Links 16/01/2025: "Meduza, IRL" and the Clock is Ticking on TikTok in the US
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Career/Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- 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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Project Censored ☛ 2025-01-09 [Older] 2025: Another ‘Unprecedented’ Year Calls for Staying the Course
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Jan Lukas Else ☛ Blog Questions Challenge
Since 2020 I have been using my own blogging software, GoBlog. After jumping between Medium, WordPress, Medium and Hugo with additional software pieces to provide custom functionality, I decided to just write my tool that does everything I need from a blogging platform. And when I fancy new features, I just add them.
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Keenan ☛ I wasn't going to get super meta on here, but the people clamour for more Keenan and who am I to deny them their simple pleasures?
Having finally freed myself from Squarespace's very weak little grasp, my site is now built with Eleventy. I use it because of peer pressure. I had to teach myself HTML and CSS to hand-code much of it. For the rest, I hand-copy-and-pasted from people I respect (Robb).
In all seriousness, it feels good to have a site that feels a bit finicky to maintain, where I can live out my little fantasy of starring in the movie Hackers. There's something really sexy to me about not having a CMS and, instead, just writing Markdown files and putting them in a folder, and then watching the code I wrote magically transform them into words with style. I enjoy writing Diet Code™ and being able to imagine what the words will look like when published on the site. It's like looking into the Matrix, but for a moron.
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MJ Fransen ☛ Blog Question Challenge 2025
I started my first personal website around 1997, just hand written HTML. With a lot of Gif images, like most websites at that time. The hosting was provided by the dial-up internet provider. You saved your HTML files in the "public_html" sub directory in your home directory on their server. Like the current "tilde-verse" sites, the website was available as http://provider-url/~username.
It was fun to do, and a way to reach out. It provided a platform to explain how to do things on Linux. I like to show that you can really use open source software for everything. This is also the main motivation to write articles for the Dutch Linux Magazine.
I have always had some kind of website since then, and when I started to be self employed it became a website for my business.
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Gabriel ☛ Blog Question Challenge 2025
I started blogging earnestly around 2016-2017, but I had already been writing stuff before then, but only in my journaling app, Day One. I love blogging, I love sharing the things I enjoy, my passions, and all my feelings, and rants.
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Chris Glass ☛ Blog Questions Challenge
Everything moved to a highly customized WordPress site in 2021 (thanks to Kay). All those legacy photo posts, 12,000 bookmarks from Delicious and the static site have been folded together with custom post types.
My long view is the platform doesn’t matter as long as the data is portable. The important thing is to keep at it.
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Bob Monsour ☛ Music is replacing my self-talk
All of this has had the effect of allowing me to be more calm and my worry becomes more selective and priortized. And I think that's a good thing.
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Tracy Durnell ☛ Blog Questions Challenge
My domain had sat stagnant as a hand-coded HTML site for many years as I had it in my head that I needed to design websites from scratch, and I was burned out on web design. It became one of those lingering shoulds in the back of my mind, haunting me, but I felt obligated to have a portfolio website. Then Google started to nag and downrank me because my site wasn’t mobile friendly/ responsive, so it had just become this massive drag 😒
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Rob Knight ☛ Blog Question Challenge
More recently I'm blogging for me. It's recipes, technical posts, things I've solved, ideas I've had. Basically instructions for anything I, or someone else, might want to do.
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The Moscow Times ☛ Russia Labels Ukrainian Meme ‘Terrorist Organization’
The name parodies the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics in eastern Ukraine, which were established by pro-Russian rebels in 2014. Moscow recognized these territories as independent ahead of the full-scale invasion and later claimed to annex them.
The meme gained enough popularity to prompt Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov to publicly deny rumors about the “Belgorod People’s Republic” in mid-2022.
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Clayton Errington ☛ Blog Questions Challenge 2025
I’ve seen this blog post floating around and in some RSS feeds and thought I’d take the time to answer these questions as well. Especially since my website has been around for 10 years, this is a good time to share some past, present, and future things and why I still enjoy having a website.
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Science
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Daniel Lemire ☛ The ivory tower’s drift: how academia’s preference for theory over empiricism fuels scientific stagnation
Almost all of academic science has moved away from actual (empirical) science. It is higher status to work on theories and models. I believe that it is closely related to well documented scientific stagnation as theory is often ultimately sterile.
This tendency is quite natural in academia if there is no outside pressure… And is the main reason why academia should be ruthlessly judged by practitioners and users. As soon as academia can isolate itself in a bubble, it is bound to degrade.
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Career/Education
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Lou Plummer ☛ The "I'm Not a Computer Person" People
OK, that was a quarter of a century ago. I don't have that attitude any more. According to Consumer Affairs, 91% of adults in the US have a smart phone - which is a hand held computer with an operating system. Computer skills are taught in public schools. Most universities require students to have a laptop. Desktops and laptops have been ubiquitous in business for many years. And yet, and yet - I still get hit with "I'm not a computer person."
Somehow, the decision makers in many workplaces have decided that demonstrating competency with one of the basic tools of a job isn't a requirement. They hire people like me to hold the hands of their employees, enabling them to forego skill development because they can just call IT when they can't find a file they were working on yesterday or they've forgotten their password for the third time this month or they can't figure out how to make PDFs open in Adobe Reader.
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404 Media ☛ Why This OnlyFans Model Posts Machine Learning Explainers to Pornhub
Only a few commenters complained or demanded that Dar take her clothes off, which is impressive because the video and comments were posted to her Pornhub channel, where Dar has been posting educational videos like “What is a neural network?” and “Intuitive Approach to Understanding Probability” for the last year.
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Sean Goedecke ☛ Giving pushback to leadership
Saying no to leadership is sometimes necessary when you’re at the helm of a project. Whether they’re proposing a timeline that can’t be achieved, or asking for something that’s technologically impossible, adopting the word “no” into your regular vocabulary is your responsibility as an engineer.
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Michael Burkhardt ☛ It’s Time To Ditch My Old Report Cards
I started university in autumn 1989. At that time (and until at least the late 1990s) the way we got our grades was that they arrived by post. I remember tearing into those snap-pack mailers to learn my fate. Sometimes it was good news, sometimes not.
