Links 11/11/2023: More GAFAM Layoffs, Flash Coffee Shuts Down Without Paying Salaries
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- 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
- Monopolies
- Gemini* and Gopher
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Leftovers
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Ruben Schade ☛ My popular opinions, part two
It’s time for another installment of Popular Opinions. Too many people post their unpopular opinions, so I’m here to bring us all back together. In no particular order:
Friendly people are more attractive.
A weekend without plans is the best kind.
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Antipope ☛ We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
Obviously, I'm talking about Elon Musk. (He named SpaceX's drone ships after Iain M. Banks spaceships, thereby proving that irony is dead). But he's not the only one. There's Peter Thiel (who funds research into artificial intelligence, life extension, and seasteading. when he's not getting blood transfusions from 18 year olds in hope of living forever). Marc Andreesen of Venture Capitalists Andreesen Horowitz recently published a self-proclaimed "techno-optimist manifesto" promoting the bizarre accelerationist philosophy of Nick Land, among other weirdos, and hyping the current grifter's fantasy of large language models as "artificial intelligence". Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, is another. He's another space colonization enthusiast like Elon Musk, but while Musk wants to homestead Mars, Bezos is a fan of Gerard K. O'Neill's 1970s plan to build giant orbital habitat cylinders at the Earth-Moon L5 libration point. And no tour of the idiocracy is complete without mentioning Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire CEO of Facebook, who blew through ten billion dollars trying to create the Metaverse from Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash, only for it to turn out that his ambitious commercial virtual reality environment had no legs.
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Nico Cartron ☛ Reducing the number of running apps/sites I'm using
It struck me recently that I'm using a lot of sites/applications to track my running habits: [...]
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Press Gazette ☛ To reach Gen Z legacy media must first stop misrepresenting them
This is a different dynamic to the army of citizen journalists filming on wobbly cameras that gave Twitter its distinctive feel in the early days.
Gen Z is at the forefront of this change. Today’s 18 to 24-year-olds have transformed how big brands advertise and how the workplace operates. The news and publishing industries are no different.
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Science
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Hackaday ☛ Fastest Semiconductor May Also Be Most Expensive
Scientists have found what they think may be the fastest known semiconductor. Sounds great, right? But it happens to made from one of the rarest elements: rhenium. That rare element combines with selenium and chlorine to form a “superatom.” Unlike conventional semiconductor material, the superatom causes phonons to bind together and resist scattering.
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Unravel Secret Behind Mysterious Animal Skin Patterns
Nature's tricks could improve medical diagnostics.
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University of Michigan ☛ Let’s do some mental math
In recent decades, the word dopamine has migrated from the realm of academic biological terminology to our pop-culture lingo. In 2019, a self-improvement trend called “dopamine fasting” caught mainstream attention. It promised a way for people to overcome their addiction to quick mental stimulation.
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Science Alert ☛ Earth Has a Mysterious 'Heartbeat' Every 27 Million Years
This pulse of clustered geological events – including volcanic activity, mass extinctions, plate reorganizations, and sea level rises – is incredibly slow, a 27.5-million-year cycle of catastrophic ebbs and flows. But luckily for us, researchers think we have another 20 million years before the next 'pulse'.
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Chris ☛ Huffman Codes – How Do They Work?
The key idea is that for a rare task, like programming or documentation, we can afford to use a long codeword. In fact, if it lets us use a short codeword for something common like reading, we should be fine with needing more than three post-it notes to encode something rare like documentation.
The Huffman code is an algorithm we can follow that generates an optimal codebook. Here’s how to do it.
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Education
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Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Piper Haywood
This is the 11th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Piper Haywood and her blog, piperhaywood.com.
Piper is a software engineer, previously at SuperHi and currently looking for her next professional adventure.
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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Hardware
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Hackaday ☛ The Eyes Of The Basilisk Are Watching You
MIT student [Anhad Sawhney] built an interesting decoration for his dorm room corridor called The Eyes of the Basilisk. Named after the mythical creature with a deadly gaze, the project monitors passers-by using thermal cameras and an LED matrix.
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Uwe Friedrichsen ☛ Back to the future
If we look at this distinction, I think one of the big goals of platform engineering is to reduce the mental load of developers who are meant to be application programmers but are forced to acquire the skills and knowledge of advanced organization programmers because they involuntarily need to know a lot about the internals of the build and runtime platform they use. The existing abstractions are so poor that most developers need to focus quite a lot on topics that are not related to implementing business features.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Xiaomi Reportedly Using China-Based YMTC's 232-Layer 3D NAND Memory
Xiaomi's 14 Pro smartphone is set to take advantage of YMTC's 232-layer 3D NAND memory with Xtacking 3.0 architecture.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Hackaday ☛ The Height Of 1960s Dental Electronic Technology
If you’ve ever been to the dental surgery and found yourself requiring some gum surgery, the chances are you’ll have found your dentist wielding an electronic probe to cauterise the flesh. It’s evidently some form of RF device because you are usually required to hold one of the electrodes while it’s being used, but annoyingly, for an engineer, it’s hardly the time or place to ask how it works. For the curious, then, [Keri Szafir] has the box of tricks behind the probe and is subjecting it to a teardown.
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Science Alert ☛ Weight Loss Slows Aging in The Brain by Up to 9 Months, Study Finds
As little as 1% loss in body weight.
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Science Alert ☛ Viral Epidemics Could Kill 12 Times as Many People by 2050. Here's Why.
We haven’t seen anything yet.
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University of Michigan ☛ Resources encourage U-M community to Be Kind Be Well
Be Kind Be Well, a collection of digital resources from MHealthy, provides more ways to weave messages of compassion and kindness into the workplace.
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University of Michigan ☛ U.S. health care should look more like Germany’s
Infamous for being both ridiculously expensive and having wildly high numbers of un- and underinsured citizens, the American health care system is in deep need of a major change. Considering the inseverable connections between our health care system and the economy at large, there is no simple solution.
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University of Michigan ☛ Ford School hosts Lourdes Rivera for discussion on reproductive justice
More than 50 University of Michigan community members Wednesday evening for the Omenn-Darling Health Policy Lecture. Lourdes Rivera, president of the nonprofit Pregnancy Justice, delivered the keynote address as part of the Policy Talks lecture series at the Ford School of Public Policy.
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Science Alert ☛ World's First Entire Eye Transplant Declared a Medical Breakthrough
Never before performed in a living person.
