Links 25/01/2024: Walkout at Condé Nast Over Layoffs, LA Times Layoffs, and Fallen Plane in Belgorod
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Jim Nielsen ☛ The Origin of Online Handles
That was when I realized trying to land-grab jimnielsen on every future social site would be a struggle with all the other (imposter) Jim Nielsens in the world.
So I decided a more distinct username for my online accounts was in order.
But what?
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Science
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Gizmodo ☛ Physicists Just Learned Something Major About the Proton
Published in Reviews of Modern Physics, the work follows up on a 2018 measurement of the proton’s internal pressure. The data the team studied came out of experiments at Jefferson Lab’s Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, or CEBAF, and the researchers used something called ‘deeply virtual Compton scattering’ (DVCS) to take the measurement. In DVCS, a high-energy electron is beamed at a target hydrogen proton. A quark within the proton emits a photon, which carries information about the quark’s properties. DVCS also yields information on gravity’s effects on matter, an idea developed in the early 2000s by the physicist Maxim Polyakov.
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Oona Räisänen ☛ Smoother sailing: Studying audio imperfections in Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie (1928) was one of the earliest cartoons with synchronized sound. That is, it had post-production sound effects; this was something new and exciting. Now that the cartoon has recently entered the public domain[bbc24] we can safely delve into its famous soundtrack. See, there's something interesting about how it sounds...
If you listen closely to the soundtrack on Youtube it sounds somehow distorted. You might be tempted to point out that it's 96 years old, yes. But you might also recognize that it is suffering from flutter, i.e. an unstable playback or recording speed.
In the spirit of this blog let's geek out for a bit and study this flutter distortion further. Can we learn something interesting? Could we perhaps learn enough to be able to reduce it?
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Science Alert ☛ Insane NASA Satellite Image Reveals Heat Leaking From Iceland's New Fissures
Hazards remain high.
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Science Alert ☛ Astrophysicist 'Fixes' General Relativity by Throwing Out a Major Law
Sorry Einstein.
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Education
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Jon Udell ☛ Learn by Doing: How LLMs Should Reshape Education
Here’s the latest installment in the series on working with LLMS: Learn by Doing: How LLMs Should Reshape Education.
If you’re teaching SQL, this article points to a pedagogical challenge/opportunity: How would I create a lesson that guides a student to an understanding of CROSS JOIN without ever mentioning or explicitly teaching anything about it?
If you’re teaching anything else, the same question could (I’ll argue should) apply. How to scaffold learning by doing?
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Hardware
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SparkFun Electronics ☛ Dumpster Dive is Back
What's a Dumpster Dive? Between samples, customer returns, demo items and old stuff that’s been sitting on the shelves for way too long, we’ve amassed quite a few bins worth of various electronics. It ranges from one-off items, to items that are a little broken or ugly, to items that aren’t worth individually listing and selling. We didn’t like the idea of recycling them, since it could still be useful and worth getting into people’s hands. And so behold: the Dumpster Dive.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Joe Crawford ☛ Al & my Friendship-as-Garden theory
Here I’ll spout my grandiose garden metaphor about friendships. Friendship is a garden that we cultivate. It’s not a bad metaphor. Friendship as a thing which requires nurturing and care, just as a garden does. It’s subject to the weather. It changes with the season. Some friendships fit in the garden, and some don’t. Some plants require particular care and climate. And some are sturdy. Some things grow without prompting. When conditions are right, incredible and unexpected beauty and joy can emerge from a garden. So much so we can share it with others. And some years, nothing goes right, and the garden goes fallow.
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Omicron Limited ☛ One in five Colorado bumblebees are endangered, new report says
Native pollinators are critical to Colorado's ecosystem, agriculture and tourism industry.
For example, the world-famous Rocky Ford cantaloupes, native to the small town in southeastern Colorado, are best pollinated by the state's native squash bees. These bees have evolved special hairs to carry the cantaloupe's particularly large pollen grains. In contrast, honeybees lack these special hairs and are inefficient at pollinating cantaloupe flowers.
