Links 28/10/2023: Clown Computing, Brain on Zoom, Google's Bought Monopoly
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- 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
- Monopolies
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Leftovers
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Forrest Brazeal ☛ Wait, is cloud bad?
DHH says they expect to save about $1.5 million per year in infrastructure costs by leaving the cloud. And while he does leave a tiny door open for nuance in the case of small startups or hugely variable workloads, his universal principle drawn from personal experience is clear:
"[M]ost established companies that can amortize capital investments over a few years should seriously reconsider the cloud craze. The benefits have been vastly overstated. The cloud is often just as complicated as running things yourself, and it's usually ridiculously more expensive."
Shots fired!
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Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Ray Thomas
This is the 9th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Ray Thomas and his blog, brisray.com
Ray is a British expat to the US and a former web designer and developer, now retired. He's also the owner of a 20+ years old personal website and that's amazing. Some people refer to him as the master of the webrings because of his incredible work on the subject.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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Kev Quirk ☛ Some of My Favourite Fonts
Beautiful typography is something that's very important to me, I've even gone as so far as having my website torn apart by a professional typographer.
It's fair to say that fonts and copy is something that's near and dear to my heart, so when I saw this post from Matt, I decided it would be fun to share some of my own favourites.
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The Nation ☛ Can I Google That?
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Science
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Science Alert ☛ 350-Year-Old Theorem Reveals 'Profound' Connection Between Properties of Light
Among his many contributions, Huygens proposed a wave theory of light that would give rise to physical optics, which deals with the interference, diffraction, and polarization of light. He also invented the first pendulum clock; the most accurate timekeeper for almost 300 years, right through the Industrial Revolution.
Little has been made of the connections between these two seemingly disparate fields of optics and classical mechanics – until now.
A pair of physicists at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey have revisited Huygens' seminal work on pendulums, published in 1673, and used his 350-year-old mechanical theorem to uncover some new connections between some of the strangest, and most fundamental, properties of light.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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US News And World Report ☛ This is Your Brain on Zoom
The investigators also found more coordinated neural activity between the brains of individuals conversing in person. This suggests an increase in reciprocal exchanges of social cues between the pairs, the authors said.
“Overall, the dynamic and natural social interactions that occur spontaneously during in-person interactions appear to be less apparent or absent during Zoom encounters,” Hirsch said. “This is a really robust effect.”
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Deluded tech bro Steve Kirsch claims COVID vaccines have killed 3.5X more people than COVID-19
Last weekend, I noted a disturbance in the antivax crankosphere. Apparently, once again, a horrible antivax “study” that was ultimately retracted had been resurrected, as we have seen more times than I can remember going back to the very beginnings of this blog in 2005. I’m referring to a study published in BMC Infectious Diseases in January with a single author, Michigan State University economics professor Mark Skidmore, who used an anonymized survey that actually had some interesting findings that made a fair amount of sense, such as the observation that political orientation and antivax beliefs influence people’s perception of whether health problems in their social circle were caused by COVID-19 or COVID-19 vaccines. If Prof. Skidmore had stuck with those modest findings, there would have been little to complain about, but he didn’t. Instead, he used the results of his survey to extrapolate an estimate as high as 278,000 people “killed” by COVID-19 vaccines. I applied some much deserved not-so-Respectful Insolence to the study in January, and by April it was retracted, a fate that it richly also richly deserved. Although there also remained a question of whether, in using survey results to make an estimate of a health outcome in the US population, Prof. Skidmore had gone beyond the protocol that MSU’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) had deemed exempt (because it was an anonymized survey). I moved on, only mentioning Skidmore’s execrable “science” one more time in the context of its being an example of retracted studies that remain far more influential than they deserve. Then came Steve Kirsch.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Scheerpost ☛ Facebook Workers in Kenya Say Meta Hasn’t Paid Them for 6 Months Amid Legal Case
Facebook workers in Kenya engaged in a legal battle with Meta and its outsourcing company over mass redundancies have accused the tech firms of contempt of court, saying they haven’t been paid for six months.