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YLE ☛ Covid cases increasing in Finland, influenza peak expected after new year
People can use home testing kits to see if they have Covid, but they should treat the results with caution, according to THL.
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Science Alert ☛ FDA Approves Powerful New Drug to Counter Obesity Epidemic [Ed: The very same FDA that approves experimental vaccines not tested for safety or efficacy, where many members resign because they see the regulatory capture]
But many questions remain.
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Science Alert ☛ US Teen Wins Top Prize For Inventing a Soap to Fight Skin Cancer
This could help so many people.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Scientists find hundreds of toxic chemicals in recycled plastics
When scientists examined pellets from recycled plastic collected in 13 countries they found hundreds of toxic chemicals, including pesticides and pharmaceuticals. The results are published in a study led by scientists at the University of Gothenburg.
Because of this, the scientists judge recycled plastics unfit for most purposes and a hinder in the attempts to create a circular economy.
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uni Case Western Reserve ☛ Why dating shows have us hooked—and what they are doing to our relationships
The answer lies not merely in the art of show business—scenes pumped with undiluted melodrama, episodes ending in annoyingly witty cliffhangers and clashing personalities destined for heated arguments and scandal. Rather, we must trace the obsession back to ourselves, to our unrelenting desire to form so-called “parasocial relationships”: one-sided relationships in our minds between ourselves and someone we don’t actually know. Ranging anywhere from harmless affection to a borderline pathological fictional love connection called “fictophilia,” cultivating these bonds has never been easier—actors, singers, comedians, athletes and reality TV stars are everywhere.
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YLE ☛ HUS: Most of Finland susceptible to Covid variant "Eris"
Nearly a fifth of patients at Helsinki University Hospital District HUS are receiving treatment for Covid infection.
[...]
The number of patients is at or even higher than levels seen during previous epidemic peaks, HUS' infectious disease chief physician Asko Järvinen told Yle on Saturday.
Most of those hospitalised in the capital region are elderly individuals. Järvinen said that while the risk of contracting coronavirus is currently high, only a small proportion have developed severe Covid symptoms.
"Just under 20 percent of hospitalised HUS patients are there because of Covid," he told Yle on Saturday.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Digital Music News ☛ Lauv Taps Hey Hi (AI) for Korean Translation of His Track, “Love U Like That”—With Help from Korean Vocalist
Singer-songwriter Lauv has utilized a combination of Hey Hi (AI) and Korean songwriters for a translation of his track, “Love U Like That.” Following the sold-out arena tour in Asia, Lauv says he wanted to celebrate his fan base with a thank you gift.
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New York Times ☛ Personalized GPTs Are Here, F.T.C. Chair Lina Khan on Hey Hi (AI) Competition, and Mayhem at Apefest
“On this podcast, we’re automating the haters.”
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David Rosenthal ☛ Robotaxi Economics
Proponents will claim that the robotaxi works 24hrs/day, not just 8. But the demand for rides isn't constant through the day. The robotaxi fleet needs enough cars to satisfy peak demand, so most will be idle for most of the time, still consuming interest and depreciation. Uber doesn't pay for the cars, and Uber drivers only work when there is enough demand for rides. I think this is roughly a wash, so the robotaxi stays about $54/day ahead.
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Matt Rickard ☛ AI Agents Today
The term AI agent is used loosely. It can mean almost anything. Here are some more concrete patterns of what it means today: [...]
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Science Alert ☛ Something in Your Brain Can Tell When a Face Isn't Real
The results from the EEG test showed that brain activity differed when people were looking at real versus synthetic faces. This difference was apparent at around 170 milliseconds after the faces first appeared onscreen.
This N170 component of the electrical signal, as it's known, is sensitive to the configuration of faces (that is, the layout and distances between facial features). So one explanation might be that synthetic faces were perceived as subtly different to real faces in terms of the distances between features like the eyes, nose, and mouth.
These results suggest there is a distinction between how we behave and what our brains "know". On the one hand, participants couldn't consciously tell synthetic faces from real ones, but on the other, their brains could recognise the difference, as revealed by their EEG activity.
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International Business Times ☛ Thousands Of People Sign Up To Get Neuralink Chips Implanted In Their Brains
The company has been involved in its share of controversies. A report by Wired claimed that the monkeys used in the trials died due to the implants.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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The Register UK ☛ Tipsy tongues tell all: How your sloshed speech could snitch to Siri
A group of researchers from Stanford University in the US and the University of Toronto in Canada have developed an algorithmic method of doing just that. In a paper published this week, the boffins report that they managed to identify alcohol intoxication with 98 percent accuracy by having study participants read tongue-twisters after imbibing a number of vodka gimlets (that's vodka, lime, and a bit of simple syrup for sweetness, to those who haven't been introduced).
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The Register UK ☛ It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs
In other words, it's A-OK for your car to "automatically and without authorization, instantaneously intercept, record, download, store, and [be] capable of transmitting" text messages and call logs since the privacy violation is potential, but the injury not necessarily actual.
The 9th Circuit judges' determination was based on the dismissal of a fifth class-action lawsuit in Washington that made the same arguments against Ford, which was dismissed in late October on identical grounds. One of the same 9th Circuit judges, Michael Daly Hawkins, was on the appeals panel that made both decisions.
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New York Times ☛ Personalized A.I. Agents Are Here. Is the World Ready for Them?
First, they are programmed for specific tasks. (Examples that OpenAI created include “Creative Writing Coach” and “Mocktail Mixologist,” a bot that suggests nonalcoholic drink recipes.) Second, the bots can pull from private data, such as a company’s internal H.R. documents or a database of real estate listings, and incorporate that data into their responses. Third, if you let them, the bots can plug into other parts of your online life — your calendar, your to-do list, your Slack account — and take actions using your credentials.
Sound scary? It is, if you ask some A.I. safety researchers, who fear that giving bots more autonomy could lead to disaster. The Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit research organization, listed autonomous agents as one of its “catastrophic A.I. risks” this year, saying that “malicious actors could intentionally create rogue A.I.s with dangerous goals.”
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Neritam ☛ One in five consumers blocked from paying with notes and coins
[our money is not an ഔദാര്യ by a remote computer. our money is our power. do not leave it for a few companies so that they can surveil us. reduce digital payments. remember, once they get monopoly they will end all free features.]
