Links 19/10/2023: Open Document Format (ODF) Adopted by NATO, Twitter No Longer Free to Use
Contents
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Free, Libre, and Open Source Software
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Standards/Consortia
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NATO ☛ NATO STANDARD: ADatP-34: NATO Interoperability Standards and Profiles: Volume 2, Agreed Interoperability Standards and Profiles, Edition N Version 1, 26 May 2021[PDF]
Open Document Format (ODF) for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 ISO/IEC 26300:2006
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Eric Bailey ☛ Websites are like bridges
An incomplete list: [...]
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Sean Conner ☛ When setting up to do the thing takes longer than doing the thing
While on route to the weekly lunch with some former cow-orkers, my car notified me that the front left tire was low on pressure. 'Tis not a problem, I thought, as we have an air compressor and tire attachment at Chez Boca.
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Hardware
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India Times ☛ IT hardware companies may require global certification
The government may ask laptop, server and other IT hardware importers to provide an international certification attesting that their product is from a trusted source before allowing a licence-free import of it, people in the know of the matter told ET.
This certification, one of the people said, could be from an international organisation. This organisation could periodically verify that the components used in the hardware come from trusted supply chains and do not have any spyware or malware in them, this person said.
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Hackaday ☛ The Birdy44 Keyboard Is Something To Crow About
The funny thing about keyboard end game is that it usually involves more than one keyboard. Rare is the board that is great for both home and away. Having finished their dactyl build, [RalphCoder13] was looking to build something slimmer and more portable, and the Birdy44 was born.
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Hackaday ☛ The Insatiable Hunger Of Paper Shredder-Based Locomotion
We enjoy hacks that combine or alter devices, enhancing (or subverting) their purpose in the process, but [Japhy Riddle] reminds us all that sometimes it’s fun just to enjoy a spectacle. In this case, it’s an old paper shredder given wheels and a continuous line of paper to rip into.
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Hackaday ☛ Daily Inspections Keep Your Spitfire In Tip-Top Shape
What ho, chaps? Look, we know this is a bally nuisance and all, but those desk jockeys at HQ want us all to watch this film about daily insepction of your Spitfire. No Vera and no Greta in this one, more’s the pity, but it is jolly important. We all know that our Spitfires are complicated buckets of bolts, but those kites won’t stay in the air if we don’t maintain them. Yes, the boring stuff, like purging the fuel system of water and refueling outside of the hanger. And, yes, Captain Molesworth, that means putting out that cigar while the tech boys are topping off your tank. Now shut up and watch the film we’ve placed below the break, what?
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Hackaday ☛ Designing A PCB GPS Antenna From Scratch
These days, when it comes to GPS devices the antenna is typically part of the package. But what better opportunity for [Pepijn] to learn how to make a GPS antenna from scratch for a badge add-on?
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Hackaday ☛ Vector Network Analyzer Demo And Teardown
[Kerry Wong], ever interested in trying out and tearing down electrical devices, demonstrates and examines the SV 6301a Handheld Vector Network Analyzer. He puts the machine through its paces, noting that the 7 inch touchscreen is a pretty nice feature for those whose eyesight isn’t quite what it used to be.
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Hackaday ☛ 2023 Halloween Hackfest: A Spooky “Severance” Speaker
If you know, you know. After becoming fully engrossed in the sci-fi psycho-thriller “Severance“, [Ben Brooks] absolutely needed to have a version of the ominous speaker known as the Board.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Gizmodo ☛ Threads 'Temporarily' Blocking Covid-Related Search Terms
Threads search is blocking terms like “Covid,” “vaccines,” “long Covid,” and others, but it is reportedly only temporary according to Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri. This comes a week after he said the app would not “amplify news.”
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Gizmodo ☛ Amazon Begins One-Hour Drone Delivery in Texas for Medications
Amazon announced the new prescription delivery service for Amazon Pharmacy customers on Wednesday. The Prime Air offering is currently only available to customers in College Station, Texas, with drones able to deliver the medication in less than an hour after users click to order. Amazon says that it is able to fulfill 500 different kinds of medication to treat illnesses like flu, pneumonia, and asthma. Those medications will be packaged by one of the company’s pharmacists and picked up by the drone.
