Links 29/12/2023: Arrests of Dissents and Software Patent Problems
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Tom MacWright ☛ Year in Review
The last time I wrote a “year in review” post was 2017, and before that in 2012. Reading my old writing is nostalgic and horrific.
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James G ☛ When you want to write a blog post but can't...
When I want to write a blog post but have no topic ideas in mind, I go back and forth trying to find the right topic about which to write. I may open my editor a few times, write a few words, and never find a topic that sticks. I do the same with coding, too. I will decide on a challenge, go to start, and realise that it doesn't feel right to continue.
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Tedium ☛ The Open Letter Still Works
Our final year-end Tedium award honors an open letter that hopefully encourages more creator-economy activism in 2024.
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Pro Publica ☛ Alabama Families Must Fight to See Body-Camera Footage When Police Kill
It was early morning on July 8, 2018, when Joseph Pettaway’s family was told by a neighbor that he had been badly injured by a police dog overnight and taken to the hospital.
He’d been rehabbing a home a block away from where he lived with his mother. His sister, Nancy, set off to see what had happened at the blighted house on the outskirts of Montgomery, Alabama.
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Science
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Off Guardian ☛ Climate Change: The Unsettled Science – Part 2
In Part 1 we questioned the fundamental principles said to underpin “the Climate Science™.” Specifically we considered the scientific validity of the claimed “consensus” and explored some of the many scientific doubts expressed about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory and the so-called “greenhouse effect.”
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Have Discovered a Way to Actually Make Coffee Taste Better
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Hackaday ☛ Keeping Watch Over The Oceans With Data Buoys
When viewed from just the right position in space, you’d be hard-pressed to think that our home planet is anything but a water world. And in all the ways that count, you’d be right; there’s almost nothing that goes on on dry land that isn’t influenced by the oceans. No matter how far you are away from an ocean, what’s going on there really matters.
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Have Found The Driving Force Behind Your Darkest Impulses
The heart of darkness is revealed.
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Education
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The Atlantic ☛ What Gen Z Is Finding at the Library
In the smartphone era, libraries might seem less central. But it turns out that young people actually use them.
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Hardware
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MIT Technology Review ☛ We need a moonshot for computing
The CHIPS and Science Act designated $39 billion for bringing chip factories, or “fabs,” and their key suppliers back to the United States, with an additional $11 billion committed to microelectronics R&D. At the center of the R&D program would be the National Semiconductor Technology Center, or NSTC—envisioned as a national “center of excellence” that would bring the best of the innovation ecosystem together to invent the next generation of microelectronics.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Nvidia launches China-specific RTX 4090D Dragon GPU, sanctions-compliant model has fewer cores and lower power draw
Nvidia has officially launched a new China-exclusive counterpart to the RTX 4090 dubbed the RTX 4090D with specs cut to bypass export regulations.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Nvidia launches scaled-down version of its latest gaming GPU in China
Chipmaker Nvidia Corp. has revealed that it’s now shipping a hobbled version of its latest graphics processing unit for video gamers in China, after the U.S. government announced it was tightening its restrictions on the hardware it’s allowed to sell in that country.
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Hackaday ☛ Copper Coating 3D Prints
We would all like to 3D print in metal, but for now, the equipment to do that is out of reach for most of us. Instead of dealing with powder printers or metal-bearing polymers, [Robert] has a simple solution. Using a process known as mechanical plating or peen plating, he deposits a layer of copper on a PLA print. The results look good, as you can see in the video below.
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Hackaday ☛ Making The Case For Wooden Wind Turbines With Swedish Modvion
Modern-day wind turbines are constructed using mostly concrete and steel, topped by the fiberglass composite blades mounted to the nacelle that houses the gearbox and generator, along with much of the control systems. With the ever increasing sizes of these turbines transporting the components to the installation location is a harrowing task, something which Swedish company Modvion claims to improve upon with its wooden tower elements that come mostly packaged flat, for on-site assembly. The BBC recently took a look at the first of these partially wooden wind turbine towers. At 105 meters tall, it features a standard V90-2.0MW turbine and blades.
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Hackaday ☛ Moving Iron-Coated Polymer Particles Uphill Using External Magnetic Field
Granular media such as sand have a range of interesting properties that make it extremely useful, but they still will obey gravity and make their way downhill. That is, until you coat such particles with a ferromagnetic material like iron, make them spin using an external magnetic field and watch them make their way against gravity. This recent study by researchers has an accompanying video (also embedded below) that is probably best watched first before reading the study by Samuel R. Wilson-Whitford and colleagues in Nature Communications.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Science Alert ☛ MRI Machines Are Perfectly Safe. But Never Do The Following Things.
Always read the instructions.
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Pro Publica ☛ Alarm After Tests Find Chemicals of “Concern” in Replacement Philips CPAP Machines
On the morning of June 14, 2021, Dr. Radhika Breaden hurried to a computer in her hushed sleep disorders clinic and tried not to panic.
The 52-year-old physician treated patients with heart conditions, cancer and neurological diseases. She cared for veterans with compromised lungs and a woman with Down syndrome. In more than a dozen years of helping people breathe through the night, she had never confronted an emergency that jeopardized nearly all of her patients at once.
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Science Alert ☛ Thriving Otters in North America Linked to Nuclear Weapons Tests. Here's Why.
The survivors.
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Science Alert ☛ Mysterious Neglected Part of Our Body Is Vital to Our Health, Scientists Discover
New technology reveals secrets.
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BIA Net ☛ Medical Association sends letter to Ministry, urging use of masks in public transportation
In the letter sent to the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, the Medical Association warns and states, "We are facing a serious epidemic believed to be caused by agents such as the influenza virus (H1N1), COVID-19 (J1.N variant), Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), and Mycoplasma pneumoniae."
