Links 12/11/2023: US Tries to Mend Relationship With China, Moody's Downgrade US Economy
Contents
- Leftovers
- Monopolies
- Gemini* and Gopher
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Leftovers
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New York Times ☛ Deadly Johannesburg Fire Exposed Years of Neglect
Officials blame immigrants and liberal housing laws, but a Times investigation found the entrenched problems that turned downtown Johannesburg into a blighted tinderbox.
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Science
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Hardware
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Tom's Hardware ☛ China's SMIC Foundry Fumbles, 80% Decline In Profit
SMIC's profit in Q3 of this year was just 20% of what it was in Q3 of 2022.
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Hackaday ☛ Hands On With Boondock Echo
Perhaps no words fill me with more dread than, “I hear there’s something going around.” In my experience, you hear this when some nasty bug has worked its way into the community and people start getting whatever it is. I’m always on my guard when I hear about something like this, especially when it’s something really unpleasant like norovirus. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Arm, Apple's PC Market Share Shrinks as x86 Rebounds: Mercury Research
Declines of Apple's Macs sales drive Arm's market share in desktops and laptops down.
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Hackaday ☛ OpenMV Promises “Flyby” Imaging Of Components For Pick And Place Project
[iforce2d] has an interesting video exploring whether the OpenMV H7 board is viable as a flyby camera for pick and place, able to quickly snap a shot of a moving part instead of requiring the part to be held still in front of the camera. The answer seems to be yes!
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Hackaday ☛ Putting 3D Printed Screw Threads To The Test
One of the challenges with 3D printing is seeing how far designs can be pushed before they break. This includes aspects like flexible hinges and structural components, but also smaller details such as screw threads. Often metal inserts with threads are added to FDM 3D prints by melting them into the plastic, but might 3D printed threads be sufficient for many cases? This is a question which [Adam Harig] sought to investigate in a recent video while working on parts that would connect to a rather expensive camera.
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Hackaday ☛ Solder Two Boards At Once With This Dual Reflow Plate
Homebrew reflow projects generally follow a pretty simple formula: find a thrift shop toaster oven or hot plate, add a microcontroller and a means to turn the heating element on and off, and close the loop with a thermistor. Add a little code and you’re melting solder paste. Sometimes, though, a ground-up design works better, like this scalable reflow plate with all the bells and whistles.
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Tom MacWright ☛ Roll
I developed an old roll of film and the photos are pretty decent!
My Olympus XA-2 is my default walking-around camera. I love it, but its age is showing and I’m envious of the crisp photos that people get out of later-era SLR film cameras. Thinking about getting a lightweight viewfinder for my monstrous Nikon F, or buying something like a Nikon FM2. There’s a paradox to this gear, though, and I don’t want to delude myself into thinking that I’d use a slightly different camera more when really the issue is that I’m not shooting many photos regardless.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Science Alert ☛ Four-Week Experiment Reveals an Ingeniously Simple Way to Boost Your Sleep Quality
You may want to try this.
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New York Times ☛ Gonorrhea Is Becoming Drug Resistant. Scientists Just Found a Solution.
A new antibiotic, zoliflodacin, is as effective as the current standard of care. Its creation may hasten the arrival of other needed antibiotics.
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The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia faces looming white rice shortage amid uncertain weather and expensive padi seeds
The shortage of padi seeds has resulted in skyrocketing prices.
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YLE ☛ Bird flu confirmation prompts cull at 10 more fur farms
The Finnish Food Authority has now detected avian influenza cases at a total of 42 fur farms.
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Hackaday ☛ Radioactive Water Was Once A (Horrifying) Health Fad
Take a little time to watch the history of Radithor, a presentation by [Adam Blumenberg] into a quack medicine that was exactly what it said on the label: distilled water containing around 2 micrograms of radium in each bottle (yes, that’s a lot.) It’s fascinatingly well-researched, and goes into the technology and societal environment surrounding such a product, which helped play a starring role in the eventual Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. You can watch the whole presentation in the video, embedded below the break.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Qt ☛ Qt Creator 12 RC released
We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 12 RC!
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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The Straits Times ☛ China Southern Airlines to honour $1.80 flight tickets sold during glitch
There was a two-hour technical glitch on its mobile phone app and some ticket-booking platforms.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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New York Times ☛ Prince Harry Can Proceed With a Lawsuit Against Daily Mail Publisher
A judge rejected an attempt by the publisher to have Harry’s case thrown out, paving the way for the trial to move ahead.
