Links 13/01/2024: More Amazon Layoffs and Substack's Erosion
Contents
- Leftovers
- Education
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- 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
-
Leftovers
-
Barry Hess ☛ You’re a Blogger, Not an Essayist
When I get wistful for the internet of old, one thing that strikes me is that all the blogs back then, well, they were just blogs. The idea of weblog was a new one, and of course it is allowed to change and mature, but back then you were allowed to share your thoughts, allowed to change your mind, and allowed to post something without thinking too terribly much. Allowed to write run-on sentences.
Actually, guess what? You’re still allowed to do all of those things!
-
Troy Patterson ☛ Running Your Own
Ben Werdmuller, who is brilliant, has a great write up, Running your own site painful. Hosting Nazis is worse. Seriously, this is a GREAT article. Please go read it (and then come back here).
He makes important points about social media, where your stuff is hosted, options for discoverability and more. He focuses on writers, but so much is equivalent to educators.
I’d say his wonderful article is relevant in two ways for educators:
1. Parent/Community Communication
2. Educational Resources. -
Jason Kratz ☛ I'm done at micro.blog
Long story short: account deleted. I need to start protecting my mental health and being there wasn't helping me accomplish that goal. I hope I can keep in touch with a handful of the folks from there either via blogs or Mastodon. But I'm done.
-
Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Rachel Smith
This is the 20th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Rachel Smith and her blog, rachsmith.com
-
Education
-
Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Email Etiquette
Our Flemish government has a language advice team that published email etiquette guidelines, where number one is do not send unnecessary emails. Another well-known local job recruitment agency posted 25 rules where Adhere to the rules you were taught at school is probably the best advice: good sentence structure, use of capitals and punctuation marks, …
-
The Atlantic ☛ American Universities Are Post-truth
This decline is something close to common knowledge. Less discussed is the fact that public confidence in colleges has fallen significantly across all ideological groups since 2015. Though Republicans’ confidence cratered the most, Gallup found that it fell by 16 points among independents (from 48 to 32 percent) and nine points among Democrats (from 68 to 59 percent, not far from where Republicans were nine years ago).
-
-
Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
-
The Register UK ☛ Your pacemaker should be running open source software
This time, however, she had a symptom, an irregular heartbeat, that was getting worse. Clearly, the first thing to do was pull the data from the device so that her cardiologist would have more data for the treatment.
One of the reasons why people get these devices is so they and their doctor can track their condition. So it was easy right? Wrong.
Remember, this runs proprietary software. It turned out that no one but a company representative could pull data from it. And, no one - and I mean no one - was available who could get the information.
-
Gizmodo ☛ Bottled Water Contains 100 Times More Plastic Particles Than Previously Thought
At this point, it’s common knowledge that bottled water contains microplastics — fragments of the insidious material that can be as small as a bacterial cell. But the problem is much worse than previously known: It turns out that bottled water harbors hundreds of thousands of even tinier pieces of the stuff.
-
PNAS ☛ Rapid single-particle chemical imaging of nanoplastics by SRS microscopy
Plastics are now omnipresent in our daily lives. The existence of microplastics (1 µm to 5 mm in length) and possibly even nanoplastics (<1 μm) has recently raised health concerns. In particular, nanoplastics are believed to be more toxic since their smaller size renders them much more amenable, compared to microplastics, to enter the human body. However, detecting nanoplastics imposes tremendous analytical challenges on both the nano-level sensitivity and the plastic-identifying specificity, leading to a knowledge gap in this mysterious nanoworld surrounding us. To address these challenges, we developed a hyperspectral stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) imaging platform with an automated plastic identification algorithm that allows micro-nano plastic analysis at the single-particle level with high chemical specificity and throughput. We first validated the sensitivity enhancement of the narrow band of SRS to enable high-speed single nanoplastic detection below 100 nm. We then devised a data-driven spectral matching algorithm to address spectral identification challenges imposed by sensitive narrow-band hyperspectral imaging and achieve robust determination of common plastic polymers. With the established technique, we studied the micro-nano plastics from bottled water as a model system. We successfully detected and identified nanoplastics from major plastic types. Micro-nano plastics concentrations were estimated to be about 2.4 ± 1.3 × 105 particles per liter of bottled water, about 90% of which are nanoplastics. This is orders of magnitude more than the microplastic abundance reported previously in bottled water. High-throughput single-particle counting revealed extraordinary particle heterogeneity and nonorthogonality between plastic composition and morphologies; the resulting multidimensional profiling sheds light on the science of nanoplastics.
