Links 18/11/2023: Amazon Alexa Layoffs, Arguments Over Hong Kong and Taiwan
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- 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
- Digital Restrictions (DRM)
- Monopolies
- Gemini* and Gopher
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Leftovers
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Federal News Network ☛ After years of delays, the TSP’s I fund will track a new index starting in 2024
After several years of delays and controversy, the TSP’s I fund will transition to tracking a new, broadened benchmark index, but will exclude investments in China and Hong Kong.
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Hackaday ☛ After MEMS Microphones, MEMS Speakers Enter The Market
These days it’s hard to not come across solid-state (micro-electromechanical systems, MEMS) microphones, as they are now displacing electret microphones almost everywhere due to their small size and low cost. Although MEMS speakers are not impossible, creating a miniature speaker that can both displace a lot of air (‘volume’) and accurately reproduce a wide range of frequencies – unlike simple piezo buzzers – is a lot tougher. Here a startup called xMEMS figures that they have at least partially cracked the code with their piezoMEMS speakers, with Creative using the Cowell version in their brand-new Aurvana Ace in-ear monitors.
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Hackaday ☛ Robots: How The Pros Keep Them Safe
Robotic safety standards are designed for commercial bots, but amateur robot builders should also consider ideas like the keepout zone where a mobile robot isn’t permitted to go or how to draw out the safety perimeter space for your experimental robot arm. After all, that robot arm won’t stop crushing your fingers because you built it yourself. So, it is worth looking at the standards for industrial robots, even if your aim is fun rather than profit.
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Hackaday ☛ Robot Hand Has Good Bones
What do you get when you mix rigid and elastic polymers with a laser-scanning 3D printing technique? If you are researchers at ETH Zurich, you get robot hands with bones, ligaments, and tendons. In conjunction with a startup company, the process uses both fast-curing and slow-curing plastics, allowing parts with different structural properties to print. Of course, you could always assemble things from multiple kinds of plastics, but this new technique — vision-controlled jetting — allows the hands to print as one part. You can read the full paper from Nature or see the video below.
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Hackaday ☛ ColorReplica Is A Rainbow At Your Fingertips
Have you ever wanted to match paint to the color of a pillow, or make a website where the primary color matches your favorite shade of electrolytic capacitor? Then ColorReplica is the project for you.
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Hackaday ☛ Umbrella Antenna Protects You From Rain, But Not The Way You Think
You never know when you’ll be called upon to [MacGyver] your way out of an emergency. We can’t imagine what kind of situation would call for whipping up a satellite ground station for NOAA weather satellites from junk, but hey, it could happen.
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Hackaday ☛ A 3D Printed Grinder For Printed Lens Blanks
When one thinks of applications for 3D printing, optical components don’t seem to be a good fit. With the possible exception of Fresnel lenses, FDM printing doesn’t seem up to the job of getting the smooth surfaces and precision dimensions needed to focus light. Resin printing might be a little closer to the mark, but there’s still a long way to go between a printed blank and a finished lens.
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Kev Quirk ☛ Fat Boy at 40 - Update 02
I just realised that I forgot to give the update for this month's Fat Boy at 40. I'll keep this brief as I don't have much time...
Things are still going well. I'm continuing to lose weight and feel good. What's more, friends and family are starting to notice now too.
Here's the number as they stood as of Mon 13th Nov 2023: [...]
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Science
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Science Alert ☛ Physicists Uncover a New State of Matter Hidden in The Quantum World
A new secret is revealed.
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Hardware
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Tedium ☛ When Tools Unlock New Paths
Don’t just keep doing the same thing hoping that something is going to change. If you want to truly be creative, try a different tool sometime. You’ll thank yourself.
Case in point: Have you ever tried to remove a hydraulic lift from an office chair? It is the most painful process, one that seems designed to wear down anyone that tries to do it. I do not recommend it.
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CNX Software ☛ AMD Ryzen Embedded 7000 Zen 4 SoC integrates Radeon RDNA 2 graphics, up to 28 lanes of PCIe 5 connectivity
AMD Ryzen Embedded 7000 Series is a new “Zen 4” processor with integrated Radeon RDNA 2 graphics designed for high-performance embedded systems targetting industrial automation, machine vision, robotics, and edge servers. The last two Ryzen Embedded families from AMD, namely the Ryzen Embedded V3000 and Ryzen Embedded 5000, mostly targeted headless networking and storage applications since the processors lacked any 3D GPU. But the new Ryzen Embedded 7000 processors bring back graphics with a Radeon RDNA 2 GPU clocked at up to 2.2 GHz and also come with up to 12 Zen4 cores clocked at up to 5.4 GHz, and feature up to 28 lanes of PCIe 5 connectivity. >
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Apple-Scented Thermal Paste Launches in Japan
An apple-scented thermal paste has been launched in Japan. One explanation provided is that the light green color helps DIYers check for an even application.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Cerebras Boss Calls Nvidia ‘Un-American’ for Sanctions-Swerving GPUs
The CEO of Cerebras has accused Nvidia of following the letter of the law regarding US-China sanctions, but limboing under the GPU restrictions in an unpatriotic manner.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ China's YMTC Preps Next-Gen Xtacking 4.0 NAND Tech
Yangtze Memory proceeds to Xtacking 4.0 architecture, but without increasing the number of layers.