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Defence/Aggression
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New York Times ☛ U.S. Seeks to Resume Military Dialogue with Beijing
The Joint Chiefs chairman said in a letter to his Chinese counterpart that restoring communications was crucial to avoiding misunderstandings.
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RFA ☛ Beijing tests Manila’s nerves in disputed reef
Large number of Chinese vessels tried blocking a Philippine resupply mission at Second Thomas Shoal.
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YLE ☛ Finnish investigators confirm recovered anchor belongs to Chinese vessel
Police found a ship's anchor near the site where the Balticconnector gas pipeline was damaged last month.
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JURIST ☛ Maryland to pay $235K to family of Black teen after fatal police encounter
Maryland’s Board of Public Works unanimously approved on Wednesday a settlement ending a lawsuit against the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in the aftermath of a fatal police encounter that resulted in the death of Anton Black’s death five years ago.
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RFA ☛ Interview: Euro-Asia ties needed as global security challenges grow
RFA spoke to KF-VUB Korea chair Ramon Pacheco Pardo about the growing needs for Europe-Asia security ties.
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Defence Web ☛ South Africa getting 30 000 more police officers to bolster fight against crime
Deputy President Paul Mashatile announced on Thursday that the government is working around the clock to capacitate the police force which will see the country having 30 000 more officers in the coming years as South Africa wages war against crime.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Philippines accuses China of ‘dangerous’ actions in South China Sea
The Philippines accused the Chinese coast guard Friday of “dangerous harassment” of Filipino boats in the disputed South China Sea, including firing a water cannon and blocking vessels on a resupply mission.
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Chronicle Of Higher Education ☛ In an ‘Extraordinarily Unusual’ Letter, Israel’s President Urges College Leaders to Fight Antisemitism
Isaac Herzog has called on American college leaders to exercise “moral leadership” and to condemn Hamas “publicly and unequivocally.” -
Michael Geist ☛ Pablo Rodriguez Failed For Weeks to Say Anything About Funding for an Anti-Semite and Then Lied About What He Knew. He Should Resign.
The government’s funding of Laith Marouf, a known anti-semite, sparked anger and condemnation last summer as many wondered how Canadian Heritage failed to conduct the necessary due diligence to weed him out as part of its anti-hate program. While government MPs such as Anthony Housefather urged action, then-Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussein was slow to respond and then-Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez inexplicably remained silent. I posted repeatedly on his silence, leading his Parliamentary Secretary, MP Chris Bittle, to suggest that I was racist and a bully. Yet as we have witnessed in recent days, when it comes to antisemitism, silence is not an option. The threat is literally playing out in our streets and campuses and we need everyone - Jews and non-Jews alike - to speak out against it and take action where necessary.
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-10 [Older] Yellen to 'Intensify Communication' With China's He, Warns on Russia Support
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-11-10 [Older] Allies in the eternal Cold War, or the intriguing partnership of the Russian Federation and the DPRK
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-10 [Older] Mitch McConnell, Standing Apart in a Changing GOP, Digs in on His Decades-Long Push Against Russia
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-10 [Older] A Teenager Taken From Occupied Mariupol to Russia Will Return to Ukraine, Officials Say
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-10 [Older] North Korea Condemns Blinken's Comments on Ties With Russia -KCNA
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-10 [Older] Russia Says Ukrainian Drones Downed in Moscow Region, Elsewhere
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-10 [Older] Russian Shelling Kills Three, Damages Gas, Power Lines in Ukraine's South
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NL Times ☛ 2023-11-08 [Older] Dutch soldiers in Bosnia to fight Russian influence; First deployment since Srebrenica
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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New York Times ☛ Man vs. Musk: A Whistleblower Creates Headaches for Tesla
An employee who was fired after expressing safety concerns leaked personnel records and sensitive data about driver-assistance software.
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Environment
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Energy/Transportation
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TruthOut ☛ Exporting US Fracked Gas Is Far Worse for the Climate Than Coal, Study Finds
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H2 View ☛ Japan and South Korea ‘to build hydrogen and ammonia supply chain’
Japan and South Korea are poised to announce closer collaboration in building a hydrogen and ammonia supply chain.
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teleSUR ☛ Kenya Hosts China-Africa Investment Summit, Green Transition
Representatives of green start-ups from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Uganda pitched to Chinese investors in hopes of securing business partnerships.