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Hardware
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The Register UK ☛ Nvidia to plow $500M into Israel R&D cluster
The cluster's home is a 10,000-square-metre facility located in the Mevo Carmel Science and Industry Park near the city of Yokne'am Illit. And according to Nvidia, it will be pack hundreds of Nv's liquid-cooled Blackwell-based systems, BlueField-3 SuperNIC, Spectrum-X800, and Quantum-X800 switches.
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Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ TCL's bet on screens that look like paper
Since 2021, TCL has been investing in an intriguing screen technology called NXTPAPER: an LCD panel that attempts to simulate paper to be less harsh on human eyes. As someone who spends more time than recommended looking at screens, this greatly interests me.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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New York Times ☛ She Is in Love With ChatGPT
Ayrin’s love affair with her A.I. boyfriend started last summer.
While scrolling on Instagram, she stumbled upon a video of a woman asking ChatGPT to play the role of a neglectful boyfriend.
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Hindustan Times ☛ Is social media addiction real? Study explores its effect on adolescents
The study was conducted on a diversity of adolescents within the age range of 11 to 15, and was observed that 67% of them are already managing a profile on TikTok. YouTube and Instagram come as close second and third with 65% and 66% participants managing profiles there.
Dr. Jason Nagata, a pediatrician at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals and the lead author of the study, in a statement said, “Policymakers need to look at TikTok as a systemic social media issue and create effective measures that protect children online. TikTok is the most popular social media platform for children, yet kids reported having more than three different social media accounts, including Instagram and Snapchat.”
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Matan Abudy ☛ Content should be pulled
Content should be pulled, not pushed. I should be the one who chooses to consume something. I want to read something because I want to read it, not because some app pushed me to do so.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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IP Kat ☛ 2025-01-10 [Older] ECS’s Opinion on Pelham II and its potential implications for [computer]-generated pastiches – Part 2
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft 365 users still on backdoored Windows 10 will be out of luck when backdoored Windows 10 is retired in October
Windows 10 Abusive Monopolist Microsoft 365 users are in for some bad news in October unless they upgrade before then.
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Scoop News Group ☛ CISA director says threat hunters spotted Salt Typhoon on federal networks before telco compromises
A top federal cybersecurity official said Wednesday that threat hunters from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency first discovered activity from Salt Typhoon on federal networks, allowing public and private sector defenders to more quickly “connect the dots” and respond to Chinese attacks on the U.S. telecommunications industry.
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The Register UK ☛ Salt Typhoon spies spotted on US govt networks before telcos
Speaking at a Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) event on Wednesday, the agency director said her threat hunters detected the Chinese government goons in federal networks before the far-reaching espionage campaign against people's telecommunications providers had been found and attributed to Salt Typhoon.
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CISA ☛ Strengthening America’s Resilience Against the PRC Cyber Threats
Over the past two years, CISA and our federal government and industry partners have been laser focused on deterring China’s cyber aggression, working with critical infrastructure entities across the nation to identify and evict Chinese cyber actors, whether they are focused on espionage—such as the recent “Salt Typhoon” campaign against U.S telcos—or disruption—the “Volt Typhoon” campaign designed to disrupt or destroy our most sensitive critical infrastructure. While PRC cyber actors have attempted to evade detection by using living-off-the-land methods—hiding their activity within the native processes of computer operating systems—our world class team of threat hunters have detected them and assisted critical infrastructure partners in evicting them. Their work to address the Volt campaign in particular was recognized in the Congressional Record of June 27, 2024, by Representative Mark E. Green of Tennessee, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He noted: [...]
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Lee Peterson ☛ SUNO CEO shows why AI companies just don’t get the creative process
Wow, this is a terrible interview. I am worried about certain aspects of AI when it comes to photography and music, as a hobby photographer and musician it amazes me that CEO’s of these companies just don’t it.
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The Conversation ☛ Meta’s factchecker cut has sparked controversy – but the real threat is AI and neurotechnology
Factcheckers have long played an important role in curbing misinformation on various platforms, especially on topics like politics, public health and climate change. By verifying claims and providing context, they have helped platforms maintain a degree of accountability.
So, Meta’s move to replace them with community-driven notes, similar to Elon Musk’s approach on X (formerly Twitter), has understandably raised concerns. Many experts view the decision to remove factcheckers as a step backward, arguing that delegating content moderation to users risks amplifying echo chambers and enabling the spread of unchecked falsehoods.
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Don Marti ☛ How this site uses AI
This site is written by me personally except for anything that is clearly marked up and cited as a direct quotation. If you see anything on here that is not cited appropriately, please contact me.
Generative AI output appears on this site only if I think it really helps make a point and only if I believe that my use of a similar amount and kind of material from a relevant work in the training set would be fair use.
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Macworld ☛ New Mac malware can bypass Apple's XProtect security scanner
Banshee Stealer is a new version of the malware that was discovered in July 2024. The malware has been updated with encryption “taken from Apple’s XProtect,” according to Check Point Research. XProtect is used by macOS as a layer of defense against malware, but Banshee Stealer’s new encryption allowed it to sneak by XProtect.
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Futurism ☛ Google’s AI Caught Recommending Use of Sex Toys on Children
Basically, according to the document, a therapist in this situation would ask stressed or concerned parents what changes they might make in their life or child's life if they had access to a mystical, Glinda-esque magical tool; this exercise, the paper adds, "allows parents to step out of their daily realities and experience the illusion of immediate power," thus allowing them to momentarily "alter the challenges they face as parents of picky toddlers, or even pregnancy challenges."
Google's less-than-nuanced AI, meanwhile, seems to have picked up on some key terms used in the document — the mentions of both a magic wand and pregnancy — and fused the health department's advice with the vast reserves of online information about the Hitachi-made vibrator. The result? The horrifying proposition that parents should use a sex toy on kids for therapy reasons.