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teleSUR ☛ Number of Invasive Streptococcus Infections Surges in Sweden
The surge is an effect of limited physical contact between people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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New York Times ☛ Death of Lee Sun-kyun of ‘Parasite’ Highlights South Korea’s Drug Crackdown
The actor, Lee Sun-kyun, had been questioned on suspicion of drug use in a country that has long drawn a hard line against anything other than total abstinence.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Miguel Grinberg ☛ Eliza-GPT: The Classic ELIZA Chatbot Running On OpenAI's Chat Completions API
ELIZA is possibly the first chatbot ever created, dating back to 1966. It was created by Joseph Weizenbaum as an early experiment in natural language processing (NLP). ELIZA is able to hold a conversation in English with a human, and is programmed through a set of pattern matching rules to respond to the user in ways that are similar to how a psychotherapist would.
The OpenAI Chat Completions API is a widely used API to chat with Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, and has become a sort of standard for turn-based conversational services.
Could 1960s ELIZA be adapted to work as a web service that any application designed as an OpenAI client can use? The answer is Yes! Why would you do that? Keep reading to find out...
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Tom's Hardware ☛ AI’s Dreadful December: Lawsuits, plagiarism and child abuse images show the perils of training on data taken without consent.
Three major news headlines in the past week have soured the generative Hey Hi (AI) party: a lawsuit from the NY Times, a new image model that copies frames from movies and the discovery of child abuse images in a popular dataset.
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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MWL ☛ 27: Obviously Forged
Here’s another chunk from Run Your Own Mail Server. Ideally, sysadmins want all the messages from their domain to conform to the highest possible standards. They intend to sign everything with DKIM, and publish SPF records that contain every host that might possibly send mail.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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EFF ☛ Kids Online Safety Shouldn’t Require Massive Online Censorship and Surveillance: 2023 Year in Review
But there’s also good news: so far, none of these dangerous bills have been passed at the federal level, or signed into law. That's thanks to a large coalition of digital rights groups and other organizations pushing back, as well as tens of thousands of individuals demanding protections for online rights in the many bills put forward.
The biggest danger has come from the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). Originally introduced in 2022, it was reintroduced this year and amended several times, and as of today, has 46 co-sponsors in the Senate. As soon as it was reintroduced, we fought back, because KOSA is fundamentally a censorship bill. The heart of the bill is a “Duty of Care” that the government will force on a huge number of websites, apps, social networks, messaging forums, and online video games. KOSA will compel even the smallest online forums to take action against content that politicians believe will cause minors “anxiety,” “depression,” or encourage substance abuse, among other behaviors. Of course, almost any content could easily fit into these categories—in particular, truthful news about what’s going on in the world, including wars, gun violence, and climate change. Kids don’t need to fall into a wormhole of internet content to get anxious; they could see a newspaper on the breakfast table.
Fortunately, so many people oppose KOSA that it never made it to the Senate floor for a full vote.
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EFF ☛ The Atlas of Surveillance Hits Major Milestones: 2023 in Review
That's what a New York Police Department lieutenant wrote on LinkedIn after someone sent him a link to the Atlas of Surveillance, EFF's moonshot effort to document which U.S. law enforcement agencies are using which technologies, including drones, automated license plate readers and face recognition. Of course, the lieutenant then went on to attack us with unsubstantiated accusations of misinformation — but we take it all as a compliment.
If you haven't checked out the Atlas of Surveillance recently, or ever before, you absolutely should. It includes a searchable database and an interactive map, and anyone can download the data for their own projects. As this collaboration with the University of Nevada Reno's Reynolds School of Journalism (RSJ) finishes its fifth year, we are proud to announce that we've hit a major milestone: more than 12,000 data points that document the use of police surveillance nationwide, all collected using open-source investigative techniques, data journalism, and public records requests.
We’ve come a long way since the Atlas of Surveillance launched as a pilot project with RSJ back in the spring semester of 2019. By that summer, with the help of a few dozen journalism students, we had accumulated 250 data points, focused on the 23 counties along the U.S.-Mexico border. When we launched the formal website in 2020, we had collected a little more than 5,500 data points. Today's dataset represents more than a 100% increase since then.
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Techdirt ☛ Every Major Pharmacy Chain Is Giving The Government Warrantless Access To Medical Records
The Fourth Amendment is rarely a match for the Third Party Doctrine. In recent years, things have gotten a wee bit better thanks to a couple of Supreme Court rulings. But the operative principle still overrides: whatever we share (voluntarily or not) with private companies can often be obtained without a warrant.
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Bruce Schneier ☛ AI and Lossy Bottlenecks
Artificial intelligence is poised to upend much of society, removing human limitations inherent in many systems. One such limitation is information and logistical bottlenecks in decision-making.
Traditionally, people have been forced to reduce complex choices to a small handful of options that don’t do justice to their true desires. Artificial intelligence has the potential to remove that limitation. And it has the potential to drastically change how democracy functions.
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RFA ☛ Vientiane police arrest taxi driver and woman, rescue 4 teenagers
Facebook posts, an all-night search and surveillance footage helped police track the girls down, family says.
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Cloudbooklet ☛ Xamalicious: Surveillance Giant Google Play Malware That Infected 330K Devices
Xamalicious is a malicious Android backdoor that infects devices through seemingly harmless apps. Learn how it works, why it’s dangerous, and how to protect yourself.
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Defence/Aggression
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El País ☛ The United States and Mexico agree to strengthen their efforts to ‘disrupt’ criminal migrant networks
The surge in migration in the final months of 2023, in which thousands of people crowd the banks of the Rio Bravo on a daily basis, kept several border crossings closed last week. The closures led Mexican businesspeople to complain about millions of dollars in losses. The cordial and friendly meeting between the two countries addressed this issue and concluded with a U.S. promise that these trade routes will remain open in the future. The joint statement says that they are focused on “promoting orderly, humane and regular migration,” which includes tackling the source of these mass exoduses through cooperation with Central American countries. The press release specifically mentioned “the joint initiative for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans,” in line with the agreement at the recent summit in Palenque, where, at Mexico’s invitation, these nations’ leaders met to address the causes of migration and possible solutions.