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Hackaday ☛ Underwater Kites Buoying The Prospect Of More Tidal Power Generation
Swedish start-up Minesto has been for years trying to float the idea of having underwater turbines that generate power for use on-shore. These would be anchored to the seafloor by a long tether and move around in figure-of-eight patterns like a kite, which would increase the flow over the turbine’s blades. After a few years of trials, its 1.2 MW Dragon 12 kite will now be installed off the coast of the Faroe Islands.
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Hackaday ☛ Don’t Look Up, Or You’ll See The Time From This VFD Projection Clock
Ceiling clocks were a bit of a thing back in the days when clock radios were a fixture of nightstands. The idea was to project the time onto the ceiling so you’d only have to roll over onto your back and open your eyes to check the time, instead of potentially disturbing your slumber by craning your neck around to see the front of the clock.
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Hackaday ☛ Backyard UFO Is Out Of This World
Halloween may be over for another year, but UFOs in your yard are cool year-round. This one might take the cake. [frydom.john]’s excellent UFO is fully programmable and contains about 2000 addressable RGB LEDs, smoke, a laser-lit ramp, and of course, an alien crew.
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Hackaday ☛ Probably The Largest Selfie Camera In The World
Most readers will have some idea of how a camera works, with a lens placed in front of a piece of film or an electronic sensor, and the distance between the two adjusted until the images is in focus. The word “camera” is a shortening of “camera obscura”, the Latin for “dark room”, as some early such devices were darkened rooms in which the image was projected onto a rear wall. [David White], a lecturer at Falmouth University in the UK has created a modern-day portable camera obscura using a garden gazebo frame, and uniquely for a camera obscura, it can be used to take selfies.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Report: Applied Materials under investigation for sending chipmaking gear to China in breach of export rules
Shares of the semiconductor manufacturing technology provider Applied Materials Inc. traded lower after-hours today in the wake of a report that it’s being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department for violating export restrictions by shipping products to a leading Chinese chipmaker.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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TruthOut ☛ A Federal Report Shows “Climate-Sensitive” Diseases Are Spreading Through the US
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Science Alert ☛ Common Pill Slashes Risk of Deadly Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Strain
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Science Alert ☛ Experts Explain FDA Warning to Stop Using Suspect Eye Drops Immediately
Alarming findings.
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Science Alert ☛ Is Ketchup Really a Sports Supplement? A Nutritionist Reveals The Truth.
We have questions.
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Science Alert ☛ Extreme Drop in Oxygen Will One Day Suffocate Most Life on Earth
The end of the road.
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Federal News Network ☛ A decade after its creation, DHA thinks it has building blocks in place for an integrated military health system
After a decade of constant change, DHA's new director says it's time to focus on delivering a truly integrated military health system.
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Federal News Network ☛ Protected: Open Season Exchange 2023: UnitedHealthcare’s Dr. Rhonda Randall on getting mental health care when you need it
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Federal News Network ☛ Protected: Open Season Exchange 2023: UnitedHealthcare Dental’s Haley Landherr on picking a dental plan that adapts with you
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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The Straits Times ☛ Italy arrests six in crackdown on fentanyl smuggling from China to US
Italian police have arrested six people in a crackdown on a network that allegedly played go-between for fentanyl trafficking from China to the United States, Guardia di Finanza police and prosecutors in the northern city of Piacenza said on Wednesday.
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teleSUR ☛ Africa: WHO Warns of Growing Diabetes Amid Lifestyle Changes
Diabetes was responsible for 416,000 deaths in Africa in 2021 and is expected to be one of the leading causes of death on the continent by 2030 unless communities adopt healthier lifestyles, such as regular exercise.
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YLE ☛ Police warn of deadly designer drug circulating in Kuopio
Metonitazene is estimated to be 10 times as potent than fentanyl. Police say it has been sold on the street in tablets that look like Subutex.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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GeekWire ☛ Internal memo: Amazon will cut ‘several hundred’ Alexa jobs as it ends unspecified initiatives
Amazon will eliminate several hundred roles in its Alexa division as part of a broader shift in priorities and a focus on developing new forms of artificial intelligence, according to an internal memo sent to employees Friday morning.
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Pro Publica ☛ DOJ Backs Tenants in Price-Fixing Case Against Big Landlords and Real Estate Tech Company
The U.S. Department of Justice late Wednesday stepped into a massive antitrust lawsuit filed by dozens of tenants who are accusing a tech company’s apartment software of helping landlords collude to inflate rents.
The DOJ action comes after a ProPublica investigation last year found that Texas-based software provider RealPage used algorithms to recommend rents to landlords across the country to maximize profits — a practice that experts said may violate antitrust laws.
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Reason ☛ From Judge Michael J. Newman (S.D. Ohio) on Use of Hey Hi (AI) to Prepare Filings
From today's order in Whaley v. Experian Info. Solutions, Inc., which dismisses the case on the merits but also adds: Plaintiff admits that he used Artificial Intelligence ("AI") to prepare case filings. [This yielded hallucinated citations to nonexistent cases. -EV] The Court reminds all parties that they are not allowed to use AI—for any purpose—to prepare…
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Pro Publica ☛ Mother Suing NYC Child Welfare Agency for Its Warrantless Searches of Her Home and Son
It was 5:30 a.m. Flashlights beamed in through the windows of the ground-floor apartment in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. Police officers and child welfare caseworkers were ordering a woman to open her front door.
