jails, that I know are on the verge of being replaced. I’m reticent to sink more money—or more importantly, time—into them, because they’re a sunk cost. I know that I’ll need to replace this stuff sooner rather than later, but without a firm timeline or budget in place, that could be in a few weeks, or next year. Who knows? My stuff is like those XPT trains.
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Pete Brown ☛ We need to stop talking about discovery.
Maybe the idea of discovery on the web was originally idealistic and well-intended, but it has become a bait-and-switch. It is a way to trick people into dumping their lives into digital platforms that are then used to serve them advertising.
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Rob Knight ☛ On Transient Slash Pages
The first blog post is easy, it would include all of that but if I change my phone to a 16 Pro do I duplicate the whole thing but update just that one line? If I just post a diff of what's changed then there isn't a single place to see everything I've used.
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Matt Cool ☛ Naming Community for Brands
While I think naming your community after your brand can be a bad idea, there is no hard and fast rule I have to offer. Hopefully this post offered a few insights and helped inspire you to think on it a bit more on these issues.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on naming communities. Find me in your preferred channel by clicking on the links in the footer.
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: They were warned; Picks and Shovels Chapter One (Part 4)
In other words, it's not enough to say, "This principle gets in the way of something I want to do, so let's throw it out because I'm pretty sure the inconvenience I'm experiencing is worse than the consequences of doing away with this principle." You need to have a theory of how you will prevent the harms the principle protects us from once you tear it down. That theory can be "the harms are imaginary" so it doesn't matter. Like, if you get rid of all the measures that defend us from hexes placed by evil witches, it's OK to say, "This is safe because evil witches aren't real and neither are hexes."
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DNA Lounge ☛ DNA Lounge: 13-Jan-2025 (Mon): Wherein I want to know how you advertise your events.
Two decades ago, we did this by paying for strip ads in the 2 or 3 local weekly physical newspapers, and putting up posters on poles around town (which meant dealing with a small set of complete weirdos who had their own competing poster fiefdoms, but, whatever, capitalism!)
It kinda worked, I guess? Then the Internet came along and broke everything and we've never figured it out since.
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ANF News ☛ No water supply to Euphrates Canton, as Turkish attacks on Tishrin Dam continue
The Turkish state and its proxies have been bombing the vicinity of the Tishrin Dam daily, using drones and fighter jets. The dam is at great risk of collapse.
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Lewis Dale ☛ The web is exhausting
I’ve been using the web in some form for over 20 years - granted, the early parts of that were heavily monitored because I was about 5 years old when we got dialup. But, a large part of my formative years were spent online, and it was such a different place compared to how it is today.
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Andrea Contino ☛ Music Questions Challenge
Music is one of my greatest passions. I spend tens of thousands of minutes each year listening to and discovering new music. In the near future, I'd like to deepen my study of it, not so much by learning to play a new instrument, but by understanding the language necessary to comprehend it better.
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David Smith ☛ Accomplish One Thing - David Smith, Independent iOS Developer
I always find coming back from the Christmas break (or any break for that matter) challenging. The regular routines of my working life are joyously disrupted, providing a welcome break and opportunity to re-charge. But when I now sit down at my computer and face the wide-open expanse of possible work endeavors, I rarely have a clear sense of where to start and how to get back into the swing of things.
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Chris O'Donnnell ☛ Blog Question Challenge 2025
My site launched on 31 December 1995. Even way back then, I was trying to add something to the site weekly. Thankfully, my impassioned defenses of the Bob Dole for President campaign didn't survive my various server moves. Blogging when it became a thing was a natural transition.
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The Newsprint ☛ The Sunday Edition — 01.12.25
I hope your 2025 has kicked off with a bang. Here are a few fun things I found this week on the web.
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Standards/Consortia
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Ruben Schade ☛ Using RSS over JSON Feeds?
But there’s something else implicit in the question. The framing suggests that JSON Feeds should be the default (I don’t think Robb would argue with this), and therefore one would need a sufficient reason to substitute RSS or Atom. What we find instead is that RSS rules the roost, and JSON Feed hasn’t seen wide adoption since it was introduced in 2017. Eight years is an eternity in Internet time. So what gives?
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[Repeat] Thomas Rinsma ☛ Tetris in a PDF
Recently, just for fun, I managed to create a playable version of Tetris inside a PDF. I posted about this a couple days ago on Hacker News and Twitter. You can play it by opening this file in a compatible desktop browser (Firefox and anything Chromium-based). The “source code” can be found here.
As there was quite some feedback, I’ll share a bit more context here.
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Science
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The Conversation ☛ We’re getting closer to having practical quantum computers – here’s what they will be used for
What exactly is quantum computing, and how close are we to seeing them enter wide use? Let’s first look at classical computing, the type of computing we rely on today, like the laptop I am using to write this piece.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Neutron star 'mountains' would cause ripples in space-time
Neutron star "mountains" would be much more massive than any on Earth—so massive that gravity just from these mountains could produce small oscillations, or ripples, in the fabric of space and time.
Mountains, or non-axisymmetric deformations of rotating neutron stars, efficiently radiate gravitational waves. In a study published in the journal Physical Review D, nuclear theorists at Indiana University consider analogies between neutron star mountains and surface features of solar system bodies.
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Common Dreams ☛ Over 25,000 Scientists, Science Supporters and 28 Organizations that Support Scientific Integrity Implore Members of Congress to Defend Science, Facts and Transparency
Today, in the face of the incoming president's agenda, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) sent a petition signed by 25,219 scientists, experts and science supporters to every member of Congress asking them to stand up against attempts to politicize, eliminate or diminish scientific roles, agencies and federal research.
At the same time, a coalition of 28 organizations that support scientific integrity sent an open letter to 99 U.S. Senators, some who will play a significant role in the confirmation of federal agency nominees. The letter asked them to ensure nominees are only confirmed if they have the necessary qualifications to succeed in their roles, do not have conflicts of interest, accept established science related to their agency’s mission and value the role of rigorous science, free from political interference, in government decision making.
