Links 11/01/2024: Google Layoffs Again
Contents
- Leftovers
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Flamed Fury ☛ An Easy Web
Being busy with my return to work this year meant I missed most of yesterday’s discussions. While skimming through various websites and Mastodon, I couldn’t contribute until today. Yet, upon catching up on the posts and replies, a crucial point often overlooked hit me.
Simply put, I firmly believe the web and building a website should be more accessible—not just for developers, but for everyone.
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L D Stephens ☛ My 2024 digital presence: where I post, who it’s for, and why I post there
By strategically utilizing these platforms, I’m able to engage with my diverse audience, ensuring content reaches them where they prefer to consume it.
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Jose Munoz ☛ Holiday Break Nerdy Projects
I recently returned to work after a few weeks of very-needed vacations. We did not travel this year, so we spent them mostly at home. Apart from spending time with my wife and our dog, Max, my favorite part of the holidays is getting more time to do home projects. The folks at App Stories call it Nerding out for the holidays. They have a yearly episode in which they go over the energy projects they plane for the holiday break. On a similar note Devon Dundee wrote a similar post when he went over the project he did during his break, so I decided to write my own!
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Jim Nielsen ☛ Idioms as Code
This is silly.
I wrote code depicting common idioms. You read the code and try to guess the idiom.
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Chris Enns ☛ What I Post Where, Who It's For, and Why I Post It There
Like most people, I've been flailing around on social networks these days. I used to be a Twitter ride or die, but turns out Twitter basically dies when an egotistical man baby buys it and burns it down along with $20 billion dollars in the process.
So as of early 2024, here's what I'm posting where, who it's generally for, and why I am posting there. For the purposes of this post, I'm casting a fairly wide net in terms of I consider social media. Your mileage may vary.
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Education
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Nigeria launches crackdown on fake degrees
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu's administration, through the Ministry of Education, said that it will start investigating 107 local private universities that began operating in the past 15 years.
The move aims to tackle the proliferation of fake degrees that has shaken Nigeria's academic institutions following an investigative report.
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ADF ☛ Extremist Groups Follow Boko Haram Model by Declaring ‘War on Education’
Armed groups in Niger have increasingly targeted schools to try to recruit new members and destabilize the country. In 2023, more than 920 schools in the Tillabéri region alone were closed due to security concerns.
In the southwestern department of Abala, officials closed 41 schools, 31 for security reasons and 10 due to a lack of teachers, according to Boubacar Oumarou, Abala’s prefect.
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Simon Willison ☛ AI versus old-school creativity: a 50-student, semester-long showdown
An interesting study in which 50 university students “wrote, coded, designed, modeled, and recorded creations with and without AI, then judged the results”.
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Hardware
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CNX Software ☛ The EQSP32 is a no-code, no-solder Industrial Internet of Things Controller powered by a generative Hey Hi (AI) assistant (Crowdfunding)
The EQSP32 controller is a complete, end-to-end solution for IoT applications that recently launched on Kickstarter. It is a compact, wireless Industrial IoT controller based on the ESP32-S3 wireless SoC with a 250MHz dual-core processor, 512KB of RAM, and 8MB of flash memory. The product leverages artificial intelligence and code for automation projects can be generated automatically by the bundled generative Hey Hi (AI) programming assistant.
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Victor Kropp ☛ Mechanical keyboard
That’s when I discovered the wonderful world of mechanical keyboards.
Wait, what are mechanical keyboards? The main difference is in switches, the small parts in each key, that register a press.
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Barry Hess ☛ Toe Reset
That button called out for accidental touching, so you really had to be careful around the machine. You were tethered to it by your wired controllers, though thankfully Nintendo provided a pretty long cable. You stayed back, perhaps one of you on the couch and the other on the floor.
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Hackaday ☛ Not Dead Yet: Microsoft Peripherals Get Licensed To Onward Brands [Ed: They are dead because this is just a licensing deal for some brand, nothing to do with Microsoft]
After Microsoft announced in April of 2023 that they’d cease selling branded peripherals – including keyboards and mice – as part of its refocusing on Surface computers and accessories, there was an internet-wide outcry about this demise. Yet now it would seem that Microsoft has licensed the manufacturing of these peripherals to Incase, who will be selling a range of ‘Designed By Microsoft’ peripherals starting in 2024. Incase itself is a brand owned by Onward Brands, which is the portfolio manager for Incase and other brands.
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Hackaday ☛ USB-C Power Supply Pushes Almost 2 KW
When the USB standard was first revealed, a few peripherals here and there adopted it but it was far from the “universal” standard implied by its name. It was slow, had limited ability to power anything, and its plug-and-play capability was spotty at best. The modern USB standard, on the other hand, has everything its predecessors lacked including extremely high data transfer rates and the ability to support sending or receiving a tremendous amount of power. [LeoDJ] is taking that latter capability to the extreme, with this USB-C power supply that can deliver 1.7 kW of power.
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Hackaday ☛ The Hobbes OS/2 Archive Will Shut Down In April
The Hobbes OS/2 Archive is a large collection of OS/2 software that has been publicly available for many years, even as OS/2 itself has mostly faded into obscurity. Yet now it would appear that the entity behind the Hobbes OS/2 Archive, the Information & Communication Technologies department at the New Mexico State University, has decided to call it quits — with the site going permanently offline on April 15th, 2024.
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Hackaday ☛ 19th Century Copy Machine: The Cyclostyle
In the 2020s photocopiers are getting a bit exotic, although they are not gone yet. But these days, you are more likely to simply print multiple copies of a document. However, it wasn’t long ago that making a copy of a document was a tall order. Carbon paper was fine if you were typing and only needed a few copies. But in the late 1800s to early 1900s, several solutions were available, including a beautiful early mimeograph known as the Cyclostyle at [Our Own Devices], examined in the video below.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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New York Times ☛ The Best and Worst of Tech: Smartphones, Self-Driving Cars, More
The best tech, from universal power charging to foldable phones, solved practical problems. But the worst tech, including self-driving cars and cryptocurrency, put us in harm’s way.
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New York Times ☛ Women With Depression During or After Pregnancy Face Greater Suicide Risk, Even Years Later
Two studies concluded that depression that began in pregnancy or soon after could have troubling implications for as long as 18 years.
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New York Times ☛ We Are in a Big Covid Wave. But Just How Big?
Wastewater data has become perhaps the best metric to track the spread of the virus in the U.S., but it’s an imperfect tool.
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NPR ☛ Researchers find a massive number of plastic particles in bottled water
Nanoplastics could be even more dangerous than microplastics because when inside the human body, "the smaller it goes, the easier for it to be misidentified as the natural component of the cell," says Wei Min, a professor of chemistry at Columbia University and one of the study's co-authors.