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Hackaday ☛ Wind Tunnel Uses The Last Straw
If you watch the movies, there isn’t much to a wind tunnel. Just a fan and a tunnel, right? The truth is there’s a lot more to it than that, and [ejs13] shows you how you can make a small tunnel with some basic supplies. One of the requirements for a useful tunnel is to have laminar flow — that is, flow in uniform layers with little, if any, mixing. This tunnel achieves laminar flow using an array of soda straws to direct the flow. In fact, there are 150 straws in total. You can see a short clip of the wind tunnel in action below.
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TruthOut ☛ Lawsuit Against Mountain Valley Pipeline Activists Sets an Alarming Precedent
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Silicon Angle ☛ Justin Sun’s Poloniex exchange hit for over $100M in exploit
More than $100 million in digital assets were taken from a wallet belonging to the cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex in what security firms said was a massive hack earlier this morning. Millions of crypto assets were transferred from an account labeled “Poloniex 4,” as seen on the Etherescan blockchain explorer.
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Wildlife/Nature
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China’s animal lovers fight illegal cat meat trade
When Han Jiali’s beloved cat Dabai was taken from her Shanghai home last year, she embarked on a hunt for her pet that took her deep into the bowels of China’s underground feline meat trade.
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The Kent Stater ☛ Amazon deforestation falls more than 20% to its lowest levels in 5 years
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Finance
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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RFERL ☛ Kazakh-Chinese Agreement On Visa-Free Travel Comes Into Force
The Kazakh-Chinese agreement on visa-free travel, signed in May, took force on November 10. According to the agreement, citizens of both countries are exempt from visa requirements for tourism, medical treatment, and business trips.
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RFA ☛ China dominates in overseas ports: report
Beijing has become a leading power in owning and operating commercial sea ports worldwide, says U.S.-based think tank.
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RFA ☛ APEC 2023: All eyes on Pooh-tin and Biden
Biden can't offer Pooh-tin the pomp and ceremony he'd demand for a state visit. APEC circumvents that.
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RFA ☛ Li Keqiang's death fueling distrust, opposition toward Pooh-tin Jinping: experts
His death was 'a farewell to the era of reform and opening up in China.'
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RFA ☛ Interview: Opposition's Operation 1027 in Shan State indicates 'low point' in Myanmar-China ties
The Myanmar junta has proven incapable of working with the Chinese to advance any of China's economic interests, says an expert on the conflict.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Fighting in Myanmar blocks key trade routes with China, in ’embarrassing affront’ to military junta
A surprise offensive by Myanmar ethnic armed groups has blocked two strategically vital roads to the country’s biggest trading partner China, choking cross-border commerce and denying the cash-strapped junta taxes and foreign exchange.
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YLE ☛ Packages sent to Finland from outside the EU held up "for weeks" due to new security rules
Newly-introduced EU security data regulations are causing delivery delays by Finland's Posti as more packages from outside the European Union get stuck in customs.
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YLE ☛ Finland's Niinistö heading to Poland for official visit
The presidents will discuss bilateral relations and regional security issues, among other topics.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Cloudbooklet ☛ New Jersey High school students victimized by Hey Hi (AI) Generated Nude Photos
AI generated nude photos of students at Westfield High School in New Jersey cause shock and outrage. The article examines the details, impact, response, and implications of this deepfake scandal.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Blur ‘did not apply for a visa,’ despite bassist’s claim that UK band ‘not allowed back in Hong Kong’
British rock band Blur were not refused a visa to perform in Hong Kong and did not apply for one, a spokesperson for the band has told HKFP, after their bassist claimed that the band was “not allowed back” into the city.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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JURIST ☛ HRW: Burkina Faso conscription plan to muzzle dissent from journalists and organizations
Human Rights Watch stated on Wednesday that Burkina Faso’s junta is intensifying its assault on dissent by notifying 12 journalists, civil society activists and opposition party members that they were required to participate in government security operations across the country.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Justice chief says ‘100% confident’ in handling Jimmy Lai case in Hong Kong amid suggestions of mainland transfer
Justice Secretary Paul Lam has said he is “100 per cent confident” that Hong Kong can handle the national security case against media tycoon Jimmy Lai, following suggestions that such cases could be transferred to China in response to proposed US sanctions.