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An antivaxxer interviews a respected oncologist about “turbo cancer”
Those of you who’ve been reading my posts on “turbo cancer,” an epidemic of which is being blamed on mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines by antivaxxers, in particular Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch, delicensed nuclear medicine radiologist William Makis, cardiologist turned antivax quack Peter McCullough, and molecular biologists like Phillip Buckhaults and Kevin McKernan, both of whom appear to have forgotten some very basic chemistry along with all the genetics, biochemistry, and molecular biology that they abuse. “Turbo cancer,” as I’ve discussed for nearly a year now, is not a thing, at least not a real thing. It’s a term made up by antivaxxers to claim that COVID-19 vaccines are fueling a wave of incredibly aggressive cancers and/or a wave of recurrences of cancers in remission as unstoppably aggressive cancers.
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Meduza ☛ Bath salts, overdoses, and drug mules The prevalence of substance abuse among Russian soldiers on the front lines — Meduza
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Scoop News Group ☛ GSA to add facial recognition option to Login.gov in 2024
GSA’s Technology Transformation Services will roll out a “proven facial matching technology” in 2024 that follows the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s 800-63-3 Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2) guidelines, according to a GSA blog post.
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[Repeat] Bruce Schneier ☛ Analysis of Intellexa’s Predator Spyware
Amnesty International has published a comprehensive analysis of the Predator government spyware products.
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Amnesty International ☛ Global: ‘Predator Files’ investigation reveals catastrophic failure to regulate surveillance trade
A new investigation into the global surveillance crisis by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) media network, with technical assistance from Amnesty International’s Security Lab, today begins to reveal the shocking truth about how far the industry’s tentacles have spread and how ineffective EU regulation has been in controlling it.
The ‘Predator Files’ focuses on the “Intellexa alliance” — a complex, morphing group of interconnected companies — and Predator, its highly invasive spyware. This spyware, and its rebranded variants, can access unchecked amounts of data on devices. It cannot, at present, be independently audited or limited in its functionality to only those functions that are necessary and proportionate to a specific use and target. Predator can infiltrate a device when the user simply clicks on a malicious link, but it can also be delivered through tactical attacks, which can silently infect nearby devices.
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Techdirt ☛ Professor Wrongly Blames Apple For CSAM
His heart is probably in the right place. That’s the best thing I can say about Berkeley professor Dr. Hany Farid, who has spent the last couple of years being wrong about CSAM (child sexual abuse material) detection.
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EFF ☛ Privacy Advocates to TSA: Slow Down Plans for mDLs
With the TSA’s proposed mDL rules, we ask: what’s the hurry? The agency’s rush to mDLs is ill-advised. For example, many mDL privacy guards are not yet well thought out, the standards referenced are not generally accessible to the public, and the scope for mDLs will reach beyond the context of an airport security line.
And so, EFF submitted comments with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) to the TSA. We object to the agency’s proposed rules for waiving current REAL ID regulations for mobile driver’s licenses. Such premature federal action can undermine privacy, information security, democratic control, and transparency in the rollout of mDLs and other digital identification.
Even though standards bodies like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have frameworks for mDLs, they do not address various issues, such as an mDL potentially “phoning home” every time it is scanned. The privacy guards are still lacking, and left up to each state to implement them in their own way. With the TSA’s proposed waiver process, mDL development will likely be even more fractured, with some implementations better than others. This happened with digital vaccine credentials.
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EFF ☛ Adtech Surveillance and Government Surveillance are Often the Same Surveillance
Traditionally, that required a court order. But increasingly, the government just buys it from data brokers who bought it from the adtech industry.
An investigation from the Wall Street Journal identified a company called Near Intelligence that purchased data about individuals and their devices from brokers who usually sell to advertisers. The company had contracts with government contractors that passed this data along to federal military and intelligence agencies. The company says it purchased data on over a billion devices. The government, in turn, can buy access to geolocation data on all those devices, when generally they’d have to show probable cause and get a warrant to get that same data.
