Links 1/11/2023: Copyright CG Case, Nokia Aggressive Again With Software Patents (Even in Kangaroo Courts)
Contents
- Leftovers
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM)
- Monopolies
- Gemini* and Gopher
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Leftovers
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Hackaday ☛ 2023 Halloween Hackfest: Quoth The Raven, “Caww!”
Sometimes, projects start in somewhat unlikely places. This one began when [Istvan Raduly] scored a fake raven at a neighbor’s garage sale and decided to turn it into a thunder-and-lightning decoration that would frighten even the bravest trick-or-treater.
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Education
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Jim Nielsen ☛ Advice on Blogging
As readers, I think the answer we’re looking for in a question like this is: “Here’s the few tips I wish I had known when I started blogging.”
Why? Because we believe we can take these tips, use them, and revel in the thought that we saved ourselves some time and headache through someone else’s (hard-won) experience.
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New York Times ☛ School Cellphone Bans Are Trending. Do They Work?
While some schools have had a significant decrease in cyberbullying incidents, there is little rigorous research on the long-term effects of the bans.
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New York Times ☛ This Florida School District Banned Cellphones. Here’s What Happened.
Like many exasperated parents, public schools across the United States are adopting increasingly drastic measures to try to pry young people away from their cellphones. Tougher constraints are needed, lawmakers and district leaders argue, because rampant social media use during school is threatening students’ education, well-being and physical safety.
In some schools, young people have planned and filmed assaults on fellow students and then uploaded the videos to platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Teachers and principals warn that social apps like Snapchat have also become a major distraction, prompting some pupils to keep messaging their friends during class.
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[Old] James Hague ☛ Retiring Python as a Teaching Language
Python is still a fine language. It lets you focus on problem solving and not the architectural stuff that experienced developers, who've forgotten what it's like to an absolute beginner, think is important. The language itself melts into the background, so lessons aren't explanations of features and philosophies, but about how to generate musical scales in any key, computing distances around a running track based on the lane you're in, or writing an automated player for poker or Yahtzee.
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Andre Franca ☛ Learning not to care
In my imagination, I’ve always entertained the idea of trying to be a person whose actions benefited the common good at the expense of my own interests. Far from being a monk or a saint, I try to live my life this way.
While thinking about others has become natural to me, I have never understood people with high levels of selfishness, narcissism, and arrogant individuals. That was until my downstairs neighbor began complaining about alleged noise coming from my apartment.
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Hardware
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Hackaday ☛ Dot Matrix Printer Gets An Epson Ribbon Transplant
What do you do when your dot matrix printer’s ribbon is torn to shreds after decades of use, and no new cartridges are available? You might like to attempt a ribbon transplant from another printer’s cartridge, and that’s just what [Chris Jones] did.
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Hackaday ☛ Building Penny’s Computer Watch From Inspector Gadget
When you help your bumbling Uncle Gadget with all kinds of missions, you definitely need a watch that can do it all. Penny’s video watch from Inspector Gadget has a ton of features including video communication with Brain and Chief Quimby, a laser, a magnet, a flashlight, a sonar signal, and much more.
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Hackaday ☛ Need A Low-Mass Antenna In Space? Just Blow It Up!
A parabolic antenna is a simple enough device, a curved reflector designed to focus all the radiation from the direction it’s pointed into a waveguide or antenna at its feedpoint. They’re easy enough to make for a radio amateur, but imagine making one for a spacecraft. It must fold into a minimal space and weigh almost nothing, both difficult to achieve. An engineering academic doing work for NASA, [Christopher Walker], has a new way to make the parabolic surface that solves the spacecraft designer’s problems at a stroke, it forms its parabolic reflector on the inside of an inflatable structure. In this way relatively huge reflectors can be built in space, with easy folding and very little weight.
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Hackaday ☛ Supercon 2022: Carrie Sundra Discusses Manufacturing On A Shoestring Budget
Making hardware is hard. This is doubly true when you’re developing a niche hardware device that might have a total production run in the hundreds of units instead of something mass market. [Carrie Sundra] has been through the process several times, and has bestowed her wisdom on how not to screw it up.
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Hackaday ☛ Chugging Along: A Steam-Powered Sawmill Still Makes Its Mark
[Rural Heritage TV] has video of a private tour of a working, two-story, steam-powered sawmill at Lake Itasca, Minnesota. This is believed to be one of the only working steam-powered band-sawmills in the country with a shotgun (or reciprocating) feed carriage. The carriage moves back and forth with a log while a monstrous 44-foot long bandsaw cuts pieces off on every stroke. There’s even a log turning mechanism, because if there’s one thing that never changes, it’s that time is money.
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Hackaday ☛ Black 4.0 Is The New Ultrablack
Vantablack is a special coating material, moreso than a paint. It’s well-known as one of the blackest possible coatings around, capable of absorbing almost all visible light in its nanotube complex structure. However, it’s complicated to apply, delicate, and not readily available, especially to those in the art world.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Beijing drops last remaining Covid rule, marking return of pre-pandemic travel with Hong Kong
China has announced that it will drop its last Covid-19 rule that required travellers to report their health status at entry and exit ports from Wednesday. The relaxation marks the resumption of normal travel arrangements between Hong Kong and mainland China after almost four years of Covid-19 restrictions.
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RFA ☛ Suu Kyi legal team files latest appeal for prison meeting
The request comes a week after the junta lifted a COVID-19-era ban on visits to inmates.
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Bridge Michigan ☛ No convictions for Flint: Attorney general ends water crisis prosecutions
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office said Tuesday it has ended its quest to prosecute public officials for their role in the crisis, shortly after the state Supreme Court shot down efforts to charge former Gov. Rick Snyder.
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The Atlantic ☛ Whatever Happened to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?
Or maybe there’s another, more disturbing possibility. What if the scourge of RSIs receded, but only for a time? Could these injuries have resurged in the age of home-office work, at a time when their prevalence might be concealed in part by indifference and neglect? If that’s the case—if a real and pervasive epidemic that once dominated headlines never really went away—then the central story of this crisis has less to do with occupational health than with how we come to understand it. It’s a story of how statistics and reality twist around and change each other’s shape. At times they even separate.
