Links 15/01/2025: Social Control Media Spreading Lies, TikTok Banned in 4 Days
Contents
- Leftovers
- 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 Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Hackaday ☛ Fluid Simulation Pendant Teaches Lessons In Miniaturization
Some projects seem to take on a life of their own. You get an idea, design and prototype it, finally build the thing and — it’s good, but it’s not quite right. Back to the drawing board, version 2, still not perfect, lather, rinse, repeat. Pretty soon you look around to discover that you’ve built ten of them. Oops.
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Hackaday ☛ How Nyan Cat Was Ported To UEFI
The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) took over from the classical BIOS some years into the new millenium. It’s typically used for running a computer at the basic pre-OS level, and most of us don’t even notice it past boot time. However, you can do some neat things in this space—you can even port over Nyan Cat if you’re talented like [Cornelius].
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Ruben Schade ☛ The limits of advice, and having your own thoughts
Nobody knows your circumstances better than you! And yes, that includes subjective opinion as well.
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Loura ☛ Hey Loura!
Since then, my paper system has evolved and that’s what I want to take a moment to record in this post. But unlike other options, I can toss aside the extra’s in this system at anytime and go back to what I can depend on… a simple list on an index card.
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Leon Mika ☛ On Slash Pages Verses Blog Posts
In lieu of that, I like the idea proposed by Chris and Dave where you basically new versions of these slash pages as blog posts and redirect the slash URL to the latest one, kind of like a bookmark. I may start doing these for some of them, starting with /defaults which is, conveniently, already a blog post.
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Cory Dransfeldt ☛ I deleted all of my email filters
The problem with this though and the problem with segmented inboxes is that it multiples the number of inboxes you have to check. You end up either actively checking these, which creates more of a cognitive and organizational load or ignoring them which means that — without fail — you'll miss things.
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Manuel Moreale ☛ Bloggers at the right time
So, to get back to the original question, if I was born in the time of modern social media, would I be blogging? The only question I can give is “Maybe?”. It’s hard to say.
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Andrea Contino ☛ If I was born and brought up in the time of modern social media, would I even blog?
So I really couldn't say what I would have done if I had started my Internet experience a decade later, let's say. Thinking about it, I would say that I would have still looked at blogs as a tool for personal expression where I could tell my story through longform, without the limiting boundaries of platforms and like-grabbing posts.
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Science
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Wired ☛ You Have NASA to Thank for Wireless Headphones and Vacuum Cleaners
But the most effective argument might simply be to point to the plethora of everyday items that would not exist without space research. NASA Spinoff—a section of the US space agency’s technology transfer program—compiles just about every commercial technology that has originated in US space research. It reveals that no space program has had a greater impact on everyday life than the Apollo lunar missions.
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Chris ☛ The Discovery of Magnetic Variation
When I read about the nuclear clock that will test if fundamental constants change I was reminded of a similar discovery in history: that by which we learned magnetic north moves.
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Science Alert ☛ Strange Blobs Found Deep Inside Earth Where No Such Blobs Should Exist
How did that get there?
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Science Alert ☛ Hilarious 'Fast-Moving Belly Flop' Lets Frogs Walk on Water
We all have our own ways of getting around.
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Science Alert ☛ These Are The Key Takeaways in The New US Alcohol-Cancer Guidelines
A scientist explains the findings.
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Science Alert ☛ Breathtaking Tattoos Revealed on Peruvian Mummies From 1,200 Years Ago
Nothing short of spectacular.
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Hackaday ☛ Selectively Magnetizing An Anti-Ferromagnet With Terahertz Laser
It’s a well-known fact that anti-ferromagnetic materials are called that way because they cannot be magnetized, not even in the presence of a very strong external magnetic field. The randomized spin state is also linked with any vibrations (phonons) of the material, ensuring that there’s a very strong resistance to perturbations. Even so, it might be possible to at least briefly magnetize small areas through the use of THz-range lasers, as they disrupt the phonon-spin balance sufficiently to cause a number of atoms to ‘flip’, resulting in a localized magnetic structure.
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Career/Education
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Pro Publica ☛ Inside the Plan to Funnel Taxpayer Dollars to Religious Schools
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[Repeat] APNIC ☛ How networking technology enables cheating in online exams
Truth be told, this post isn’t really for students. They (and their helpers) likely already know much of what I’m about to share — and have probably been practicing it without their teachers or administrators noticing. This is for you: The technical support teams in educational institutions. What do you say to colleagues in education who think that Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) proctored online exams are an affordable and secure solution? They need a wake-up call. Here’s what you need to know to convince them otherwise.
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Chris Holdgraf ☛ Why I’m running for the Jupyter Executive Council
The Jupyter Executive Council is the highest governing body within the Jupyter ecosystem. It was created two years ago, and is the group that is ultimately responsible for the health of Jupyter as a whole. For example, last year the Executive Council oversaw the effort to move Jupyter into the Linux Foundation, and to set up its own Jupyter Foundation.
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The Guardian UK ☛ ‘I read 35 books this year!’: the Guardian readers who cut their phone use in 2024
But if you’re looking for a new relationship with your phone and truly sticking to it, there’s no need to feel trapped in this hopeless cycle – and I have the people to prove it.
At the start of 2024, I edited Reclaim Your Brain, a Guardian newsletter designed to help anyone unhappy with their screen-time use. It provides a five-week course that readers can sign up for at any time, and comes with tested tasks from our expert Catherine Price, the award-winning author of How to Break Up With Your Phone.
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Hardware
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Lenovo led global PC shipment in 2024 with 61.8 million units — Fashion Company Apple is gaining PC market share with a 17.3% growth
PC market grew modest 1% in 2024 as Lenovo maintained its lead
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CNX Software ☛ IBASE INA1607 is a fanless uCPE/SD-WAN appliance powered by an defective chip maker Intel Atom x7405C Amston Lake SoC
IBASE Technology’s INA1607 is a fanless uCPE (universal Customer Premises Equipment) and SD-WAN (Software-defined WAN) appliance powered by an defective chip maker Intel Atom x7405C Amston Lake processor coupled with up to 16GB ECC or non-EEC DDR5 memory.
