Leftovers

• Sara Jakša ☛ Creative questions challenge (In Reply to James's Creative questions challenge)

  James asked some of the creative questions based on the blogging challenge that is making round currently. I am even more interested in the creativity then I am in blogging, making this an even more interesting challenge to me.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Things that make me avoid a blog

  I’ve written before about the things I look for in a blog. This time I thought I’d flip this on its head… an exercise that used to be much easier when I was into gymnastics.

  This is what will make me bounce instantly: [...]

• Jason Burk ☛ Blog Question Challenge 2025

  I started a "blog" back in 1999. I have it in quotes because it was a basic static webpage with manual updates. It wasn't any kind of CMS; it was just a plain old .html file with text added with dates manually. Sadly, you will notice I lost all the posts before ~2006.

• Task And Purpose ☛ Army lawyer who recorded himself deleting legal files gets prison

  A former Ranger who became an Army lawyer was sentenced to more than four years in federal prison for lying about contacting a Russian embassy and deleting military-owned training materials from a computer system.

• MB ☛ My 2025 Goals - jarunmb.com

  Like many folks, my New Year’s resolutions never seem to stick. However, I make better progress with setting a simple, achievable, defined goal. Also, if I give myself too many, then a slip up on a single one seems to cascade down and they all seem to fall by the wayside.

  I haven’t done this in a few years, but here are my 4 goals for 2025: [...]

• Baldur Bjarnason ☛ The web is a creative industry and is facing the same decline and shattered economics as film, TV, or publishing

  Accidentally wrote this while trying to figure things out, so I might as well publish it here. And, no, I didn’t bother to edit it, so expect fluff and rambling.

• Flamed Fury ☛ Blog Question Challenge 2025

  When I started Flamed Fury it wasn’t exactly blogging. especially not in the way how blogs and posts are considered blogging today. The front page was used to share short updates about changes to the website or what we might have been up to today, short status updates. It was microblogging before microblogging.

• Canion dot Blog ☛ Blog Question Challenge 2025

  It is so long ago, it’s hard to remember why. Was there even a why? I was a nerd interested in technology, and blogs were the hot new thing. There was a cool platform called Movable Type and I wanted to try it out. So I started a blog. This was all a very long time ago.

  My blog varies between a diary, an opinion platform, a software review centre and a place to dump thoughts, photos, audio and video. A blog in incredibly versatile!

• Science

  • Wired ☛ See 6 Planets Align on January 21

    On January 21, six planets—Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—will be visible simultaneously in the sky, and their alignment will be easily visible from almost all parts of the globe. But if you miss the chance to observe the night sky on January 21, don’t worry: There is plenty of time to see this planetary parade.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ New fossil species sheds light on divergent life-history strategies in early land plants

    The initial radiation of vascular land plants, evidenced by increases in both diversity and morphological disparity during the Silurian and Devonian periods, is considered plant terrestrialization, which can be seen as the terrestrial equivalent of the Cambrian explosion of marine animals. During this period, novel structures such as tracheids, stomata, leaves, roots, and secondary xylem evolved. However, the evolution of life-history strategies in early land plants remains poorly understood.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Image: Hubble reveals Jupiter in ultraviolet light

    Though the storm appears red to the human eye, in this ultraviolet image it appears darker because high altitude haze particles absorb light at these wavelengths. The reddish, wavy polar hazes are absorbing slightly less of this light due to differences in either particle size, composition, or altitude.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Does Altering A Dataset Merit Retraction?

    Some journals have strong data policies. Others do not.

    For the first group, authors are required to deposit a copy of their dataset (or supporting evidence, like images) into a third-party repository that has a commitment to maintain the integrity of original files. Other journals simply require an author to include a data statement in their paper about what they promise to do. Journals with even weaker policies simply state that authors need to maintain their own data and make it available to others when requested, but take no active position in mediating that transaction or holding the authors accountable when they shirk their responsibilities.

    This is a tale of a journal with a very weak data policy and what happens when a critical reader tests the limits of that policy.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Isotopes in early South African hominin teeth show they ate little meat

    The researchers conducted an analysis of the nitrogen and carbon isotopes bound to the tooth enamel of 43 fossilized teeth, all of which had been found in South Africa's Sterkfontein caves. Seven of the sample teeth were from Australopithecus africanus, and the remainder were from five other mammalian families. They then did the same with teeth from several modern species, both meat eaters and vegetarians.

  • Axios ☛ Moon landing sites at risk from space tourism, preservationists warn

    Driving the news: The organization named Tranquility Base, in particular, as a trove of historic artifacts immortalizing the first time humans walked on the Moon that must be protected.

• Career/Education

  • Spencer Harston ☛ Creating a Books Page

    For the past couple years, I kept track of my books here on my website. For 2023 and 2024, I simply updated a post listing the books I'm currently reading, have finished, did not finish, and want to read.

    This is simple enough of course, but I've now decided to list every book on a single page. The source of data for the page could be managed from a simple JSON file. Moving the data from the post pages to JSON was straightforward enough.

    I also used to use Goodreads to keep track of my books, but it has been several years since I last updated my account, which has plenty of data that I'd like to use for this. Unfortunately, they stopped offering API keys in December 2020, which probably would've made getting this data a bit simpler.

    Anyways, here's how I built my /books page.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Annie Mueller

    This is the 73rd edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Annie Mueller and her blog, anniemueller.com.

  • Westenberg ☛ We Don't Need More Cynics. We Need More Builders.

    Cynicism comes with hidden taxes. Every time we default to assuming the worst, we pay in missed opportunities, reduced social trust, and diminished creative capacity. These costs compound over time, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in which cynical expectations shape cynical realities.

    Cynicism is quite good at masquerading as wisdom. Pattern recognition is valuable — we should learn from history and past failures. But pattern recognition becomes pattern imprisonment when it blinds us to genuinely new possibilities.

  • Axios ☛ School cellphone bans keep bipartisan momentum

    "It doesn't matter if you live in a big city or a rural town, urban or suburban, all children are struggling and need that seven-hour break from the pressures of phones and social media during the school day," Kim Whitman, co-founder of the Phone Free Schools Movement, told the AP.

    State of play: 68% of U.S. adults support cellphone bans during class, and about 36% favor an all-day ban, a Pew Research survey found last year.

• Hardware

  • Sean Conner ☛ These robots enable employment

    An incredible video about the development of robots not solely controlled by software but by people that enable them to work jobs they otherwise could not do so. While I guess you could technically call these “robots,” they come across more as “waldos,” devices that enable people to physically work from a remote location. In any case, I think it's a fantastic use of technology.