"Our native bees have co-evolved with our native plants. We recreate in our beautiful high alpine mountains, because they are covered in colorful wildflowers, which wouldn't be there if they didn't have our native pollinators to help them reproduce. Additionally, those native plants are integral to our rangelands, supporting over $5 billion worth of livestock across the state," Carper said.
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France24 ☛ Fewer, older, poorer: France’s farming crisis in numbers
The protests sweeping across France have cast a renewed focus on the plight of farmers, a shrinking and ageing category at the mercy of volatile prices and grappling with a bleak economic outlook. FRANCE 24 talks to an economist and a unionist about the key figures behind France’s farming crisis.
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Vox ☛ Where billions of cicadas will emerge this spring (and over the next decade), in one map
This year, though, will be a rare event. Two groups — known as “broods” — are waking up during the same season. There will likely be billions, if not trillions, of the insects. According to NPR, the last time these two broods emerged at the same time was in 1803.
There’s the 17-year-group called Brood XIII, which is concentrated in Northern Illinois (brown on the map below), and the 13-year clutch, Brood XIX, which will emerge in Southern Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and throughout the Southeast (see them in light blue on the map below).
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NBC ☛ Billions of cicadas will emerge in the U.S. this year in a rare double-brood event
“Thomas Jefferson was president the last time these two broods came out, so is it rare? Yes,” said Gene Kritsky, an entomologist at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati and author of “A Tale of Two Broods,” a book about this year’s dual emergence that was published earlier this month.
After 2024, Brood XIII and Brood XIX cicadas won’t sync up their emergences again for another 221 years.
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CNET ☛ Cicadas Are Coming: Here's What We Know About Brood XIX and Brood XIII
If you're made of tough stuff and don't get easily queased-out by unusual foods, there are plenty of simple cicada recipes on the web. An expert from Johns Hopkins University says they're "quite tasty" but admits "the yuck factor" might keep most of us from even trying.
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NBC ☛ When will the massive cicada emergence hit Illinois in 2024? Here's what we know
In 1956, entomologists reported as many as 311 "emergence holes" per square yard in a forested floodplain near Chicago, which experts say translated to 1.5 million cicadas per acre, according to the University of Illinois.
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Gizmodo ☛ NY Plans to Let You Grow 5lbs of Weed at Home
The 2021 state law that legalized weed possession for adults cleared New Yorkers to grow weed at home, but that provision has been on hold while the state’s Office of Cannabis Management works on guidelines. Empire State residents 21 and older can already carry up to three ounces of store-bought herb, but the proposed rules would okay up to 5 pounds of trimmed flower once they go into effect. Residential weed farms would be limited to six mature cannabis plants with visible buds and an additional six immature plants. That would apply no matter how many people live in the home.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Press Gazette ☛ Publishers: Ditch Surveillance Giant Google search addiction or die
Google's switch to generative AI-written search results could send many publishers out of business.
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Johan Halse ☛ Concatenating text
My argument, however, is that these sorts of applications are a tiny, nay, minuscule, part of our industry but we’re arguing about them as if the web was 50% realtime applications and 50% documents. My killgissning is that the actual ratio would be more like 95% document to 5% application, depending on where you draw that rather arbitrary line. For every person working on GMail you have a hundred people doing unglamorous maintenance on various Wordpress or dot-net CRUD apps. The amount of “applications” that totally should have been plain-vanilla websites is also too damn high. The web is—let’s just face it—basically a hundred million forms, and a couple of successful outliers that have to be something else. In my previous life I worked on dozens of high-profile projects of varying sizes and complexities for one of Sweden’s most prestigious consultancies. We made a lot of cool stuff on a lot of screens! We absolutely did some great work but we also committed pretty heinous crimes using Flash, Backbone.js, and eventually React. I don’t know what to tell you other than this: the hitbox for “this project would be a great fit for hydrated edge-rendered React/Vue/Qwik” is motherfucking tiny. Yet here I am, ranting about it like everyone else. It’s easy to get swept up.
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Daniel Miessler ☛ How To Write Effective AI Prompts (Updated)
If you want AI to work for you, you have to know how to talk to it.