Many smartphone application developers, to make a quick buck, are all too eager to sell your data to the highest bidder–and that often includes the government. Courts should hold that the Fourth Amendment requires police to get a warrant before tracking a person this way, but unfortunately, this corporate-government surveillance partnership has mostly evaded judicial review.
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Confidentiality
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Vice Media Group ☛ A Researcher Hijacked the CIA's Secure Contact Link for Informants Due to a Flaw in X
As first reported by the BBC, 37-year-old Kevin McSheehan—who goes by “pad” online—discovered the issue by accident. Since May, the CIA has run a Telegram channel with instructions in English and Cyrillic for reaching out to the spy agency securely using the Tor browser for the dark web. McSheehan discovered that the link to that channel, which is posted to the CIA’s bio on X, was shortened so that it linked to an unclaimed Telegram account: “t.me/s/SecurelyCont.” Archived versions of the CIA’s X account confirm that this was the case since the beginning of October.
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Defence/Aggression
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Latvia ☛ Repatriation flight from Israel lands in Rīga Monday evening
On October 16 evening, a repatriation flight from Israel provided by airBaltic landed at Riga airport. Nine days after the attacks launched by the terrorist group Hamas, Latvian residents also had the opportunity to leave the country on a special evacuation flight.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Belgium: Terrorist shooting underlines tense mood in Europe
Except on Rue Van Oost, the street where the man suspected of killing two Swedish football fans and wounding a third in the center of the Belgian capital Monday evening was shot dead by police the following morning.
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[Repeat] Defence Web ☛ Corruption costs Africa $140 billion a year
Interpol’s just ended Africa conference in Luanda closed with delegates agreeing to increase information sharing in multiple crime areas from counter-terrorism to wildlife trafficking.
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RFA ☛ US, South Korea warn global companies of covert Pyongyang hackers
The United States and South Korea have issued an alert to the international community on North Korean hackers posing as non-North Korean job seekers, whose objectives are to undertake cyber missions that could accelerate Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.
The authorities from the two countries issued a joint public service announcement late Wednesday that these hackers impersonate “IT workers” and non-DPRK nationals, who could potentially infiltrate global companies.
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CBC ☛ TikTok execs insist China can't access user data during meeting with MPs
Parliamentarians grilled a pair of TikTok executives on the security of Canadians' privacy — and whether China can access the popular social media app's data — during a House committee meeting on Wednesday.
The executives repeatedly told MPs on the access to information, privacy and ethics committee that China and the ruling Chinese Communist Party are not able to view user data. One executive said China has not requested any data at all.
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Janes ☛ Ukraine conflict: Ukraine develops jam-resistant radio
Known as Himera G1, the handheld ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio has been designed to fill a capability gap at the squad-level for an affordable tactical communications system that is resistant to jamming and has a low probability of detection, Misha Rudominski, co-founder of Himera Tech told Janes on 13 October.
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The Atlantic ☛ The House Mess Is What GOP Voters Wanted
Is that what Republican voters really want? Apparently so; as my friend Sarah Longwell, the founder of the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Project, told my Atlantic colleague Ronald Brownstein, “Even if he doesn’t make it, because the majorities are so slim, you can’t argue that Jim Jordan doesn’t represent the median Republican today.”
And that is the part we tend to overlook when we’re focused on the drama inside the Capitol: The disorder in the GOP caucus is not some accident or glitch triggered by a handful of reprobates, but rather a direct result of choices by voters. The House is a mess because enough Republican voters want it to be a mess.
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The Atlantic ☛ The Threat to Democracy Is Coming From Inside the U.S. House
The preponderant majority of House Republicans backing Jordan is attempting to elevate someone who not only defended former President Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election but participated in them more extensively than any other member of Congress, according to the bipartisan committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection. As former Republican Representative Liz Cheney, who was the vice chair of that committee, said earlier this month: “Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives.”
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The Nation ☛ Can the UN Help the Nuclear Victims, At Last?
The very first resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, titled “Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy,” was adopted in January of 1946, less than three months after the founding of the United Nations (UN). Recognizing the devastating humanitarian consequences of the United States atomic bombings on Japan half a year earlier, the resolution called for “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.” The states that had just come together in a new international forum were clear about the need to prevent the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from ever happening again.