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CS Monitor ☛ Maine's Secretary of State bars Donald Trump from primary ballot
Ms. Bellows found that Mr. Trump could no longer run for his prior job because his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol violated Section 3, which bans from office those who “engaged in insurrection.” Ms. Bellows made the ruling after some state residents, including a bipartisan group of former lawmakers, challenged Mr. Trump’s position on the ballot.
“I do not reach this conclusion lightly,” Ms. Bellows wrote in her 34-page decision. “I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”
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New York Times ☛ Trump Ballot Challenges: What to Know
There are lawsuits pending in more than a dozen states seeking to have Donald J. Trump disqualified from appearing on primary ballots.
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New York Times ☛ In Burkina Faso, Criticizing the Army Could Get You Drafted
The military junta in Burkina Faso, a West African nation struggling to defeat extremist groups, has been forcibly conscripting critics, say human rights organizations.
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The Straits Times ☛ North Korea aims to shake up US and South Korea votes, spy agency says
December 29, 2023 9:13 AM
North Korea has a habit of conducting tests of ballistic missiles and nuclear devices to coincide with elections.
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France24 ☛ North Korea's Kim Jong Un orders military to accelerate 'war preparations'
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered its military, the munitions industry and the nuclear weapons sector to accelerate war preparations to counter what he called unprecedented "confrontation moves" by the United States, state media reported on Thursday.
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RFA ☛ INTERVIEWS: 'I don't know how I'm going to survive this winter.'
Migrant workers, white collar tech staff and entrepreneurs say prosperity under Pooh-tin Jinping has nosedived.
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RFA ☛ Poll: Most Filipinos support stance of Marcos against China in sea dispute
The Philippine president’s approval rating jumped 15 points in the poll held Sept. 30 to Oct. 4 from July.
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RFA ☛ China ramps up warnings against Philippines on South China Sea
Chinese spokesperson condemned Manila’s actions in disputed waters and warned the U.S. against intervening.
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RFA ☛ Where did Taiwan’s fake presidential election poll come from?
Asia Fact Check Lab delves into the murky background of a poll published by pro-China content providers.
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The Straits Times ☛ Taiwan election: Candidates receive rock star treatment, steamed buns while campaigning
DPP's Lai Ching-te leads his rivals when it comes to support from women voters, according to one poll.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China’s defence ministry accuses Taiwan of ‘hyping up’ claims of election interference
China’s defence ministry on Thursday accused Taiwan’s leadership of “hyping up” claims that Beijing is interfering in the self-ruled island’s upcoming presidential election. “The DPP authorities have been hyping up that China’s mainland is interfering in its elections,” ministry spokesperson Wu Qian told a press conference, using the initials of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party.
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Techdirt ☛ Turns Out Taser’s ‘Tragic’ Backstory Is Mostly Just Alternate Facts Cooked Up By Its Founder
Jeffrey Dastin, writing for Reuters, has dug up some very interesting information about TASER, which has since re-branded to Axon (and has since set its sights on arming cops with body cams, in addition to its infamous electrical devices).
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The Straits Times ☛ Japan eyes lethal weapon exports to South-east Asia to boost regional security
The plan comes amid calls for Japan to do more to protect rules-based order.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 3 Hong Kong students jailed up to 6 years for ‘terrorism’ over foiled 2021 bomb plot
Three students have been jailed for up to six years over their involvement in a foiled 2021 plot to bomb court buildings and government offices. Cheung Ho-yeung, 23, Ho Yu-wang, 20, and Kwok Man-hei, 21 were charged with taking part in a “conspiracy to commit terrorism” under the national security law.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Tony Chung: Ex-independence group leader flees Hong Kong, seeks asylum in UK after nat. security jail term
Hong Kong activist Tony Chung says he has left the city for the UK to seek political asylum, following the completion of his jail term earlier this year over a national security offence. The 22-year-old announced in a social control media post on Thursday that – as part of supervision rules since his release from prison [...]
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Defence Web ☛ National effort to curb illegal mining continues apace
Illegal mining is presently seemingly rated a priority crime, with the SA Police Service (SAPS) supported by an SA Army brigade recording numerous arrests and confiscation of millions of Rands worth of equipment.
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Defence Web ☛ Spanish university research shows Africa leads in armed conflict
A comprehensive report on conflict has it there were 33 conflicts globally in 2022, with Africa leading other parts of the world by a long way with 16.
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Federal News Network ☛ DoD special trial counsel offices become fully operational, giving more protections to sexual assault victims
Independent military attorneys will now be handling sexual assault and other serious crimes, removing the influence of unit commanders from the process.
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Democracy Now ☛ As Biden Pushes Trump-Like Border Policies, Blinken Meets with AMLO, Who Has Criticized U.S. Sanctions
As many as 10,000 people a day are being arrested in the U.S.-Mexico border as the Biden administration adapts the GOP’s xenophobic anti-immigrant framework ahead of the 2024 election, says Laura Carlsen, director of the Mexico City-based think tank MIRA: Feminisms and Democracies. She joins us as the U.S. secretary of state and homeland security secretary met Wednesday with the Mexican president. The U.S. and its policies south of the border, including sanctions and an exported drug war, are “actually causing the migration that they then try to contain — through these measures that are whipping up racism and also feeding into Republican campaigns,” says Carlsen.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Reason ☛ US, Allies Consider Seizing Russian Government Assets and Giving them to Ukraine
They should take this wise and just step sooner rather than later.