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Pro Publica ☛ The Plan to Save Oregon’s Salmon From Willamette River Dams
To free salmon stuck behind dams in Oregon’s Willamette River Valley, here’s what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has in mind:
Build a floating vacuum the size of a football field with enough pumps to suck up a small river. Capture tiny young salmon in the vacuum’s mouth and flush them into massive storage tanks. Then load the fish onto trucks, drive them downstream and dump them back into the water. An enormous fish collector like this costs up to $450 million, and nothing of its scale has ever been tested.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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ACLU ☛ TSA Shouldn't Force a Bad Digital ID System on America
A movement is underway to create a digital identity system that would allow people to carry their ID on their phones or on digital smart cards and, eventually, use them over the internet. That might sound handy at first blush, but as we discussed in this 2021 report, it would not be as simple as it might sound. It could create a world where we get asked for digital ID at every turn, and by every web site, and where our ID use is tracked; and it could have significant implications for equity if digital IDs become effectively mandatory by disadvantaging those who don’t have a smartphone.
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EFF ☛ VICTORY! California Department of Justice Declares Out-of-State Sharing of License Plate Data Unlawful
Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are cameras that capture the movements of vehicles and upload the location of the vehicles to a searchable, shareable database. Law enforcement often installs these devices on fixed locations, such as street lights, as well as on patrol vehicles that are used to canvass neighborhoods. It is a mass surveillance technology that collects data on everyone. In fact, EFF research has found that more than 99.9% of the data collected is unconnected to any crime or other public safety interest.
The California State legislature passed SB 34 in 2015 to require basic safeguards for the use of ALPRs. These include a prohibition on California agencies from sharing data with non-California agencies. They also include the publication of a usage policy that is consistent with civil liberties and privacy.
As EFF and other groups such as the ACLU of California and the Center for Human Rights and Privacy have demonstrated over and over again through public records requests, many California agencies have either ignored or defied these policies, putting Californians at risk. In some cases, agencies have shared data with hundreds of out-of-state agencies (including in states with abortion restrictions) and with federal agencies (such as U.S. Customs & Border Protection and U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement). This surveillance is especially threatening to vulnerable populations, such as migrants and abortion seekers, whose rights are protected in California but not recognized by other states or the federal government.
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Defence/Aggression
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Unicorn Media ☛ Former Wikimedia CEO, Katherine Maher, Takes Reins at Web Summit to Do Damage Control
New CEO comes to helm as companies like Google, Meta, and TikTok pull out of the Lisbon-based mega-conference in response to accusations from the event’s founder and former CEO that Israel is committing “war crimes.”
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You might have heard that Web Summit, the titanic tech conference that’s held each year in Lisbon, Portugal, is in danger of crashing and burning after the event’s co-founder and long-time CEO, Paddy Cosgrave, made some statements on Twitter/X in the wake of Israel’s response to Hamas’s October 7 attack, that led to a mass exodus by the event’s biggest sponsors as well as many scheduled speakers. As a result, Cosgrave resigned as CEO on October 21, and on Monday Katherine Maher, the CEO and executive director of Wikimedia Foundation from 2019 to 2021, was crowned as the organization’s new CEO.
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Adding fuel to the fire, Cosgrave posted his anti-Israel rant from Doha, Qatar, where another Web Summit is scheduled to launch in February. Qatar is thought by some to be a funding source for Hamas.
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Organizations cancelling includes Google/Alphabet, Meta, Intel, Amazon, Stripe, Amazon, TikTok, and more. Also gone are a sizable number of people who were slated to speak or give presentations.
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The New York Times reports that according to company filings in Ireland, that as recently as last summer Cosgrave owned 81 percent of the conference, although the paper indicates that its been unable to determine his current ownership status.
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Federal News Network ☛ Marine Corps Commandant suffers serious health episode
In today's Federal Newscast: Gen. Eric Smith, the commandant of the Marine Corps, has suffered what appears to be a serious health episode. Agencies have received updated guidance for the type of infrastructure projects that the Buy American Act applies to. And House Republicans propose taking away billions of dollars in IRS modernization money and using it for aid to Israel.
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US News And World Report ☛ UN Human Rights Official Is Alarmed by Sprawling Gang Violence in Haiti
The United Nations expert on human rights in Haiti said Tuesday that he is alarmed by the rapid spread of gang violence and the bleak future awaiting children in the embattled country.
William O’Neill spoke at the end of a weeklong visit to Haiti, his second one this year amid a spike in violence that has displaced more than 200,000 people.
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Vice Media Group ☛ The U.S. Is Building a New Nuclear 'Gravity Bomb', Pentagon Announces
If approved by Congress, the B61-13 will replace the 1980s era B61-7, according to the Friday announcement. The new bomb will have the same yield as the old which is estimated to be 360 kilotons, roughly 24 times bigger than the blast that destroyed Hiroshima. The B61-13 will be a so-called gravity bomb, meaning it works by being pulled to ground by the force of gravity instead of flying to the target on a powered missile. A bomber flies over the target and drops the bomb.
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NPR ☛ The Telegram app has been a key platform for Hamas. Now it's being restricted there
Critics of Telegram have for weeks called on the company to remove Hamas accounts, arguing that the platform is amplifying terrorist propaganda and being used to defend grisly acts of violence.
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Axios ☛ On TikTok, views of pro-Palestine posts far surpass views of pro-Israel posts
Why it matters: The data shows how the conversation around the war between Israel and Hamas is playing out on one of the most popular platforms for young people in the world.
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France24 ☛ Mob storms Russian airport looking for Israelis as US condemns 'anti-Semitic protests'
Dozens of protesters, many of them chanting "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest), broke through doors and barriers at Makhachkala airport, with some charging onto the runway, according to videos posted on social media and Russia's RT and Izvestia media.
Russia's aviation agency Rosaviatsiya announced shortly afterwards that it had closed the airport to incoming and outgoing flights and that security forces had arrived.