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Democracy Now ☛ “Stop the War”: Israeli Peace Activist Whose Parents Were Killed in Hamas Attack Calls for Ceasefire
We speak with Israeli peace activist Maoz Inon, whose parents Bilha and Yakovi Inon were killed in the surprise attack by Hamas militants on October 7 that killed over 1,300 people in Israel. He wants the war to end. “Let’s call for peace. Let’s call for hope. Let’s call for a complete ceasefire. Let’s call for building bridges,” says Inon. “We must build the future, and this future must be based on equality, on partnership, on peace.”
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The Gray Zone ☛ Failed Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó lands new gig as visiting prof at Florida International U
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Meduza ☛ ‘I hope I won’t have to talk about the war’: How the next generation of Russian history teachers is preparing to teach a reimagined past — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ State Duma unanimous in approving Russia’s revocation of its Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratification — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ ‘War is war’: Putin’s remarks to the press during his second trip abroad as a wanted man — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Patriarch Kirill says Russia’s nuclear weapons created ‘by divine providence’ to keep country ‘free and independent’ — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Putin calls supply of ATACMS missiles to Ukraine ‘another mistake by the U.S.’ — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ A potential game changer How the ATACMS differs from the other missiles in Ukraine’s arsenal — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Two killed in Russian missile strike on Zaporizhzhia, four missing — Meduza
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Environment
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DeSmog ☛ California enacts far-reaching climate disclosure laws
On October 7, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping series of climate and environmental laws into effect, cementing the Golden State’s reputation as a leader in climate action. The laws establish some of the country’s most robust rules for businesses to disclose greenhouse gas emissions, the content of their carbon offsets, and the financial risks they face due to climate change. They also hope to speed up the state’s adoption of more renewable energy, in particular offshore wind projects. Still, the governor raised some eyebrows by vetoing bills that might have sped up construction of new transmission lines — an essential complement to the buildout of renewable power — and signaled that even the bills he just signed could be revised to satisfy business interests in the coming years.
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Pro Publica ☛ California Oil Companies Face Tougher Enforcement Under New Law
California will soon have more authority to fine oil companies that cause major spills or other hazards. The new law, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2024, was authored in response to a Desert Sun and ProPublica probe that found the state agency charged with regulating fossil fuel companies had a spotty enforcement record and had collected no fines in 2020. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 631 on Oct. 7.
The law increases penalties to as much as $70,000 per day for continuing violations, and it gives state regulators new abilities to request criminal enforcement.
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Energy/Transportation
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Common Dreams ☛ EU sets path to secure fossil fuel phase-out agreement at COP28
Importantly, while the EU recognizes the need for the energy sector to be free of fossil fuels, well ahead of 2050, it does not fully close the door to ‘abatement’, a set of poorly defined technologies that have been promoted by the fossil fuel industry and its enablers to distract from the need to rapidly phase out all fossil fuels, which risks weakening its negotiating position in Dubai. However, the EU makes it clear that such technologies have a limited role to play and are no substitute for the phase out of fossil fuels. The Environment ministers say: "emissions abatement technologies ... exist at limited scale and are to be used to reduce emissions primarily from hard to abate sectors." They also state that they "should not be used to delay climate action in sectors where ... alternatives are available,” which includes the energy sector.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Nigeria taps into the global lithium market
Lithium is currently mined in Nassarawa, Kogi, Kwara, Ekiti, and Cross River States.
The mineral is also being mined extensively in Zimbabwe, Africa's largest producer, as well as in Namibia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, and Ghana.
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DeSmog ☛ If the First Solar Entrepreneur Hadn’t Been Kidnapped, Would Fossil Fuels Have Dominated the 20th Century the Way They Did?
One argument put forward in defense of fossil fuels is that they were a historical necessity, because there was no other viable substitute for much of the 20th century. We owe fossil fuels a debt of gratitude, the argument goes, because they supercharged our development. But what if I told you there was a viable alternative, and that it may have been sabotaged by fossil fuel interests from its very inception?
