Leftovers

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New Yorker ☛ What Will DOGE’s Moves on Government Agencies Mean for OSHA?

    Musk is unlikely to hold a more charitable view of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a branch of the Labor Department whose mission is to protect employees from hazardous working conditions and to hold employers who put them at risk accountable. In recent years, OSHA has repeatedly fined Musk’s companies for serious safety violations, including an incident at a SpaceX facility in Texas in which a worker fell to his death from a truck whose cargo had not been properly secured. The fatality was first disclosed in an exposé published in 2023 by Reuters which documented at least six hundred previously unreported injuries at the company; its facility in Brownsville, Texas, had an injury rate six times higher than the industry average. (SpaceX has defended its safety practices in written responses to OSHA and California OSHA, where an employee was injured during a rocket-engine test.) OSHA has also fined another of Musk’s companies, Tesla, for exposing workers to hazardous chemicals and has issued a fine for multiple violations involving chemical burns and other injuries sustained by employees at a third Musk-owned business, the Boring Company.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Farming in France on the decline as consumers put price above quality

    But behind that anger, a far bigger crisis is brewing for French farming. Half of all its farmers are expected to retire in the next five years, and few young people are signing up to take their place. At stake is not just the survival of French agriculture but also a key part of what it means to be French: its food culture.

    Now, the French must decide how far they are willing to go to keep their diverse terroirs alive, says Jean-Pierre Poulain, a professor emeritus of food culture at the University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès. As food prices rise and cheap imports crowd local goods off the shelf, “Are they willing to spend more on French-made products instead of buying a new cellphone?” he wonders.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Biocompatible nanoadhesive offers hope for safer corneal transplants, reducing inflammation and infection risks

    Polymeric adhesives form connections with wound tissue through covalent bonding, leading to chemical damage to cells and extracellular matrix. Meanwhile, the generated physical barrier through monomer crosslinking also inhibits the cell migration process and restricts cell-substrate attachment.

    As the cornea is an avascular, low-cell-density tissue that relies on aqueous humor circulation to maintain metabolism, these side effects of polymeric adhesives will be amplified in the application of corneal tissue repair, leading to problems such as delayed wound healing, inflammation, neovascularization, and even necrosis.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ Tales from the Dark Ages

    It seems strange to recount now, but when I went to work as a prison guard in the 1980s, the unit where I worked housed a category of offender known as a health law violator. These inmates were invariably chronic street alcoholics who had contracted tuberculosis and been non-compliant when it came to taking their medication. The state of North Carolina in all of its infinite wisdom decided at some point in the distant past that the best solution to this problem was to make it a crime. They would arrest these men and send them to the prison where I worked where they would receive treatment for TB. When they were no longer contagious, they would be released.

  • BIA Net ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] İstanbul grapples with high air pollution levels

  • New Yorker ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] How to Make Eggs Affordable Again

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] How to Cook the Perfect Boiled Egg, According to Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Experts have challenged the medical case against Lucy Letby. What about the statistical evidence?

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Psychotherapy may change memories of childhood – here’s why practitioners should warn clients

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Why Democrats are switching off the news – a psychologist explains

• Proprietary

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-02-02 [Older] Microsoft's Termination Letter For Underperforming Employees: Guise For Corporate Cost-Cutting?

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] Microsoft 365 Increases Price While Dropping VPN [Ed: Increases Price While Dropping VPN means a lack of money, desperation for revenue (not paying OpenAI to pretend to be client; Tom's Hardware ☛ "Circular spending"; "Circular spending" means that Microsoft 'invests' 10 billion dollars or whatever in OpenAI for OpenAI to become a "client" of Azure and "buy" from Microsoft, driving up " revenue" and giving a false sense of demand; such accounting is illegal and FTC is being gutted, so the illegal accounting will take longer to unravel)]

  • Ghacks ☛ Windows 11: Microsoft sets status of issue to resolved without providing a solution - gHacks Tech News

    Microsoft closed a Windows 11 issue that requires affected users to reinstall the operating system without providing further assistance.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Tech layoffs reveal the unintended consequences of mass job cuts

    After mass layoffs, tech workers lost trust in their employers. Federal employees may soon face the same fate.

  • Business Insider ☛ Meta is cutting jobs after saying it would target 'low performers.' That label can make things worse for those being laid off. [Ed: Microsoft Blasted for Adding Insult to Injury: Workers Laid Off Without Prior Notice, Without Severance Payment and Basic Coverage (Like Health), Then Stigmatised as Bad Performers So They Cannot Find a Job Elsewhere]

    Meta began laying people off Monday after saying it would target its lowest performers. Microsoft also sent termination letters last month, telling people their performance had "not met minimum performance standards."

    Both companies' announcements in January about the layoffs triggered an online debate. Targeting the lowest performers may be logical for the companies' bottom lines, but the publicity surrounding layoffs can give those a negative label that can compound the difficulties of being laid off.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • The Atlantic ☛ It’s Time to Worry About DOGE’s AI Plans

      Even if Congress were motivated to fight back against Trump and Musk, or against a future president seeking to bulldoze the will of the legislature, the absolute power to command AI agents would make it easier to subvert legislative intent. AI has the power to diminish representative politics. Written law is never fully determinative of the actions of government—there is always wiggle room for presidents, appointed leaders, and civil servants to exercise their own judgment. Whether intentional or not, whether charitably or not, each of these actors uses discretion. In human systems, that discretion is widely distributed across many individuals—people who, in the case of career civil servants, usually outlast presidencies.