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France24 ☛ Cargo ship hits naval mine in Black Sea en route to Ukraine
Ukrainian authorities said Thursday that a commercial ship arriving to collect grain hit a Russian naval mine in the Black Sea, injuring two sailors.
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Meduza ☛ Ukraine says Panama-flagged cargo ship hit Russian naval mine in Black Sea — Meduza
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France24 ☛ War in Ukraine: In 2023, Russian disinformation continued to dominate
Out of the 197 fact-checking articles our team wrote in 2023, 52 of them concerned the war in Ukraine. And 50 of those highlighted pro-Russian disinformation aimed at discrediting Kiev and the Ukrainian war effort.
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LRT ☛ Lithuania allocates €4.6m to fund studies of over 1,000 Ukrainians
Lithuania has allocated 4.6 million euros to finance the studies of more than 1,000 Ukrainians this year, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport said on Thursday.
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RFERL ☛ Orthodox Archbishop, 86, Charged With Discrediting Russian Army
Archbishop Viktor Pivovarov, the head of the Slavic and South Russian Orthodox Church, which distances itself from the Moscow Patriarchate, told RFE/RL on December 28 that police in the Krasnodar region had charged him with "repeatedly discrediting" Russia's armed forces that invaded Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Despite Russian Invasion, Ukraine's Economy Registers Growth In 2023
Despite the Russian invasion, Ukraine's economy registered a spike in growth this year, the economy minister said on December 28.
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RFERL ☛ Imprisoned Russian Anti-War Activist's Health Deteriorating, Lawyers Say
Russian anti-war activist Igor Baryshnikov, who was sentenced in late June to 7 1/2 years in prison on a charge of spreading "fake" information about Russian armed forces involved in the ongoing war in Ukraine, must be urgently provided with medical assistance, his lawyers say.
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Meduza ☛ Ukraine identifies Russian soldiers as suspects in murder of Ukrainian POWs filmed by drone — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ Two Russians Get Prison Terms For Reciting Poems Against War On Ukraine
A Moscow court on December 28 sentenced poets Artyom Kamardin and Yegor Shtovba to seven and 5 1/2 years in prison on charges of "inciting hatred and calling for anti-state activities" after they publicly recited verses condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Panama-Flagged Ship Hits Russian Mine In Black Sea, Injuring Two
A Panama-flagged bulk carrier headed to a Danube port to load grain hit a Russian mine in the Black Sea, the Ukrainian military said on December 28.
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New York Times ☛ ‘Almost Naked’ Party in Moscow Angers Russian Conservatives
Outrage over scantily clad socialites highlights the growing contradictions of a society reshaped by the war in Ukraine.
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New York Times ☛ Russia Retakes Some Land Hard Won by Ukraine During Counteroffensive
Russia’s recent progress around the southern village of Robotyne is a sobering development for Ukraine amid dwindling Western military aid.
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New York Times ☛ Foreigners Who Made Ukraine Home Stay Put, Despite War
As millions fled, some expatriates made the unlikely decision to remain in Ukraine, among them students determined to finish their education and others who now consider it home.
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Latvia ☛ Russians still have a chance to stay in Latvia if they can show why
At the beginning of next year, at least 1,213 Russian citizens who have not met the rules on holding a valid residence permit face the prospect of being deported to the country of their citizenship, reports LSM's Latvian language service.
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France24 ☛ Navalny's penal colony in the Arctic is direct heir to Russia's Gulag
Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, currently serving a 19-year prison sentence, has been transferred to a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle. The IK-3 penal colony, located in Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 km (1200 miles) northeast of Moscow, is considered to be one of the toughest prisons in Russia. Penal colonies are descendants of Soviet-era Gulags, the notorious Stalin-era labour camps where thousands of Russians lost their lives.
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Meduza ☛ Alexey Navalny, transferred to prison in Russia’s Far North, fails to appear by video at court hearing — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Prosecution requests 10.5-year prison sentence for former Navalny associate Ksenia Fadeyeva — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Latvian government blocks all Yandex sites — Meduza
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RFA ☛ Russian FM on Korean peninsula: ‘knots of conflict’ in 2024
An apparent warning comes amid escalating tensions between Moscow and Seoul.
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RFERL ☛ Siberian Lawmaker, Former Navalny Associate To Be Sentenced On Extremism Charge
A court in the Siberian city of Tomsk announced it will sentence Ksenia Fadeyeva, a local lawmaker and the former head of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny's regional team, on December 29.
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RFERL ☛ Kalmyks In Russia Mark 80th Anniversary Of Mass Deportation To Siberia
Russia's Kalmykia region has marked the 80th anniversary of the start of mass deportations of Kalmyks to Siberia by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
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Meduza ☛ Russian Defense Ministry says over 640,000 contract soldiers currently serving in Russian army — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ Self-Exiled Belarusian Activist's Home Searched As Crackdown On Dissent Continues
Alyaksey Frantskevich, the leader of the Free Belarus Foundation who currently resides abroad, said on December 28 that police searched his home in Belarus.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Quillette ☛ Quillette’s Most Read—2023
These articles cover a wide range of topics, including true crime, Harvard, Oppenheimer, and even an imaginary sex ring. We want to extend our congratulations to the authors and our dedicated team of editors for delivering such high-quality journalism in what has been our most successful year yet.b
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Project Censored ☛ Light through the Slats: Challenging Corporate News Frames
The power of news is often described using visual metaphors. Good journalism is said to be illuminating, meaning it provides clarity and insight; exemplary reporting is praised for “shining light” on a subject or “bringing to light” crucial facts and original perspectives. And the concept of “framing,” a fundamental element of critical media literacy, portrays news as a “window” to the world—yet another visual metaphor.
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Environment
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The Nation ☛ Quitting
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Energy/Transportation
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DeSmog ☛ Our Best of 2023 Has Your Holiday Reading Covered
We published hundreds of articles in 2023, from breaking news to live reporting, from COP28 to monthslong investigations. As the year comes to a close, we wanted to reflect on and celebrate that work. So get comfortable and join us for this highlight reel.