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DeSmog ☛ Despite ‘Energy Transition’ Theme, Petroleum Congress Rejected Climate Action
At the conclusion of the 24th edition of the World Petroleum Congress, which was ambitiously titled Energy Transition: The Path to Net Zero, little progress appears to have been made on advancing the cause of energy transition or of accelerating on the road to net zero.
Rather, a consistent theme of the congress was the idea that international commitments to achieve net zero by 2050, or to attain even modest Paris Agreement targets, were unrealistic, arbitrary, or threatened global energy stability and security.
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DeSmog ☛ Mapped: The Deep Ties Between Big Ag and Europe’s Right-Wing Politicians
Striding out on alpine hikes, mingling at rooftop soirées and lending office space free of charge – these are just some of the ways Big Ag has sought to win over influential EU lawmakers on critical green reforms in recent years.
These relationship-building activities have helped to forge a powerful alliance in Brussels between select politicians from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and those with a commercial interest in slowing moves to more nature-friendly farming: pesticide manufacturers and farming unions linked to industry.
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Overpopulation
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The Strategist ☛ Tigris–Euphrates basin states must come together to address water crisis
During the Syrian civil war, water was frequently used as a weapon. In May 2015, for instance, Islamic State took control of the Ramadi Dam in Iraq and reduced the outflow of the Euphrates River, diverting water into Lake Habbaniya. This drained the water supply of several provinces, hurting civilian communities. Other parties to the conflict in Syria also weaponised water access to punish or gain leverage over populations and exacerbated the already dire water crisis.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Meduza ☛ Google’s Russian subsidiary bankrupted, company assets to be auctioned off — Meduza
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India Times ☛ Meta to limit some Facebook comments on Israeli, Palestinian posts
Earlier this week, some users who posted in support for Palestine or Gaza citizens accused Meta of suppressing their content. Meta designates Hamas as a "dangerous organization" and bans content praising the group.
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Quartz ☛ Elon Musk has made X (Twitter) all about him. Just look at the numbers
To be fair, the downward trend is not unique to X; other social networks have seen drops in traffic as well. Traffic to the top 100 social networks and communities was down 3.7% in September compared to the year before, according to SimilarWeb. A big exception, though, was short-form video platform TikTok, which got an impressive 22.8% bump in September.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ X to test $1 annual subscription fee.
The purpose of introducing the new subscription model is to combat bots and spammers, X said, adding that the fee will vary from country to country based on the exchange rate.
X said the new method will be first available for users in New Zealand and Philippines.
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Techdirt ☛ The Great Paywall Of Musk Will Consist Of $1/Year To Tweet
You will recall that, last month, Elon Musk mentioned in passing that he’d decided the only way to stop bots and spam on Twitter (which he’d already claimed to have stopped a few times earlier) was to paywall the entire site with “a small monthly payment for use of the X system.” This statement apparently caught CEO-in-name-only Linda Yaccarino entirely by surprise, as she seemed unaware of the issue when asked about it live on stage a couple weeks later.
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El País ☛ Musk’s X tests $1 fee for new users in the Philippines and New Zealand in bid to target spam
Elon Musk’s social media platform X has begun charging a $1 fee to new users in the Philippines and New Zealand, in a test designed to cut down on the spam and fake accounts flourishing on the site formerly known as Twitter.
The company said late Tuesday that it has started trying out the annual subscription method for new and unverified accounts. The program, dubbed Not a Bot, won’t apply to existing users.
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Digital Music News ☛ Twitter Now Charging $1 Per Year for New Accounts in Some Regions
Rumors have been swirling that Elon Musk will begin charging an access fee for X/Twitter. The first iteration of that appears to be here with a ‘not a bot’ fee charged to New Zealand and the Philippines. Here’s the latest.
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CoryDoctorow ☛ What Americans want
The latest Pew Research mega-report investigates Americans' attitudes towards politics, and honestly, the title says it all: "Americans’ Dismal Views of the Nation’s Politics": [...]
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The Register UK ☛ Amazon to drop a cool $1B on Microsoft 365 cloud suite
Microsoft is set to welcome Amazon as a big spender on its software in a deal believed to be worth more than $1 billion over five years, according to Insider, which claims to have seen documented proof and cites an unnamed source said to be familiar with the situation.