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The Register UK ☛ GoDaddy gets a stern finger-wagging for non-existent infosec
GoDaddy has failed to protect its web-hosting platform with even basic infosec tools and practices since 2018, according to the FTC, but the internet giant won’t face any immediate consequences for its many alleged acts of omission.
As one of the world's largest web-hosting companies, and a registry and registrar with about 82 million domain names in its care, one would assume GoDaddy would be adept at applying software updates and monitoring security-related events in its hosting environment to protect its millions of customers and the visitors to their websites from online threats.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Chris Coyier ☛ Nest Cams
This put us pretty deep in the Google Home related devices land. We ended up with multiple speakers spread around the house and three screens, which we’ve just upgraded to Nest Hub Max’s after deciding we might as well stick with the Google Home ecosystem.
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EDRI ☛ EDRi’s 2024 in Review
Just like the year before it, 2024 saw the unlawful use of spyware against politicians, journalists and human rights defenders continue to mount. In February, shocking news broke that Members of the European Parliament had been targeted with spyware, catalysing hopes that EU lawmakers might finally be taking this issue seriously. But despite the huge threat that these practices pose to democracy, most lawmakers were nonplussed.
Disappointingly the year ended not dissimilarly from how it started, with a shocking new report from EDRi observer Amnesty International published in December, in collaboration with our members SHARE Foundation and Access Now, on the use of spyware against journalists and human rights activists in Serbia. The prolific use of these tools by governments throughout the year showed why the EU must ban spyware – a demand that EDRi will continue to raise in 2025.
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Dhole Moments ☛ Don’t Use Session (Signal Fork)
The main reason I said to avoid Session, all those months ago, was simply due to their decision to remove forward secrecy (which is an important security property of cryptographic protocols they inherited for free when they forked libsignal).
Lack of forward secrecy puts you in the scope of Key Compromise Impersonation (KCI) attacks, which serious end-to-end encryption apps should prevent if they want to sit at the adults table. This is why I don’t recommend Tox.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Stasi secret police, 35 years on: 'My file is mine'
Despite this humiliating punishment, she refused to flee to the West and made a living as a freelance artist in the GDR. The Stasi continued to monitor her. The way that she and other like-minded people later managed to peacefully dismantle the secret service in 1989 is something Gabriele Stötzer still describes as "ingenious" and "magnificent" today. The unbelievable news from Erfurt spread throughout the GDR: "They went in, demanded the Stasi files, and no shots were fired." In Halle, Leipzig and Gotha — the Stasi was capitulating everywhere.
Only in Berlin did it take longer. Markus Meckel, GDR Foreign Minister for a short time in 1990 after the first free elections, has a reasonable explanation for this: the GDR was a centralized state. "That was the center of power, including the repressive apparatus." And the Stasi could only be removed "if the government itself became unstable and saw no other way out." That moment arrived on January 15, 1990.
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Defence/Aggression
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-05 [Older] Mali army claims arrest of IS-linked group leader
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-05 [Older] Germany defunds 2 Israeli human rights groups
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New York Times ☛ Full Transcript of President Biden’s Farewell Address
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NBC ☛ Biden argues 'oligarchy,' social media are threats to democracy in farewell address
"Six decades later, I'm equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex," Biden said. "It could pose real dangers for our country as well."
Biden also launched into a sharp criticism of social media platforms, arguing they are neglecting to fact-check.
"Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit," he said, appearing to refer to Meta’s ending its fact-checking program.
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Michigan Advance ☛ Trump would have been convicted on election interference charges, says special counsel
The report was released just after midnight Tuesday, following a court battle to keep the document hidden from the public.
The roughly 140-page report is Smith’s final record of the investigation that never made it to trial, as Trump repeatedly delayed the case, ultimately escalating his assertion of presidential criminal immunity to the Supreme Court.
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ What Jack Smith Didn't Say about the January 6 Investigation
But it’s not clear any of this would matter. SCOTUS had the ability, which they exercised, to stall all of this; had Trump lost, SCOTUS still would have gotten at least a second chance to weigh in before trial. And unless Smith superseded to add insurrection charges, Trump still would not be disqualified for running for office.
Barring Mitch McConnell or John Roberts doing the right thing, this battle was lost politically. And no amount of second guessing strategic decisions that ended up being auspicious given SCOTUS’ subsequent rewriting of the Constitution can change that. Indeed, the second guessing distracts from effective efforts to minimize Trump’s damage going forward.
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Deseret Media ☛ Biden warns in farewell address that an 'oligarchy' of ultrarich in US threatens future of democracy
"Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead," Biden said, drawing attention to "a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked."
Invoking President Dwight Eisenhower's warnings about the rise of a military-industrial complex when he left office in 1961, Biden added, "I'm equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers to our country as well."
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VOA News ☛ Indonesia to push social media protections ahead of age-limit law
On Monday, communications minister Meutya Hafid said the government planned to issue a regulation to set a minimum age for social media users, after discussing the proposal to protect children online with President Prabowo Subianto.
The plan follows Australia's decision to ban children under 16 from accessing social media, with fines for tech giants from Instagram and Facebook owner Meta to TikTok, owned by China's ByteDance, if they failed to prevent children from accessing their platforms.
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India Times ☛ TikTok U.S. ban: TikTok prepares for US shutdown from Sunday: sources
Under TikTok's plan, people attempting to open the app will see a pop-up message directing them to a website with information about the ban, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the matter is not public.
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Variety ☛ TikTok Plans US Shutdown of App Jan. 19 Unless Supreme Court Acts
TikTok is in danger of being banned in the U.S. under a federal law set to take effect Sunday, Jan. 19, unless the Supreme Court grants an injunction blocking it. On Wednesday, the court did not issue a ruling in the matter.
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NBC ☛ TikTok considering total shutdown in U.S. if ban moves forward
Noel Francisco, an attorney for TikTok, told the Supreme Court on Friday that to his understanding, the app would “go dark” on Jan. 19 if the company lost the case. “Essentially, the platform shuts down,” Francisco said.
That is what happened in India when TikTok was banned there on June 29, 2020. Nikhil Pahwa, who founded the tech policy publication MediaNama in India, said the app shut down the night the ban went into effect.