American PR Firm Edelman Enabled Oil Baron Al Jaber’s Ascension to Lead COP28 Climate ConferenceBy Cartie Werthman
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Quartz ☛ An electric cargo bike is changing how fresh produce gets to market in Nigeria
Running on an electric powered motor, ThinkBikes’ CoolMAX model offers a promising solution for the agribusiness sector, and also a remedy to rising fuel prices in Nigeria. Over 90% of the bikes’ components are sourced locally, including the bodywork, wheels, and batteries, while a patented energy recuperation system adds up to 5% of the energy back into the traction batteries.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Blockchain-based Levana Protocol exploited for $1 million+ in crypto hack
The blockchain-based perpetual futures swap protocol Levana announced Wednesday that it suffered an exploit that resulted in the loss of about $1.1 million worth of cryptocurrency tokens from its liquidity pools.
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Wildlife/Nature
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France24 ☛ Indigenous leader Raoni 'wants to make sure' Brazil's Lula will keep promises on Amazon
In an interview with FRANCE 24, Indigenous leader Raoni Metuktire expressed concern that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva might fail to keep his promises on the Amazon rainforest, particularly on demarcating the lands of Indigenous peoples. Although Raoni, who is chief of the Amazonian Kayapo people, admitted that the announcements from Lula since his return to power in January 2023 are encouraging, he said that the continued influence of Lula's predecessor Jair Bolsonaro and his allies represents an obstacle to their implementation.
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Overpopulation
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The Age AU ☛ World population grows to 8 billion
Almost all the increase was driven by a surge in international migration. Canada accepted 454,590 new permanent residents over the past year, while bringing in 804,690 non-permanent residents, a category that includes temporary workers, foreign students and, to a lesser extent, refugees.
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Finance
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Tech jobs bloodbath: Over 260,000 staff axed this year as industry battles to save cash [Ed: But the real number is a lot higher; they don't count HR tricks and mislabelling, under-reporting]
More than 260,000 tech jobs have been axed this year as the industry battled to save cash.
A total of 261,847 staff have been sacked since January, up more than 50 per cent from the 164,969 who were let go in 2022.
Some of the biggest names in the industry including Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook owner Meta and Microsoft have made significant layoffs.
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NYPost ☛ Google, Meta, other tech giants slash DEI-related jobs, resource groups in 2023: report
Tech giants, like Google and Meta, have slashed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in 2023 despite their commitments following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and riots.
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It wasn't just you; things in the tech world got really weird this year
It was a long year for Silicon Valley, but it may have felt even longer to outsiders, who watched the tech world essentially implode and regroup over the course of 2023 in ways both typical (layoffs, restructurings) and deeply unhinged (everything below).
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Financial Express ☛ The year ahead 2024: Fog over jobs growth deepens
On Monday, Paytm’s parent company, One97 Communications, announced “a slight reduction in workforce” to cut costs. Media reports pegged the number of jobs lost at more than 1,000, or close to 10% of the company’s workforce.
Paytm is just one among many which have been slashing jobs after a prolonged funding winter and investors demanding revenue and profit visibility. As per layoff.fyi, 16,298 persons have been laid off so far in 2023. The number is expected to be much higher considering that many of the 125 companies that announced layoffs didn’t give the actual number of people they let go.
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YLE ☛ Housing prices rise month-on-month, still down year-on-year
The end of the year rise may be caused by first-time buyers rushing to take advantage of a tax exemption expiring in January.
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LRT ☛ ‘Good news’ for consumers: Lithuania slips into deflation following months of price rises
After a period of sustained inflation, Lithuania has reported a monthly drop in the general price levels in December. This is good news for shoppers and people with mortgages, says an economist, although prolonged deflation would not be good news for the economy as a whole.
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RFA ☛ Unpaid wages lead Sichuan doctors to protest on window ledges
Local officials deny the protest was about unpaid wages, but observers say it is a mounting cross-industry crisis.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Reason ☛ Court Upholds $2.1M Libel Verdict Against Ex-Wife Who Accused Husband (a Minister) of Being a Pedophile
From today's decision by the Texas Court of Appeals (First District) in Zoanni v. Hogan, written by Justice Veronica Rivas-Molloy and joined by Chief Justice Terry Adams and Justice Julie Countiss; the opinion is 81 pages long, so I excerpt just the quick summary of the facts and the verdict: [...]
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New York Times ☛ Wisconsin University Chancellor Fired Over Pornographic Videos With His Wife
The University of Wisconsin System’s top official said she was “disgusted” by the chancellor’s actions; the chancellor says he was exercising his right to free speech.
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Meduza ☛ ’No longer a human being’ : How a woman was sentenced to compulsory psychiatric treatment for spreading ‘fake news’ about the Russian army
In 2022, Viktoria Petrova was arrested and charged with spreading “fake news” about the Russian army for social media posts condemning the war in Ukraine. After Viktoria didn’t abandon her views in jail, a psychiatric committee declared her “legally incompetent”; nevertheless, the court still found her guilty of “knowingly publishing false information.” Now, she’s been sentenced to “potentially indefinite” compulsory psychiatric treatment. Journalists from the independent news outlet Bumaga reported on Viktoria’s case, detailing her situation and the events that led to it. In English, Meduza is publishing an abridged version of their story.
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BIA Net ☛ Sheikh Said's grandson ordered to share Turkish flag on social control media as penalty
The Diyarbakır Bar has filed a lawsuit against the judge who gave the order.
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Reason ☛ Hong Kong Police Targeting Overseas Activists and Speech
Police have set bounties on 13 activists, some living in the U.S.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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RFERL ☛ Eighth Journalist Arrested In Azerbaijan Amid Media Crackdown
Eminov is among other journalists who worked for Kanal 13 to have been arrested in recent weeks. An editor of the television channel, Teymur Karimov, was arrested on December 12 on extortion charges that he and his supporters deny.