    • IT Wire ☛ How APIs give organisations the freedom of choice

      Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the office technology sector are diversifying to reduce risks and explore new revenue streams as print volumes decline globally. SMEs that are prioritising operational efficiency, flexibility, and futureproofing are looking to technology like application programming interfaces (APIs) and artificial intelligence (AI) to adapt existing systems for new uses.

      APIs integrate software systems, while AI supports informed decision-making and process optimisation, helping organisations to navigate a diversifying market.

  • Social Control Media

    • PC World ☛ Sick of Elon's antics? Here's a beginner's guide to Bluesky

      X and other social media services are criticized for their algorithms that encourage hate and conflict, and for having too little respect for privacy. That’s why there’s a desire for an alternative service and, for a long time, many talked about Mastodon as the main challenger.

    • RFERL ☛ Romanian President Klaus Iohannis Steps Down Amid Crisis Over Scrapped Election

      The Constitutional Court canceled the election two days before the second round was to be held between Georgescu and pro-European centrist candidate Elena Lasconi.

      It cited state documents that allegedly showed Georgescu, who ran as an independent candidate, had benefitted from an unfair social media campaign likely orchestrated by Russia. Moscow denies interfering in the election.

    • VOA News ☛ Romanian President Iohannis announces resignation after pressure by populists

      That came after the far-right populist Calin Georgescu unexpectedly won the first round, after which allegations emerged of Russian interference and electoral violations.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Briefing: The Data Use and Access Bill (Second Reading)

      The new Data (Use and Access) Bill drops several concerning aspects of the previous Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. Open Rights Group welcomes the removal of provisions that would have: watered down the definition of personal data; expanded the scope of democratic engagement; lowered the threshold to refuse a data rights request to “vexatious and excessive”; removed various accountability requirements; allowed the Secretary of State to dictate the Strategic Priorities of the new Information Commission; required individuals to contact an organisation before lodging a formal regulatory complaint; abolished the Biometric and Surveillance Camera Commissioner.

    • The Washington Post ☛ Your employer may be spying on you. How employees, fed workers can check.

      You’re at a higher risk for spying if you’re using a company-issued device, which offers the least privacy and will ultimately return to your employer, experts say. But you also could be exposed if you downloaded work software on your personal device or use your job’s networks. To be safe, do these checks on any device or network you use for work.

    • 2025-02-07 [Older] Maybe we should all file breach reports against Musk like Kevin did.

      But it’s not just anonymous government officials who are worried or upset about Musk and his team accessing personal and sensitive information. And one citizen wasn’t afraid to put his name to his outrage.

      [...]

      But now there’s Kevin Couture of Maine. Who is he? DataBreaches reached out to him via email to ask him why he submitted the breach report. He replied:

      I did file that breach against him. I mean seriously WTF is going on ? I filed the report with my state AG against Elon Musk stating my privacy rights were violated as my SSN, banking info was compromised by accessing government systems and down loading the info with out my CONSENT or KNOWLEDGE !!! What other information did he gather on me or others.?

      This is wrong and illegal. I have no idea who has my information now. And all his 18 year old tech lost boys may have it also and who knows what they could do with it.

      Me and other friends want something done ASAP. This whole episode is completely outrageous.

      So… has any big law firm claimed they are “investigating” this reported breach and looking for potential plaintiffs for a class-action lawsuit? Send in the lawyers.

• Defence/Aggression

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-02 [Older] Israeli Military Blows up Buildings in West Bank Refugee Camp

  • France24 ☛ Romania's President Iohannis resigns in face of impeachment threat from hard-right opposition

    Outgoing Romanian president Klaus Iohannis resigned Monday ahead of a mounting impeachment threat pushed by a coalition of hard-right parties. Iohannis's mandate was extended in December after the Constitutional Court cancelled last year's presidential race after accusing Russia of having interfered in the campaign.

  • CS Monitor ☛ ‘We are ... being demonized’: Federal workers reel as DOGE shakes agencies

    In just a few short weeks since coming into office, President Donald Trump and his new “Department [sic] of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), led by billionaire Elon Musk, have upended the federal bureaucracy – and with it, the lives of more than 2 million federal workers. Following through on a campaign promise to “drain the swamp,” with a stated goal of slashing as much as $2 trillion from the U.S. budget, Mr. Musk’s team has moved with a speed and ruthlessness that has left the federal workforce reeling.

    Many say they feel they are being treated unfairly, even villainized, for jobs that have never been lucrative or easy.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Federal Workers Can Defeat Elon Musk’s Coup. Here’s How.

    Who can stop Elon Musk? Even though it’s illegal for him to seize control of federal agency finances to slash the workforce, a Republican Congress is unlikely to assert its legally mandated prerogatives. Nor has any serious opposition emerged from the Democratic Party. And while the courts have paused some of this power grab, there’s no guarantee that our hyperconservative Supreme Court will seriously oppose it. Moreover, Musk’s wrecking crew can impose a huge number of cuts while legal proceedings wind their way through the courts.

