Links 29/03/2024: Fentanylware (TikTok) Fines and UK High Court Makes It Seem OK to Assassinate People Wrongly (Falsely) Associated With "Russia"
Contents
- Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
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SaaS/Back End/Databases
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Leftovers
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Ruben Schade ☛ Visiting Patterson Lakes for first time since 1992
Today I got to share a bit of my childhood with Clara!
I was born in Sydney, but my family moved to Melbourne before my first birthday, so I remember none of it. My parents intended to live in Melbourne permanently, so they bought a house for the cost of a sandwich in a new development well south of the city called Patterson Lakes. A few years later, and we’d sold up and moved to Singapore. Live comes fast sometimes.
Technically I did briefly come back here with friends in 2007 when I was studying in Adelaide, but I didn’t have the opportunity to really explore. So for my birthday yesterday we got the Frankston train from Flinders Street Station down to Carrum, then walked down the road to check it out.
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Tracy Durnell ☛ The anathema of perceived negativity
I find I put a lot of value on interesting, whether or not I like something — and part of what I found a bit dull about Dune is that it is solidly in the sci-fi canon, so it’s the foundation for fifty odd years of sci-fi storytelling. I’m pretty disinterested in the SF canon these days and more interested in how people move away from the canon or reinvent the canon. Something can be both good art and not for me. This is taste 🤷♀️
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[Repeat] Ruben Schade ☛ Wandering around the Melbourne Botanic Gardens
The Melbourne Botanic Gardens are Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens just south of the Melbourne CBD, hence the name. Sometimes I worry the stuff I write here is too clever… but then I raise something completely pointless like this.
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Paweł Grzybek ☛ I am joining Avant Arte
I am joining Avant Arte. Initially inspired by rap lyrics and hip-hop album covers blog, it organically grew to the biggest community and marketplace for contemporary art lovers. This place felt like home from my initial chat with the company members. Despite being one of the hardest I have ever done, the multi-stage technical part of the interview felt relaxed and was more like an actual problem-solving session with friends. Meeting Mazdak Sanii, the CEO, exchanging back stories and sharing our beliefs made me feel confident that it is where I want to be.
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James G ☛ Website pride
When I look at my website, I see the product of efforts of years gone by. The weekends in the pandemic where I had nothing to do and asked myself what tiny things I could do with my website. The evenings where I have written under fairy lights the thoughts that have been on my mind. The days when I have felt inspired by seeing a moment that brought me joy and said "I should document this!" and did so on this website.
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Amit Patel ☛ Distance field effects
The key idea I wanted to explore this week is that a distance field font can be thought of as contour lines: [...]
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Science
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University of Michigan ☛ U-M study finds Crow instability is responsible for ring formation
A supernova is an explosion that is part of the stellar evolution of certain kinds of stars. The remnants of Supernova 1987A, which exploded in 1987, has a “string of pearls” formed by clumps of hydrogen gas. In an email to The Daily, Michael Wadas, U-M alum and first author of the study, wrote that he was inspired to look into Supernova 1987A with his background in fluid mechanics because of its current importance in the astrophysics field.
“Supernova 1987A is the first supernova visible to the naked eye since Kepler’s Supernova in 1604,” Wadas wrote. “Because of its recency and close proximity to Earth, it is one of the most important astrophysical events that shapes what we know about stellar evolution. I was inspired by an intriguing classical fluid instability, and based on interactions with collaborators, including Heath LeFevre, who study astrophysics in more detail than I do, we were able to hypothesize that this instability was in play in a famous supernova system.”
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] What we learned from teaching a course on the science of happiness
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] How nature can alter our sense of time
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] How long before quantum computers can benefit society? That’s Google’s US$5 million question
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] Why did modern humans replace the Neanderthals? The key might lie in our social structures
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The Conversation ☛ Finland is the happiest country in the world – but our research suggests the rankings are wealth and status-oriented
Research has shown that when people define happiness, they only mention wealth and status to a small degree. It is well established that money relates to wellbeing but the money effect is weaker than many other happiness factors, where good quality social relationships have the strongest effect.
Recent research from the University of Oxford shows happiness actually causes people to be more productive and the most important factor for happiness at work is belongingness. Salary, on the other hand, is believed to be the most important driver for happiness at work, but it turns out to be a much weaker driver of happiness at work than belongingness. This aligns with the general message from the happiness science that relationships are the most important factor for happiness.
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Education
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Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Putting Research Integrity Checks Where They Belong
Despite the relatively low number of incidents, not checking every accepted paper puts a journal at risk of missing something and winding up on the front pages of Retraction Watch or STAT News. This is not where we want to be and it opens you up to a firestorm of criticism — your peer review stinks, you don’t add any value, you are littering the scientific literature with garbage, you are taking too long to retract or correct, etc.
The bottom line is that journals are not equipped with their volunteer editors and reviewers, and non-subject matter expert staff to police the world’s scientific enterprise.
Some have called for journals to simply retract or publish an expression of concern if questions are raised about published papers and force the institutions to conduct an investigation.
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Hardware
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Taiwan produces 90% of the world's AI servers – raising concerns as US-China trade conflicts continue to simmer
The Taiwanese government recently held a briefing with 20 Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry leaders. According to a DigiTimes report on the event, which took place at a technology park in Taoyuan in the north of the island, Taiwan currently dominates the artificial intelligence (AI) server market. The numbers are both astonishing and concerning. Astonishing: the scale of the Taiwanese industry's success, having captured 90% of the global AI server market. Concerning: the potentially precipitous geopolitical situation, given that US-branded AI servers are 100% reliant on Taiwanese manufacturing.
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Chips and Cheese ☛ Why x86 Doesn’t Need to Die
About a decade ago, a college professor asked if I knew about the RISC vs CISC debate. I did not. When I asked further, he said RISC aimed for simpler instructions in the hope that simpler hardware implementations would run faster. While my memory of this short, ancient conversation is not perfect, I do recall that he also mentioned the whole debate had already become irrelevant by then: ISA differences were swept aside by the resources a company could put behind designing a chip. This is the fundamental reason why the RISC vs CISC debate remains irrelevant today. Architecture design and implementation matter so much more than the instruction set in play.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Latvia ☛ Flu and Covid rates drop in Latvia
The prevalence of both influenza and Covid-19 continued to decrease in Latvia last week, but a total of 9 people died from these diseases during the week, according to the Disease Prevention and Control Center (SPKC) data of March 27.
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Green Party UK ☛ 2024-03-27 [Older] Water companies increase sewage discharges - reaction
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Green Party UK ☛ 2024-03-27 [Older] Green Party response to Attitude survey on the NHS
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New Yorker ☛ Can We Get Kids Off Smartphones?
“On average,” the social psychologist and N.Y.U. professor Jonathan Haidt writes in “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” “people born in and after 1996 were different, psychologically, from those who had been born just a few years earlier.” From childhood, Haidt suggests, they suffer from a weak “psychological immune system—the ability of a child to handle, process, and get past frustrations, minor accidents, teasing, exclusion, perceived injustices, and normal conflicts without falling prey to hours or days of inner turmoil.” This immunosuppression persists into adolescence and beyond, fostering higher proportions of nervous, avoidant young adults.
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CBC ☛ Schools say kids are compulsively using social media. But experts say they learned from the best
Not only are parents modelling social media habits to their children with their own excessive use — half of the parents surveyed in a new study admitted spending too much time on their phones, for instance — but they're also sharing information about their own kids online, said Emma Duerden, an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in neuroscience and learning disorders at Western University.
"They're showing their children, 'This is what you do as an adult.'"
And those children are learning that their parents are getting a lot of attention from it, she said.
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USMC ☛ Nearly 250,000 veterans to receive payouts in 3M earplug settlement
The figure represents more than 99% of all of the claimants who filed suit against the manufacturing company, accusing them of causing hearing damage in troops through faulty production of military-grade hearing protection.
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US News And World Report ☛ Norwegians Facing a Shortage as Easter Nears Are Hoarding Eggs From Neighboring Sweden
Concerns about overproduction of eggs in Norway led to farmers being offered compensation to reduce egg production. That and the effects of bird flu have led to a shortage, according to news reports.