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The Conversation ☛ 2025-01-09 [Older] How ancient flying reptiles ruled the skies – new research
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The Conversation ☛ 2025-01-09 [Older] The Traitors: how trustworthy is a Welsh accent? A sociolinguist explains
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The Conversation ☛ 2025-01-08 [Older] How Britain got its first internet connection – by the late pioneer who created the first password on the internet
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The Conversation ☛ 2025-01-08 [Older] Social media ‘soft girls’ depend on men for money – but Sweden once used state ‘influencers’ to urge women to get jobs
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US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-09 [Older] Spacecraft Buzzes Mercury's North Pole and Beams Back Stunning Photos
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Career/Education
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Pro Publica ☛ Families Sue East Tennessee School District After Children Arrested Under School Threats Law
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Variety ☛ Universal Kids Shuts Down March 6, Latest NBCU Cable Network To Go Dark
Universal Kids, the youth-oriented network that began life as the preschool-centric PBS Kids Sprout (and later, Sprout) before being rebranded as a destination for a wider age range in 2017, is shutting down, Variety has confirmed. The network is expected to go dark on March 6, with an on-screen slate after that directing audiences to other platforms.
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Lou Plummer ☛ How Do You Know When It's Over?
Within one month's time, I went from a child walking in a line to the lunchroom, raising my hand when I wanted to speak and asking permission to use the bathroom to being handed a rifle and shooting at human silhouettes representing the enemies of my country. Childhood ended abruptly at the gates of Ft. Benning. More than once, I had a job when I woke up and didn't have one when I went to sleep. It could happen again tomorrow.
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Julian Peters ☛ A Year of Indie Consulting (Year Two)
Recently I read somewhere, that instead of using only December 31st to review and plan the year, you should allow yourself the whole of January to do so.
I like that idea. So in the same spirit I write my 2024 recap in mid-january. I am still working two jobs as an independent consultant as well as for one of the bigger digital agencies in Germany, move:elevator. So this marks the second split as a part-time independent consultant (what a mouthful).
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Annie Mueller ☛ It’s okay to not know, and it’s okay to wait - annie's blog
It’s okay to not know, and it’s okay to not make a move when you don’t know.
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Task And Purpose ☛ ‘28 Years Later’ uses same creepy poem as military SERE school
In the trailer, Holmes’ rising cries of “Four—eleven—seventeen—thirty—two the day before” quickly establish a haunting tone. It turns out Kipling’s words work just as well for testing the willpower of troops as they do for scaring moviegoers.
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Hardware
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US News And World Report ☛ Sweden to Test New Drone Swarm Technology, Defence Minister Says
Jonson said the technology allows swarms of drones of different sizes to form and then solve tasks autonomously. "With these drone swarms it is possible to conduct both reconnaissance, positioning and identification".
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Tedium ☛ Screen Saver History: Why Boring Black Screens Won Out
"The simplest preventive is to turn down the intensity before you walk away from your computer. If you don’t see an image on the screen, it'll be safe from burn damage. But although simple, this method is unreliable. It's too easy to leave the display on for “just a few minutes,” only to return several hours later to find the screen still brightly lit."
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Matan Abudy ☛ What about staying connected through social media?
So I try to consume most of my content through RSS, blogs, and human-created content, all curated by another human—me. However, I have yet to find a solution for keeping up with the social aspect of social networks, so for now, they are here to stay for me.
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SBS ☛ The TikTok trend that's left Australian cancer researchers 'disturbed'
She said Cancer Council researchers found half of Australians were using three or more forms of sun protection when exposed to sun during peak UV-radiation periods, and young people were less likely to use adequate sun protection.
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Futurism ☛ Scientists Say Children Are Getting Sick and Dying in Huge Numbers Due to Chemicals and Plastics
"The evidence is so overwhelming and the effects of manufactured chemicals are so disruptive for children, that inaction is no longer an option," study coauthor Daniele Mandrioli, director of the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center at the Ramazzini Institut in Italy, told The Guardian. "Our article highlights the necessity for a paradigm shift in chemical testing and regulations to safeguard children's health."
The data the researchers point to, encapsulating the past 50 to 75 years, is alarming. Childhood cancer rates have increased by 35 percent. One in 36 children are now diagnosed with autism. The number of children with asthma has tripled, while obesity has quadrupled. And for boys, the rate of birth defects in the reproductive organs has doubled.
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The Conversation ☛ 2025-01-06 [Older] Loneliness and social isolation are linked to specific proteins – new research
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Wired ☛ The King of Ozempic Is Scared as Hell | WIRED
Now that Novo Nordisk is the world’s weight-loss juggernaut, will it have to betray its first patients—type 1 diabetics?
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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India Times ☛ Tech companies are turning to 'synthetic data' to train AI models - but there's a hidden cost
Elon Musk claims human-generated data for AI models is running out. This shortage could force a reliance on synthetic data, which may lower AI accuracy and reliability. However, careful management and validation of synthetic data could enhance AI models, overcoming data shortages while maintaining quality and trustworthiness.
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Futurism ☛ Behold the AI Slop Dominating Google Image Results for "Does Corn Get Digested"
As pointed out on X-formerly-Twitter by the hardworking account "Insane Facebook AI Slop," a simple search query for the phrase "does corn get digested" returns a Google image results page loaded down with strange, nonsensical AI graphics claiming to depict corn kernels' quest through the human digestive tract. As it stands, four out of the top six results for the query — including the first and second results — are AI slop, and all stem from one of two spam blog posts published by a shady website claiming to sell "Top-notch Proteins&Nutrition" from "China No.1 Manufacturer."
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Futurism ☛ Waymo Self-Driving Taxi Flummoxed by Construction Worker's Hand Signals
Look no further than a video circulating on social that shows a Waymo cab struggling to decipher the hand signals of a construction worker, juddering to a halt and refusing to turn left.
The incident highlights persistent shortcomings with driverless ride-hailing tech, often related to chaotic edge cases: despite years of research and tens of millions of miles driven, simple hand signals can still seemingly pose an insurmountable obstacle.
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Ruud van Asseldonk ☛ LLM text makes human interactions less fun
LLMs are, in one sense, all the same. Everybody uses the same foundation models, and the handful that are there, are trained in a way that makes their default writing styles very similar.
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[Repeat] The Register UK ☛ Microsoft testing 45 percent M365 price hikes in Asia
The price rises have been flagged in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
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Jasper Tandy ☛ Jasper is blogging I guess you can call it "back on my bullshit", but I'm giving social media another try. I had a...