When she did, the first thing she saw was that the police had their guns drawn. Her hands flew up into the “don’t shoot” position; she was well aware of the recent stories of cops “shooting first and asking later.” She prayed that her 7-year-old son was still asleep in his room.
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Security Week ☛ Threat Intel: To Share or Not to Share is Not the Question
To share or not to share threat intelligence isn’t the question. It’s how to share, what to share, where and with whom.
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Techdirt ☛ UK Law Enforcement Continues To Expand Use Of Facial Recognition Tech
UK law enforcement seems incapable of recognizing warning signs. Officials seem willing to compete with China in terms of Most Cameras Per Capita. And it’s not enough to just have cameras covering every bit of open space. Those cameras must contain questionable tech that is notoriously inaccurate, at least when deployed by UK law enforcement.
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Defence/Aggression
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New York Times ☛ International Court Orders Syria to Stop Torture of Political Opponents
Human rights experts have estimated that some 14,000 people died from torture or were killed in the prisons run by military intelligence and security forces during Syria’s long civil war.
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Federal News Network ☛ Cyber Solarium leader pushes to ensure continuity in national cyber director job [Ed: Hiring another poser]
"The worst thing would be if we suffered a serious cyber attack, and this position was vacant."
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China’s leader Pooh-tin Jinping and US President Joe Biden agree to restore military ties at ‘productive’ summit
United States US President Joe Biden hailed his “most constructive” talks with Chinese President Pooh-tin Jinping Wednesday, as they agreed at their first summit in a year to restore military-to-military communications and ease tensions.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Global China Newsletter: Pooh-tin and Biden dazzle, but don’t be blinded to action elsewhere
The November 2023 edition of the Global China newsletter.
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Federal News Network ☛ Federal cybersecurity strategy faces a crucial test. Will it pass?
More often than not, legacy contracts and programs with existing providers and solutions are routinely extended. That may save time, but it also prevents the innovation and collaboration needed to address modern threats.
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Federal News Network ☛ One of the EPA’s most sacred databases could be at risk
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), is one of the main tools the agency relies on for environmental regulations, containing information on human health effects that may result from exposure to various chemicals in the environment. A new report from the EPA's inspector general, said the agency needs to do a better job of who has access to it. For more on the report, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin's Executive Producer Eric White talked with Jeremy Sigel, the IG office's Supervisory Audit Manager in the Information Resources Management Directorate.
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Security Week ☛ State-Sponsored Online Spies Likely to Target Australian Submarine Program, Spy Agency Says
Australia’s cooperation with the U.S. and Britain to develop an Australian fleet of submarines powered by U.S. nuclear technology is a likely target of state-sponsored cyberespionage, the nation’s digital spy agency said.
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The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s Yoon, Japan’s Kishida vow to deepen ties
They made the pledge during a meeting on the sidelines of the Apec summit in San Francisco.
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RFA ☛ Yoon, Kishida aim for better ties; island issues may constrain
Ongoing territorial disputes could hamper full security cooperation, says an expert.
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RFA ☛ Biden: US-China ties ‘not all kumbaya’ after Pooh-tin talks
He also told world leaders that their main focus should be building resilience, ‘not about how much we trade.’
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RFA ☛ Xi and Biden hold talks outside San Francisco
Despite progress after an hourslong meeting, Biden also said that he still thinks Pooh-tin is a ‘dictator.’
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Meduza ☛ Police raid Voronezh restaurant, hand out 50 military summonses to immigrants from Azerbaijan — Meduza
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RFA ☛ Has North Korea shut down all diplomatic missions?
Verdict: False
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The Straits Times ☛ Philippines calls on China to remove illegal structures, cease reclamations in South China Sea
It also called on China to be accountable for environmental damage in the South China Sea.
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The Straits Times ☛ Philippines’ Marcos, China’s Pooh-tin to discuss tensions, way forward in South China Sea
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 said the line on China’s maps had no legal basis.
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The Straits Times ☛ 26 dead, dozens hospitalised in China building fire: State media
The fire started at a four-storey building belonging to a coal company in Shanxi province.
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RFA ☛ Thailand backs away from Chinese police patrol plan amid furor
Prime minister says there is no plan to station Chinese police in Thailand for joint patrols.
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YLE ☛ Finland closes southeastern border
Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said that all four southeastern border crossing points will be shut on Friday night.
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New York Times ☛ ‘Erase Gaza’: War Unleashes Incendiary Rhetoric in Israel
Experts say that inflammatory statements by prominent Israelis are normalizing ideas like the killing of civilians and mass deportations.
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New York Times ☛ How International Law Views Israel’s Military Action at Al-Shifa Hospital
Human rights laws prohibit harming or interfering with a hospital like Gaza’s Al-Shifa, with very narrow exceptions, or using it as a human shield. Attacking one can be a war crime.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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RFERL ☛ Prosecution Seeks Seven Years For Kyrgyz Blogger Who Wrote About Issues At Mining Complex
The prosecutor in the trial of Kyrgyz blogger Yryskeldi Jekshenaliev, who was arrested in August on charges of making public calls for mass disorder and violence, asked a Bishkek court on November 16 to convict and sentence the defendant to seven years in prison.