Egg prices are at near-historic highs in many parts of the world as Easter approaches, reflecting a market battered by disease, high demand and growing costs for farmers.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Creative Commons ☛ CC Joins Civil Society Letter Urging U.S. to Support Openness and Transparency in AI
This week, we joined a broad coalition of civil society and leading academics urging a tailored, evidence-driven approach. The letter highlights the critical benefits that open models can provide, and encourages the government to consider carefully the best ways to address the marginal risks that openness can create. As the letter states, “We do not claim that openness is always beneficial, and there are some situations where openness may exacerbate risks from AI.” However, risk should be evaluated relative to alternatives (e.g., the use of closed models or other digital tools to accomplish the same ends) and may be addressed through less restrictive means than direct limits on openness.
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Center for Democracy & Technology ☛ RE: Openness and Transparency in AI Provide Significant Benefits for Society [PDF]
Although we approach openness and transparency in AI from a wide range of perspectives, we all agree that it has a vital role to play in making AI worthy of our trust. We send this letter in order to underscore three broad points of consensus about openness and transparency in AI:
1. Open models can provide significant benefits to society, and policy should sustain and expand these benefits. For decades, open source software has provided building blocks for everything from creating art to designing vaccines. According to recent estimates, open source software is worth more than $8 trillion in value4 and is a part of 96% of commercial software.5 The U.S. government is one of the biggest users of open source software in the world,6 and funds open source approaches ranging from boosting cybersecurity to protecting human rights and fighting cancer.7
Openness in AI can provide similar benefits. Indeed, many of AI’s most promising applications have already been fueled by open source and open science,8 and openness can support key societal goals, such as: [...]
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University of Michigan ☛ What the Dead Internet Theory Means for Gen Z
It’s impossible to navigate the [Internet] today in any capacity without encountering bots, yet in recent months (particularly on X), there has been an observable phenomenon of bot-generated content posts, which might neglect to link the video they refer to, write in obviously generated sentences or use artificially generated images of things which don’t exist — and yet they go viral. Checking the replies, they nearly all riff on two or three general ideas, sometimes using the same words or phrases (or using the exact same response). You might also see a deluge of generated replies to posts (viral and nonviral alike) advertising adult content on the user’s account, most of which are obvious scams. Bots clog the replies of sites like Reddit or YouTube, while artificially generated images clog Facebook. What explains this influx of bot-generated replies, and more novel, bot-generated viral content, and what does it mean for user experience on social media?
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Silicon Angle ☛ New York City will introduce controversial AI gun detection technology amid subway crime crisis
The company he chose is Evolv Technologies Inc., a Massachusetts-based weapons detection firm that has been deploying its systems in schools and venues across the U.S. for quite some time now. Not only is the presence of such systems quite dystopian and depressing for some Americans, but Evolv has taken flak in the past for its technology either not working or giving false positives. Still, the company claims its software detects around 400 guns a day across the U.S.
At an investor conference in 2022, Evolv’s Chief Executive Peter George was asked if his company’s technology would have saved lives in the Uvalde school shooting. “The answer is when somebody goes through our system, and they have a concealed weapon or an open carry weapon, we’re gonna find it, period,” he replied. “We won’t miss it.” The Federal Trade Commission has since begun a probe into such claims.
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Gizmodo ☛ 'This Is a Sputnik Moment': NYC Is Adding AI Metal Detectors to the Subway
NYC Mayor Eric Adams has a new plan to make the city’s subways safe: metal detectors. But these are not just any metal detectors because these detectors come with AI. As for how well they work, it’s not looking so good.
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The Register UK ☛ AI bots hallucinate software packages and devs download them
Last year, through security firm Vulcan Cyber, Lanyado published research detailing how one might pose a coding question to an AI model like ChatGPT and receive an answer that recommends the use of a software library, package, or framework that doesn't exist.
"When an attacker runs such a campaign, he will ask the model for packages that solve a coding problem, then he will receive some packages that don’t exist," Lanyado explained to The Register. "He will upload malicious packages with the same names to the appropriate registries, and from that point on, all he has to do is wait for people to download the packages."
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The Register UK ☛ Nvidia's newborn ChatRTX bot patched for security bugs
ChatRTX, formerly known as Chat with RTX, was launched in February to provide Nvidia GPU owners with an AI chatbot that could run locally on RTX 30 and 40-series hardware with at least 8 GB of VRAM. While this solution couldn't promise as much power as a cloud-based alternative, being able to run it locally has been an upside for early users.
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Gizmodo ☛ This ChatGPT Crypto Scam Is Flooding YouTube With Actors Who Don't Know What They're Reading
Have you seen YouTube ads recently for a “slippage bot” that uses ChatGPT and promises to help you earn passive income with crypto? It’s a scam. And it’s ripping off a lot of people, all while using unsuspecting actors hired on Fiverr who don’t understand what they’ve been hired to read. One of the actors tells Gizmodo he ultimately didn’t even get paid for his work, despite his face showing up constantly on YouTube under accounts he doesn’t control.
The videos all follow the same basic script. They open with an actor saying they personally created a bot using ChatGPT that allows anyone to earn money without any real coding knowledge. Early in the videos, the actors warn that the crypto community has lots of scammers, so it’s important that the viewer not interact with “unfamiliar wallets” and “unknown exchanges.”
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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RFA ☛ Did Surveillance Giant Google ‘abandon’ the Chinese market due to domestic requirements?
Verdict: Misleading
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Couple Get An Hour-Long Voicemail From Their Amazon Alexa; It Had Recorded Their Conversations
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The Register UK ☛ Meta allegedly snooped on Snapchat via traffic decryption
To spy on rival Snapchat and get data on how the app was being used, Meta – when it was operating as Facebook – allegedly initiated a program called Project Ghostbusters, which intercepted data traffic from mobile apps. And it used that data to harm its competitors' ad business.
The name of the program was "an apparent reference to Snapchat's corporate logo, a white ghost on a yellow background," according to a recently unsealed court document [PDF].
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Gizmodo ☛ Florida May Just Be Too Valuable for PornHub to Pull Out
The Sunshine State recently passed HB 3, a law that prohibits children aged 14 or younger from using social media without parental consent. The law also stipulates that “pornographic or sexually explicit websites” will need to “use age verification to prevent minors from accessing sites that are inappropriate for children.” Pornhub and its parent company, Aylo, have repeatedly criticized these kinds of requirements, claiming that they are ineffective and do not respect users’ privacy. (Whether Pornhub really cares about user privacy is a hanging question; last year the platform was accused of breaking the GDPR—the landmark European privacy law—by illegally harvesting user data).
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Defence/Aggression
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Digital Music News ☛ After Hefty Fines, Fentanylware (TikTok) Launches ‘Youth Council’
TikTok’s ‘youth council’ of teens is now official as part of the company’s broader push to ‘further strengthen’ the platform’s safety, and they’ve already started meeting with CEO Shou Chew.
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US Navy Times ☛ US Navy preps hypersonic weapon test this spring, with Army watching
Hypersonic weapons are capable of flying faster than Mach 5 — or more than 3,836 miles per hour — and can maneuver between varying altitudes, making them difficult to detect. The C-HGB is made up of the weapon’s warhead, guidance system, cabling and thermal protection shield.
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The Hill ☛ Democrat to introduce bill that would bar Menendez, Trump from receiving classified information
Trump faces federal charges of willful retention of national defense information and corruptly concealing a document or record, as well as conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
Federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York have charged Menendez with conspiracy to act as a foreign agent and acting as a foreign agent, one of the criminal charges mentioned in Sherrill’s bill as disqualifying a federal official from access to classified information.