    But all is not lost: Musk is actually very vulnerable to popular backlash. As Jonathan Martin of Politico points out, Donald Trump is likely to throw Musk’s project to the wolves once it starts generating too much bad press. If workers can turn the tide of popular opinion squarely against Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), it’s likely to meet the same fate as the administration’s unpopular funding freeze.

  • US News And World Report ☛ DOGE's Access to Treasury Data Risks US Financial Standing and Raises Security Worries, Experts Warn

    DOGE, spearheaded by billionaire Donald Trump donor Elon Musk, has rapidly burrowed deep into federal agencies and taken drastic actions to cut spending. This includes trying to get rid of thousands of federal workers, shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development and accessing the Treasury Department's enormous payment systems.

    Advocacy groups and labor unions have filed lawsuits in an attempt to save agencies and federal worker jobs, and five former treasury secretaries are sounding the alarm on the risks associated with Musk’s DOGE accessing sensitive Treasury Department payment systems and potentially stopping congressionally authorized payments.

  • The Register UK ☛ Judge: DOGE made US Treasury ‘more vulnerable to hacking’

    Trump administration policies that allowed Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to access systems and data at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS) have left the org “more vulnerable to hacking” according to federal Judge Paul A. Engelmayer in New York City.

    Judge Engelmayer used that phrase in an order [PDF] filed in Feb 8 in the case of State of New York et al vs Trump et al, which saw 19 State attorneys’ general argue that allowing the Trump-blessed Elon-Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency to access systems and data at the Bureau of Fiscal Services (BFS) broke at least one law and violates the US Constitution, among other legal errors.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ House bill would ban DeepSeek on agency workers’ devices

    The No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act, introduced by Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., Darin LaHood, R-Ill., and 16 of their House colleagues Friday, comes after weeks of panic in Silicon Valley following the revelation that the Chinese startup’s AI models were comparable if not more advanced than offerings from U.S. companies.

    DeepSeek, a low-cost, open-source AI model, has since reported difficulties in registering new users thanks to “large-scale malicious attacks” on its services. Meanwhile, a security issue at the company has exposed sensitive internal data, researchers at Wiz found.

  • Wired ☛ NIH Funding Cuts Appear to Draw on Heritage Foundation Report That Blasts ‘DEI Staff’

    The NIH policy change, announced on February 7, dramatically reduces the amount of funding that accompanies NIH grants to cover indirect costs—money that universities put toward building maintenance, administration, support staff wages, regulatory compliance, and safety requirements associated with funded research.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Carr Names Project 2025 Co-Author as FCC General Counsel - Inside Towers

    Michigan State University (MSU) School of Law professor Adam Candeub has been appointed the General Counsel of the FCC. He joined the university faculty in 2004. Before entering academics, he was an FCC attorney advisor in the former Common Carrier Bureau and the Media Bureau.

    Candeub is known for his involvement in Project 2025 and criticism of Big Tech, according to Semafor. Candeub was an architect of a late effort in President Donald Trump’s first term to revoke some legal protections for social media.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Elon Musk’s DOGE turns to AI to accelerate its destructive incompetence

    You’ll be delighted to hear that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and the racist rationalist idiot kids he’s hired to do the day-to-day destruction are heavily into “AI,” because it substitutes so well for competence.

    You can put anything into an LLM and get back perspicacious analysis, right? So DOGE is feeding sensitive data from across the Education Department, including personal information about student loans, into a Microsoft-hosted LLM to work out what they can cut.

  • The Independent UK ☛ TikTok finds way to skirt US ban with Android [installation]

    TikTok has bypassed restrictions in the US that prevent users from downloading the app on an Android device.

    The Chinese-owned app was banned in the US in January due to fears that it could be used to collect private data of citizens or spread propaganda through its algorithm. TikTok has denied these claims.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Elon Musk Isn't Bidding for TikTok—And Had No Interest

    Currently ByteDance is seeking to bypass restrictions on Apple and Google removing TikTok from their respective App Stores. The company recently made a version of TikTok that can be side-loaded on Android apps—where installing apps outside of the official Google Play channel is a relatively easy affair. The TikTok ban signed into law by President Biden includes a provision in which platform owners could be fined $5,000 per instance of download delivered.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Courts think they can stop Musk from ending democracy, how adorable is that?

    If Trump ignores the courts, "the United States is in truly uncharted waters," says Millhiser.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ The Closure of USAID: Is America Surrendering Its Foreign Aid Soft Power?

    However, President Trump’s closure of USAID raises concerns about U.S. influence. Would its dismantling weaken America’s global soft power? As the world knows, global competition intensifies, and withdrawing from aid efforts could have lasting repercussions for vulnerable populations and the U.S.’s standing on the world stage. Hence, the pros and cons of this action need to be discussed more robustly.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ The new international (dis)order

    Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine represents a decisive failure of the rules-based international order. As the world drifts further towards the idea of might makes right, a rejuvenation of the rule of law is sorely needed. Without this, we will only see a repeat of past mistakes.

  • LRT ☛ Lithuania needs up to €34m to protect sea cables – PM

    The protection of energy infrastructure in the region became a renewed concern following the damage done to the Estlink 2 submarine cable between Finland and Estonia in a suspected act of sabotage on Christmas Day. In addition, four other telecommunication cables in the same region have been recently damaged.