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Meduza ☛ Seven people who participated in anti-Semitic riot at airport in Dagestan jailed for disorderly conduct — Meduza
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Atlantic Council ☛ Attempted airport pogrom highlights rising antisemitism in Putin’s Russia
An attempted pogrom in southern Russia's Republic of Dagestan has sent shock waves around the world and raised serious questions about the rising tide of antisemitism in Putin’s Russia, writes Joshua Stein.
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France24 ☛ France's Macron travels to Central Asia amid great power rivalry
French President Emmanuel Macron heads to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan on Wednesday, aiming to boost France's profile in a region where Russia, China, Turkey and Europe are all jostling for influence.
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LRT ☛ Russia puts Vilnius councillor on wanted list
Russia has added Kamilė Šeraitė, an adviser to the Lithuanian minister of defence and a member of Vilnius City Council, to the list of wanted persons, according to the Russian media outlet Mediazona. The politician is an active advocate of removing Soviet-era monuments and street names and chairs the Historical Memory Commission.
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RFERL ☛ Three Russians Arrested In New York For Shipping Arms Components
Three Russians have been arrested in New York for shipping electronic components to Russia in violation of U.S. sanctions, American officials said on October 31.
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RFERL ☛ Kadyrov Critic Jailed In Kyrgyzstan Says He Has Been Tortured In Bishkek Detention Center
Russian citizen Mansur Movlayev, an outspoken critic of Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov,who was sentenced in Kyrgyzstan earlier in October to six months in prison for illegal border-crossing, says he has been tortured in a detention center in Bishkek.
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Meduza ☛ ‘Even a broken clock is right twice a day’: Researcher Ivan Filippov explains why he spends time in Telegram’s Z-world, and how not to go insane while there — Meduza
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Bruce Schneier ☛ The Future of Drone Warfare
“This drone costs up to $400 and can be made anywhere. We made ours using microchips imported from China and details we bought on AliExpress. We made the carbon frame ourselves. And, yeah, the batteries are from Tesla. One car has like 1,100 batteries that can be used to power these little guys,” Tsybenko told POLITICO on a recent visit, showing the custom-made FPV drones used by the academy to train future drone pilots.
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New Statesman ☛ Will Muslim voters turn against Labour over Gaza?
Is Labour due a shock with Muslim voters over its stance on Gaza? It has certainly lost out before with this demographic: think of the Tower Hamlets mayoral election in 2022 (losing to Lutfur Rahman’s Aspire party), the Bradford West by-election in 2012 (won by George Galloway), and the Bethnal Green and Bow seat in 2005 (also won by Galloway). Britain’s Muslims are not definitely for Labour, though almost every ward and seat in England and Wales with a large Muslim population is now either represented by a Labour MP or a Labour councillor.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Turkey at 100: What will become of Ataturk's legacy?
For weeks, secular Turks had been wondering whether the conservative Islamic government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish republic on October 29. Until just a few days ago, no official program was planned. Foreign diplomats were also rumored to be asking one another if anyone had received an invitation.
Finally, on October 20, Erdogan's communications department announced that there would be a series of events — in which the Erdogan era would take center stage. The news confirmed secular fears that Erdogan is trying to downplay the legacy of founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and, in his place, create a cult of Erdogan as the leader of an Islamist country.
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Common Dreams ☛ In What Is Called A War
We apologize. The unprecedented human tragedy in Gaza hurtles on; we can record only pitiless catastrophe afflicting the innocent, its numbers and names. Over 3,400 Palestinian children have been killed and 6,300 wounded; Israel is hitting ravaged hospitals without fuel or light with de-facto bombings; their mad "leader" is quoting Biblical bloodbaths, declaring a "holy mission" of annihilation, and refusing to stop in the name of vengeance: "This is a time for war." Once again: Murdering children is not "war."
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Site36 ☛ Deportation tourism: German interior minister returns from Morocco almost empty-handed
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Pro Publica ☛ Report on Oxford High School Shooting Finds Multiple Failures, Troubled Aftermath
In the end, it took 699 days to account for what went wrong before, during and after a deadly shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan.
Nearly two years after the shooting, which killed four students and injured seven others, an outside consulting firm that conducted an independent investigation issued a sweeping report that faulted top administrators and other school officials for “failure and responsibility by omission.”
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The Dissenter ☛ Detained Under UK Terrorism Law, Whistleblower Says Police Questioned His Support For Assange
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New York Times ☛ Johnson’s Israel Aid Bill Sets Stage for a Clash Over Security Assistance
By splitting money for Israel’s war effort from aid to Ukraine and coupling it with spending cuts, Speaker Mike Johnson has put the House on a collision course with the Senate and President Biden.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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New York Times ☛ Russia Detains Two Soldiers Suspected of Killing 9 Civilians
The arrest in an occupied area of Ukraine was a rare admission by Moscow that its forces may have committed a crime against Ukrainian civilians. Experts warned that it might just be political posturing.
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Meduza ☛ Russian bailiffs suggest mother of two enlists for contract military service to pay off bank debt — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Uzbekistan sentences man to five years in prison for allegedly fighting in war against Ukraine — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ First Uzbek Jailed For Joining Russian Troops Fighting In Ukraine
The first Uzbek citizen has been sent to prison for joining Russian troops fighting in Ukraine's Donetsk region in 2014-15.
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Meduza ☛ Ramzan Kadyrov says law enforcement should use deadly force to prevent ‘unsanctioned unrest’ — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ FSB arrests suspect accused of aiding murder attempt against pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Oleg Tsaryov — Meduza
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Atlantic Council ☛ How to bridge the Ukrainian government’s wartime funding gap
With the current war now widely expected to continue into 2024 and possibly beyond, Ukraine will need significant additional financial support from its partners in order to defeat Putin's Russia, writes Anna Kornyliuk.
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Atlantic Council ☛ ATACMS missiles create new dilemmas for Russian army in Ukraine
Two weeks since Ukraine's President Zelenskyy first confirmed delivery of ATACMS missiles from the US, reports continue to mount of highly destructive ATACMS strikes against the Russian army in Ukraine, writes Mykola Bielieskov.