I’ve been grinding on AI since November 2022, and I recently taught a 3-hour live course on how I’ve integrated AI into my everyday workflows. One of the topics I covered was how to create concise and effective prompts.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Warning that AI will lead to increase in cyberattacks
The rapid development of novel artificial intelligence tools will lead to an increase in cyberattacks and lower the barrier of entry for less sophisticated [crackers] to do digital harm, Britain’s GCHQ spy agency warned on Wednesday.
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The Register UK ☛ Simon Willison interview: AI software still needs the human touch
AI Software Week Simon Willison, a veteran open source developer who co-created the Django framework and built the more recent Datasette tool, has become one of the more influential observers of AI software recently.
His writing and public speaking about the utility and problems of large language models has attracted a wide audience thanks to his ability to explain the subject matter in an accessible way. The Register interviewed Willison in which he shares some thoughts on AI, software development, intellectual property, and related matters.
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RIPE ☛ The LLM Misinformation Problem I Was Not Expecting
Not long into the fall 2023 semester, students began to cite blogs and vendor materials that made sense but were partly or entirely incorrect. This problem traces back to LLMs providing "hallucinations." In some cases, vendor content creators incorporate these untrue materials directly into their published content without vetting or correcting them.
It wasn't an infrequent problem during the fall 2023 semester. In the past four years of teaching three semesters a year, I encountered just one activity where several students found incorrect information as the result of a high search result. During the fall 2023 semester, however, I noticed the problem on at least three separate assignments. In one case, the information was put together so well in the source materials that it caught me off guard. I had to validate my own thoughts with others to confirm!
Let's take a look at a couple of examples to better understand what's going on.
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R J Faas ☛ Welcome to your 40s Macintosh, you weren’t even 10 when I met you
One of the things I remember from the late 90s is how confusing it was to purchase a back before Jobs cut the product line down into a two by two matrix including just four machines. I had a brief stint doing business sales for a computer store just as Jobs returned to Apple and the product matrix from Apple literally covered an entire wall of my cubicle. There were Performs and Quadras and LCs, Power Macs and PowerBooks – and on top of that there were the Mac clones.
Steve Jobs is remembered for many things but taking a hatchet to that mess is an often overlooked achievement. It made the Mac accessible and even fun.
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The Register UK ☛ Software troubles delay F-35 fighter jet deliveries ... again
Lockheed held its fourth quarter earnings call yesterday, with president and CEO Jim Taiclet blaming the delays on software associated with Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3), a key component of modernization efforts for the aircraft, which were first delivered to the US military in 2015.
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SEC ☛ FORM 8-K, September 6, 2023, Lockheed Martin Corporation
Lockheed Martin Corporation (the “Company,” “we” and “our”) has updated its F-35 Technology Refresh 3 (“TR-3”) schedule projections and we currently anticipate delivering the first TR-3 jet between April and June 2024. As a result, we now expect to deliver 97 aircraft in 2023 (all in the TR-2 configuration), which we do not currently anticipate will impact our 2023 financial outlook. We are producing F-35s at a rate of 156 per year and expect to continue at that pace while simultaneously working to finalize TR-3 software development and testing. Additionally, we remain focused on receiving the necessary hardware from our suppliers to deliver this critical combat capability for the F-35. The number of 2024 F-35 deliveries will depend on when the first TR-3 aircraft is delivered and the time needed to complete the customer’s acceptance process. We continue to assess impacts to 2024 and will have updates as the test plan continues.
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The Register UK ☛ Major IT outage at Europe's largest caravan and RV club makes for not-so-happy campers
Another member of the camping club got in touch to say the CAMC's website and booking system "has been a shambles" since it was redesigned by digital transformation agency Freestyle Interactive, which also failed to respond to our contact requests.
It's unclear the role Freestyle Interactive still has in the running of the CAMC's digital infrastructure, although its website describes the agency's partnership with the CAMC as "ongoing."
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New York Times ☛ Making VR Headsets Cool Won’t Be Easy, Even for Apple
Starting with Surveillance Giant Google Glass, all have been plagued with the same issues, even as Fashion Company Apple plunges into the market with its Vision Pro.
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Boston Herald ☛ Tech sector layoffs starting to pile up
A host of high profile companies in the technology sector have been laying off employees recently after quickly ramping up hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic while people spent more time and money online.