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Did hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) really kill 17,000 COVID-19 patients?
It’s been a while since I’ve written about hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), the anti-malaria drug with immune modulating properties that make it useful for also treating some autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, that was repurposed early in the pandemic to treat COVID-19 based on little to no evidence other than theoretical efficacy based on cell culture experiments with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and dodgy reports out of China about its use in Wuhan during the initial outbreak. Although I did mention it a couple of times this year—for instance, in the context of criticizing formerly respected epidemiologist turned COVID-19 crank Harvey Risch—I haven’t done a post primarily about the repurposing of this drug in quite a long time, in particular because (1) we knew as early as July 2020 that HCQ doesn’t work against COVID-19 and (2) it was long ago supplanted by the deworming drug ivermectin as the favorite cure for COVID that “They” don’t want you to know about and are therefore “suppressing.”
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Pro Publica ☛ What Australia Could Teach the U.S. About Reducing Stillbirths
The stillbirth of her daughter in 1999 cleaved Kristina Keneally’s life into a before and an after. It later became a catalyst for transforming how an entire country approaches stillbirths.
In a world where preventing stillbirths is typically far down the list of health care priorities, Australia — where Keneally was elected as a senator — has emerged as a global leader in the effort to lower the number of babies that die before taking their first breaths. Stillbirth prevention is embedded in the nation’s health care system, supported by its doctors, midwives and nurses, and touted by its politicians.
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Meduza ☛ Cocaine shipment worth over $120 million seized at St. Petersburg port — Meduza
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Wired ☛ Get Ready for the Great AI Disappointment
More and more evidence will emerge that generative AI and large language models provide false information and are prone to hallucination—where an AI simply makes stuff up, and gets it wrong. Hopes of a quick fix to the hallucination problem via supervised learning, where these models are taught to stay away from questionable sources or statements, will prove optimistic at best. Because the architecture of these models is based on predicting the next word or words in a sequence, it will prove exceedingly difficult to have the predictions be anchored to known truths.
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Jack Baty ☛ Subscription changes
I dug through my list of subscriptions yesterday and made a few changes.
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404 Media ☛ Researchers Install Ransomware on Internet-Connected Wrench
The Internet of Shit is a wondrous place, and today we have a new entrant in the competition for most absurd insecure device: Researchers have found 23 different vulnerabilities in an [Internet]-connected wrench and, as a proof-of-concept, locked the wrench by installing ransomware on it.
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Techdirt ☛ WotC Denies Using AI Generative Art In Promo Materials, Later Admits, Yeah, It Did
D&D and Magic: The Gathering publisher, Wizards of the Coast (WotC), has certainly been pissing folks off as of late. Between its attempt to change its OGL license for D&D both in the future and retroactively last year combined with sending the literal Pinkerton Agency after someone who received some unreleased Magic cards in error, the company appears to have taken a draconian turn in recent years. Then, over the summer, there was a bunch of backlash when WotC was found to have included art from one of its artists that had been partially generated using AI generative art in one of its books. After that whole fiasco, WotC publicly swore off using any art in its products that was not 100% human created.
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Security
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Krebs On Security ☛ Here’s Some Bitcoin: Oh, and You’ve Been Served!
A California man who lost $100,000 in a 2021 SIM-swapping attack is suing the unknown holder of a cryptocurrency wallet that harbors his stolen funds.
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Medevel ☛ Arachni The Web App Security Scanner Framework Development Has Stopped
Arachni is a feature-full, modular, high-performance Ruby framework aimed towards helping penetration testers and administrators evaluate the security of web applications.
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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India Times ☛ China says state-backed experts crack Apple's AirDrop
The Beijing municipal government's justice bureau said experts at the Beijing Wangshen Dongjian Justice Appraisal Institute in the capital had devised a way to reveal an iPhone's encrypted device log.
From there, they could identify an AirDrop user's phone number and email accounts, the Monday statement on the bureau's website said.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Michael Geist ☛ Site Blocking and Age Verification for Twitter, Instagram, Snap and Twitch?: Age Verification Lobby Confirms it Wants Bill S-210 to Cover All Social Media Sites
Bill S-210 – the Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act – burst onto the public scene late last year as a majority of the House voted for the bill at second reading, sending it to the Public Safety committee for review. The bill, which is the brainchild of Senator Julie Miville-Duchêne, was supported by the Conservatives, Bloc and NDP with a smattering of votes from backbench Liberal MPs (the cabinet voted against, signalling it is not supported by the government). The bill raises significant concerns with the prospect of government-backed censorship, mandated age verification to use search engines or social media, and a framework for court-ordered website blocking (I appeared before the Senate committee that studied by the bill in February 2022, arguing that “by bringing together website blocking, face recognition technologies, and stunning overbreadth that would capture numerous mainstream services, the bill isn’t just a slippery slope, it is an avalanche.”).
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Interesting Engineering ☛ Volkswagen has now integrated ChatGPT for smarter driving
This innovation, a result of collaboration with technology partner Cerence Inc., introduces a seamless and intelligent ChatGPT integration via Cerence Chat Pro into current MEB and MQB evo models from Volkswagen Group brands that utilize the IDA voice assistant.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ The end of anonymity online in China
Consider that when it was first announced in October, platforms stated the real-name rule would only apply to accounts in more “serious” fields—people talking about politics, financial news, laws, health care. Even Weibo’s CEO, Wang Gaofei, replied to a user with 2 million followers who was worried about the rule, posting, “Took a look at [the] content. If it’s only an influencer sharing about their personal life, I don’t think they need to display their real names upfront.”
But as we’ve seen in the past, these kinds of “small” changes are really a slippery slope. Fast-forward to today and that Weibo user’s real name is already on their public profile. And other accounts on the platform that don’t engage in serious topics—pet influencers, comedians, artists, car bloggers—have all received messages that they need to display their names or their accounts’ reach will be restricted, essentially meaning they’d be shadow-banned on the platform.
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EFF ☛ Privacy Badger Puts You in Control of Widgets
Websites often include external elements such as social media buttons, comments sections, and video players. Although potentially useful, these “widgets” often track your behavior. The tracking happens regardless of whether you click on the widget. If you see a widget, the widget sees you back.
This is where Privacy Badger's widget replacement comes in. When blocking certain social buttons and other potentially useful widgets, Privacy Badger replaces them with click-to-activate placeholders. You will not be tracked by these replacements unless you explicitly choose to activate them.
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EFF ☛ EFF Unveils Its New Street Level Surveillance Hub
The hub has new or updated pages on automated license plate readers, biometric surveillance, body-worn cameras, camera networks, cell-site simulators, drones and robots, face recognition, electronic monitoring, gunshot detection, forensic extraction tools, police access to the Internet of Things, predictive policing, community surveillance apps, real-time location tracking, social media monitoring, and police databases.