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JURIST ☛ UN inquiry into missile strike that killed 59 civillians concludes Russia was responsible
The UN Human Rights office Tuesday concluded that the October 5 missile strike in Hroza, Ukraine was launched by Russia. The strike, which was labeled the deadliest since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, killed 59 people in the small village of Hroza.
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RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Defends Pace Of Counteroffensive As Air Defense Activated In Central Ukrainian Region
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned against expecting too much success too quickly in Ukraine's counteroffensive as air alerts sounded in Kyiv and other regions late on October 31.
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RFERL ☛ Winter Will Amplify Humanitarian Needs In Ukraine, UN Official Tells Security Council
With the war between Israel and Hamas raging, a UN humanitarian official urged the Security Council on October 31 to "not lose focus" on Ukraine, especially with winter approaching.
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RFERL ☛ Top Biden Administration Officials Urge Congress To Approve Aid For Both Ukraine And Israel
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says Russia will be successful in Ukraine unless his country's support for Kyiv continues.
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RFERL ☛ Russia's FSB Detains Suspect In Assassination Attempt On Pro-Moscow Ukrainian Politician
Russia's Federal Security Service said it apprehended a man suspected of coordinating an assassination attempt in Russian-occupied Crimea of former Ukrainian lawmaker Oleh Tsaryov, a pro-Moscow public figure
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RFERL ☛ UN Agency: 'Reasonable Grounds' Russia Responsible For Attack On Ukraine's Hroza
The UN says it has found "reasonable grounds" to believe that a missile that killed 59 civilians in a Ukrainian village earlier this month was launched by Russian forces and that there was "no indication" of military personnel or "any other legitimate military targets" at the time of the attack.
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The Straits Times ☛ Japanese publisher sorry for comparing Russia-Ukraine war to cat fight on magazine cover
The winter edition cover of Tsuhan Seikatsu magazine features a photo of a soldier aiming a gun at a cat.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Vox ☛ Why Norway — the poster child for electric cars — is having second thoughts
Worse, the EV boom has hobbled Norwegian cities’ efforts to untether themselves from the automobile and enable residents to instead travel by transit or bicycle, decisions that do more to reduce emissions, enhance road safety, and enliven urban life than swapping a gas-powered car for an electric one.
Despite the hosannas from abroad, Norway’s government has begun to unwind some of its electrification subsidies in order to mitigate the downsides of no-holds-barred EV promotion.
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Michael Geist ☛ “A Lack of Commitment to Transparency and a Failure of Leadership”: Melanie Joly and Global Affairs Ignore Information Commissioner Ruling in My Request for Decades-Old Copyright Records
In 2017, I filed an access to information request with Global Affairs Canada seeking records related to the creation of the WIPO Internet Treaties more than 20 years earlier. The timing of the request was not accidental.
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Environment
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The Nation ☛ Corporate Bullsh*t, and How to Fight It
But all of these advances have been impeded by a set of corporate lies that try to gaslight us, to tell us problems aren’t problems, and if they’re problems, it might be our own fault, and if we try to fix them, we’ll only make it worse. So we wrote a handbook to help you combat these brazen falsehoods. Once you see their game plan, you can’t unsee it.
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Energy/Transportation
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Latvia ☛ Liepāja bus company agrees to pay penalty for cartel participation
Liepāja public transport company JSC “Liepājas autobusu parks” intends to withdraw its court appeal and has committed to pay the fine imposed on it in the amount of EUR 862,700 for participation in a public transport cartel, Competition Council (KP) said on October 31.
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Latvia ☛ Plan to close six railway stations in Latvia dropped
The Council of Public Transport has decided not to close six train stations next year as previously planned – Cena, Kūdra, Dārziņi, Rumbula, Kaibala, and Inčupe, Latvian Television reported on Monday, October 30. Such a conception previously triggered objections from locals.
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David Rosenthal ☛ Shitcoins
According to coinmarketcap.com, the top 10 tokens have a combined "market cap" of about $1.1T, with #10 TRON at $8.2B and a daily volume of $386M. They represent about 88% of the total "market cap". The next 10 have a combined "market cap" of $52B, with #20 Avalanche at $3.7B and a daily volume of $365M. The top 20 represent about 92% of the total.
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DeSmog ☛ New Report Calls Out Chemical Recycling as a ‘False Solution’ to the Plastics Crisis
The plastics and petrochemical industries’ latest purported solution to the plastic pollution crisis – chemical or “advanced” recycling – is essentially a public relations and marketing strategy designed to distract from the urgent need to curb plastic production, a new report contends. The report, released today by Beyond Plastics and the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), exposes the failures and perils of chemical recycling as an approach to manage plastic waste.
Only 11 chemical recycling facilities currently exist in the United States, and in total they are capable of processing less than 1.3 percent of all plastic waste generated annually, the report finds. The facilities do not operate at full capacity most of the time, however. Pervasive underperformance, hazardous working conditions, perpetuation of environmental racism, and financing challenges are among the many issues plaguing these operations, according to the report.
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Finance
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EFF ☛ You Wanna Break Up With Your Bank? The CFPB Wants to Help You Do It.
This is a very good idea, provided it’s done right. Done wrong, it could be a nightmare. Below, we explain what the Bureau should do to avoid the nightmare and realize the dream.
We’ve all heard that “if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.” But time and again, companies have proven that they’re not shy about treating you like the product, no matter how much you pay them.
What makes a company treat you like a customer, and not the product? Fear. Companies treat their customers with dignity when they fear losing their business, or when they fear getting punished by regulators. Decades of lax antitrust and consumer protection enforcement have ensured that in most industries, companies don’t need to fear either.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Idiomdrottning ☛ Smash the… state?
Weeeell… How about skipping the middleman and smashing the big corporations directly instead? Always with an eye on leaving the fossils in the ground, don’t go and cause oil spills and methane leak, that’d be pretty bad. I also haven’t been fond of super temporary reprieves like occupying a drill site for a few weeks that just drains even more resources and ultimately is unsuccessful.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ People shouldn’t pay such a high price for calling out AI harms
In all, these events suggest that the narrative pushed by Silicon Valley about the “existential risk” posed by AI seems to be increasingly dominant in public discourse.