Now, many of them are making job cuts to help lower costs and bolster their bottom lines.
Here’s some of the companies that have laid of employees of late:
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Online Retailer eBay Cutting 1,000 Jobs, Joining Other Tech Companies in Workforce Reduction
Online retailer eBay Inc. will cut about 1,000 jobs, an estimated 9% of its full-time workforce.
CEO Jamie Iannone said in a message to employees on Tuesday that the company also will reduce how many “contracts we have within our alternate workforce over the coming months.”
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Ziff Davis ☛ Tech Layoffs Continue, eBay Plans To Cut 9% of Full-Time Workforce
Online retailer eBay Inc. has announced its intentions to cut 1,000 jobs, approximately 9% of its full-time workforce. The company has stated that growing expenses and high worker headcount compared to business growth have driven this decision. This is despite the company reporting a $1.3 billion profit in the last quarter of 2023.
The layoffs come on the heels of a surge of job cuts across multiple U.S. tech companies after a hiring spree during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, eBay has already laid off 500 employees in 2023, accounting for 4% of its workforce.
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The Washington Post ☛ Online retailer eBay is cutting 1,000 jobs. It's the latest tech company to reduce its workforce
CEO Jamie Iannone said in a message to employees on Tuesday that the company also will reduce how many “contracts we have within our alternate workforce over the coming months.”
Those who are being laid off will be told through Zoom calls with their bosses, Iannone said, requesting that people work from home Wednesday to allow privacy for those conversations.
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India News ☛ Vroom To Shut Its E-Commerce Operations, Cuts Nearly 90% Of Jobs
Under the Value Maximisation Plan approved by Vroom’s Board of Directors, the company is suspending transactions through vroom.com, planning to sell its current used vehicle inventory through wholesale channels, and halting purchases of additional vehicles.
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EuroGamer ☛ Outriders developer People Can Fly reportedly lays off "over 30" employees
People Can Fly, the developer behind the likes of Outriders and Bulletstorm, has reportedly laid off "over 30 people" working on a currently unannounced game - codenamed Project Gemini - that's set to be published by Square Enix.
As reported by Kotaku, People Can Fly development director Adam Alker announced the layoffs in an email sent to all staff working on the project, explaining the cuts were being made due to budget limitations and its shrinking scope. An additional 20 people are also due to leave Project Gemini, but will be shifted to other titles within the company.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Gizmodo ☛ 40 Years Ago, Apple Got Our Current Tech Dystopia Dead Wrong
We are all the sledgehammer, Apple does like to tell its fans. We are all disruptors hurtling toward one great screen, breaking the iron-fisted hold that other tech firms want to impose on us. The hellscape dystopia world of Apple’s famed “1984” commercial modeled after George Orwell’s seminal dystopia 1984 never really came to pass. As silly as it is to say, Apple was right. We didn’t win some nebulous liberation, exactly. We won a whole different soup of tech-based dystopia.
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Press Gazette ☛ Why news publishers should fight to stop rollout of Surveillance Giant Google Privacy Sandbox [Ed: Surveillance company offering fake privacy]
The replacement of Cookies with Google's in-house technology would be seismic change for news industry.
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Scoop News Group ☛ CFPB’s proposed data rules would improve security, privacy and competition
By giving the public greater control over their banking data, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's proposal would deal a blow to data brokers.
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Security Week ☛ Amazon’s French Warehouses Fined Over Employee Surveillance
France's data protection agency fines Amazon's French warehouses unit 32 million euros ($34.9 million) for "excessively intrusive" employee surveillance system.
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RFA ☛ Vietnamese prisoner under constant surveillance: family member
Huynh Minh Tam is in solitary confinement with a camera in his cell, says his sister.
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EFF ☛ Victory! Ring Announces It Will No Longer Facilitate Police Requests for Footage from Users
This announcement will also not stop police from trying to get Ring footage directly from device owners without a warrant. Ring users should also know that when police knock on their door, they have the right to—and should—request that police get a warrant before handing over footage.