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The Verge ☛ Parallels is testing x86 emulation on Apple silicon Macs
Parallels has added support for x86 emulation in Parallels Desktop 20.2, product manager Mikhail Ushakov wrote in a blog post last week. The “early technology preview” will let you emulate Intel-based hardware on an M1-or-greater Mac, a first for Parallels since Apple’s Arm transition in 2020 — but don’t expect stellar performance.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Science Alert ☛ Drinking More Green Tea Each Day Cuts Risk of Dementia Brain Lesions
Have another cup.
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Science Alert ☛ Body Parts Have Surprisingly Similar Values Around The World Through History
Eye for a toenail, anybody?
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Science Alert ☛ LA Now Faces Water Contamination Threat After Wildfires, Expert Warns
Here's what you need to know.
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ Drug Ads Misinform Patients and Raise Health Care Costs
Direct-to-consumer drug ads are prohibited in almost all countries besides the US. By leading doctors to prescribe unnecessary and more expensive treatments at the request of their patients, they also raise health care costs across the board.
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Scheerpost ☛ The ‘Uber Model’ Comes for Nursing
In a recently published brief for the Roosevelt Institute, Groundwork Collaborative Fellow Katie J. Wells and Funda Ustek Spilda, senior lecturer at King’s College London, dig into the harms and pitfalls of what is being called “Uber for nursing.”
Through interviews with 29 “gig” nurses and certified nursing assistants, the researchers found a long list of poor and unsafe working conditions.
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India Times ☛ surveillance technology: Surveillance tech is changing our behaviour - and our brains
Surveillance technology affects how our brains process information, increasing our awareness of other people's gaze unconsciously. Research suggests this can lead to heightened anxiety and mental health concerns. Constant monitoring might shape our perceptions and social interactions without us realizing it. The balance between security and personal freedom needs careful consideration.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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The CDC, Palantir and the AI-Healthcare Revolution
The CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA) has partnered with the CIA-linked Palantir to cement the public-private model of invasive surveillance in “public health,” all while pushing the U.S. national security state and Silicon Valley even closer together.
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Bleeping Computer ☛ Microsoft to force install new Outlook on backdoored Windows 10 PCs in February
Microsoft will force install the new Outlook email client on backdoored Windows 10 systems starting with next month’s security update.
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The Register UK ☛ Microsoft sues 'foreign-based' crims abusing AI services
The lawsuit, filed in December in a US District Court, accuses 10 defendants of using API keys stolen from "multiple" Microsoft customers along with custom-designed software to break into computers running Microsoft's Azure Open AI service.
Microsoft says it uncovered the scheme in July 2024, but the exact way in which the criminals stole the API keys is unknown.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Microsoft sues cybercriminal operation that developed tools to bypass AI safety guardrails
The complaint, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia in December, claims that the unnamed cybercriminals violate U.S. law and the Acceptable Use Policy and Code of Conduct for Microsoft services. The complaint alleges that “Does 1-10 Operating an Azure Abuse Network” breached laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, as well as trespass to chattels and tortious interference under Virginia state law.
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Bruce Schneier ☛ Microsoft Takes Legal Action Against Hey Hi (AI) “Hacking as a Service” Scheme [Ed: No, Microsoft is the facilitator and Microsoft puts back doors in things, causing massive security incidents; it should sue itself]
Not sure this will matter in the end, but it’s a positive move:
Microsoft is accusing three individuals of running a “hacking-as-a-service” scheme that was designed to allow the creation of harmful and illicit content using the company’s platform for AI-generated content.
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Ruben Schade ☛ Remember international calls?
It’s all moot thesedays anyway now, at least for me. I press the phone button in LINE, Signal, or Skype, and be done with it. The quality of the call between here and my colleagues in San Francisco is better than the phone calls I take from delivery drivers who’ve arrived downstairs.
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Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Sustainability versus scalability
We have ample evidence to demonstrate that social media can be and very often is toxic at scale — often that's due to financial concerns outweighing what's best for users, but it can also be that smaller, holistic communities that don't aim to have everyone you've ever run into cloistered together in the same space.
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The Verge ☛ Elon Musk is being sued by the feds over the way he bought Twitter
Before Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion, before he tried to back out of that deal, before he was forced to go through with it, and before he changed its name to X, he started by acquiring a substantial stake in the company but didn’t reveal that fact until weeks later.
The only problem, as the SEC pointed out then, is that by the time he disclosed that stake, it was outside the agency’s required 10-day window. They claim that he should’ve filed his paperwork by March 24th, 2022, instead of when he actually did, on April 4th (and then again on April 5th). During that period, they say he purchased more than $500 million in shares of the company.
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New York Times ☛ S.E.C. Sues Elon Musk Over Twitter-Related Securities Violations
The regulatory filings are required so investors in the marketplace can monitor the moves of large investors and potential takeover bids.
Because Mr. Musk did not disclose his position, he was able to continue buying Twitter stock at an artificially low price, the S.E.C. said in its lawsuit. The move “allowed him to underpay by at least $150 million” for the additional shares before he belatedly disclosed his stake, the lawsuit continued.
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TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ SEC sues Elon Musk, saying he didn’t disclose Twitter ownership on time before buying it
The SEC said that starting in April 2022, it authorized an investigation into whether any securities laws were broken in connection with Musk’s purchases of Twitter stock and his statements and SEC filings related to the company.
Before it filed the lawsuit, the SEC went to court in an attempt to compel Musk to testify as part of an investigation into his purchase of Twitter.
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Rlang ☛ Understanding Machine Learning and Data Science
Understanding Machine Learning and Data Science, In today’s digital age, the terms “Machine Learning” and “Data Science” have become buzzwords, often used interchangeably.
However, they represent distinct fields with unique methodologies and applications.
This article aims to demystify these concepts, highlighting their significance, differences, and real-world applications.
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Futurism ☛ Politicians Blame Los Angeles Fires on Explosion of AI Data Centers
Meanwhile, as Politico reports, politicians have started pointing fingers at the burgeoning AI industry, which has garnered a reputation for sucking up staggering amounts of water to cool down the quickly-growing number of data centers powering it.