  • India Times ☛ TSMC's US plant unlikely to get latest chip tech before Taiwan: CEO C.C. Wei

    TSMC's new chip plant in Arizona faces significant delays and higher costs due to complex compliance and regulatory issues, a shortage of skilled workers, and supply chain gaps. Despite these challenges, TSMC's CEO is confident in the plant's future productivity. The US government supports the investment with a $6.6 billion grant to diversify chip manufacturing geographically.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Meduza ☛ Antidepressant sales in Russia on the rise — Meduza

  • Science Alert ☛ Eating Fiber Could Protect You From Infections. Here's Why.

    To reach this conclusion, we analysed over 12,000 stool samples from people in 45 countries. Using DNA sequencing technologies, we were able to identify and quantify the microbes detected in each sample. We found that the gut microbiome composition of people with Enterobacteriaceae was fundamentally different from those without.

    By analysing these microbes and their genes, we could accurately predict (about 80% of the time) whether someone had Enterobacteriaceae in their gut. This showed us that the types of bacteria in our gut are closely tied to whether harmful species can take over.

  • The Anxious Generation ☛ The Four New Norms To Free the Anxious Generatio [PDF]

    In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt lays out four reforms or “new norms” that would provide a foundation upon which a healthier kind of childhood could be forged for the digital age. He hopes that these new norms will reverse the two big (well-intentioned) mistakes we’ve made: overprotecting children in the real world (where they need to learn from vast quantities of independent real- world experience) and under-protecting them online (where many are being severely harmed, especially during their vulnerable years of early puberty). It is often hard for one family to swim against the tide of ever-increasing screen time, but if we act together we turn the tide.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Internet Is TikTok Now

    Although it was not the first app to offer an endless feed, and it was certainly not the first to use algorithms to better understand and target its users, TikTok put these ingredients together like nothing else before it. It amassed what every app wants: many users who spend hours and hours scrolling, scrolling, scrolling (ideally past ads and products that they’ll buy). Every other major social platform—Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, X, even LinkedIn—has copied TikTok’s format in recent years. The app might get banned in the United States, but we’ll still be living in TikTok’s world.

    I recently made a game out of counting how many swipes it takes for each of my apps to try to funnel me into a bottomless video feed. From the default screen on the YouTube app, I swiped only once, past a long (five-minute) video, before it showed me a split screen of four “Shorts,” the first of which tried baiting me with a few seconds of looping, silent footage. Tapping any would have led me down the app’s vertical-video pipeline. I’m confronted with an array of “Reels” almost immediately upon opening Facebook, and need to swipe only once or twice before hitting similar “Videos for you” on LinkedIn. Both of these apps also have dedicated video tabs; Snapchat and Instagram do too. X eschews the carousel, but clicking any video leads to the entry point of something common to all these platforms: the wormhole. The app expands into full-screen mode to serve me an infinite scroll of videos.

  • NL Times ☛ Netherlands to launch aid center for cult victims

    The Dutch government is set to launch a new assistance platform for victims of sects and coercive group cultures later this year. The platform, which will serve as both a resource hub and a referral service, will work closely with law enforcement and the judiciary.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • International Business Times ☛ YouTubers Rake In Thousands Of Dollars Selling Unused Footage To AI Companies, Including OpenAI

    With artificial intelligence companies exhausting publicly available content to train their models, new opportunities are emerging for content creators to monetise their unused footage.

    AI firms are offering YouTubers and other creators the chance to sell their surplus content for thousands of pounds, even as platforms enforce stricter rules on "synthetic" content in their databases.

  • Matt Webb ☛ The need for a strategic fact reserve (Interconnected)

    Countries - and state-scale corporates - should each be working on their own Strategic Fact Reserve. If they’re not already.

    Let me trace the logic…

  • Howard Oakley ☛ Apple silicon CPU cores of the same type aren’t the same after all

    Since Apple released the first M1 Macs over four years ago, I’ve been guilty of making the assumption that P and E cores used in the variants (base, Pro, Max and Ultra) in each family are identical. Thanks to the persistence of Thomas, I have learned the error of my ways and can now tell you that, while their hardware might be the same, there’s at least one significant difference between some, their operating frequencies, or clock speeds.

  • Andrea Contino ☛ Lifetime Subscriptions

    I have a certain reluctance towards software subscription models. I'm not at all saying that software shouldn't be paid for, quite the opposite, every piece of code written is a form of art from my point of view that deserves a lot of respect and all the necessary appreciation. However, I can't accept (I'm surely wrong) the fact that every month I have to pay the same amount for something that essentially changes little or nothing over time, like a note-taking application.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Microsoft research finds Microsoft AI products may never be secure

    Their takeaway: “LLMs amplify existing security risks and introduce new ones.”

  • Futurism ☛ Facebook Shuts Down Machine Learning Systems for Identifying Viral Hoaxes

    In response to the rising tide of social media-spread misinformation in the 2010s, the social media behemoth Meta-formerly-Facebook built machine learning systems that proactively identified and limited the spread of viral fake narratives. Now, as reporting from Platformer reveals, it's switched those hoax-tracking systems off.

    The automated systems have targeted bonkers — and sometimes physically dangerous — narratives, like the eternally stupid Pizzagate conspiracy theory. By Meta's own admittance, the effort has been extremely effective: according to internal documents reviewed by Platformer, the machine learning tools have limited the spread of viral misinformation with an astonishing over 90 percent effectiveness.

  • The Register UK ☛ Apple solves broken news alerts by turning off the AI

    In December, an Apple Intelligence summary famously botched a BBC headline by claiming that Luigi Mangione, a man arrested over the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thomson, had shot himself. This was not true, and certainly not what the BBC had written. A source at the BBC told The Register that it caused jitters in the newsroom and the corporation was determined to show it was not at fault.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Off Guardian ☛ WATCH: Car Freedom – #SolutionsWatch

      Anyone who has been car shopping recently knows that modern cars are surveillance and privacy nightmares that take control out of the hands of their supposed owners and places them in the hands of car manufacturers and government regulators.

    • 404 Media ☛ Opting Out of Gmail's Gemini AI Summaries [sic] Is a Mess. Here's How to Do It, We Think

      On Wednesday, Google pushed various Gemini capabilities to business and enterprise customers, including the ability to summarize the contents of emails.

    • The Verge ☛ Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd returns as CEO amid a dating app decline

      Dating apps have struggled as of late, following the “Bumble fumble” anti-celibacy ad it apologized for last year, as competitor Match Group (the owner of Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and other services) reported a drop in users. In Bumble’s most recent earnings report, it said that the number of paying users had increased from 3.8 million to 4.3 million over the last year, however, average revenue per paying user dropped from $23.42 to $21.17, and its total revenue dropped slightly.