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American Oversight ☛ Judge Recommends John Eastman Be Disbarred for Efforts to Overturn 2020 Election - American Oversight
After the 2020 election, Eastman penned a memo outlining a six-step plan to keep Trump in power that relied on Trump supporters from seven states submitting fake electoral certificates to dispute Biden’s victory in those states. It also called for former Vice President Pence to reject the results from those states when presiding over the congressional certification of the electoral college vote, and argued that state legislatures had “the plenary power to determine the manner for choosing presidential electors” and thus could reject the valid electors because of measures undertaken to make voting easier during the coronavirus pandemic.
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VOA News ☛ Wagner Mercenaries Helping Mali Army Kill Civilians, Rights Groups Say
Mali, along with its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger, has for over a decade battled an insurgency fought by Islamic extremist groups, including some allied with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Following military coups in all three nations in recent years, the ruling juntas have expelled French forces and turned to Russia's mercenary units for security assistance instead.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Germany star Rüdiger slams Islamist gesture allegation
He said that Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesverfassungsschutz or BfV) considers the gesture a symbol of Islamist radicalization and that the German interior minister, Nancy Faeser, has in the past called it unacceptable.
"Anyone who poses so publicly is intentionally displaying a gesture of fanaticism and not an innocent, spiritual gesture," he claimed.
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New Statesman ☛ The deadly return of Islamic State
Vladimir Putin has, paradoxically, condemned “radical Islamists” while also seeking to blame both Western and Ukrainian intelligence. Yet, even a cursory examination of IS activity over recent years demonstrates just how much the group has been seeking to reassert itself. The Moscow attack comes just two months after another IS cell launched an attack inside a church in Istanbul targeting worshippers at Sunday mass.
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CBC ☛ Ontario school boards sue Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok
The public district school boards of Toronto, Peel and Ottawa-Carleton, along with Toronto's Catholic counterpart, are looking for about $4.5 billion in total damages from Meta Platforms Inc., Snap Inc. and ByteDance Ltd., which operate the platforms Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok respectively, according to separate but similar statements of claim filed Wednesday.
"These social media companies ... have knowingly created a product that is addictive and marketed to kids," said Rachel Chernos Lin, the chair of the Toronto District School Board, on CBC Radio's Metro Morning on Thursday.
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BoingBoing ☛ There are no guardrails: Trump's second term will lead to a dictatorship
She then goes into each of the institutions that will supposedly protect democracy: the media, the judiciary, the military, the blue state mayors and governors. Her piece is thoughtful and intelligent and well written. With all my heart I hope she's right… but I'm fairly certain she couldn't be more wrong.
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VOA News ☛ In Central African Republic, Russia is No Peacekeeper
The hostilities in CAR are ongoing, with some 10,000 children fighting in armed conflicts among various rebel groups. Russia’s involvement with CAR’s leadership is replete with corruption, misappropriation of natural resources, mass violence and human rights abuses.
In February, CAR’s Ministry of Family and Gender estimated that armed groups continue to exploit some 10,000 children “recruited as fighters, spies, messengers, cooks and even used as sex slaves.’’
Since Russia deployed Wagner mercenaries to CAR in 2018, Russian officials have misleadingly referred to them as “Russian instructors.”
Russia has designed a disinformation and propaganda ecosystem targeting the African continent to advance Moscow’s interests, the U.S. State Department said in a February 8 report titled “The Wagner Group’s Atrocities in Africa: Lies and Truth.”
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The Guardian UK ☛ French PM backs school head who faced death threats after Muslim veil row
The French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, has defended French secularism following the resignation of a Paris school principal who received death threats after asking a student to remove her Muslim veil on the premises.
Attal, a former education minister, said the state would be filing a complaint against the student over falsely accusing the headteacher of mistreatment during the incident in late February.
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RFI ☛ School principal resigns after receiving death threats in hijab row
Secularism and religion are hot-button issues in France, which is home to Europe's largest Muslim community.
In 2004, authorities banned school children from wearing "signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation" such as headscarves, turbans or kippas on the basis of the country's secular laws which are meant to guarantee neutrality in state institutions.
The headmaster's departure comes amid deep tensions in the country following a series of incidents including the killing of a teacher by an Islamist former pupil last year.
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France24 ☛ French school principal’s resignation over headscarf death threats sparks uproar
French politicians from across the political spectrum Wednesday denounced what they called an "Islamist" attack on education after a school principal resigned following death threats over a Muslim veil. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said the state would file a complaint against the student over falsely accusing the headmaster of mistreatment during the incident.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-03-27 [Older] The EU should start the gradual membership for Georgia, even with regions occupied by Russia
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-27 [Older] Russia's Tajik community face discrimination after Moscow attack
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CPJ ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] After fifth detention extension, CPJ renews call for Russia to release US journalist Evan Gershkovich
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] Evan Gershkovich: Russia extends pre-trial detention
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] Hybrid warfare: Germany braces for Russian influence operations
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-27 [Older] Air Defences Down 16 Airborne Targets in Russia's Belgorod, Local Governor Says
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-27 [Older] Russian Delegation Visits Pyongyang to Discuss Cooperation Against Spying, KCNA Says
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-27 [Older] New US Sanctions Target North Korean Military Finances
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] Ukraine qualifies for Euro 2024, landing berth at 1st major tournament since Russian invasion
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] After Moscow attack, could Putin's image suffer in Russia?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] Russian intel heads allege Western support for Moscow attack
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The Age AU ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] ‘Banditry and theft’: The delicate plan to unlock a $350 billion Russian safe
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] Moldovan Court Strikes Down Law Barring Pro-Russian Party From Polls
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NL Times ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] Squatters leave Russian billionaire Arkady Volozh's Amsterdam villa
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] 2 more Canadians have died in Ukraine-Russia war, Global Affairs says
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] Russian seals Olympic spot in Germany despite visa rejection
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The Age AU ☛ 2024-03-25 [Older] Terror attack suspects face Russian court with severe injuries
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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The Hill ☛ Celebrating 45 years of C-SPAN
In the subsequent 95th Congress (1977-78), O’Neill, the newly elected Speaker, surprised everyone by announcing early in the session that a 90-day trial of televising would be initiated using black and white security cameras. When that initiative proved successful, Rep. Gillis Long (D-La.), chairman of a Rules Subcommittee on Rules and Organization of the House, introduced a resolution (H. Res. 821) on Oct. 6, 1977, authorizing the Speaker to “devise and implement a system subject to his direction and control for the complete and unedited audio and video broadcasting and recording of the legislative proceedings of the House.”
After hearings, the Rules Committee voted eight to seven to report a substitute resolution (H. Res. 866), sponsored by Sisk and Rep. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). The substitute directed the Speaker to defer a final decision pending a final Rules Committee report on alternative broadcast systems.
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Quartz ☛ Apple sues engineer for leaking products including Vision Pro
The former Apple software engineer shared over 1,400 Signal messages with “Homeboy,” Aude’s secret name for a Wall Street Journal reporter, according to filings. Apple alleges Aude leaked Apple’s journaling app in April 2023 to the Wall Street Journal because he wanted the project “killed.” Aaron Tilley published a WSJ article on the app at that time. Aude also shared “over 10,000 text messages” with a journalist from The Information.
This was all conducted on Aude’s company-issued iPhone. Aude is accused of breaking the company’s confidentiality agreement, and Apple seeks $25,000 in damages.
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Gizmodo ☛ A Data Broker Reportedly Tracked Visitors to Jeffrey Epstein’s Island
A data broker compiled a report on the geographical movements of visitors to Jeffrey Epstein’s “pedophile island,” culling it from mobile data that it acquired via unknown means, a new investigation by Wired reveals.
The company in question, which was formerly called Near Intelligence, confirmed to Wired that it had created such a report but refused to give details about who commissioned the report or what it was for. The report involves data points, sourced from mobile web traffic, that appear to reveal 166 locations throughout the U.S., “where Near Intelligence infers that visitors to Little St. James likely lived and worked.” Near Intelligence reportedly got its mobile location data from online ad exchanges, which can pick up details about mobile users through the apps on their phones. When analyzed, the data gives companies like Near Intelligence an accurate assessment of a person’s geographical movements as they go about their daily activities.