-
Soeren ☛ 🍔 Fat Boy at 40
If you read this and want to join the party, read Kev’s articles, join the mailing list and write your story. We’re looking forward to hear it and support you wherever we can 🙂
-
-
Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
-
Troy Patterson ☛ AI Training
I’ve been thinking about this lately in terms of AI. AI has scraped the web for data to create models. There are several lawsuits currently in place trying to resolve some of the issues around collecting and using data.
-
Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Outa wants people jailed over SAP corruption
The agreement also requires the software firm to cooperate with US and South African authorities in criminal investigations into the individuals involved in the corruption, including former SAP executives, South African government officials and the intermediaries.
-
The Scotsman ☛ Scots subpostmaster ‘ashamed’ at embezzlement conviction died before name cleared
More than 900 Post Office workers across the UK were prosecuted when faulty Horizon software made it look like money was missing from their branches. Around 100 Post Office workers in Scotland were caught up in the scandal.
-
The Register UK ☛ Number of orgs compromised via Ivanti VPN zero-days grows as Mandiant weighs in
The software biz disclosed the vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) – the VPN server appliance previously known as Pulse Connect Secure – and its Policy Secure gateways on Wednesday. At the time the biz said someone or some group had already found and exploited the holes. A spokesperson for Ivanti told The Register the victim count was "less than 10." It has since increased.
This situation is especially worrisome because neither flaw has a patch — Ivanti hopes to start rolling those out the week of January 22 in a staggered fashion, and, in the meantime urges customers to "immediately" deploy mitigations. And as Mandiant Consulting CTO Charles Carmakal noted: "These CVEs chained together lead to unauthenticated remote code execution."
-
[Repeat] Scoop News Group ☛ NIST researchers warn of top AI security threats
As dozens of states race to establish standards for how their agencies use AI to increase efficiency and streamline public-facing services, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology found that artificial intelligence systems, which rely on large amounts of data to perform tasks, can malfunction when exposed to untrustworthy data, according a report published last week.
-
US NIST ☛ NIST AI 100-2 E2023: Adversarial Machine Learning: A Taxonomy and Terminology of Attacks and Mitigations
This NIST Trustworthy and Responsible AI report develops a taxonomy of concepts and defines terminology in the field of adversarial machine learning (AML). The taxonomy is built on surveying the AML literature and is arranged in a conceptual hierarchy that includes key types of ML methods and lifecycle stages of attack, attacker goals and objectives, and attacker capabilities and knowledge of the learning process. The report also provides corresponding methods for mitigating and managing the consequences of attacks and points out relevant open challenges to take into account in the lifecycle of AI systems. The terminology used in the report is consistent with the literature on AML and is complemented by a glossary that defines key terms associated with the security of AI systems and is intended to assist non-expert readers. Taken together, the taxonomy and terminology are meant to inform other standards and future practice guides for assessing and managing the security of AI systems, by establishing a common language and understanding of the rapidly developing AML landscape.
-
Scoop News Group ☛ White House moves to ease education requirements for federal cyber contracting jobs
National Cyber Director Harry Coker said on Thursday that he is working with the Office of Management and Budget to remove the requirement for four-year degrees for some federal cybersecurity contracting jobs as part of the Biden administration’s push to boost hiring of cybersecurity professionals.
In his first public remarks since being confirmed as the national cyber director in December, Coker said he is working to improve the diversity of cybersecurity workers and to eliminate barriers that have historically excluded women and people of color from cybersecurity jobs.
-
[Old] Wired ☛ The Way the World Ends: Not with a Bang But a Paperclip
The game ends—big, significant spoiler here—with the destruction of the universe.
In between, Lantz, the director of the New York University Games Center, manages to incept the player with a new appreciation for the narrative potential of addictive clicker games, exponential growth curves, and artificial intelligence run amok.