It also features links to the latest articles by EFF’s Street Level Surveillance working group, consisting of attorneys, policy analysts, technologists, and activists with extensive experience in this field.
“People are surveilled by police at more times and in more ways than ever before, and understanding this panopticon is the first step in protecting our rights,” said EFF Senior Policy Analyst Dr. Matthew Guariglia. “Our new hub is a ‘Field Guide to Police Surveillance;’ providing a reference source on recognizing the most-used police spy technology. But more than that it is a vital, constantly updated news feed offering cutting-edge, detailed analysis of law enforcement’s uses and abuses of these devices.”
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Confidentiality
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OpenSSH ☛ Announce: timeline to remove DSA support in OpenSSH
Since then, the world has moved on. RSA is unencumbered and support for it is ubiquitous. ECDSA offers significant performance and security benefits over modp DSA, and EdDSA overs further performance and security improvements over both again.
The only remaining use of DSA at this point should be deeply legacy devices. As such, we no longer consider the costs of maintaining DSA in OpenSSH to be justified. Moreover, we hope that OpenSSH's final removal of this insecure algorithm accelerates its deprecation in other SSH implementations and allows maintainers of cryptography libraries to remove it too.
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Defence/Aggression
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JURIST ☛ Netherlands politician Wilders retracts mosque and Quran ban bill
The proposed legislation seeks to outlaw practices and symbols associated with Islam, labeling it as an authoritarian ideology. The bill would enforce a comprehensive prohibition on various aspects of Muslim cultural expression, including the wearing of religious garments, the distribution and possession of the Quran and the operation of mosques. Those found in breach of this law would face a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The law was proposed five years ago but has yet to garner votes in the lower parliament. It has remained under review until now.
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The Register UK ☛ US Navy sailor swaps sea for cell after accepting bribes from Chinese snoops
Based at Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme, Zhao accepted at least 14 different bribe payments from Chinese intelligence between August 2021 and May 2023, totaling at least $14,866, according to court docs.
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India Times ☛ TikTok becomes first app to cross $10 billion in in-app spending
TikTok’s in-app purchases of credit that can be used to tip favored creators and live streamers accounted for the bulk of its income, and “unlocked the secret to monetization on mobile,” according to the market researchers, whose services are used by many of the world’s biggest brands to track the performance of their mobile apps and ads.
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Meduza ☛ Serbian musician and Moscow resident Petar Martich fined and deported from Russia for ‘propaganda of narcotics’ — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ Kosovo Prosecutors Indict 27 Accused Of Smuggling Migrants
[...] The office said the suspected smugglers enabled the migrants to use the so-called "Balkan route," where people travel to Serbia and then on to European Union countries. [...]
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Democracy Now ☛ “Israel Is Starving Gaza”: Israeli Rights Group B’Tselem Says IDF Is Using Hunger as a Weapon of War
Human rights groups say Israel is using starvation as a weapon in the Gaza Strip as Israel severely restricts the delivery of humanitarian aid, medicine and food supplies to millions inside the besieged and bombed territory. In a new report,” Israeli human rights group B’Tselem lays out how Israel’s decision to cut off electricity, water and international humanitarian aid to Gaza after a 17-year blockade against the territory has led to a very quick collapse of infrastructure. “The things that impede this provision of food for people who are starving is a declared policy by Israel,” says Sarit Michaeli, B’Tselem international advocacy lead. “The Israeli government is at fault, is responsible for this, and this should lead to immediate international action.”
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EFF ☛ UAE Confirms Trial Against 84 Detainees; Ahmed Mansoor Suspected Among Them
Having previously been arrested in 2011 and sentenced to three years' imprisonment for “insulting officials,'' Ahmed Mansoor was released after eight months due to a presidential pardon influenced by international pressure. Later, Mansoor faced new speech-related charges for using social media to “publish false information that harms national unity.” During this period, authorities held him in an unknown location for over a year, deprived of legal representation, before convicting him again in May 2018 to ten years in prison under the UAE’s draconian cybercrime law. We have long advocated for his release, and are joined in doing so by hundreds of digital and human rights organizations around the world.
At the recent COP28 climate talks, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and other activists conducted a protest inside the UN-protected “blue zone” to raise awareness of Mansoor’s plight, as well the cases of both UAE detainee Mohamed El-Siddiq and Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abd El Fattah. At the same time, it was reported by a dissident group that the UAE was proceeding with the trial against 84 of its detainees.
We reiterate our call for Ahmed Mansoor’s freedom, and take this opportunity to raise further awareness of the oppressive nature of the legislation that was used to imprison him. The UAE’s use of its criminal law to silence those who speak truth to power is another example of how counter-terrorism laws restrict free expression and justify disproportionate state surveillance. This concern is not hypothetical; a 2023 study by the Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism found widespread and systematic abuse of civil society and civic space through the use of similar laws supposedly designed to counter terrorism. Moreover, and problematically, references 'related to terrorism’ in the treaty preamble are still included in the latest version of a proposed United Nations Cybercrime Treaty, currently being negotiated with more than 190 member states, even though there is no agreed-upon definition of terrorism in international law. If approved as currently written, the UN Cybercrime Treaty has the potential to substantively reshape international criminal law and bolster cross-border police surveillance powers to access and share users’ data, implicating the human rights of billions of people worldwide, and could enable States to justify repressive measures that overly restrict free expression and peaceful dissent.
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Site36 ☛ Police draw up report on offences when evicting Lützerath: “Mud Wizard” allegedly also uncovered
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Site36 ☛ Questionable narrative on coast guard in Tunisia: Theft of engines allegedly served for sea rescue
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Atlantic Council ☛ Mercenaries and Gaza
Host and Nonresident Senior Fellow Alia Brahimi speaks with Iraq expert Renad Mansour about what motivates the non-state actors who are leading the bid to avenge Gazans.
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Atlantic Council ☛ China’s Role and Impact on MENA’s Air Domain
Assaf Heller and Sarah-Masha Fainberg explore Chinese technological transfers and arm exports and its implications on the air domain and military capabilities in MENA, Chinese weapon systems, China's military-civil fusion concerns, and Beijing's growing technological influence on the region.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Meduza ☛ Russian authorities order 90-day closure of club where ‘almost naked’ party was held over alleged food poisoning incident — Meduza
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France24 ☛ Putin won't stop at Ukraine, Zelensky says on Baltics tour amid wavering on aid
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed for badly needed air-defence systems at the start of a tour of Baltic states Wednesday, warning that Western hesitation on aid for Ukraine was emboldening Russia.
