Links 17/11/2023: Health and Privacy Issues, IBM Pulling Out of Twitter/X
Contents
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Leftovers
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Science
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Science Alert ☛ Archaeologists Unearth a Secret Lost Language From 3,000 Years Ago
What does it say?
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Science Alert ☛ Underwater Labyrinth Hidden Beneath Mexico Contains a Huge Swathe of Life
A hidden metropolis.
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Open Access/Content
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Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post: Mind the Gap – Understanding China’s Perspective on Research Integrity and Open Access
Interactions and collaborations between the Chinese research community and international scholarly publishers are as numerous and wide-ranging as at any point in past 20 years, during which China has become the world’s top producer of research papers. Yet in some ways the perception gap between these two groups is widening. Some of our colleagues, peers, and partners in China view open access (OA), research integrity, and the responsibilities of authors, editors, institutions, and publishers quite differently than their counterparts in North America and Europe. Some of this stems from the unique nature of the Chinese research ecosystem, while in other cases, China’s stance points toward a likely evolution of global practices in scholarly publishing. Either way, there is an increasing need to exchange views and come to a more shared understanding of scholarly research and communication.
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Education
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The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s high school dropout vlogs gain popularity
The dropout rate in the country for elementary, middle and high school students in 2022 was 1 per cent.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Reason ☛ Mississippi Makes It a Crime to Advertise Legal Medical Marijuana Businesses
Clarence Cocroft filed a lawsuit this week challenging the state's virtual ban on advertising medical marijuana businesses, arguing the law violates his First Amendment rights.
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Reason ☛ The 'Monster' Isn't the Drug, It's the Prohibition
Intoxicating drugs never do as much damage as the laws that impotently attempt to eradicate them.
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Science Alert ☛ Men's Drinking Habits Can Have a Shocking Effect on Their Unborn Child
We need to pay more attention to this.
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Calculated How Much Exercise You Need to 'Offset' a Day of Sitting
Important PSA!
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Science Alert ☛ World's Leading Theory on Alzheimer's in Crisis After Major Drug Trials Fail
Are we chasing the wrong culprit?
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Science Alert ☛ Five Times as Many Human Deaths From Extreme Heat Expected by 2050
We're literally cooking ourselves.
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Federal News Network ☛ VA EHR sees no outages in 6 months, but employees still give system low marks
The Department of Veterans Affairs says its new Electronic Health Record (EHR) hasn't seen a total outage in more than six months.
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teleSUR ☛ Benin: Chinese Medical Team to Perform Free Cataract Surgery
Beninese Health Minister Benjamin Hounkpatin said the project was in line with the development of medical and surgical centers of excellence in Benin.
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New York Times ☛ For Health, More Nuts, Beans and Whole Grains In Your Diet
Plant-based foods are linked to a lower risk of heart disease and diabetes, a new study shows.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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9to5Google ☛ Google News removing magazines, including the ones you paid for, in December
A lesser known feature of the Google News app (and the website) is its ability to show digital copies of magazines, but the company is set to remove this option in a month’s time.
Announced on a support page, Google has confirmed that its News app and news.google.com will remove support for paid magazines next month. The removal not only applies to new subscriptions/purchases, but also to existing libraries of magazines. That means that users who have paid for magazines to use them in the Google News app will be cut off pretty soon.
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6000 Laid Off US H-1Bs Find Alternative
Canada is increasingly becoming a sought-after destination for H-1B visa holders affected by layoffs in the US tech sector. The Canadian government launched a three-year open work permit scheme on July 16th, providing a path to employment for up to 10,000 US-based H-1B visa holders. Over 6,000 have already taken advantage of this opportunity, prompting the closure of the application process. The H-1B visa, highly sought by international students for post-education work in the US, suffered setbacks due to tech layoffs. Major companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google announced significant staff reductions, giving H-1B holders a 60-day ultimatum to leave, transfer visas, or find new sponsors.
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Tech EU ☛ London HRtech startup Beamery to cut 25 percent of workforce amid restructuring
London-based hrtech startup Beamery is to shed 25 percent of its workforce Tech.eu has learned. The move is part of an organisational restructuring that aims to reduce the company’s total costs by 35 percent.
According to LinkedIn, 421 individuals list Beamery as their workplace, meaning 105 talents will soon be available for hire.
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The Daily Beast ☛ Elon Musk, Accused of Antisemitism, Loses IBM Ad Dollars on Twitter Successor X
The company’s ads had been displayed next to pro-Nazi tweets.