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Suspected 2019 Exposure of Jonathan Buma’s Source
The reasons I'm cautious about Jonathan Buma's whistleblower complaint go beyond the fact that he thought Chuck Johnson would make a good informant.
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Environment
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Reason ☛ New U.S.-China Climate Deal: Same as the Old Deals
China pledges again to do exactly what it was going to do anyway.
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Hackaday ☛ A Brief History Of Weather Control
It used to be a common expression to say that something would happen when “people walked on the moon.” That is, something that was never going to happen. Of course, by 1960, it was clear that someone was going to walk on the moon eventually. There were many other things everyone “knew” would happen in the future. Some of them came true, but many of them didn’t. Some, like video phones and robot factory workers, came true in a way, but not as people imagined. For example, people were confident that computers would easily translate between human languages, something we still have trouble doing entirely reliably. Another standard prediction is that people would control the weather.
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YLE ☛ Finland leads 'Freezing Winds 23' drills in Baltic Sea
Sixteen allied aircraft will also take part, with drills planned over areas of southern Finland and the northern Baltic Sea.
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Energy/Transportation
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European Commission ☛ Security of gas supply: the European Commission decides to refer POLAND to the Court of Justice of the European Union for measures imposing additional costs on cross-border gas trade
European Commission Press release Brussels, 16 Nov 2023 Today, the Europen Commission decided to refer Poland to the Court of Justice of the European Union for imposing restrictive requirements on companies engaged in the cross-border trade of natural gas under its national gas storage legislation.
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RFA ☛ China’s renewable energy boom powers global job surge, report says
Investment in renewables in Asia reached US$345 billion at the end of 2022.
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Overpopulation
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Science Alert ☛ Doomsday Clock Warns We're Alarmingly Close to an Uninhabitable Earth
The nearest we've ever been to midnight.
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Finance
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Atlantic Council ☛ CBDCs will further fragment the global economy—and could threaten the dollar
By the end of 2023, over 130 central banks representing 98 percent of global GDP will have initiated programs to develop central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). In the next five to seven years, it is reasonable to expect that quite a few of those countries will have issued CBDCs either in wholesale or retail formats.
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Reuters ☛ Amazon.com to cut 'several hundred' Alexa jobs
The cuts affect several hundred employees working on Alexa, according to the email. A spokeswoman declined to elaborate on exactly how many were affected.
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CNBC ☛ Amazon cuts ‘several hundred’ jobs in Alexa division
on Friday began laying off “several hundred” people in its Alexa division as part of broader belt-tightening that’s been underway since last year, the company confirmed.
Daniel Rausch, Amazon’s vice president of Alexa and Fire TV, sent a note to staffers informing them of the job cuts, according to a copy of the memo shared by an Amazon spokesperson.
“As we continue to invent, we’re shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers — which includes maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generative AI,” Rausch wrote in the memo, which was reported earlier by GeekWire. “These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives, which is resulting in several hundred roles being eliminated.”
Amazon didn’t specify which Alexa initiatives it’s winding down as a result of the move.
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TechCrunch ☛ Sam Altman ousted as OpenAI’s CEO
Sam Altman has been fired from OpenAI, Inc., the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that acts as the governing body for OpenAI, the AI startup behind ChatGPT, DALL-E 3, GPT-4 and other highly capable generative AI systems. He’ll both leave the company’s board of directors and step down as CEO.
In a post on OpenAI’s official blog, the company writes that Altman’s departure follows a “deliberative review process by the board” that concluded that Altman “wasn’t consistently candid in his communications” with other board members, “hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.”
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CS Monitor ☛ Starbucks to face biggest strike on one of its busiest days
The Workers United union says its expecting more than 5,000 Starbucks workers to take part in its one-day “Red Cup Rebellion” on Nov. 16. It’s the largest strike yet in the effort to unionize the company’s stores.
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Vice Media Group ☛ 'No Contract, No Coffee': Starbucks Workers Hold Largest Strike in Company History
Workers participating in the "Red Cup Rebellion" told Motherboard that all they were asking was that the company come to the table with them.
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The Kent Stater ☛ ‘Red Cup Day’ protest will be the largest strike in Starbucks history
Thousands of Starbucks workers at hundreds of stores will be on strike, as they protest the lack of their first contract despite a nearly two-years long organizing drive at the coffee chain.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong’s unemployment rate edges up to 2.9% from four-year low
Hong Kong’s jobless rate has edged up to 2.9 per cent from a four-year low, following an increase in unemployment in manufacturing and trade. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose from 2.8 per cent during July to September to 2.9 per cent between August and October, according to figures released Thursday by the Census and […]
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RFA ☛ US Congress pushes sanctions on HK pension, judicial issues
The moves would further batter the city’s reputation, deal a blow to Beijing's credibility, experts say.
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YLE ☛ Exploitation of foreign workers an "open secret" in Lapland tourism sector
Tourism is booming in Finnish Lapland, but the industry faces growing questions over its treatment of foreign workers.
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YLE ☛ Survey: Half of recent retirees want to keep working
Many of Finland's retirees remain keen to work even after they start claiming their pensions, according to a new survey.
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CS Monitor ☛ Inflation is falling for the first time in a year. Why now?
Inflation didn’t rise from September to October, the first time that consumer prices haven’t moved from one month to another in over a year. A new report shows prices are down for just about everything – from gas to airfares to home appliances.