This is concerning, because focusing on fixing hypothetical harms that may emerge in the future takes attention from the very real harms AI is causing today. “Existing AI systems that cause demonstrated harms are more dangerous than hypothetical ‘sentient’ AI systems because they are real,” writes Joy Buolamwini, a renowned AI researcher and activist, in her new memoir Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines. Read more of her thoughts in an excerpt from her book, out tomorrow.
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Quartz ☛ X is now worth half of Elon Musk’s original $44 billion bet
Banks involved with financing the purchase have also been revaluing their holdings. Mutual fund Fidelity, which has put more than $300 million into Musk’s deal, has marked down its investment by 65%.
In July, Musk himself posted on his platform that X is “still negative cash flow, due to 50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load.”
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The Register UK ☛ X says it's only worth $19B after year of Muskmanagement
While no longer a public company, X employees are eligible for equity compensation in the form of restricted stock units (RSUs) that only have value after a certain vesting period. According to an email reportedly sent to X employees yesterday, X is offering RSUs at $45 a share, putting the company's value at less than half of what Musk paid for it.
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India Times ☛ Explainer | Britain's AI summit: what can it achieve?
The aim of the summit is to start a global conversation on the future regulation of AI.
Currently there are no broad-based global regulations focusing on AI safety, although some governments have started drawing up their own rules. For instance, the European Union has written the first set of legislation governing its use for the bloc.
According to the summit agenda, there will be a series of roundtable discussions on threats posed by future developments in the tech.
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USA ☛ Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence
In the end, AI reflects the principles of the people who build it, the people who use it, and the data upon which it is built. I firmly believe that the power of our ideals; the foundations of our society; and the creativity, diversity, and decency of our people are the reasons that America thrived in past eras of rapid change. They are the reasons we will succeed again in this moment. We are more than capable of harnessing AI for justice, security, and opportunity for all.
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India Times ☛ Google is an AI-first company, we also want to be AI-first philanthropy: Google.org's Annie Lewin
Recently, Annie Lewin, senior director, global advocacy and head of Asia Pacific, Google.org, was in New Delhi to announce a $4 million grant to CyberPeace Foundation to help 40 million people combat misinformation across India and $3.3 million to Wadhwani AI to protect India's staple crops with AI-powered pest mitigation technology.
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New York Times ☛ With Executive Order, White House Tries to Balance A.I.’s Potential and Peril
How do you regulate something that has the potential to both help and harm people, that touches every sector of the economy and that is changing so quickly even the experts can’t keep up?
That has been the main challenge for governments when it comes to artificial intelligence.
Regulate A.I. too slowly and you might miss out on the chance to prevent potential hazards and dangerous misuses of the technology.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ The Download: Biden’s executive order, and calling out AI harms
The bad news is that speaking up against powerful technology companies still carries risks. That is a shame. The voices trying to shift the Overton window on what kinds of risks are being discussed and regulated are growing louder than ever. If the culture around AI actively silences other voices, that comes at a price to us all. Read the full story.
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Scoop News Group ☛ In signing AI executive order, Biden calls for ‘bold action’ that pushes agencies to reduce risks but allow for innovation
Biden added that he intends to continue working with lawmakers and federal agencies to ensure that technology companies stop collecting personal data and that AI does not threaten any national security, including economic and public health safety. Advertisement
Four key elements of the executive order were highlighted by the president during Monday’s White House event, which was attended by top tech industry executives, leading AI scholars and digital rights activists: [...]
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AntiWar ☛ Three Major Events in Russia the World Didn’t Notice
With global media attention focussed away from the war in Ukraine, several key events happened that the world didn’t enough notice. One continues to shape the state of global relations, one continues to shape the state of diplomacy toward ending the war, and one continues to shape the state of the battlefield.
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RFERL ☛ Carlsberg CEO: Russia Has 'Stolen Our Business'
Carlsberg has cut all ties with its Russian business and refuses to enter a deal with Russia's government that would make its seizure of the assets look legitimate, the brewer's new CEO has said.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Billionaire Kuzmichyov Arrested In France On Suspicion Of Tax Fraud
Police in France have arrested Russian billionaire Aleksei Kuzmichyov, one of the founders of Russian financial firm Alfa Group, for alleged tax fraud.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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VOA News ☛ Deepfake Video Impersonates VOA Russian Service Anchor, Underscoring AI Concerns
VOA’s Russian Service on Friday became aware of a deepfake video being disseminated on Facebook that uses VOA branding and Turkova’s AI-generated voice and appearance. Instead of sharing the news, the video was promoting a trading product.
When Turkova first saw the video on Friday, she said it took her a few moments to realize it was fake.
“My first reaction was, ‘I don’t remember that. I didn’t say that,’” she said. “Then I realized it was a deepfake. I’ve never experienced anything like that.”
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Censorship/Free Speech
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VOA News ☛ China Blocked Online Appreciations After Death of Li Keqiang, Top Official Linked to Reform
The official response recognized that many citizens considered Li as the last high-level official who represented the path of reform and opening up under the increasingly closed China of President Xi Jinping.
Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center, told VOA Mandarin, "Li was a pragmatic economic technocrat sidelined by Xi. And now, there is widespread resentment against Xi for overemphasizing ideology and mismanaging the economy. Xi's government is nervous and working overtime to censor indirect criticism sparked by Li's death.”
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Elderly busker who played protest song ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ will serve 30-day jail sentence after retracting appeal
Li, who had only played the song’s melody, said in court earlier that he was playing Glory to Carrie Lam, supposedly a parody of the protest song with the same melody.
Written by protesters, Glory to Hong Kong has been at the centre of repeated incidents at international sporting events, in which the song was played instead of China’s national anthem.
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CBC ☛ How teacher librarians interpreted GTA school board's controversial book-weeding process
Teacher librarians are speaking out about their experiences with a controversial new equity-based book-weeding process after Ontario's Education Minister ordered their school board to stop the practice last month.