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The Washington Post ☛ TikTok races toward a ban as Supreme Court — and Trump — weigh its fate
After oral arguments last week, most of the justices appeared inclined to uphold the law banning the social media platform if its Chinese parent company does not sell it, but with the divestiture deadline of Sunday rapidly approaching, the app’s prospects for an immediate lifeline are dwindling.
While the court is still expected to issue a ruling or order on the case this week, its continued silence has amped up the tension in years-long drama over the fate of TikTok, a platform that has captivated millions of users with its buzzy, short-form videos but triggered intense scrutiny in Washington over fears it could serve as a tool for Chinese spying or propaganda.
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International Business Times ☛ 'US Refugees' Jump From TikTok To RedNote: What To Know About The Chinese App Before You Jump, Too
Like TikTok, RedNote uses a vertical scroll interface and delivers a personalised feed of short-form video content. Getting started with RedNote is easy, but users must provide personal information, including their name, age, email address, and phone number.
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International Business Times ☛ Rednote Gains 700K Users in 2 Days as US Downloads Surge 200% Amid TikTok Ban Talks
The social media app was valued at £16.37 billion ($20 billion) in a 2021 funding round and is a strong IPO candidate in China. It is backed by tech giants and venture capital funds like Alibaba, Tencent, and DST Global. Bloomberg reported last year that RedNote was projected to generate over £818.93 million ($1 billion) in profits for 2024.
Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court has yet to intervene on a law mandating TikTok to be divested from ByteDance by 19th January or face a ban in the country. The impending ban was imposed due to national security concerns over ByteDance's connection to the Chinese government.
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The Atlantic ☛ Why Didn’t Jack Smith Charge Trump With Insurrection?
One of the most beguiling untrod paths is the one where Smith charged Trump with insurrection against the United States. The nation watched Trump try to overturn the election, first through spurious lawsuits and then by instigating a violent riot on January 6, 2021, in a vain attempt to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory. A conviction for insurrection would have prevented Trump from returning to office, but when Smith indicted Trump in August 2023, he didn’t charge him with insurrection.
Smith’s report, which was released early this morning, finally explains why. In doing so, it shows how the United States legal system is and was unprepared for a figure like Trump. The framers of the law simply didn’t contemplate a sitting president trying to use the vast powers of the federal government to reverse the outcome of an election.
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Axios ☛ Trump team uses skip-the-Senate playbook for Pete Hegseth
Here's the formula: [...]
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The Independent UK ☛ Why didn’t Jack Smith charge Trump with insurrection?
Evidence shows Trump ‘caused and benefited’ from the violent attack. The law and the country weren’t prepared for a case showing how a sitting president, not an outside force, could be responsible, Alex Woodward reports
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Greece ☛ NATO announces a new mission to protect undersea cables in the Baltic Sea region
Secretary-General Mark Rutte said at a meeting in Helsinki with the leaders of NATO countries located on the Baltic Sea that the effort would be dubbed Baltic Sentry.
“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.
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Greece ☛ Olivier Roy on where our ‘decultured’ world is headed
The dystopian series “Game of Thrones,” which simply flattens history by conflating it with legends and fantasy, or “The Truman Show,” which makes visible every minute of human life – the world is pure representation, pure show; there is no implicit – and “Mad Max,” which, like all apocalyptic movies, shows how the disappearance of culture opens to a world of pure violence.
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RTL ☛ Ruling imminent: From ban to buyout: What next for TikTok in the US?
TikTok faces an uncertain future in the United States as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on a law that could force its shutdown by Sunday, escalating tensions over the app's Chinese ownership and national security concerns.
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Axios ☛ TikTok ban timeline: Here's where things stand
Congress said the law was necessary because ByteDance is controlled by the Chinese government, and that its ability to harvest vast amounts of personal information from American users is a national security threat.
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New York Times ☛ TikTok C.E.O. Plans to Attend Trump Inauguration
The invitation to the executive, Shou Chew, went out from the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss Monday’s inauguration. Mr. Chew will join tech moguls like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk at the event; Jeff Bezos has also been invited.
TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, declined to comment.
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The Hill ☛ Trump will ‘find a way’ to preserve TikTok, Waltz says
Waltz appeared on “Special Report” with Bret Baier shortly after The Washington Post reported Trump was considering different options to save TikTok in the face of a looming ban, including via an executive order.
A bipartisan law signed by President Biden in April requires TikTok to divest from its China-based owner ByteDance or face a ban in the U.S. beginning Sunday.
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Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Prepares to Shut Down the App in the US on Sunday
The law mandates a ban starting January 19 on new TikTok downloads on Apple and Google app stores should parent company ByteDance not divest the app to a US company before then. This ban only affects new downloads, while existing users could continue using it until updates cease.
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Techdirt ☛ Celebrated Lawyer ‘Fires’ Meta As A Client Over Zuck’s ‘Neo-Nazi Madness’
Mark Lemley is one of, if not the biggest names in IP law. So when Lemley makes a move, it’s worth paying attention. And that’s exactly what happened this week when he announced that he has “fired Meta as a client.”
There are various lists that come out from time to time about the “most cited” law professors, and on recent lists Lemley is always highly ranked. On IP law/Cyberlaw in particular, he’s almost always at the top. Here’s a list from 2013-2017 that shows him not just as the most cited cyberlaw professor, but with the number of citations to his works that is more than double the second person on the list (Lemley’s 2200 citations to Robert Merges’ 920).
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Scoop News Group ☛ White House finalizes OPEN Government Data Act guidance, restarts CDO Council
The Biden administration released anticipated guidance Wednesday for federal agencies to implement the OPEN Government Data Act and reupped the Chief Data Officers Council after it lapsed last month, completing two key actions for federal data policy.
Under the Office of Management and Budget memo (M-25-05), commonly known as “Phase II” guidance, agencies have long-awaited marching orders on how to create and maintain comprehensive data inventories and make their data open by default. That includes requirements to create a data inventory that is interoperable with the Federal Data Catalog, conform to the metadata schema approved by the White House, and publish that inventory on the agency’s website.