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WhichUK ☛ Inflation plummets to 4.6% in October 2023 – and half of all savings accounts now beat it
Lower energy prices helped slow the rate at which prices are rising
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France24 ☛ ‘Feminisation of poverty’: France’s cost-of-living crisis is hitting women hardest
Poverty is worsening in France and women and children are the main victims, the charity Secours Catholique has warned in its annual report, highlighting the burden of inflation, childcare and entrenched gender inequality on single women and mothers.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Silicon Angle ☛ Meta calls for new legislation around how teens download apps from app stores [Ed: Way to spin the troublemaker as solution seeker]
In what might be construed as a passing of the buck, Meta Platforms Inc. today said the U.S. needs new legislation that will require app stores to receive parental approval before their kids can download an app.
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ Election Interference: Aileen Cannon Denies Republicans Speedy Trial in Stolen Document Case
Aileen Cannon has all but ensured that Republican voters won't learn whether Donald Trump sold out America's security before they choose to make him their party's nominee.
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The Straits Times ☛ Old photo, birthday wish, ravioli lunch: Personal diplomacy on display during Xi-Biden meeting
Both presidents also pledged to pick up the phone should the other call.
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CS Monitor ☛ At Biden-Xi summit, the voices of Taiwan
The summit’s reach for stability between the U.S. and China relies on respect for Taiwan’s embrace of democracy and independence.
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RFA ☛ Taiwan’s opposition parties join forces in presidential race
Kuomintang, Taiwan People’s Party to offer a joint ticket based on a controversial opinion poll.
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The Strategist ☛ Australia should be clear that ‘disagree where we must’ means disagreeing with Beijing on Taiwan
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit last week to the People’s Republic of China was a reminder that beyond the metrics of trade and the mechanics of statecraft, the Australia–China relationship carries deep meaning [...]
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New York Times ☛ Panda Diplomacy Might Not Be Dead Just Yet
President Pooh-tin Jinping of China said his country may keep sending giant pandas to the United States. The National Zoo in Washington sent three of them back to China last week.
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New York Times ☛ In Talks With Biden, Pooh-tin Defends China’s Rise, While Seeking to Reassure
China’s depiction of Pooh-tin Jinping’s U.S. visit reflected his sometimes-contradictory priorities: to project both strength and a willingness to engage with Washington.
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New York Times ☛ Day After Pooh-tin Meeting, Biden Says U.S. Has ‘Real Differences’ With China
Mr. Biden won applause when he noted that he and Mr. Pooh-tin had agreed to resume military-to-military communication to “reduce the risk of miscalculation.”
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New York Times ☛ Biden and Pooh-tin Make Nice Despite U.S.-China Tensions
Despite simmering tensions, President Biden and President Pooh-tin Jinping exchanged the kind of pleasantries that adversarial leaders deploy when they are trying to make nice.
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New York Times ☛ For Biden, a Subtle Shift in the Power Balance With China’s Pooh-tin Jinping
For the first time in years, a Chinese leader desperately needed a few things from the United States.
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CS Monitor ☛ From anti-narcotics to US-China military contacts, Biden-Xi talks make headway
At their first face-to-face meeting since last year, Pooh-tin Jinping and Joe Biden made several small steps forward on repairing U.S.-China relations. Perhaps the most important accomplishment was laying groundwork for future cooperation.
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The Straits Times ☛ Peru President Boluarte talks trade boost after meeting China's Xi
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte met with Chinese counterpart Pooh-tin Jinping on Thursday, discussing major infrastructure projects and possible investments, her office said on social control media.
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New York Times ☛ China’s Pooh-tin Jinping Draws Elon Musk, Tim Cook and Other U.S. CEOs to Gala in San Francisco
Amid frosty U.S.-China relations, Pooh-tin Jinping emphasized friendship in an address to executives from Apple, Boeing, Nike and others.
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TruthOut ☛ Poll Shows More Than Half of Americans Want More Choices for President in 2024
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TruthOut ☛ Joe Manchin Considers 2024 Run — Even as Polls Show Voters Don’t Like Him Much
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TruthOut ☛ George Santos Is Not Running for Reelection After Scathing House Ethics Report
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The Straits Times ☛ Voter support for Japan PM Kishida slides to record low: Poll
Public support for Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government slid to a record low, a poll conducted by Jiji news agency showed on Thursday, as Kishida's tax cut plans to help cushion the blow of rising inflation left voters unimpressed.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Bruce Schneier ☛ FTC’s Voice Cloning Challenge
The Federal Trade Commission is running a competition “to foster breakthrough ideas on preventing, monitoring, and evaluating malicious voice cloning.”
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Meduza ☛ ’Teachers, sales, family — no hot-button issues’: The Kremlin’s favorite fake news factory launches its own polling company — Meduza
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Reason ☛ Academic Freedom Alliance Protests USC Prof's Ban from Campus
University of Southern California appears to ignore its own policy to remove professor from campus over alleged speech
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teleSUR ☛ Censorship is Out of Control: Stella Assange
Misinformation problems will not be resolved because there are "revolving doors" between major corporations and intelligence agencies.
