Links 24/01/2024: SAP Disguising 8,000 Likely Layoffs as "Hey Hi"
Contents
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Leftovers
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Science
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Hardware
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Hackaday ☛ Autofeeding CNC Lathe Cranks Out Parts All By Itself
The trouble with building a business around selling low-margin widgets is that you have to find a way to make a lot of them to make it worth your while. And if the widget in question is labor-intensive to make, you’ve got to find ways to reduce your inputs. That sounds like a job for industrial automation, a solution that’s often out of reach of small shops, for all the obvious reasons. Not if you’re clever about things, though, as this fully automated CNC lathe work cell shows.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ 120 Gbps Thunderbolt 5 and more PCIe 5.0 lanes coming to Intel's Arrow Lake desktop CPUs, Barlow Ridge controller debuts
A leak of internal defective chip maker Intel documents details that Arrow Lake-S desktop CPUs will support Thunderbolt 5.
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Hackaday ☛ Reverse Engineering The Apple Touch Bar Screen
The Apple Touch Bar was an oddity on a fairly small number of Apple laptops which replaced the function key row with a touch display. Yet what is special about this display other than its odd form factor when you consider it as a generic touch display? As [Wenting Zhang] describes in a recent reverse-engineering video, this 2,170 x 60 pixel display is somewhat limited in that it doesn’t support the MIPI DSI video mode, only command mode, along with a special instruction (0x3C) for automatic address offsets. The results of this project can be found on the GitLab account.
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Linux Gizmos ☛ Emerald 2 Mini PC with Triple HDMI and defective chip maker Intel Iris Xe Graphics
This month, Simply NUC, Inc unveiled their newest Mini PC, the Emerald 2 NUC.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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CS Monitor ☛ AI in the classroom: Why some teachers are embracing it [Ed: Conflating crap like chatbots and plagiarism with "intelligence" amounts to mindless, harmful propaganda that makes this publisher irresponsible]
Educators are trying to balance concerns about artificial intelligence with how to prepare students for using it in the future. What does teaching look like when Hey Hi (AI) is part of the curriculum?
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Reason ☛ Filterworld Is a Confused Critique of Algorithms
It's Super Size Me for internet intellectuals.
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Federal News Network ☛ What SEC’s new guidelines mean for public companies in 2024
This legislation comes at an opportune time: Cybercriminals are getting smarter by the day, carrying out more sophisticated attacks at a higher volume than ever before. As technologies like artificial intelligence continue to proliferate, and organizations become increasingly digitized, the risk of breaches resulting in material impact grows.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Apple reportedly switches to less ambitious development roadmap for its electric car
Apple Inc.’s long-rumored electric car will launch later than originally planned and with a more limited feature set, Bloomberg reported today. Reports that the company is working on an electric vehicle first emerged in 2015.
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Pro Publica ☛ FTC Orders Intuit to Cease “Deceptive” TurboTax Ads
The Federal Trade Commission has ordered the maker of TurboTax to stop what it called years of widespread deceptive advertising for “free” tax-filing software.
The order, released Monday, was accompanied by a 93-page opinion that harshly criticized Intuit, the Silicon Valley company behind TurboTax. Intuit’s “deceptive ad campaign has been sufficiently broad, enduring, and willful to support the need for a cease-and-desist order,” the commission’s opinion stated.
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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YLE ☛ Finnish police warn of speeding fine scam
The text messages appear to come from a police unit or department, and instruct the recipient to pay a fine via a link provided.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Papers Please ☛ IDs and mug shots now required from all corporate principals
This month the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) division of the Department of the Treasury began collecting copies of passports, drivers licenses, and other ID documents submitted by officers and owners of all sorts of companies.
In other words, you now have to have a government-issued ID and provide an image of it, probably including your photo, to the Federal government in order to establish, serve as an executive of, or hold a major interest in almost any type of corporation, LLC, partnership, trust, etc. (with some odd and irrational exceptions).