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Environment
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Wired ☛ Los Angeles Needs to Fireproof Communities, Not Just Houses
The challenge facing the city is huge. An estimated 12,000 structures have been destroyed in the Palisades and Eaton fires, neither of which has been contained. At least 25 people have been killed by the blazes, which are on track to be the costliest wildfires in US history. But as the risk of devastating wildfires increases with climate change, the calls to rebuild Los Angeles raise a series of tricky questions: How and where to rebuild—and whether to rebuild at all.
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The Walrus ☛ Why Flying Sucks So Much
Even if everything goes right, you probably feel squeezed for every penny—Air Canada announced its economy basic fare will no longer include carry-on baggage for tickets purchased after January 3, so be prepared to pay $35 for your first bag alone. Economy seats these days average thirty inches of space between you and the customer in front of you, with legroom seemingly shrinking. If you are tall or plus size or have any intention of being comfortable, you’ll likely need to pay extra for a preferred seat for more room (which will run you anywhere from $20 to $199). You might have heard horror stories about lost luggage, so you put everything in a carry-on item and fought tooth and nail to get overhead bin space. Then you might be given a bag of pretzels for a multi-hour journey—if you want to eat more, you’re paying $12 for a ham-and-cheese croissant. The kicker, of course, is that you’ve already paid hundreds of dollars just to be there, fighting for leg space with the manspreader next to you while people cough ominously in the row ahead.
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NDTV ☛ 'Fireflies' Light Up Sky As India Gets 1st Private Satellite Constellation
Till now, all precision earth imaging satellites from India have been owned and operated by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) which has about 52 different satellites in space. Lately, India's burgeoning private space sector has been increasingly giving competition to the government behemoth.
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Hamilton Nolan ☛ Uninsurable Futures
Predicting this scenario does not require any particular expertise in insurance underwriting or climatology. It requires only 1) acceptance of the reality of climate change, 2) basic math, and 3) an understanding of how American politicians operate.
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YLE ☛ Influencers trample Lapland wilderness to photograph the same old boat
The problem is that there isn't a proper trail leading to the boat, which is by an archeological site yet to be properly examined, according to Hutton.
"The ground surrounding the boat has been completely trampled by people, and vegetation beneath the snow is dead," she explained.
In her dissertation research, Hutton dug up thousands of photos of the lakeside scenery that have been posted on Instagram. She concluded that visitors often forget about the delicate surrounding nature as they try to get those great shots.
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The Korea Times ☛ Korea's air passenger traffic surges nearly 20% in 2024 on overseas travel
The sharp increase last year was largely attributed to a rise in the number of international passengers to and from Korea, which jumped 30.2 percent on-year to some 88.9 million, while domestic passengers gained 3.3 percent to 31.13 million over the cited period, the data showed.
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DeSmog ☛ New Study Shows How Fossil Fuel Sectors Create a Climate Denial Echo Chamber on Social Media
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DeSmog ☛ Fossil Fuel Advocate Nigel Farage is Building a House in High Climate Risk Area
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FAIR ☛ Right-Wing Sleuths Find the LA Fires Culprit: Once Again, It’s Wokeness
The devastation of the ongoing Los Angeles fires is an alarm going off, but also the result of society having hit the snooze button long ago (Democracy Now!, 1/9/25; CBS, 1/13/25). Game-changing fires destroyed Paradise, California (NPR, 11/8/23), in 2023, and Lahaina, Hawaii, in 2024—clear warnings, if any were still needed, that the climate catastrophe had arrived.
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Energy/Transportation
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Wildlife/Nature
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Overpopulation
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France24 ☛ Spain mulls 100% tax on homes bought by non-EU residents to address housing crisis
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the plan this week to tackle housing affordability and high rents in the Southern European nation. He said that the overall goal was to provide “more housing, better regulation and greater aid.”
“The West faces a decisive challenge: To not become a society divided into two classes, the rich landlords and the poor tenants,” Sánchez said as he announced the plan.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-05 [Older] Messi, Soros among recipients of Biden's Medal of Freedom
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Lee Peterson ☛ Voting with your wallet
I’ve been listening to a few different tech podcasts again and it’s brought to mind something I try to do whenever I can, voting with my wallet or data.
I think it’s pretty simple, if you don’t like the company you give data to or the moves from the company or their CEO don’t buy their products.
It’s why I stopped using all Meta products for example.
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TruthOut ☛ World’s 3 Richest Men — Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg — Will Attend Trump Inauguration
The three men will be seated on the platform of the event, next to Trump’s cabinet nominees and other elected officials, and will be very close to Trump himself as he’s sworn in and delivers his inauguration speech, a source with knowledge of the plans indicated. Their inclusion in the event comes as the three billionaires — whose total net worth is valued at $885 billion — have all made recent moves to benefit Trump’s campaign.
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Nick Heer ☛ Mark Zuckerberg Is Not Done With Politics
Journalists do not write the headlines; I hope the editor responsible for this one is soaked with regret. Zuckerberg is not “done with politics”. He is very much playing politics. He supported some more liberal causes when it was both politically acceptable and financially beneficial, something he has continued to do today, albeit by having no discernible principles. Do not mistake this for savviness or diplomacy, either. It is political correctness for the billionaire class.
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New York Times ☛ Zuckerberg Will Host a Party for Trump’s Inauguration
But he has undergone something of a political reinvention over the last year. He traveled to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last week. And has announced a series of changes at Meta since the election in November that have delighted advisers to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Zuckerberg is one of several tech-company leaders positioning themselves for a Republican administration that will have considerable influence over their industry.
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The Hill ☛ Trump awarded 'first ever Presidential Commemorative Inaugural' Diet Coke by Coca-Cola CEO
Coca-Cola is the latest in a slew of companies that have aligned themselves with Trump’s upcoming inauguration — Google, Boeing, Ford, Amazon, Toyota and Meta are among those that have donated to Trump’s inaugural fund.