  • Techdirt ☛ No, The People Didn’t Vote For This

    A stunning 54% of Americans now believe we’re in a Constitutional crisis, according to recent YouGov polling. They’re right. As a tech billionaire effectively dismantles federal agencies without Congressional authority — agencies that Congress explicitly created and funded — we’re watching in real-time as our system of checks and balances crumbles.

  • Air Force Times ☛ Afghans who helped US fight Taliban left in limbo by Trump policy

    Many are now stranded in Albania, Pakistan and Qatar, where they were awaiting transfer to the U.S. Others are in hiding from the Taliban in Afghanistan.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Trump Signals He Might Ignore the Courts

    The United States is sleepwalking into a constitutional crisis. Not only has the Trump administration seized for itself extraconstitutional powers, but yesterday, it raised the specter that, should the courts apply the text of the Constitution and negate its plans, it will simply ignore them.

  • The Register UK ☛ The biggest microcode attack in our history is underway

    Microcode is the regulator of the state of the machinery with infinite disruptive power. To see the other and infinitely alarming hack going on right now, just rearrange those first few words. Regulators are the microcode of the machinery of state, with infinite disruptive power. That's why Musk and DOGE are working so hard at taking over, closing down, and ignoring regulators. Once those are turned off, the machinery of state will be unprotected and institutionally corrupt. You don't want Trump to have access to the data that the state has about you? How about the mechanisms of money by which the Treasury works? All the interlocking components of the state, carefully designed to follow rules to protect that data, will be open to abuse.

  • The Verge ☛ Elon Musk’s rapid unscheduled disassembly of the US government

    “Wait a minute,” you may be saying. “What about President Donald Trump?” Trump ran, much like Silvio Berlusconi before him, primarily to avoid prosecutions. He has never liked being president and he has already gotten what he wants. He’s not the power center. Musk is.

    Consequently I will not be bothering with whatever statements Katie Miller of DOGE and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt are putting out. We all have eyes; we can see what is going on. Musk has taken over the civilian government. This is a billionaire pulling a heist on the entire nation.

  • The Record ☛ British military drops basic training to fast track recruitment of ‘cyber warriors’

    The new pipeline will see up to 50 recruits accelerated into existing vacancies with either the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force by the end of this year. The British Army will join the recruitment drive in 2026.

    The recruits will complete only four weeks of basic training — reduced from the 10 weeks normally required by the Royal Navy and RAF — before they spend three months learning military cyber skills at the Defence Academy in Shrivenham, Oxfordshire.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Techdirt ☛ As Elon Musk Continues To Repeat Lies About Who And What USAID Funded, Turns Out, It Funded Elon Musk

    Last week, we highlighted how the richest person on the planet — Elon Musk, who currently appears to have unparalleled, Constitutionally-violating control over the US government — was running around repeating every confused 4chan dipshit’s conspiracy theory about USAID, all of which were easily debunked if you… understood how reality worked.

    Now it turns out that someone actually was getting USAID money: Elon Musk.

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Solutions journalism can spur climate action, study finds

    Solutions journalism is an approach to reporting that not only explains a problem but also emphasizes ways to solve it, while still adhering to core journalism values. For example, a solutions story on the harm from climate change might also highlight a new kind of electric vehicle or the work of a climate activism group as possible ways to mitigate some of the damage.

  • VOA News ☛ US declares interest in developing African mining sector

    Speaking in the exhibition hall during the indaba, Zambia's minister of transport and logistics, Frank Tayali, thanked the U.S. for its leadership.

  • SBS ☛ You know global warming but what is 'global weirding'?

    "We are experiencing more weird events," says the University of Melbourne professor emeritus.

    "It's partly due to what's called 'climate whiplash ' where we're getting rapid switches between wet events [years when there's more rainfall] to dry events and hot years."

    Karoly says this is exactly what happened prior to the devastating fires in Los Angeles last month , which had experienced several years of wet conditions that boosted the amount of vegetation before conditions switched to being dry and hot.

  • YLE ☛ Lapland tourism marketing under scrutiny as EU tightens greenwashing rules

    The need for stricter enforcement of the greenwashing directive became clear when the EU Commission discovered that 40 percent of environmental claims on products sold in European markets were unfounded.

    Advertising has become so exaggerated that genuinely better products no longer stand out, and many consumers have lost trust in environmental claims altogether, according to Tero Heinonen from the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke).

  • Green Party UK ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Greens call for Drax subsidies to be shifted to home insulation scheme

  • Green Party UK ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Greens warn of burning world and call for faster government-backed transition

  • CBC ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Canada is pushing to build more homes. Many could end up in the path of floods, fire, report warns

  • The Age AU ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] One hundred ‘carbon-neutral’ corporates quit government scheme over integrity concerns

  • Vox ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] 5 approaches that experts say are our best shot at surviving future wildfires

  • NL Times ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Climate Minister to allow wind turbines near homes despite noise complaints

  • University of Michigan ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Nonprofit includes scientists, moms who study climate change

  • Truthdig ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Why Climate Defiance Is Doubling Down on Disruption

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] New York Is Sued Over $75 Billion Climate Superfund

  • CBC ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Climate disasters lead to billions in insurance losses. Could they trigger a financial crisis?

  • The Age AU ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] The water is so warm, even whale sharks are heading south for summer

  • Vox ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] The LA fires have a shocking price tag — and we’ll all have to pick up the tab

  • Vox ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] The far right is going … green?