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France24 ☛ France fines Amazon €32 million over employee surveillance
France's data protection agency said Tuesday that it had fined Amazon's French warehouses unit 32 million euros ($34.9 million) for an "excessively intrusive" surveillance system to keep track of staff performance.
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Defence/Aggression
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ADF ☛ Liberian Peacekeepers Return Home to Honors
Liberia’s journey with United Nations peacekeeping forces has come full circle over the course of two decades. In need of support after 14 years of unrest and two civil wars, the West African country hosted a U.N. peacekeeping mission in 2003.
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YLE ☛ FM: EU united in addressing civilian suffering in Gaza
Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen (NCP) says the EU is working to promote an independent Palestinian state as part of a peace process in the region.
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YLE ☛ 1,500 Finnish women volunteer for military service
Women are excluded from Finland's conscription system but can still volunteer for military service.
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Mexico News Daily ☛ Mexico wins appeal in lawsuit against US gunmakers filed in Boston
A U.S. appeals court overturned the 2022 dismissal of the lawsuit by a Boston district court on Monday. Mexico's government "welcomes the ruling."
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ADF ☛ Pause in ATMIS Troop Drawdown Raises New Questions About Somalia’s Security
ADF STAFF A United Nations helicopter in mid-January was conducting a medical evacuation when a technical problem forced it to make an emergency landing in an area long controlled by al-Shabaab in central Somalia.
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ADF ☛ Mozambique Takes Aim at Terrorists in Last Stronghold
Having secured most of the Cabo Delgado region, the Mozambique Defence Armed Forces plan to sever supply lines for the few terrorists hiding in the Catupa Forest as they push to rid the country of the threat entirely.
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RFA ☛ China’s state security ministry issues lurid ‘honey trap’ warning
Officials fear ‘casual invitations’ to ‘pornographic entertainment’ could land state employees in trouble overseas.
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JURIST ☛ Philippines national security representative condemns actions of China Coast Guard against local fishermen
Jonathan Malaya, a representative of the Philippines National Security Council, condemned the latest action by the China Coast Guard (CCG) against local Philippine fishermen in a televised interview on Monday night.
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Defence Web ☛ Africa needs a stronger voice on resolving the Red Sea crisis
The Red Sea crisis is now a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) priority, with three meetings held this year already. Following several months of Houthi attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, a coalition of concerned countries launched military operations on 11 January to degrade Houthi maritime capabilities in Yemen.
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NYPost ☛ Killer mom who ‘intentionally and systematically’ tortured disabled 15-year-old son to death gets life in prison
"This wasn't punishment. You weren't trying to curb his behavior. You tortured him," Judge Matthew Kacel said.
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RFA ☛ Elderly monk dies two months after he was tortured by Myanmar’s junta
The military arrested him in November and he was found a week later with missing teeth and multiple stab wounds.
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RFA ☛ Did Jimmy Carter admit that Taiwan is part of China in his 1978 speech?
Verdict: Missing context
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European Commission ☛ Keynote address by Commissioner Lenarčič at the European Parliament's event on the Protection of Children in Armed Conflicts
The issue of children in conflict has never been more urgent.
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New York Times ☛ U.S. Strikes 3 Sites in Iraq Linked to Militias Blamed for Base Attack
The strikes were “in direct response” to a series of attacks by Iranian-sponsored militias against U.S. and coalition personnel in Iraq and Syria, the defense secretary said.
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New York Times ☛ U.S. Strikes 2 More Houthi Targets in Yemen
The attacks — the ninth in two weeks — hit anti-ship missiles that the Iran-backed militia could use against merchant and Navy ships in the region.
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teleSUR ☛ US Carries Out Major Strikes Against Houthis in Yemen
The U.S. named the strikes "Operation Poseidon Archer," suggesting that they might become more organized and last for a longer period of time.
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teleSUR ☛ Syria Says Jordanian Airstrikes 'Unjustified'
Last month, Jordanian forces bombed an area of Al-Suwayda, leaving a dozen dead, including women and children.