As such, three California lawmakers introduced bills last week aimed at encouraging AI data processing centers to work toward sustainable water use standards, and holding them accountable to new transparency rules.
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Futurism ☛ Zuckerberg Announces Plans to Automate Facebook Coding Jobs With AI
And as Zuckerberg said, Meta is far from the only one that's pushing for AI automation in the industry. In December, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that the software giant, which is among the most valuable companies in the world, would no longer be hiring software engineers in 2025. Benioff credited this hiring freeze to productivity gains made with AI technology, including its own Agentforce AI model.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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New York Times ☛ Texas Sues Allstate Over Its Collection of Driver Data
The lawsuit accuses Arity, an Allstate subsidiary, of collecting data about people’s driving behavior through mobile phone apps, leading to increases in drivers’ insurance rates.
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AccessNow ☛ Statement on the historic decision in the WhatsApp v NSO case
Access Now welcomes the ruling in the case of WhatsApp v NSO Group, where the U.S. District Court of Northern California found that NSO violated federal and California state hacking statutes.
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VOA News ☛ US finalizes rules banning Chinese, Russian smart cars
In a White House fact sheet detailing the decision, the Biden administration Tuesday said that while connected vehicles offer advantages, the involvement of foreign adversaries such as China and Russia in their supply chains presents serious risks granting “malign actors unfettered access to these connected systems and the data they collect.”
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Scheerpost ☛ The CDC, Palantir and the AI-Healthcare Revolution
This will apparently be achieved via mass interagency data sharing between the DoD, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the private sector. In other words, the military and intelligence communities, as well as the public and private sector elements of the US healthcare system, are working closely with Big Tech to “predict” diseases and treat them before they occur (and even before symptoms are felt) for the purported purpose of improving civilian and military healthcare.
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Defence/Aggression
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VOA News ☛ NATO announces mission to protect undersea cables in Baltic region
"Across the alliance, we have seen elements of a campaign to destabilize our societies through cyberattacks, assassination attempts and sabotage, including possible sabotage of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea," Rutte told reporters after a meeting in Helsinki with the leaders of Allied Baltic nations.
Announcing the new operation, Rutte noted that more than 95% of internet traffic is secured via undersea cables, and 1.3 million kilometers of cables guarantee an estimated $10 trillion worth of financial transactions every day.
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The Atlantic ☛ Pete Hegseth Declines to Answer
Hegseth’s liabilities can be divided into four categories, each of them individually disqualifying: [...]
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Harvard University ☛ Is TikTok’s time nearly up?
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case, TikTok v. Garland, and is expected to rule soon.
The Gazette spoke with Timothy Edgar, J.D. ’97, a privacy and cybersecurity law expert who teaches at Harvard Law School and Brown University. Edgar’s position is that the law limits the First Amendment rights of ByteDance and TikTok users in the U.S. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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The Register UK ☛ A TikTok US ban seems imminent, barring a miracle
That's right: Barring a 90-day extension by Biden; a multi-billion dollar deal is agreed upon and closed in the next few days; a Supreme Court reprieve; or Senate action on legislation that has yet to be introduced, it's lights out for TikTok in the US on Sunday, January 19, the deadline set for Chinese tech giant ByteDance to sell the app or have it nixed from US app stores.
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The Verge ☛ TikTok says it’s planning for “various scenarios” ahead of possible US ban
In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, employees were told that the company is “continuing to plan the way forward” ahead of the court’s imminent decision, which is expected as soon as Wednesday, January 15th.
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The Verge ☛ Elon Musk is reportedly trying to save TikTok
The kicker? China is reportedly mulling having President-elect Donald Trump’s favorite tech billionaire, Elon Musk, act either as broker or buyer in the arrangement. Reports from the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg — all citing unnamed sources — indicate that Chinese officials are at least discussing the option of a sale. TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes has called the reports “pure fiction.” The Chinese embassy in the US and Musk’s existing social media company, X, did not respond to requests for comment.
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Techdirt ☛ TikTok Users Gleefully Embrace Even More Chinese App To Spite US TikTok Ban
The US government’s ham-handed attempt to ban TikTok on national security grounds is not only a troubling attack on free speech and the open internet, but it’s already backfiring by sending users flocking to Chinese apps that pose even greater privacy concerns, as young people mock their misguided paternalism.
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Futurism ☛ TikTok Users Looking to Spite US Government Find Warm Welcome on Chinese App
Though the internet has often been heralded as a tool for information dissemination and western progressivism — remember the Arab Spring? — the reality isn't so idealistic. Case in point, China tends to ban American apps that don't comply with its regulatory standards, and the US has long used the internet as a tool to maintain global hegemony. So it's interesting to see Western and Chinese users interacting directly, a turn with little precedence in the contemporary world.
It's all the more fascinating that the tensions of state which usually keep the two societies separate has, in this case, driven them right into each other's arms. In practice, posts on RedNote suggest that American users are uniting around the app out of spite for the US government, or at least the parts of it that might ban the distribution of TikTok.
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BBC ☛ TikTok users flock to Chinese app RedNote before US ban
As more US users joined RedNote, some Chinese users have also jokingly referred to themselves as "Chinese spies", a reference to US officials' concerns that TikTok could be used by China as a tool for spying and political manipulation.
RedNote's Chinese name, Xiaohongshu, translates to Little Red Book, but the app says it is not a reference to Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong's book of quotations with the same name.
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India Times ☛ TikTok dismisses reports of US operations sale to Elon Musk as "pure fiction"
TikTok has denied reports suggesting that Chinese officials are considering a sale of its United States operations to Elon Musk, calling the claim "pure fiction".
The denial came after a Bloomberg report suggested that Chinese authorities might explore selling TikTok's US business to Musk if the US Supreme Court upholds a ban on the app. The court is set to rule on a law requiring TikTok to sell its US operations or face a ban by 19 January.
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The Washington Post ☛ RedNote gains popularity as TikTok users worry about a potential ban
The threat of a ban on TikTok this coming Sunday has young Americans migrating to an unexpected destination: RedNote, another Chinese-owned app, which is heavily censored and used almost exclusively by Chinese-speakers.