Four out of every five Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft's productivity tools, and Amazon has been running on-prem versions of Microsoft Office ahead of the switch to the semi cloud-based suite.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Amazon to switch to Microsoft 365 in $1-billion deal: report
Microsoft is preparing to bring Amazon.com on as a customer for its 365 cloud productivity tools in a deal worth more than US$1-billion, news site Insider reported on Tuesday (paywall), citing an internal document and a person familiar with the matter.
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Pro Publica ☛ How the GOP Uses Privilege to Keep Redistricting Work Secret
Eva Bonilla grows furious when she thinks about how Latino voters are treated by the Republican power structure in Texas. At 74, the small business owner watched the GOP Legislature pass a series of measures like a voter ID law that she felt would make it harder for Latinos to cast ballots or run for public office.
Two years ago, serving as the leader of a Hispanic women’s group in Fort Worth, she decided to strike back. The Republican Legislature had just pushed through new election maps that carved up Latino communities and made it even harder for them to elect candidates of their choice. So Bonilla joined other minority voters as plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit alleging intentional discrimination in the 2021 redistricting plan.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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New York Times ☛ Hamas Is Barred From Social Media. Its Messages Are Still Spreading.
Such posts are the latest challenge for technology companies as many of them try to minimize the spread of false or extremist content while preserving content that does not run afoul of their rules. In past conflicts, like the genocide in Myanmar or other attacks between Palestinians and Israel, social media companies struggled to strike the right balance, with watchdog groups criticizing their responses for being too limited or sometimes overzealous.
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RTE ☛ Fake Ads
We are aware of misleading material circulating on social media which replicates RTÉ branding, features RTÉ newscasters and presenters, and purports to be official RTÉ content. In some cases, ‘deep fake’ technology can be used to portray reports by RTÉ presenters which never actually occurred.
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Techdirt ☛ ExTwitter Misclassifies Your Spam Reports So It Doesn’t Have To Take Down Spammers
Elon Musk keeps insisting that stopping spam bots is a huge priority. After all, he said he’d either stop them or die trying.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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RFERL ☛ Iranian Court Sentences Amini Lawyer To Prison For Foreign Media Interviews
Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Court has sentenced prominent Iranian attorney Mohammad Saleh Nikbakht, who represents the family of the late Mahsa Amini, to one year in prison on a charge of "propaganda against the system" after he conducted interviews with several foreign media outlets, including RFERL’s Radio Farda.
Ali Rezaei, the attorney for Nikbakht, said on October 18 that the sentence is the maximum penalty typically meted out in such cases. He added that in past incidents where individuals were persecuted for interviews with overseas Persian-speaking media, the prison terms were considerably shorter.
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Meduza ☛ Defense lawyers arrested and charged with extremism after representing Navalny are held in Matrosskaya Tishina jail — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Navalny’s lawyer reportedly transferred from pre-trial detention center — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ ‘I go to prison first, then you defend me’: Defense attorney Alexey Liptser is in jail, after representing Alexey Navalny in court. His friend Pavel Kanygin explains why Liptser and his family stayed in Russia, despite the risks. — Meduza
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Civil Rights/Policing
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uni Emory ☛ Ph.D. students head to polls to vote on potential unionization
Emory University Ph.D. students will cast their final votes today to decide whether or not to form a majority union, with polls closing at 7 p.m. Voting began yesterday after seven years of advocacy by EmoryUnite!, a student-led union based out of Laney Graduate School.
Students can expect to learn the election results by mid-November. If at least 50% of voters choose to unionize, EmoryUnite! will officially be recognized as a majority union under the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
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Jamie Zawinski ☛ Bandcamp
Every member of Bandcamp United Union bargaining team was laid off: [...]
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International Business Times ☛ Women And Girls In Afghanistan Feel 'Forgotten' and 'Abandoned' By World
In a recent interview, Human Rights Activist and Former Minister of Women's Affairs Hasina Safi, spoke of the international humanitarian support given to Afghans living under the Taliban rule.