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CPJ ☛ 2023-11-10 [Older] ‘Our kids miss their mom’: Husband of journalist Alsu Kurmasheva speaks out about her detention in Russia
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ ‘Fact-twisting’: Hong Kong gov’t slams call by international Catholic leaders for Jimmy Lai’s release
Calls by a group of foreign Catholic leaders for the immediate release of media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who will face a national security trial next month, were “misleading and slanderous,” the Hong Kong government has said.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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TruthOut ☛ New Book Examines How Pirates Tried to Sabotage the Growth of the Slave Trade
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RFERL ☛ Under Intense Pressure, Iranian Family Of Slain Child Moves Up Memorial
The family of Kian Pirfalak, a 9-year-old boy killed in last year's protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini while in police custody, commemorated the first anniversary of his death a week earlier than planned after coming under intense pressure from security forces.
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JURIST ☛ Apple to pay $25M settlement over employment discrimination claims
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday that Fashion Company Apple will pay $25 million to settle claims that the tech giant participated in discriminatory hiring and recruitment practices on the basis of citizenship.
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Guest post by Hampole, Truffa & Wong: Breaking the Glass Ceiling: The Power of Female Peer Networks
The glass ceiling — the barrier obstructing females and minorities from obtaining upper-level positions— persists. Even with decades of advancements in labor force participation and university enrollment, companies still underrepresent women in top corporate leadership roles. For instance, women constitute 40% of the workforce in the S&P 1500 companies, yet they only occupy 6% of CEO positions. The gender gap expands at every level of the corporate hierarchy.
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TruthOut ☛ Republicans Claim to Support Child Care Policies, But Few Speak Up
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JURIST ☛ Former Malaysia minister convicted on corruption charges faces 7 years in prison and whipping
An Indonesian court sentenced former Malaysian Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman to seven years in prison and two lashes of the whip after being found guilty of abetting in criminal breach of trust, misappropriation of funds and money laundering, according to a Thursday article from state news agency Bernama.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Chinese former bank chief given life in prison for bribery
China on Friday sentenced the former president of one of its biggest state-owned banks to life in prison for bribery, state media reported, as a campaign against corruption sweeps through the country’s financial sector.
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Latvia ☛ Latvia pushes its AMLA HQ bid in Brussels
Thursday, November 9 saw an event held in Brussels, Belgium to present Latvia as the possible future seat of the new European Union (EU) agency, the European Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA).
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Latvia ☛ Banking association denies Reirs' remarks over 'bank cartel'
The Finance Latvia Association (FLA) categorically rejects the claims made by the former Finance Minister Jānis Reirs that banking activity in Latvia resembles a cartel, the association said in a statement on November 10.
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DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ UAW Targets Toyota and Tesla for Unionization. | BaronHK’s Rants
UAW Targets Toyota and Tesla for Unionization. UAW says they want to unionize Toyota and Tesla. Elon Musk is infamously anti-labor. His cars are almost the shoddiest shit that you can find on the road today.
[...]
The UAW should have gone after Toyota full force years ago but it’s good that they realize that this may be their last opportunity for a while.
Personally, I think Joe Biden should float the idea of some tariffs against Japanese car companies if Toyota tries to resist unionization.
The Japanese government has been incredibly uncooperative with American companies that try to sell anything in Japan even though there are officially no tariffs.
Since the US doesn’t export much to Japan and GM only sells about 700 new cars in the entire country per year anyway, there’s not much the Japanese could do in response.
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LRT ☛ ‘This puts us in one category with Hungary’ – is Lithuania facing sanctions for defying ECHR ruling?
After the parliament voted down amendments to a controversial anti-LGBTQ+ information law, Lithuania may be facing EU sanctions in addition to reputational damage, argues the justice minister. Not everyone agrees.
The Latvian parliament Saeima on Thursday adopted amendments to eight laws legislating same-sex partnership, the country’s public broadcaster LSM has reported.
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Monopolies
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Patents
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Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ SUEPO report 2022: EPO management keeps ignoring staff in major reforms
The political environment at the EPO remains bumpy. Though some progress is made in relatively minor adjustments of the working conditions, the SUEPO trade union and staff committees remain largely ignored in major reforms. SUEPO writes this in its Annual Report 2022, which was published this week: [...]
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Unified Patents ☛ Two Chinese ETRI video codec patents held invalid
The Beijing Intellectual Property Court found all claims of two Chinese patents, CN103384333B and CN104219523B, invalid after the patent monopoly owner, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), filed an appeal.