I guess you can call it "back on my bullshit", but I'm giving social media another try. I had a Mastodon instance a while back and when I looked at the cost of running my own (I am never not running my own. There's no version of this reality where I'm on someone else's instance. Is that main character energy? I don't care, you should want to own your own creative output), it was like $40 a month, + £25 a year for Ivory and that's just too much. All that, combined with how difficult discoverability is in both directions just made it untenable for me at the time.
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Pivot to AI ☛ AI agents mean Salesforce won’t hire software engineers in 2025, apparently
Salesforce has several ads for engineers on Indeed — but these appear to be “ghost” jobs just to collect resumes or pretend there are no US applicants for positions they want a cheap H1B for.
So what’s this new miracle system Agentforce, released in December, which Benioff talks up at every opportunity? It’s a chatbot-based help system.
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Six Colors ☛ 2025-01-08 [Older] Jason Snell: ‘Apple Intelligence Summaries Might Get Warning Labels. That’s Not Enough.’
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John Gruber ☛ 2025-01-08 [Older] ★ Apple Claims It Will Soon ‘Further Clarify’ Which Notifications Are AI-Generated Summaries, Following Embarrassing BBC News Summarization Mistakes
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The Verge ☛ 2025-01-09 [Older] Microsoft’s Recent History of Dirty Tricks With Edge
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CNBC ☛ 2025-01-11 [Older] Google and Microsoft Each Donate $1 Million to Trump’s Inauguration Racket
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9to5Mac ☛ 2025-01-11 [Older] Zuckerberg Disses Apple With Joe Rogan: ‘They Haven’t Invented Anything Great in a While’ [Ed: Facebook never invented anything, ever]
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Vox ☛ 2025-01-09 [Older] Siri’s listening to you — but is it spying?
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YLE ☛ Grocery store files police complaint about vandalism of its delivery robots
It is likely the attacks and vandalism were captured on video, as the robots are each equipped with 16 cameras, and they also carry microphones.
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Defence/Aggression
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Mark Hysted ☛ hedging my social media position
Well, I think I am hedging my position. In my brain there will one day be a winner in the war to feed me adverts whilst I laugh at cat videos. Perhaps the winner will be the one that is free to use, although that really isn’t a sustainable position. Getting people to put money into a perceived free activity such as browsing funny cat videos is seemingly impossible to achieve so adverts seem to be the revenue generator of choice. Bluesky is funded through venture capital, I wonder what their venture will be, subscriptions might work.
We don’t really want a winner though do we? A single platform where the owning entity has too much power, able to sway opinion and control what we see, and therefore what we think?
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Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Users Flock to Download RedNote Ahead of US Ban
Chinese social media app RedNote, known in China as Xiaohongshu, launched to the top of the Apple App Store this week as an impending US ban closes in on TikTok.
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The Independent UK ☛ What is RedNote? Chinese app shoots to #1 with TikTok ban looming
A Chinese short-form video app called Xiaohongshu is now the top free app in the Apple App Store, as social media users look to get out ahead of a potential U.S. TikTok ban set to take effect on Sunday.
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Wired ☛ With a TikTok Ban Looming, Users Flee to Chinese App ‘Red Note’
“Most of the [new Xiaohongshu users] are probably in the curiosity phase. I think moments of cultural shock or controversies could emerge as time goes on, but that would be part of the process for them to know each other on a deeper level,” Yang says.
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Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Receives Formal Buyout Offer for U.S. Operations
That proposal has arrived courtesy of Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt’s The People’s Bid for TikTok, which disclosed the offer in a release.
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Variety ☛ TikTok Denies Report China Is Looking to Sell App to Elon Musk
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that “Chinese officials are evaluating a potential option that involves Elon Musk acquiring the US operations of TikTok” if an American law goes into effect that would require parent company ByteDance to divest its TikTok stake or effectively ban the app in the U.S. The Bloomberg report cited anonymous sources.
“We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction,” a TikTok rep said in reply to Variety‘s request for comment.
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US News And World Report ☛ China Mulls Potential Sale of TikTok US to Musk, Bloomberg News Reports
Under one scenario, Musk's social media platform X would take control of TikTok U.S. and run the business together, the report said. Officials have yet to reach a consensus about how to proceed, according to Bloomberg News.
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Silicon Angle ☛ China reportedly evaluating plan for Elon Musk to acquire TikTok's US operations, but TikTok denies it
With TikTok in the U.S. facing being shut down on Jan. 19, Chinese officials are reportedly evaluating an 11th-hour option that involves Elon Musk, through X Inc., acquiring the U.S. operations of TikTok should last-minute attempts to stop the ban fail.
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Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Unveils Alan Walker Partnership Despite U.S. Ban Deadline
Unsurprisingly, though, TikTok opted to include a statement on the Walkerworld 2.0 undertaking from a London-based exec, and specifically SoundOn Europe, Middle East, and Africa head Nichal Sethi.
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Hindustan Times ☛ What happens after TikTok ban in US and how users will be affected?
The U.S. Supreme Court justices on Friday expressed skepticism about a challenge from TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance against a law signed by President Joe Biden, which would force the sale or ban of the popular short-video app by Jan. 19 in the United States. The TikTok app is displayed on an iPhone screen in Miami, Florida. US president Joe Biden signed a foreign aid package that includes a bill that would ban TikTok if China-based parent company ByteDance fails to sell the app to an American company within a year. The TikTok app is displayed on an iPhone screen in Miami, Florida. US president Joe Biden signed a foreign aid package that includes a bill that would ban TikTok if China-based parent company ByteDance fails to sell the app to an American company within a year.
Some of the justices seemed to acknowledge Congress' national security concerns over TikTok, given its ownership by what lawmakers deemed a foreign adversary.
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Digital Music News ☛ Supreme Court Justices Are Leaning Towards A TikTok Ban
At the core of the argument is whether or not national security concerns supersede free [sic] speech [sic] concerns raised by TikTok and its creators. The alarm on TikTok’s data collection policies has been slowly flashing a bright red for nearly four years now. Digital Music News has cataloged how the app was caught snooping full access to a user’s clipboard and continually accessing location information. The U.S. Navy was the first branch of the U.S. military to ban the app due to data collection concerns. The Army soon followed, with both branches of Congress following.
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The Hill ☛ Mark Kelly says he is aware TikTok ban ‘is controversial,’ yet there is ‘national security risk to' app
“I know this is controversial. I know there are folks out there that earn a living, you know, on TikTok, but it has a national security risk to it,” he added.