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Wired ☛ Not Many Meta Employees Will Have to Move to Texas After All
Meta’s cascade of announcements this month on slashing diversity initiatives and relaxing hate-speech policies warned of a significant change in the lives of some of its employees. Teams that write and enforce rules for what can be posted on Instagram and Meta’s other services will be moved from California to Texas and other parts of the US to “help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, without elaborating.
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Ruben Schade ☛ “Free Our Feeds”
I have so many questions, but these are the top two:
• Why is there no mention of ActivityPub, or Mastodon, at all? You know, the protocol that isn’t tied to one app? At best, this reads like not-invented-here syndrome. At worst, it’s obfuscation.
• Why can’t Bluesky use some of their millions from investor funding to do this? Wasn’t that the whole point of “decentralisation”, and the creation of the Bluesky Public Benefit Corp? Or put another way, what were people investing into Bluesky for, if not for exactly this?
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Tim Bray ☛ Protocol Churn
I’m sympathetic to both these efforts, but not equally. I’m also cynical, mostly about the numbers: They’ve each announced a fundraising target, and both the targets are substantial, and I’m not going to share either, because they’re just numbers pulled out of the air, written on whiteboards, designed to sound impressive.
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European Parliament ☛ Petition No 0729/2024 by N. W. (Austrian) on the implementation of an EU-Linux operating system in public administrations across all EU countries
The petitioner calls for the European Union to actively develop and implement a Linux-based operating system, termed ‘EU-Linux’, across public administrations in all EU Member States. This initiative aims to reduce dependency on Microsoft products, ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and promoting transparency, sustainability, and digital sovereignty within the EU. The petitioner emphasizes the importance of using open-source alternatives to Microsoft 365, such as LibreOffice and Nextcloud, and suggests the adoption of the E/OS mobile operating system for government devices. The petitioner also highlights the potential for job creation in the IT sector through this initiative.
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Futurism ☛ Zuckerberg Announces Layoffs After Saying Coding Jobs Will Be Replaced by AI
According to a company-wide memo obtained by Bloomberg, the Facebook owner is cutting around five percent of its staff. And interestingly, the directive is already in tension with what Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan last week about how the company was looking to replace "midlevel engineers" with AI. Instead — in a likely concession to AI just not quite being up to snuff yet — he says employees "who aren't meeting expectations" will be replaced in order to "bring new people in" (emphasis on the "people," for any AI zealots.)
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New Statesman ☛ Why Mark ZuckerBro turned Meta Maga
He’s abandoned fact-checking, wrongly (and dangerously) inferring those carrying out this valuable work are “censors”. Third-party fact-checkers employed by Facebook did just that – checked facts. Whether posts were removed was down to the company itself. Now there will be moderation for only the most extreme content: terrorism, child sexual exploitation and drugs.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Netherlands tightens export controls on sanctioned semiconductor equipment — move made in line with U.S. limitations, ASML will apply for licenses from the Dutch government
The Netherlands has once again tightened export controls to ensure that ASML will have to apply for export licenses with the Dutch government instead of the U.S. These new rules will come into effect on April 1st and is seemingly The Hague’s response to the updated list of sanctioned equipment; Bloomberg reports that this includes specific measurement and inspection equipment made by Dutch semiconductor companies like ASML.
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The Independent UK ☛ Tech bro enemies Zuckerberg, Bezos and Musk jockey for position at Trump’s inauguration
On January 20 the three richest people on Earth will all squeeze into an area together smaller than a Mini Cooper.
That is according to NBC News, which reported on Tuesday that "first buddy" Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Facebook and Instagram boss Mark Zuckerberg will be seated together on the platform at Donald Trump's inauguration in Washington D.C.
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The Independent UK ☛ 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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Techdirt ☛ SEC Sues Musk Over Stealth Twitter Stock Grab, Years Too Late
In what is almost certainly a case of too little, too late, the SEC on Tuesday sued Elon Musk for failing to file a public announcement about his secretive Twitter equity position. The lawsuit, coming nearly three years after Musk’s alleged violations, highlights the billionaire’s brazen flouting of disclosure rules and the SEC’s glacial pace in holding him accountable. It was widely reported on at the time that Elon Musk waited until he had nearly 10% of Twitter’s equity before publicly revealing his stake. That’s a problem because, by law, you have to file something publicly when you have 5%.
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The Independent UK ☛ US government sues Elon Musk for allegedly failing to disclose Twitter stock ownership
As a result, the SEC alleges, Musk, now a confidant of president-elect Donald Trump, was able to underpay “by at least $150 million” for shares he bought after he should have disclosed his ownership of more than 5% of Twitter’s shares. Musk bought Twitter in October 2022 and later renamed it X.
Musk started amassing Twitter shares in early 2022, and by March of that year, he owned more than 5%. At this point, the complaint says, he was required by law to disclose his ownership, but he failed to do so until April 4, 11 days after the report was due.
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VOA News ☛ US SEC sues Elon Musk over late disclosure of Twitter stake
An SEC rule requires investors to disclose within 10 calendar days, or by March 24, 2022, in Musk's case, when they cross a 5% ownership threshold.
The SEC said that at the expense of unsuspecting investors, Musk bought more than $500 million of Twitter shares at artificially low prices before finally revealing his purchases on April 4, 2022, by which time he owned a 9.2% stake.
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Wired ☛ The SEC Is Suing Elon Musk. It’s All in the Timing
The SEC’s complaint centers on Musk’s acquisition of Twitter stock in early 2022. According to the complaint, Musk failed to notify the agency that he had acquired more than 5 percent of common shares in the company within 10 calendar days. If true, that delay would violate federal security laws. “As a result, Musk was able to continue purchasing shares at artificially low prices,” the SEC alleges, “allowing him to underpay by at least $150 million for shares he purchased after his beneficial ownership report was due.” The SEC has asked for a jury trial.
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Axios ☛ SEC sues Elon Musk, saying he failed to disclose Twitter share purchases
Because investors did not know the size of his holdings, that allegedly let him buy stock at "artificially low prices," the SEC said, underpaying by an estimated $150 million.
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The Register UK ☛ SEC sues Musk for late reveal of Twitter share purchases
The SEC's beef is that its rules require parties that acquire five percent or more of a listed entity to report that fact within ten days of doing so. The rule is designed to ensure investors are informed about big buys that could indicate upcoming market-moving events, such as a takeover bid.