Both Facebook and its contractor, Samasource Kenya EPZ – known as Sama – are accused of failing to comply with a court order that banned them from laying off the workers before their legal challenge had been heard.
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LRT ☛ Lithuanians less inclined to use AI than Latvians or Estonians – survey
In Latvia, 58 percent of people aged 18–29 use AI, compared to between 11 and 38 percent in the other age groups. In Estonia, the percentages are 56 and 8–34 respectively.
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Axios ☛ "Poison pill" could sabotage AI trained with unlicensed images
They frame their innovation as a counter-offensive against AI developers scraping the open [Internet] for content.
"Data poisoning attacks manipulate training data to introduce unexpected behaviors into machine learning models at training time ... effectively disabling its ability to generate meaningful images," according to the research paper.
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Daniel Miessler ☛ Extracted Wisdom: Riva Tez vs. David Perell
The conversation involves David Perell and Riva Tez discussing various topics related to technology, AI, free-thinking, reading historical texts, and authenticity in writing. They delve into the importance of questioning conventional wisdom, exploring new ideas, and finding meaning in a world full of technology.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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The Record ☛ Alleged covert wiretap on Russian messaging service blown by expired TLS certificate
The expired certificate was instead discovered on a single port being used by the service to establish an encrypted Transport Layer Security (TLS) connection with users. Before it had expired, it would have allowed someone to decrypt the traffic being exchanged over the service.
The wiretap is believed to have lasted for up to 6 months, from April 18 through to October 19, although the researchers were only able to confirm 90 days of actual interception. “All jabber.ru and xmpp.ru communications between these dates should be assumed compromised,” wrote ValdikSS.
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Amazon Alexa is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA
Amazon can do this because the Alexa's operating system sits behind a cryptographic lock, and any tool that bypasses that lock is a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA, punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. That means that it's literally a crime to provide a rival OS that lets users retain functionality that Amazon no longer supports.
This is the proverbial gun on the mantelpiece, a moral hazard and invitation to mischief that tempts Amazon executives to run a bait-and-switch con where they sell you a gadget with five features and then remotely kill-switch two of them. This is prime directive of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."
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The Register UK ☛ King Charles III signs off on UK Online Safety Act, with unenforceable spying clause
The Online Safety Act, which began in April 2019 as the Online Harms White Paper when Theresa May served as Prime Minister (before Boris, Liz and now Rishi has the job) and was passed by Parliament in September, aims to tame the internet.
The law requires tech companies to prevent illegal content from being distributed on their platforms and to remove it when identified. It also seeks to prevent children from being exposed to harmful material, a goal that demands effective online age verification. And it allows for fines of up to £18 million ($21.82 million) or 10 percent of their global turnover, whichever is greater. It even includes the possibility of imprisoning executives whose companies fail to comply.
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Defence/Aggression
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International Business Times ☛ Urgent Travel Warning For Tourists As Threat In France Goes Up To 'Highest Level'
"Following a fatal attack in Arras, northern France on October 13, 2023, France has raised its national threat level to the highest level ('Emergency Attack Level'). This threat level is described as 'maximum vigilance and protection in the event of an imminent threat of a terrorist act or in the immediate aftermath of an attack'," wrote FCDO in their advisory.
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Defence Web ☛ Banditry on the border needs joint Nigeria-Niger efforts
Bandits have terrorised north-west Nigerians for about a decade, and attacks are rising. Rape and other sexual violence, abductions and killings are just some of the atrocities citizens face daily. Communities are fleeing to other states, with some crossing into neighbouring Niger as refugees. Violence has followed them, both in terms of attacks and recruitment into bandit groups.
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Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Estonia police patrol in Latvia apprehends over 100 illegal migrants
Golovin said the methods of entry were not particularly sophisticated, and mostly involved cutting border fencing or wire, in one case cutting surveillance camera connections.
Latvian border guards put the illegal immigrant interception rate at 95 percent.
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RTL ☛ Does Luxembourg need a different refugee policy?