  • TruthOut ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Agriculture Department Web Managers Ordered to Remove Climate Change From Sites

  • Truthdig ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] How Cheeto Mussolini’s Mass Firing of Government Watchdogs Affects Climate Policy

  • Vox ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] Hate rats? Then you won’t love this new study.

  • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-02-02 [Older] The US Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement: A Blow to Global Climate Unity?

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Engineers design new autonomous system to monitor Arctic's melting ice

      Their conceptual design features a small waterplane area twin hull (SWATH) vessel that acts as a docking and charging station for AUVs and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The SWATH ship is engineered for exceptional stability, allowing it to navigate through melting ice and operate in a wide range of sea conditions. It is designed to be self-sufficient, utilizing automated sailing, solar panels and an underwater turbine positioned between its twin hulls to generate and store energy, ensuring continuous mission support even when sailing against ocean currents.

    • Vintage Everyday ☛ The Story of the Future Batmobile, the 1955 Lincoln Futura in the 1959 Movie “It Started with a Kiss”

      The car was essentially forgotten until 1961, when custom car builder George Barris convinced the Ford Motor Company to sell him the car for $1. The idea was to build a wild custom out of the Futura, but the project never launched, and the Lincoln languished for years parked out back behind Barris’ shop just rusting away.

      Then in 1965, George Barris was approached by TV producer William Dozier, whose upcoming Batman TV series needed a Batmobile before filming started in a scant 3-weeks. With no time to design and build a car from the ground-up, Barris dusted off the Futura and modified it to look more like a bat than a shark.

    • The Register UK ☛ London has 400 GW of grid requests for datacenter builds

      While the UK government wants to turbocharge datacenter construction, a newly published report says there are already 400 GW worth of outstanding requests for connection to the power grid around London, and regulator Ofgem estimates 60-70 percent of these will never happen.

    • Ruben Schade ☛ Baltic states disconnect from Russian grid

      This video clip shared by NoelReports on Mastodon shows the grid being physically disconnected in Estonia. The arcs were incredible: [...]

    • Latvia ☛ Saturday a success for Baltics' newly independent electricity grids / Article

      On Sunday morning voltage deviation tests will be carried out, after which synchronization with Continental Europe is due to take place around 14:00 on Sunday.

    • University of Michigan ☛ Campus is not walk friendly

      Even with this Gold recognition, the campus itself is not safely walkable.

      Regardless of whether a student waits to cross at a light or any other intersection, it’s difficult for them to know if a car will fully stop before they begin to cross the street. All around campus, drivers often show blatant disregard for students traveling by foot or bike. This month alone, I have personally almost been hit by a car more times than I can count.

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] Texas Regulators Grapple With a Growing Problem: Old Oil Wells Leaking Polluted Water

    • International Business Times ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Passengers Furious As South Korean Airline Becomes First To Ban Power Banks In Cabin Bags

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Poland's Tusk Says EU Must Act on Energy Prices, Migration

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini and Energy: An Exercise in Unseriousness

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Can renewable energy solve Iran's energy woes?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Greece: Offshore gas instead of green energy projects?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-05 [Older] Iran Calls for OPEC to Unite Against Potential US Oil Sanctions

    • The Local SE ☛ 2025-01-31 [Older] Human rights group say green energy projects threaten Sami in Norway and Sweden

    • DeSmog ☛ Ad Firms Make Oil Companies Look Green. Here’s Six Ways They Greenwash Themselves.

    • DeSmog ☛ Ad Giant WPP Has Broken International Guidelines on Climate and Human Rights, Charge Campaigners

    • DeSmog ☛ Canada OKs ‘Massive’ $20 Billion Loan for Trans-Mountain Pipeline

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ The Silent Threat Beneath Our Feet: How Deregulation Fuels the Spread of Forever Chemicals

    • Harvard University ☛ What electric fish can teach scientists about NeuroAI

      Electric fish are among the most intriguing specimens in nature’s cabinet of curiosities. They “see” their world and each other by sensing — and generating their own — electric fields. This unique ability provides a key area of exploration for the emerging field of NeuroAI, which explores the perceptual and cognitive capacities of both natural and artificial systems.

• Finance

  • CBC ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini falsely says U.S. banks aren't allowed to do business in Canada. What does he mean?

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Pro Publica ☛ Trump Administration Is Still Freezing Funds Despite Court Orders

    When the federal courts first blocked the Trump administration’s funding freeze, Jessyca Leach was cautiously optimistic.

    For days, the pause had prevented her from accessing the money she needs for her Phoenix health clinic to serve thousands of at-risk people, most of them poor and many of them members of the LGBTQ+ community. Things had gotten so bad that she had to lay off three employees and cut the salaries of her leadership team, including her own.

  • India Times ☛ EU digital chief: I will enforce AI regulation in innovation-friendly manner

    Europe will implement regulation on artificial intelligence in an innovation-friendly manner to ensure innovation and investment are encouraged, and cut excess red tape, the European Union's digital chief said on Monday.

    "I agree with industries on the fact that now, we also have to look at our rules, that we have too much overlapping regulation," Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen told Reuters on the sidelines of an AI summit in Paris.