The regulator's lawsuit claims Musk’s holdings in Twitter crossed the five percent threshold on March 14, 2022, but that he did not disclose the fact until April 4 – eleven days beyond the March 24 disclosure deadline.
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The Independent UK ☛ Elon Musk is being sued by the SEC over his Twitter takeover. What we know
The agency alleges that the billionaire failed to disclose his ownership of Twitter stock in a timely manner, saving himself at least $150 million “at the expense of shareholders.”
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RTL ☛ Raising the bar: Meta to lay off 3,600 employees in performance-based cuts
Performance-based dismissals are a common practice among major US corporations. Microsoft announced similar cuts last week affecting less than one percent of its workforce, Business Insider reported.
The layoffs come amid broader changes at Meta, in advance of Donald Trump returning to the White House on January 20.
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India Times ☛ Meta is planning to cut 5% of lowest performers, memo shows
Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to cut about 5% of its lowest performers with the intent of backfilling their roles this year, according to an internal memo sent to employees.
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VOA News ☛ Why did US exclude India from unrestricted access to AI chips?
But the U.S. left India, its strategic partner in the Indo-Pacific, off a list of 18 countries that are allowed unrestricted access to advanced AI chips. Analysts say while a growing technological relationship between the two countries would likely make India eligible in the future to access advanced U.S. AI chips, New Delhi's existing ties with Moscow and the perception of a less robust technology regulatory framework led to its exclusion from the top list.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Futurism ☛ Apple's AI Is Constantly Butchering Huge News Stories Sent to Millions of Users
"It's wildly irresponsible that Apple doesn't turn off summaries for news apps until it gets a bit better at this AI thing," Fowler added.
The constant blunders of Apple's AI summaries put the tech's nagging shortcomings on full display, demonstrating that even tech giants like Apple are failing miserably to successfully integrate AI without constantly embarrassing themselves.
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NDTV ☛ "Inadvertent": Meta Apologises For Zuckerberg Error After House Panel Warning
The apology comes a day after BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, who heads the Parliamentary standing committee on Communication and Information Technology, said Meta would be summoned on grounds of spreading misinformation for Zuckerberg's remark.
"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.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Fact check: Viral claims on California wildfires
It has been nearly a week since the devastating wildfires began raging through southern California, killing at least 24 people and burning an area larger than San Francisco.
While the true causes of the blaze remain under investigation, a flood of misinformation regarding the fires and their impact has been unleashed on social media.
Noticeably, President-elect Donald Trump was one of those who spread numerous false or misleading claims on the wildfires in LA, many of which went viral after Elon Musk reposted
them on his social platform, X.
Many users on social media shared numerous pictures and videos allegedly showing the fires, however, not all were recent, and some weren't even real. DW’s Team Fact check analyzed the most viral claims.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Meduza ☛ VKontakte surpasses YouTube in monthly audience reach in Russia for first time
Disruptions to YouTube in Russia have been ongoing since July 2024. That month, a source in Russia’s telecommunications industry told Meduza the government was deliberately throttling the platform. By mid-December, users reported even greater difficulties accessing the platform.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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BIA Net ☛ 2025-01-10 [Older] Joint statement from 12 press organizations: “The press is free; it cannot be censored”
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-01-05 [Older] Indian journalist found dead in septic tank
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CPJ ☛ Yemeni journalist appears in Houthi court after 3-month disappearance
After more than three months of arbitrary detention, including one month of enforced disappearance, Al-Miyahi appeared before the Houthi’s Specialized Criminal Prosecution in Sana’a on January 13, where he was accused of “publishing articles against the state and its political regime.” His case was referred to the Houthi’s Press and Publications Prosecution and Court.
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CPJ ☛ Venezuela detains journalist covering anti-government protests on preliminary charge of terrorism
A criminal court on January 11 ordered Palmar, news director of the University of Zulia’s Luz Radio station, and Cubillán to remain in detention on preliminary charges of terrorism, conspiracy, inciting hatred and disturbing public order, according to the local chapter of the National Association of Journalists (CNP).
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Scheerpost ☛ Destroyed Assange Files: Why Judge’s Rebuke Against Crown Prosecution Service Was So Significant
In writing the decision for the three-member tribunal, First-Tier Tribunal (FTT) Judge Penrose Foss pierced the veil of deference that is often shown to governmental bodies in England and Wales by the U.K.’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Foss was quite blunt in his criticism of the CPS’s handling of multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that Maurizi had submitted as early as 2015.
It is uncommon for the CPS to be a respondent in FOIA appeals. A review of FTT decisions regarding information rights cases since 2009 shows the CPS as a respondent in 16 out of 3,167 cases (0.5 percent). This includes two appeals filed by Maurizi.
The decision establishes a precedent that may make it easier for future FOIA requests to be successful in the long run, according to Estelle Dehon KC of London’s Cornerstone Barristers, who represented Maurizi.
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Meduza ☛ Meduza, IRL: Our first-ever advertising campaign is coming to a city near you
It’s important that as many people around the world as possible know that Meduza also reports in English. This isn’t just a matter of building bridges between different audiences (though this is critical in times of war and polarization). As you may know, we can raise the funds we need to survive only outside of Russia. And since bad things happen regularly when you cover authoritarian countries, we’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The more people know about Meduza, the easier it is to respond when, for example, we must find new ways to circumvent online censorship or rid our phones of powerful spyware.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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FAIR ☛ ACTIVISM UPDATE: Responses Show WaPo Is Hearing From Its Critics
In two instances in the past couple of weeks, the Washington Post has acknowledged criticisms made by FAIR activists and others. Post editors may not be backing down, but they are hearing you.
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Papers Please ☛ Maine may stop complying with the REAL-ID Act
A bipartisan group of six Maine state legislators has introduced a bill, L.D. 160, which would repeal all of the provisions of Maine law enabling the state to issue driver’s licenses and state ID cards potentially compliant with the REAL-ID Act of 2005.