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Reason ☛ Bans on Approaching or Videorecording Hunters Struck Down by Seventh Circuit
From Brown v. Kemp, decided Monday in an opinion by Judge David Hamilton, joined by Judge Ilana Rovner: [A Wisconsin law] makes it a crime to interfere intentionally with a hunter by [two or more acts of] "maintaining a visual or physical proximity" to the hunter, by "approaching or confronting" the hunter, or by photographing,…
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RFA ☛ China's official silence on Li Keqiang's death hides shock and fear
Li's fate as sidekick to Pooh-tin Jinping's protracted power grab resonates deeply with many officials.
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Project Censored ☛ Dark Money, Leonard Leo, and the Anachronistic Supreme Court
In How to Interpret the Constitution (2023), Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein argues that any theory of constitutional interpretation used by Supreme Court justices must be defensible in terms of beneficial outcomes, to make democracy “better.” Better is subjective, though. Considering the current Supreme Court, “better” begs the obvious question, “Better for whom?”
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LRT ☛ Lithuanian MP Gražulis stripped of immunity over homophobic statements
The Lithuanian parliament on Thursday stripped MP Petras Gražulis of his legal immunity so that he can be investigated over suspected hate speech towards LGBTQ+ people.
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New York Times ☛ Supreme Court Refuses to Revive Florida Law Restricting Drag Shows
A federal judge in Orlando ruled that the law violated the First Amendment, saying it was “specifically designed to suppress the speech of drag queen performers.”
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Meduza ☛ ‘I’m behind bars, but I’m more free than you’: Chronicling antiwar activist Sasha Skochilenko’s 19-month trial, from her arrest to her seven-year prison sentence, in photos — Meduza
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RFA ☛ Chinese police put Tiananmen artist, film director under travel ban
Guo Zhenming won't be able to attend the Singapore screening of his film about post-1989 dissident malaise.
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Techdirt ☛ Indiana: Another Age Verification Bill Criminalizing Legal Pornography
Another state lawmaker has introduced an age verification bill looking to block minors’ access to porn websites.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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RFERL ☛ Kyrgyz Journalist Guljan Sheripbaeva Detained For At Least 48 Hours
The Kyrgyz State Committee of National Security has detained journalist Guljan Sheripbaeva for at least 48 hours on unspecified charges.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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RFERL ☛ Kazakh Opposition Leader Continues Hunger Strike In Jail To Demand Open Trial
The lawyer for the chairman of the unregistered Algha Kazakhstan party, Marat Zhylanbaev, said on November 16 that his client had lost 13 kilograms while on a hunger strike launched on October 30 to protest against a court decision to hold his trial behind closed doors.
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France24 ☛ Indonesia: Rare video of indigenous tribe facing down bulldozer shows ‘uncontacted peoples do exist’
On the Indonesian island of Halmahera, two members of an “uncontacted” indigenous tribe were filmed facing down a logging company’s bulldozer. The rare encounter caught on camera testifies to the growing threat that industrial activities – particularly nickel mining managed in part by a French company – pose to indigenous tribes. For members of an indigenous rights NGO, the video serves as a reminder to the government and companies that uncontacted populations exist.
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TruthOut ☛ From Death Row, Keith LaMar Has Built a Movement for Love, Art and Abolition
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RFA ☛ What did the protesters want with Pooh-tin Jinping?
Xi's visit unites dissidents, Hong Kongers, Tibetans, Uyghurs in 'tsunami' of protest, clashes with Pooh-tin supporters.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ After US report calls Hong Kong a ‘Chinese rather than international city,’ gov’t slams ‘slanders and smears’
Hong Kong’s government has “firmly rejected” a report by a US Congressional commission, which said the city now lives under the mainland’s control after Beijing interfered with the judicial system and weakened civil society. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) submitted its annual report to Congress on Tuesday.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Tibet activists and pro-China supporters stage opposing demos in San Francisco as Pooh-tin Jinping joins APEC summit
San Francisco, United States Groups of Tibet activists and pro-China supporters staged opposing demonstrations in San Francisco on Wednesday as Chinese President Pooh-tin Jinping visited the city for an APEC summit.
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Techdirt ☛ Indiana’s Top Court Adds More Due Process To Forfeiture, Says A Jury Needs To Be Part Of The Process
The courts in Indiana have made significant moves in recent years to do what the legislature won’t: limit asset forfeiture abuse.
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RFA ☛ 12 men in tea shop massacred by junta troops for no apparent reason
As Myanmar’s civil war rages on, 10 civilians are killed in airstrikes in southern Chin state.
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Pro Publica ☛ A Knoxville Detention Center Illegally Locks Kids Up Alone
With a glint in his eye, Richard L. Bean reminisces about the days when children in his detention center could be paddled.
“We didn’t have any problems then,” Bean says. “I’d whip about six or eight a year and it run pretty smooth. They’d say, ‘You don’t want him to get hold of you.’” Once, he chuckles, a kid had to be held down by four guards to be spanked.
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Pro Publica ☛ This Louisiana Village Brought in $1 Million Through a Court Where the Mayor Is the Judge
The village of Fenton, outside the oil and gas town of Lake Charles, covers only about 20 blocks. There’s City Hall. The library. One gas station. A small public housing complex. A Dollar General. A grain elevator. A Baptist church. Drivers headed to east Texas from central Louisiana go right through town, passing it all in under a minute.