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JURIST ☛ Amnesty International report alleges Pegasus spyware targeted India journalists
Amnesty International released a report Thursday alleging the targeted use of Pegasus spyware against prominent Indian journalists, rekindling apprehensions about government surveillance and press freedom in the country, following the 2021 Pegasus project disclosures that sent shockwaves through India.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ India: Pegasus spyware used to target journalists — reports
High-profile journalists in India have been targeted with the invasive spyware Pegasus, according to a report published by Amnesty International on Thursday.
The civil rights watchdog carried out forensic investigations on the iPhones belonging to Siddharth Varadarajan, the founding editor of The Wire, and Anand Mangnale, the South Asia editor of The Organized Crime and Corruption Report Project (OCCRP).
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The Hindu ☛ Is Pegasus spyware targeting journalists in India? Premium
The story so far: The Washington Post and human rights non-profit Amnesty International have alleged that the spyware instance known as Pegasus continues to be in use, on this occasion targeting journalists in India. Based on newfound data from the latter organisation’s Security Lab, the two organisations have said the phones of founding editor of the online news portal The Wire, Siddharth Varadarajan, and South Asia editor of the Organised Crime and Corruption Report Project (OCCRP) Anand Mangnale were infected with the spyware. The alleged incursion was identified in October 2023 following a forensic analysis, and after phone-maker Apple had issued security notifications to its users, including certain Members of Parliament, that their iPhones were being targeted by “state-sponsored attackers”.
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JURIST ☛ WP: India government retaliated against Fashion Company Apple after government phone hacking claims
The Washington Post (WP) reported Wednesday that following Apple’s October alert about alleged government hacking attempts on iPhones of independent Indian journalists and opposition politicians, Indian government officials swiftly retaliated against Apple.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Scoop News Group ☛ Government not meeting minimum accessibility standards on federal websites, GSA report finds
The assessment published on Thursday found that “overall compliance to Section 508 is well below expectations given the federal government has had over 20 years to implement programs capable of achieving and maintaining modern ICT Standards.” More than three quarters of the agencies that responded were at or below average in terms of compliance, the report explained, and less than 30 percent of top-viewed online content analyzed conformed with standards.
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RFA ☛ Tibetans forced to celebrate Mao’s 130th birthday
Officials used Mao’s birthday “to spread false information and distort facts about Tibet’s past history, in the hope of making the Tibetan people believe this disinformation,” a young Tibetan in Lhasa told Radio Free Asia, requesting anonymity for safety reasons.
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The Nation ☛ Will Human Rights Survive?
To mark Human Rights Day, on December 6, Roosevelt House presented an extraordinary program honoring Eleanor Roosevelt’s role in drafting and passing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The event featured a dialogue between the incomparable Meryl Streep (as Eleanor) and the much-respected former UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay.
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EFF ☛ Protecting Students from Faulty Software and Legislation: 2023 Year in Review
Bad bills and invasive monitoring systems, though sometimes well-meaning, hurt students rather than protect them from the perceived dangers of the internet and social media. We saw many efforts to bar young people, and students, from digital spaces, censor what they are allowed to see and share online, and monitor and control when and how they can do it. This makes it increasingly difficult for them to access information about everything from gun violence and drug abuse to politics and LGBTQ+ topics, all because some software or elected official considers these topics “harmful.”
In response, we doubled down on exposing faulty surveillance software, long a problem in many schools across the country. We launched a new project called the Red Flag Machine, an interactive quiz and report demonstrating the absurd inefficiency—and potential dangers—of student surveillance software that schools across the country use and that routinely invades the privacy of millions of children.
We’ll continue to fight student surveillance and censorship, and we are heartened to see students fighting back
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YLE ☛ Industrial Union calls more strikes in protest at government programme
In addition to the Porvoo oil refinery, the union also said it was shutting down heavy industrial areas in Kokkola and Kilpilahti.
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RFERL ☛ Imprisoned Iranian Activist On Hunger Strike Again
Imprisoned Iranian civil rights activist Zartosht Ahmadi Ragheb has reportedly begun a new hunger strike to protest what he describes as the authorities' "fabricating" new charges against him.
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RFERL ☛ Two Members Of Serbian Opposition End Hunger Strike Over Election
Two Serbian lawmakers say they will end their hunger strike to demand an annulment of general elections that took place earlier this month, while three other members of the opposition Serbia Against Violence continue their protest.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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APNIC ☛ Three of the best: Geoff Huston
In 2023, Geoff Huston delivered several insightful posts. Here are three of the best.
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APNIC ☛ Reliability engineering at APNIC
APNIC is changing the way service availability is measured.
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Techdirt ☛ Amazon Gives Giant Middle Finger To Prime Video Customers, Will Charge $3 Extra A Month To Avoid Ads Starting In January
Thanks to industry consolidation and saturated market growth, the streaming industry has started behaving much like the traditional cable giants they once disrupted.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Hackaday ☛ Unbricking Trains, Uncovering Shady Behavior
The first clue was that a number of locomotives started malfunctioning with exactly 1,000,000 km on the odometer. And when the company with the contract for servicing them couldn’t figure out why, they typed “Polish hackers” into a search engine, and found our heroes [Redford], [q3k], and [MrTick]. What follows is a story of industrial skullduggery, CAN bus sniffing, obscure reverse engineering, and heavy rolling stock, and a fantastically entertaining talk.
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Techdirt ☛ Amazon Gives Giant Middle Finger To Prime Video Customers, Will Charge $3 Extra A Month To Avoid Ads Starting In January
Thanks to industry consolidation and saturated market growth, the streaming industry has started behaving much like the traditional cable giants they once disrupted.