The minister's direction came in the wake of a CBC Toronto investigation that found the new process, intended to ensure library books are inclusive, seemingly led some Peel District School Board (PDSB) schools to remove thousands of books based on the criteria they were published in 2008 or earlier. This first step in the process was intended to weed out damaged, outdated and uncirculated books.
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NPR ☛ Can public officials block you on social media? It's up to the Supreme Court
The issue at the Supreme Court on Tuesday is how courts should evaluate these questions when they occur on a public official's social media page. Most appeals courts have ruled that when public officials create an online place for public comments, the First Amendment's freedom of speech prevents those officials from barring people whose comments they don't like.
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US News And World Report ☛ China Removes Anonymity of Bloggers' Accounts With More Than 500,000 Followers
China's most popular social media platforms on Tuesday announced that "self-media" accounts with more than 500,000 followers will be asked to display real-name information, a controversial measure that has prompted concerns over doxxing and privacy among some users.
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Project Censored ☛ The Israeli-Palestine Conflict: Corporate Media Failure and Big-Tech's Facilitation of War Crimes
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The Gray Zone ☛ US regime change activist named Web Summit CEO after founder forced out for condemning Israeli ‘war crimes’
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Techdirt ☛ Techdirt Podcast Episode 370: Trust & Safety In Wartime
As you hopefully know, we recently launched (and then released a podcast about) our new game, Trust & Safety Tycoon, which we created in association with the Atlantic Council’s Task Force for a Trustworthy Future Web. This week, we’ve got two people from the Atlantic Council joining us on the podcast: Democracy & Tech Initiative Director Rose Jackson and DRFLab Senior Fellow and Managing Editor Andy Carvin. In the wake of current events in Israel, the conversation turned to a look at the unique challenges of trust and safety during times of global armed conflict.
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Techdirt ☛ Community Notes Is A Useful Tool For Some Things… But Not As A Full Replacement For Trust & Safety
When Twitter first launched what it called “Birdwatch,” I was hopeful that it would turn into a useful alternative approach to helping with trust & safety/content moderation questions, but I noted that there were many open questions, in particular with how it would deal with malicious actors seeking to game the system. When Elon took over Twitter, he really seemed to embrace Birdwatch, though he changed the name to the pointlessly boring “Community Notes.”
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Federal News Network ☛ When to express an opinion and when to zip it up, when on the job
Whether its the war in Ukraine, the war in Israel, the House speaker race or any of a zillion controversial topics, everyone has an opinion. As federal employees, can you express your opinions out loud and not get fired for it?
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Techdirt ☛ In One Lawsuit, Louisiana & Missouri Say Gov’t Can Never Pressure Websites To Change; In Another, They’re Looking To Pressure Websites To Change
We’ve spent plenty of time over the last year or so on Missouri and Louisiana’s lawsuit against the Biden administration for apparently suggesting how sites like Meta should moderate content on their platforms. That case has had its twists and turns and is now going before the Supreme Court. I’m sure we’ll have plenty more to say on that case shortly, but last week we also saw the lawsuit where 33 states sued Meta for (what the lawsuit claims) is Meta’s failures to keep kids from using the platform.
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Reason ☛ Tennessee to Pay $125,000 to Settle Lawsuit by Man Arrested for Posting Meme Mocking Dead Cop
Joshua Garton spent nearly two weeks in jail for "manufacturing and disseminating a harassing photograph on social control media." A First Amendment lawsuit quickly followed.
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RFERL ☛ Popular Belarusian Rock Musicians Jailed Amid Crackdown
A Belarusian court in the southeastern city of Homel has sentenced three members of the popular rock group Tor Band, whose music voiced support for protesters angry over the results of a 2020 presiential election, to prison terms amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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RFERL ☛ Russian Court Rejects RFE/RL Journalist's Appeal Against Pretrial Detention
The Supreme Court of Russia's Republic of Tatarstan has denied the appeal filed by RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva against her pretrial detention on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent, which she rejects.
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RFERL ☛ Rights Group Urges Dushanbe To Disclose Whereabouts Of Opposition Journalist's Brother
The Norwegian Helsinki Committee has urged the Tajik authorities to disclose the exact whereabouts of Asliddin Sharifov, the brother of the director of an opposition online television station, who was extradited from Russia in early October.
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uni Emory ☛ Students, journalists connect at Asian American Journalists Association panel
The panelists also reflected on journalism’s changing technological landscape and the new prominence of short videos. Kallingal, who is also the president of AAJA’s Atlanta chapter, emphasized the undaunted courage of journalists to ask questions, Kim brought up the indispensable journalistic curiosity about the world as an important adaptive skill. Wakabayashi stressed the need to look for answers and said that there are no dumb questions in journalism.
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CPJ ☛ In Haiti, murders of journalists go unpunished amid instability and gang violence
Kersaint is one of at least five Haitian journalists murdered in direct reprisal for their work since Moise’s assassination. According to CPJ’s 2023 Global Impunity Index, their unsolved killings – along with a sixth murder in 2019 – have placed Haiti as the world’s third-worst country, behind Syria and Somalia respectively, when it comes to justice for murdered journalists over the past 10 years.
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CPJ ☛ In Ecuador, threats force 9 journalists to flee their homes in 7 months
Other journalists who were threatened or fled their homes so far in 2023 include: [...]
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Democracy Now ☛ How They Did It: Labor Journalist Jane Slaughter on UAW’s “Life-Changing” Deal with Big 3 Automakers
The United Auto Workers union has reached tentative agreements with Ford, Stellantis and General Motors, and workers are returning as they end a historic six-week strike against the Big Three automakers based in Detroit. Under the deals, workers will get major raises over the length of the contracts, as well as improved benefits. “They will be life-changing for some of the lowest-paid members of the union,” says legendary labor journalist Jane Slaughter, founder of Labor Notes. The UAW’s success is largely attributed to union president Shawn Fain’s “stand-up strike” strategy, in which workers walked off the job at more locations each week in response to lack of progress at the bargaining table. Fain is part of a new wave of reformist leaders who were intent on reversing losses from the Great Recession, when the union made historic concessions to keep the car companies afloat. “None of this would be happening if it were the old UAW,” says Slaughter.