In many ways, Fenton is like other small towns in Louisiana. But it is remarkable in one way: This village of 226 people collected more money in a single year through fines and forfeitures, primarily traffic tickets, than almost any other municipality in Louisiana, according to audits.
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Pro Publica ☛ When Health Insurers Break State Laws
In North Carolina, lawmakers outraged that breast cancer patients were being denied reconstructive surgeries passed a measure forcing health insurers to pay for them. In Arizona, legislators intervened to protect patients with diabetes, requiring health plans to cover their supplies. Elected officials in more than a dozen states, from Oklahoma to California, wrote laws demanding that insurance companies pay for emergency services.
Over the last four decades, states have enacted hundreds of laws dictating precisely what insurers must cover so that consumers aren’t driven into debt or forced to go without medicines or procedures. But health plans have violated these mandates at least dozens of times in the last five years, ProPublica found.
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JURIST ☛ UK Prime Minister promises emergency legislation to circumvent ruling against controversial asylum plan
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised emergency legislation and a new treaty with Rwanda Wednesday to ensure his flagship asylum policy of sending UK asylum-seekers to Rwanda is not blocked again after the Supreme Court ruled it unlawful Tuesday.
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TruthOut ☛ New Policy Will Ban Chicago Police From Joining Hate and Extremist Groups
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The Nation ☛ War, What Is It Good For?
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RFA ☛ Former lawmaker dies in police custody after arrest for Myanmar scams
China issued warrants for Ming Xuechang and his family members earlier this week.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Joseph Nguramo testifies before Congress on child labor in Congo
Joseph Mulala Nguramo, nonresident fellow with the Freedom and Prosperity Center, testified to the Congressional Executive Commission on China on November 14, 2023. He discussed China’s mining practices in the Democratic Republic of Congo, drawing attention to how China’s mining industry is rampant with corruption and forced child labor of Congolese citizens.
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Meduza ☛ Court sentences Navalny associate Vladimir Milov to eight years in absentia — Meduza
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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APNIC ☛ IPv6, the DNS and Happy Eyeballs
Why mandating IPv6 DNS transport requires careful thinking in specifications.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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The Kent Stater ☛ OPINION: Are movie theaters going extinct?
Streaming services have been America’s number one source for television and movies for quite some time now. DRM spreader Netflix started streaming in January of 2007 and ever since then, more and more apps have popped up, easily replacing cable as the go-to place to watch new television shows.
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Techdirt ☛ Apple’s ‘180 On Right To Repair’ Was Widely Overstated
The consumer quest to be able to affordably repair your own tech is going well, if you hadn’t noticed. Maine just became the fourth state to implement right to repair protections in the wake of laws passed in New York, California, and Minnesota. As that vote (84 percent of Maine voters approved) illustrates, support for the movement is significant and bipartisan.
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Techdirt ☛ Maine Voters Once Again Show ‘Right To Repair’ Reforms Are Overwhelmingly Popular
Maine residents have made it very clear: the overwhelming majority of Americans want to be able to easily and affordably repair the stuff they own. 83 percent of Maine voters last week responded yes to “Question 4,” asking whether automakers should be required to provide car owners (and independent repair shops) access to on-board diagnostic systems:
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Monopolies
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Mexico News Daily ☛ Google faces allegations of anti-competitive practices in Mexico
Google is again accused of monopolistic practices - this time by Mexico's antitrust agency, for abusing its market position in digital advertising.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Apple moves to make RCS messaging available on iPhones amid regulatory scrutiny
Apple Inc. will finally enable iPhone and Android users to exchange messages via the RCS communications protocol. A company spokesperson told 9to5Mac today that the feature is scheduled to roll out next year.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Amazon is about to get into the business of selling cars
Amazon.com Inc. announced today that next year, it will allow automakers to sell cars on its e-commerce platform, starting with South Korean firm Hyundai Motor Co.
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Patents
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JUVE ☛ Bayer and Simmons & Simmons repel Sandoz nullity suit over Xarelto [Ed: EPO kangaroo courts, favouring low-quality and invalid patents to raise money]
The current dispute between Bayer and Sandoz revolves around EP 1 845 961, which describes a dosage for Bayer’s thrombosis drug Xarelto using the active ingredient rivaroxaban. While the European Patent Office revoked EP 961 in the first instance in 2018 due to lack of inventive step, the EPO Boards of Appeal reinstated the patent monopoly...
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Unified Patents ☛ 2023 Corporate IP Strategy Conference was a success!
The 2023 Corporate IP Strategy Conference (CIPSC) was attended by over 200 IP professionals, attorneys, and consultants with several presentations and discussions on the most thought-provoking IP issues of our current times.
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Predicting Eligibility [Ed: Patent maximalists upset to accept that patent bubbles implode]
I have really enjoyed reading the new article by Professors Rantanen and Datzov providing empirical evidence that eligibility outcomes are now quite predictable. When the Supreme Court decided Bilski back in 2010, I was quite concerned about predictability and co-authored a BTLJ article with Prof. Rob Merges on the topic. If you recall though, in Bilski the Supreme Court offered no decision making framework beyond suggesting a case by case approach. At the time, there were only a sparse few prior cases to guide future decisions. But a more complete legal framework was developed fairly quickly in the subsequent cases of Alice Corp and Mayo, and the lower courts decided several hundred eligibility cases that provided substantial guideposts that so often seek in our common law system.