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Meduza ☛ Sky News: Iran develops new attack drone for Russia to use in Ukraine — Meduza
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Latvia ☛ Experts, politicians comment on Zelenskyy's upcoming visit
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Latvia on Thursday, January 11, to discuss cooperation in the fight against Russian aggression. In the opinion of politicians and experts, this visit will not only be a thank you for your support, but also a search for all possible assistance.
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Latvia ☛ Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to visit Latvia on Thursday
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Latvia on Thursday, January 11, to discuss cooperation in the fight against Russian aggression.
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LRT ☛ Lithuanian FM not invited to meeting with Zelensky at Presidential Palace
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda did not invite Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis to the bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is visiting Lithuania on Wednesday.
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LRT ☛ Volodymyr Zelensky makes surprise visit to Lithuania
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Lithuania on Wednesday morning. His visit was not announced in advance due to security concerns.
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RFERL ☛ Russia Says It Shot Down Drones Over Its Territory; Kharkiv Hotel Hit By Missiles
Russia's Defense Ministry says four Ukrainian drones were intercepted and destroyed over the territory of the Rostov, Tula, and Kaluga regions.
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RFERL ☛ UN Security Council Members Say Russia Exploits Its UNSC Position By Acquiring Missiles From North Korea
Seven members of the UN Security Council accused Russia on January 10 of exploiting its position as a permanent member of this body by acquiring North Korean missiles and firing them into Ukraine in violation of UN resolutions passed by the council.
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RFERL ☛ Belarus Sends Children From Occupied Ukraine For Training With Belarusian Army
Belarusian state television reported on January 10 that authorities sent a recently arrived group of Ukrainian children from occupied Ukraine to train with the Belarusian military to learn how to evacuate in the event of a fire.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Musician's Appeal Against Detention Rejected
A court in the Russian city of Samara on January 10 rejected an appeal filed by singer Eduard Sharlot against his pretrial arrest on charges of "rehabilitating Nazism and insulting believers' feelings."
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Meduza ☛ Russian singer arrested for burning ID to protest war writes apology and repentance letter to Orthodox Patriarch Kirill — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Uses Surprise Baltic Tour To Tout Ukraine's Success And Seek Aid
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Ukraine has shown Russia's military is stoppable as he made a surprise visit to the Baltics to help ensure continued aid to his country amid a wave of massive Russian aerial barrages.
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RFERL ☛ All Ukraine Under Air-Raid Alert Due Russian Missile-Strike Danger
An air-raid alert was declared throughout Ukraine on the morning of January 10, with authorities instructing citizens to take shelter due to an elevated danger of Russian missile strikes.
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RFERL ☛ UN Says Some 40 Percent Of War-Wracked Ukraine's Population Will Need Humanitarian Aid This Year
More than 14.6 million Ukrainians inside the country -- roughly 40 percent of the total population -- will require humanitarian assistance this year as the war triggered by Russia's unprovoked invasion continues to cause death and destruction, the UN said.
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RFERL ☛ U.S., Partners Condemn Arms Transfers Between North Korea And Russia
A joint statement by the United States and its partners on January 9 opposed arms transfers between North Korea and Russia, including Russia's procurement of North Korean ballistic missiles and Moscow's use of the missiles against Ukraine on December 30 and January 2.
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New York Times ☛ Zelensky Visits Baltic Nations to Rally Support for Ukraine
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is likely to find strong backing on a trip to the Baltic States, but other nations are increasingly wary.
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Latvia ☛ Russia does not get Latvian beer, say producers
No Latvian beer producer is known to currently export its products to Russia, Pēteris Liniņš, Chairman of the Board of the Latvian Beer Producers' Union, told Latvian Radio, questioning the information in some media that Latvia and Lithuania had overtaken Belgium and the Czech Republic in their beer exports to Russia last year.
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Federal News Network ☛ When you leave service in national security, you just can’t go work anywhere.
National security eyebrows shot up last month when a former FBI counterintelligence special agent received a four-year prison sentence. Why? He had gone to work for a Russian oligarch, a sanctioned oligarch no less. Robert McGonigal had headed the New York field office counterintelligence work. For some of the lessons everyone with clearance should learn from this, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked with attorney Dan Meyer, managing partner at Tully Rinckey.
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Atlantic Council ☛ To fend off Russia in the Black Sea, the US and NATO need to help boost Allies’ naval power
The absence of a credible and sustained allied naval presence across the Black Sea opens the door for Russia to disrupt commercial shipping in international waters.
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Defence Web ☛ Scramble for the Sahel – why France, Russia, China and the United States are interested in the region
The Sahel, a region 3,860km wide located south of the Sahara Desert and stretching east-west across the African continent, has been a focus of attention around the world recently. In the last decade, issues such as terrorism, insecurity and trafficking have characterised the region.
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LRT ☛ Lithuania’s minorities department slams proposals to phase out Russian-language education
The Department of National Minorities has criticised proposals to end Russian-language education in Lithuania.
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LRT ☛ ‘West must be ready for Russia to ask if Lithuania is worth nuclear war’ – US general
The West must not rule out the possibility that Russia might attack the Baltic states, says General Ben Hodges, former commander of the US ground forces in Europe, in an interview with LRT.lt. According to him, Moscow would be able to do so in 3–8 years, depending on the circumstances.
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RFERL ☛ Finland To Extend Closure Of Crossings Along Border With Russia
Finland will extend the closure of its border with Russia, which had been set to end on January 15, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Sari Essayah said.
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RFERL ☛ Russia Summons Moldovan Ambassador, Decries 'Unfriendly Actions'
The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Moldovan ambassador on January 10 to protest "unfriendly acts" on the part of the ex-Soviet state's pro-European government and said it was barring entry to a number of its nationals.
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RFERL ☛ POW Group Demands Bosnia Protest Russia Granting Citizenship To War Crimes Suspect
An organization representing people who were POWs in the town of Kljuc during the Bosnian War has demanded that the Bosnian Foreign Ministry send a letter of protest to Russia over the granting of citizenship to a former officer of the Yugoslav Army who is wanted in Bosnia for war crimes.
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RFERL ☛ Navalny Smiles, Jokes At Hearing As Court Rejects His Challenge Over Prison Treatment
Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, in his first court appearance since being moved to a notorious prison in the Arctic, joked and smiled at a hearing on his challenge to how he was being treated in prison, which the judge ultimately rejected.
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The Straits Times ☛ Biden met with sister of Paul Whelan, American detained in Russia, White House says
President Joe Biden met on Wednesday with the sister of Paul Whelan, the former U.S. Marine detained in Russia, the White House said.