    • The Register UK ☛ GM settles charges it shared driver location data

      OnStar is GM's subscription-based, in-car communication service, sold to drivers for security, emergency services, navigation, and remote diagnostics. But according to the FTC, GM launched a program called OnStar Smart Driver in 2015 and subsequently struck deals with telematics analysis firms to provide those businesses with driver data.

      The program allegedly provided driver behavior data at least since 2018, without informed consent, to partners Verisk and LexisNexis. That data, it's claimed, ended up being used against those drivers – it was offered to car insurance companies and used to raise the rates of those deemed to be bad drivers – a determination that isn't always accurate.

    • New York Times ☛ General Motors Is Banned From Selling Driving Behavior Data for 5 Years

      “G.M. monitored and sold people’s precise geolocation data and driver behavior information, sometimes as often as every three seconds,” said Lina M. Khan, the chair of the F.T.C. “With this action, the F.T.C. is safeguarding Americans’ privacy and protecting people from unchecked surveillance.”

      The F.T.C. opened an investigation and determined that G.M. had collected and sold data from millions of vehicles “without adequately notifying consumers and obtaining their affirmative consent.” Drivers who signed up for OnStar Connected Services and activated a feature called Smart Driver were subject to the data collection. But federal regulators said the enrollment process was so confusing, many consumers did not realize that they had signed up for it.

    • Axios ☛ States where you need to show ID to access porn sites

      What they're saying: "Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy," Pornhub parent company Aylo said in a recent statement, per PC Magazine.

      "Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws."

• Defence/Aggression

  • Thais scrutinized over Cambodian’s murder, Vietnamese, Uyghur detainees

    Human Rights Watch says Thailand should follow its own laws on not sending people back to risk of torture.

  • France24 ☛ Netherlands grapples with painful past as WWII archives go public

    Eighty years after the end of World War II, the Netherlands' largest war archive is going public. No longer classified, it contains the names of hundreds of thousands of people who were investigated for collaborating with the Nazis. The release has sparked a great deal of interest, but also public debate. Just weeks before the full archive containing 30 million documents was supposed to go live, the Dutch data protection authority intervened, citing privacy concerns. Our correspondents Fernande van Tets and Alix Le Bourdon report.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Let’s Not Fool Ourselves About TikTok

    But though Americans might be listening to music or shopping for clothing that was made with TikTok in mind, a majority of them are not scrolling the app itself. According to a Pew survey released last year, only a third of U.S. adults said they had ever used TikTok. YouTube touches far more Americans, with 83 percent of adults reporting that they use the platform. Although TikTok is often referred to as the Gen Z app, a larger share of 18-to-29-year-olds are on Snapchat and Instagram.

  • Wired ☛ RedNote Scrambles to Hire English-Speaking Content Moderators

    WIRED identified a handful of job listings posted to recruitment platforms by tech outsourcing companies in China this week for content moderators who can help manage the unexpected influx of English videos and posts being uploaded to Xiaohongshu. (There were also several new recruitment notices posted looking for content moderators who can work in Chinese, the platform’s default language.)

  • Vox ☛ TikTok ban: What Trump could do and why Instagram isn’t the alternative

    There are a lot of reasons why RedNote probably won’t become the next TikTok. Chief among them is the fact that Chinese government censors aren’t thrilled by the influx of American users and whatever politically sensitive content they might bring with them. It’s entirely possible that these “TikTok refugees” will find themselves kicked off RedNote in the coming weeks.

  • Vox ☛ The Supreme Court’s decision upholding the TikTok ban, explained

    It’s also worth noting that all three of the lower court judges who heard this case, known as TikTok v. Garland, agreed that the law should be upheld. That means that no judge has determined that the law is unconstitutional.

  • RTL ☛ German Chancellor criticises attacks: Musk backing for European far right 'endangers democracy': Scholz

    German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday said US tech billionaire Elon Musk is threatening European democracy with his attacks on political leaders and support for the far right.

    "He supports the far right across Europe -- in the UK, Germany and many other countries. This is something that is completely unacceptable, that endangers the democratic development of Europe," Scholz said.

  • International Business Times ☛ 'Not Everyone Belongs Here': Sweden's Citizenship Crackdown Introduces Strict New Criteria, Language Tests, And 'Honest Living' Demands

    He noted that it was 'crucial' to 'always be very clear about the values that must apply in Sweden.' He added, ' Family is important but does not stand above the law. There is equality between the sexes. You can marry whoever you want.

    'Girls and boys have the right to swim and play football. If you don't accept that, Sweden is not the country for you,' the Minister said.

  • El País ☛ Biden warns against tech ‘oligarchy’ and abuse of power in farewell speech

    “I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And that’s the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked. 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. Trump is a billionaire, and one of his top allies is Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world. The members of the incoming administration collectively accumulate more wealth than any previous Cabinet.

  • NL Times ☛ Fear of explosions grows as attacks surge across the Netherlands

    In larger cities, 25 percent of respondents said explosions had occurred in their neighborhoods, compared to 7 percent nationwide. "Such incidents make people hyper-aware of their surroundings," said Gijs Rademaker, an opinion researcher for RTL Nieuws.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Trump is exploring ways to preserve TikTok as company's CEO gets inaugural invite: Report

    “TikTok is a Chinese Communist spy app that addicts our kids, harvests their data, targets them with harmful and manipulative content, and spreads communist propaganda,” Cotton said. TikTok CEO's is expected to be seated on the dais for the inauguration along with tech billionaires Elon Musk, who is CEO of SpaceX, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to two people with the matter. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

  • NPR ☛ Trump and China's Xi speak by phone as Supreme Court issues TikTok ruling

    The Trump-Xi phone call came hours before the Supreme Court on Friday upheld a U.S. law that effectively bans TikTok starting Sunday. It also took place three days before the former president's inauguration on January 20.

  • France24 ☛ Trump will keep TikTok from 'going dark', incoming national security adviser says

    TikTok, which is used by more than 170 million Americans, is set to be banned on Sunday - one day before Trump's inauguration - under a law mandating that it find a non-Chinese owner due to national security concerns.

  • India Times ☛ TikTok divestiture: TikTok's fight against going dark gains support from key US lawmakers

    A law passed in April mandates TikTok's owner, ByteDance, divest TikTok's US assets by Sunday to a non-Chinese buyer, or be banned on national security concerns.

  • The Independent UK ☛ TikTok CEO to attend Trump’s inauguration as app’s fate hangs in the balance

    The invitation to Chew is somewhat ironic given he will be in the presence of the lawmakers who voted to pass legislation that forces TikTok to be sold to a U.S.-based company or risk becoming inoperable on U.S. servers.