A law that passed Congress with expansive bipartisan support and was signed by President Biden last April requires TikTok to face a ban in the U.S. starting on Jan. 19 unless it divests from ByteDance, its Chinese-based parent company.
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Deseret Media ☛ Half of US parents think TikTok ban would make kids safer online
Half of U.S. parents believe banning TikTok would enhance children's online safety.
Surveys show 86% of parents support requiring parental consent for minors on social media.
Concerns include TikTok's inappropriate content, addictive nature and influence on behavior.
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Defence Web ☛ West Africa could soon have a jihadist state – here’s why - defenceWeb
Their influence and operational model are on the rise. They are radicalising the population, heightening sectarian strife and aggravating the difficulties of already volatile regions.
Operating in parts of Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Chad, these groups aspire to form a jihadist caliphate in the Sahel region.
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New York Times ☛ This Part of Mozambique Was Like Paradise. Now It’s a Terrorist Hotbed.
Officials in the region and in the West say they are deeply concerned that if the Islamic State affiliate known as ISIS-Mozambique is not contained, then the loosely linked Islamic State network that has been gaining ground in pockets of Africa could become a bigger global threat.
What locals call “the war” has robbed the region of what was a largely peaceful life of fishing and farming.
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The Guardian UK ☛ Sweden neither at war nor at peace, says PM, as warships sent to Baltic Sea
Speaking on the opening day of Sweden’s three-day annual Folk och Försvars (people and defence) conference in Sälen, northern Sweden, Ulf Kristersson also commented on the recent Baltic undersea cable breaks, saying “hostile intent cannot be ruled out”.
Amid hybrid attacks and “proxy wars” – citing Iran’s alleged use of members of Swedish gangs [sic] to commit crime – Kristersson said: “Sweden is not at war. But there is no peace either.”
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India Times ☛ Elon Musk: After helping Trump win, Elon Musk backs far-right causes in UK, EU
Billionaire Elon Musk’s opinions have often landed him in controversy, but that hasn’t stopped him. Through his social media platform X, Musk has become a vocal commentator on global politics, fuelling debates and shaping narratives.
His involvement in Donald Trump’s 2024 US presidential election victory highlights how he leverages X to amplify his political influence and forge alliances with key figures.
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India Times ☛ Neo-Nazis? Anti-immigrants? What you need to know about AfD, Elon Musk's favourite German party
Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, a right-wing populist movement, has made headlines for its hardline stance on migration and increasingly radical rhetoric. Recent developments reveal how the AfD's platform, including its focus on mass deportations, ties into its broader ideological agenda—and why it has caught the attention of global figures such as Elon Musk.
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New York Times ☛ A New Age of American Interference in Europe
Even before he retakes office, Mr. Trump is making threats — perhaps serious, perhaps not — to acquire the territory of NATO allies like Canada and Denmark. And Mr. Musk, the president-elect’s biggest financial supporter, is using his social media platform X to bring the far-right Alternative for Germany party into the mainstream and smear the leaders of Britain’s center-left Labour Party.
It is not clear if Europe’s political immune system has the antibodies to defend against these new incursions.
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RFERL ☛ Biden Speaks To Families Of Taliban's U.S. Prisoners, Vows To Press For Release
"The president and the families discussed the U.S. government's continuing efforts to reunite these three Americans with their families. The president emphasized his administration's commitment to the cause of bringing home Americans held hostage and wrongfully detained overseas," the statement added.
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The Atlantic ☛ A Wider War Has Already Started in Europe
The Eagle S, however, apparently had a covert military purpose as well: Investigators discovered that the vessel was crammed full of advanced surveillance equipment, which used so much power that the ship suffered from periodic blackouts. Finnish authorities concluded that the Eagle S had dragged its anchor across the Baltic Sea bed for “dozens of kilometers” in an attempt to break the Estlink 2 line.
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VOA News ☛ At least 40 farmers killed by Islamic militants in northeast Nigeria, official says
Boko Haram, Nigeria's homegrown jihadis, took up arms in 2009 to fight Western education and impose their radical version of Islamic law. The conflict, now Africa's longest struggle with militancy, has spilled into Nigeria's northern neighbors.
Some 35,000 civilians have been killed and more than 2 million have been displaced in the northeastern region, according to the U.N. The 2014 kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls by Boko Haram in the village of Chibok in Borno state — the epicenter of the conflict — captured the attention of the world.
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VOA News ☛ Sahel vacuum provides opportunities for China, analysts say
Stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, Africa’s Sahel region is experiencing security problems and surging anti-Western sentiment that could prove an opportunity for China, analysts say.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-11 [Older] Germany plans new homeland security army division
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-01-12 [Older] From Silk to Servers: China’s Hidden Power in Southeast Asia as a Fork in the Digital Road
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US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-10 [Older] As China Hacking Threat Builds, Biden to Order Tougher Cybersecurity Standards
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US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-10 [Older] University of Michigan to End Partnership With a Chinese University Over National Security Concerns
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US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-09 [Older] Nigeria, China Deepen Ties With Pledge on Security, Finance and Economic Growth
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US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-09 [Older] Security Operations in Jenin Put Spotlight on Palestinian Authority
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US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-07 [Older] Saudi Arabia Presses Florida Man to Give up US Citizenship Over Critical Tweets, Family Says
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Defence Web ☛ 2025-01-09 [Older] South Africa’s ‘spooks’ supply intel to law enforcement – Ntshavheni
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The Local SE ☛ 2025-01-09 [Older] Swedish government orders tougher security checks of citizenship applicants
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The Local SE ☛ 2025-01-10 [Older] Swedish government reported to parliament for citizenship security checks
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-04 [Older] US announces $8 billion arms sale to Israel
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-04 [Older] Germany: Scholz uneasy over Musk's support for far-right AfD [Ed: How many German government orgs STILL use his platform, in effect making him the "boss" of Germany's official communications?]
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Futurism ☛ Parents of Dead OpenAI Whistleblower Say They Believe He Was Murdered
As the San Francisco Standard reports, Balaji's mother Poornima Ramarao is not only claiming that her 26-year-old son was killed — as opposed to dying by suicide, which the city's medical examiner ruled as his cause of death — but also that media and local government were orchestrating a coverup.