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Axios ☛ What happens to TikTok if it gets banned
State of play: TikTok will not instantly disappear from a device where it's already downloaded on Jan. 19. But ByteDance won't be able to issue updates to the app — eventually rendering it useless.
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New York Times ☛ Why TikTok Users Are Downloading ‘Red Note,’ the Chinese App
“How funny would it be if they ban TikTok and we all just move over to this Chinese app,” Ms. Lee wrote on Monday on TikTok encouraging her followers to join her.
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Wired ☛ GPS Is Vulnerable to Attack. Magnetic Navigation Can Help
GPS signals can be jammed—deliberately drowned out with other powerful radio signals—and spoofed, where erroneous signals are released to fool positioning systems. GPS interference has been documented in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the South China Sea.
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New York Times ☛ A Neo-Nazi Helped Incite U.K. Riots. Elon Musk Criticized His Sentencing.
Mr. Musk’s post, which has been viewed 34 million times, is just one in a flurry of comments he has made about Britain in recent weeks that have included attacks on the governing Labour Party, and that have increasingly echoed far-right talking points laced with disinformation.
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Advance Local Media LLC ☛ ‘We have to stop them’: 2 billionaires trying to buy Texas, state representative warns - lonestarlive.com
“Their names are Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, and they’re the biggest Republican donors in the state ... And now, to complete their takeover, they’re going to try to buy the Texas House.”
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JURIST ☛ SCOTUS dispatch: Supreme Court appears skeptical of TikTok’s First Amendment claims, but may wait for Trump
Chloe Miracle-Rutledge is a JURIST Supreme Court Correspondent and a 2L at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC. On Friday, I braved the cold to sit in the press box for the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in TikTok, Inc. v. Garland.
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Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Live Fest Kicks Off This Week in London, With Zara Larsson Headlining
TikTok’s Global Live Fest kicks off this week in London, with headliner Zara Larsson and host Jason Derulo. Zara Larsson has been announced as this year’s headliner for TikTok’s second annual Global Live Fest on January 16 in London.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ India’s Narendra Modi opens strategic road tunnel to contested China border zones
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a strategic Himalayan road tunnel on Monday, pushing all-weather access northwards towards contested high-altitude border zones with rivals China and Pakistan. The Z-Morh or Sonmarg tunnel, stretching 6.4 kilometres (four miles) beneath a treacherous mountain pass cut off by snow for between four to six months a year, is […]
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The Straits Times ☛ South Korea, Japan foreign ministers stress security ties amid political turmoil
The ministers also emphasised the importance of developing three-way security cooperation with the US.
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The Straits Times ☛ China’s deployment of ‘monster ship’ alarming, says Philippine security official
Manila said the Chinese vessel clearly meant to intimidate fishermen operating around the South China Sea.
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Defence Web ☛ Morocco looking to buy Small Diameter Bombs, AIM-120 missiles for its F-16s
The Kingdom of Morocco has requested to buy $175 million worth of AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles and GBU-39B Small Diameter Bombs from the United States. Both possible sales were approved by the US State Department on 20 December, and the relevant notifications delivered to Congress.
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Scoop News Group ☛ Trump and others want to ramp up cyber offense, but there’s plenty of doubt about the idea
In recent months, incoming Trump administration national security adviser Mike Waltz and some lawmakers have suggested that in response to Chinese cyber breaches, the United States needs to prioritize taking more aggressive offensive actions in cyberspace rather than emphasizing defense. It’s been said before. And it’s easier said than done
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Scoop News Group ☛ Biden administration unveils export controls on Hey Hi (AI) models, chips
The so-called Hey Hi (AI) diffusion rule from Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security faced swift pushback from industry.
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Scoop News Group ☛ Second Biden cyber executive order directs agency action on fed security, AI, space
A draft obtained by CyberScoop would give the sitting president a short window to sign it before his exit.
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The Strategist ☛ The Quad should help Indonesia achieve underwater domain awareness
Indonesia’s underwater domain awareness (UDA) is a critical gap that the Quad security partners—Australia, India, Japan and the United States—can and should fill.
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Federal News Network ☛ Homeland Security steps up efforts to stop human trafficking
"The elements of the of human trafficking don't necessarily involve transportation. That's more human smuggling," said Brandi Bynum.
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Federal News Network ☛ Trump team is questioning civil servants at National Security Council about commitment to his agenda
Incoming senior Trump officials have begun questioning career civil servants serving on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for.
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Ta’ang rebels renew vow to crush Myanmar’s junta despite earlier ceasefire offer
Observers say the TNLA knows that control of its region is unsustainable if the military remains in power.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Meduza ☛ Dispatch from Pankisi Valley In the aftermath of a controversial election, frustration and fear on Georgia’s rural fringe — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Slovak Prime Minister Fico invites Zelensky to meet near border to discuss gas transit — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ NATO Baltic Sea Leaders To Discuss Increasing Security In Region
The leaders of several NATO countries are scheduled to meet in Helsinki on January 14 to discuss increasing security in the Baltic Sea region following the suspected sabotage of several undersea cables.
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Meduza ☛ Police in Siberia arrest two suspected accomplices in General Igor Kirillov’s Moscow assassination — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Moscow court issues unprecedented ruling in housing compensation case, siding with victim of Stalinist repressions — Meduza
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LRT ☛ Minister’s comments about Belarusians’ closeness to Lithuanians ‘strange’ – PM
Interior Minister Vladislav Kondratovič’s comments about the Belarusian people’s closeness to Lithuanians sound “quite strange in today’s context”, Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas said on Monday.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Press Gazette ☛ Ban on naming Sara Sharif care judges 'cannot be allowed to stand'
A ban on naming judges who oversaw proceedings related to the care of Sara Sharif before she was murdered “cannot be allowed to stand”, the Court of Appeal has been told.
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Doc Searls ☛ How Facts Matter
Look closely: Trump’s news is deliberate, theatrical, and constant. All of it is staged and re-staged, so every unavoidably interesting thing he says or does pushes the last thing he said or did off the stage and into irrelevance, because whatever he’s saying or doing now demands full attention, no matter what he said or did yesterday.