  • New York Times ☛ TikTok Makes Last-Minute Push as Supreme Court Is Poised to Rule on Ban

    The company’s representatives have swarmed Capitol Hill in recent days, pressing lawmakers with TikTok’s case, three people familiar with the efforts said. The app, which is owned by ByteDance, should win a reprieve, the company representatives say, and warn that if it doesn’t it may go dark on Sunday when the law is scheduled to go into effect.

  • CBC ☛ What TikTok could look like for users in the U.S. — and around the world — if it goes dark

    Carmi Levy, a tech analyst in London., Ont., expects "more of a fizzle than a Big Bang. But bottom line is, if you live in the U.S., the experience is going to be a lot worse over time than it is now."

    Here's what could happen to TikTok if a ban is enforced on Sunday: [...]

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ U.S. Supreme Court upholds ban on TikTok unless it’s sold as deadline nears

    A bipartisan law enacted last year requires ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to sell the platform by Sunday or face exclusion from U.S.-based app stores.

    TikTok fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing First Amendment rights, but did not prevail and now faces a choice of whether to sell the app.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ The Supreme Court upheld the TikTok ban. Here's what happens now

    The future of the popular short-form video app has been precarious since 2020, when then-President Trump moved to shut it down because of national security concerns. Trump and others raised the prospect that TikTok owner ByteDance could assist the Chinese government by sharing the data it collects from its roughly 170 million American users, embedding malicious software in the app or helping to spread disinformation.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ U.S. Supreme Court upholds ban on TikTok unless it’s sold as deadline nears

    Trump issued an executive order in 2020 to ban the video platform unless it broke from ByteDance, but reversed his position last year.

    Trump’s attorney general nominee, Pam Bondi, cited “pending litigation” and declined to directly answer a question about whether she would direct the Justice Department to enforce the TikTok ban during her confirmation hearing Wednesday.

    TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration Monday, according to a source familiar with the planning.

    Chew will not be the only tech executive sitting nearby as Trump takes the oath of office. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, are expected to be in attendance. Both donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural.

  • New York Times ☛ TikTok to ‘Go Dark’ on Sunday for Its 170 Million American Users

    The statement was TikTok’s latest attempt to pressure the administration to grant it a reprieve from a law, upheld by the Supreme Court on Friday, that would effectively ban its service starting Sunday.

    The law says that app stores and major cloud computing providers cannot deliver TikTok to U.S. consumers unless the company is sold by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to a non-Chinese owner.

  • Michigan News ☛ Supreme Court upholds law banning TikTok if it’s not sold by its Chinese parent company - mlive.com

    “ByteDance and its Chinese Communist masters had nine months to sell TikTok before the Sunday deadline,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote on X. “The very fact that Communist China refuses to permit its sale reveals exactly what TikTok is: a communist spy app. The Supreme Court correctly rejected TikTok’s lies and propaganda masquerading as legal arguments.”

    The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.

  • The Verge ☛ TikTok says it will go offline on Sunday if Biden doesn’t intervene

    The company confirms earlier reporting that it will be “forced to go dark” on the 19th unless the outgoing administration provides a “definitive statement” assuring its “most critical service providers” that they won’t be held liable for breaking the law. Those providers include Apple and Google, which together distribute TikTok through their app stores, and its hosting partners, which include Amazon and Oracle.

  • The Verge ☛ TikTok has limited options after losing Supreme Court appeal

    It’s now clear the company never planned for a scenario in which it would lose to the Supreme Court. Maybe it couldn’t, given that the Chinese government ultimately has final say on a sale. Now, TikTok’s leaders are banking on Donald Trump to save them in a last-ditch effort that will unquestionably come with strings attached.

    Politically, TikTok misplayed its hand at every turn of this multi-year saga. Executives repeatedly dismissed the possibility of a ban, even going so far as to literally laugh at the idea. They were blindsided by Congress overwhelmingly agreeing on a ban. Then, they lost on appeal to the Supreme Court with only a day left before the law goes into effect. The only leverage they seemingly have left is that Trump thinks the app helped him win the election — plus their willingness to let him extract whatever pound of flesh he wants.

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. Ban of TikTok Is Set to Deal a Major Blow to ByteDance, Its Chinese Owner

    TikTok has a larger audience outside the United States — it has 1.2 billion to 1.8 billion monthly users around the world, with its largest markets including Indonesia and Brazil — but the app’s American users are the most valuable, analysts said. TikTok makes money through ads, as well as by selling goods through its TikTok Shop, which pays influencers a commission to hawk beauty products, gadgets, clothes and other items. Social networks typically get their highest “revenue per user” in the United States.

    “The U.S. market is the most profitable market of any market by a long shot,” said Mark Zgutowicz, an analyst at Benchmark Company. TikTok took in an estimated $10 billion in revenue in the United States last year, he said, out of a total global revenue estimated at $20 billion to $26 billion.

  • El País ☛ Shigemitsu Tanaka: Nagasaki survivor: ‘The 1945 bomb is a homemade device compared to today’s nuclear weapons’

    Q. The world has changed a lot since you started your activism 25 years ago and experts say this is the time of greatest nuclear risk in history.

    A. The world is certainly a more dangerous place and those who have nuclear power are not afraid to threaten to use it. For example, Russia and Israel have nuclear weapons and there are conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. The nuclear taboo, the belief that nuclear weapons should not be used, is no longer so taboo. In addition, technological advances have made nuclear weapons smaller, more portable and more sophisticated. There are bombs that are physically half the size of the one dropped on my city. The 1945 bomb is a homemade device compared to today’s nuclear weapons.

  • France24 ☛ ‘Sheep for hire’: Trump, Musk and Zuckerberg’s dangerous plan for Europe

    His statement was a veiled threat directed at the EU, where increasingly stringent digital laws have already cost his interests more than a billion dollars in fines over the past few years.

    In the next breath, Zuckerberg announced that he was abandoning the fact-checking programmes that have been key to fighting disinformation on both Facebook and Instagram in recent years – replacing them with voluntary “community note” systems. Although the move would apply only to the United States for now, he indicated that Europe could be next.

  • The Nation ☛ Needed: A Sober Assessment of Putin’s Russia to Help End the War

    Yet here is one assumption that can be made with some level of confidence: Putin’s ultimate goal isn’t recreating empire or seeking war with NATO—it’s staying in power. While to outsiders Putin’s hold on power might seem wholly secure, he is an authoritarian leader obsessed about “color revolutions” and popular uprisings elsewhere, such as the brutal end meted out to Libya’s Moammar El-Gadhafi. Recall that the conflict with Ukraine began in 2014 when massive protests forced President Yanukovych to flee to safe haven in Russia, leaving all of his ill-gotten gains behind, a fate that has now befallen to Syria’s Assad.