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Carl Svensson ☛ The Decline of Usability: Revisited
Three years ago, I wrote a rant about the problems of our current UI paradigm. The complaints I voiced were hardly new or unique, neither was the text what I'd consider my best writing. It was, honestly, mostly a way to blow off steam. It seems I struck a nerve, though, because it's proven to be one of the most popular texts I've published here. For some time, I've thought about writing a follow-up, and a recent resurgence in the text's popularity prompted me to finally do so.
I didn't (and still don't) have any delusions that my ramblings will somehow affect anything. And, in three years' time, nothing has indeed changed - at least not for the better. The most depressing part is perhaps that the debate around these issues hasn't changed one iota, either. The same non-arguments crop up all the time when discussing these issues: [...]
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VOA News ☛ Iran Arrests Human Rights Lawyer at Funeral for Teen Who Died in Metro Incident
The arrest of 60-year-old Nasrin Sotoudeh took place Sunday in Tehran during the funeral of 17-year-old Armita Garawand, who died a day earlier after nearly a month in intensive care.
Sotoudeh, who was awarded the European Parliament's 2012 Sakharov prize for her human rights work, has been arrested several times in recent years.
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BW Businessworld Media Pvt Ltd ☛ Taliban Must Immediately Release Women Human Rights Defenders, Say UN Experts
UN experts on Tuesday demanded the immediate release of women human rights defenders Neda Parwan and Zholia Parsi, who have been detained by Afghanistan's de facto authorities for over a month.
The two human rights defenders are affiliated with the Women's Spontaneous Movement. Neda Parwan's husband and Zholia Parsi's adult son have also been placed in custody. No reasons have been provided for their arrests, the experts said, but others have been arrested in similar circumstances for exercising their fundamental right to engage in peaceful protests.
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RFERL ☛ UN Experts Urge Taliban To Free Two Women's Rights Defenders In Afghanistan
UN experts have demanded the Taliban immediately release two women's rights defenders who have been in detention for more than a month. [...]
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Techdirt ☛ Court Tells Cops That A Driver Not Laughing At An Officer’s Terrible Joke Is Not Reasonable Suspicion
The list of things law enforcement officers consider reasonably suspicious could fill a decent-sized book. Pretty much anything anyone does or says when being accosted by an officer is usually deemed to be indicative of illegal activity.
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Techdirt ☛ The Retail Theft Surge That Isn’t: Report Says Crime Is Being Exaggerated To Cover Up Other Retail Issues
For months, it has seemed as though retailers are under siege, raided on a daily basis by organized groups of thugs who walk off with hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of merchandise.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Techdirt ☛ The FCC’s Plan To Address Racism In Broadband Deployment Sounds Like A Sad Joke
Groups like the National Digital Inclusion Alliance have consistently released studies showing that telecom giants like AT&T, despite billions in subsidies and tax breaks, routinely avoid upgrading minority and low income neighborhoods to fiber. Not only that, the group has documented how users in those neighborhoods even struggle to have their existing (older and slower) DSL lines repaired.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ Linus Torvalds on the Lenovo UEFI Bugs. “When You Can’t Trust Kernel Updates, People Will Stop Updating the Kernel.”
“One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn’t try and make the “ACPI” extensions somehow Windows specific."
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[Repeat] Windows Central ☛ Xbox's new policy — say goodbye to unofficial accessories from November thanks to error '0x82d60002' (UPDATE)
From November 12, 2023, Microsoft will no longer allow unauthorized third-party accessories to be used with its Xbox consoles.
Players are reporting a warning message displaying on Xbox when plugging in unauthorized accessories, notifying them of the date their accessories will be blocked with "error 0x82d60002."
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Gizmodo ☛ YouTube's Ad Blocker Crackdown Is Getting Harder to Dodge
The best part about one company revolutionizing video-sharing on the internet is that it gets the say in how awful that experience can be. After beginning to roll out a healthy nudge to turn off ad blockers or subscribe to the platform’s ad-free Premium offering, YouTube is now forcing users’ hands.
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Monopolies
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Zuck's gravity-defying metaverse money-pit
Both of these are true, even though they seemingly contradict one another, and no one embodies that contradiction more perfectly than Mark Zuckerberg.
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Matt Rickard ☛ Regulatory Capture in the Railroad Industry
Regulatory capture is when the regulatory agency, which is supposed to act in the public interest, becomes dominated by the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.
However, the ICC ended up protecting many of the interests in the railroad industry (and later, the trucking industry).
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Software Patents
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Reuters ☛ Nokia sues Amazon, HP for patent infringement over video streaming technology
Nokia said that Amazon's Prime Video and Twitch streaming services and HP's computers violate its patents related to streaming video compression, delivery and other technology.
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Bloomberg ☛ Nokia Sues Amazon From US to India Over Streaming Patents
The suits were filed in the US, Germany, India, the UK, and the European Unified Patent Court, Arvin Patel, Nokia’s Chief Licensing Officer said in a statement on the company’s website. Separately, a suit was also filed against HP Inc. in the US over video-related technologies, he said.
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Barrons ☛ Nokia Sues Amazon In US, India Over Video Patents
Nokia said the streaming market is estimated to reach $300 billion by 2027, but decried what it saw as a mismatch between those who invested in developing the technology "and those who benefit the most."
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BNN ☛ Nokia Sues Amazon From US to India Over Streaming-Tech Patents
In June, Nokia announced a license agreement with Apple Inc., without disclosing the terms.
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Business Standard ☛ Nokia sues Amazon from US to India over streaming-tech patents infringement
The suits were filed in the US, Germany, India, the UK, and the European Unified Patent Court, Arvin Patel, Nokia’s Chief Licensing Officer said in a statement on the company’s website. Separately, a suit was also filed against HP Inc. in the US over video-related technologies, he said.
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Nokia ☛ Nokia seeks compensation for Amazon’s use of our patented multimedia inventions
Nokia’s inventors have been heavily involved in the development of all market-adopted video codecs, from the H.264/Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard in the early 2000s to the H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard completed in 2020. Each of these generations of codecs have halved the bitrate required compared to their predecessor without compromising picture quality. This technology is inside virtually every tablet, PC, smart TV, smartphone, and any other device that plays video, for example cameras, security systems, and video doorbells.