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Patents
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Kangaroo Courts
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JUVE ☛ Top patent monopoly partner and judge moves 2023 [Ed: "With 2023 the year in which the UPC finally roared into life" despite is being illegal, partly because of JUVE et al advocating for a crime with fake news, lies, and reputation laundering. One common lobbying tactic is, bribe publishers to pen or copy-paste some bullshit piece, then pay PR agencies to stick that as a reference into Wikipedia, managing perception based on lies.]
With 2023 the year in which the UPC finally roared into life, it is no surprise that the European patent monopoly market has seen multiple patent monopoly partner and judicial changes in its major jurisdictions. Patent lawyers and patent monopoly attorneys alike became more secure in making major decisions which could impact their future career trajectory.
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Software Patents
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New York Times ☛ Apple Resuming Sales of Its Newest Smartwatches, for Now
The company pulled two watches from stores after losing a patent monopoly case, but an appeals court temporarily paused enforcement of that ruling while the legal battle continues. [...] The commission ruled in October that some models of Apple watches were infringing on patents held by two medical technology companies in California, Masimo and Cercacor Laboratories. It ordered Apple to stop selling the Apple Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 after Christmas.
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Quartz ☛ A US court says it's actually fine for Apple to sell its fancy Watch models
Masimo sued Apple in 2020 for stealing the technology that higher-end Apple Watches use for their blood oxygen monitor features, arguing that it was too similar to the light-based pulse oximeter used in a similar piece of Masimo hardware. That suit ended in a mistrial, but a parallel appeal to the US International Trade Commission (ITC) got Masimo the outcome it wanted. The ITC imposed the import ban, which makes it difficult to sell the watches in America because they are manufactured overseas.
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Techdirt ☛ Lost In The Latest Apple Watch Patent Battle: The ITC Loophole Creates A Mess
If you follow tech news at all, you likely heard some stuff about the potential for an Apple Watch ban over patent infringement. It was all over the news. Apple had pulled its high end watches from its store last week, following an ITC ruling from earlier this year claiming that Apple’s blood oxygen reading sensor in the watch violated the patents of a company by the name of Masimo. The patent claim here might even have some level of validity, given the history of how Apple ended up developing such tech.
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Trademarks
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Trademark Influencers and Aspen Mountain
I’m excited to head out to Snowmass in early January for the IP-SKI conference! Although we have the Ozarks here in mid-Missouri, there is nothing like the Rocky Mountains. This year I’ll also have the opportunity once again to connect with other intellectual property lawyers and talk shop while enjoying some long runs. (LINK)
In the meantime, I came across an interesting lawsuit that Aspen Skiing Company (ASC) recently filed against ski apparel company Perfect Moment. ASC owns and operates the four famous ski resorts that make up Aspen Snowmass – Snowmass along with Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands, and Buttermilk, with a history stretching back to 1947. According to the complaint, ASC is suing Perfect Moment for trademark infringement, false association, unfair competition, and other claims. [Aspen Complaint]
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TTAB Blog ☛ REALITY COMPOSER and REALITY CONVERTER Merely Descriptive of Augmented Reality Software, Says TTAB
Oppositions based on Section 2(e)(1) mere descriptiveness are somewhat rare. Here's a consolidated opposition in which the Board found the proposed marks REALITY COMPOSER and REALITY CONVERTER to be merely descriptive of Apple's downloadable software that converts files and assists in composing scenes in augmented reality. The Board relied on "the plain meaning of the words in connection with Applicant’s software products that have the functions and purposes of converting and composing" as sufficient to establish mere descriptiveness. ZeroDensity Yazilim Anonim Sirketi v. Fashion Company Apple Inc., Opposition Nos. 91266285 and 91266754 (December 22, 2023) [not precedential] (Opinion by Judge Karen S. Kuhlke).
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ ACE Has Prepared a Huge List of Pirate Sites it Wants to Shut Down in 2024
At a time when hundreds of millions of people in North America, Latin America, Europe, and beyond had little but Christmas on their minds, MPA & ACE were deciding which platforms to target in 2024. Their latest list of streaming, hosting, torrent and other platforms is not only substantial, but almost certainly represents just the tip of a very large iceberg.
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Artificial Intelligence and Copyright in China: Lessons from a Recent Court Case
Thus far US copyright monopoly and patent monopoly tribunals have refused to award rights for Hey Hi (AI) generated works. China has begun its move in the opposite direction with the recent decision granting rights to an artist who created an image using the popular generative Hey Hi (AI) system Stable Diffusion. The case of Li v. Liu was decided by the recently Beijing Internet Court. The court decides internet related cases using online tools. Although the court uses Hey Hi (AI) judges in some cases, this one was decided by humans.
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Techdirt ☛ Generative AI Will Be A Huge Boon For The Public Domain, Unless Copyright Blocks It
A year ago, I noted that many of Walled Culture’s illustrations were being produced using generative AI. During that time, AI has developed rapidly. For example, in the field of images, OpenAI has introduced DALL-E 3 in ChatGPT: [...]
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Techdirt ☛ The NY Times Lawsuit Against OpenAI Would Open Up The NY Times To All Sorts Of Lawsuits Should It Win [Ed: Techdirt used to be spot on when it comes to copyrights, not a Microsoft shill]
This week the NY Times somehow broke the story of… well, the NY Times suing OpenAI and Microsoft. I wonder who tipped them off. Anyhoo, the lawsuit in many ways is similar to some of the over a dozen lawsuits filed by copyright holders against AI companies. We’ve written about how silly many of these lawsuits are, in that they appear to be written by people who don’t much understand copyright law. And, as we noted, even if courts actually decide in favor of the copyright holders, it’s not like it will turn into any major windfall. All it will do is create another corruptible collection point, while locking in only a few large AI companies who can afford to pay up.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ OpenAI and Abusive Monopolist Microsoft being sued by The New York Times over Copilot and Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Chaffbot copyright monopoly infringement
The New York Times files a lawsuit against Abusive Monopolist Microsoft and Proprietary Chaffbot Company for their Copilot and Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Chaffbot programs, respectively, alleging that millions of NYT articles were stolen from.