  • New York Times ☛ Biden’s Farewell Address Leaves Late Night Befuddled

    “Yes, Biden used his last speech as president to warn us about a new American oligarchy. And you can tell the message hit home because of how many people — and this is true — how many people immediately went to Google to search ‘What is oligarchy?’ And weirdly, Google responded: ‘Don’t worry about it.’” — JORDAN KLEPPER

  • The Nation ☛ Why I Won’t Be Watching the Clown Show That Will Be Trump’s Inauguration

    As I said, Biden’s message was spot-on. After all, one can’t look at Musk’s outsize, and entirely destructive, current public role, his trolling of leaders around the world, his embrace of neo-Nazi politics, and not shudder. One can’t look at Zuckerberg’s craven embrace of Trump’s “If I say it, it’s true” philosophy, as well as his hosting of inauguration day parties feting Trump, and not be horrified at the tech titan’s reincarnation as an enthusiastic midwife to fascism. But Biden’s message, delivered in the hard-to-hear monotone that has come to define his image, no longer carries weight; the public has long since tuned the man out.

    And here’s where I get really angry. Joe Biden had exactly one job when he assumed office after the 2020 election, and that was to craft a politics capable of neutralizing the MAGA movement and all of the extremism spewing forth from its leader’s mouth. He had one job: to do everything in his power to make sure that Donald J. Trump could never again get within a mile of power and could never again use the power of the presidency to launch a full-on assault on American democracy. And Biden screwed that up. Not by a little bit, but in a volcanic eruption of incompetence. He failed again and again and again to sell his message, and, when it was clear the public wasn’t buying what he was selling, he then failed to step aside in a timely manner to give another Democrat a viable chance of winning against a resurgent Trump.

  • New York Times ☛ Israeli Strikes Kill Dozens of Gazans After Cease-Fire Deal Is Announced, Officials Say

    Israel has continued to bomb the enclave as it prepares to implement a cease-fire. Civil Defense said Gaza City had the highest toll with more than 80 killed.

  • France24 ☛ Ex-CIA analyst pleads guilty to leaking docs on Israel's plans to strike Iran

    A former CIA employee who was accused of leaking classified documents about Israel's plans to strike Iran has pleaded guilty to criminal charges that he willfully retained and transmitted national defense information. Asif Rahman, 34, was arrested by the FBI in November, weeks after the classified documents appeared on the Telegram messaging app.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ ‘They tell us nothing’: Russians seeking to join Akhmat special forces unit allegedly imprisoned as replacements for bribe-paying Chechens — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘All we have to eat is bread’: With detention centers overcrowded, Russia is holding Central Asian migrants in prisons — and treating them like convicts — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russia and Iran sign strategic partnership agreement pledging non-assistance to aggressors — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Navalny’s death wasn’t enough’: Colleagues of Alexey Navalny’s former lawyers comment on prison sentences for acting as his attorney — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Putin’s tin soldiers: Novaya Gazeta Europe reports that 80 percent of Russian state officials who enlist in the Ukraine War are opting out of real service — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Investigative journalist Christo Grozev says Putin ordered a hit on him — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian diplomats broke from U.K. Parliament tour and wandered ‘out of bounds’ in ‘major security breach’ — Meduza

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Students charged in TikTok plot targeting soldier plead not guilty

    A review of the messages showed no indication that the man was looking for underage girls, police said.

    After the assault, Brainard reported the man to police as a sexual predator and said she was frightened by him. She said he had come to campus uninvited and that she texted a male friend who chased him away. All of this was false, campus police concluded after reviewing surveillance recordings and finding that “first person perspective videos” were being circulated among students.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Calmes: The case of the missing Hegseth investigation

    But as I learned in researching a book at the time, the Trump White House told the FBI whom its agents could contact, ignoring willing witnesses with damning information, and gave them just days to finish. The bureau’s slapdash Kavanaugh report, merely summarizing agents’ interviews without drawing conclusions, was enough political cover for Trump and Senate Republicans to falsely claim he’d been exonerated. Democrats correctly insisted otherwise. Yet it was their word against the Republicans’ since the senators-only report remains secret to this day.

  • France24 ☛ Netherlands grapples with painful past as WWII archives go public - Focus

    Eighty years after the end of World War II, the Netherlands' largest war archive is going public. No longer classified, it contains the names of hundreds of thousands of people who were investigated for collaborating with the Nazis. [...]

• Environment

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The LA Fires Show Why Schools Must Prepare for Climate Change

    Schools district-wide were closed only after United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), alongside other local labor unions, demanded action. This lack of planning underscores a broader crisis: our schools are woefully unprepared for the escalating challenges of the climate crisis, and our kids are paying the price.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Southern Utah leaders call on prayers for rain, as state warns of possible water 'challenges'

    About 95% of the state's water supply comes from the snowpack collection and spring snowmelt process. Southwest Utah is in the roughest shape when it comes to drought and snowpack.

    The Washington County Commissioners' statement came as St. George entered its 50th straight day without precipitation. It also went 78 days without rain between spring and early summer last year. A little more than half of Washington County has fallen into severe drought, while the rest is listed in moderate drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Groundwater threatened by droughts and heavy rainfalls, long-term analyses find

    However, rainfall can sometimes quickly flow into deeper soil layers thereby evading purification and transporting large amounts of dissolved substances from the surface and upper soil layers into groundwater aquifers.

    This is particularly true following extreme rainfall and after drought periods. Extended droughts induce large cracks in the soil and they also reduce the uptake of rain water in upper soils. Under such conditions, water flows more directly into the groundwater, or alternatively runs off into rivers, lakes and oceans.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Oil Change International Statement on Trump's Day One Assault on Climate Action

    "As Trump returns to office, we're witnessing the deadly price tag of fossil fuel industry control over our democracy. From the still-burning wildfires in Los Angeles to the destruction left by Hurricane Helene in Asheville, to the unprecedented droughts and floods devastating Southern Africa, the climate crisis is accelerating. These deadly disasters are driven by fossil fuel executives who put their profits ahead of our future.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Sewer Sludge Is Dangerous to Health, EPA Says of Biosolids and PFAS

    Sewer sludge from wastewater treatment plants appears to expose farmers and nearby neighbors to toxic “forever” chemicals, a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) draft risk assessment says.

    This sludge -- which is sometimes applied to farmland as fertilizer -- can contain high levels of chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, the EPA concluded in its review.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Deputies warned to decontaminate clothes after lead, asbestos found in air near Eaton fire

    Sent at 4:35 p.m., the message began “**Attn all personnel**” and said that the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s hazmat team reported the air in Altadena is “‘hazardous, containing lead, asbestos and other harmful particulates.”