-
Scorpil ☛ Understanding Generative AI: Part Two - Neural Networks
In Part One of the “Understanding Generative AI” series, we delved into Tokenization - the process of dividing text into tokens, which serve as the fundamental units of information for neural networks. These tokens are crucial in shaping how AI interprets and processes language. Building upon this foundational knowledge, we are now ready to explore Neural Networks - the cornerstone technology underpinning all Artificial Intelligence research.
-
The Verge ☛ Instagram’s co-founders are shutting down their Artifact news app
Since launching at the end of January 2023, Artifact has added a bunch of new and interesting features, like AI-powered article summaries, the ability to comment on articles within Artifact, and the ability to mark articles as clickbait (and then rewrite them using AI). It’s broadened from just focusing on news by letting people post links to share cool stuff on the web and a Twitter-like posts feature. However, Systrom says features like comments and posts required “a fair amount of moderation and oversight” that it doesn’t have the staff to support.
-
Medium ☛ Shutting down Artifact
We’ve made the decision to wind down operations of the Artifact app. We launched a year ago and since then we’ve been working tirelessly to build a great product. We have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way. It’s easy for startups to ignore this reality, but often making the tough call earlier is better for everyone involved. The biggest opportunity cost is time working on newer, bigger and better things that have the ability to reach many millions of people. I am personally excited to continue building new things, though only time will tell what that might be. We live in an exciting time where artificial intelligence is changing just about everything we touch, and the opportunities for new ideas seem limitless.
-
Jarrod Blundy ☛ Artifact Shuts Down Just as I Was Getting Into It
There were a lot of details to the reading view that the Artifact team — led by the Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger — got right:
-
Mandiant ☛ Cutting Edge: Suspected APT Targets Ivanti Connect Secure VPN in New Zero-Day Exploitation
Mandiant is sharing details of five malware families associated with the exploitation of CS and PS devices. These families allow the threat actors to circumvent authentication and provide backdoor access to these devices. Additional post-exploitation tools have also been identified in our investigation and are highlighted further in this post.
-
Game Informer ☛ Discord Lays Off 170 Employees Due To Overhiring
Community chat application company, Discord, has laid off 170 employees, or 17 percent of its staff, according to a new report from The Verge. Discord CEO Jason Citron cites overhiring, which has led to the company becoming "less efficient" in how it operates. The layoffs affected people across various departments.
The Verge obtained an internal memo from Citron sent to employees announcing the layoffs, which have already happened. That memo explained why the layoffs were happening, when affected employees would receive the email telling them they no longer have a job, and follow-up meetings for those who remain at Discord.
-
India Times ☛ Discord cuts 17% of workers in latest tech layoffs
Discord, the social chat and messaging startup beloved by gamers, told employees Thursday that it would cut 17% of its staff, adding to the string of recent jobs reductions by tech firms.
-
Discord is laying off 170 employees as its CEO says the workforce grew too quickly
Discord is laying off 170 employees, which equates to about 17% of its workforce.
The messaging app told workers about the cuts in an all-hands meeting and memo, which The Verge obtained. CEO Jason Citron blamed the layoffs on the company growing too fast.
Citron reportedly told staff in the memo: "We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020." He added, "As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated."
The privately held company cut 4% of its headcount in August. Cofounded by Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy in 2015, Discord was valued at $15 billion in 2021, CNBC reported.
-
Silicon Angle ☛ Data protection provider Veeam reportedly lays off 300 employees
Less than a year after letting go 200 employees, data protection provider Veeam Software Corp. has reportedly axed an additional 300 positions.
Blocks and Files reported the workforce reduction today, citing a LinkedIn post from a former senior campaign account manager at Veeam. The company acknowledged the layoffs in a statement without confirming the number of affected employees.
-
Veeam lays off 300 despite market share growth
Data protection outfit Veeam has reportedly laid off around 300 employees, according to one caught up in the redundancies.
In a post on LinkedIn, Denise Jongenelen, a senior campaign account manager, said she and “roughly 300 of my colleagues” were “eliminated” as part of an “organizational restructure”. She thanks the company for the “relationships, professional growth and experiences” during her five plus years on board.