  • International Business Times ☛ Google, Accenture, Amazon Join Growing List of US Companies Scrapping DEI Efforts and Goals

    A growing number of major corporations are retreating from their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, following legal challenges and political shifts in the United States. Among them are Google, Amazon, and consulting giant Accenture, which have either revised, scaled back, or removed their DEI objectives altogether.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Projecting the next decade of software supply chain security

    With the rapid pace of innovation accelerating under a new administration, discussions over whether software security will be sidelined in favor of speed are heating up. However, security leaders have long been saying that security protocols shouldn’t slow down development plans — and they don’t when done correctly. This perception must be adopted more widely so that innovation and security can happen in tandem.

  • The Verge ☛ Big Tech is still silent on Trump’s tariffs

    There are a handful of reasons why companies may be hesitant to comment. It might take time for the companies to feel the effects of the tariff and know how it might impact their businesses. The Trump administration is chaotic, so companies may be waiting to see if the policy changes or gets put on pause, as it already has for Canada and Mexico. The administration is also vindictive, so the companies may not want to draw the ire of the president by blaming the tariffs for hurting their business.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Public Citizen on Elon Musk’s Bid for OpenAI

    Today, Elon Musk and a group of investors made a $97.4 billion bid to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI.

    The news comes after OpenAI announced it would restructure its core business into a for-profit corporation, which Public Citizen has argued means the nonprofit should be dissolved and its value paid into the nonprofit sector — for example, by endowing a new, independent foundation for AI safety. Given that the nonprofit OpenAI currently has controlling authority over the for-profit OpenAI, this amount should probably total in the tens of billions of dollars.

  • New York Times ☛ Elon Musk Leads $97.4 Billion Bid to Control OpenAI

    The consortium includes Vy Capital and Xai, Mr. Musk’s artificial intelligence company, as well as the Hollywood power broker Ari Emanuel and other investors, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are ongoing.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Elon Musk-led group makes $97 billion bid for OpenAI; Scam Altman said no

    OpenAI chief executive Scam Altman immediately shot down the offer in a post on X. “No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” he wrote, using the former name of Musk’s social media company, which he bought for $44 billion in 2022. Musk replied to Altman with a single word, writing “Swindler.”

  • The Verge ☛ Elon Musk just offered to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion

    The offer brings together a powerful coalition of backers, including Musk’s own AI company xAI and venture heavyweights like Valor Equity Partners, Hollywood mogul Ari Emanuel, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale’s venture firm 8VC.

  • India Times ☛ Elon Musk-led group proposes buying OpenAI for $97.4 billion. OpenAI CEO says 'no thank you'

    Elon Musk and a group of investors are offering $97.4 billion to buy OpenAI and return it to its original nonprofit mission. OpenAI CEO Scam Altman rejected the offer. Musk is engaged in a legal battle, contesting OpenAI's move towards becoming a for-profit entity.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Elon Musk-led group makes unsolicited $97.4B bid for OpenAI

    A group of investors led by Elon Musk has made an unsolicited offer to buy the nonprofit behind artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, escalating the tech billionaire’s legal campaign against OpenAI CEO Scam Altman.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Big tech CEOs are too busy protecting their interests to protect their users

    Each of them wield immense power in the private sector, raking in billions of dollars from both commercial operations and government contracts. What was most significant to me about the image wasn’t how all three of them happened to be standing right next to each other or how close they were to Trump, but the underlying reasons for why they were there in the first place: to curry favor with a new, friendly administration. The U.S. government recently filed some of the largest antitrust lawsuits of the 21st century against the companies that Zuckerberg, Bezos and Pichai own, and their close up attendance and funding of Trump’s inauguration represent a worrying future for tech regulation.

    The trio’s visit to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20 was far from an apolitical decision. In 2023, the Biden administration filed a flurry of antitrust lawsuits against various Silicon Valley giants, including Meta, Amazon and Google, for their alleged anti-competitive behavior. The lawsuit against Amazon focuses on penalizing the company for artificially inflating prices and exploiting both consumers and competitors. Google’s lawsuit saw the break up of Chrome from the rest of the company after a judge decided that the contracts held by the company made it a monopolist. Meta faced a lawsuit for its alleged monopolistic practice of buying up competing social media companies to remove its competition.

  • France24 ☛ The global race to build AI computing infrastructure

    France is "back in the AI race", President Emmanuel Macron declared Monday evening at Paris's artificial intelligence summit. His comments came just days after the Élysée and the UAE announced their agreement to develop a vast AI campus and data centre in France. But experts warn that the race to dominate the sector with massive investments in AI infrastructure comes with a unique set of challenges.

  • Connor Tumbleson ☛ The anger of a few.

    In return of that behavior we have a barrage of horns in retaliation and upset people leading to some rough traffic congestion and I believe this is solely due to 1 individual and 1 car each and every morning. I just can't fathom why this person is so angry and who did what to them to result in this behavior.

  • India Times ☛ Nokia names Intel's AI head to replace CEO

    The move comes as Nokia reported last month a surge in profit for 2024 after years of slumping demand for its 5G equipment from mobile network operators.

  • India Times ☛ Nokia picks Intel's AI and data centre leader Justin Hotard as new CEO

    Hotard, set to assume the role on April 1, is currently the executive vice president and general manager of the Data Centre & AI Group at Intel, according to the chipmaker’s website. Pekka Lundmark, who became Nokia’s CEO in 2020, will remain as an advisor to Hotard until the end of the year, the company announced.