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Kev Quirk ☛ I Asked Hey Hi (AI) to Generate a Headshot for Me
I needed a new headshot for work, as I was pissed in my old one. But instead of getting a photographer, I asked Hey Hi (AI) to do it for me instead.
A while back I decided I needed a new headshot, as the one I currently use everywhere is from a night out with friends where I'm actually little drunk. It was an okay picture of me, so I decided to edit my friend out of the picture, remove the background, and use it: [...]
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EFF ☛ To Best Serve Students, Schools Shouldn’t Try to Block Generative AI, or Use Faulty AI Detection Tools
For decades, students have had to defend themselves from an increasing variety of invasive technology in schools—from disciplinary tech like student monitoring software, remote proctoring tools, and comprehensive learning management systems, to surveillance tech like cameras, face recognition, and other biometrics. “AI detection” software is a new generation of inaccurate and dangerous tech that’s being added to the mix.
Tools such as GPTZero and TurnItIn that use AI detection claim that they can determine (with varying levels of accuracy) whether a student’s writing was likely to have been created by a generative AI tool. But these detection tools are so inaccurate as to be dangerous, and have already led to false charges of plagiarism. As with remote proctoring, this software looks for signals that may not indicate cheating at all. For example, they are more likely to flag writing as AI-created when the word choice is fairly predictable and the sentences are less complex—and as a result, research has already shown that false positives are more frequent for some groups of students, such as non-native speakers.
Instead of demonizing it, schools should help students by teaching them how this potentially useful technology works and when it’s appropriate to use it.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Techdirt ☛ Steamed Hams, Except It’s The EU Commission’s Alleged CSAM Regulation ‘Experts’
Everyone who wants client-side scanning to be a thing insists it’s a good idea with no potential downsides. The only hangup, they insist, is tech companies’ unwillingness to implement it. And by “implement,” I mean — in far too many cases — introducing deliberate (and exploitable!) weaknesses in end-to-end encryption.
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Defence/Aggression
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PHR ☛ PHR Welcomes International Arrest Warrant for Assad and Senior Syrian Officials Involved in 2013 Chemical Weapons Attack
The international arrest warrants issued by a French court for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, his brother Maher al-Assad, and two generals for their role in devastating chemical attacks against civilians in 2013 are a crucial first step towards justice for the many victims of the Syrian government’s gross human rights violations [...]
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JURIST ☛ France issues arrest warrants for Syria president and officials over 2013 chemical attacks
France issued arrest warrants on Wednesday for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher al-Assad, the de facto chief of the Syrian elite military unit, as well as two high-ranking armed forces generals. The arrest warrants stem from two chemical weapons attacks that occurred in Ghouta, Syria in August 2013.
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New York Times ☛ French Judges Issue Warrant for Syria’s President in War Crimes Case
The warrant relates to the deadly use of chemical weapons and is a major step to hold President Bashar al-Assad accountable for some of the worst atrocities in Syria’s long conflict.
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France24 ☛ France issues arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
France has issued an international arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, accused of complicity in crimes against humanity over chemical attacks in 2013, a judicial source and plaintiffs in the case said Wednesday.
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JURIST ☛ UK House of Commons rejects Gaza ceasefire amendment as US representatives pressure president
The UK House of Commons rejected an amendment calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday as 24 US congressional representatives advocated for one in a letter to the Biden administration.
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France24 ☛ Are Islamist flags being waved in pro-Palestine protests? Not exactly
Images of protesters brandishing black and white banners during marches across Europe in support of the Palestinian people have been circulating online. Some accounts were quick to point out that these same flags have been brandished by al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Islamic State group. It turns out that this is a religious symbol that has been appropriated by terrorist groups. At the rallies, however, it was largely members of a radical group called Hizb ut-Tahrir that carried this banner.
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New York Times ☛ Younger Israel and Palestinian Activists Dream of a New Peace
A younger generation of Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers want to be part of the dialogue about the “day after” the war, when Israelis and Palestinians must grapple again with how to live side by side.
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New York Times ☛ U.S. Says Hamas Operates Out of Gaza Hospitals, Endorsing Israel’s Allegations
John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said that intelligence from U.S.-generated sources supported Israel’s claim that Hamas has tunnels under Al-Shifa and other hospitals.
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CS Monitor ☛ War in Gaza: Has Hamas achieved its aims against Israel?
Does Hamas think it is winning? It has shaken Israel’s sense of security to its core, increased its alienation, and renewed focus on the Palestinian cause. But the cost to civilians in Gaza has been enormous.