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Quartz ☛ Jeffrey Epstein’s secret island visitors tracked by data broker
If Near Intelligence was able to methodically identify the trajectories of visitors to Epstein’s secretive haven, it doesn’t seem to have spent much effort protecting the data that it accumulated. That is, Wired journalists somehow stumbled upon the Epstein report, which they say had been left exposed to the open [Internet]. Wired reports:
"Near Intelligence...tracked devices visiting Little St. James from locations in 80 cities crisscrossing 26 US states and territories, with Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, Michigan, and New York topping the list. The coordinates point to mansions in gated communities in Michigan and Florida; homes in Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts; a nightclub in Miami; and the sidewalk across the street from Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City."
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Wired ☛ Jeffrey Epstein's Island Visitors Exposed by Data Broker
Nearly 200 mobile devices of people who visited Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious “pedophile island” in the years prior to his death left an invisible trail of data pointing back to their own homes and offices. Maps of these visitations generated by a troubled international data broker with defense industry ties, discovered last week by WIRED, document the numerous trips of wealthy and influential individuals seemingly undeterred by Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender.
The data amassed by Near Intelligence, a location data broker roiled by allegations of mismanagement and fraud, reveals with high precision the residences of many guests of Little Saint James, a United States Virgin Islands property where Epstein is accused of having groomed, assaulted, and trafficked countless women and girls.
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The Dissenter ☛ UK High Court: Extradition Stops CIA From Killing Assange
While recognizing that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had valid grounds to appeal extradition to the United States, the British High Court of Justice refused to consider “fresh evidence” involving the CIA.
On March 26, the High Court granted Assange a limited appeal but adjourned the decision so that the U.S. government could submit "assurances" related to the court's concerns.
The High Court astonishingly stated [PDF] that the “extreme measures” considered by the CIA were intended to keep Assange from fleeing to Russia. If he was “lawfully” in U.S. custody after extradition, there would no longer be a risk that the agency would kidnap or assassinate him.
By drawing such a wild and erroneous conclusion, the High Court showed why they should have admitted the fresh evidence. Assange’s legal team could have helped the judges better understand the chain of alleged events, but the court justified the “serious” allegations in order to avoid proceedings that would negatively impact the United Kingdom's relationship with a close ally.
[...]
It is hard to believe that any requesting state other than the United States would be allowed to extradite an individual if that state’s intelligence or security service was accused of plotting to kidnap or kill that person.
[...]
Importantly, the report did not claim that the CIA plotted to kidnap or kill Assange because officials were afraid that he would flee to Russia. In fact, it clearly stated that officials were already discussing “kidnapping and other extreme measures” when “intelligence” related to a “possible breakout” was obtained.
[...]
As noted in the Yahoo News report, U.S. government officials were unable to find evidence that WikiLeaks was working at the behest of the Russian government. That led the CIA to “reframe” the media organization as a “hostile intelligence service” so that it could still target Assange and anyone associated with WikiLeaks.
[...]
Following the release of High Court’s appeal decision, Stella Assange said the court would not admit evidence that the CIA plotted to kill her husband because “if it acknowledges that, then of course, he can’t be sent to the United States.”
What the High Court did may be more sinister. A court that supposedly is part of the rules-based order concluded that the allegations were serious but do not matter. In the court's opinion, if U.S. intelligence or government officials plot to kill a journalist, who may try to escape persecution, it may be acceptable if that journalist is planning to flee to a country that has been designated a U.S. adversary.
"What the High Court did may be more sinister. A court that supposedly is part of the rules-based order concluded that the allegations were serious but do not matter. In the court's opinion, if U.S. intelligence or government officials plot to kill a journalist, who may try to escape persecution, it may be acceptable if that journalist is planning to flee to a country that has been designated a U.S. adversary."
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Environment
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DeSmog ☛ Groups Pressure Ottawa to Ban Fossil Fuel Ads in Public Facilities
For the first time in 20 years, this month Ottawa will review its Corporate Sponsorship and Advertising Policy. Community groups such as Ecology Ottawa are looking forward to the review as a rare opportunity to stop fossil fuel companies from advertising in the city. If successful, this would prevent fossil fuel companies and their advocates from advertising in city-owned buildings, such as hockey arenas or community centres. The community groups intend to lead a separate campaign to also ban fossil fuel advertising on vehicles and infrastructure owned by the city’s transit agency.
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Global Laws That Help Corporations Block Climate Action
Fast forward to the 1990s. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a wealth of new opportunities for Western business, but corporations didn’t want to take the risk of new governments coming to power that might feel differently about their operations. The ECT was designed to eliminate that risk, and lock in business-friendly regulations into the far future.
What the Western countries didn’t realize was that they too would one day become targets for these corporate courts. West-on-West
As the 2000s dawned, corporations realized that the biggest threat they faced wasn’t from a government taking over their oil rigs. It was climate action that was seen as a growing necessity across Europe.
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The Atlantic ☛ Too Few Americans Are Eating a Remarkable Fruit
Fielding and his co-author Jorge Julian Zaldivar surveyed 43 Florida-based breadfruit growers. Some had as few as one tree. Still, each was a remarkable living symbol of a changing world. Although climate change remains overwhelmingly a destructive phenomenon, they note, the expanding range of the breadfruit is one small silver lining. “There’s not really a climate that is too hot for breadfruit,” he says. Normally, with climate trends, whenever you gain a new range for a species, you also lose it elsewhere. “But with breadfruit you’re gaining, not losing.”
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El País ☛ Polar ice melt caused by climate change is slowing the Earth’s rotation
Mathematics says that a day has 86,400 seconds, but this is wrong. Days on Earth do not have that exact duration because the Earth’s rotation is not regular. Among the factors that intervene in this irregularity are the friction of the tides, or the fact that the planet is not a solid sphere but is made up of different solid or liquid masses, both on its surface and inside. Despite such irregularity, the astronomical second was accepted as the basis of universal time (UT1). But in 1967, the internationally accepted definition of the second changed. The measurement of time, which had been linked to the Earth’s rotation, became determined by the first atomic clocks, the basis of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the primary time standard. But its precision is such that the lack of synchrony between universal time and UTC had to be recovered by introducing a leap second every so often. Now a new problem is emerging, the need to subtract a second instead of adding it, a problem that has to do with climate-related melting of polar ice.
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Hackaday ☛ 2024 Home Sweet Home Automation: [HEX]POD – Climate Tracker And Digital Nose
[eBender] was travelling India with friends, when one got sick. Unable to find a thermometer anywhere during COVID, they finally ended up in a hospital. After being evacuated back home, [eBender] hatched an idea to create a portable gadget featuring a few travel essentials: the ability to measure body temperature and heart rate, a power bank and an illumination source. The scope evolved quite a lot, with the concept being to create a learning platform for environmental multi-sensor fusion. The current cut-down development kit hosts just the air quality measurement components, but expansion from this base shouldn’t be too hard.
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Energy/Transportation
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Barry Kauler ☛ Considering ball joints for wheel knuckles
I posted about three different types of ball joints that I purchased for comparison:
https://bkhome.org/news/202403/heim-versus-ball-joint.html
Today I was at the workshop where retired guys get together and work on little projects. Lots of good equipment there. Thinking about what ball joints to use with the wheel knuckles.
Back in early January I was working on the wheel knuckles, intending to fit them to the cheap swing-arms that I purchased from China: [...]
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RFA ☛ Rising theft of cables and bolts along the Laos-China railway
The new Laos-China railway is hiring more security guards at train stations after a rise in thefts of electrical cables, bolts and other equipment along the route, two employees of a private security company told Radio Free Asia.
The cables and bolts are sold to scrap metal businesses by people looking for an easy way to raise cash, a villager who lives close to the railway told RFA.
It’s widely believed that many of the thieves are addicted to drugs, the villager said. But even with extra security guards and soldiers watching the rail line and station, the thieves still find a way, he said.
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Business Standard ☛ Bitcoin miners are devouring electricity at record pace during [cryptocurrency] rally
All the activity is driving miners to consume energy at a record pace. Last month, miners drew a record 19.6 gigawatts of power, up from 12.1 gigawatts the same period in 2023, according to an estimate by Coin Metrics. That’s equivalent to the electricity capacity that can power about 3.8 million homes in Texas, where many of the mining operations are located.