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Michael Geist ☛ The Year in Review: Top Ten Michael Geist Substacks
My look back at 2023 concludes with a review of my most popular Substacks of the year. Given the overlap between blog posts and Substacks, there is unsurprisingly overlap between the most popular posts with the piece on Bill S-210 occupying the top spot on both charts. However, there are differences, with posts on the CBC and my appearance before the CRTC that focused on competition and consumer choice making their way into the Substack top ten.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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To Be A Man (A Thesis in Sociological Discourse between Child and Adult)
Living in such a society as that of modern times, many people have often come to believe that the gap between the adult and the child is vast and expansive. But nothing could be farther from the truth.
What separates a man from a child isn’t the sole age of an individual, but responsibility to own one’s actions.
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If you think Murphy's got it in for you, ponder this 'should take 10 seconds and out' snafu
Ex-perience seems an idea/concept of a something not out there wearing flesh garb to know out there.
Except there is no thing *not* out there. All things are out there.
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Kinda dying helped me live
I've been re-experiencing memories lately. One comes up a lot.
It was August 2022, and I was in hell. I've described that sensation a lot, so I will refer the reader to past posts on this gemlog.
One of the central goals in my faith practice is to live so that you can die in a state of durable happiness. Around this time, I started to think about how bad my life condition was, and how far away I was from this goal. Instead of dying happy, I was living in constant suffering.
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Motivation 1/...
Oh wow, a guy online has motivation issues
I'm sure you never read that before
So yeah, I should be doing Rust stuff right now.
I am very much not.
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Amazon Prime
Please note that I'm about to rant about a decidely first world problem. You have been warned.
I just got an email today about how Amazon Prime video titles will now include advertising when watching them.
Like what is even the point of streaming services?
You were supposed to be better than cable...You were the chosen one!
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New Year’s Resolutions
I know that a lot of folks don’t like New Year’s Resolutions, but I’m a fan. There’s always stuff about myself that I need to change, but I’m capable of putting projects off forever without a deadline; the winter solstice and new calendar year¹ are a good time to start things and assess my progress.
First, I’m finally giving up dairy, which I’m embarrassed to admit that I continued consuming long after I realized that I should stop. In an effort to not be too burdensome a partner, I’ve told my spouse that they can still use dairy in the meals that they prepare — so I’m not going to be a real vegan — but none of the meals I cook or foods I choose for myself will use any animal products. Sorry it’s taken me so long to do this.
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Why did the chicken...
When you need to apply an operation to each element of a list/tree/graph/&c -- or you need to compute some value over all the elements, or &c -- what is the act of going over the elements, or, so to speak, walking over them, named?
There's this whitepaper I had to read, attentively, more than once. In this paper, the authors consistently write "transversal". There are 5 (FIVE) of them! (authors)
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Winning an Argument in the Family
If my father were my wife, I would file for divorce.
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Thoughts of a narcoleptic movie theatre employee
It is 11 pm. I can hardly keep my eyes open, yet my brain is running wild with intrigue as I watch the actions of the people around me. Two old ladies sit by the door. They have been sitting there for 3 hours now, following their 2 hour movie. They sit and they talk forever. I find myself personally invested in their make believe conversation in my head, imagining what in the world one could talk for 3 hours about. Sure, I have had my own share of hour long rants, but I become exhausted so fast. I get self aware, and start looking around as I talk, my eye contact falling short, my voice losing its volume as I realize I have gotten too exited and had become too loud. I can hardly type this without nodding off, as I think about the people who may or may not read it and resonate. Whatever those ladies are talking about, I do hope it is pleasant for the both of them.
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🔤SpellBinding: CHIZPRO Wordo: REAVE
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Attraction to the past
When I think about my own life, as far as I can, I find a kind of attraction to the past. In my childhood, I have read a lot of books about history. It started with my mother's schoolbook, the way History was taught in the 50s and 60s. You can imagine what it was like when France was a colonial state, or when there was a civil war in Indochina or North Africa. The ancient names of countries or regions seem very exotic to me. And history books were still heavily influenced by the national narrative. Clovis, Charlemagne, heroes like Charles Martel, Roland or the great kings like Louis XIV, Emperor Napoleon... When I think about it, I understand why some politicians in France are sometimes stuck in this national narrative, so far from reality. But, that's another story (see LIveFromFrance, for example...)
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Merry Christmas!
Hey Gemini! Merry Christmas! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season (though it's not really over until Theophany.) I feel fortunate to have been invited by my classmate to celebrate with his family. They are lovely people, and I hope someday they can visit my house.
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Disconnected
Not really sure why I chose this place of all places to write about such a personal thing. Maybe it's the sense of anonymity I have? I know nobody here, and nobody here knows me, and there's a sort of comfort to be found in that. Either way. I will get my ramblings out while I can.
A college student I am, living at home again after a few months away in halls, on account of the horrendous student accomodation rent prices in the area. Living with my mother, father, and younger sister, in a 2-bedroom apartment not too far from the city center. Close with all of them, and happy to know them so well, but I feel lately as though one of them is shutting the rest of us out.
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Science
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New Year's Math Problem
Towards the end of the year 2023 and the beginning of 2024, I found a math puzzle on Quora[1]. Don't worry, those puzzles are pretty easy.
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Technology and Free Software
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The Future of Misfin
I emailed the misfin creator not so long ago, and I don't think they ever responded, unfortunately. I want to continue working on misfin, but there is at least one or two issues that need worked on: content length, and replies.
The problem is I don't want the already small misfin community to fracture off into different standards and implementations.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.