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Engadget ☛ Every car is a smart car, and it's a privacy nightmare
“These privacy policies are written in a way to ensure that whatever is happening in the car, if there's an inference that can be made, they are still ensuring that there is protection, and that they are compliant with different state laws,” Adonne Washington, policy council at the Future of Privacy Forum, said. The policies also account for technological advances that could happen while you own the car. Tools to do one thing could eventually do more, so manufacturers have to be mindful of that, according to Washington.
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Gizmodo ☛ The Humane AI Pin Gets Its Big Reveal But We Still Have a Lot of Questions
After months of hype and speculation, the self-proclaimed “smart phone killer” is here. Humane, a startup founded by two former Apple employees, has launched its hotly anticipated AI pin, a small, cookie-sized device that you stick to the front of your shirt and that, according to its creators, is designed to revolutionize our relationship to computing. While Thursday finally saw the startup unveil some details about its long anticipated product, the jury’s still out on whether it’s actually going to compel you to throw your smartphone in the trash—or if it’ll even prove a functional product you’ll want to buy.
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EFF ☛ S.T.O.P.: Putting a Check on Unchecked Local N.Y. Government Surveillance
Can you share how S.T.O.P. came to be, got started, and its mission?
S.T.O.P. as an organization grew from the belief that emerging surveillance technologies pose an unprecedented threat to public safety and the promise of a free society. Our executive director, Albert Fox Cahn, started S.T.O.P. in 2019 to address the long-ignored threat of state and local government surveillance. While federal advocates spent years at loggerheads over the federal surveillance powers, the growth of local police surveillance, particularly the NYPD, often went unchecked.
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Bruce Schneier ☛ The Privacy Disaster of Modern Smart Cars
Article based on a Mozilla report.
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Press Gazette ☛ Daily Mail fails in bid to stop Prince Harry illegal newsgathering legal claim
Associated Newspapers, however, said the judgment was a win for the Mail publisher.
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Defence/Aggression
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RFA ☛ More than 100 displaced northern Laos families refuse resettlement
After they lost their homes to the Lao-China Railway, the families were told to move into new resettlement villages
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France24 ☛ US military buildup off Israeli coast requires balancing act between deterrence and escalation
US warplanes conducted air strikes on a weapons storage facility in Syria used by Iran-backed militants on November 8 in retaliation for the growing number of attacks on US military interests in the region, the second such strikes in less than two weeks. The strikes illustrate the delicate balancing act the US must carry out as it aims to protect its interests in the region without escalating the war between Israel and Hamas into a regional conflict.
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JURIST ☛ US federal appeals court strikes down ATF ‘ghost gun’ rule
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled on Thursday that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) lacked authority to adopt a final rule aimed at limiting “ghost guns,” weapons parts kits that can be put together to create a firearm without having to register it.
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RFA ☛ Washington ‘denied’ Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong’s asylum bid
State Department refused to help Wong despite knowing he would be jailed, a new book quotes officials as saying.
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RFA ☛ Veteran dissident Guo Min arrives in US to rejoin family
Guo's escape comes after years of harassment, but Hangzhou activist Zhu Yufu is less lucky.
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RFA ☛ Taiwan authorities: Chinese aircraft carrier transits Taiwan Strait
With the latest move, Beijing ‘wants to show it can encircle Taiwan when it wishes,’ said an analyst.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Deterrence is crumbling in Korea: How we can fix it
Conventional wisdom in the United States holds that deterrence in Korea is strong, but this widespread confidence is based on a backward look at long-standing assumptions that are no longer tenable, along with rapidly shifting politico-military conditions. This report explains the urgent actions required to get ahead of these changes and maintain effective deterrence.
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BBC ☛ Translators for German UN troops in Mali fear Taliban-style fate
Translators who work for German peacekeepers in Mali have told the BBC they fear for their lives as the UN mission winds up its mission in the West African country.
The 19 interpreters wrote to the German government on 7 August asking for protection as the jihadist groups that operate in northern Mali regard those who work with the UN as traitors.
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El País ☛ Fossil fuel-producing countries ignore climate warnings and plan to increase coal, oil and gas extraction
Despite climate warnings and the increasingly rapid expansion of renewable energies, fossil fuel-producing countries are still planning to increase the production of coal, oil and natural gas in the coming decades. To such an extent that, if these projections come true, it will be impossible to comply with the Paris Agreement, which establishes that, to avoid the most harmful effects of the climate crisis, the rise in global temperatures must be kept between 1.5ºC and 2ºC. Currently, global warming is 1.2ºC above pre-industrial levels.
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Production Gap Report ☛ The Production Gap
This comes despite 151 national governments having pledged to achieve net-zero emissions and the latest forecasts suggesting that global coal, oil, and gas demand will peak this decade, even without new policies. Meanwhile, the impacts of climate change, long predicted by scientists, are now manifesting and wreaking havoc in every corner of the planet, and fossil-fuel-derived CO2 emissions reached a record high in 2022.
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Hastsings Distric Council, New Zealand ☛ Commemorating Armistice Day and the centenary of the Hastings Cenotaph
On November 11 a remembrance service will be held at the Hastings Cenotaph to commemorate Armistice Day, and also the 100th anniversary of the cenotaph and Hawke’s Bay Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial.
The monument was dedicated on November 11, 1923, to the memory of the contribution of the Hawke’s Bay soldiers who served and died during World War 1.
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Warwickshie County Council, UK ☛ Honouring Heroes on Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday in Warwickshire
The annual Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday commemorations are set to take place on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th November throughout the UK.
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CS Monitor ☛ In Israel, concern grows that hard right is undermining war effort
As Israel’s conflict with Hamas enters its second month, the Israeli far right, in both word and deed, appears to be actively undermining the country’s war effort.
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The Atlantic ☛ The West Must Defeat Russia
Right now, Putin’s bets are on the Republicans who repeat Russian propaganda—Senator J. D. Vance, for example, echoes Russian language about the Ukraine war leading to “global disorder” and “escalation”; Representative Matt Gaetz cited a Chinese state-media source as evidence while asking about alleged Ukrainian neo-Nazis at a congressional hearing; Vivek Ramaswamy, a GOP presidential candidate, has also called Zelensky, who is Jewish, a Nazi. Putin will have been cheered by the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, who is knowingly delaying the military and financial aid that Ukraine needs to keep fighting. The supplemental bill that he refuses to pass includes money that will keep Ukrainians supplied with the air-defense systems they need to protect their cities, as well as the fiscal support they need to sustain their economy and crucial infrastructure in the coming months.