In the context of this discussion, the role of municipalities also took the spotlight. Serge Kollwelter, spokesperson for the advocacy group Ronnen Dësch ("Roundtable"), which promotes reception and integration, underscored the need for greater accountability among municipalities. He highlighted the system in Germany where refugees are officially allocated to federal states, districts, and municipalities. Kollwelter stressed that Minister Asselborn had previously made numerous appeals with minimal response and proposed that the present time, with no imminent municipal elections and a new government on the horizon, could be an opportune time for legislative action.
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uni Stanford ☛ Professors raise questions over $1.9 million Stanford-DOJ settlement
Stanford reached a $1.9 million settlement with the federal government over claims that the University knowingly concealed faculty members’ “current and pending support from foreign sources” on research grant proposals, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Oct. 2. No determination of liability has been made and the claims resolved by the settlement are solely allegations.
The government alleged under the False Claims Act that 16 proposals — submitted to the Army, Navy, Air Force, NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) between July 2015 and December 2020 — failed to disclose foreign funding that assisted 11 principal investigators (PIs), or lead researchers.
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[Repeat] JURIST ☛ Malaysia warns TikTok and Meta against blocking pro-Palestine content
Following the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, the tensions between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel groups has escalated online. This has been coupled with misinformation, graphic images and hate speech on social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, which has drawn criticism from government officials around the world.
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India Times ☛ TikTok rejects Malaysian accusation it blocks pro-Palestinian content
Both Meta and TikTok designate Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that governs Gaza, a "dangerous organisation" and ban content praising it.
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LRT ☛ Lithuania’s military ship to monitor Sweden power link after Baltic Sea incident
The Lithuanian Navy has dispatched a mine countermeasures vessel to monitor the NordBalt power link with Sweden in response to an incident in the Baltic Sea when a gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable between Finland and Estonia were damaged.
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Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia, China hold talks to resume digital migration
Minister of Information and Media, Cornelius Mweetwa who is in China, held talks with StarTimes Chairperson, Xinxing Pang on the possibilities of resuming the project to complete the remaining 10 percent.
Mr Mweetwa says the government wants a win-win situation on the project considering that works that include construction of eight provincial television studios, transmission sites as well as building of the National Operation Centre was already at 90 percent.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Insight Hungary ☛ Leaders of Estonia, Luxembourg criticise Orban over meeting with Putin
Estonia and Luxembourg leaders criticized Hungary's far right prime minister Viktor Orban for his recent meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin, amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, Reuters reports. Orban defended the meeting, stating it was necessary to maintain communication for the sake of peace. "We would like to do everything to have peace. Therefore we keep open all the communication lines to the Russians, otherwise there will be no chance for peace," he told reporters, adding he was proud of his strategy.
While the West has provided substantial financial and military aid to Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Russia since the invasion in February 2022, Orban has developed closer ties with Moscow, consistently opposed the sanctions, and even threatened to block the promised 50 billion euros in support for Ukraine through 2027.
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Meduza ☛ Crossed out On the shore of Lake Baikal, a memorial to Tsarist-era Polish exiles meets an unfortunate end — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ White House says Russian army executes soldiers who retreat or refuse to follow orders — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Hamas delegation leader says group views Moscow’s request to release hostages ‘more favorably’ than other countries’ requests — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Satellite images of Russian airfield in annexed Crimea show fighter jets painted on tarmac — Meduza
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Quillette ☛ Failing the Hamas Litmus Test
On October 17th, an explosive projectile was reported to have hit the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital in Gaza City at about 21:30. Hamas quickly alleged that an Israeli airstrike had destroyed the building and killed as many as 500 people. In fact, an errant jihadist rocket, fired from within Gaza, had fallen in the hospital’s parking lot. Although the final casualty figures are still not established, given the limited size of the blast and the few photos of the bodies, one European intelligence source estimated that 10–50 people died.