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The Register UK ☛ What's unconstitutional about Google keyword search warrants? Nothing, says Colorado Supreme Court
The case, People v. Seymour, involved a 2020 act of arson that killed five people in a Denver home. When the Denver Police Department couldn't identify suspects, investigators sent Google a search warrant requesting information about any and all users who searched for nine variations of the home's address over a two-week period prior to the fire.
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France24 ☛ French-Iranian academic held in Iran since 2019 arrives back in Paris
Adelkhah was one of some two dozen foreign nationals held by Tehran in what activists and Western governments have described as a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking aimed at extracting concessions from the West.
Several of the foreign prisoners have been released in recent months, including five Americans freed in a complex exchange for billions of dollars in Iranian funds that had been frozen in a South Korean account.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Critical services unaffected by strike, Sita says
The central IT agency for national government departments and other state-owned entities is facing industrial action by members of the Public Servants Association (PSA), who are demanding an improved wage offer.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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India Times ☛ All [Internet] firms may not get to dock in safe harbour
The Centre is planning to make a regulatory clause, which offers immunity from prosecution to internet companies — including social media firms — with regard to user-generated content published on their platforms, more “the exception than the norm”. The move could redefine the future trajectory of India’s digital and social media industry.
A draft of the revised IT Act (The Digital India Bill), reviewed by ET, shows that the default exemption to internet intermediaries currently available under Section 79 of the Information Technology (IT) Act of 2000, is likely to be provided only on a “case-to-case basis” once the new regulations come into force.
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Techdirt ☛ Every Year Like Clockwork The Telecom Industry Lies And Claims Broadband Prices Are Dropping
Once a year like clockwork, the telecom industry trade association releases a study claiming that if you squint just right–broadband prices have dropped year after year. It’s their annual attempt to pretend (and to help the politicians that coddle them pretend) that the U.S. broadband market isn’t heavily monopolized and woefully uncompetitive.
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Techdirt ☛ Error 402: The First Secure Monetary Transaction Online
Last week, we kicked off our Error 402 series on the history (and hopefully future) of web monetization, by talking about much of the framing of what this series will be about. I started it out by noting that it has been 30 years since I first got online in 1993. That also happened to be right about the point at which the ability to exchange money online became a thing.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Gizmodo ☛ Things Are Going Great at Netflix, So It's Raising Prices
Looks like that password sharing crackdown worked: Netflix has reported adding nearly nine million new customers this quarter, bringing its total number of subscribers to 247.2 million as of September 30. Some customers, however, will find their plans are about to go up in price.
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Hollywood Reporter ☛ Netflix Hikes Prices For Basic and Premium Plans
The changes come as Netflix continues to ramp up its monetization efforts on the platform, which have included its new advertising tier — which saw its membership up close to 70% from last quarter and 30 percent of signups in the countries with the ad tier choosing that tier — and its password-sharing crackdown. However, the price hikes also come as the streamer reported about $1 billion in “lower-than-planned cash content spend,” over the past quarter due to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes.
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Windows Central ☛ Exclusive: Windows 11 is active on almost half a billion devices, ahead of Microsoft's expectations
Compare that to the launch of Windows 11, which was pretty tame. Right out of the gate, Windows 11 was only officially supported on PCs made in 2018 onwards (due to TPM), which cut out all those older Windows 7 and 8 PCs that upgraded to Windows 10 and the first three years of new Windows 10 PCs. This immediately limited the growth Windows 11 could sustain, and Microsoft knew this. Indeed, in our readers' poll, nearly 25% couldn't upgrade to Windows 11 due to the requirements.
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Monopolies
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New York Times ☛ In Antitrust Trial, Google Argues That Smart Employees Explain Its Success
In its antitrust confrontation with the government, the pillar of Google’s defense has been that innovation — not restrictive contracts, backed by billions in payments to industry partners — explains its success as the giant of internet search.
Its competitive advantage, it says, is brilliant people, working tirelessly to improve its products.