There is genius to this, and it requires understanding and respect—especially by those who report on it.
You can call this trolling, or earned media coverage, meaning the free kind. Both are true. Comparing Trump to The Mule in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Empire also makes sense. (The Mule was a mutant with exceptional influence over the emotions of whole populations. It was by noting this resemblance that I, along with Scott Adams, expected Trump to win in 2016.)
This speaks of two big fails for journalism: [...]
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ The January 6 Report Is Substantially the Immunity Brief Reporters Ignored in October
ECF 252 is the immunity brief Jack Smith fought hard, over Trump’s objections, to submit in October. The footnotes often then cite the Special Counsel’s Bates stamp identifying that piece of evidence and include a short description of the source.
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Environment
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The Nation ☛ It’s Time to Rethink Everything About How We Fight Fires
But the West’s fire season keeps starting earlier and lasting longer. Today’s outlier could increasingly be tomorrow’s norm. When firefighting resources and tactics become overrun, as they have been in LA, we must be willing to accept that the reason is not as simple as budgets, climate change, short-term management failures, or development practices alone. It’s all of those combined, joined together by the beliefs that underlie them.
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Vox ☛ California fires: The real story of California’s water problems
There are several mechanisms for this. Kearns explained that when water pressure drops in the municipal water supply like it did in Los Angeles last week, untreated waste water can backflow into mains. This means that pathogens and other contaminants can enter water lines. Several communities in Los Angeles County have advised residents not to drink tap water.
The ash from the fires can also enter surface water supplies like reservoirs and aqueducts. That ash can contain toxic chemicals. Some of the flame retardants used to contain the fires can also allow hazardous substances like benzene to enter the water supply.
Fires can melt PVC plumbing, which can introduce long-lasting contaminants into water. Weather conditions have been exceptionally dry so far, but when rain does pick up, that can wash fire debris into the water system, stressing water treatment plants.
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Press Gazette ☛ Climate change scepticism almost extinct from UK national press
But newspapers are instead increasingly arguing against the need to take action to slow climate change.
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Science Alert ☛ LA Fires a Catastrophic Example of Study's 'Hydroclimate Whiplash' Warnings
Climate chaos ensues before our eyes.
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The Straits Times ☛ 6.8-magnitude quake strikes Japan, prompts tsunami alert
It struck off Miyazaki prefecture in the Kyushu region around 9.19pm.
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Pro Publica ☛ After the Palisades Fire, What Can We Really Rebuild?
In the last years before the fires that destroyed Pacific Palisades, California, the great civic debate in my hometown was over the meaning of a shopping mall.
Some residents feared that the Palisades Village, a 3-acre archipelago of posh boutiques and restaurants that opened in 2018, was driving a gleaming stake through the heart of the place where we grew up. That “Old Palisades” was a mythologized, upper-middle-class community where people knew one another, raised happy families and tempered even the old, analog status-seeking of Malibu and Beverly Hills.
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DeSmog ☛ Exclusive: Norway’s Equinor Forced to Withdraw Key Carbon Capture Claim
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Energy/Transportation
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DeSmog ☛ Tory Net Zero Chief Calls for Climate Deniers to Vet UK Energy Policies
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DeSmog ☛ Pierre Poilievre Met With Denier-Backed UK Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch
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Peter Hosey ☛ Let the user help solve their own problem
I wish we had a maps app like Apple Maps or Google Maps that let you order up a travel itinerary using public transit between two points, and explicitly pick the transit routes involved. Or, ideally, multiple sets of routes, for comparison.
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Wildlife/Nature
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Science Alert ☛ Brain-Eating Amoebas Are a Real-Life Horror We Should Know About
Rare but deadly.
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Finance
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Mexico News Daily ☛ Economy minister: Trump tariff plan is unviable
"You can't have low inflation and sustained economic growth in the U.S. if ... you're rolling out strong protectionist policies against Mexico and China," Marcelo Ebrard said.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China’s exports reached record high in 2024 ahead of second Trump term and amid threat of tariffs
China’s exports surged to a record high in 2024, providing a much-needed boost for the economy as the prospect of biting tariffs imposed by US president-elect Donald Trump looms.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Tom's Hardware ☛ EU protests new US AI chip restrictions — some countries face GPU caps
Ten EU members—Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—would have Tier 1 status, meaning they have ‘near-unrestricted access’ to advance American AI chips. However, they must still abide by U.S. security requirements and keep at least 75% of their processing capabilities within Tier 1 countries. Although they could install the rest of their AI chips in Tier 2 countries, they cannot put over 7% of these chips in any single nation, meaning they have to spread operations to over four countries if they want to do so.
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New York Times ☛ Meta to Cut 5% of Its Workers in New Round of Layoffs
Meta plans to lay off up to 5 percent of its employees based on performance ratings, according to an internal memo to workers on Tuesday viewed by The New York Times.
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The Washington Post ☛ Mark Zuckerberg says Meta will push out ‘low performers’ faster
Meta confirmed that these policies will lead to a dramatic staff cut, trimming back roughly 5 percent of the company’s workforce. Zuckerberg told rank-and-file workers that those being cut will be notified on Feb. 10 and will receive “generous severance,” according to the memo. Zuckerberg said the company expects to backfill the jobs of workers who will be cut.
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Federal News Network ☛ Technology executives on the move at Education, OPM, HHS
The Education Department lost two top technology executives this week. The Department of Health and Human Services filled three key technology roles. And the Office of Personnel Management made quick work to name a new permanent chief information officer.
These are just a few of the big personnel changes in the federal IT community. And this isn’t even counting the 10 or so CIOs who are leaving this week when their political appointments comes to an end.
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US News And World Report ☛ Mark Zuckerberg Will Cohost Reception With Republican Billionaires for Trump Inauguration
The reception cohosted by Zuckerberg is set for Monday evening, shortly before the inaugural balls, according to two people familiar with the private plans who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss them.