When Western journalists first approached the Israelis for comment about the alleged strike, they were told that Hamas’s claims were being investigated. But instead of awaiting further details, many of these reporters simply printed Hamas’s version of events. Like “stenographers,” journalists at the New York Times, BBC, AP, France 24, Reuters, CNN, the Washington Post, and the LA Times all repeated the unsubstantiated claims of a terrorist organization. Despite the egregious implausibility of those claims, and the highly volatile situation in which they were being made, the West’s legacy media carried the story just as Hamas wanted. Jihadist war propaganda was transformed into news.
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Environment
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France24 ☛ Indigenous people and climate change: With the Inuit when the ice melts (2/4)
As the climate warms up, the lives of the Inuit people are changing: they no longer camp out on the ice in freezing temperatures to stock up on meat, and can hunt by boat instead. Meanwhile, the world’s largest fjord is now navigable by cruise ship, making it amenable to a new activity: tourism.
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Energy/Transportation
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The Atlantic ☛ Why America Doesn’t Build
Stokes’s research likely undersells how rampant opposition actually is. She relied on media coverage to measure it, which means that her data set doesn’t include nonpublic actions such as making calls to legislators or local elected officials, or lawsuits not covered by local newspapers. Nor can her research capture the cascading effects of opposition on renewable-energy development. Whether it kills a project or merely delays one, opposition has broad ramifications beyond the enterprise in question, because it raises the costs of development. Moreover, broad ordinances such as the ones in Alabama don’t just stop current projects; they prevent future projects as well.
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Gizmodo ☛ [Cryptocurrency] Exchanges, Not Just FTX, Are All a Mess Right Now
The founders of cryptocurrency exchanges face a mountain of regulatory challenges and billions in personal losses. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao personally lost $12 billion this year as trading volumes on Binance declined, according to a Bloomberg report Friday. Meanwhile, the Winklevoss twins’ Gemini sued their former partner, Genesis. Running a cryptocurrency exchange in 2023 continues to be an absolute mess.
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Quartz ☛ How Stellantis’s investment in Leapmotor could boost China’s EV dominance
Stellantis, the Netherlands-based Jeep and Chrysler maker, is making a big bet on China: It’s shelling out €1.5 billion ($1.6 billion) for a 21% stake in the Chinese electric vehicle maker Leapmotor.
The move is borne of desperation: Stellantis, which was formed in 2021 through the merger of France’s PSA and Fiat Chrysler, has struggled to reverse declining sales in China amid fierce local competition. China accounts for just 1% of its revenue (pdf, p. 286); a decade ago, Fiat Chrysler made 5% of its sales there (pdf, p. 167). Last year, its Jeep joint venture in China filed for bankruptcy.
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DeSmog ☛ Chancellor Jeremy Hunt Told Equinor To ‘Work With Us’ On Oil and Gas Messaging
Cabinet ministers reassured “smiling” fossil fuel executives and offered tips on how to communicate their polluting activities to the general public months before the controversial Rosebank oilfield was approved, DeSmog can reveal.
A new cache of documents, obtained via Freedom of Information request and largely unredacted, offer a rare insight into conversations held between senior Treasury officials and Norwegian state-backed oil firm Equinor.
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DeSmog ☛ Cabinet Ministers Set to Speak at GB News Linked Conference Alongside Climate Science Deniers
Michael Gove and Kemi Badenoch are due to speak at a major event next week alongside leading critics of climate action, DeSmog can report.
The three-day conference is being hosted in London by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, which shares its directors with the startup broadcaster GB News.
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Wildlife/Nature
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The Conversation ☛ How the world might look if animals had legal rights
A call for animal rights is a call to forbid most of these uses in law. It is also a call to reconfigure our relationships with animals. Imagining such possibilities can be difficult. What’s the point, we may wonder, of even considering the ethics of a future we can barely imagine?
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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New York Times ☛ How Elon Musk Changed the Meaning of Twitter for Users
In interviews, Twitter users, content creators and social media experts said that what had once been a trusted news [sic] source for them now needed a more skeptical eye. Some said a delightful source of spontaneity, community and humor had turned far more combative. Others said they believed that Mr. Musk had set a heavily censored environment free.