L.D. 160 was introduced yesterday and immediately referred to the Joint Committee on Transportation. No hearing on the bill has been scheduled yet.
According to a report by Randy Billings in the Portland Press-Herald, State Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn), the lead sponsor of L.D. 160, says of the REAL-ID Act that, “It’s expensive. It puts Mainers’ privacy at risk. It doesn’t protect us from terrorism.” Rep. Libby is joined by five Democratic co-sponosrs of L.D. 160.
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404 Media ☛ Porn Performers Conflicted Over Crossing the Picket Line to Attend AVN
The Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE) and the Adult Video Network Awards, collectively often referred to as AVN, is expected to bring more than 45,000 attendees to Vegas for three days of signings and meet-and-greets for fans, panels and programming about the adult industry, and booths for hundreds of brands, studios, and sex toys. It’s also the biggest event of the year for the industry’s indie performers, who come out to shoot content and network, spending weeks and months planning agendas and setting up unofficial parties and meetups. The show has been going for decades—since 1998 when it shared space and dates with the Consumer Electronic Show, and later at the Hard Rock Hotel when vendors and performers were forced out of CES and started their own event a few weeks and a couple blocks away.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Inside Towers ☛ NY Affordable Internet Program Effective Today
The law is particularly significant as it comes after the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program expired in mid-2024, affecting millions of low-income households. ISPs with fewer than 20,000 customers may apply for exemptions, while others must comply by the January deadline. Penalties for non-compliance can reach $1,000 per violation.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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The Register UK ☛ John Deere sued by FTC for maintaining repair monopoly
With just days until Biden leaves office, and the Democrat-led FTC cedes control to Republicans under President-elect Trump, the federal regulator has decided to file suit against Deere over what it said is decades of unlawful practices that have driven up repair costs and caused losses for farmers left without the ability to repair equipment in a timely manner. The FTC was joined in filing the complaint by the states of Minnesota and Illinois; the suit was filed in the latter.
"Deere's unlawful practices have limited the ability of farmers and independent repair providers to repair Deere equipment, forcing farmers to instead rely on Deere's network of authorized dealers for necessary repairs," the FTC said in a statement. "This unfair steering practice has boosted Deere's multi-billion-dollar profits on agricultural equipment and parts."
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The Register UK ☛ FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION, STATE OF ILLINOIS, and STATE OF MINNESOTA, Plaintiffs, v. DEERE & COMPANY, Defendant. [PDF]
1. For decades, Defendant Deere & Company, a manufacturer of large agricultural equipment including tractors and combines, has throttled the ability of farmers and independent repair providers (“IRPs”) to repair Deere equipment, leaving farmers wholly reliant upon Deere’s network of authorized dealers (“Deere dealers”) for many key repairs. Deere’s increasingly sophisticated agricultural equipment requires a software tool to diagnose and repair problems that relate to electronic functions, and only Deere has the information and knowledge to create this essential tool. By making this tool available only to Deere dealers, Deere forces farmers to turn to Deere dealers for critical repairs rather than complete the repairs themselves or choose an IRP that may be cheaper, closer, faster, or more trusted. Deere’s unlawful business practices have inflated farmers’ repair costs and degraded farmers’ ability to obtain timely repairs, which is especially critical in times of planting and harvesting.
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404 Media ☛ FTC Sues John Deere Over Its Repair Monopoly
The Biden administration and the states of Illinois and Minnesota sued tractor and agricultural manufacturer John Deere Wednesday, arguing that the company’s anti consumer repair practices have driven up prices for farmers and have made it difficult for them to get repairs during critical planting and harvesting seasons. The lawsuit alleges that Deere has monopoly power over the repair market, which 404 Media has been reporting on for years.
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The Verge ☛ FTC sues John Deere for ‘unfairly’ raising repair costs on farm equipment
“Illegal repair restrictions can be devastating for farmers, who rely on affordable and timely repairs to harvest their crops and earn their income,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a press release today. “The FTC’s action today seeks to ensure that farmers across America are free to repair their own equipment or use repair shops of their choice—lowering costs, preventing ruinous delays, and promoting fair competition for independent repair shops.”
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US News And World Report ☛ Music Streams Hit Nearly 5 Trillion in 2024. Women Pop Performers Lead the Charge in the US
The global music industry hit 4.8 trillion streams in 2024, a new single-year record, Luminate’s 2024 Year-End Report found. That’s up 14% from 2023, which held the previous record.
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DataGeeek ☛ Amazon vs. MicroStrategy
According to the simulation results, MicroStrategy has had a positive trend with less volatility for the last ten years compared to AMAZON, which has had a negative trend with high volatility.
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Trademarks
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Copyrights
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Techdirt ☛ We’re Halfway Through The Public Domain Game Jam, And There’s Still Plenty Of Time To Get Involved
We’re at the halfway point of January, and that means we’re at the halfway point of the latest edition of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1929! As in past years, we’re celebrating the entry of new works into the public domain by calling on game designers of all stripes and levels of experience to create digital and analog games based on these now-copyright-free works from 1929.
We’ve already gotten a few interesting early entries, and we expect a lot more to come in as the deadline approaches — but for now that deadline is still more than two weeks away, and that’s still plenty of time to get started and build a game of your own.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Telegram Shuts Down Z-Library & Anna's Archive Channels Over Copyright Infringement
Telegram is one of the most popular messaging tools, chosen by many online services to stay connected with their audiences. Major shadow libraries Z-Library and Anna's Archive used Telegram until this week, when both accounts were terminated for copyright infringement. While these websites offer infringing content, both were cautious to avoid copyright troubles on Telegram.
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Torrent Freak ☛ 3,682 Pirate Sites Blocked to Protect Creators; More Importantly, Did it Work?
With considerable encouragement from Hollywood and affiliated anti-piracy groups, in 2021 the Malaysian government stepped up its site blocking measures. An official statement published this week reveals that between 2021 and November 2024, a total of 3,682 pirate sites were blocked to prevent exploitation of local content. Interesting, perhaps, but after 15 years of effort, did site-blocking actually work and, if so, who benefited, and how?
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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