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France24 ☛ Cartel turf war rages in Mexico's Chiapas as groups fight over territory
People in Mexico’s southernmost state, Chiapas, have for the last year and a half, been living through a conflict between rival criminal groups. The Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generacion Cartel are both vying for control of the territory. The state, which borders Guatemala, has long been a hotspot for trafficking drugs, arms and migrants. But ravaged by years of inter-community conflicts, the security situation in Mexico’s poorest state is now spiralling out of control. In the face of growing insecurity, the left-wing rebel movement – the Zapatistas – recently announced that their self-managed municipalities, called “caracoles”, will be dissolved, in what looks to be a political retreat. Quentin Duval, Laurence Cuvillier and Ed Augustin report.
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New York Times ☛ Madagascar Votes Amid Violence and Calls for Boycott
Tensions are high on the island nation off the coast of southeastern Africa, as opposition presidential candidates complain of a rigged election and abuses by security forces.
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New York Times ☛ U.N. Security Council Calls for Days-Long Humanitarian Pauses in Gaza
After weeks of division, the Council adopted a resolution that stopped short of calling for a cease-fire.
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New York Times ☛ Israel Shows Videos of Gaza’s Al-Rantisi Hospital, Claiming It Was Used by Hamas
Israel released two videos from inside Gaza’s main children’s hospital that showed weapons and explosives. Gazan health officials denied the hospital was used for military purposes.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Experts react: Are the US and South Korea following through on the Washington Declaration?
US and South Korean defense officials and military leaders just met in Seoul for two meetings that, while long-standing annual events, have taken on a new urgency following the April 2023 Washington Declaration.
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RFA ☛ Hymn to Kim Jong Un becomes official song at state events
By replacing a hymn to his father, Kim is breaking out of previous leaders’ shadows, experts say.
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The Straits Times ☛ North Korea vows more offensive response to US ‘threats’: Report
A spokesperson for the North's Defence Ministry blamed the US for raising tensions in the region.
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Environment
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The Strategist ☛ Australia’s climate-security support for Tuvalu a leap in the right direction
The Falepili Union, a security treaty between Australia and Tuvalu announced at the conclusion of last week’s Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting, is a huge leap forward for tackling climate change [...]
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Energy/Transportation
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TruthOut ☛ Protesters Hoped to Plant Trees at Cop City Site. They Were Tear Gassed Instead.
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TruthOut ☛ Over 1,000 Oil and Gas Companies Around the World Plan to Expand Infrastructure
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New York Times ☛ Fire at Coal Firm Office in China Kills at Least 26
The fire, at a coal company’s offices in the province of Shanxi, also left dozens of people injured. The cause was not immediately clear.
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Finance
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TechCrunch ☛ Cruise suspends employee stock program, corp bonuses moved up | TechCrunch
Cruise, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of General Motors, told staff Thursday via email that the employee share-selling program for the fourth quarter
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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The Nation ☛ Crime Family
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New York Times ☛ Trump’s Love-Hate Relationship With the World Is Mostly Hate
If we came to think of Trump Derangement Syndrome as a mental health problem, who do you think would be the first person diagnosed?
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TruthOut ☛ Nearly 100 Republicans Vote Against Bill to Narrowly Avert Government Shutdown
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TruthOut ☛ Republican Senator Says He’d Bite Teamster President in Fight
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CS Monitor ☛ Forced sea labor: Chinese companies worst offenders, study finds
In the most comprehensive attempt to date, a new report has worked to identify companies operating nearly 500 vessels where workers face hazardous, forced conditions sometimes likened to slavery. A quarter of the suspected ships belong to China.
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New York Times ☛ Biden-Xi Talks Lead to Little but a Promise to Keep Talking
Both American and Chinese accounts of the meeting indicated scant progress on the issues that have pushed the two nations to the edge of conflict.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Security Week ☛ Addressing the State of AI’s Impact on Cyber Disinformation/Misinformation
By embracing a strategy that combines technological advancements with critical thinking skills, collaboration, and a culture of continuous learning, organizations can safeguard against AI's disruptive effects.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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TruthOut ☛ Report Finds X Failed to Remove 98 Percent of Posts Flagged Hateful
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EFF ☛ Speaking Freely: Agustina Del Campo
Agustina Del Campo is the Director at the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information (CELE) at the University of Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She holds a law degree from Universidad Catolica Argentina and an LL.M. in International Legal Studies from American University Washington College of Law.