    In the all-caps lettering of the department’s aging computer dispatch system, the message informed deputies that the hazmat team suggested wearing N95 masks while working in the area.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ What are the Santa Ana winds that are fueling the L.A. wildfires? When will they die down?

    Santa Ana winds are a geographically specific type of wind that occur in Southern California known as katabatic winds.

    They are cold, dry, down-sloping winds that warm as they descend a mountain side.

  • LabX Media Group ☛ A Common Plastic Additive Harms DNA and Chromosomes

    Despite their utility, everyday essentials—cosmetics, food packaging, plastics—can contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). These stealthy invaders can slip into the body through skin absorption, inhalation, and ingestion, quietly stirring up health issues.

    Take benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), for example.1 This additive makes plastic products flexible and durable, but exposure to BBP can disrupt hormonal balance and mess with human reproductive health.2,3 While animal studies hint at its effects on egg cell development and early embryos, BBP’s impact on the earliest stages of meiosis remains largely understudied.4

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Lessons from the burn zone: Why some homes survived the L.A. wildfires

    Fire-resistant architecture and defensible open space around homes is credited with saving some homes from the devastation of the Palisades and Eaton fires. In some cases, no amount of defensive measures can save a home.

  • Pro Publica ☛ The Fate of This Hurricane-Battered Town Is Now in Trump’s Hands

    Cynthia Robertson could be forgiven for feeling that the banner was aimed at her. Its white-on-black lettering — “FUCK BIDEN AND FUCK YOU FOR VOTING FOR HIM” — hung from the wooden house right across the street from her own.

    Hostility toward the outgoing Democratic president is no surprise in Sulphur, Louisiana, a red town in a red state in a country that has handed the White House and Congress to Republicans. Yet the message felt like a poke in the eye at a time when Robertson was seeking funding through Biden’s signature climate law so her nonprofit organization could repair and retrofit hurricane-battered houses in the area — including her neighbor’s. Not even a fraying tarp, a tar patch or the piece of corrugated metal tacked on the roof could keep the rain from pouring inside.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Biden Is Ignoring Environmental Concerns to Boost AI

      Joe Biden’s own Energy Department is warning that data centers’ energy consumption, water use, and emissions are already skyrocketing amid droughts and climate disasters. Biden just signed an executive order to accelerate an AI build-out anyway.

    • Michigan Advance ☛ Michigan remains on top in clean energy projects, new study says

      Michigan, Texas, Georgia, California, South Carolina, Ohio, North Carolina, Arizona and Tennessee have secured the bulk of these projects. Michigan remains at the top, securing 74 projects since August 2022. Texas ranked second with 61 projects, while Georgia ranked third with 50 new projects, continuing trends from the previous report.

    • Wired ☛ Can You Get Rich Using a Raspberry Pi to Mine Cryptocurrency?

      To really understand crypto mining, you sort of need to mine some crypto. So that’s what I did, using a tiny, cheap, single-board computer called a Raspberry Pi to mint Monero cryptocurrency. Yeah, this tiny setup is like digging for gold with a teaspoon, but it’s fine for studying the physics involved.

      Once I get this beast of a machine running, I can take some measurements. In particular, I can determine the power it uses as well as the thermal output. In physics, power is the rate of energy change in units of watts (1 watt = 1 joule per second). For an electrical device, power can be calculated as the product of the input electrical current (I) and the voltage (ΔV): [...]

    • El País ☛ Why 90% of cars sold in Norway are electric: VAT exemptions, free tolls and taxes on combustion vehicles

      Norway, Europe’s largest oil exporter, has become the undisputed world leader in the electrification of road transportation: almost 90% of cars sold there last year were electric. The Scandinavian nation is now the only one in the world where there are more battery-powered vehicles on the road than petrol-powered ones. Despite its cold climate and low population density, Norway’s shift to electric cars began in the 1990s and was further accelerated by technological advancements, leading to exponential growth in zero-emission vehicles in recent years.

• Finance

  • DNA Lounge ☛ DNA Lounge: 17-Jan-2025 (Fri): Wherein I have a time-machine fantasy

    We first started selling online tickets in 2005. We first started accepting credit cards at the bar in 2012. And If I could send a message through time to decades-ago past-me (and if for some reason it couldn't just be a Biff Tannen gambit) then that message would be: "CASH ONLY FOREVER, NEVER DO CREDIT CARDS OR ONLINE SALES". (And if I get a second sentence, "Don't date ████ or ████.")

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Pro Publica ☛ Under Trump, the DOJ’s Investigation of Ken Paxton Could Come to an End

    When President Donald Trump appeared in a New York courtroom last spring to face a slew of criminal charges, he was joined by a rotating cadre of lawyers, campaign aides, his family — and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

    Paxton had traveled to be with Trump for what he described on social media as a “sham of a trial” and a “travesty of justice.” Trump was facing 34 counts of falsifying records in the case, which focused on hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep her from disclosing their sexual relationship.

  • The Register UK ☛ CISA: Election security isn't political

    These threats spanned envelopes mailed to election offices containing "suspicious white power," sometimes laced with fentanyl; election officials being swatted at their homes; ballot drop boxes being blown up; ransomware gangs targeting election vendors and offices; and criminals trying to knock election-related websites offline.

    Plus, CISA and friends saw a ton of attempts by foreign trolls to unduly influence and divide Americans going to the polls.

  • Air Force Times ☛ How Trump’s Air Force pick could elevate space priorities

    As a Defense Department insider with deep acquisition and technology-development experience, Meink would bring to the job a government background unlike that of Trump’s other DOD nominees. And his specialization in space could upend the priorities of a service typically dominated by Air Force interests.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Analysis: Zuckerberg’s cozying up to Trump spurs public backlash

    Now, it looks like Trump has once again caused Zuckerberg’s likeability to plummet. This time, it’s Zuckerberg’s ostensible cozying up to Trump that has everyone up in arms.

  • The Hill ☛ Bill Gates on Trump meeting: 'Frankly I was impressed'

    Gates is one of several billionaires who have taken steps to reach out to Trump following his election victory. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last month. Amazon donated $1 million to the president-elect’s inaugural fund along, as did OpenAI’s Sam Altman and several major companies including Ford, Google, Meta and more.

  • The Hill ☛ The 'Trump Home Shopping Network' is on the air — buyer beware

    The “God Bless the USA Bibles,” which also “contain America’s founding documents,” ironically, are printed in China. An AP report estimated the production cost at $3.00 each, but expect a price increase after Trump’s forthcoming tariffs on Chinese imports.

  • Axios ☛ Tech CEOs flock to Trump's inauguration

    Just about all the biggest names in tech will be in Washington on Monday for President-elect Trump's inauguration — a much different scene than the beginning of his first term.