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RFA ☛ Arakan Army fires rockets on junta naval base in Myanmar’s Rakhine state
An artillery strike in response to the attack forced more than 1,000 civilians to flee their homes.
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France24 ☛ US carries out airstrikes on Iran-backed militias in Iraq
The US military struck three facilities in Iraq on Tuesday, targeting an Iranian-backed militia in retaliation for missile and drone attacks on American troops in Iraq and Syria over the past several days, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
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The Kent Stater ☛ US carries out airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq
The US carried out airstrikes in Iraq targeting facilities used by Iranian-backed militias in the country on Tuesday following repeated attacks on US forces, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced in a statement. The strikes targeted three facilities used by Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah and other Tehran-affiliated groups in Iraq.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Latvia ☛ 'Key mission' is safeguarding independence, Latvia's ambassadors told
On January 23, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Krišjānis Kariņš, launched the annual meeting of the heads of diplomatic missions of Latvia, telling them that special attention and targeted efforts were necessary to strengthen transatlantic relations, and cooperation with like-minded countries in the security policy field.
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RFERL ☛ Transdniester Calls Rally To Protest Moldova's Trade Duties
Moldova's breakaway Transdniester has announced a massive rally for January 24 to protest Chisinau's refusal to scrap newly introduced import and export duties for the Moscow-backed region.
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Meduza ☛ Belarus detains dozens of former political prisoners and relatives of those currently imprisoned — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ Belarusian Authorities Detain More Than 70 People In One Day, Human Rights Center Says
The Vyasna (Spring) human rights center said that Belarusian authorities detained more than 70 people on January 23 amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent.
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LRT ☛ Lithuania hands in note to Belarus over border violation by three armed guards
Lithuania has handed in a diplomatic note to Belarus about border violation after three armed Belarusian border guards entered Lithuania, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
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RFERL ☛ Kyrgyz Parliamentary Committee Approves Controversial Bill On 'Foreign Representatives' On Second Reading
The Kyrgyz parliament's committee for constitutional laws on January 23 approved on second reading a controversial bill that would allow authorities to register organizations as "foreign representatives" in a style that critics say mirrors repressive Russian legislation on "foreign agents."
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RFERL ☛ Kremlin-Backed Leader Of Russia's Bashkortostan Reportedly Plans 'Anti-Extremism' Rallies
Local officials plan to organize rallies to support Radiy Khabirov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan, after the sentencing of an outspoken critic of his government to four years in prison sparked massive protests that led to violent clashes with police.
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Meduza ☛ ‘God forbid he get injured’: Convicted murderer returns home to Russia’s Far East after serving just one year of lengthy prison sentence and three-month army stint — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Russian authorities planning to make it illegal not to hire ex-soldiers — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ CIA releases new video clip urging Russians to collaborate with the intelligence agency — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Ramzan Kadyrov proposes ousting lawmaker who predicted religious clashes in Russia and called migrants ‘savages’ — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Capitalizing on nostalgia: How Russian authorities have used the debate over what to do with Lenin’s body to further their own agendas — Meduza
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Pro Publica ☛ How Chicago Became an Unlikely Leader in Body-Camera Transparency
A decade ago, the Chicago Police Department drew national outrage after an officer shot and killed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Officials had refused to disclose footage of the murder while officers worked to cover it up. But the fallout from the case has also led to a lesser-known and surprising outcome: The city is now a leader in using body-camera footage to deliver transparency.
Notably, an independent accountability office — not the police department — decides what footage from police shootings and other serious incidents is released to the public. That seemingly straightforward setup, the product of the city’s policing reforms, appears to put Chicago in a league of its own.
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Environment
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Energy/Transportation
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Hackaday ☛ A Live Map Display In A 1960s Airliner
We tend take GPS navigation for granted these days, so it’s easy to forget that it became only available in the last few decades. Aviation navigation used to be significantly more challenging, so how was the Hawker Siddeley Trident, a 1960s airliner, fitted with a live updating map display? In a fascinating dive into aviation history the British Airliner Collection has spun up an insightful article on the magic behind these moving map displays.