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Vox ☛ The Supreme Court must decide if it wants to own Twitter
On Halloween, the Supreme Court will hear the first two in a series of five cases the justices plan to decide in their current term that ask what the government’s relationship should be with social media outlets like Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter (the social media app that Elon Musk insists on calling “X”).
These first two cases are, admittedly, the most low-stakes of the lot — at least from the perspective of ordinary citizens who care about free speech. Together, the first two cases, O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier and Lindke v. Freed, involve three social media users who did nothing more than block someone on their Twitter or Facebook accounts. But these three social media users are also government officials. And when a government official blocks someone, that raises very thorny First Amendment questions that are surprisingly difficult to sort out.
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Atlantic Council ☛ The 5×5—The cybersecurity implications of artificial intelligence
With cybersecurity playing a significant role in recently announced voluntary commitments by leading AI companies, a sweeping Executive Order on AI expected next week, and leading AI companies allowing their products to be used to construct increasingly autonomous systems, a discussion about the intersection of generative AI and cybersecurity could not be timelier. To that end, we assembled a group with diverse perspectives to discuss the intersection of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
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The Verge ☛ The UK’s controversial Online Safety Bill finally becomes law
Although it’s now law, online platforms will not need to immediately comply with all of their duties under the bill, which is now known as the Online Safety Act. UK telecoms regulator Ofcom, which is in charge of enforcing the rules, plans to publish its codes of practice in three phases. The first covers how platforms will have to respond to illegal content like terrorism and child sexual abuse material, and a consultation with proposals on how to handle these duties is due to be published on November 9th.
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India Times ☛ Churn on: Tata Digital loses another senior executive
ET has reported previously on how Bansal, after joining Tata Digital in June 2021, aggressively hired ecommerce executives to lead various functions at Neu. However, executives like Prateek Mehta, Sharath Bulusu, and Shivcharan Pulugurtha, who joined Tata Digital over the last 12-18 months, have left the company. Bansal himself formally left the firm around March but he had stepped back from day-to-day operations during the start of the year, as reported by ET.
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The Hindu ☛ One held for posting obscene content on ‘X’
The Hyderabad Cyber Crimes police, acting on a complaint received by SHE Teams, arrested a person for posting obscene content on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter).
The accused, Bhukya Ramesh Naik, the police said, posted sexually explicit content and morphed videos of a woman. It was also observed that the said video became viral, and it was being sold online.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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CoryDoctorow ☛ A taxonomy of corporate bullshit
There are six lies that corporations have told since time immemorial, and Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen's new book Corporate Bullsht: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America* provides an essential taxonomy of this dirty six: [...]
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NL Times ☛ Teenagers frequently exposed to climate misinformation on TikTok, study finds
Researchers conducted a study at a secondary school in the Netherlands to assess youths' exposure to climate misinformation on TikTok. Ten students, aged 13-17, were tasked with gathering climate information in an hour using new accounts to ensure unbiased video suggestions. This approach provided insights into TikTok's algorithm.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Democracy Now ☛ The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: Censorship, Harassment Intensifies on Campus Amid Gaza War
A free speech battle is playing out on college campuses, as students, professors and others advocating for Palestinian rights across the United States are facing racist attacks and retaliation that threaten their safety and livelihoods. These attacks aim to suppress criticism of Israel and U.S. support of its actions in Gaza. This comes as the U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a resolution “condemning Hamas and antisemitic student activities on college campuses.” The resolution references a student at New York University’s law school whose job offer was withdrawn after they sent a newsletter to classmates expressing “unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression toward liberation and self-determination.” We’re joined by that student, Ryna Workman, who was also suspended from their position as president of the NYU Law Student Bar Association after publicly expressing support for Palestine, and by Dima Khalidi, the founder and director of Palestine Legal, a legal aid organization dedicated to documenting and supporting people who face retaliation for supporting Palestinian rights. “Folks are now afraid to speak up, in fear that they might become the next me,” says Workman about what Khalidi terms “the Palestine exception to free speech.”