  • [Old] DataCenter Dynamics ☛ Intel appoints former HPE exec Justin Hotard to lead data center unit - DCD

    Hotard joins from an eight-and-a-half-year stint at HPE, where he most recently served as executive vice president and general manager of High-Performance Computing, AI, and Labs. Prior to that, he held roles at NCR Corp and Symbol Technologies (acquired by Motorola).

    “I am excited about my next chapter to lead the Data Center and AI Business Group at Intel Corporation. I look forward to joining Pat Gelsinger and his talented team to contribute to its vision to create world-changing technologies and deliver on Intel’s mission to bring AI everywhere,” Hotard said on LinkedIn.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Guardian UK ☛ AI chatbots distort and mislead when asked about current affairs, BBC finds

      The researchers asked the four generative AI tools to answer 100 questions using BBC articles as a source. The answers were then rated by BBC journalists who specialise in the relevant subject areas.

      About a fifth of the answers introduced factual errors on numbers, dates or statements; 13% of quotes sourced to the BBC were either altered or did not exist in the articles cited.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] Apple Lashes Out at IPhone Porn App Maker and the EU Rules Allowing Its Download

  • Make Tech Easier ☛ 2025-02-06 [Older] Apple App Store Compromised With Malware

  • MacRumors ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Apple Settles Lawsuit Against Former Employee Who Leaked to The Information and WSJ [Ed: Censorship at Apple = lawyering up against true statements]

  • NDTV ☛ "Jihadist Extremists": Taslima Nasreen's Publisher Vandalised In Bangladesh Book Fair

    "The book fair authorities and the police from the local station ordered the removal of my book. Even after it was removed, the extremists attacked, vandalized the stall, and shut it down", she added.

    "The government is supporting these extremists, and jihadist activities are spreading across the country", Nasreen said.

  • [Old] Buzz Feed ☛ How Aaron Swartz Joined The Fight Against SOPA

    The following essay, by Aaron Swartz, is an excerpt from Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, The Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists and Suits Teamed Up To Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet (OR Books, March 2012). Today marks the one-year anniversary of the SOPA blackout.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Salman Rushdie attacker trial latest: Hadi Matar says ‘free Palestine’ in court

    District attorney Jason Schmidt, in his opening statement, said Mr Matar repeatedly “plunged” a knife into Sir Salman “deliberately, forcefully and efficiently” onstage at the Chautauqua Institution.

  • RFERL ☛ Russian Musician's Fatal Plunge During Police Raid Triggers Doubt About Suicide 

    Precisely what happened next remains unclear. But shortly thereafter, the 59-year-old musician and guitar tutor lay dead on the pavement below following a fatal plunge from his 10th-story window.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘It shook everyone up’: New York town hosting Salman Rushdie trial recalls knife attack

    Hadi Matar’s twice-delayed trial began on Monday reviving memories of the religious forces that sought to destroy Rushdie, 77, since a fatwa was issued by Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini following publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Salman Rushdie attempted murder trial set to begin

    A separate federal indictment charges Hadi M. with terrorism, alleging he was attempting to carry out a fatwa.

  • NYPost ☛ Accused Salman Rushdie stabber Hati Matar says 'Free Palestine' as he heads into court

    Matar, who was born in America but is a dual Lebanese citizen, told The Post in a jailhouse interview days after the stabbing, he was inspired to attack Rushdie because he’s “someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.”

  • The Register UK ☛ Clownflare pondering new foundations for 'post search web'

    Clownflare has declared it’s found optimizations that reduce the amount of hardware needed for inferencing workloads, and is in early talks to re-invent the World Wide Web for the age of AI

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Dissenter ☛ Trump Megadonor Escalates Campaign Against Freedom of The Press

  • CPJ ☛ Azerbaijani journalist given 3-month pretrial detention in foreign funding case

    “Veteran journalist Shahnaz Baylargizi’s arrest underscores how Azerbaijani authorities are exploiting allegations of Western funding to silence leading independent voices,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Baylargizi suffers from acute health challenges, and each day she unjustly spends behind bars jeopardizes her life. Azerbaijani authorities must immediately release her along with all other unjustly jailed journalists.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Elon Musk Is a Mouthpiece for South Africa’s White Far Right

    Elon Musk’s claim that South Africa’s land expropriation laws are part of a broader attack on the country’s white minority is divorced from reality. But it represents South African elites’ inability to understand the class tensions that define their nation.

  • International Business Times ☛ Why Are People Boycotting Coca-Cola? And 11 Other Companies Latinos Refuse To Buy From

    The Freeze Latino Movement, which opposes Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies, has set its sights on Coca-Cola following the company's support for Trump's inauguration. Activists view this as a betrayal, given Trump's promise to carry out the largest deportation of undocumented immigrants in US history.

  • Wired ☛ US Funding Cuts Are Helping Criminals Get Away With Child Abuse and Human Trafficking

    As Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has ravaged its way though the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), cutting its workforce from 10,000 to just 300, hundreds of organizations providing vital safety services have been upended. Multiple children’s safety groups—including those fighting online child sexual abuse and exploitation—say their efforts have been severely hamstrung.