The U.S. is supplying about a third of Ukraine’s financial needs—the rest comes from the European Union, global institutions, and the taxes paid and bonds purchased by the Ukrainians themselves—but without that help Ukraine will have trouble surviving the winter.
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Meduza ☛ Russia loses International Court of Justice seat for the first time in history
The five judges who won Thursday’s election are Bogdan-Lucian Aurescu from Romania, Sarah Hull Cleveland from the U.S., Juan Manuel Gómez Robledo Verduzco from Mexico, Dire Tladi from South Africa, and Hilary Charlesworth from Australia, who was reelected.
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The Straits Times ☛ ‘Carrot knife’ trend among teens in S. Korea sparks concerns over potential violent behaviour
Carrot knife-related content has gained widespread attention on platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
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TruthOut ☛ Israeli Military Is Attacking Gaza Hospitals Where Thousands Are Sheltering
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The Nation ☛ In America, Funding War Is a Smart Investment—but Providing Healthcare Isn’t
Eight days after Israel declared war on Hamas and began its bombardment of Gaza, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was asked if the United States could afford to support wars in both Israel and Ukraine. Without missing a beat, she answered the question in the affirmative.
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Pro Publica ☛ How We Made the Animated Documentary “The Night Doctrine”
This month, in collaboration with The New Yorker, the ProPublica Films team published an animated documentary called “The Night Doctrine.” The film follows the investigative journey of reporter Lynzy Billing as she pieces together what happened to her own family members when they were murdered in Afghanistan 30 years ago. During her reporting, Billing began to learn of a series of other killings of Afghan civilians committed by the Zero Units, elite Afghan special forces groups backed by the U.S. That investigation, called “The Night Raids,” was published late last year.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Latvia ☛ 43,000 Ukrainians have found refuge in Latvia
Latest statistics from Eurostat show that at the end of September, more than 40,000 Ukrainians were in Latvia after finding protection from Russia's war on their homeland.
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France24 ☛ The Dnipro River, a key front line between Russian and Ukrainian troops
A sweeping plain dotted with ruined houses stretched into the horizon and towards the blue expanse of the Dnipro River, where a clutch of Ukrainian forces were poised for Russian attacks.
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RFERL ☛ Canada Sanctions Individuals, Media Entities For Spreading 'Disinformation And War Propaganda'
Canada said it is imposing fresh Russian-related sanctions against nine individuals and six entities for their roles “in the Kremlin-backed orchestration of disinformation and war propaganda” and directly promoting “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”
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H2 View ☛ US FCHEA signs hydrogen MoU with Ukraine
The US’ Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association (FCHEA) has signed an agreement with the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine to advance hydrogen energy.
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RFERL ☛ Teenager Taken To Russia Last Year Will Be Returned To Ukraine
Bohdan Yermokhin, a 17-year-old Ukrainian who was taken to Russia last year from the southern city of Mariupol, will be returned to Ukraine following an agreement between the two countries, a top official in Kyiv said on November 10.
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RFERL ☛ French Court Rejects Appeal To Extradite Ukrainian Billionaire Zhevago
A French court rejected an appeal from the Ukrainian government and ruled that Ukrainian billionaire Kostyantyn Zhevago shouldn't be extradited over accusations of embezzlement, a court spokesperson said on November 10.
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RFERL ☛ Invoking Stalin-Era Phrase, Kremlin Admits To Recruiting Inmates For Ukraine War
The Kremlin has admitted for the first time to recruiting inmates to fight in the war against Ukraine, saying the recruits "are atoning for their guilt with blood," a phrase first used by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin during World War II.
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RFERL ☛ Hungary's Orban Says Talks On Ukraine's EU Membership Should Not Move Forward
Hungary's prime minister said he does not support moving forward on negotiations on Ukraine's future membership in the European Union, signaling again that his country could pose a major roadblock to Kyiv's accession ambitions.
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RFERL ☛ EU Has 'Plan B' If Hungary Vetoes 50 Billion Euro Aid For Ukraine
The European Union will be able work around any Hungarian veto and give Ukraine 50 billion euros ($53.4 billion) in aid, officials in the bloc said.
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RFERL ☛ Siberian Court Sentences Buryat Anti-War Activist To Seven Years In Prison In Absentia
A court in Russia's Siberian region of Buryatia on November 10 sentenced Aleksandra Garmazhapova, the founder of A Free Buryatia foundation, to seven years in prison in absentia on a charge of distributing "fake news" about Russian armed forces involved in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
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The Straits Times ☛ Czechs team up with Taiwan for Ukraine reconstruction
November 11, 2023 9:14 AM
The Czech and Taiwanese governments signed an agreement on Friday to work together to help reconstruction work in Ukraine, with a senior Czech envoy praising Taipei as a "great ally" despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties.
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YLE ☛ VR ending popular ice cream sales over Russian market ties
The Pingviini (Penguin) brand of ice cream is produced by a Finnish subsidiary of Nestlé, which Ukraine added to its list of 'international sponsors of war' last week.
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New York Times ☛ Thousands Wait at Ukraine Border After Polish Truckers Blockade It
As drivers protested what they say is unfair competition from their Ukrainian counterparts, the waiting time at one checkpoint was estimated to be seven days.
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RFERL ☛ Bulgarians Face Russia Spy Plot Trial In Britain
Five Bulgarian nationals in custody in Britain will face trial next year on charges they spied for Russia, a judge ruled on November 10.
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RFERL ☛ NATO Member Romania Says To Buy 54 Abrams Tanks From U.S.
France on November 9 blamed a Russian disinformation campaign for amplifying graffiti of Stars of David that appeared in Paris earlier this week.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Digital Music News ☛ Mystery Behind Led Zeppelin IV Album Cover Revealed, 50 Years On
The photograph is titled in the album, ‘A Wiltshire Thatcher.’ But Edwards is a long-time Led Zeppelin fan and instantly recognized the man. “I instantly recognized the man with the sticks. He’s often called the stick man. It was quite a revelation,” Edwards told BBC Wiltshire after making the discovery. Following the discovery, handwriting analysis done on the photograph’s caption suggests the photographer to be Ernest Howard Farmer.