Ramarao insisted to The Standard that Balaji "was very proud" that he'd come forward with allegations that OpenAI, his employer of four years, was committing copyright infringement. In October, the New York Times published those claims — and a month later, the young whistleblower was found dead of an apparent gunshot wound to the head.
"He was very proud of what he was doing — where is the depression?" the grieving mother said. "How do you think it’s suicide? It’s brutal murder. Cold-blooded murder."
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Ken Shirriff ☛ It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor
In this post, I'll describe some cargo cults from 1919 to the present. These cargo cults are completely different from the description of cargo cults you usually find on the internet, which I'll call the "pop-culture cargo cult." Cargo cults are extremely diverse, to the extent that anthropologists disagree on the cause, definition, or even if the term has value. I'll show that many of the popular views of cargo cults come from a 1962 "shockumentary" called Mondo Cane. Moreover, most online photos of cargo cults are fake.
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Pivot to AI ☛ UK government plans to splurge billions on AI — we step through the tricky details
The key to making sense of the AI action plan is that none of this is any more coherent than any other plan in the AI bubble. Its purpose is to bung public money to large tech companies that are Labour Party and Tony Blair Institute donors.
All of this is based on two reports that openly admit they were based on fake data generated with GPT.
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The Register UK ☛ Pornhub lockdown and fact-free Zuckbots – welcome to 2025
Opinion is free, facts are sacred, and those who herd bits know the facts about the digital world better than most. 2025 is going to need us.
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Environment
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CBC ☛ 2025-01-11 [Older] Ahead of Trump presidency, U.S. banks abandon Mark Carney climate initiative
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Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ Alarms go off on climate change as Trump retakes reins
Amid the unprecedented wildfire disasters in the Los Angeles area comes news that last year was the hottest year ever recorded — just as the previous nine years were the hottest ever before that.
Even more alarmingly, the global average temperature in 2024 was 1.6 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial era, surpassing the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius for an inhabitable planet.
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Sightline Media Group ☛ 1,800 California National Guardsmen activated for LA fire response
One thousand eight hundred California Guardsmen will support response efforts, including firefighting crews, aircraft and military police that are working in support of local law enforcement, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a Monday briefing.
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Michigan Advance ☛ Major legal brawl may decide what types of cars Americans can buy
During his first term, Trump attempted to revoke California’s waiver authority, an action many states challenged as unlawful. The effort to deny the waivers was tied up in legal challenges until President Joe Biden took office. This time, Trump will have a “much more cohesive plan” to block state efforts to clean up their cars and trucks, Elkind said.
California is urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to finalize several pending waivers before Trump returns to the White House. Officials in blue states are preparing to defend their authority in court should Trump seek to revoke the waivers. And attorneys general in some red states are pushing to end the waivers altogether — mounting a legal challenge to California’s power to set its own rules.
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Los Angeles Times ☛ 2024 was the hottest year on record, NASA and NOAA confirm
NOAA pegged 2024’s global average surface temperature at 1.46 degrees C above its preindustrial baseline, and NASA’s measurements put the increase at 1.47 degrees C.
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YLE ☛ Finavia calls on government to stop subsidising loss-making regional routes
However, the decision to continue subsidising the routes has been widely criticised — with an analysis by Yle last week revealing that every return flight from Helsinki to Kemi costs the Finnish state 8,586 euros, as ticket sales are not enough to make the flights profitable.
The environmental impact of the short-haul flights has also been noted as a reason for their discontinuation.
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YLE ☛ Finland's climate warming faster than global average
Temperatures in Finland were last year on average 3.4 degrees warmer than in the pre-industrial era, and 2024 was the fourth warmest year on record.
This was reflected by the fact that Finland saw a record number of 'hot' days during 2024 — when temperatures exceed the threshold of 25 degrees — with a total of 71 throughout the calendar year.
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Truthdig ☛ Killing California for a Snack
I’ve been covering the Resnicks for close to 15 years. A documentary about them, which I’ve been working on with Rowan Wernham, will come out this spring, so I know quite a bit about this family. In fact, a lot of the viral content that’s circulating about the Resnicks is based on my reporting. So I want to add a few words about the Resnicks and the fires in LA.
The connection between the fire and the Resnicks is not as direct as people think. Or rather, it’s direct, but from a different direction. It’s less about their particular control of so much water, and more about what this control says about California and our world.
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RFA ☛ Unexploded WWII bombs plague Palau amid US military build-up
“They said after the war the soil was so contaminated they couldn’t even plant food,” said Paules, 49, who is part of a team clearing the island for the mine action group Norwegian People’s Aid.
“They couldn’t plant bananas, taro, tapioca or soursop. You still can’t plant tapioca and eat it here, it’s really bad.”
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Axios ☛ Why Los Angeles fire hydrants ran dry as wildfires ravaged the area
"It's something that we have definitely started to see as, essentially, these wildland fires move into urban areas and become urban conflagrations," Kearns said.
"Our urban water supply is meant to deal more with things like a single house being on fire," she added.
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[Repeat] Science Alert ☛ It's Official: 2024 Declared Hottest Year on Record as World Exceeds 1.5°C
The official declaration was made on Friday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union's Earth observation program. It comes as wildfires continue to tear through Los Angeles, California – a disaster scientists say was made worse by climate change.
This record-breaking global heat is primarily driven by humanity's ongoing greenhouse gas emissions, caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The warming won't stop until we reach net-zero emissions.
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Energy/Transportation
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-04 [Older] Over a third of Deutsche Bahn long-distance trains late
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Green Party UK ☛ 2025-01-10 [Older] Greens urge faster transition away from fossil fuels
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VOA News ☛ China's EV sales surge in 2024; foreign automakers struggle in shifting market
A new industry report released Monday shows China made big strides last year toward an EV-driven future, as domestic sales of all types of electric vehicles rose by 40% in 2024. Sales of gasoline powered cars tumbled, including foreign imports.
In 2024, a total of 31.4 million total vehicles were sold in the world’s largest automobile market by sales, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. That marked a 4.5% rise compared with the previous year.
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Bitdefender ☛ Pastor's "dream" [cryptocurrency] scheme alleged to be a multi-million dollar scam
A federal grand jury has indicted a 51-year-old church pastor on 26 counts of fraud, after allegedly using his position to deceive victims into investing in a cryptocurrency investment scam.
That in itself would seem unusual, but what is even more bizarre is that the the pastor alleged to be behind the scheme claims that the inspiration for the project came to him in a dream.