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Earth Justice ☛ State Legislation Alert: As Alarm Grows Over [Cryptocurrency] Mining’s Energy Consumption, Bitcoin Lobbyists Peddle State Bills
Proof-of-work [cryptocurrency] mining operations consume vast quantities of energy and often run around the clock. [Cryptocurrency] mining operations may now consume up to 2.3 percent of U.S. electricity, according to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA). Many U.S. [cryptocurrency] mining facilities draw power from the grid, which often increases emissions from fossil-burning power plants that pollute our air and water, and that contribute to climate change.
The EIA recently reported that crypto mining’s hard-to-predict energy demands threaten to cause brownouts and blackouts during times of peak demand, such as during a cold snap or a heat wave.
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International Business Times ☛ Memeing Money: UK Targets 'FinFluencers' Using Memes to Shill [Cryptocurrency]
In a statement, the watchdog emphasised that all financial product marketing, including memes, must be fair, clear and not misleading. This announcement on meme guidelines comes just months after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) implemented new regulations on January 8 to establish a more civilised and stable environment for UK [cryptocurrency] firms and traders.
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Wired ☛ The Baltimore Bridge Collapse Is About to Get Even Messier
But while shipping is a growth industry, infrastructure is stagnant by design. Engineering and technology improve, sure, but a bridge is an expensive undertaking that’s built to last. “This incident is a reminder that we need to look at transportation and infrastructure as a system,” says Nii Attoh-Okine, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Maryland. The Francis Scott Key bridge opened nearly half a century ago, when cargo ships were much smaller. “When these bridges were built, they weren’t necessarily built to withstand the size and weight and force of a cargo ship like this one ramming into it,” says Phiroz. “It wasn’t foreseeable that a scenario like this would take place.”
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New York Times ☛ How Elon Musk Became ‘Kind of Pro-China’
He gained access to top leaders and secured policy changes that benefited Tesla. He also got workers accustomed to long hours and fewer protections, after clashing with U.S. regulators over labor conditions at his California plant. The Shanghai factory helped make Tesla the most valuable car company in the world and Mr. Musk ultrarich.
But Tesla is now struggling. Mr. Musk helped create his competition, Chinese E.V. makers that are taking market share and becoming a security concern for the United States and Europe.
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Wildlife/Nature
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] Brazil, France Launch $1.1 Billion Program to Protect Amazon Rainforest
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US News And World Report ☛ Biden Restores Endangered Species Protections Rolled Back by Trump
The 51-year-old Endangered Species Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1973, is credited with helping to save the bald eagle, the California condor and numerous other animals and plants on the brink of extinction.
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The Drone Girl ☛ Kerry Mapes: how she pulled off that viral Barbie drone photoshoot - The Drone Girl
Despite the novelty of movie-inspired photoshoots, Kerry’s passion lies in capturing nature.
With an undergraduate degree in biology and conservation ecology, Kerry finds a natural connection between her academic background and her drone work.
“At least 75% of my work involves some aspect of the earth or nature,” Mapes said.
Living in North Carolina, Kerry says she is drawn to marshes.
“They’re my favorite ecosystem to explore,” she said. “Seeing them from above offers a unique perspective.”
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Futurism ☛ Wild Searches Trending in Texas After Porn Ban
The search term "how to watch porn in Texas?" had ticked up an extraordinary 3,500 percent during that time period with — surprise! — conservative areas like Lubbock scoring highest for this search term. For context, Lubbock passed an anti-abortion ordinance in 2021 making the municipality a "Sanctuary City for the Unborn."
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Quartz ☛ AI hiring craze has reaches U.S. government with new agency rule
As the use of artificial intelligence continues to spread at all levels, the U.S. government wants to staff up federal agencies with AI experts — or, if they don’t, stop using the technology.
The White House Office of Management and Budget is requiring U.S. federal agencies to designate chief AI officers, Vice President Kamala Harris announced in a briefing Thursday. These new additions to the C-suite will be responsible for coordinating the use of AI across agencies as part of a push to heighten accountability and oversight for the use of the technology within the federal government.
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Techdirt ☛ EU’s Digital Services Act Stumbles Out Of The Gate As Member States Fail To Appoint Regulators
It makes it difficult to take seriously if the EU countries themselves aren’t taking it seriously. It also seems to reinforce the idea that the EU really only cares about regulating the big American companies, for all the talk of how the DSA was meant to regulate all [Internet] companies. The process necessary to regulate the smaller, local companies is a clear afterthought and not considered at all important.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Biden administration unveils new AI safeguard rules for federal use
The Biden administration today announced new policies for the government’s use of artificial intelligence, calling upon federal agencies to adopt “concrete safeguards” by Dec. 1 to protect the rights and safety of Americans.
The new directives, outlined in a fact sheet, state that the White House Office of Management and Budget is issuing three new policies that will improve transparency and require that government agencies’ use of AI does not endanger the safety of U.S. citizens. In addition, all federal agencies must designate a chief AI officer.
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USA ☛ FACT SHEET: Vice President Harris Announces OMB Policy to Advance Governance, Innovation, and Risk Management in Federal Agencies’ Use of Artificial Intelligence | The White House
By December 1, 2024, Federal agencies will be required to implement concrete safeguards when using AI in a way that could impact Americans’ rights or safety. These safeguards include a range of mandatory actions to reliably assess, test, and monitor AI’s impacts on the public, mitigate the risks of algorithmic discrimination, and provide the public with transparency into how the government uses AI. These safeguards apply to a wide range of AI applications from health and education to employment and housing.
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Scoop News Group ☛ White House unveils AI governance policy focused on risks, transparency
The White House released its much-anticipated artificial intelligence governance policy Thursday, establishing a roadmap for federal agencies’ management and usage of the budding technology.
The 34-page memo from Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda D. Young corresponds with President Joe Biden’s October AI executive order, providing more detailed guardrails and next steps for agencies. It finalizes a draft of the policy that was released for public comment in November.
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The Record ☛ Hillary Clinton: AI and deepfakes pose a ‘totally different type of threat’
Clinton also used the interview as a chance to call for the overturning of Section 230, which is part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and which generally gives immunity for online computer services in terms of third-party content generated by its users. Many experts believe that Section 230 is a key factor in allowing disinformation to flourish online.
Two Supreme Court challenges last year left Section 230 intact. Clinton called that a mistake.
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Wired ☛ The White House Puts New Guardrails on Government Use of AI
The US government issued new rules Thursday requiring more caution and transparency from federal agencies using artificial intelligence, saying they are needed to protect the public as AI rapidly advances. But the new policy also has provisions to encourage AI innovation in government agencies when the technology can be used for public good.
The US hopes to emerge as an international leader with its new regime for government AI. Vice President Kamala Harris said during a news briefing ahead of the announcement that the administration plans for the policies to “serve as a model for global action.” She said that the US “will continue to call on all nations to follow our lead and put the public interest first when it comes to government use of AI.”
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Quartz ☛ Reddit stock falls as short-sellers come after IPO
Reddit shares fell as much as 11% at market open to a low of $51.52 after an already-bad Wednesday. Bloomberg reports that Wednesday’s decline was in part due to a Hedgeye Risk Management report naming Reddit as a short idea, saying the stock could plummet 50%.
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Axios ☛ Truth Social faces harsh reality as a public company
Why it matters: While the app does sell some ads, its business is practically non-existent.
• Truth Social earned $3.4 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2023 and it lost around $49 million.
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The Strategist ☛ Making emerging technologies safe for democracy
While these developments hold great promise, applying them recklessly could lead to irreversible harm. The destabilising effect of unregulated social media on political systems over the past decade is a prime example. Likewise, absent appropriate safeguards, the biotech breakthroughs we welcome today could unleash new pandemics tomorrow, whether from accidental lab leaks or deliberate weaponization.