  • The Verge ☛ Google rejects EU fact-checking commitments for Search and YouTube

    Google has notified the European Union that it won’t integrate work from fact-checking organizations into Search or YouTube, ahead of the bloc’s plans to expand disinformation laws. Google had previously signed a set of voluntary commitments that the EU introduced in 2022 to reduce the impact of online disinformation, which are in the process of being formalized into law under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

  • The Hill ☛ Tech CEOs attend Trump's inauguration, including Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg

    The CEOs of several of the world’s biggest technology companies are planning to attend President-elect Trump’s inauguration Monday.

    The leaders of Amazon, Google, Meta, Tesla, TikTok and OpenAI are all set to appear at the Capitol to watch as Trump is sworn in for a second time, amid an apparent push by the tech industry to mend fences with the president-elect.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Trump, Musk dined with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at Mar-a-Lago

    President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance had lunch with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Wednesday, along with Elon Musk, according to people briefed on the meeting.

    Microsoft President Brad Smith also attended the gathering at Mar-a-Lago, the latest example of the tech industry’s increasingly close relationship with Trump following his victory in the November election.

  • Axios ☛ TikTok CEO to attend Trump inauguration as app's ban looms

    TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew intends to attend President-elect Trump's inauguration next week and is expected to sit on the dais alongside other prominent guests, a Trump transition source confirmed to Axios Thursday.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia Labels Canadian Tech Company OpenText ‘Undesirable’

    OpenText was among the first Western corporations to pull out of Russia after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The company employs up to 23,000 people worldwide.

    Being designated an “undesirable” organization exposes OpenText’s employees and affiliates to criminal prosecution in Russia and effectively bans it from operating in the country.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New York Times ☛ Russian Disinformation Campaigns Eluded Meta’s Efforts to Block Them

      The Russian group, the Social Design Agency, evaded lax enforcement by Facebook to place an estimated $338,000 worth of ads aimed at European users over a period of 15 months that ended in October, even though the platform itself highlighted the threat, the three organizations said in a report released on Friday.

      The Social Design Agency has faced punitive sanctions in the European Union since 2023 and in the United States since April for spreading propaganda and disinformation to unsuspecting users on social media. The ad campaigns on Facebook raise “critical questions about the platform’s compliance” with American and European laws, the report said.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Noem: No anti-disinformation, misinformation action under her as DHS secretary

      DHS has already wound down a number of initiatives to combat dis- and mis-information, disbanding a Disinformation Governance Board and backing away from efforts to flag false election-related claims. Officials have repeatedly countered allegations that they were policing free speech, saying critics mischaracterized their work as such. The Supreme Court this year rejected a bid from conservative governors to limit those efforts by government agencies.

    • The Walrus ☛ Fake Reviews Have Become the Internet’s Perfect Crime | The Walrus

      A 2023 study published in the journal Nature found that “the most important attribute for consumers in selecting an online shopping service is star rating.” And studies have consistently found that over 90 percent of consumers use online reviews before making a purchase, and 88 percent say they trust reviews as much as or more than personal recommendations.

      The problem is that many online reviews are straight-up fake.

      And by fake, I mean not written by a true customer. They were either purchased, generated by an AI-powered bot, or written by someone with an ulterior motive, such as wanting to sell stuff or, at the other end of the motivation spectrum, trying to hurt a business, product, or service.

    • RTL ☛ Accumulating complaints: Apple sidelines AI news summaries due to errors

      The move by the tech titan comes as it enhances its latest lineup of devices with "Apple Intelligence" in a market keen for assurance that the iPhone maker is a contender in the AI race.

      Apple's decision to temporarily disable the recently launched AI feature comes after the BBC and other news organizations complained that users were getting mistake-riddled or outright wrong headlines or news summary alerts.

    • Axios ☛ Apple pauses AI-generated news notifications after fake headline errors

      Why it matters: The BBC lodged an official complaint after the Apple Intelligence summaries generated an inaccurate headline of a report by the British outlet that incorrectly represented a report on Luigi Mangione, the suspect in last month's killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by suggesting he had committed suicide.

      It's the latest in a series of problematic rollouts of AI features by tech giants, with Microsoft in June announcing changes to its Recall feature following criticism from security and privacy experts.

    • India Times ☛ Apple plans to disable AI features summarising news notifications

      Apple is disabling its AI-driven news summary feature following complaints from British media outlets about misrepresented news reports, including errors in notifications. Apple will improve the summaries and reintroduce the feature in future updates, alongside expanding language support and promoting the iPhone's AI capabilities in key markets.

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Apple disables AI news summary feature after a month of it getting facts wrong: Report

      Examples of it getting facts wrong include it falsely claiming Pete Hegseth had been fired, Luigi Mangione shooting himself, and Donald Trump endorsing Tim Walz

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Washington Post ☛ Russia sentences Navalny lawyers to years in prison

    Three lawyers for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison camp just under a year ago, were sentenced to prison Friday, highlighting the risks of having any ties to the opposition in Russia, even in a professional lawyer-client relationship.

  • RFA ☛ Vietnam punishes social media poster for complaining about traffic rules

    Vietnam’s tough new traffic rules have come in for a rough ride on the information superhighway.

    The regulations came into force at the beginning of the year, with steep penalties for running red lights, riding motorbikes on sidewalks or using phones while driving.

  • France24 ☛ Russian court jails three of Navalny's former lawyers for 'extremist' activity

    The case, which comes amid a massive crackdown on dissent during the Ukraine offensive, has alarmed rights groups who fear Moscow will ramp up trials against legal representatives in addition to jailing their clients.

    The Kremlin has sought to punish Navalny's associates even after his unexplained death in an Arctic prison colony last February.

  • JURIST ☛ UN expert expresses concern over 'continued misuse' of Türkiye counter-terrorism law

    A UN expert expressed concern Thursday over Türkiye’s “misuse” of counter-terrorism laws to detain nine prominent human rights defenders and lawyers.

    UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Mary Lawlor highlighted arbitrary arrests, unfair trials, and lengthy sentences handed to the nine activists and lawyers, emphasizing that these practices undermine fundamental freedoms and violate international human rights standards.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Iran knows my son is innocent, says mother of French man held in Evin jail

    Olivier Grondeau, 33, was arrested from his hotel room in Shiraz, in the south of Iran, on 12 October 2022, just weeks into the Woman, Life, Freedom anti-government protests that engulfed the country. The writer, poet and bookseller was in the country as part of a world tour.

  • RFA ☛ ‘TikTok’ refugees could soon run into Chinese censorship on RedNote

    According to multiple media reports in Chinese citing a recent recruitment ad from the company, Xiaohongshu is now looking for people to vet posts for compliance with China’s plethora of censorship requirements in English, due to a massive influx of people posting in that language.