The man in the photograph was also identified as a man named Lot Long (1823-1893), a widower who lived in a small cottage in Shaftesbury. To create the album cover, the band had the black and white image hand-colored and then framed against a wall of peeling papers. The album features the band’s hit, “Stairway to Heaven” and was immortalized in the UK on a Royal Mail postage stamp in 2010.
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BBC ☛ Original photo from Led Zeppelin IV album cover discovered
Wiltshire Museum's director, David Dawson, said the exhibition in spring next year will be called The Wiltshire Thatcher: a Photographic Journey through Victorian Wessex, and will celebrate Ernest Farmer's work.
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Environment
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Omicron Limited ☛ Low-intensity fires reduce wildfire risk by 60%, according to study
The analysis, published Nov. 10 in Science Advances, reveals that low-intensity burning, such as controlled or prescribed fires, managed wildfires, and tribal cultural burning, can dramatically reduce the risk of devastating fires for years at a time. The findings—some of the first to rigorously quantify the value of low-intensity fire—come while Congress is reassessing the U.S. Forest Service's wildfire strategy as part of reauthorizing the Farm Bill.
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Truthdig ☛ Salmon Are Vanishing — And So Is a Way of Life
There have been salmon in the Yukon, the fourth-longest river in North America, for as long as there have been people on its banks. The river’s abundance helped Alaska earn its reputation as one of the last refuges for wild salmon, a place where they once came every year by the millions to spawn in pristine rivers and lakes after migrating thousands of miles. But as temperatures in western Alaska and the Bering Sea creep higher, the Yukon’s salmon populations have plunged.
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Energy/Transportation
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DeSmog ☛ New Study Finds Overwhelming Evidence of Harms From Fracking
The negative impacts of hydraulic fracturing on public health, the environment, and the climate are “intractable and not fixable,” according to a newly published report.
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DeSmog ☛ Former BP Scientist Steve Koonin Claims Climate Journalists Are Spreading ‘Hysteria’
A former chief scientist for the oil and gas producer BP claims that journalists specializing in climate change reporting are spreading false claims about extreme weather — an accusation that a major climate media organization deems “factually careless and ideologically driven.”
“There are a number of interests that align to produce the current climate hysteria,” Steve Koonin argued last week during a webinar for Canadian post-secondary students. “The media are indeed a big factor in that.”
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Wildlife/Nature
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Science Alert ☛ Glowing Fingertips And Green Eyes: First-of-Its-Kind Monkey Chimera Born in China
It's like nothing that's lived before.
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Gizmodo ☛ I Got a Sneak Peek of the American Museum of Natural History’s ‘The Secret World of Elephants’
The new exhibit is entitled ‘The Secret World of Elephants’ and it walks you through elephants’ journey to become the intelligent and, yes, massive creatures that they are. I visited the exhibit earlier this week and, while I wish it included more reconstructions of ancient proboscidean species, I think it does a terrific job of looking beyond elephants’ superlative size and more obvious traits to showcase how remarkable the animals really are.
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Finance
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China slipped back into deflation in October: data
China slipped back into deflation in October, data showed Thursday, highlighting the work officials have in reviving still-sluggish demand in the world’s number two economy. The figures come after figures earlier in the week showed a forecast-busting bounce in imports that had lifted hopes the country’s vast army of consumers were beginning to stir.
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New York Times ☛ Before World Leaders Arrive, San Francisco Races to Clean Up
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference comes at a pivotal moment for the city as it struggles to rebound from the pandemic.
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Ruben Schade ☛ Goodbye to Flash Coffee
Those bright yellow coffee stalls were seemingly everywhere in Singapore overnight from 2021, but they shut last month with unpaid wages and debts.
I never got to try it; friends spoke highly of it compared to other chain coffee on the island. I’m more sad for the people who’s livelihoods have been left in a lurch though. It sucks.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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LRT ☛ China warns Estonia to scrap plans for Taiwanese office
China stepped up diplomatic pressure on Estonia, warning Tallin not to allow Taiwan to open a representative office in the country, Politico has reported.
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Insight Hungary ☛ Fidesz to submit 'sovereignty' bill targeting 'foreign influence'
Hungary's ruling party, Fidesz, will present a bill to the parliament next Tuesday, aiming to establish an office tasked with investigating activities that "pose a threat to the country's sovereignty" including foreign financing of political parties, as confirmed by Viktor Orban's Chief of Staff, Gergely Gulyas.
Fidesz party introduced the "sovereignty protection bill" in September. The proposed office or authority is expected to investigate various activities violating the country's sovereignty, though specifics were not provided during the briefing.
The Hungarian Parliament has released the intelligence services' migration report: There is an obvious connection between #terrorism and illegal #migration! The report contains the following main findings: ❗️At the Serbian-Hungarian border, known terrorist organizations such… pic.twitter.com/nxBblsgccn
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Craig Murray ☛ The Curious Hacking of @craigmurrayorg
This post may generate a tweet on @matthuag (which the hacked @craigmurrayorg has been renamed) because the autoposting programme interacts differently with Twitter (called a Twitter API).
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The Register UK ☛ Google, Amazon among big names in tech axing jobs this week
More tech jobs are on the chopping block this week, with Amazon, Google, Snap and Zillow all cutting staff.
A Google spokesperson confirmed the Chocolate Factory laid off some employees belonging to a team in charge of consumer complaints, though declined to give an exact number.
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Neritam ☛ The Former Israeli Spies Working in Top Jobs at Google, Facebook and Microsoft
A MintPress study has found that hundreds of former agents of the notorious Israeli spying organization, Unit 8200, have attained positions of influence in many of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon.
The Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) Unit 8200 is infamous for surveilling the indigenous Palestinian population, amassing kompromat on individuals for the purposes of blackmail and extortion. Spying on the world’s rich and famous, Unit 8200 hit the headlines last year, after the Pegasus scandal broke. Former Unit 8200 officers designed and implemented software that spied on tens of thousands of politicians and likely aided in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
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The Register UK ☛ Arm flexes financial muscles post-IPO, but shares get a reality check
Royalty revenue was down 5 percent to $418 million, which Arm attributed to lower sales of chips into the smartphone market, partially offset by growth in cloud and automotive. The chip designer is now trying to lean in towards these markets as smartphone is regarded as saturated.
The company reported a total of 7.1 billion Arm chips shipped by licensees during the quarter, down from the 7.5 billion shipped during the same period last year.