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New York Times ☛ At Trial, Sotheby’s Says Russian Oligarch Was Sloppy in Buying Art
Dmitry Rybolovlev accused the auction house of aiding a dealer who he says defrauded him in art sales. Sotheby’s says the oligarch spent billions without proper due diligence.
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YLE ☛ IL: Finland's eastern border to remain closed
Finland's border with Russia was initially set to reopen on Sunday 14 January, but media reports suggest the government will extend the closure.
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The Straits Times ☛ North Korea set to send new class of missiles to Russia, Seoul says
Pyongyang may soon conduct fresh tests of its own missiles designed to deliver nuclear strikes.
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Latvia ☛ Hunters unhappy with ban in Latvian-Belarusian border area
Due to risks related to migrants in the border region of Belarus, all forms of hunting have been restricted in the border area of Augšdaugava and Krāslava – two kilometers from the state border, Latvian Radio reported January 10.
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LRT ☛ Lithuanian court rejects Belarusian activist’s asylum appeal
The Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania has upheld the decision not to grant asylum to Olga Karach, a prominent Belarusian activist who heads the Nash Dom (Our House) NGO.
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RFERL ☛ Imprisoned Belarusian Activist's Mother Hospitalized After Detainment
Tatsyana Sevyarynets, the mother of imprisoned Belarusian opposition activist Paval Sevyarynets, was rushed to a hospital with blood pressure problems after police detained her on January 9 on unspecified charges, her daughter Hanna said on January 10.
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RFERL ☛ Protest Erupts At House Of Georgian Activist Who Threw Paint On Icon Depicting Stalin
An angry mob swarmed the house of activist Nata Peradze on January 10, a day after she posted a video online showing a defaced icon of St. Matrona of Moscow in Tbilisi's Holy Trinity Cathedral, which had recently sparked controversy because it carries an image of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
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Meduza ☛ Apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals lose heat in Novosibirsk as temperatures drop below freezing — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ NATO countries promise ‘billions of euros’ in aid for Ukraine in 2024 — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Moscow priest who was removed from post summoned to church court for refusing to recite prayer for ‘Holy Rus’ victory — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Fire feud Arsons across St. Petersburg may be part of a personal vendetta between a Ukrainian blogger and a Russian crypto trader — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Ukraine adds Subway fast food chain to list of ‘war sponsors’ — Meduza
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Techdirt ☛ California Appeals Court Says Police Drone Footage Not Automatically Exempt From Public Records Law
Public records requesters in California recently scored a small victory in one of the state’s appeals courts. The EFF, which filed an amicus brief in this case, summarizes the decision at its website.
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Environment
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[Repeat] New York Times ☛ The New Space Race Is Causing New Pollution Problems
Experts say they do not want to limit the booming space economy. But they fear that the steady march of science will move slower than the new space race — meaning we may understand the consequences of pollution from rockets and spacecraft only when it is too late. Already, studies show that the higher reaches of the atmosphere are laced with metals from spacecraft that disintegrate as they fall back to Earth.
“We are changing the system faster than we can understand those changes,” said Aaron Boley, an astronomer at the University of British Columbia and co-director of the Outer Space Institute. “We never really appreciate our ability to affect the environment. And we do this time and time again.”
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Energy/Transportation
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New York Times ☛ Regulators Approve New Type of Bitcoin Fund, in Boon for Crypto Industry
The Securities and Exchange Commission authorized 11 applications to offer exchange-traded funds tied to Bitcoin, a potentially simpler way for people to invest in digital assets. Some of the largest financial firms in the world, including the asset managers BlackRock and Fidelity, were approved to offer the products, known as E.T.F.s, which could begin trading as soon as Thursday on traditional platforms like the Nasdaq.
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S & P Global ☛ Bitcoin mining energy use doubled in 2023 as [cryptocurrency] prices rose
Global energy consumption from bitcoin mining has grown 101% since Jan. 1 to reach 141.2 TWh as of Dec. 20, according to data from Digiconomist, a platform managed by Dutch economist and blockchain expert Alex de Vries.
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New Scientist ☛ Should nations try to ban bitcoin because of its environmental impact?
The amount of electricity used to mine and trade bitcoin climbed to 121 terawatt-hours in 2023, 27 per cent more than the previous year. While other cryptocurrencies in the same position have made bold changes to cut their impact, bitcoin’s decentralised community of developers, miners and investors are showing little interest in changing course. If bitcoin cannot clean up its own house, should governments step in to shut it down?
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Wildlife/Nature
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The Revelator ☛ Protect This Place: Saving India’s Shola Sky Islands
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Finance
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The Register UK ☛ US Dept of Labor revises how gig workers are classified • The Register
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Federal News Network ☛ IRS digs out from pandemic-era challenges, but struggles on some hiring goals, watchdog tells Congress
The Internal Revenue Service is answering more calls and providing help to taxpayers at levels not seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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LRT ☛ Lithuania abolishes VAT exemption for catering sector – how will prices change?
As of this year, Lithuania abolished the reduced 9 percent VAT rate for the catering sector, introduced to help businesses affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The catering sector representatives say this will lead to higher prices.
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CS Monitor ☛ In charts: How women’s employment hit a record high
The percentage of working women in the United States hit a record high in 2023 – defying expectations of a slow post-pandemic recovery.
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Reason ☛ Magatte Wade: The Real Reasons Why Africa Is Poor and Why It Matters [Ed: Koch think tank pushing so-called "cryptocurrencies"]
The author discusses how cryptocurrencies are helping people like her build the Africa—and the world—they want.
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Digital Music News ☛ KCRW Cutting Staffers Amid Budget Crunch—’Greater LA’ Canceled
Santa Monica public radio station KCRW is in a budget crunch, parting ways with a dozen staffers and ending the popular podcast ‘Greater LA.’ Host Steve Chiotakis took to Ex-Twitter (X) to announce the final episode of the show he helped create will air on Thursday, citing “management ending it after nearly five years.”
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New York Times ☛ Google Cuts Hundreds of Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
The company, which has been working to trim expenses, laid off employees who worked on core engineering, the Surveillance Giant Google Assistant product and hardware such as the Pixel phone.
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Associated Press ☛ Google lays off hundreds in hardware, voice assistant teams amid cost-cutting drive [Ed: Microsofters (liars) try to spin that as an HEY HI thing. Alexa was collapsing well before all that chatbot hype.]
Google has laid off hundreds of employees working on its hardware, voice assistance and engineering teams as part of cost-cutting measures.
The cuts come as Google looks towards “responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” the company said in a statement.