B&F asked Veeam to comment on the number of redundancies, and chief operating officer Matthew Bishop sent us a statement:
-
India Times ☛ Amazon's Audible is laying off 5% of its workforce, marking another round of job cuts in tech
Amazon-owned online audiobook and podcast service Audible is laying off about 5% of its workforce, marking the third round of job cuts at the ecommerce giant's businesses this week as the technology industry continues to shed roles in the new year. In a memo sent to employees Thursday, Audible CEO Bob Carrigan said the company is in good shape, but faces an "increasingly challenging landscape."
-
Digital Music News ☛ Amazon Layoffs Will Impact Audible Division Too, Leaked Email Reveals
Yesterday Digital Music News covered the announced layoffs at Prime Video and Twitch. Prime Video’s layoffs impacted “several hundred” individuals across the division, including the MGM Studio team. Meanwhile, live streaming service Twitch announced 500 jobs would be cut as the organization reorganizes as a smaller company.
-
CBC ☛ Hundreds of workers lose jobs at Amazon Prime Video, MGM Studios and Twitch
The latest cuts come as the company has eliminated more than 27,000 jobs over the past year, part of multiple rounds of technology industry layoffs in the United States following hiring booms during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Amazon had about 1.54 million employees as of Dec. 31, 2022, according to public filings.)
-
New York Times ☛ Discord Cuts 17% of Workers in Latest Tech Layoffs
Roughly 170 jobs will be affected by the layoffs, according to an internal memo sent by Jason Citron, Discord’s founder and chief executive, which was seen by The New York Times.
-
The Gamer ☛ Twitch Is Losing Money, Says CEO [Ed: So companies unable to make money are valued at billions; Fake economy]
As Twitch lays off 500 employees, CEO Dan Clancy says the site isn't profitable.
-
The Verge ☛ The tech industry’s layoffs and hiring freezes: all of the news
Over the last couple years, it feels like we’ve heard news of mass layoffs and hiring freezes from tech companies nearly every week, and since the beginning of 2024, there’s been a new wave of layoffs and firings.
-
[Repeat] New York Times ☛ Google Cuts Hundreds of Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
Several hundred employees from the company’s core engineering organization lost corporate access and received notices that their roles were eliminated, two of the people said. Google said that most of the hardware cuts affected a team working on augmented reality, technology that combines the real world with a digital overlay.
-
The Atlantic ☛ Substack Was a Ticking Time Bomb
Substack now finds itself in the middle of a crisis. In late November, an investigation in The Atlantic turned up “scores of white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi newsletters on Substack.” Because the site takes a cut of subscription revenue, this meant that Substack was making money off extremists. In response, nearly 250 Substack writers demanded in an open letter that the site explain why it was “platforming and monetizing Nazis.” Meanwhile, an opposing group of nearly 100 writers published its own open letter rejecting calls for greater moderation. Last month, a Substack co-founder, Hamish McKenzie, responded with a blog post articulating the company’s position: “We don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse.”
-
Quartz ☛ Substack's Nazi content has cost it a top tech newsletter
In a Dec. 21 post, Substack co-founder and CEO Hamish McKenzie wrote, “we don’t like Nazis either.” But the post also emphasized that Substack would not remove extremist, pro-Nazi content—and doubled down, saying it would only intervene if content posed credible threats of violence.
-
-
Security
-
Privacy/Surveillance
-
The Verge ☛ Google will now let EU users select which services share their data, thanks to the DMA
That’s not the biggest change that Google will have to make to comply with the DMA, which goes into effect on March 6th. The law also includes additional rules on interoperability and competition. For example, Google will no longer be able to treat its own services more favorably in Search’s ranking than other third-party services.
-
Patrick Breyer ☛ “Digital euro”: Pirate amendments want to enable real digital cash
As there is no limit to the amount of cash we can hold and pass on, there should be no limit to the amount of digital euros in our hands. And just as cash can be used to make confidential payments and controversial donations anonymously and without fear of disclosure, trace-free payments in digital euros must not be made impossible or limited to an unknown and variable amount, as proposed by the EU Commission. The justification of wanting to combat money laundering and terrorism is just a pretext for gaining more and more control over our private transactions. Where every payment is recorded and stored forever, there is a threat of hacker attacks, unauthorised investigations and chilling government control over every payment.