Years ago, after public outcry and a lot of criticism from EFF and other organizations, Ring ended its practice of allowing police to automatically send requests for footage to a user’s email inbox, opting instead for a system where police had to publicly post requests onto Ring’s Neighbors app. Now, Ring hopefully will altogether be out of the business of platforming casual and warrantless police requests for footage to its users. This is a step in the right direction, but has come after years of cozy relationships with police and irresponsible handling of data (for which they reached a settlement with the FTC). We also helped to push Ring to implement end-to-end encryption. Ring has been forced to make some important concessions—but we still believe the company must do more. Ring can enable their devices to be encrypted end-to-end by default and turn off default audio collection, which reports have shown collect audio from greater distances than initially assumed. We also remain deeply skeptical about law enforcement’s and Ring’s ability to determine what is, or is not, an emergency that requires the company to hand over footage without a warrant or user consent.
Despite this victory, the fight for privacy and to end Ring’s historic ill-effects on society aren’t over. The mass existence of doorbell cameras, whether subsidized and organized into registries by cities or connected and centralized through technologies like Fusus, will continue to threaten civil liberties and exacerbate racial discrimination. Many other companies have also learned from Ring’s early marketing tactics and have sought to create a new generation of police-advertisers who promote the purchase and adoption of their technologies. This announcement will also not stop police from trying to get Ring footage directly from device owners without a warrant. Ring users should also know that when police knock on their door, they have the right to—and should—request that police get a warrant before handing over footage.
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Defence/Aggression
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ADF ☛ Mozambique Takes Aim at Terrorists in Last Stronghold
The holdouts in Catupa continue to start skirmishes and what military leaders called “nuisance” attacks against nearby communities. Gen. Ronald Rwivanga, spokesperson for Rwandan forces, said Rwanda is open to expanding its operations in Mozambique beyond Mocímboa da Praia.
“The most important thing is that we work together with the Mozambican forces to pacify Cabo Delgado province,” he said.
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RFERL ☛ Dozens Protest Local's Killing In Siberia's Yakutsk; Several Detained
Russian police made several arrests after dozens of residents of Yakutsk gathered in a central square of the eastern Siberian city to protest the alleged murder of a local man by a suspect who they said was Tajik.
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France24 ☛ Houthis fire 3 missiles toward US-flagged ship in Gulf of Aden, US military says
Yemen’s Houthi forces on Wednesday fired three anti-ship ballistic missiles toward a US-flagged and owned container ship as it was transiting the Gulf of Aden, the US military said in a statement. The attack comes a day after US and British strikes targeting the rebel forces.
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JURIST ☛ Houthi authorities order US and British aid workers out of Yemen within 30 days
Houthi authorities sent a letter Tuesday to the UN’s acting humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Peter Hawkins, requesting that all British and American nationals leave Yemen within a month. The letter comes as US and British forces continue strikes against targets in Yemen.
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New York Times ☛ How the Houthi Militia in Yemen Became a Nimble U.S. Foe
The Iran-backed Houthis perfected the tactics of irregular warfare during years of conflict against a Saudi-led coalition, military officials say.
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New York Times ☛ U.S. Strikes 2 More Targets of the Iran-Backed Houthis 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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RFA ☛ Residents fear junta attack, despite NUG control in Myanmar’s Sagaing
While the shadow government is running four towns, the threat of airstrikes and invasion remain.
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RFA ☛ Nearly 40 Myanmar civilians dead after four-day clash
Indiscriminate junta airstrikes and heavy shelling caused the deaths, locals said.
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New York Times ☛ U.S. Strikes 3 Iran-Linked Militia Sites in Iraq
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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teleSUR ☛ US Airstrikes on Hashd Shaabi Forces Escalation: Iraq
The airstrikes were in response to attacks on U.S. military sites, including the attack on the Ayn al-Asad Airbase in Anbar.
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New York Times ☛ Widening Mideast Crisis: U.N. Officials Say Shells Hit a Crowded Shelter in Gaza
Several deaths and dozens of injuries were reported in the strikes. U.N. officials cited tank shelling, pointing toward Israeli responsibility, but the Israeli military suggested Hamas might be to blame.
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New York Times ☛ U.N. Shelter in Gaza’s Khan Younis Is Struck, Killing at Least 9
United Nations officials said a building that was being used as a shelter by about 800 people had been “clearly marked” as one of their facilities. Israel denied responsibility.