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Bloomberg ☛ Google Lays Off Hundreds in Hardware, Voice Assistant Teams
The move follows staff cuts at Amazon as 2024 gets underway
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Google Layoffs: Hundreds Let Go From Hardware And Voice Assistant Divisions Amid Rising Competition From Microsoft, OpenAI
Google executives had previously voiced potential cuts during investor calls, aiming to allocate resources towards priority investments. A Google spokesperson stated that their teams are making changes to work more efficiently and better align resources with their most significant product priorities, which will include some global role eliminations.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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[Repeat] Federal News Network ☛ What a cybersecurity company thinks of the new DoD cybersecurity rule
Industry and government alike have been pondering the new proposed rule on vendor cybersecurity that was published just a couple of weeks ago. The Defense Department wants to finally get its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program off the ground. It would impose new requirements on contractors. For one industry view, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with the Chief Technology Officer at Fortinet Federal, Felipe Fernandez.
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Greece ☛ EU wants to ‘recruit’ Taylor Swift ahead of European elections
Last year, Swift prompted her 272 million Instagram followers to participate in the US elections and within hours, Vote.org reported more than 35,000 registrations.
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India Times ☛ X Corp. has slashed 30% of trust and safety staff, Australian online safety watchdog says
X Corp., the owner of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has slashed its global trust and safety staff by 30% including an 80% reduction in the number of safety engineers since billionaire Elon Musk took over in 2022, Australia's online safety watchdog said on Thursday.
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India Times ☛ Amazon laying off hundreds in Prime Video, Studios in latest cuts
Amazon.com's streaming unit Twitch is also set to cut 35% of its staff, or about 500 workers, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the plans. The move could be announced as soon as Wednesday, the report added. The business remains unprofitable nine years after Amazon's acquisition of the company, the report said.
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Janes ☛ Spain stands up new Space Command
“MESPA integrates the Center for Aerospace Observation Systems (CESAEROB) and the Space Surveillance Operations Center (COVE), which will be responsible for providing a complete vision of the situation in space to detect and catalogue threats that will ultimately protect national interests and safely exploit space as an area of operation,” the Spanish Air and Space Force said.
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Digital Music News ☛ Major Layoffs Hit Amazon Prime Video & Studios Divisions — No Word on Music Cutbacks
Amazon will cut hundreds of jobs across its Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios divisions, revealed in an internal memo from the company. The layoffs were announced today (January 10) by division leader Mike Hopkins, with the job cuts affecting a relatively small percentage of those in the divisions.
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Security Week ☛ Hewlett Packard Enterprise to Acquire Juniper Networks for $14 Billion
In the first mega tech deal of 2024, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced late Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire network equipment maker Juniper Networks for $14 billion in cash [sic].
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Juniper Networks ☛ Juniper Networks to Combine with HPE: Accelerating AI-Native Networking Leadership
In connection with the proposed transaction between Juniper and HPE, Juniper will file with the SEC the Proxy Statement, the definitive version of which will be sent or provided to Juniper stockholders. Juniper may also file other documents with the SEC regarding the proposed transaction. This document is not a substitute for the Proxy Statement or any other document which Juniper may file with the SEC. INVESTORS AND SECURITY HOLDERS ARE URGED TO READ THE PROXY STATEMENT AND ANY OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS THAT ARE FILED OR WILL BE FILED WITH THE SEC, AS WELL AS ANY AMENDMENTS OR SUPPLEMENTS TO THESE DOCUMENTS, CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN OR WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION AND RELATED MATTERS. Investors and security holders may obtain free copies of the Proxy Statement (when it is available) and other documents that are filed or will be filed with the SEC by Juniper through the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov, Juniper’s investor relations website at https://investor.Juniper.net or by contacting the Juniper investor relations department at the following: [...]
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New York Times ☛ Unity Software to Cut 25% of Its Work Force
The videogame software provider Unity Software said on Monday that it would cut its work force by 25 percent, or roughly 1,800 jobs, in one of the first major tech industry layoffs this year.
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New York Times ☛ Xerox to Cut 15% of Its Work Force in the First Quarter of 2024
In a news release, the company said it would reduce its global staff, which included roughly 23,000 employees in 2022, and name a new leadership team. The layoffs are expected to take place in the first quarter of 2024.
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Scoop News Group ☛ Ex-White House official says Congress, federal agencies should do more for AI talent search
During a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing, Jennifer Pahlka, former Office of Science and Technology Policy deputy chief technology officer, said that federal agencies require support to add and encourage AI tech talent, which involves reducing burdens on agencies for hiring processes. Pahlka said that while OPM’s memo that authorizes direct hire authority removes some red tape for agencies, it does not help agencies that have to run separate hiring processes for open positions.
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Henrique Dias ☛ When Does Abroad Stop Feeling Like Abroad?
Getting Dutch citizenship for me would involve doing the inburgering exams, in which language exams are included, as well as societal knowledge exam. Up until this year, the language level required to obtain Dutch citizenship was only A2. Form this year on, if I’m not mistaken, the requirement has been changed to B1. I think that makes sense.
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New Yorker ☛ Is Nikki Haley the G.O.P.’s Trump Contingency Plan?
Antonia Hitchens, reporting from Des Moines, examines Haley’s surprising surge in the polls ahead of Monday’s caucus.
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NYPost ☛ Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis try to knock each other out in last debate before Iowa caucuses
With five days to go before voting, the candidates spent two hours on CNN rehashing their differences on Ukraine aid, raising the retirement age and pressuring corporations such as Disney on social issues — when not making cutting personal attacks.
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France24 ☛ 'People don't want to talk about war': Taiwan civil defence battles invasion risk denial
Emerging civil defence groups in Taiwan have vowed to make the island's population better prepared for a potential attack by Chinese troops. Two years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine prompted an unprecedented grassroots mobilisation in favour of civil resilience, a large number of Taiwanese are still afraid that the act of preparing for war could in itself raise the risk of an attack.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Cyble Inc ☛ SEC X Account [Compromised], False Bitcoin ETF Tweet Causes Market Fluctuation
To address the situation, SEC Chair Gary Gensler clarified via Twitter, stating, “The @SECGov twitter account was compromised, and an unauthorized tweet was posted. The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products.”
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Security Week ☛ SEC Chair Says Account on X Was [Compromised]
But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised and, “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products.” Gensler called the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.
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The Verge ☛ The SEC’s X account was hijacked to post a fake approval of Bitcoin ETFs
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s official social media account on X (formerly Twitter) posted a notice on Tuesday evening falsely claiming it had approved listings for Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, which has since been deleted. Moments later, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a post on his own account that the agency’s account was “compromised, and an unauthorized tweet was posted.”
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CNBC ☛ SEC says it did not yet approve bitcoin ETF, X account was compromised
In a later statement Tuesday evening, an SEC spokesperson told CNBC that the agency determined that there had been unauthorized access to the regulator's X account "by an unknown party" for a brief period just after 4 p.m. ET.