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New York Times ☛ German Rail Workers Strike Over Pay and Hours
The walkout, one of the most significant to hit the country’s train service in years, is expected to affect long-distance and commuter travel nationwide.
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France24 ☛ Fears over economy grow as German train strike could cost up to a billion euros
German train drivers began on Wednesday their longest-ever strike, piling on travel misery for thousands of passengers in an escalating industrial dispute that economic experts warn could cost the economy up to a billion euros ($1.1 billion).
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Mexico News Daily ☛ Drivers plan national strike to protest highway insecurity
The government has responded by saying it will increase National Guard presence on the most frequently targeted highways.
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Wildlife/Nature
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New York Times ☛ Remnants of Sprawling Ancient Cities Are Found in the Amazon
Archaeologists, relying on laser technology and decades of research, mapped a cluster of ancient cities in eastern Ecuador. Their findings add to evidence of dense settlements in Amazonia.
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Finance
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Yahoo News ☛ SAP to restructure 8,000 jobs in push towards AI, shares hit record [Ed: A new word for layoffs and way to pump-and-dump with buzzwords ("started experimenting with OpenAI's ChatGPT"); the HR people call it "voluntary redundancy programs."]
The company said it will spend 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) on the programme to either retrain employees with AI skills or to replace them through voluntary redundancy programs.
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SAP Announces Overhaul With 8,000 Job Cuts Amid AI-Driven Restructuring Reflecting Industry-Wide Shift towards Automation Globally; More Job Cuts Likely [Ed: Sugar-coated mass layoffs, disguised as "Hey Hi" (buzzword); "8000-job-cuts" rewritten with flowery language like "restructure 8,000 jobs"]
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YLE ☛ Kela: Government's welfare cuts will hit low-income young people hardest
Young people who rely on housing, unemployment and single parent benefits will be heavily affected by the government's plans, according to the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela).
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New York Times ☛ Yale, Duke and Columbia Among Elite Schools to Settle in Price-Fixing Case
Five universities have agreed to pay $104.5 million to settle a lawsuit accusing them of violating an agreement to be “need-blind” when awarding financial aid.
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Latvia ☛ Sale of Luminor bank possible
Blackstone, a US investment company, is planning to sell Luminor Bank, a bank operating in the Baltic States, the business news agency Bloomberg reports.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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JURIST ☛ HRW calls on Meta to improve LGBTQ+ protections [Ed: HRW also took bribes from KSA, which decapitates these groups; HRW has its head screwed all wrong sometimes; demanding more censorship; HRW or UN Human Rights ☛ United Nations Human Rights Council? Which gets controlled by the UN Human Rights ☛ worst culprits? UN is a lot cheaper to buy than football clubs.]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for Meta to improve their protection of LGBTQ+ people on Facebook (Farcebook) and Instagram on Tuesday. This new campaign follows an HRW report from 2023, which found that security forces in the Middle East and North Africa use social control media platforms to gather evidence to prosecute them.
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Vice Media Group ☛ Berlin Stops Blocking Artists From Criticizing Israel After Massive Boycott
A controversial rule restricting speech about Israel was dropped after artists abandoned festival lineups in Germany’s techno mecca.
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Techdirt ☛ Judge Reminds Deputies They Can’t Arrest Someone Just Because They Don’t Like What Is Being Said
It shouldn’t need to be said, but it bears repeating: the First Amendment definitely protects speech the listener doesn’t like.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai ordered Fashion Company Apple Daily petition seeking US sanctions on Beijing, ex-publisher says
Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai instructed his Apple Daily newspaper to launch a petition seeking US sanctions on Chinese officials ahead of Beijing’s imposition of the national security law, a former senior staff member has testified.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Off Guardian ☛ WATCH: Identifying State Crimes Against Democracy in Real Time
Kevin Ryan joins host Piers Robinson to discuss the definitions of “Structual Deep Events” and “state crimes against democracy” (SCADs), the tell-tale signs common to incidents from 9/11 to Covid and the October 7th Hamas attack, as well as how to categorize different types of SCAD.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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APNIC ☛ Setting up MMIX’s second IXP
Guest Post: Exploring the challenges and solutions, technical and otherwise, in setting up a second IXP in Myanmar.