Agustina has extensive experience in human rights training, particularly as it relates to freedom of expression and the press in the Inter-American human rights system. She has taught and lectured in several Latin American countries and the U.S.
EFF’s Executive Director Cindy Cohn caught up with Agustina at RightsCon 2023 in Costa Rica. In this brief but powerful exchange Agustina discusses how, though free speech has a bad rap these days, it is inherent in any advocacy agenda aimed at challenging – and changing – the status quo and existing power dynamics.
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New York Times ☛ Antisemitic and Anti-Muslim Hate Speech Surges Across the Internet
Fueled by the conflict between Israel and Gaza and stoked by extremists, hate speech has spiked on social control media platforms such as X, Facebook (Farcebook) and Instagram, researchers said.
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Reason ☛ Nikki Haley's Crazy Plan to Require Verification on Social Media
The 2024 GOP candidate has proposed something blatantly unconstitutional.
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Techdirt ☛ Bally Sports Tries To Disappear Sports Commentator’s Televised Rant, Streisanding It To The Moon
Some will never learn. The Streisand Effect, coined by site-god Mike Masnick two decades ago, is a term that describes when a person or group attempts to disappear content, typically from the internet, which only serves to make that content far more visible and sought out. Because the internet tends to round around censorship and deletion. Because the internet is forever, someway, somehow. Because attempts to control the content cat that has already exited the content bag never, ever works.
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teleSUR ☛ Gaza to Lose All Communications and Internet Services Soon
"Currently, main network elements depend solely on batteries... May God protect you and our country," PALTEL stressed.
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Reason ☛ Prof. John Goldberg (Harvard) on "Large Libel Models"
I was delighted to see a brief review of my article on libel by Hey Hi (AI) in JOTWELL yesterday by Prof. Goldberg, a leading expert on tort law.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Verdict in sedition case against Hong Kong outlet Stand News further postponed pending higher court ruling
The verdict in the sedition case against Hong Kong outlet Stand News and two of its former editors has been postponed again pending a higher court’s ruling.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Reason ☛ Washington Court Refuses to Enforce Saudi Child Custody Decree
"During the custody battle [in Saudi Arabia], Ghassan AlHaidari accused Bethany of gender mixing, adultery, and insulting Islam and Saudi Arabia. Gender mixing, a punishable crime, entails having a male friend. To prove the charge of adultery, Ghassan submitted a photograph of Bethany with a male, who Ghassan claimed to be her boyfriend. The crimes of adultery, insulting Islam, and insulting Saudi Arabia carry a death penalty in Saudi Arabia."
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CS Monitor ☛ ‘Minister of music’: Courtney Bryan fuses protest with the sacred
At a time when many people take to the streets to protest injustice, Courtney Bryan turns to her piano. The recently named MacArthur fellow calls music a way to grapple with the emotions of things, rather than become numb to others’ pain.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 2 Hong Kong students sue schools over ban on long hair for boys
Two Hong Kong students have sued their former schools over their bans on long hair for boys. The lawsuits came months after the city’s equality watchdog terminated investigations into the students’ complaints citing no “actual loss.”
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JURIST ☛ Peru dispatch: the Alejandro Soto case shows how parliamentarians can craft laws to achieve personal impunity
Peruvian law students from the Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Políticas, Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco are reporting for JURIST on law-related events in and affecting Perú.
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TruthOut ☛ Oklahoma Supreme Court Blocks Anti-Abortion Laws Citing Protections for Life
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Federal News Network ☛ Fort McNair Army civilian guilty of abusing his GSA gas card
In today's Federal Newscast: A Fort McNair Army civilian is guilty of charging thousands of dollars on a GSA gas card. A deputy archivist ends her federal service after more than three decades. And the Pentagon has a new responsible artificial intelligence toolkit.
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RFERL ☛ Iranian Rights Lawyer Sotoudeh Released From Prison After Posting Bail, Husband Says
Prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been released from prison, her husband said on X, formerly known as Twitter. Sotoudeh was released on November 15 after posting bail, said Reza Khandan.
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BIA Net ☛ Inmate dies suspiciously in Urfa prison
The 36-year old prisoner’s family said he had no known pre-existing health conditions.
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Monopolies
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Matt Rickard ☛ What if Google Wasn’t The Default?
Google has paid Apple to be the default search on their operating systems since 2002. But recent antitrust cases against Google have shed more light on this deal.
Google pays Apple 36% of the revenue it earns from search advertising through the Safari browser (iOS, macOS).