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The Nation ☛ Joe Manchin, Jeff Weaver, and Jill Stein Walk Into a Bar…
Thursday was a big day for the future of US democracy—or lack thereof, take your pick.
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The Straits Times ☛ North Korea condemns Blinken's comments on ties with Russia: KCNA
November 11, 2023 5:44 AM
Its foreign ministry said Mr Blinken's comments only intensify political and military tensions on the Korean peninsula.
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New York Times ☛ Yellen Says U.S. Wants ‘Healthy’ Economic Ties With China
The Treasury secretary said she had pressed her Chinese counterpart on China’s export controls and cautioned against supporting Russia.
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RFERL ☛ Father Of Self-Exiled Belarusian Writer Jailed For Reposting Article
Self-exiled Belarusian writer Sasha Filipenka told RFE/RL on November 10 that a Minsk court sentenced his father to 13 days in jail for reposting an article by the Zerkalo (Mirror) website that the government has labeled as extremist.
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Atlantic Council ☛ The APEP Leaders’ Summit opened a window for deeper US economic ties with Latin America and the Caribbean
The White House's promises at the November 3 summit should be followed up with trade integration efforts, investment goals, and an expansion of the countries involved.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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New York Times ☛ Korean President’s Battle Against ‘Fake News’ Alarms Critics
He calls fake news an enemy that threatens democracy. Critics of President Yoon Suk Yeol say he is silencing journalists in the name of fighting disinformation.
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NPR ☛ Why the fight to counter false election claims may be harder in 2024
Experts say a campaign of legal and political pressure from the right has cast efforts to combat rumors and conspiracy theories as censorship. And as a result, they say, the tools and partnerships that tried to flag and tamp down on falsehoods in recent election cycles have been scaled back or dismantled. That's even as threats loom from foreign governments and artificial intelligence, and as former President Donald Trump, who still falsely claims to have won the 2020 contest, is likely to use the same tactics again as he pursues the White House in 2024.
Added Wilcox: "Everybody is gun-shy."
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Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Estonian anti-misinfo site highlights China's efforts to control global info flows
Propastop enumerates the PRC's approach to information manipulation as including the amplification of propaganda and censorship, the promotion of digital authoritarianism, exploiting international organizations and partnerships and controlling the media.
When successfully pursued, these approaches can help Beijing to reshape the global information environment via overt and covert influence on content and platforms.
In this, Beijing seeks to maximize the reach of biased or misleading pro-PRC content, Propastop says, while the PRC has acquired stakes in foreign media through public and non-public means, and has and sponsored online "influencers."
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El País ☛ Google’s new phone uses ‘Magic Editor’ AI tool to radically alter photos
“Remove distractions, move your subjects around, improve backgrounds and more,” says the message when you open Magic Editor for the first time. Editing options change depending on what’s in the photo. The “Sky” option adds or removes clouds and other sky elements. The “Golden Hour” option can change a gray or dull sky into a beautiful sunset. If your photo has a river or ocean, the Magic Editor suggests the “Water” option, which you can use to stylize the photo by adding currents and waves, or changing its color.
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RFERL ☛ France Blames Russia For Effort To Whip Up Online Controversy Over Stars Of David Graffiti
France says it has been the target of a Russian online destabilization campaign that used bots to whip up controversy and confusion about spray-painted Stars of David that appeared on Paris streets and fed alarm about surging anti-Semitism in France during the war in Gaza.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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EFF ☛ Debunking the Myth of “Anonymous” Data
This often happens without our knowledge or consent. Personal information that corporations collect from our online behaviors sells for astonishing profits and incentivizes online actors to collect as much as possible. Every mouse click and screen swipe can be tracked and then sold to ad-tech companies and the data brokers that service them.
In an attempt to justify this pervasive surveillance ecosystem, corporations often claim to de-identify our data. This supposedly removes all personal information (such as a person’s name) from the data point (such as the fact that an unnamed person bought a particular medicine at a particular time and place). Personal data can also be aggregated, whereby data about multiple people is combined with the intention of removing personal identifying information and thereby protecting user privacy.
Sometimes companies say our personal data is “anonymized,” implying a one-way ratched where it can never be dis-aggregated and re-identified. But this is not possible—anonymous data rarely stays this way. As Professor Matt Blaze, an expert in the field of cryptography and data privacy, succinctly summarized: “something that seems anonymous, more often than not, is not anonymous, even if it’s designed with the best intentions.”
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VOA News ☛ Internet Collapses in Yemen Over 'Maintenance' After Houthi Attacks Targeting Israel, US
The outage began early Friday and halted all traffic at YemenNet, the country's main provider for about 10 million users which is now controlled by Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthis.
Both NetBlocks, a group tracking internet outages, and the internet services company CloudFlare reported the outage. The two did not offer a cause for the outage.
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RFERL ☛ Kyrgyzstan Blocks Independent Kloop Website's Kyrgyz Segment
The independent Kloop website's Kyrgyz-language pages (ky.kloop.asia) have been blocked in Kyrgyzstan after its Russian site was blocked in September amid ongoing pressure on the owner, the Kloop Media Public Foundation.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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ABC ☛ Imprisoned Algerian journalist remains behind bars despite expected release
Authorities' February raid on Bendjama's office and subsequent charges against him related to Bouraoui's escape followed years of problems with the Algerian government, which accused him of writing favorably about pro-democracy street protests that led to the resignation of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2019.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Man jailed for 3 months for indecent assault on Korean tourist in Hong Kong
A Hong Kong magistrate has jailed a man for three months for indecently assaulting a South Korean tourist while she was live-streaming in a MTR station, saying the case damaged the city’s reputation.
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Apple agrees $25m to settle hiring discrimination suit
Apple's payout marks the largest ever settlement involving claims of discrimination based on citizenship for the US Justice Department.
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Informa PLC ☛ BT exec stokes fear of AI impact on jobs by likening staff to horses
Every morning, BT saddles up its beasts of burden and sets them to work splicing fiber or answering phone calls. They trot long-faced around the UK telco's call centers, braying nervously as colleagues are carted off to the local knacker's yard. Even the horsiest-looking telecom-sector workers are hard to mistake for real equine mammals. Unless you are Harmeen Mehta.
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New Yorker ☛ Hollywood Faces Its Post-Strike Future
The town can get back to work, but there is a lot of uncertainty in the air.