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Hackaday ☛ Tech In Plain Sight: What Does A Yellow Light Mean?
The traffic light is a ubiquitous feature of modern life and is quite old — dating back to 1868 London, although that device was a modified railroad semaphore operated by a policeman, but it was the same idea. The initial test of the signal proved disastrous. The semaphore had gas lamps to illuminate the signs in the dark. A gas leak caused one of the lamps to explode, badly burning the operator and ending the nascent invention for a while. In 1910, American inventor Ernest Sirrine worked out an automatically controlled traffic signal. Two years later, Lester Wire, a police officer, developed a different version powered by overhead trolley wires to light the signal. A 1917 patent by William Ghiglieri also had two lights — red and green. But where was the yellow light?
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Copyrights
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Public Domain Review ☛ Modernity in the Rainforest: Man and his Desire (1917)
Handmade book showing Paul Claudel's scenario, with illustrations by Audrey Parr and Hélène Hoppenot, for Darius Milhaud's ballet *L'homme et son desir*.
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Techdirt ☛ Error 402: Searching For Ways To Pay For Content
Last week in our Error 402 series on the history of web monetization, we wrote about the earliest forms of web advertising: banner ads. As we noted, this “simple” way of making money seemed to derail other forms of monetization, including early attempts at paywalls (which had many other problems and were destined to fail). Either way, though, the success of ads as a way of funding content online in the mid to late 90s of the original dot com boom certainly meant that much less attention was paid to other ways to monetize content on the web.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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hello!
i could have sworn it was morning here but the moment i stepped into the pub it seems like it quickly became midnight somehow. imagine that! either way, i think i'll have some green tea for now.
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A High Probability that I Believed It
On the drive up to Lubbock from Seminole today for my father's surgery, I was suddenly gripped by the memory of lying on my back on the floor of Jenn DuBois's apartment in Galveston. Dave was also present, and later that same evening he appropriated my truck. And luckily, my SHOVEL, which incidentally was one of my brilliant gifts for the beginning of the 23rd year of my life, was in the "toolbox" that stretched from side to side in the bed of the truck. More about that later.
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Urney.xyz - 1974
Dear outsider, I'm happy to announce you that I'm alive; hope you care. I'm writing you from the post-apocalypse, the country formerly known as Rhedesia. In the good times, before we all went zombi and had the obese daddy of a civil war, mommy took me to the mall and we ate ice-cream. I can't remember the taste of vanilla, but the dance and the music of that day, I haven't forgotten. That's all gone when we started killing each other and you, the rest-of-the-world locked us in and threw the key. I can't blame you, really, I can't; you owe it to your own children, I suppose.
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Games
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1974 starting a new gamebook
Just started a gamebook called 1974, about a family living in a local post-apocalypse. The idea is that some fictional country, Redhesia, got into a civil war bad enough to lead to a local collapse in civilization. The outside world has done little but locked them in, patrolling every border so that the "dangerous" refugees cannot come into "civilization".
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Technology and Free Software
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Adless Kineto
Here is a branch of Kineto that doesn’t have the “details” at the bottom, making the pages look more like they belong on the web and less like an ad for Kineto.
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Re: I gave emacs a serious look back in the day
So, something that changed my life as an Emacs user was Helm-Mode fuzzy completion. How it works on my setup is I press a key-chord (META-SHIFT-3) and then I can type two or three characters from ANY available emacs command, and it will fetch the command that it thought I meant. I can either press ENTER to use that command, or press down arrow (or CTRL-n) to get to one of the other likely matches. It is fuzzy search, so I can type characters from any part of the command (e.g., "v l i" will bring up the "visual-line-mode" command). It keeps track of my history, so 99% of the time it guesses correctly, and the rest of the time the command I want is one or two entries down. I can also keep typing more letters to clarify.
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Defaults
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Re: Defaults
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This, that, and Re: Defaults
It was fun to come across a gemlog post speaking to "org-mode" after recent emacs remembrances.
Pride cometh before a fall because that's what individuality is.
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Internet/Gemini
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Sustainability doubts
Gemini is feeling like /dev/null again.
Don't get me wrong. We're talking lots of really interesting people writing fairly interesting things. And I can't tell you how impressed I am with @skyjake for creating gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/ and the Lagrange browser.
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[Old] Will this content will be lost
I remember I was new to internet world, I created a site, started writing articles thinking all will be live forever. But I change few sites playing with domain names, ideas etc.
Then I discovered thoughts.com and I started writing poetry, blogs and was engaging with audience.
It greed my post views and comments. This was new to me, I thought this content will be forever, I can show this to my grandchildren what their grandfather was writing in his teenage. Later due to study i left platform for some time, And after a while when I opened my site, it was 404. The platform was discontinued.
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Sustainability doubts
But back to Gemini: the sense of content getting lost starts about half an instant after a post publishing.
You'd think this would be easy to solve. But such thinking wouldn't take into account the stultifying physical/conceptual isolation of individuals.
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Sending plain text, would like to send gemtext
So I have my first gamebook running... a very little thing, but I'm encountering a problem, the client is interpreting the result as plain text, as per the default, but I'd like to show it as gemtext and I don't know how to do that.
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Urney.xyz - First Story
This is a short and simple gamebook, comprising 4 sections. Its main purpose is to teach myself how to do interactive fiction on Gemini.
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.