-
-
-
Defence/Aggression
-
The Atlantic ☛ January 6 Is Exactly What the Fourteenth Amendment Was Talking About
For all the debate over disqualifying Trump under Section 3, and the hubbub among pundits eager to downplay January 6, the arguments against defining the Capitol insurrection as such remain remarkably feeble. Although three Colorado justices dissented from the state supreme court’s ruling barring Trump from the ballot, none of them did so on the grounds that the majority was wrong in deeming January 6 an insurrection. Even during oral arguments before that court, Trump’s legal team offered only the weakest of rebuttals, at one point suggesting that an insurrection must take place over “longer than three hours” and that the “geographical scope has to be broader than one building.” (Would a riot that took place over four hours and two buildings suffice?)
-
[Repeat] Vice Media Group ☛ TikTok Real Estate Influencers and ‘Grifters’ Are in Deep Trouble, Short Seller Says
Viceroy came to its conclusion after examining publicly available data on Arbor’s loans, including its collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), or pools of corporate debt sold as securities, and found at least half of them are underwater, meaning they are worth less than what is still owed on the loan. Arbor bundles its loans into CLOs to raise cash from investors and dole out more loans. Viceroy said at least 17 percent of the loans it examined were delinquent.
-
Salon ☛ The “Chosen One”: Why experts say a new campaign ad from Trump signals impending violence
The "God Made Trump" ad is disturbing but incredibly predictable. We've watched for years while Trump used every white religious fanatic in this country for his own purposes, bilking them out of their money and promising them their wildest and most extreme fantasies. Eventually, he was going to say, explicitly, that God sent him because that's what every cult leader eventually says. There's a thin line between Give me your money and I'll talk to God for you, and I am God. That's where we are. And people need to understand what comes next, always, is violence.
Rick Wilson is a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, a former leading Republican strategist, and author of two books, "Everything Trump Touches Dies" and "Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump - and Democrats from Themselves": [...]
-
[Repeat] Digital Music News ☛ ByteDance Is Shutting Down Resso in India Amid Regulatory Scrutiny — No Plans to Replace With TikTok Music
Word of Resso’s India shutdown just recently entered the media spotlight in a report from Mumbai-based Moneycontrol. Designed to compete with Spotify, Apple Music, and others in emerging markets, Resso last May abruptly axed its free tier.
Moreover, it bears highlighting at the outset that the Indian government outlawed TikTok proper (along with a number of other China-linked apps) back in the summer of 2020, citing national security concerns.
-
Deutsche Welle ☛ German 'remigration' debate fuels push to ban far-right AfD
On January 10, the party posted a message on X propagating a "consistent and unwavering remigration policy" and "passport revocation for criminals and remigration."
-
Deutsche Welle ☛ Digital death threats in sport: 'There's no space to run'
The dopamine hit that social media provides is something many around the world are familiar with. Less familiar is being sent death threats for your performance at work. For professional athletes, this is sadly becomingly an increasingly common reality.
-
Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
-
Meduza ☛ Warehouse in St. Petersburg catches fire, over 500,000 square feet in flames — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Bill allowing foreigners with criminal records to sign contract with Russian military submitted to State Duma — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Moscow court fines TV channel for playing music video containing ‘LGBT propaganda’ — Meduza
-
Meduza ☛ Moscow paramedic forcibly sent to front line after reporting assault by supervisor — Meduza
-
The Gray Zone ☛ American citizen Gonzalo Lira dies from neglect in Ukrainian prison
-
Insight Hungary ☛ Orban receives same state honour from Bosnian Serbs as Putin
In commemoration of the Day of the Republic of Srpska Milorad Dodik, the head of the entity, presented honors upon individuals who have left an indelible mark on the republic's life. Among the awardees was Hungary's far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who was notably absent from the ceremony, vijesti.ba reports.
In his speech, Dodik expressed pride in remembering those who have contributed to the existence and survival of Republika Srpska on their National Day. He stated, "My colleagues and I have been closely monitoring the activities of many noteworthy individuals, and we have chosen to confer medals upon those who have made a lasting contribution. One such person is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who expressed delight at receiving the award and has conveyed his intention to accept it in February." Dodik expressed gratitude towards Orbán, highlighting that the Hungarian PM views Republika Srpska as a "genuine political actor". The last recipient of this honor was Russian President Vladimir Putin,
-
-
-
Transparency/Investigative Reporting
-
US News And World Report ☛ A Denmark Terror Case Has 'Links' to Hamas, a Prosecutor Tells Local Media
The case has been shrouded in secrecy and very few details have been revealed about it until now.