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Dan Langille ☛ Eaton 5PX removes power every 24 hours
When I powered on my UPS yesterday, I predicted when it would power off: 24 hours later. To be clear, it’s removing power from the outlets and not sending any notifications to the hosts that it’s about to do so.
Today, I captured the console when resetting and trying to power on the UPS.
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The Autopian ☛ If You Ever See This Speed Sign, You're Probably Going To Die - The Autopian
Ultimately, the Department of Transport prepared these signs for when things really hit the fan. Thankfully, the worst fears of the Cold War never came to pass, and these signs weren’t needed in any major emergency situation.
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Wildlife/Nature
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The Conversation ☛ 2025-01-07 [Older] Spiders ‘smell’ with their legs – new research
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The Revelator ☛ A New Idea for National Parks: Leave Some of Them to the Animals
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Overpopulation
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Wired ☛ The Los Angeles Wildfires Have Created Another Problem—Unsafe Drinking Water | WIRED
Melted plastic pipes and drastic water-pressure drops are potentially leaching toxic chemicals and contaminants into local supplies. Multiple water authorities in north Los Angeles have issued Do Not Drink notices.
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Finance
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Wired ☛ Rich Men Rule the World | WIRED
The holders of the vast majority of the world’s wealth? Men. So many men—from Trump and Musk and Putin to every CEO, crypto schmo, and solar bro in between.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Rlang ☛ US Presidential Elections – A Bayesian Perspective
Ever since I’ve finished my grad studies (Few months ago), I wanted to experiment with some “real life” applications of statistics. Things that interest real people. With the 2024 American presidential elections being the hot issue around the world, and Bayesian statistics being the hot issue of my personal projects, I thought how can these two mix.
Two features of Bayesian statistics pop to mind when thinking about election polling: [...]
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Maine Morning Star ☛ What if all states split their Electoral College votes for president?
The real 2024 vote, based on the winner-take-all system used by every state except Nebraska and Maine, gave the Republican nominee a victory margin of 312 to 226 over Harris, the Democratic nominee.
The analysis comes as the Nebraska Legislature is poised again to consider whether to rescind the state’s unique system of awarding electoral votes and return to a winner-take-all approach, the law in the state until 1991.
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The Nation ☛ The Worlds of Noam Chomsky
Though he was trained as a linguist, it’s not especially surprising that Chomsky has become best known for his political opinions. Born in 1928 and raised in Philadelphia, he wrote his very first article—which appeared in the February 1939 edition of his fifth-grade newspaper—on, as he remembers, “the spread of fascism in Europe and its apparently inexorable conquest and the terror this incited.” Indeed, the essay that made Chomsky’s name was not an esoteric piece on linguistics but rather his 1966 “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” a manifesto that lambasted those scholars who, Chomsky believed, were more interested in cozying up to power than speaking truth to it.
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New York Times ☛ OpenAI Courts Trump With Vision for ‘A.I. in America’
In December, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, donated $1 million to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inaugural fund, joining a number of other tech executives who are working to improve their relationships with Mr. Trump.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ US moves to restrict AI chip sales to much of the world
The new regulations will cap the number of AI chips that can be exported to most countries and allow unlimited access to US AI technology for America’s closest allies, while also maintaining a block on exports to China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
The lengthy new rules unveiled in the final days of outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration go beyond China and are aimed at helping the US keep its dominant status in AI by controlling it around the world.
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New York Times ☛ Biden Administration Adopts Rules to Guide A.I.’s Global Spread
The rules put various limitations on the number of A.I. chips that companies can send to different countries, essentially dividing the world into three categories. The United States and 18 of its closest partners — including Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan — are exempted from any restrictions and can buy A.I. chips freely.
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Semafor Inc ☛ US announces new controls on artificial intelligence
Certain allied countries and partners will be exempt from the controls, a senior administration official said. Low volume chip orders, such as those placed by universities and research organizations, will also not require a license.
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The Korea Times ☛ H-1B visa lottery is shutting out top talent. Replace it
That companies need to hire the best candidates to remain competitive should be uncontroversial. Ideally, the U.S. system would reliably provide such workers, but too often it fails to. Employers, especially in tech, say domestic workers lack the skills to meet their demands and complain the restrictive cap is hampering innovation in critical sectors, from artificial intelligence to bioweaponry. If the H-1B visa could solve those problems, it’d be worth expanding liberally. It falls short for two reasons.
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Bozhidar Batsov ☛ macOS No Longer Ships with Emacs
The answer to the first question turned out to be Apple being opposed to using anything licensed under GPL v3, and so it happens that Emacs 22.1 was the last Emacs version licensed under GPL v2.1 A former Apple employee shared the following in a comment on HackerNews: [...]
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The Verge ☛ What Mark Zuckerberg is changing Meta for the Trump era
That’s the question I’ve been asking sources in and around Meta over the last several days. They all described Meta’s relationship with the outgoing Biden administration as incredibly hostile. It’s safe to assume that Zuckerberg wants a reset for the MAGA regime, especially since Trump threatened not that long ago to imprison him for life.
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The Hill ☛ Capitulation culture: The new trend in conservative politics
Cancel culture is old news. A new political phenomenon has appeared. Call it “capitulation culture” — the parade of companies, financiers, billionaires and politicians who once stood on principle but now bend to kiss the incoming president’s ring.
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Axios ☛ Meta's MAGA pivot will be hard for Big Tech rivals to match
Why it matters: After Zuckerberg's embrace of Trump and Trumpism, Silicon Valley is holding its breath to see whether a whole row of tech dominoes is about to fall in the same direction.
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The Hill ☛ US leadership in AI requires open-source diplomacy
If the U.S. retreats from open innovation in AI, other nations may “decouple” from U.S. technology, investing in their own infrastructure to build satisfactory AI capabilities or turning to alternatives. That would entrench Chinese AI models like Qwen, Yi or DeepSeek, establishing a global reliance on Chinese labs and eroding the influence of U.S. firms.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ Mark Zuckerberg and the power of the media
I’ll leave it to others right now to parse the specific political implications here (and many people are certainly doing so). Rather, what struck me as so cynical was the way Zuckerberg presented Facebook’s history of fact-checking and content moderation as something he was pressured into doing by the government and media. The reality, of course, is that these were his decisions. He structured Meta so that he has near total control over it. He famously calls the shots, and always has.