  • RFA ☛ Out of the frying pan and into the wok?

    Experts are warning that these self-styled “TikTok refugees” flocking to the mostly lifestyle and travel site that until recently was little known outside of China will quickly encounter the same data safety and censorship issues that bedeviled TikTok.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Wired ☛ Mark Zuckerberg Turns His Back on the Media

    Now that it’s been a week since Meta’s turnaround—and my first take at Zuckerberg’s speech—I am particularly haunted by one aspect: He seems to have downranked the basic practice of classic journalism, characterizing it as no better than the nonreported observations from podcasters, influencers, and countless random people on his platforms. This was hinted at in his Reel when he repeatedly used the term “legacy media” as a pejorative: a force that, in his view, urges censorship and stifles free expression. All this time I thought the opposite!

  • The Hill ☛ Funding controversy: NPR's struggle to be more inclusive

    Public media, in other words, should seek geographic diversity — as a way to win back listeners and viewers and defuse the controversy which perennially dogs it. Indeed, this would be the right time to revise the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 to require regularly reporting to Congress on public media audiences in specific cities and states across the country.

  • VOA News ☛ Report: 67 journalists jailed for their work across Africa

    While these trends are not confined to Africa, the continent has seen alarming cases of journalists facing prosecution under such laws, said Mumo. Countries such as Burundi, Ethiopia and Nigeria are using legislation intended for public safety to criminalize journalism, Mumo said.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Pro Publica ☛ Lawmakers in at Least Seven States Seek Expanded Abortion Access

  • India Times ☛ Supreme Court to study 'major' question on age in child marriage law

    Section 3 of the Act says every child marriage shall be voidable at the option of the contracting party who was a child at the time of marriage and a petition may be filed at any time but before the child filing the petition completes two years of attaining majority.

  • The Hindu ☛ Dalai Lama Charitable Trust gets FCRA nod

    The Trust, registered in Delhi, had applied for the renewal of an existing FCRA registration, the official said. However, MHA data shows that a fresh registration was granted.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Register UK ☛ FCC says US telcos by law must secure networks from spies

    The Salt Typhoon raids on American telecoms have raised concerns about the effectiveness of CALEA — particularly since carriers' responsibilities to secure their networks under the law have not been consistently enforced. The security breaches have also reignited calls from lawmakers and privacy advocates to reform the decades-old law and eliminate provisions requiring the aforementioned government-mandated wiretapping backdoors in communications systems. Backdoors that adversaries are clearly happy to use against us.

    The Feds have historically argued law enforcement needs this wiretapping for crime-fighting and terrorism-preventing purposes.

  • Wired ☛ The FCC’s Jessica Rosenworcel Isn’t Leaving Without a Fight

    Rosenworcel’s plan consists of two steps. First, the FCC formally declared that the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which required telecom companies to design their phone and internet systems to comply with wiretaps, also requires them to implement basic cyber defenses to prevent tampering. Next, the FCC proposed requiring a wider range of companies regulated by the commission to develop detailed cyber risk-management plans and annually attest to their implementation.

    The outgoing chairwoman describes the rules as a commonsense response to a devastating attack.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Maine joins 21 other states asking Supreme Court to save affordable internet access program

    Maine joined 21 other states in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to save a program designed to make telephone service and internet access affordable for low-income, rural and tribal residents.

    Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey and Public Advocate William Harwood signed an amicus brief filed Thursday that asks the nation’s highest court to reverse a lower court judgement that found the Universal Service Fund unconstitutional.

    The fund in question was established through the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and has since provided significant financial support for Mainers, according to a news release from the Maine Office of the Public Advocate.

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Now Requires Carriers to Secure Their Networks

    After recent reports of data breaches involving an intrusion by foreign actors into U.S. communications networks, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced late yesterday the agency has taken action to safeguard the nation’s communications systems from cybersecurity threats, including those from the People’s Republic of China.

    “In response to Salt Typhoon, there has been a government-wide effort to understand the nature and extent of this breach, what needs to happen to rid this exposure in our networks, and the steps required to ensure it never happens again,” said Rosenworcel. “At the FCC, we now have a choice to make. We can turn the other way and hope this threat goes away. But hope is not a plan.

  • Education Resources Information Center ☛ ERIC - ED368360 - Accessibility and Integrity of Networked Information Collections. Background Paper., 1993-Jul-5

    This paper considers questions related to the integrity and accessibility of new electronic information resources. It begins with a review of recent developments in networked information resources and the tools to identify, navigate, and use such resources. An overview is then given of the issues involved in access and integrity questions. Links between access and integrity are stressed. For example, ensuring the integrity of a body of information is meaningless if there is no access to the body of information. The changing legal framework that governs the use of electronic information as contract law rather than simple sale within the context of copyright law becomes the dominant model for acquiring access to electronic information. Effects of this shift on libraries and the interlibrary loan system are examined. Other issues considered are those of the relationships between privacy and access in the electronic environment. Final sections consider identifying and citing electronic information works and networked information resources. It is emphasized that, until standards are developed and services in support of integrity and authentication are deployed, problems of access and integrity cannot be entirely resolved. (Contains 93 references.) (SLD)

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Andrea Contino ☛ Pay per stream

    For several years now, the favorite sport of those who use music streaming tools has been throwing mud at Spotify and everything surrounding it. Not that Spotify is blameless; it has greatly worsened the quality of the user experience in the app, and for many, having music, audiobooks, podcasts, and videos all in one place is rather confusing.

  • Techdirt ☛ FTC Finally Sues John Deere Over Years Of ‘Right To Repair’ Abuses

    A few years ago agricultural equipment giant John Deere found itself on the receiving end of an antitrust lawsuit for its efforts to monopolize tractor repair. The lawsuits noted that the company consistently purchased competing repair centers in order to consolidate the sector and force customers into using the company’s own repair facilities, driving up costs and logistical hurdles dramatically for farmers.

    John Deere executives have repeatedly promised to do better, then just ignored those promises.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Press Gazette ☛ Six things publishers should do now to protect themselves from AI scrapers

    The same thing could happen here – chaos first, solutions later. But this time, publishers should actively take steps to mitigate against the threat of big tech taking the lion’s share of the spoils.

    Let’s take a look at two key questions: What new revenue opportunities could Generative AI offer publishers? And what role could content marketplaces play in this?

  • JURIST ☛ News organizations sue OpenAI over copyright infringement claims

    The case centers on allegations that OpenAI unlawfully utilized copyrighted content from various publishers, including The New York Times, to train its generative AI models and the hearing could determine whether OpenAI will face trial.