”The investigation has provided information that, according to the police, the case has links to Hamas,” prosecutor Anders Larsson said during a custody hearing before an appeals court according to broadcaster TV2. “That information is no longer necessary to keep secret.”
-
Jacobin Magazine ☛ John Pilger’s Reporting Demolished Western Propaganda’s Myths
John Pilger, who died on December 30, had an extraordinary career as a reporter. His journalism informed countless people about the catastrophic impact of US foreign policy during and after the Cold War, from Vietnam and Cambodia to Nicaragua and East Timor.
-
Off Guardian ☛ John Pilger: A Life of Fearless Journaling: A Reflection on Our Overlapping Interests
Over his career, he consistently broke through the glossy exterior of numerous falsehoods broadcast and put into print for mass consumption.
From Vietnam to Iraq, Syria to Diego Garcia and well beyond, he journaled the bizarre illusions upheld by empires in his ceaseless efforts to demythologize corporate news narratives and to offer a view of the empirical world unadorned by fear or favor, political cant, obfuscation, and doublespeak. He probed coercive power structures and prodded his readers to pause and think, and that sense of unblinking service to his vocation changed many hearts and minds and opened many up to contemplate how thoroughly craven the power-hungry are.
-
-
Environment
-
Energy/Transportation
-
CBC ☛ Calgary group floods streets with bike traffic once a month
Over the next four years, she said, the city is investing in new bike and pedestrian corridors, looking at missing links, and improving sketchy crossings.
-
[Old] Sports n' Hobbies ☛ What is the Critical Mass Bike Ride?
One of the main catchphrases of the Critical Mass movement is “we aren't blocking traffic; we are traffic.” The cyclists hope to get people thinking about bicycles as a valid mode of transportation deserving of respect. [...]
-
-
-
AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
-
Federal News Network ☛ Army consolidating its networks to 14, moving towards ‘unified network’ by 2027
This year, the command will focus on the Army National Guard, the Army Reserve and the Army Materiel Command’s networks. Eubank’s team will be looking into the Army Corps of Engineers’ environment to ensure they have a thorough understanding of their network before starting the convergence process.
-
Scoop News Group ☛ Growing pains at the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, report finds
Officials at the State Department are working through roles and hiring challenges at the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
The Thursday report, which looks at cyber diplomacy efforts in the United States, reported that officials at the new bureau responsible for pushing U.S. cyber policy interests abroad said clarifying roles and responsibilities are an ongoing challenge.
-
[Old] Overthinking It ☛ Conan the Liberal
With the new Conan the Barbarian movie coming out in about a month week, I felt that it would be worthwhile to look at an oft-ignored aspect of the older Conan movies. Not only are the movies Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer politically charged, they’re also, despite being directed by John Milius, much more progressive than most movies released around that time. Specifically, I’d like to point out this series’ feminist, anti-racist and anti-theistic themes.
-
-
Censorship/Free Speech
-
Techdirt ☛ Filing A Badly Drafted, Mistargeted, Bullshit SLAPP Suit Is No Way To Convince Women You’re Not An Asshole
Dating can be difficult, but there are certain things you can do to not make things worse on yourself. Don’t be a creep. Be kind. Take no for an answer. Actually listen to the people you date. I mean, that’s kinda the standard stuff.
-
Meduza ☛ Russia issues arrest warrant for journalist who called for people to stay away from enlistment offices
Russia’s Interior Ministry has issued an arrest warrant for Andrey Serafimov, a journalist from Tomsk who left the country after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine.
-
New York Times ☛ Removal of Netflix Film Shows Advancing Power of India’s Hindu Right Wing
With “Annapoorani,” Netflix appears to have in effect done the censoring itself even when the censor board did not. In other cases, Netflix now seems to be working with the board unofficially, though streaming services in India do not fall under the regulations that govern traditional Indian cinema.
-
VOA News ☛ Iranian Singer Sentenced to Prison, Flogging, Lawyer Says
The pop singer was arrested four days after he released "Roosarito" a month before the anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, the young Kurdish woman who died in police custody on September 16, 2022. She was accused of violating the strict dress code on the proper wearing of a hijab. "Roosarito" means "your headscarf."