Regardless of whether one is excited by the possibilities of technological innovation or concerned about potential risks, the unique characteristics, corporate power, and global scale of these technologies require guardrails and oversight. These companies’ immense power and global reach, together with the potential for misuse and unintended consequences, underscore the importance of ensuring that these powerful systems are used responsibly and in ways that benefit society.
Here, governments face a seemingly impossible task: they must oversee systems that are not fully understood by their creators while also trying to anticipate future breakthroughs. To navigate this dilemma, policymakers must deepen their understanding of how these technologies function, as well as the interplay between them.
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India Times ☛ amazon anthropic investment: ETtech Explainer: Why is Amazon’s $4-billion investment in Anthropic significant?
The investment comes six months after Amazon invested $1.25 billion in Anthropic, making the San Francisco-based startup Amazon’s most important AI partner.
But the investment in Anthropic is not just a simple equity stake for Amazon. Like Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI, it includes getting access to AI systems and commitments to provide computing power. However, it stops short of the high-value acquisitions that could trigger an antitrust review.
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New York Times ☛ Amazon Adds $2.75 Billion to its Stake in Anthropic
Six months ago, Amazon invested $1.25 billion in Anthropic, making the San Francisco start-up Amazon’s most important A.I. partner. Amazon said at the time that it had the option to bring its total investment to $4 billion. It had until the end of March to do so, according to financial filings.
Still, the additional investment shows the enormous resources that tech companies are pouring into A.I. and is indicative of how much financial support Anthropic needs to keep pace with its peers.
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Overpopulation
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Omicron Limited ☛ To manage chronic wasting disease, some animals die so more can live
An infected animal continuously sheds the infectious agent—a protein called a prion—into the environment in their saliva, feces and urine, and through their bodies when they die and decompose.
These prions stay infectious for years, although researchers still don't know for how long. To make matters worse, there is no way to disinfect or burn these prions away. And so, reducing disease spread is still the best approach to minimizing impacts on cervids and the people who rely on them.
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Los Angeles Times ☛ Hay consumes a vast share of the Colorado River's water
With chronic water shortages afflicting the Colorado River, discussions about how to cut usage have increasingly focused on a thirsty crop that consumes an especially large share of the river’s water: hay that is grown to feed cattle and produce beef and dairy products.
In a new study, researchers found that alfalfa and other cattle feed crops consume 46% of the water that is diverted from the river, accounting for nearly two-thirds of agricultural water use. The research also shows that agriculture is the dominant user of Colorado River water, accounting for 74% of the water that is diverted — about three times the combined usage of all the cities that depend on the river.
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The Hindu ☛ Water woes in Kerala’s wetland
Kuttanad region, famous for cultivating paddy below the sea level, is reeling under a severe drinking water crisis caused by water pollution, high salinity, and changing weather patterns. Hiran Unnikrishnan and Sam Paul A. travel to the region that spans 62 grama panchayats in Kottayam, Alappuzha, and Pathanamthitta districts to understand the issue up-close
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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The Register UK ☛ Hillary Clinton: 2024 is 'ground zero' for AI and elections
This will be a huge election year, with more than four billion people on this planet eligible to vote in one poll or another. The output of generative AI in all this politics, at least, is expected to be unavoidable in 2024; deepfake images, falsified audio, and such software-imagined stuff are likely to be used in attempts to sway or put off voters, undermine people's confidence in election processes, and sow division.
That's not to say nothing should be trusted, or that elections will be thrown. Instead, everyone should be mindful of artificial intelligence, what it can do, and how it can be misused.
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The Hill ☛ GOP Michigan state rep mistakenly claims Gonzaga team buses are for ‘illegal invaders’
A Republican state legislator in Michigan railed against buses of “illegal invaders” landing at his local airport Wednesday, but he garnered criticism after it was discovered the buses carried a college basketball team.
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Gizmodo ☛ TikTokers Are Convinced the Solar Eclipse Will Break Our World 'Simulation'
In reality, the path of totality isn’t going over six, seven, or eight towns named Nineveh. The totality is passing over just two towns named Nineveh, in Ohio and Indiana, which certainly makes the claim that this is a sign from God sound less ominous.
Dan McClellan, a biblical scholar who often answers questions on TikTok about the history of religion, has created videos explaining why these claims of prophecy make no sense, even from a biblical perspective. And his own map of various U.S. towns named Nineveh, created with data from NASA, shows it’s really just two.
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Quartz ☛ Baltimore Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse conspiracy theories
What really happened to cause the bridge collapse on Tuesday, according to the loudest voices on social media? We’ve compiled a list with some of the dumbest theories, including everything from the idea that explosive charges were scattered across the bridge to the theory that Ukraine was somehow responsible for the collapse.
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India Times ☛ Deepfakes: How extreme can the imitation possibly be
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Press Gazette ☛ Reach plans to move 300 journalists into central traffic-driving content hub
Reach is planning to create a central team of journalists to produce traffic-driving content for use across multiple of its national and regional websites.
The proposal, presented by chief digital publisher David Higgerson to all editorial staff on Tuesday, will see around 300 journalists from the company’s total of about 2,000 editorial staff moved into the new Reach Content Hub.
The hub will aim to reduce multiple journalists writing similar stories on topic verticals such as trends, wellbeing, screen time and money, Press Gazette understands.
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NPR ☛ California judge recommends disbarment of pro-Trump attorney John Eastman
"Eastman's wrongdoing constitutes exceptionally serious ethical violations warranting severe professional discipline," wrote California State Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland in her decision. "Eastman made multiple patently false and misleading statements in court filings, in public remarks heard by countless Americans and to others regarding the conduct of the 2020 presidential election and Vice President Pence's authority to refuse to count or delay counting properly certified slates of electoral votes on January 6, 2021."
Judge Roland also criticized Eastman's defiant response to the allegations against him.
"His lack of insight into the wrongfulness of his misconduct is deeply troubling," wrote Judge Roland. "While Eastman is entitled to defend himself, his conduct goes beyond this, revealing a complete failure to understand the wrongfulness of his actions."
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Censorship/Free Speech
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AccessNow ☛ Meta is revisiting its hate speech policy on Zionism — here’s why it’s (still) a bad idea
Meta is (re)considering how to moderate content involving the term “Zionist.” Here’s why this hate speech policy is (still) a bad idea.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Sweden Quran burner says he will go to Norway
Salwan Momika, a 37-year-old Christian Iraqi, told AFP news agency that he had left Sweden and arrived in Norway, where he planned to seek asylum.
"I left Sweden because of the persecution I was subjected to by government institutions," Momika said in a text message.
In an interview published Wednesday by Swedish tabloid Expressen, Momika said, "I am on my way to Norway. Sweden only accepts terrorists who are granted asylum and given protection, while philosophers and thinkers are expelled."
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VOA News ☛ China Makes Misleading Claims About US to Evade Criticism over New Hong Kong Law
Article 23 undermines freedom of speech and the right to assembly, both of which are fundamental rights protected under the U.S. Constitution and Hong Kong’s Basic Law. It broadens the definition of “sedition” to not requiring incitement of violence for a conviction. That means criticism of the Hong Kong or Chinese government could be defined as “sedition.”
Besides putting protests and whistleblowing in the crosshairs, the new law also enables the Hong Kong government to attack those who have fled and potentially invalidate their passports.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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CPJ ☛ Rare rebuke for Chinese police who harassed state journalists covering gas explosion
During a live broadcast about the tragic incident, two police officers interrupted CCTV reporter Yang Hailing and attempted to block the camera. At least 10 officers allegedly pushed another CCTV reporter, Xu Mengzhe, and two colleagues while they were reporting live on camera.
The incident prompted a rare rebuke from the All-China Journalists Association, a group overseen by China’s Communist Party. The association issued a statement demanding local authorities allow journalists to report on incidents concerning public security.