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Trademarks
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The Register UK ☛ Trademark fight: Brit biz Threads has a teeny tiny problem with Meta's Threads
Meta's Threads app is facing a trademark challenge from a software biz that says it owns the rights to the name in the UK, and has given Zuck's crew 30 days to change its branding in Blighty or face an injunction.
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Techdirt ☛ Finally: Our National Taco Tuesday Nightmare Is Now Fully, 100% Over
It’s over. It’s finally over. The battle to end the trademark registrations for “Taco Tuesday” began years and years ago, mostly after Taco John’s wielded the trademark haphazardly to occasionally threaten other taco joints with legal action. Less spotlighted was Gregory’s Bar & Restaurant, which held the trademark for the phrase in the one state that Taco John’s didn’t, New Jersey. But, and if you haven’t been following this story I swear to god this next collection of words forms a true sentence, LeBron James teamed up with Taco Bell to launch a public campaign to get both trademark registrations rescinded by the USPTO. As a result, Taco John’s finally agreed to just give up this fight it was doomed to lose. But the owner of Gregory’s Bar & Restaurant, who’s name is — sigh — Gregory Gregory (duplicate is not a typo), vowed to fight to keep his trademark in New Jersey.
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TTAB Blog ☛ TTAB Post November 2023 Hearing Schedule
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (Tee-Tee-Ā-Bee) has scheduled six oral hearings for the month of November 2023. Five of the hearings will be held via video conference; one will be "In Person," as indicated below. Briefs and other papers for each case may be found at TTABVUE via the links provided.
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Copyrights
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EFF ☛ EFF to Copyright Office: Copyright Is Indeed a Hammer, But Don’t Be Too Hasty to Nail Generative AI
Because copyright law carries draconian penalties and grants the power to swiftly take speech offline without judicial review, it is particularly important not to hastily expand its reach. And because of the imbalance in bargaining power between creators and the publishing gatekeepers with the means to commercialize their work in mass markets, trying to help creators by giving them new rights is, as EFF advisor Cory Doctorow has written, like trying to help a bullied kid by giving them more lunch money for the bully to take. Or, in the spirit of the season, like giving someone a blood transfusion and sending them home to an insatiable vampire.
In comments to the United States Copyright Office, we explained that copyright is not a helpful framework for addressing concerns about automation reducing the value of labor, about misinformation generated by AI, privacy of sensitive personal information ingested into a data set, or the desire of content industry players to monopolize any expression that is reminiscent of or stylistically similar to the work of an artist whose rights they own. We explained that it would be harmful to expression to grant such a monopoly – through changes to copyright or a new federal right.
We believe that existing copyright law is sufficiently flexible to answer questions about generative AI and that it is premature to legislate without knowing how courts will apply existing law or whether the hypes, fears, and speculations surrounding generative AI will come to be.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Judge dismisses most copyright claims by artists against generative AI art providers
According to Orrick, two of the plaintiff artists, McKernan and Ortiz, failed to copyright any of their works, meaning that they didn’t have sufficient grounds to make copyright claims. The judge also asked that they show that the artwork produced appeared substantially similar to their own works for the counts to proceed forward.
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The Register UK ☛ Judge bins AI copyright lawsuit against DeviantArt, Midjourney – Stability still in the mix
The artists argued the startups not only made unauthorized copies of people's art when collecting up images and training neural networks on those pictures, but also the content generated by those models – incorporating themes, elements, and styles created by human artists – was unlawful derivative work.
It was therefore claimed humans were being unfairly ripped off. The trio sued DeviantArt and Midjourney, which built text-to-image tools based on Stability's open source Stable Diffusion software, as well as Stability as well.
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Walled Culture ☛ How a flawed copyright takedown system is causing problems for online sales of perfume products
By contrast, recipients of takedown notices are often small businesses, or ordinary members of the public. They are unlikely to have any legal training yet must respond to a formal legal notification if they wish to send a counter-notice. The latter must include a statement ‘under penalty of perjury’ that the material was taken down by mistake. Many will quail at the thought that they risk being convicted of perjury, and this stands in stark contrast to the mere ‘good faith belief’ required from the sender of a takedown request. Consequently, most people will simply accept that their material is removed, even if it was legal, for instance under fair use.
Takedown notices can be abused for purposes that have nothing to do with copyright. For example, they are a handy way to censor perfectly legitimate online material. The practice has become so common that an entire industry sector – reputation management – has evolved to take advantage of this trick. Online reputation management companies often use takedown notices as a way of intimidating sites in order to persuade them to remove material that is inconvenient for their clients.
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Torrent Freak ☛ State Attorneys General Warn Public About Piracy Scams and Malware
In a series of new public service announcements, several state attorneys general are warning the public that some very bad actors are exploiting pirate sites to distribute ransomware and steal credit card information. The Digital Citizens Alliance is a driving force behind the campaign, which aims to keep the public away from pirate sites and services.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Russia Blocks 167 VPNs, Steps Up OpenVPN & WireGuard Disruption
The head of the Russian department responsible for identifying threats to the "stability, security and integrity" of the internet, has revealed the extent of the Kremlin's VPN crackdown. Former FSO officer Sergei Khutortsev, a central figure in Russia's 'sovereign internet' project, confirmed that 167 VPN services are now blocked along with over 200 email services. Russia is also reported as stepping up measures against protocols such as OpenVPN, IKEv2 and WireGuard.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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another dream
the night before last night, when I slept alone. many weird things but it ended up with me walking around with hal and really wanting to tell him I had a crush on him. I was friends with his other, the original, but just getting to know this one. I knew his body but that didn't have anything to do with him. hal hasn't popped up in my dreams before, I just think about him sometimes, as a character study. think about this. you step into a machine that clones you instantaneously. you remember making the decision to clone yourself, you remember your whole life up to now. but you are the copy. technically, you're not real. what claim do you have on that identity, if any? what right do you have to establish your own? what do you do then?
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.