Government-linked media outlets accused him of "releasing an illicit and morally inappropriate song that contradicts the Islamic societal norms."
-
-
Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
-
RFERL ☛ Belarusian Photojournalist Goes On Trial For Covering Protests, Faces Up To Six Years In Prison
A Belarusian photojournalist went on trial on January 12 in Minsk on charges linked to his professional work covering protests, the latest move in a relentless government crackdown on dissent. [...]
-
404 Media ☛ Behind the Blog: Open Source Platforms and Impactful Journalism
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss tenacity in blogging, seeing results from journalism, and open-source platforms.
-
RFA ☛ Vietnamese blogger who filmed chemical spill protests released from prison
Nguyen Van Hoa, 28, regularly contributed to Radio Free Asia as a blogger and video producer prior to his January 2017 arrest on “abusing democratic freedoms” charges.
-
ABC ☛ Julian Assange's lawyer warns his life is 'at risk' if final UK appeal against extradition to US fails
Assange spent almost seven years living in the Ecuadorian embassy in central London before it forced him to leave. He has been held in Belmarsh Prison since 2019.
"As a result of the 13 years he's been effectively in prison or under house arrest or some form of restrictions on his liberty inside the Ecuadorian Embassy he is really unwell," Ms Robinson said.
-
Crickey ☛ Julian Assange’s life at risk if final appeal fails, says lawyer
But US authorities subsequently brought a successful High Court challenge against this decision, paving the way for Assange’s extradition.
In June last year, Assange lost his appeal against a judge’s ruling over whether he should be extradited but he will make his final appeal in the UK High Court in February.
-
Morning Star UK ☛ Julian Assange's life is at risk if his final extradition appeal fails next month, his lawyer warns
Mr Assange’s wife Stella has said that the stakes are “high on all sides, not just for Julian’s life and his freedom, but all the press freedoms and the freedom of speech rights that go with him.”
-
-
Civil Rights/Policing
-
The Hill ☛ Rights suppressed, threatened worldwide, group says
Last year, human rights were suppressed and challenged around the world as wars waged on and began, climate-fueled disasters increased, economic inequality worsened and discrimination against marginalized communities continued, Human Rights Watch (HRW) declared.
In a new report, the global nongovernmental organization focused on human rights called on governments internationally to protect and defend human rights “with the urgency, vigor, and persistence needed” to address existential challenges posted for people around the world.
-
HRW ☛ Human Rights Watch: World Report 2024: Events of 2023 [PDF]
The drivers of these human rights crises and their consequences often transcend borders and cannot be solved by governments acting alone. Understanding and responding to these threats needs to be rooted in universal principles of international human rights and the rule of law. These ideas built on shared human histories agreed upon by nations across all regions 75 years ago in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the basis for all contemporary human rights conventions and treaties.
-
The Nation ☛ Sinking Ship…
-
-
Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
-
Tedium ☛ What Was ISDN?
Today in Tedium: If you live in the United Kingdom and still rely on traditional copper lines to get telephone calls or get on the internet, we have some bad news for you. In 2025, British Telecom plans to shut off its ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) and PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) services entirely, in favor of modern technologies like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). It is within its final year of existence, which means if you do not have an upgrade plan by now, maybe you should have one. This, of course, means ISDN is getting dangerously close to Tedium territory, which as you may know involves “a pattern of stillness.” Which means now’s a good a time as any to write a retrospective on one of the most interesting technologies the phone company ever gave the masses, ISDN, and why relatively few people have actually used it. Today’s Tedium considers ISDN’s legacy. — Ernie @ Tedium
-
-
Digital Restrictions (DRM)
-
Digital Music News ☛ Web3 Streaming and Superfan Platform Tune.fm Announces $20 Million Raise, Targets Major Label Licensing Deals
Expanding on these points, a Tune.fm mobile app, for both iOS and Android, is expected to roll out “soon,” per execs. Likewise on the horizon is a desktop app for Mac and Windows – besides, most significantly, licensing discussions with the decidedly monetization-minded Big Three.
-
-
Chris O'Donnnell ☛ WTF Amazon
I'm going to guess this is actually 3 or 4 China based firms spitting out an infinite number of nonsense company names as they game the Amazon system.