The power of defaults is real. From the trial, 75% of users don’t switch defaults. And 50% of iOS users don’t know what search engine they are using.
What would happen if Google wasn’t the default? Where would that revenue go?
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Patents
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JUVE ☛ UPC takes narrow definition of ‘party’ after Meril Italy files nullity suit in Paris [Ed: UPC is totally and entirely illegal. EPO and EU have in effect put together a "legal" system that is profoundly illegal and unconstitutional. This will cost the EU in legitimacy.]
The Italian subsidiary of medical device company Meril Life Sciences filed a revocation action against Edwards Lifesciences’ EP 3 646 825 before the Paris central division. Now the court has published an order regarding the basic jurisdiction of such actions.
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Unified Patents ☛ IPVal patent monopoly asserted against dozens of retailers challenged
On November 10, 2023, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 8,643,875, owned by eCeipt, LLC, an NPE and IPValuation Partners entity. The ‘875 patent monopoly relates to sending electronic receipts to a customer.
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Design Patent Bar Now Reality [Ed: Such patents ought not exist at all, but law firms' lobbying makes the absurd a reality]
The USPTO is officially establishing a separate design patent monopoly practitioner bar with its final rule published on November 16, 2023 and effective January 2, 2024. This is an historic change that opens the door to becoming a patent monopoly practitioner to a much wider audience and will likely lend itself to further growth in this specialty area. After proposing the idea in May 2023 and receiving positive feedback, the USPTO implemented the design patent monopoly practitioner bar through its rulemaking authority under 35 U.S.C. 2(b)(2).
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Software Patents
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ The Predictability of the Mayo/Alice Framework – A New Empirical Perspective [Ed: This is how many software patents have been squashed for nearly a decade; patent extremists hate this with a passion for their own financial reasons.]
The Mayo/Alice framework used to determine patent monopoly eligibility has been a lightning rod for criticism since the Supreme Court’s decisions a decade ago. Some have argued that the two-step framework is inconsistent with earlier patent monopoly eligibility precedent, while others have focused their objections on its purported negative effects on innovation. But arguably the most popular narrative is the asserted fatal flaw that the framework lacks administrability and cannot be applied predictably.
Too many critics to count—including academics, practitioners, legislators, and judges—have lambasted the patent monopoly eligibility framework as an unpredictable morass of confusion. Even some judges on the Federal Circuit have labeled the eligibility framework as an “incoherent doctrine”[1] that might tempt district courts into “an effective coin toss,”[2] while others have openly confessed that “the nation’s lone patent monopoly court … [is] at a loss as to how to uniformly apply § 101.”[3] The latest legislative attempt to reframe patent monopoly eligibility is similarly premised on “extensive confusion and lack of consistency [in applying the 101 exceptions] throughout the judicial branch of the Federal Government and Federal agencies.”[4] These concerns for unpredictability are undoubtedly echoed by countless practitioners who have been in the trenches of litigating this polarizing issue.
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Trademarks
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TTAB Blog ☛ And the INTA President's Award Goes to . . . Guess Who?
Well, this was an amazing surprise. My thanks to INTA for this award. It is truly an honor to join the distinguished roster of past recipients.
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Copyrights
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Public Domain Review ☛ Last Order Dates for the Holiday Season - 2023
The recommended cut-off dates to order from our shop by to ensure delivery in time for Dec 25th.
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Torrent Freak ☛ YouTube Copyright ID Scammers Must Pay Artists $3.3m Restitution
By masquerading as legitimate music rightsholders, two men managed to extract over $23 million in revenue from YouTube's Content ID system. Both were arrested and sentenced to prison. In the wake of the criminal proceeding, hundreds of disadvantaged artists came forward, and the court has now ordered the scammers to pay $3.3 million in restitution.
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Jason Kottke ☛ Coyote Vs. Acme Movie! Shelved?!
I just found out today that they made a movie version of Ian Frazier’s classic 1990 New Yorker piece Coyote V. Acme, in which Wile E. Coyote files a product liability lawsuit against the Acme Company.
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Walled Culture ☛ Money talks in the world of copyright legislation, and that’s a big problem for ordinary Internet users
One striking chart shows global music streaming revenues rising from negligible rates in 2005 to $5.5 billion in 2022. This underlines how foolish the music business was to resist the move to online music – it could probably have made billions more dollars had it started earlier. Instead, it sued the pioneering service Napster into the ground in 2001. It was a typically short-sighted move that impoverished not just the music industry, but society as a whole, for a reason Lawrence Lessig explains in his book Free Culture: [...]
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