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Michigan Advance ☛ When democracy dies in broad daylight
The most insightful George Orwell bumper-sticker wisdom on the road these days says the following: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
At a time when tech billionaires, morning cable news hosts, editorial boards and other once unshakeable stalwarts of the dissenting spirit have entered into an Olympics of competitive groveling before President-elect Donald Trump, speaking of ‘revolutionary acts’ in such an earnest way sounds increasingly quaint.
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Lucidity ☛ Brainwash An Executive Today!
We still have fifteen minutes left, and it becomes more and more apparent that the executive desperately wants to buy Monte Carlo, as desperately as my little cousins demand another go on the machines at the arcade. For the next day or so, they will wake and see Monte Carlo wherever they go, and when they close their eyes they will see the Monte Carlo sales team leering in their slumber, their tentacle sales-fingers reaching through monitors and rewiring cortices. Every word I say is potential ammunition in their case for buying this piece of software, which I know nothing about. I am nothing to the C-suite but a device that emits words that will ultimately result in being able to say "Ludic supports buying Monte Carlo".
We reach the end of the conversation, and my face hurts from the forced smile. They are doing their best to relate to some of my earlier sentiments.
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Axios ☛ Meta, Google stand to win ad share from TikTok ban
Zoom in: If TikTok is banned, more than half of the ad dollars spent on the platform in the U.S. would go to Meta and Google-owned properties, eMarketer projects.
Instagram and Facebook would take 22.% and 17.1% of TikTok's reallocated ad spend, respectively. Google's YouTube would take roughly 10.7%.
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The Register UK ☛ The UK's Online Safety Act applies to Small Tech too
When one thinks of online harms – death threats, revenge porn, suicide encouragement etc. – one thinks of the largest global platforms and services. But over the decades small hobbyist forums have sprung up on even the most niche topics, while retailers often allow customers to chat to each other to share ideas, challenges, and solutions.
Estimates suggest 100,000 such services will have to comply with the act, and some feel they don't have resources to do the compliance work, or that their content is not relevant to the kind of harm the law is designed to prevent.
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The Register UK ☛ Tim Apple cooks up 18% pay rise to $74.6M
The total remuneration package consisted of a $3 million base salary – unchanged in recent years – as well as $58.1 million in stock awards, $12 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation, and $1.52 million in terms of all other compensation.
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Rolling Stone ☛ Jack Smith's Report on Trump's 2020 Election Subversion Is Damning
Attorney General Merrick Garland has released former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his investigation into President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The 130-page report is damning, and concludes that “the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
“As set forth in the original and superseding indictments, when it became clear that Mr. Trump had lost the election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power,” the report reads.
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France24 ☛ Trump would have been convicted if he were not reelected, says US special counsel report
It concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency, set for Jan. 20, made that impossible.
Smith, who has come under relentless criticism from Trump, also defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Why is Indonesia blocking sales of Apple's new iPhone?
Indonesia requires 40% of parts used in certain smartphones to be produced domestically. To comply, Apple had pitched a $1 billion investment in an Indonesian manufacturing facility on Indonesia's Batam island to produce parts for the AirTag tracking device.
However, Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang pointed out that since the AirTag is not an iPhone part, the facility would not count towards the locally produced component rule for the iPhone 16, which was rolled out in September 2024. The local sales ban was first announced the following month.
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Sean Goedecke ☛ Crushing JIRA tickets is a party trick, not a path to impact
What determines importance? Importance at a tech company is whatever your directors/VPs/C-staff say it is. I mean that quite literally. Your job as an engineer is to execute on the strategy of the company, and since that strategy is set by executives, your job is to make sure you’re aligned with what they consider important. In any remotely functional company, they will tell you (over and over) what that is. You should pay attention when they do1.
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Rlang ☛ Using gganimate and ggflags to look at democratic progress
This dataset shows, for every year from 1950 to 2000, classifications for countries around the world. In the spirit of January 6th, I chose to focus on whether countries have free and fair elections, here shown as has_free_and_fair_election.
In the interest of this exploration, I’m not interested in colonies, which are shown as NA in the regime_category_index.
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The Telegraph UK ☛ The transformation of Mark Zuckerberg – from Democrat luvvie to Trump sympathiser
The big question, of course, is whether this is a genuine shift in Zuckerberg’s beliefs, or a canny, commercially minded way of currying favour with president-elect Trump. There is precedent for the latter, with Zuckerberg having seemingly shrewdly shifted strategy each time the political winds change in Washington. Yet his language of late is striking: not cold, hard business speak, but, particularly in the past couple of years, seemingly passionate. There is no zealot like the converted, after all, and it sounds as though Zuckerberg is now a full-blown Trumpian evangelist.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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New Yorker ☛ Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, and the Collapse of the Hollywood #MeToo Era
The reportage that thrived in the late twenty-tens cannot break through on today’s volatile Internet, where information is misinformation and victims are offenders.
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Common Dreams ☛ New Report Exposes Toyota’s Years-Long Effort to Fund Climate Deniers and Block Climate Action
“The world’s largest automaker has quietly spent the past several years building a powerful U.S. influence operation in an effort to delay the transition to electric vehicles,” said Adam Zuckerman, senior clean vehicles campaigner with Public Citizen’s Climate Program, and author of the report. “Funding a small army of climate denying lawmakers, while lobbying aggressively against stronger emissions and fuel economy standards, is a volatile combination intended to roll back policies that protect our communities and planet.”
In the three congressional election cycles between 2020 and 2024, Toyota’s political action committee donated $808,500 to the campaigns of Congressional candidates that deny or question the existence of climate change.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Big business uses factual research to mislead the public—philosophers analyze the issue
Even the truth can be manipulated to deliberately mislead us. That is the argument put forward in a paper titled "Industrial Distraction."
The research, due to be published in the Philosophy of Science journal in January, explores when big business, corporations and trade bodies fund and share research that is accurate and high quality, but nonetheless is intended to mislead.
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Futurism ☛ Firefighter Shuts Down Elon Musk to His Face
Several personalities took to social media to criticize Musk over the video, with California governor Gavin Newsom — a recent sparring partner for the Tesla and SpaceX exec — charging that Musk had been "exposed by firefighters for his own lies."