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Craig Murray ☛ Fighting the British Police State – Somebody Has To
I didn’t really volunteer to fight the British police state, it came after me. But here we are, and here I am, in Switzerland, seeking the protection of the United Nations. I still don’t actually know whether the terrorism investigation into me is focused on Palestine or on Wikileaks. It seems to be both and anything else they can get. My legal team is now active in Scotland seeking some kind of clarification and explanation, which will probably require a judicial review.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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CPJ ☛ CPJ statement on news blackout in Gaza
A communications blackout is a news blackout. This can lead to serious consequences with an independent, factual information vacuum that can be filled with deadly propaganda, dis- and misinformation. CPJ is aware that many journalists remain on the ground in Gaza and many international journalists have flocked to Israel to cover the war. We remind all warring factions – including outside of Israel’s internationally recognized borders –that journalists are civilians and must be respected and protected by all warring parties in accordance with international humanitarian law. Deliberately targeting journalists or media infrastructure constitute possible war crimes.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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RFA ☛ Police beat and detain Tibetan language advocate
Wangchuk’s encounter with police comes at a time when the Chinese government has intensified its efforts to suppress Tibetan culture, language and religion and to forcibly assimilate the Tibetan identity into the dominant Han-Chinese majority.
It has eroded the use of Tibetan language as medium of instruction in schools and persecuted those who advocate for its continuance.
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The Register UK ☛ It took seven years but over-40s fired by HP win $18m settlement
The settlement notice [PDF], which was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California in late September and preliminarily approved by a judge on Thursday, doesn't include any admission of guilt on HP or HPE's part - quite the opposite, in fact.
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Indie Wire ☛ SAG-AFTRA Responds to Studio’s Latest Offer and Will Meet Again Friday
The studios’ latest offer was an improvement on the bonus structure designed to reward actors appearing on the most successful streaming series, but it did not offer a cut of overall streaming revenue as the guild has been demanding, sources told IndieWire. A studio-side source also says the studios have increased its percentage increase on salary minimums up from 5 percent in the first year to now be 7 percent.
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Variety ☛ SAG-AFTRA Members Say They’d Rather Stay on Strike Than ‘Cave’ to a Bad Deal
SAG-AFTRA has been on strike for 105 days, shutting down almost all scripted film and TV production in North America.
“We have not come all this way to cave now,” the letter states. “We have not gone without work, without pay and walked picket lines for months just to give up on everything we’ve been fighting for. We cannot and will not accept a contract that fails to address the vital and existential problems that we all need fixed.”
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ABC ☛ China shows off a Tibetan boarding school that some see as forced assimilation
China's communists, after coming to power in 1949, overthrew the Buddhist theocracy running Tibet in 1951. The Dalai Lama, the head of the dominant school of Tibetan Buddhism, fled into exile during a failed uprising in 1959 and has not returned since.
Protests flared over the years, but after large demonstrations in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the government set out to quash dissent through arrests and intimidation, the reshaping of Tibetan identity into a more Chinese one, and lavish spending on infrastructure to develop the remote, mountainous region that borders northern India and Nepal along one flank of the Himalayas.
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Quartz ☛ 30% of Americans insured through work still have substantial medical debt
It has long been recognized that medical debt, the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US, is a heavy burden for the uninsured. But a new survey reveals that almost a third of workers with job-based insurance also carry substantial medical debt, a rate in line with the average among all working-age Americans and not far behind the 41% of uninsured people in arrears.
The survey also found that 43% of people with coverage through an employer still struggle to pay for healthcare. As a result, almost 30% of these Americans said they frequently skip or delay needed care, compared with 37% of people with individual plans and 58% of those who are uninsured.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Net Media Europe ☛ FCC Votes To Start Reinstating Net Neutrality Rules
The issue of net neutrality has turned into a deeply political issue in the United States, after the FCC under former President Barack Obama (a Democrat), had adopted net neutrality rules back in 2015.