-
Trademarks
-
The Verge ☛ I’m sorry, but I cannot fulfill this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy
This product, the “I’m sorry but I cannot analyze or generate new product titles it goes against OpenAI use policy which includes avoiding any trademarked brand names,” at least contains plausible-looking pictures! So that’s an improvement over FOPEAS’s other listing. Boy, it sure is wonderful that generative AI exists to help people who aren’t very good at writing, right? Look at all the help FOPEAS is getting with its business.
-
Techdirt ☛ LDS Church Bullies Brewery Out Of Beer Brand Referencing Biblical Bees
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has something of a rollercoaster history when it comes to the enforcement of its real, or perceived, intellectual property rights. On the one hand, the church has occasionally been quite lenient when it comes to not trying to battle every use of its name, traditions, or religious texts. The Book of Mormon (the play) does exist, after all, and it’s not like the church put up some big fight over it. On the other hand, the church has also previously tried to use IP laws to hide all kinds of information from the public and even gone after individuals for trying to get trademarks on terms the church feels would denigrate its stature.
-
Right of Publicity
-
CBC ☛ George Carlin AI comedy special is 'ghoulish' and 'creepy,' his daughter says
"This is not my father. It's so ghoulish. It's so creepy," Carlin's daughter, Kelly Carlin-McCall, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
[...]
"It is not a very good impression. First of all, let's just be honest about that," she said. "I think it's a way of skirting around the legal issue. And the problem is, is that there really isn't a lot of legal clarity right now about this."
-
-
-
Copyrights
-
The Register UK ☛ Media experts cry foul over AI's free lunch of copyrighted content
Not only is OpenAI alleged to have stolen its work, The New York Times claimed it was now unfairly profiting off it by generating passages of its articles verbatim, allowing netizens to evade its paywall. In an attempt to wrestle back some power from tech companies, publishers are now fighting for compensation and trying to negotiate licensing agreements. But it's a difficult battle to win, especially if the law might not be on their side.
-
-
Gemini* and Gopher
-
Personal/Opinions
-
🔤SpellBinding: TKMNRSI Wordo: TONAL
-
Handwriting
Like many of us my mind whirls trying to make out patterns in the world around us. I find it interesting that with all the digital platforms that engross us the written word is alive and well, but handwriting it has fallen wayside. A little while back, I wrote a thank you letter to someone and they placed it on display because they hadn't received one before. The very script they are teaching my children to write has been simplified--serifs and flourishes removed--so they can get past the subject more quickly. I don't mean to demean, I just feel like we've lost something that should be reclaimed.
-
Books are garbage
-
Syncretism
I just saw a guy describe himself as christian use a yin&yang to represent the "spirituality/philosophy" section of his blog.
This is good. I am so used to think of syncretism in from the mythology pov that I never realized they are a sign of peace and respect to another ideology.
-
-
Technology and Free Software
-
Monkeys and typewriters
A monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type every single spell there is.
This is a security problem. If you try to extract Hamlet out of here, you'll need to be careful not to read an unknown spell. That unknown spell is probably going to be garbage. "Summon 10ml of snail mucus". But that snail mucus might have an "enchantment of earthquake on contact with a door knob".
Traditional security would fail here. There's just too much variation. Therefore I propose factorial security as a mitigation, and philosophical security as a last resort.
-
List Running Images [Ed: People pushing Microsoft into Gemini now? Did that never stop? That's proprietary things.]
I wanted to generate a list of running processes. But, instead of getting 300 Firefox processes, this PowerShell one-liner lists each image uniquely.
-
Internet/Gemini
-
Smolnet engineering
From random remarks on IRC, I think I've distilled the engineering principles that inform so-called "smolnet" engineering:
* we don't care about asking people to install new software
-
A humble website list (An interstring experiment)
Like many people here I suppose I'm feed up with the "current" state of the web. Tracking is ubiquitous, you have no expectation of privacy and search results are most of the time utter crap.
So I started to simply make manually a list of website I find interesting. I just enter them in some very simple cloud note app so I can get them whenever I need to. In a way its similar to bookmarks but I prefered the "full page" list experience, and bookmarks are craps (ff/chrome/etc) will always show you the same results over and over.
-
-
-
Monopolies/Monopsonies
-
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.