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Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ Saudi Arabia: Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman Conspired in Khashoggi Murder
Current Saudi Defense Minister and former Ambassador to the U.S. Khalid bin Salman (KBS) is a close advisor and brother of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). He conspired in the plot to murder of Jamal Khashoggi, advising him to complete official paperwork in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, but where a Saudi hit team ambushed and murdered Khashoggi. During KBS's time as Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. (April 2017 – February 2019), the Saudi government also recruited U.S.-based Saudi citizens to spy on, harass, and intimidate Saudi activists in the U.S. and Canada.
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The Atlantic ☛ Atlantic tops 1 million subscriptions and profitability
The Atlantic now has more than 1 million subscriptions and is profitable, surpassing two goals that the company set several years ago. In an email to The Atlantic’s staff, quoted in part below, Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg and CEO Nicholas Thompson announce this news.
Overall revenue is up more than 10 percent year over year; advertising booked year-to-date is also up 33 percent year over year. Subscriptions to The Atlantic have increased by double-digit percentages in each of the past four years––and surged 14 percent in the past year. The Atlantic has more than doubled the total number of paid subscriptions since it launched digital and a digital + print bundle four years ago.
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Mint Press News ☛ Chris Hedges: The Crucifixion of Julian Assange
Prosecutors representing the United States, whether by design or incompetence, refused — in the two-day hearing I attended in London in February — to provide guarantees that Julian Assange would be afforded First Amendment rights and would be spared the death penalty if extradited to the U.S.
The inability to give these assurances all but guaranteed that the High Court — as it did on Tuesday — would allow Julian’s lawyers to appeal. Was this done to stall for time so that Julian would not be extradited until after the U.S. presidential election? Was it a delaying tactic to work out a plea deal? Julian’s lawyers and U.S. prosecutors are discussing this possibility. Was it careless legal work? Or was it to keep Julian locked in a high-security prison until he collapsed mentally and physically?
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CPJ ☛ CPJ joins call for EU to prioritize rule of law
CPJ joined 38 other civil society organizations on Wednesday in calling on the European Commission to strengthen its fifth annual rule of law report, which assesses media freedom in European Union member states.
With Europe due to vote from June 6 to 9, the 39 groups also called on the new European Commission to prioritize implementation of their recommendations.
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CPJ ☛ Fragile Progress: The struggle for press freedom in the European Union
The EU’s next parliamentary election will take place in 2024. Much has changed in the media landscape since EU citizens last went to the polls. Brussels, the shorthand reference for major EU institutions like the European Commission, the Council, the European Parliament, and the Court of Justice, has increasingly recognized that while journalists played a key role in defending EU interests and values, the EU was not doing enough to protect them – and that this needed to change. Renewed will and a strengthened mandate from the European Commission after 2019 saw Brussels pledge to tackle issues from journalist safety, the economic undermining of independent journalism through media capture, and the vexatious lawsuits known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs). EU legislation like the Journalist Safety Recommendation, the anti-SLAPP Directive, and the European Media Freedom Act spelled out a positive new direction for the EU.
Professional associations and press freedom groups have also strengthened networks and coalitions that increased their profiles and enhanced the importance of press freedom within the EU institutions, pushing for common EU policies to support journalists and guarantee their safety.
At the same time, new challenges have arisen. Overall, the EU’s shift still needs to be translated into meaningful action within member states. Some governments used the COVID-19 pandemic to control the media, including restricting access to journalists and withholding public-interest information. Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has tested the EU’s ability to protect journalist safety.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2024-03-22 [Older] Workplace Fragmentation Demands New Organizing Strategies
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2024-03-26 [Older] Worker-to-Worker Unionism: A Model for Labor to Scale Up
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Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Key findings from AP's investigation into police force that isn't supposed to be lethal | National | reformer.com
Over a decade, more than 1,000 people died after police subdued them through physical holds, stun guns, body blows and other means not intended to be lethal, an investigation led by The Associated Press found. In hundreds of cases, officers weren’t taught or didn’t follow best safety practices for this force, creating a recipe for death.
Medical officials cited law enforcement as causing or contributing to about half of the deaths. In many others, significant police force went unmentioned and drugs or preexisting health problems were blamed instead.
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New York Times ☛ Saudi Arabia, Lagging on Women’s Rights, Is to Lead U.N. Women’s Forum
Saudi Arabia will chair a United Nations commission on women, bringing condemnation from human rights groups, which said the kingdom still has an “abysmal” record on women’s rights.
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JURIST ☛ Saudi Arabia to chair UN women's rights forum
Saudi Arabia was elected chair of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) by “acclamation” on Wednesday after an unopposed bid for leadership with no dissent, despite outcry from human rights organizations ahead of the vote. Saudi Ambassador to the UN Abdulaziz Alwasil will assume the position.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Outrage as Saudi Arabia picked to head women's rights forum
Such posts rotate among the UN's five regional groups, and are usually confirmed unanimously, in a precedent that other countries may have been unwilling to upset. The Asia group, which includes Saudi Arabia, unanimously confirmed the Saudi candidacy.
The choice has prompted a backlash by rights groups, who note the country's track record on women's rights. Saudi Arabia ranks 131 out of 146 countries on gender equality, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF) .
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The Register UK ☛ Study claims more than half of Americans use ad blockers
According to a survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by research firm Censuswide, on behalf of Ghostery, a maker of software to block ads and online tracking, 52 percent of Americans now use an ad blocker, up from 34 percent according to 2022 Statista data.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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RIPE ☛ Geoff Huston: Starlink and the Future of Low-Orbit Internet
Starlink's megaconstellations deliver broadband Internet to customers around the globe. But while the tech promises to democratise Internet access, it's not always clear how existing protocols and regulations apply beyond the clouds. In this episode, Geoff Huston talks about the future of low-orbit Internet.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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The New Leaf Journal ☛ Against Buying Games From Smart TV Stores
That is a fool-proof tip for never buying a scam game on your LG TV. As a general matter, I would advise against buying any games from a smart TV app store, if you are Bob and you receive a recommendation from Alice. Even assuming arguendo that you can run open source Android apps on an Android-powered TV (I never had an Android-powered TV so I have no idea), I would still advise against running them there. If you want to play games, attach a computer to the TV (laptops work), stream from your phone, or purchase a game console. Please – whatever you do – do not buy games from the LG TV content store. Without having tried said store, I am reasonably confident that hunting for games on it is a poor life-choice.
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The Verge ☛ Algorithms can aid price collusion, even if no humans actually talk to each other, US enforcers say
The plaintiffs are trying to show that the hotels violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits “conspiracy in restraint of trade” and is used to prosecute illegal price-fixing. They say that the hotels allegedly used a pricing algorithm platform called Rainmaker, knowing that their competitors were also using the platform and choosing it for that reason.
The agencies really care about how this issue is handled. “Judicial treatment of the use of algorithms in price fixing has tremendous practical importance,” the DOJ and FTC write in their statement. They’ve already filed similar statements in other algorithmic price-fixing cases, like in one lawsuit against rental property management software company RealPage. Tenants have accused the company of contributing to higher rental prices through its access to and use of nonpublic pricing data from landlords.
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John Gruber ☛ Daring Fireball: The EU’s Share of Apple’s Global Revenue
So EU member states account for only 25–30 percent of Apple’s revenue from “Europe”, and just 7 percent globally. 7 percent is significant, to be sure, and in addition to users, there are of course many iOS and Mac developers in EU countries. I really don’t know what Apple pulling out of the EU would even look like, but it would be ugly. Could they merely stop selling the iPhone there but continue selling other products? Would that create a massive gray market for iPhones imported from outside the EU? How would Apple deal with the hundreds of millions of existing iPhone owners in the EU? I have no idea. It would be a mess, to be sure, but the DMA has already made doing business in the EU a mess for Apple and the other designated gatekeepers. But one can make the case — as Eric Seufert has — that American companies have to at least consider the fact that doing business in the EU isn’t worth the risk of fines so vastly disproportionate to the revenue they generate in the EU.
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CoryDoctorow ☛ The credit card fee victory is a defeat (28 Mar 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
But if you actually delve into that settlement, the victory gets very hollow indeed. Here's the figure that didn't make the headline: as a part of this settlement, the sky-high fees merchants pay to process your credit-card transaction are going up by 25%: [...]