Those laws were designed to stop service providers from blocking, slowing access to or charging more for certain content.
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NPR ☛ What happened to the [Internet] without net neutrality?
The fiery debate over how the government should regulate the [Internet] came to a head in 2017. That's when the Trump-led Federal Communications Commission repealed so-called net neutrality rules put in place during the Obama administration. The rules were meant to curtail practices like intentionally slowing down someone's [Internet] speed. Now, under a new Democratic majority, the FCC is proposing reviving net neutrality. Today on the show, what happened in the years without it and what happens next.
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India Times ☛ US FCC votes to advance plan to reinstate net neutrality rules
The commission voted 3-2 on a proposal to reinstate open [Internet] rules adopted in 2015 and reestablish the commission's authority over broadband [Internet].
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EPIC ☛ FCC Advances Net Neutrality Rulemaking, Raising Prospect of Stricter Privacy Rules for ISPs
“We applaud the FCC for taking this important step to solidify their jurisdiction to rein in harmful practices by broadband providers,” said EPIC Executive Director Alan Butler. “The Commission plays a key role in privacy enforcement in the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law, and we look forward to seeing the FCC Privacy and Data Protection Task Force taking meaningful enforcement action to rein in data abuses.”
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The Register UK ☛ Net neutrality is back in the Land of the Free – for now
"The proposal also seeks to restore clear, nationwide open [Internet] rules that would prevent Internet Service Providers from blocking legal content, throttling speeds, and creating fast lanes that favor those who can pay for access."
Internet provision is currently classed as an information service under Title I of the 1934 Communications Act, which means there is a very light amount of regulation. Under a Title II classification ISPs are classed as a common carrier – like telephone and electricity providers – and are subject to much tighter oversight and restricted from allowing providers to throttle data speeds or sell prioritized access.
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US FCC ☛ FCC Votes To Start Proceeding On Reestablishing Open Internet Protections [PDF]
The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking adopted today seeks comment on classifying fixed and mobile broadband [Internet] service as an essential “telecommunications” service under Title II of the Communications Act. The proposal also seeks to restore clear, nationwide open [Internet] rules that would prevent Internet Service Providers from blocking legal content, throttling speeds, and creating fast lanes that favor those who can pay for access.
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uni Stanford ☛ What happened to the internet without net neutrality?
VAN SCHEWICK: Internet service providers have started to slowly exploit this lack of oversight and limit what people can do online. And so it's like the boiling frog where the water gets hotter and hotter, and the frog doesn't notice because change is so gradual.
WONG: Barbara points to two practices that she says crept in during the last few years. No. 1 is zero rating. This is when an internet service provider says certain kinds of content don't count towards a customer's data cap.
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Monopolies
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Gizmodo ☛ Google Paid How Much to Be the Default Search Engine?
Google’s payout to make it the default search engine comes weeks after Bernstein analysts reported the company paid Apple roughly $18 billion in 2021 to keep Chrome as the default on Macs, iPads, and iPhones. The report, shared with The Register, estimates that Google’s payout accounts for 14% to 16% of Apple’s annual operating profits.
“Google invests billions in defaults, knowing people won’t change them,” DOJ attorney Kenneth Dintzer told Mehta during a hearing in Washington, CNBC reported. “They are buying default exclusivity because defaults matter a lot.”
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ Lithuania's Media Watchdog Fines Over Two Dozen 'Private' Torrent Tracker Users
Lithuania's Radio and Television Commission (LRTK) is using newly gained legal authority to penalize online pirates. This new power has resulted in several rulings already and this week the media watchdog upped the ante by issuing more than two dozen monetary fines. All targets were identified through their IP-addresses and linked to the private torrent tracker Linkomanija.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Some Pirate Sites Received More Visitors After Being Blocked
Blocking pirate sites is widely believed to reduce the number of visits to the targeted domains. However, new research based on data provided by WIPO and funded by the Republic of Korea, suggests that's not always the case. Roughly a quarter of all domains for which data was available received more visits after they were blocked.
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.