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CS Monitor ☛ Why more young, educated Turks are packing their bags for Europe
“I can understand the people who are leaving, some things really need to change,” said Fatma Zehra Eksi, a 22-year-old student from Istanbul who says she is a reluctant supporter of Mr. Erdogan. “But if we ... leave because we are not comfortable here, then there will be no one left here to change things.”
xs Serap Ilgin, a 26-year-old copywriter in Istanbul said she grew up with the values of secular Turkey and its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
“Leaving is not a solution, on the contrary, I think we need to stay here and fight,” she said.
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Truthdig ☛ SAG-AFTRA and Hollywood Reach Tentative Deal, Ending the Strike
The tentative agreement was announced days after SAG-AFTRA rejected what the Hollywood studios described as their “last, best, and final offer” over a so-called “zombie” clause that critics said would allow studios to use the AI likenesses of dead actors without consent. It’s unclear exactly how or whether that language was changed in the tentative agreement.
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ANF News ☛ Workshop on ‘Women and Defense’ in Shengal marks the anniversary of liberation from ISIS
The Yazidi settlement area Shengal (Sinjar) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq is the last contiguous settlement area of the Yazidi community. Thousands of Yazidis were murdered and thousands of women and children were taken prisoner in the 3 August 2014 onslaught on Shengal by ISIS militants. While ISIS gangs began murdering Yazidis in Shengal, the Peshmerga left, leaving the Yazidis behind, unprotected. The guerrillas of HPG (People’s Defense Forces) and YJA Star (Free Women’s Troops) and fighters of the YPG (People’s Defense Units) and YPJ (Women’s Defense Units) came to the Yazidi people's aid in the face of ISIS aggression. Thanks to a months-long selfless struggle, the city was liberated on 13 November 2015. After the liberation of the city, the HPG and YPG/YPJ subsequently withdrew in 2017. People who returned to their land after Shengal's independence reformed, established defensive units and built their institutions.
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DagHammarskjöld ☛ Dima Yared: ‘This year is a commemoration, but it’s not a celebration’
Human rights are a problem-solving tool with huge transformative potential. They can, and should, be seen as a unifying force, not a divisive factor. Penholders of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) represented a worldwide community drawing inspiration from values across cultures. And universality and indivisibility of rights are crucial – the rights to housing, health, work, and sanitation go hand in hand with freedom of expression or the right to be free from torture.
Dima Yared, Human Rights Officer at the OHCHR, was in a conversation with Jemina Holmberg, Programme Manager for Human Rights at the Foundation. We gained insight into the background thinking and objectives of Human Rights 75 which aims at looking to the future and strengthening the human rights ecosystem.
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Quartz ☛ Apple is paying $25 million to settle claims of shutting US jobseekers out of some jobs
The US Department of Justice, which has been probing Apple’s hiring practices since 2019, accused the company of putting in hurdles in the recruitment process to favor current Apple employees holding temporary visas who wanted to become permanent employees. For instance, for positions it wanted to fill through a federal program called the Permanent Labor Certification Process (PERM)—which allows US companies to sponsor foreign workers for permanent residency—it did not advertise the vacancies on its external job website and required mail-in applications.
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Gizmodo ☛ SAG-AFTRA's Board Approves Tentative Agreement With the AMPTP
At the press conference, Crabtree-Ireland noted that SAG members will remain active in the conversation around the responsible use of AI, including its emerging prominence as a political issue.
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Ruben Schade ☛ Indefinite detention ruled unlawful in Australia
On Wednesday the chief justice, Stephen Gageler, said that “at least a majority” of the justices agreed that sections of the Migration Act which had been interpreted to authorise indefinite detention were beyond legislative power.
Awesome news! Australia violated international law under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, and the 1967 Protocol, for decades. This (hopefully) closes another dark chapter in our history.
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Pro Publica ☛ Dane County, WI, Approves $8M for Housing for Immigrant Dairy Workers
County officials in Wisconsin approved reforms this week meant to respond to a ProPublica report on the flawed investigation into the 2019 death of a Nicaraguan boy on a dairy farm. They include an $8 million fund for farmworker housing and measures to improve access to government services for people who don’t speak English.
Advocates said the housing initiative appears to be the first of its kind in Wisconsin, a state that calls itself “America’s Dairyland” but that offers few protections for the undocumented immigrants whose labor many farms depend on.
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Pro Publica ☛ Utah Therapist Scott Owen Arrested for Allegedly Sexually Abusing Patients
Former Utah therapist Scott Owen was arrested Wednesday in connection with accusations that he sexually abused patients during sessions.
The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica reported in August on a range of sex abuse allegations against Owen, who had built a reputation over his 20-year career as a specialist who could help gay men who were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He gave up his therapy license in 2018 after several patients complained to state licensers that he had touched them inappropriately. Some of the men who spoke to The Tribune said their bishop used church funds to pay for sessions where Owen allegedly also touched them inappropriately.
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Pro Publica ☛ The Call to Help Black Families Displaced by Virginia Universities
A Virginia state representative has called for creating a legislative commission to examine public universities’ uprooting of Black neighborhoods following reports of the racial impacts of one local college’s expansion.
Delegate Delores McQuinn said in an interview that a commission is needed to research Black communities that were displaced by Virginia universities and to examine cases of families who say they were forced to sell their homes. Separate legislation sponsored by McQuinn in 2020 established a commission studying the impact of slavery and racial discrimination in Virginia, which is expected to issue a preliminary report in January.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Big Telco's fury over FCC plan to infuse telecoms policy with facts
Reality has a vicious anti-telco bias. Think of Net Neutrality, the idea that if you pay an ISP for internet service, they should make a best effort to deliver the data you request, rather than deliberately slowing down your connection in the hopes that you'll seek out data from the company's preferred partners, who've paid a bribe for "premium delivery."
This shouldn't even be up for debate. The idea that your ISP should prioritize its preferred data over your preferred data is as absurd as the idea that a taxi-driver should slow down your rides to any pizzeria except Domino's, which has paid it for "premium service." If your cabbie circled the block twice every time you asked for a ride to Massimo's Pizza, you'd be rightly pissed – and the cab company would be fined.
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Monopolies
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Gizmodo ☛ Apple Will Reportedly Appeal EU's Gatekeeping Claims
Apple is one of six companies targeted by European regulators under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which claims Big Tech has several gatekeeping services that stifle competition and should be broken up. Apple has reportedly drafted an appeal to the DMA, arguing that the entire App Store and iMessage should not be on this list. Earlier this week, Google sent a letter to the EU Commission saying iMessage should be required to share its blue text bubbles with the world because it fits all the requirements of a gatekeeper service.