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India Times ☛ amazon eu tech rules ad clause: Amazon loses court fight to suspend EU tech rules' ad clause
Under the Digital Services Act (DSA) which kicked in last year, Amazon was designated as a very large online platform subject to tough rules to tackle illegal and harmful content on its platform.
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Quartz ☛ Facebook killed its Watch streaming service to help Netflix, feds say
These unsealed court filings stem from a class action antitrust case against Meta, first spotted on X by Jason Kint. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of consumers and advertisers, alleges Meta is a monopoly in the social media market.
Netflix was a large advertiser to Facebook, and plaintiffs allege Zuckerberg shuttered its promising Watch platform for the sake of the greater advertising business. Zuckerberg personally emailed the head of Facebook Watch in May of 2018, Fidji Simo, to tell her their budget was being slashed by $750 million, just two years after Watch’s launch, according to court filings. The sudden pivot meant Facebook was now dismantling the streaming business it had spent the last two years growing.
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Gizmodo ☛ Facebook Allegedly Killed Its Own Streaming Service to Help Sell Netflix Ads
Do you remember Facebook Watch? Me neither. Mark Zuckerberg’s short-lived streaming service never really got off the ground, but court filings unsealed in Meta’s antitrust lawsuit claim “Watch” was kneecapped starting in 2018 to protect Zuckerberg’s advertising relationship with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.
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CoryDoctorow ☛ End of the line for corporate sovereignty (27 Mar 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
For the US and the UK, the lesson was clear: they needed a less kinetic way to ensure that sovereign countries around the world steered clear of policies that undermined the profits of their oil companies and other commercial giants. Thus, the "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) was born.
The modern ISDS was perfected in the 1990s with the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT). The ECT was meant to foam the runway for western corporations seeking to take over ex-Soviet energy facilities, by making those new post-Glasnost governments promise to never pass laws that would undermine foreign companies' profits.
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Patents
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Futurism ☛ Ozempic Is Being Sold for Hundreds of Times What It Costs to Make
But according to a new paper published today in the journal JAMA Network, that's nowhere near the actual cost of producing semaglutide, the scientific name of Ozempic's active ingredient.
The authors from Yale University, King’s College Hospital in London, and the nonprofit Doctors Without Borders found that producing glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists (GLP1As) like semaglutide only costs anywhere from $0.89 to $4.73 for a monthly supply.
In other words, Novo Nordisk is selling the substance at a spectacular markup — for hundreds or even a thousand times what it costs to manufacture.
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CNBC ☛ How Ozempic and Wegovy turned Novo Nordisk into a $400 billion company
Novo Nordisk's treatments are not the only GLP-1 treatments available, but they are the only semaglutide products currently on the U.S. market, as the company holds a patent until 2032.
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The Print ☛ Ozempic makers could be raking in 40,000% profit — study says diabetes drug can be made for $1/month
According to an analysis by Doctors Without Borders or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), this disparity in pricing for Semaglutide, sold under the brand name of Ozempic, results in 39,562 percent markup — the difference between the production cost and selling price of the drug.
Factors such as cost of innovation, monopoly and profiteering contribute to the high pricing of such drugs. According to the study, patents prevent competition and play a leading role in keeping prices high for a wide range of medicines.
The study, published Thursday in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) analysed the prices of new diabetes medicines and insulin pens used by type 1 diabetics and severe cases of type 2 diabetes.
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Trademarks
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Right of Publicity
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Gizmodo ☛ Family Requests 'Mamma Mia" Star Be Replaced With AI in BBC Documentary
“In these very particular circumstances and with the family’s wishes in mind we have agreed to use AI for a brief section to recreate a voice which can now no longer be heard,” said a BBC spokesperson in a statement. “This will be clearly labelled within the film.”
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Copyrights
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The Age AU ☛ TikTok in the sights as Universal and Spotify announce new partnership
Universal Music Group has announced a new deal with Spotify aimed at increasing the “virality” of new releases, in what appears to be an expansion of the label’s battle with TikTok.
The partnership was unveiled on Thursday (US time), just two weeks after Spotify announced it would make full-length music videos available on its platform, putting it in direct competition with YouTube – and, indirectly, Universal.
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Variety ☛ WGA Demands Congress' 'Urgent Action' on AI Protections for Writers
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) and other unions representing film and TV writers and journalists sent a letter to Congress Thursday urging protections for their industries in any legislation regarding Artificial Intelligence.
Addressed to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the letter was co-signed by the NewsGuild-CWA, Writers Guild of America East (WGAE), Writers Guild of America West (WGAW), and National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET-CWA).
“So far this year, our members have witnessed the impact of unregulated AI on their jobs,” the letter, obtained by Variety, states. “Major news media companies, including Gannett and G/O Media sites, deployed AI articles with fake bylines to replace the work of hardworking local and digital journalists and writers. Film and television writers won critical protections in their collective bargaining agreement, but their work continues to be used by AI developers without their consent.”
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Torrent Freak ☛ Hollywood Studios, Amazon & Netflix Sue 'Evasive' Pirate IPTV Operator From Texas
A Dallas resident is being sued by several major Hollywood studios, Amazon, and Netflix for operating a pirate IPTV operation. In a complaint filed at a federal court in Texas, they accuse the defendant of widespread copyright infringement dating back to 2016. After cautioning the alleged (re)seller of 'TV Nitro', 'Streaming TV Now', and other services, the companies are taking the matter to court.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Ukraine Commits to Piracy Crackdown, Draws Up Blacklist, Joins WIPO ALERT
Following an announcement by the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine in February, the Ministry of Justice has registered an order that will see Ukraine become a full participant in the World Intellectual Property Organization's WIPO ALERT initiative. In common with its counterparts, Ukraine will maintain a list of pirate sites that advertisers will be required to boycott. The order also provides for administrative liability for companies that fail to adhere to the rules.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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the story of a man named charlie
there's this song, right, it's called "M.T.A." (or charlie on the mta, depending on who you ask), and i think i'm getting a bit obsessed
it was a campaign song for a mayoral candidate in boston in the late '40s, written by some local folk musicians, and it's become part of the mbta's¹ lore. our fare cards are named after the protagonist of the song, charlie, who gets stuck on the t because he doesn't have a nickel for a then-recently-instituted exit fare that the mayoral candidate was opposing
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🔤SpellBinding: CDEITVU Wordo: LOFTS
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Swimming
Humans can swim but can't
You can actually die just by going into water, if you didn't manually learn to swim.
Like, evolution, wtf? The human body definitely *can* swim.
And it even has the primate preset for it. Like, hello, it's update eon, did you run sudo dnf update recently? We have asses now, the muscle mass and body shape shifted around, this stuff is outdated as hell.
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If I ever write fiction
But if I ever write fiction, this is how it starts. The most mundane conversation, mentioning something you've never heard of and everyone is bored about. Like a dense population living out of silk threading in the middle of rural France.
There are so many casual truths, things that everyone knows, there's no way you know them all.
So maybe, someday, as my attention lingers on a passerby talking loudly to his phone, I'll learn something I can't even imagine.
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Technology and Free Software
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28th March 2024 - gef's 5 Questions for March
gef has kindly asked 5 questions and so I attempt to answer them.
1. What is your favourite soup? Whether you make it from scratch or not. Feel free to explain the process.
Hmmm favourite soups are fairly hard. I suppose dahls count as soups really. I do love a good dahl. However, my go to sort of watery meal is an aloo matar curry. It is fairly simple but has lots of opportunity for variations.
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Groups yes, hashtags no
I’ve got a couple of rants on why hashtags don’t work very well on Fedi but one thing that does work somewhat (it’s a li’l janky still) is groups!
[...]
Now this is way more difficult and nerdy so if you’re just starting out, stick with the follow method above, and read no further!
I don’t like to get overwhelmed by a ton of posts so I don’t like to be directly subscribed to the groups.
You can reply to posts without following them by going to the search box on your instance and pasting in the true, real, original, originating URL for a post. But it’s gotta be the original.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.