"This isn't about a water shortage. It's about the pipes being overwhelmed," wrote social personality Ed Krassenstein, in a reversal of his usual Musk boosterism. "People need to stop spreading misinformation."
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NDTV ☛ "Would Have To Apologise...": House Panel To Summon Mark Zuckerberg's Meta
"Misinformation on a democratic country maligns its image. The organisation would have to apologise to the Parliament and the people here for this mistake," Mr Dubey said in a post on X.
In a podcast on January 10, the 40-year-old Facebook co-founder said the Covid pandemic had led to an erosion of trust in incumbent governments the world over. He incorrectly cited India's example in this connection. "2024 was a very big election year around the world and all these countries, India, had elections. The incumbents basically lost every single one. There is some sort of a global phenomenon - whether it was because of inflation or the economic policies to deal with Covid or just how the governments dealt with Covid. It seems to have had this effect that's global," he said.
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India Times ☛ 'Will call Meta for this wrong information': Parliamentary panel on Zuckerberg’s Indian elections remark
He further said, “Wrong information in any democratic country tarnishes the image of the country. That organization will have to apologize to the Indian Parliament and the people here for this mistake.” Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw also criticised Zuckerberg’s statement, calling it factually incorrect. In a detailed post on X, Vaishnaw highlighted the achievements of the NDA government during the Covid -19 pandemic and its decisive victory in the 2024 elections.
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New Statesman ☛ Social media was never ethical
The timing of this change isn’t surprising: as a second Donald Trump presidency became increasingly likely over the summer and autumn, many high-profile billionaires sycophantically and transparently fell in line behind him. The influence of Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, reportedly resulted in the paper pulling its planned endorsement of Kamala Harris just weeks before the election. (Amazon also announced the termination of its own DEI programmes in December.) Elon Musk became Trump’s right-hand man after pumping a million dollars a day into his campaign. Amazon and Meta have both contributed $1m to Trump’s inauguration fund, a money pot used for the purposes of embellishing Trump’s swearing-in ceremony, which has also received contributions from tech companies such as Google (which owns YouTube), Boeing and OpenAI. When asked whether Meta’s changes were influenced by his threats to social media companies, Trump answered: “Probably.”
While no social media platform is seen as a utopian space in 2025, these developments have caused widespread shock and indignation. Within Meta itself, many staff are reportedly appalled. The Guardian described the changes as an “extinction-level event for the idea of objective truth on social media”. On platforms themselves, users were eager to voice their outrage at the new rules.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Techdirt ☛ NY Post: Fact Checking Is Now Censorship
This was inevitable, ever since Donald Trump and the MAGA world freaked out when social media’s attempts to fact-check the President were deemed “censorship.” The reaction was both swift and entirely predictable. After all, how dare anyone question Dear Leader’s proclamations, even if they are demonstrably false? It wasn’t long before we started to see opinion pieces from MAGA folks breathlessly declaring that “fact-checking private speech is outrageous.” There were even politicians proposing laws to ban fact-checking.
In their view, the best way to protect free speech is apparently (?!?) to outlaw speech you don’t like.
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Deseret Media ☛ Over half a million 'TikTok refugees' flock to China's RedNote
Occasionally, however, the Americans veered into riskier territory.
"Is it OK to ask about how laws are different in China versus Hong Kong?" one American user asked.
"We prefer not to talk about that here," a Chinese user responded.
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US News And World Report ☛ Russian Fines Google $78 Million for Ignoring Previous Penalties
Russia has for several years ordered foreign technology platforms to remove content it deems illegal, issuing small but persistent fines when it sees failures to comply. Tuesday's fine marked a significant increase on fines of around 4 million roubles that are usually levied.
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404 Media ☛ Meta Is Blocking Links to Decentralized Instagram Competitor Pixelfed
Meta is deleting links to Pixelfed, a decentralized Instagram competitor. On Facebook, the company is labeling links to Pixelfed.social as “spam” and deleting them immediately.
Pixelfed is an open-source, community funded and decentralized image sharing platform that runs on Activity Pub, which is the same technology that supports Mastodon and other federated services. Pixelfed.social is the largest Pixelfed server, which was launched in 2018 but has gained renewed attention over the last week.
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Mastodon ☛ The people should own the town square
Mastodon was founded on the principles that people should be able to control their social circle online, curate their own timeline, and convene freely with any community of their choosing. We believe social media should help users build bridges, not walls. And we believe this is best achieved through federation.
Today, we are excited to announce that Mastodon is taking important steps to ensure its legal and operational structures better reflect and support the pursuit of these ideals.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Press Gazette ☛ Mirror journalists given individual online page-view targets
Some journalists fear targets will hit quality - but editor says good stories drive page views.
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The Dissenter ☛ Destroyed Assange Files: Why UK Judge's Ruling Matters
A British judge issued an unusually critical rebuke against the Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales (CPS) for its handling of freedom of information requests related to Sweden's failed attempt to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The decision by the United Kingdom’s information rights tribunal was made public on January 10. It followed an appeal by Italian investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi, who argued that the CPS failed in its duty to properly explain why a senior prosecutor’s emails were allegedly deleted or destroyed.
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Kansas Reflector ☛ Kansas House speaker bans reporters from chamber floor, doesn't say why
The rule change, which is consistent with one imposed by Senate President Ty Masterson three years ago, restricts reporters’ access to the legislative process and action that can be observed and heard only from the floor. Previously, reporters were given access to a small area in a corner of the chamber. Now, reporters will be relegated to the public galley overlooking the chamber.
The rule provides limited access for photography, from angles that feature the back of legislators’ heads.
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AntiWar ☛ Judge Threatens To Break the UK's Wall of Secrecy Around Assange's Persecution
For years, the UK and Sweden stymied Freedom of Information requests to hide why prosecutors under Keir Starmer pursued the WikiLeaks founder. Finally the game may be up
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404 Media ☛ Our New FOIA Forum! 1/23, 1PM EST
So, what’s the FOIA Forum? We'll share our screen and show you specifically how we file FOIA requests. We take questions from the chat and incorporate those into our FOIAs in real-time. We’ll also check on some requests we filed last time. This time we're particularly focusing on how to use FOIA in the new Trump administration. We'll talk all about local, state, and federal agencies; tricks for getting the records you want; requesting things you might not have thought of; and how to apply when the federal government tries to withhold those records.