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APNIC ☛ Vale Dave Mills — Network Time Synchronization, Fuzzball router, network community leader
Emeritus Professor David Mills, University of Delaware, sadly passed away in January 2024.
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Patents
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Unified Patents ☛ Empire IP entity Liberty Access door locks patent monopoly found invalid
On January 22, 2024, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) entered a final rejection of the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 11,373,474 owned by Liberty Access Technologies Licensing LLC, an NPE and Empire IP LLC entity.
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Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ Court of Appeal considers unjustified threats provisions in the context of Amazon’s IPR policy
On 19 December 2023, the Court of Appeal handed down its decision in The NOCO Company v Shenzhen Carku Technology Co., Ltd [2023] EWCA Civ 1502. The issue on appeal was whether communications between The NOCO Company (“NOCO”) and Amazon amounted to a “threat of infringement proceedings” [...]
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Guest Post by Prof Burstein: Sanctions & Schedule A
Jiangsu Huari Webbing Leather Co., Ltd. v. Joes Identified in Schedule A, No. 1:23-cv-02605 (SDNY Jan. 2, 2024), ECF 76.
The Schedule A litigation phenomenon continues apace in the Northern District of Illinois, a court that has become, in the words of Judge Seeger, “an assembly line for TROs.” But Schedule A litigation is not confined to Chicago. It has spread, perhaps most notably to the Southern District of Florida and the Southern District of New York.
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ USPTO Granted Remand in Important Antibody Written Description Case
The Federal Circuit has remanded the Xencor appeal — allowing USPTO leadership an opportunity to re-focus on the written description requirement for both Jepson claims and means-plus-function claims in the antibody art.
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Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Vanda Seeks Supreme Court Review on Lower Standard for Obviousness
The main question now before the Supreme Court is whether obviousness requires a showing of “predictable” results, as suggested in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., or if a “reasonable expectation of success” is sufficient. Although these two tests are close to one another, they have meaningful differences. Importantly, the court’s obvious-to-try approach would invalidate truly innovative and unpredictable results so long as the pathway to get there was reasonable. The patentee here argues that the courts should not find any solutions solutions obvious unless those solutions were themselves reasonably predictable from the prior art.
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Kangaroo Courts
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JUVE ☛ SEPs, medical devices, e-cigarettes: Biggest UPC battles reveal broad court remit [Ed: This is an illegal asnd unconstitutional fake court that JUVE, this publisher, was bribe to lie for and promote/lobby]
The number of cases at the Unified Patent Court increased significantly again at the end of 2023. This is mainly due to defendants filing many counterclaims for revocation, following the filing of infringement lawsuits in the first two months of the UPC.
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Copyrights
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Digital Music News ☛ Anthropic Fires Back Against Music Publishers’ Injunction Motion: ‘Using Copyrighted Content As Training Data for an LLM Is a Fair Use’
Two months back, music publishers including Universal Music, Concord, and ABKCO demanded a preliminary injunction against Anthropic amid an infringement legal battle. Now, the generative Hey Hi (AI) company has officially fired back.
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Digital Music News ☛ Writers, Actors, & Musicians, Oh My!—AMPTP Must Face American Federation of Musicians Now
After the writers and actors strikes of 2023, the AMPTP now faces negotiations with the American Federation of Musicians—serving 70,000 musicians across the United States and Canada.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Technology and Free Software
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Map projections
I like the idea and certainly would like to see what she can come up with ;).
Reading about map projections again immediately reminded me of the mandatory XKCD and another interesting website that I stumbled upon about a decade back.
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Internet/Gemini
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Gemini & PHP
Is there a good way to integrate/use PHP with a Gemini server and what server should I choose for that?
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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.