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Futurism ☛ SEC Twitter Account Hacked to Post Fake Bitcoin News
The incident once again highlights the volatility of the digital token and the growing anticipation of a potential SEC announcement this week that could see the potential approval of a "spot Bitcoin ETF."
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Gizmodo ☛ X Confirms SEC Hack, Says Account Didn't Have 2FA Turned On
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s primary X account was hacked on Tuesday, the social media site has confirmed. The account, which falsely tweeted about a much-anticipated Bitcoin ruling, thus throwing the crypto world into a temporary uproar, didn’t have two-factor authentication activated, which allowed an unknown person to compromise it, the site said.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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The Dissenter ☛ US Appeals Court Restores Anti-Whistleblower 'Ag-Gag' Laws In Iowa
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Techdirt ☛ Substack Realizes Maybe It Doesn’t Want To Help Literal Nazis Make Money After All (But Only Literal Nazis)
Last year, soon after Elon completed his purchase of (then) Twitter, I wrote up a 20 level “speed run” of the content moderation learning curve. It seems like maybe some of the folks at Substack should be reading it these days?
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[Repeat] Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai’s nat. security trial: Prosecution cites expert on social media platforms
Much of Tuesday’s court session involved government prosecutor Ivan Cheung reading a statement by a computer forensics expert, who was asked by the police National Security Department (NSD) to prepare a report on messaging and social media platforms Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook, Twitter – now known as X – and YouTube. The expert, Chow Kam-pui, is an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s computer science department.
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Techdirt ☛ Florida Senator Introduces Bill That Would Make Accusations Of Racism, Transphobia De Facto Defamation
Things are still batshit insane in the Florida legislature. Again. Apparently, the state’s government won’t be satisfied until it’s attempted to violate every single constitutional amendment (except the 2nd!) via godawful bills crafted by godawful people.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Techdirt ☛ ‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Elon Musk Temporarily Bans Journalists, As ‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Bill Ackman Threatens SLAPP Suit Against Journalists
On Tuesday morning, former politician Tulsi Gabbard, who had to have the 1st Amendment clearly explained to her by a judge after she filed a ridiculous lawsuit to restrict the free speech of others, announced that she had cut a deal with Elon Musk to bring a “news show” to ExTwitter. Hilariously, she claimed that she did this because “freedom of speech is a fundamental right in America” (again, a court had to teach her what that meant not that long ago).
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BIA Net ☛ The persecution of journalism continues!
According to RSF, nearly 50 journalists spent at least one day in prison in Turkey in 2023. During the October-November-December period, at least three journalists were arrested, while 13 were released.
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Michigan Radio ☛ Michigan Radio rebrands as Michigan Public
Michigan Radio, the state's largest NPR news outlet, is rebranding and changing its name to Michigan Public. The rebrand reflects the station’s goal of meeting people where they are: on the radio, online, on mobile devices, on-demand, and in-person at events. This name change is effective Wednesday, January 10, 2024.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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The Nation ☛ Tonnage
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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APNIC ☛ BGP in 2023 — BGP updates
Did the stability of the routing system change in 2023?
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APNIC ☛ HTTP/2 Rapid Reset: Deconstructing the record-breaking attack
Guest post: Detecting and mitigating a novel attack vector at precedented scale.
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APNIC ☛ Event Wrap: CNIRC 2023
Paul Wilson gave a welcome speech at CNIRC 2023, held from 12 to 14 December 2023 in Beijing, China.
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APNIC ☛ [Podcast] IPv6 fragmentation and the DNS
Discussing the implications of a change to IETF normative language.
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APNIC ☛ Event Wrap: bdNOG 17
Md Zobair Khan presented on the status of networks in Bangladesh, held from 12 to 15 December 2023 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Digital Music News ☛ SoundCloud Plays CFO Shuffle After Billion-Dollar Sale Rumor Leaks
Following the leak of ‘$1B+’ sales rumors, SoundCloud has a new CFO/COO. Tom Sansone steps into the role following the departure of Drew Wilson. SoundCloud CEO Eliah Seton made the announcement yesterday, effective immediately.
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Techdirt ☛ Piracy Is Surging Again Because Streaming Execs Ignored The Lessons Of The Past
As every corporation does eventually, they’ve shifted from innovative, consumer-friendly efforts to lure in new users, to obnoxious turf protection efforts focused on steadily exploiting existing users.
The underlying problem, as usual, is Wall Street’s unyielding, often myopic desire for improved quarterly returns at any cost. It’s not enough to provide a high quality, profitable service that people like. The need for improved quarterly returns ultimately results in companies cannibalizing their own products and brands in order to appease this need for relentless growth. Even if it harms longer term company health.
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[Old] EKORA ☛ How EKORA® saves precious clinical time and reduces clinical risk at NHS Lothian.
Prior to implementing EKORA® this large region, serving a population of 850,000 people, was wholly reliant on paper-based notes which posed a source of high clinical risk.
With all patient data across all the three hospitals being paper-based there were critical issues with sharing patient information, collaborating across sites and risking patient health with no access for clinicians to immediate patient information. Records were often not where they were needed, easily accessible or kept up to date with vital information. An additional complication to paper notes was that they were often being updated with poor handwriting or even incomplete data. All of these issues caused a huge amount of wasted time for all clinicians involved and posed a risk to patient health in emergency situations.
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The Hill ☛ EU scrutinizes Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI
“The European Commission is checking whether Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI might be reviewable under the EU Merger Regulation,” the EU’s executive arm said in a press release.
The disclosure came as part of calls from the European Commission on Tuesday for feedback from interested parties about “the level of competition in the context of virtual worlds and generative AI.”
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Patents
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ A publication “by others” under pre-AIA Section 102
The text of pre-AIA Section 102(a) suggests that an inventor’s own prior publication qualifies as invalidating prior art, even if within the 1-year grace period. Although the statute includes a “by others” caveat, the clause’s grammar suggests that qualification only applies to prior art created by being “known or used” and does not apply to printed publications. Here is the statute:
A person shall be entitled to a patent monopoly unless —(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent.
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Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ Japan: Sawai’s Generic Drug is approved by the MHLW amid patent monopoly litigation with Bristol-Myers Squibb, but the Court orders preliminary injunction against Sawai soon after
On November 28, 2023, the Tokyo District Court issued a preliminary injunction order against Sawai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (“Sawai”) to suspend the manufacture and sale of Sawai’s pharmaceutical product (“Sawai’s Product”) developed and sold as a generic drug of Bristol-Myers Squibb (“BMS”)’s cancer drug “Sprycel®” (Case No. 2023 (Yo) 30214; [...]