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JUVE ☛ Adtran and Arnold Ruess overturn first instance ruling in Orckit dispute
US telecommunication company Adtran and Israeli company Orckit IP have battled for years over two network technology patents. Orckit claims that Adtran’s products infringe its IP rights EP 1 974 485, covering VPLS failure protection in ring networks, as well as EP 3 068 077, which covers forwarding multicast traffic over link aggregation ports.
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Copyrights
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Digital Music News ☛ Mystery Behind Led Zeppelin IV Album Cover Revealed, 50 Years On
The mystery of the Led Zeppelin IV album cover has been solved over 50 years on after a researcher in the UK unearthed the original photo. The image features a man with a bundle of sticks on his back, hunched over in a field.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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Hard Times
I guess right now I am having a difficult time with your death. Just before you died two years ago, I was about to go on the same trip as every year, but I had no idea where you were or how you were doing. I hadn't know for several months. You had stopped communicating with me and everyone.
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Politics and World Events
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Thankful, Given Today
Given Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year, and the terror attacks by Hamas and subsequent response by Israel this year, I'm once again thinking how blessed I am to have never been touched by war. The closest it's been in my life is via my brother-in-law, a former infantry sergeant who served in Afghanistan. Other than that, it's taken the form of family stories from my father, because it was my grandfather's generation who fought Nazi Germany. My grandfather didn't actually fight himself, though he was in the army - he was a tank mechanic on the south coast of England, and fixed up the ones that made it back. But I have long-gone great uncles who experienced the hell of war: one who pulled his brother's body out of the water after a U-boat attack, and another who was tank crew, and fought Rommel's forces across Africa. His reward, as an experienced tanker, was to be part of the assault force on D-Day.
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Technology and Free Software
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Working on getting Vivaldi Browser onto Flathub…
I am currently working on getting Vivaldi Browser onto Flathub, which involves creating the various files to convert our .deb package to flatpak format.
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What a week
This wasn't such a wonderful week. It started off with hot and humid weather from the 3 day weekend. On Monday it was 26c / 78f and I had to dig out my USB fans and summer clothes again. Then by nightfall the temperature had dropped and it was cold again, making it difficult to sleep that night.
Then I messed up this Ubuntu install by doing something stupid and I had to recover it. The same day my Gear S2 popped up two low battery warnings, even after having been fully charged and went dead during the night. Finally, work was even more idiotic than usual.
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A hot 3 day weekend
I went to a number of BOOK OFFs looking for PS2 games, but it's frustrating to find that not all locations have them; I walked over 30 minutes to one out in the middle of nowhere just to find that out. I also dropped by Super Potato this weekend, but I was in and out rather quickly. The prices are quite high I noticed, and it's often crowded. With very narrow aisles it's not easy getting around the tourists talking to each other about what game(s) they remember from childhood and/or others taking photos and video.
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Internet/Gemini
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Limited Connection III - Back To Human Ralm
The longer, with the help of various new systems, tricks and challenges and, above all, heightened awareness, I try to control my own Internet usage habits, the more I get an idea of how unaware I was and still am of the vast amount of time I spend on the Internet. Despite the fact that I belong to a generation that grew up without the Internet and was introduced to it at the threshold of entering adulthood, I have become accustomed to being online and constantly immersed in the netosphere to such an extent that on a daily basis, without making an intellectual effort or moving my imagination, I don't realize how difficult it is for me to function without it and how hard it is for me to overcome the urge to connect. To leap with my consciousness into the digital dimension. Frequently downloading small bundles of information (Don't know a term? Quick, look it up immediately!). Not to mention soaking in the rabbit holes of forgetfulness that I've been aware of for quite some time now.
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Limited Connection IV - Old Modem Simulation
In this post I describe the rules of a game (challenge?) I've been testing for myself lately for my own use. Imagine going back to a time when you could only connect to the Internet through a modem connected to the telephone network, the cost of a connection was charged every minute, so we were aware of every minute we spent on the Internet. As you will see, I don't fully go back to the realities of the times, I do, however, go back enough that it strongly changes my life.
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"Mind Management" book notes
These are my personal takeaways after reading "Mind Management" by David Kadavy. Note that the book contains much more knowledge wisdom and that these notes only contain points I personally found worth writing down. This is mainly for my own use, but you might find it helpful too.
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.