Yet in Tuesday’s announcement, Zuckerberg tries to blame others for the policies he himself instituted and endorsed. “Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more,” he said.
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Common Dreams ☛ Public Citizen Co-Presidents Request to Join DOGE
Today, Public Citizen co-presidents Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert sent a letter to Trump transition co-chairs Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon requesting to be appointed as members of the “Department [sic] of Government Efficiency” (DOGE).
If appointed, Weissman and Gilbert would bring to the table years of experience advocating for the interests of consumers and the public.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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VOA News ☛ Patriarch of Russian Orthodoxy preaches ‘biblical battle’ between West, Russia, lies about WWI
"We emerged victorious from two world wars. … We have preserved our people. …”
The claim is false.
The Soviet Union played a pivotal role in the Allied victory in World War II (WWII), but Russia lost in World War I (WWI). Both wars were devastating for Russia.
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NDTV ☛ "Factually Incorrect": Union Minister Trashes Mark Zuckerberg's India Election Results Claim
Union Minister Ashwini Vaisnaw today fact-checked Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg's claim on the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections. In an interview on Friday with popular podcaster Joe Rogan, Mr Zuckerberg wrongly claimed that most incumbent governments, including India, lost elections in 2024.
Mr Zuckerberg's claim "is factually incorrect," said the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government had won the 2024 general elections.
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RTL ☛ Artificial intelligence: Viral images of Hollywood sign on fire are fake
Images and videos purporting to show the historic Hollywood sign engulfed in flames are spreading across X and other social media platforms as wildfires rage through Los Angeles, California. But the visuals are fakes, some likely generated by artificial intelligence; the landmark had not been affected as of January 10, 2025.
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The Conversation ☛ 2025-01-10 [Older] What Meta’s move to community moderation could mean for misinformation
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Censorship/Free Speech
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BIA Net ☛ 2025-01-10 [Older] Is RTÜK’s pressure on newspapers for YouTube licenses new threat to freedom of expression?
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The Moscow Times ☛ Kursk Governor Bans Officials From Censoring Online Criticism - The Moscow Times
The acting governor of Russia’s partially occupied Kursk region has prohibited local officials from deleting online comments critical of their performance, state media reported Monday.
“You can’t delete comments except those containing profanity and insults. If the comment is proper but unpleasant, you must respond to it,” Alexander Khinshtein was quoted as saying by the state broadcaster Vesti Kursk.
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Techdirt ☛ Appeals Court: Yes, Suing The Family Of People You Killed In A Car Crash For Defamation Is A SLAPP Suit
It’s a move so brazen, so devoid of compassion, that it almost defies belief. But believe it, because it happened, and it’s a stark reminder of the ways in which our legal system can be weaponized against the very people it’s meant to protect.
And, thankfully (if too late in the process), it’s also a stark reminder of the importance of a strong anti-SLAPP law, like California’s, that has now righted this wrong. This case is not just an affront to decency, it’s a textbook example of why we need robust anti-SLAPP protections to prevent the legal system from being abused to silence and intimidate victims.
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The Hill ☛ In a self-censoring world, telling uncomfortable truths is resistance
Telnaes, if you weren’t sure, is the former Washington Post political cartoonist who resigned in protest when the Post spiked one of her cartoons — a piece depicting the publication’s owner Jeff Bezos as a Trump supplicant among other billionaires such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, all offering the future president bags of money.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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ANF News ☛ 2025-01-08 [Older] Farewell to journalists Nazım Daştan and Cihan Bilgin martyred in Rojava
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ANF News ☛ 2025-01-08 [Older] Journalist Tolhildan: The Turkish state's target is Syria
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ANF News ☛ 2025-01-05 [Older] DFG report: 118 journalists detained, 26 imprisoned in Turkey in 2024
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ANF News ☛ 2025-01-08 [Older] Delegation to retrieve the bodies of slain journalists from Rojava not allowed to leave Turkey
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CPJ ☛ Tajik journalist Ahmad Ibrohim sentenced to 10 years in prison
A court in Tajikistan’s southern city of Kulob on January 10 sentenced Ahmad Ibrohim, chief editor of the independent weekly newspaper Payk, to 10 years in prison on charges of bribery, extortion, and extremism.
The closed-door trial was held in the city’s pretrial detention center, with authorities reportedly classifying the case as secret.
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CPJ ☛ CPJ to release annual report of journalists imprisoned globally
The census covers all countries that have imprisoned journalists globally in 2024, as well as providing background information on each imprisoned journalist. It also provides recommendations on what needs to be done to counter criminalization of journalism globally.
Thematic analysis by CPJ experts highlights the trends driving the increase in journalists imprisoned for their work in recent years. CPJ’s annual prison census is a snapshot of journalists incarcerated as of midnight on December 1, 2024.
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The Dissenter ☛ Incarcerated Journalist Now Held At Texas Supermax
In early September 2024, The Dissenter published a report on what seemed like a glaring example of retaliation against a prisoner for writing about systemic problems in Texas state prisons.
Busby provided an update on January 6 that indicated he has twice been transferred to a new facility during the past six months. Each time, "personal property" and legal paperwork that he had in his possession were destroyed.
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El País ☛ Nicholas Thompson: ‘My view on journalism is that you shouldn’t create content to please the algorithms’
A. I don’t agree with people who say that the media shouldn’t partner with technology companies. There are good and bad partnerships. There are news companies that, just a few years ago, invested a lot of money when Facebook told them that it would pay for creating videos. They hired people who then had to be fired. The mistake was believing that the money would continue to come indefinitely; they didn’t understand that Facebook is a capitalist company that will invest if it thinks there’s a market opportunity and will stop when there isn’t.
My view on journalism is that you shouldn’t create content to please the algorithms. You shouldn’t assign stories just because you think they’ll do well on Facebook, or you think they’ll do well on Google. You should assign the stories you think are the right stories to assign [to specific reporters].
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New Yorker ☛ What’s a Fact, Anyway?