  • US Navy Times ☛ Army, Navy remove web pages highlighting women’s military service

    While webpages on the history of female service remains intact on the U.S. Army Reserve website, the Army’s link to its “Women in Army History” page has been taken down as of Monday and leads readers directly back to its homepage.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Saudi Arabia Is Still One of the Most Repressive Countries

    Saudi identity is a complex mix of Wahhabi-Salafism — a sectarian Islamic cult based on strict observance of certain behaviors in dress, deportment, gender separation, prayer observance and so forth — alongside recognition, not to say worship, of the Al Saud family as guardians and promoters of the cult.

    The relationship between Wahhabi-Salafism and power, however, is far from stable. Wahhabi divines who have their own scholastic and collegiate tradition were often resistant to the introduction of new ideas into the kingdom and to many aspects of the rampant program of modernization undertaken in the wake of the petrodollar bonanza after 1970. The 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca was the most conspicuous example of this resistance.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Andy Hawthorne ☛ The Small Web is Great

    Social control media platforms became walled gardens. Websites became bloated with analytics and ads. Loading a single page now means downloading megabytes of data.

    We traded simplicity for convenience. We traded ownership for reach. We traded independence for engagement metrics.

    But here's the thing:

    Some people never stopped believing in the small web.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• IP Kat ☛ 2025-02-03 [Older] CJEU finds that all absolute grounds for refusal were created equally

• Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-02-07 [Older] Big Companies Are Already Asking Cheeto Mussolini for Favors

• Greg Morris ☛ I Now Hate The App Store

  For years I have been, secretly and sometime publicly, one of this people that thought the Apple was fine. It gave developers the reach they needed to potentially get to millions of customers, and the 30% that changed for the privilege was fine. That was until this week and my eyes were opened to the stress and hassle needed.

• Digital Music News ☛ Legit Oasis Tickets Reportedly Canceled Amid Effort Targeting Bots

  It’s against this backdrop that Live Nation in October 2024 moved to invalidate approximately 50,000 tickets for allegedly being resold through platforms besides Ticketmaster and Twickets.

  Though the maneuver certainly impacted profit-minded resellers, the diehard followers who’d coughed up thousands for passes were arguably hit hardest. Now, the focus has apparently shifted to tickets, resold or not, obtained thanks to automated software.

• Patents

  • Michael Geist ☛ The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 226: Richard Gold on Why Canada Should Target U.S. Patents To Help Counter Tariff Trade Pressure

    The trade battle between Canada and the U.S. took a brief break last week as hours before the Convicted Felon tariffs were scheduled to take effect, Convicted Felon agreed to a 30 day delay in return for various border measures. That brought a sigh of relief but no real sense that the issue is over. Indeed, quite the opposite – as future battles over tariffs and other measures appear very likely.

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • EP 1 740 740 B1 – Not only does the UPC wants to have a long arm, its arm is also meant to reach backwards

      EP 1 740 740 B1 relates to a compact service module which is intended for electrolytic aluminium production plants.

      Brief outline of the case

      In a decision of the Düsseldorf Regional Court (4c O 1/21), dated 09.08.2022, the defendant was ordered to stop infringement of patent EP 1 740 740 B1 and damages were awarded to its proprietor.

      By an application dated 08.08.2023, the proprietor filed an action for the determination of damages before the CFI LD Hamburg

      In its order UPC_CFI_559935/2023, dated 17.11.2023, the presiding judge of the LD Hamburg, acting as rapporteur, denied competence for the determination of damages.

      On 04.12.2023, the proprietor requested a review of the decision by the entire panel in accordance with RoP 331.1 and 333.4 UPC.

      By decision UPC_CFI_559935/2023, dated 25.01.2024, the application for review of the rapporteur’s decision of 17 November 2023 by the 2023 by the panel was rejected as inadmissible. Leave to appeal was granted.

      In its decision UPC_CoA_30/2024-APL_4000/2024, the CoA UPC decided that the UPC has jurisdiction to decide on acts of infringement committed before the entry into force of the UPCA on 01.06.2023, as long as the European patent invoked has not yet lapsed at that date.

• Copyrights

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-02-01 [Older] Oh, So Now We Care About Copyright? OpenAI Drags DeepSeek for Alleged Model Theft

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-02-04 [Older] [Guest Post] Things go belly-up for Aldi in Australia as baby food packaging found to constitute copyright infringement

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Piracy Device Still Sold By Company that Didn't Pay $101m Judgment & Can't Be Sued

    BeIN, Miramax and MPA-affiliated anti-piracy group AVIA, have called out a Chinese company behind a device that disables anti-piracy codes embedded in video streams. Gotech was previously hit with a widely publicized $101m judgment following a Nagravision copyright lawsuit. Yet, not only was the amount never paid, the judgment was fully vacated. In what can only be described as a bizarre finale, GoTech now promotes Nagra as its partner.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Feds Seize Pirate Sports Streaming Domains in 'Super Bowl Crackdown'

    US authorities have initiated a new round of domain name seizures, targeting dozens of pirate sports streaming sites. Most likely by design, the enforcement action coincided with the Super Bowl. While the seizures may have frustrated many 'pirate' viewers, pirate streaming operations are not necessarily throwing in the towel just yet.

  • Ars Technica ☛ “Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right”: Meta emails unsealed

    "The magnitude of Meta’s unlawful torrenting scheme is astonishing," the authors' filing alleged, insisting that "vastly smaller acts of data piracy—just .008 percent of the amount of copyrighted works Meta pirated—have resulted in Judges referring the conduct to the US Attorneys’ office for criminal investigation."