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CPJ ☛ Re: Press Freedom Protections in Sri Lanka [PDF]
We welcome the NPP’s dedication to a free media, as well as accountability for past crimes against journalists, as outlined in the coalition’s election manifesto. To that end, we call upon the newly elected government to: [...]
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Wife and son of wanted ex-pollster questioned by Hong Kong national security police – reports
The wife and son of wanted former pollster Chung Kim-wah have been questioned by national security police, local media has reported, a day after Chung’s ex-colleague was also questioned and his office was searched as part of a national security investigation.
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Privacy International ☛ Prosecuted for Protesting
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JURIST ☛ New Mexico court strikes down abortion restrictions in state’s conservative counties
The Supreme Court of New Mexico unanimously struck down restrictive abortion access policies in local counties on Thursday. Despite the state having criminalized abortion for over 57 years, New Mexico has now become one of the most liberal states in regard to abortion rights.
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ACLU ☛ The Long Journey Home
What does daily life look like while waiting to win asylum? That question was central to our latest series, Letters to America. The series, available now, features several individuals sharing their heartwarming – and often haunting – experiences coming from all over the world to seek safety, freedom and opportunity in the U.S.
For many individuals, the journey to being granted asylum is long. Even after arriving in the States, they may be held in detention centers for months or even years before being released into the community and reuniting with friends and loved ones. Many people begin to build their lives while their future remains in limbo. To better understand what daily life looks like for the asylum-seekers featured in our series, select ACLU team members who met with our storytellers share behind-the-scenes reflections to learn more.
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ACLU ☛ How “Stay-or-Pay” Contracts Are Used to Abuse Immigrant Workers
Shiny Lal is a nurse who came to the U.S. from India at the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic. In a new country facing an unprecedented virus, she dedicated herself to the difficult, dangerous work of front-line caregiving to create a better life for her family. But it wasn’t long before her American dream turned into a nightmare. Her employer, MedPro Healthcare Staffing, is among the growing number of companies that force employees to sign “stay-or-pay” contracts. These agreements impose exorbitant fees – routinely in the tens of thousands of dollars – under the guise of recouping training and relocation expenses if a worker leaves their job too soon. In Shiny’s case, the penalty – up to $40,000 plus MedPro’s enforcement costs – was triggered if she spent fewer than three years working for the company.
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Papers Please ☛ TSA issues new non-rules for REAL-ID
Today the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) published new regulations for the REAL-ID Act in the Federal Register, finalizing a bizarre and clearly illegal proposal the agency made in September 2024.
The new TSA regulations leave it even more unclear than before who the TSA will allow to fly without ID, and who it will prevent from flying without ID, after May 7, 2025.
Rather than establishing standards applicable to demands for ID by all Federal agencies, the new TSA regulations purport to authorize the TSA itself as well as other Federal agencies to establish agency-specific plans for selective enforcement of REAL-ID Act requirements.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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AccessNow ☛ Platform accountability: a rule-of-law checklist for policymakers
In this report, Access Now proposes a rule-of-law checklist to enable states to enact platform accountability regulations that are fit for purpose and protect human rights.
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AccessNow ☛ Platform accountability and human rights: a rule-of-law checklist
As policymakers around the world seek to rein in Big Tech, we define the safeguards necessary to ensure rule of law and protect human rights and democracy.
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VOA News ☛ UK's antitrust regulator to investigate Google's search services
Britain's antitrust regulator said on Tuesday it would investigate Google's search services using its new powers to see how they impact consumers and businesses, including advertisers, news publishers and rival search engines.
The Competition and Markets Authority, which has gained new powers to examine big tech, said search was vital for economic growth and it was critical that competition was working well.
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India Times ☛ EU reassesses tech probes into Apple, Google and Meta, Financial Times reports
The tech giants have urged U.S. President-elect Trump to challenge European Union's regulatory scrutiny against them.
The implications of Trump's presidency were a factor in the review, one source told the newspaper, clarifying that his victory had not triggered it.
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Trademarks
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TTAB Blog ☛ In 2024, What Was The Rate of TTAB Affirmance of Section 2(d) Refusals to Register?
The TTABlogger has once again taken a stab at estimating the percentage of Section 2(d) likelihood-of-confusion refusals that were affirmed by the Board in the past calendar year. I counted 228 decisions, of which 204 were affirmances and 24 were reversals. That's an affirmance rate of about 89.5%.
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ 'Notorious' Pirate IPTV Service MagisTV Applies for US Trademark and Rebrands
In its annual report published last week, the U.S. Government listed MagisTV as one of the most notorious piracy services. The mention comes after the IPTV provider, which is mainly popular in Latin America, boldly applied for a U.S. trademark. This trademark is unlikely to be granted without protest, but that doesn't seem to be a major issue; the service has already rebranded itself as FlujoTV.
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Rolling Stone ☛ Zuckerberg Appeared to Know Meta Trained AI on Pirated Library
As first revealed in a motion filed by attorneys for novelists Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey and comedian Sarah Silverman, who are pursuing a class-action suit against Meta for allegedly using their copyrighted work without permission, employees at the tech giant had candid conversations about the potential for scandal that would arise from leveraging a risky resource: Library Genesis, or LibGen, a massive so-called “shadow library” of free downloadable ebooks and PDFs that includes otherwise paywalled research and academic articles. In these exchanges, Meta’s engineers identified LibGen as “a dataset we know to be pirated,” but indicated that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had approved its use for training the next iteration of its large language model, Llama.
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Billionaire-proofing the [Internet]; Picks and Shovels Chapter One (Part 5)
What's more, none of the money the labels extracted from teenagers, grandparents (and the dead) went to artists. The labels just kept it all, while continuing to insist that they were doing all this because they wanted to "protect artists."
One thing everyone agreed on was how disgusted we all were with the labels. What we didn't agree on was what to do about it. A lot of us wanted to reform copyright – say, by creating a blanket license for [Internet] music so that artists could get paid directly. This was the systemic approach.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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