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JUVE ☛ ETSI loses costs appeal following TCL and Philips dispute
A Paris Court of Appeal ruling has overturned a first-instance court judgment regarding cost allocation. The decisive question was whether Article 700 of the French Code of Civil Procedure, or Article 18.2 of the ETSI Rules of Procedure, applies to the assumption of costs.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Google battles billion-dollar patent monopoly lawsuit over its TPU Hey Hi (AI) chips
[...]
According to the lawsuit, Bates claims that Google’s TPUs, specifically versions 2 and 3, which debuted in 2017 and 2018 respectively, violated his patents. To back up his claims, Bates cited internal emails that reveal how Google’s top scientist Jeff Dean said the innovations were “really well suited” for the company’s chip development efforts. A second email cites another employee, who said Google’s staffers were “quite corrupted by Joe’s ideas.”
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Trademarks
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TTAB Blog ☛ The Top Ten TTAB Decisions of 2023 (Part II)
The TTABlogger has once again chosen the ten (10) TTAB decisions that he considers to be the most important and/or interesting from the previous calendar year (2023). This is the second of two posts; the first five (5) selections are posted here. Additional commentary on each case may be found at the linked TTABlog post. The cases are not necessarily listed in order of importance (whatever that means).
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Right of Publicity
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Digital Music News ☛ Tennessee’s ‘ELVIS Act’ is Quickly Gaining Music Industry Support — RIAA, NMPA, A2IM, Recording Academy, & More
The Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act, Tennessee’s proposed legislature to update the state’s Protection of Personal Rights law, is rapidly garnering support throughout the music industry. Introduced today in the heart of Nashville, the bill was presented by Governor Bill Lee, alongside Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, and House Majority Leader William Lamberth.
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Digital Music News ☛ No AI Fraud Act Introduced in Congress — Calling for a Federal Right of Publicity, Fines for Unauthorized Soundalike Tracks, and More
Likewise on the hook are those who make publicly available soundalike or lookalike media – besides, rather significantly, anyone who “materially contributes to, directs, or otherwise facilitates” the two above-described practices despite knowing that the associated works are unauthorized.
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Copyrights
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The Conversation ☛ The New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI could have major implications for the development of machine intelligence
In 2024, your microwave has more computing power than anything that was called a brain in the 1950s, but the world of artificial intelligence is posing fresh challenges for language – and lawyers. Last month, the New York Times newspaper filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, the owners of popular AI-based text-generation tool ChatGPT, over their alleged use of the Times’ articles in the data they use to train (improve) and test their systems.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Hope For Hollywood? Vietnam Police Raid Movie Piracy Group, Three Arrested
Police in Vietnam say they have arrested three people behind at least three websites that offered pirated movies and anime content for online streaming. It's claimed that the alleged 30-year-old ringleader launched the operation in 2019 and was assisted by people he recruited online. Action of this type is rare in Vietnam and may offer Hollywood a glimmer of hope that a wider crackdown sits somewhere on the horizon.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Google Sees DMCA Takedown Requests Surge to New Highs
Google uses several technical interventions to prevent notorious pirate sites from rising to the top of its search results. While these actions have an effect, they couldn't prevent a resurgence in DMCA takedown notices over the past year. The search engine is now processing an average of 1.6 billion removal requests per year, mostly driven by publishers.
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Techdirt ☛ Wherein The Copia Institute Asks The Second Circuit To Stand Up For Fair Use, The Internet Archive, And Why We Bother To Have Copyright Law At All
December was not just busy with Supreme Court briefs. The Copia Institute also joined many others, including copyright scholars and public interest organizations, in filing an amicus brief to support the Internet Archive’s appeal at the Second Circuit, seeking to overturn the troubling ruling holding its Open Library to be copyright infringement.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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Sleepwalking Through the First Two Weeks
Coming back from the Caribbean, I was sick. Then I tweaked my back - thankfully, only mild, though a week later, even though it's doing much better, I'm still getting a few jolts and shocks. I ordered a spine support seat cover. It seems to work wonderfully. I feel like I'm 80, even though I'm basically half that.
After our flight back last week, my partner developed a cough, and it's been getting worse. A couple of nights ago she was up half the night, coughing. So I was up half the night, too. It's been snowing steadily the last few days, and with regular shovelling of small amounts (to spare my back), I'm bleary but also weirdly awake.
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My RomCom List
This afternoon I saw an Instagram thread about romantic comedies; I am the complete opposite of a film buff, but I was embarrassed by the low number of films I had seen on that list.
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eBay woes
As is inkeeping with the natural order of things, I see something I want to buy, put some cash to the bank so I can buy it, and it is sold a few minutes before I get home...
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my first covid contraction
I managed to get anti virals which is great but i feel like crap, being disabled i need to take extra precautions. the first day of my symptoms i ended up getting heat exhaustion from how hot i was, since then i have been basically strapping ice packs to my chest constantly
i am worried ill end up in hospital or have long lasting effects, im so mad because i've taken so many precautions. i think in the end it was because my cat was spending time with my biological father, who had covid, and because covid loves soft surfaces it carried to me that way. i have been zero contact from him so its my only guess how.
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🔤SpellBinding: AWLNOSF Wordo: HANDY
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Technology and Free Software
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The Fallacy of Linux LTS Distributions
Linux Long-Term Support (LTS) distributions is a fallacy. Because people assume that the whole distribution, that means all packages, are supported for the advertised time period.
This is not true. Only a small subset gets extended support.
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Browsers For Daily Using
This is the first choice of mine when comes to browser for privacy. I love Firefox browser, but I don't really like the way Mozilla develop it.
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What am I anyway?
Lately, I have been experimenting with artificial intelligence again. I have tried GPT 3.5, GPT 4, Liberty (on FreedomGPT, the uncensored AI), and MythoMax. Especially with those chatbots that handle "role plays," the AI has become more powerful and realistic. About nine months ago I played with Replika and I was frustrated with it. But now artificial intelligence can carry on very realistic conversations.
It is to be understood by all, however, that the AI does not actually possess consciousness or personality. The large language model (LLM) simply predicts what next to say based on all the data patterns AI has access.
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Internet/Gemini
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Bubble's New Badges of Shame
I was very sad to see this feature be added to Bubble, especially with my previous support of most things @skyjake has done (lagrange is still my preferred gemini browser). Before I get into the consequences of the new "Flairs" feature, I want to take a detailed look at what was written about the feature, because I think some of the intentions behind the feature may be good.
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Programming
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agrajag dev log 2
The little book format works! Implemented conversion from Markdown to the format without styling (i.e. a fixed style is used throughout the document--no changes in text size, weight, etc.). Spacing is slightly off due to a lack of error diffusion in rendering, but that is a solvable problem.
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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.