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Gizmodo ☛ Microsoft Got Bullied [sic] Into Removing Forced OneDrive Survey
Update: All the online backlash that Microsoft received finally worked. They got rid of the survey that users were forced to take every time they would quit the OneDrive app. They also remarked that it was just a test. In a statement that they gave to The Verge, it said, “Between Nov. 1 and 8, a small subset of consumer OneDrive users were presented with a dialog box when closing the OneDrive sync client, asking for feedback on the reason they chose to close the application. This type of user feedback helps inform our ongoing efforts to enhance the quality of our products.”
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Patents
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Unified Patents ☛ Stasit smartphone patent monopoly challenged
On November 10, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 8,855,723, owned and asserted by Stasit, LLC, an NPE. The ‘723 patent monopoly is directed to smartphones that can mask notifications of incoming calls and text messages for certain unauthorized numbers during certain times and only logging a record of those temporally unauthorized communications on a password protected log, while allowing incoming communications from authorized numbers to be handled normally (regular notification and logging on the general log).
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Guest Post by Alice Li: Tips for Strengthening Innovation Ecosystems and Technology Transfer [Ed: "Technology Transfer" is just a propaganda term for patents and monopolies]
Myriad inventions in history have been created based on the foundational research done by universities and academic institutions worldwide. Consider the following examples: Google, the search engine we use every day; COVID vaccines, which saved hundreds of thousands of people amidst the pandemic; and even Honeycrisp Apples, which many enjoy daily, are all widely used inventions with direct links to academic studies. In fact, from 1996 to 2020, nearly 500,000 inventions were created by academic institutions, and more than 17,000 startups were formed based on such inventions.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ How open-source drug discovery could help us in the next pandemic | MIT Technology Review [Ed: Maybe MIT should stop taking bribes from and covering up for Bill Gates then. He lobbied for monopolisation and patenting.]
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Trademarks
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Other Barks & Bites for Friday, November 10: Proprietary Chaffbot Company to Cover Costs of Copyright Infringement Suits Resulting from Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Chaffbot Use; Amazon Hit with $46.7 Million Dollar Patent Infringement Ruling; and Music Copyright Value Tops $40 Billion
This week in Other Barks & Bites: A Delaware jury rules Amazon must pay $46.7 million to a company that accused the tech giant’s Alexa of infringing on several patents; G7 Members publish communique on digital competition; and Diego Maradona’s heirs win a trademark battle against his former lawyer.
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TTAB Blog ☛ J. Michael Keyes: "Getting Your Teflon Survey to 'Stick' at the TTAB"
Teflon. When most people hear that word, they may think of their favorite coated frying pan that dutifully keeps those scrambled eggs from being a jumbled-up, sticky mess on Saturday mornings. When trademark trial lawyers and their experts hear it, though, (regardless of the day), we think of...consumer surveys.
That's because "Teflon" is the name for a specific type of survey method used to test for whether a trademark is "generic" in the marketplace. Teflon surveys are often times at play before the TTAB. A couple of recent decisions provide a cautionary tale for those looking to get their Teflon surveys to stick with the Board. We discuss those below, but first, a paragraph (or two) of history for context.
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TTAB Blog ☛ TTABlog Test: TTAB Rules in Three Recently Argued Ex Parte Appeals
In re Total Vision Group LLC, Serial No. 90687823 and 90689458 (September 19, 2023) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Marc A. Bergsman) [Refusals to register RETYZ, in standard character and design form, for "cable ties, not of metal and zip ties, not of metal," the former on the ground of mere descriptiveness and the latter on the ground of failure to disclaim "retyz."]
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ BitTorrent Pirates Won't Receive ISP Warnings (It Will Be Something Worse)
As part of its overall strategy to reduce piracy in the Netherlands, local anti-piracy group BREIN announced a program to identify major or frequent uploaders by their IP addresses so that warnings could be sent via their ISPs. Under this system, user identities would not have been obtained by BREIN, but after a local ISP refused to cooperate and BREIN's request to proceed was denied twice in court, BREIN had a decision to make. (SPOILER: It's bad news for pirates)
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Digital Music News ☛ DMNPro Conference: Artists, Tech Heavyweights, and Regulation Experts Debate Rules for AI, Voice Modeling, and Copyright Issues
DMNPro’s inaugural mini-conference took place on October 25, 2023. The event set the stage for insightful discussions on the current dilemmas plaguing the music industry — in the face of AI.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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November 9th, 2023: Self-Care
Further along chapter 1 of Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, she quotes Audre Lorde when talking about how her idea of doing nothing is actually about self-care.
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🔤SpellBinding: FWLSTUI Wordo: YAWED
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Now you be me, now you don't
Yesterday we removed the last of our belongs (that was a typo, but I'm likin' it) from a house whose sale closing is this coming Tuesday.
We're leaving not just a house, but a town we've lived in for over 15 years.
Many good times. But we've landed in a much more practical place relative to familial interactions, and at a point in life where such matters more than it did a decade ago.
So that's the current main aspect of the so frequently nightmarish a dream.
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Politics and World Events
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Ben: Episode 56
00:00:00 Introduction
00:07:57 About Me
00:27:32 US After 9/11
00:53:01 Arabs
01:10:22 Israel vs. Palestine
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Technology and Free Software
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tmux divinity and random stuff
Oh man, I am loving the copy and paste in tmux! I should have figured this out years ago! I only figured it out a few days ago, and I made a note, but I think this deserves front page recognition. Except I’m not doing that either, I’m just going to link to that note here.
I’ll probably have to figure out the clipboard commands that it also supports because I will inevitably want to copy and paste from one session somewhere to another session somewhere else.
Tmux is usually the first thing I launch when I open a new terminal. Sometimes I connect to an existing session, sometimes I connect to a remote system and then launch or reattach there. My current home setup is to ssh into my PinePhone and attach to a session there. That’s where I have my messengers, email client, calendar, and a git clone of my notes repository.
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Programming
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A Small at(1) Gotcha
but may become apparent if the working directory the job was scheduled in is no longer available. Thus, a safe default when you do not care about the working directory would be to chdir to a "safe" directory before entering the at job.
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.