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Trademarks
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Techdirt ☛ McCormick & Company Gets Spicy Over Weed Brand’s Parody Packaging
As the American market continues to expand on rights for Americans to enjoy being super high on cannabis, the industry around those rights are expanding quickly as well. And, in a way that is somewhat akin to the craft beer explosion that occurred last decade, more and more trademark scuffles are popping up as these weed-slingers look to build brands and market their product. What trademark rights this quasi-legal business can actually gain has been an open question for some time, but we really have moved into the phase that is more aligned with the beer industry, in which weed-branding is often done in a fun and creative fashion, often times with callbacks to other cultural touchstones. And sometimes, that includes parody.
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Copyrights
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Creative Commons ☛ CC Celebrates 20 Years of the UNESCO Convention on Safeguarding Intangible Heritage
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Torrent Freak ☛ Vietnam Forms Specialist Unit to Tackle Pirate Sites Linked to "Organized Crime"
Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications says it will partner with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and the Ministry of Public Security, to establish a specialized unit to crack down on pirate sites. Authorities using the terms "organized crime" and "copyright infringement" in the same sentence is uncommon in Vietnam, a country that plays host to many of the world's most popular pirate sites.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Popular Torrent Tracker FileList Saved From Demise
Last weekend, popular torrent tracker FileList announced that it would soon shut its doors forever. A change in life priorities and an absence of trusted and skilled successors were mentioned as the main reasons. The decision triggered an outpouring of support and two people have stepped forward to keep the site going. This includes "God", one of FileList's original founders.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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When setting up to do the thing takes longer than doing the thing
While on route to the weekly lunch with some former cow-orkers, my car notified me that the front left tire was low on pressure. _'Tis not a problem,_ I thought, _as we have an air compressor and tire attachment at Chez Boca._
Once back at Chez Boca, I began to set up to inflate the tires with said air compressor and tire attachment. The tire attachment, easy to obtain. The air compressor? Not so easy, as it was nestled in the middle of the garage among various wood working and gardening tools. I ended up having to hoist this 50 pound (23kg for those unwise in the ways of Imperial measurements) tool up and over some obstacles.
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Politics and World Events
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They're bombing again
I wish I could do something, protect somebody, demilitarize. I've been in dusty streets, around pancaked buildings, around dead bodies in heat and in cold. I cleaned crush and amputation wounds. I packed a dead baby in a shoebox, asked teammates to try to find a morgue. I tried to get rice, drinking water through a blockade. I had the luxury of going home, my family living.
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Technology and Free Software
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How to maybe reverse engineer a file format
Need for Speed: Underground 2 (NFSU2) is a 2004 racing game that brought us the best cover of “Riders on the Storm”. It's a game where you can pimp your car to your heart's content with body kits, neon lights, absurdly huge speakers and all kinds of things just for show. All these modifications award you with style points; gather enough and you're invited for a photoshoot for the cover of some magazine or DVD.
Going through an archive of old save files I noticed all the magazine and DVD covers were stored alongside the game profile and so started trying to visualize them.
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SSH Host DSA Key
Those who ran sysclean(8) after their recent OpenBSD 7.4 update may have noticed that SSH host DSA keys were listed for potential removal.
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Internet/Gemini
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Local Smtp Server
Someone was asking about a mail server where clients would be able to send mail, local only, and obtain mails via IMAP. This will involve some work and annoyance. You'll need a mail server (Postfix or OpenSMTPD are not terrible choices) and an IMAP server (Dovecot is typical, though I haven't run IMAP in years). The mail server would probably offer SMTP AUTH via SASL on the submission port (TCP/587) over SSL for clients to send email with. So you'll need certificates and authentication setup. Probably custom authentication that does not use system accounts. "Only local" requires configuration so that clients cannot send mail to the internet.
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Programming
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"Building A to Z list pages in Pandoc"
Pandoc offers a very good template system. It avoids elaborate features in favor of a few simple ways to bring content into the page. It knows how to use data specified in “front matter” (a YAML header to a Markdown document) as well as how to merge in JSON or YAML from a metadata file. One use case that is common in libraries and archives that less obvious of how to handle is building A to Z lists or year/date oriented listings where you have a set of navigation links at the top of the page followed by a set of H2 headers with UL lists between them.
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.