What is more certain is that, from time to time, every journalist, no matter how well meaning, gets something wrong, or misses the point. This is true even if—as Michael Schudson, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, has argued—American journalism is deeper, more analytical, and more investigative today than it was fifty years ago. If there ever was a golden age of journalism, we may be living in it. The trouble is, pointing out the mistakes of others is not enough. If people are to trust journalists, we need to earn it.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-12 [Older] Apple's Board Recommends Shareholders Vote Against Proposal to Eliminate Diversity Programs [Ed: While Tim Crook gives money to Trump and visits him in his private home]
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CBC ☛ 2025-01-06 [Older] Amazon is ending remote work. Its employees hope the company reconsiders
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-01-07 [Older] Assessing the Recent Strike at Amazon
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US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-10 [Older] Meta, Amazon Scale Back Diversity Programs Ahead of Trump Inauguration
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ANF News ☛ 2025-01-06 [Older] Lawyer Deniz: Turkey does not recognize the 'Right to Hope'
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RFA ☛ China bans monks, aid workers from visiting quake-hit areas of Tibet
The blocking of monks was painful for survivors because in Buddhist tradition, prayers and rituals are conducted at the end of each week for the first seven weeks after a person’s death.
Tibetans in other areas of Tibet, as well as those abroad or in exile in India, Nepal, Bhutan and elsewhere, gathered Monday to offer prayers.
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Kansas Reflector ☛ 80 years later, movie tells story of SC woman’s battalion during World War II
Under her leadership, a battalion of Black women nicknamed the Six Triple Eight (for the 6888th) sorted and sent the mail in three months — about half the time one general predicted. Their story disappeared in much of the history of World War II, but with a new movie, the Columbia native has hit the spotlight, more than 20 years after her death.
After achieving the highest possible rank for a woman in the Army at the time, Earley became a fixture of the Ohio city where she lived. She died Jan. 13, 2002, 23 years ago Monday.
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USMC ☛ In quiet shift, Marines allow mixed-gender DI teams to train recruits
Across the depots, he said, about 10% of all DI teams are integrated — about the same proportion of female recruits at the depots. A typical integrated team, he added, will have three DIs of one gender and a fourth of the opposite gender, with most featuring three male instructors and one female.
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India Times ☛ Taliban don’t regard women as human beings: Malala
“Taliban do not see women as human beings. They cloak their crimes in cultural and religious justifications. They punish women and girls who dare to defy their opaque laws by beating, arresting, or injuring them,” Malala said at a summit in Islamabad focused on girls’ education in Muslim countries.
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RFERL ☛ Malala Condemns Taliban On Women’s Rights, Assails ‘Gender Apartheid’
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders not to "legitimize" the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan and instead to "raise their voices" and "use [their] power" against the militant group's curbs on women and girls' education.
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The Korea Times ☛ Male parental leave reaches record high, surpassing 40,000 in 2024
As of November last year, three in 10 people taking parental leave were men, a record high and a 20 percent increase from the previous year, according to the Ministry of Employment and Labor on Monday. The number of male workers taking parental leave is expected to surpass 40,000 for the first time when December’s figures are included.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Techdirt ☛ Telecoms Glom Onto ‘AI’ Hype Cycle In A Fruitless Bid To Make 5G Seem Interesting
We’ve noted for several years how the “race to 5G” was largely just hype by telecoms and hardware vendors eager to sell more gear and justify high U.S. mobile data prices. While 5G does provide faster, more resilient, and lower latency networks, it’s more of an evolution than a revolution.
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APNIC ☛ IP addresses through 2024
However, while the Internet has grown at such amazing speed, the deployment of IPv6 continues at a more measured pace. There is still no evidence of any common sense of urgency about the deployment of this protocol, and still, there is no common agreement that the continued reliance on IPv4 is failing us. Much of the reason for this apparent contradiction between the designed population of the IPv4 Internet and the actual device count, which is many times larger, is that the Internet rapidly changed from a peer-to-peer architecture to a client/server paradigm.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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US News And World Report ☛ 2025-01-05 [Older] A Melania Trump Documentary From Director Brett Ratner Will Be Released by Amazon
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The Guardian UK ☛ Apple to face court over claims it overcharged UK users on App Store
Apple will appear in court on Monday accused of overcharging UK customers through its App Store. The claim alleges that the company is abusing its dominant position in the app market and that its 30% commission fee is in breach of European and UK competition laws.
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India Times ☛ Elon Musk gets US government support in what he called “illegal” conversion from Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI
US antitrust regulators support Elon Musk's claims against OpenAI and Microsoft, arguing overlapping board memberships can harm competition. The lawsuit highlights LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman's roles from 2017 to 2023. Musk seeks to stop OpenAI's for-profit shift, asserting it breaches non-profit goals.
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Patents
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Macworld ☛ Go home Mark Zuckerberg, you’re drunk
Obviously, it would be a huge boon for the Meta Glasses if they “just worked” with the iPhone without needing to dig into Bluetooth settings. But if Zuckerberg really thought Apple was just going to open a proprietary connection method for Meta, he’s more delusional than I thought.
And not for nothing, Zuckerberg’s claim that the protocol isn’t encrypted is unfounded, as is his earlier claim that iPhone sales “might actually be declining.” You know what actually is declining? Facebook.
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Trademarks
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Spoofing
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The Verge ☛ 2025-01-09 [Older] When You Search for ‘Google’ on Bing, Bing Attempts to Trick You Into Thinking the Results Page Is Google
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Make Tech Easier ☛ 2025-01-07 [Older] Microsoft Bing Spoofs a Google Makeover
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International Business Times ☛ 2025-01-08 [Older] Dell Defends Against 'Apple Copycat' Claims In Naming New Computers: 'Pro And Max Are Not Exclusive'
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ ISP Huffs and Puffs Then Apologizes to 3 Little Piggies Over Pirate Downloads
Making use of free Wi-Fi offered by pubs, bars, cafés, and other businesses, is now an everyday event for millions of people. For the owner of the 3 Little Piggies café in Cork, Ireland, providing free Wi-Fi led to an allegation of music piracy from his ISP and advance notice of potential disconnection. What followed was an extremely rare apology, for reasons deserving of a much closer look.
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Torrent Freak ☛ MissAV: One of the World's Largest 'Pirate' Sites Targeted in Takedown Effort
In Asia, Japan in particular, MissAV is the leading player. The site, which has a strong focus on uncensored Japanese Adult Videos (JAV), is listed among the 15 most-visited websites in the country.
With over 300 million monthly visits, it’s also one of the most trafficked websites globally. This is a major frustration for rightsholders of adult content, including FANZA, which is owned by the Japanese Internet company DMM.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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