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Site36 ☛ Germany grants visa exemption for Israelis: No residence permit required until end of April
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Site36 ☛ Gaza war: International NGO’s appeal to United Nations to stop arms deliveries by all sides
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France24 ☛ The black market price to get out of Gaza: $9,000
Many Palestinians have been desperately trying to leave the Gaza Strip and get to Egypt via the Rafah border crossing since October 7 and Israel's subsequent military campaign, which has killed more than 25,000 people, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. However, it’s nearly impossible to get an authorisation to leave the enclave, especially if you don’t have another nationality and a foreign government working on your behalf.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Meduza ☛ Russia recovers black boxes from crashed military plane — Meduza
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New York Times ☛ Britain Is Lobbying U.S. Republicans on Ukraine. Here’s Why.
The U.K., often a wingman to the United States in defense, is pushing its ally to stand firm against President Vladimir V. Putin, amid fears that Russia poses an existential threat to Europe.
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RFERL ☛ Oil Refinery In Southern Russia Ablaze, Russian Media Reports Say
A fire broke out at a large Rosneft oil refinery in the southern Russian town of Tuapse in the Krasnodar region on January 24, according to Russian news agency reports.
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YLE ☛ Wednesday's papers: A pay discrimination lawsuit, deterring Russia, Finland's large predators
An employee sued Finland's biggest employer over pay discrimination and won.
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Meduza ☛ Russian users report disruptions on messaging apps, local official links outages to ‘preventative work’ by federal censor — Meduza
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JURIST ☛ Belarus dispatch: thousands of Belarusians abroad can no longer renew their passports after expiration
Belarusian law students enrolled at European Humanities University are filing reports with JURIST on current circumstances in Belarus under the constitutionally-disputed presidency of Alexander Lukashenka. Katsiaryna Vasilionak files this dispatch from Vilnius, Lithuania.
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Meduza ☛ Russia State Duma to prepare statement to U.S. Congress and German parliament regarding Belgorod plane crash — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Governor of Russia’s Belgorod region says all passengers of crashed military plane killed — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ White House says investigating circumstances of Russian military plane crash, has no reliable information yet — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Russia’s Education and Science Ministry fires genetics institute director who linked genetic diseases to sin — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Russia requests emergency U.N. Security Council meeting after military plane crash — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Russian Society of Psychiatrists says transgender people can’t be ‘cured’ and instead recommends they undergo psychotherapy — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ Bashkir Activist Detained For Taking Part In 'Mass Riots'
Alfinur Rakhmatullina, a 60-year-old activist, was detained in Salavat, a city in Russia's Bashkortostan region, on charges of participating in mass riots, her daughter, Laysan Ravilova said on January 24.
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Latvia ☛ Under half of Ukrainians in Latvia are employed
Almost 9,000 Ukrainian civilians in Latvia are currently employed here or have a company of their own. Although employment in this group increased last year, it is still less than half of the total number of working Ukrainians in Latvia, Latvian Radio reported on January 24.
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Latvia ☛ Survey: Latvian public unenthusiastic about Ukrainians staying on after war's end
Latvian society supports and donates to Ukrainian war refugees, but few believe that the state should try to keep them in Latvia long-term to alleviate demographic and labor problems, according to a survey of residents carried out by Norstat research center in cooperation with LSM.lv.
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Stanford University ☛ Sean Penn reveals Ukraine’s ‘Superpower’ and calls for military aid
“Superpower,” co-directed by Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman, highlights Ukraine’s fight for freedom and the resilience of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The documentary was screened on Thursday at the Hoover Institution, followed by a discussion with FSI director Michael McFaul and Knight journalism fellow Natalia Antelava.
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Atlantic Council ☛ What the EU can do now to strengthen economic ties with Ukraine and Georgia
EU support for capacity-building projects in Ukraine and Georgia can help deepen their ties with the West before their accession to the bloc.
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France24 ☛ Kremlin says Kyiv downed military plane carrying more than 60 Ukrainian POWs
The Kremlin on Thursday said Ukraine had shot down a military transport plane carrying dozens of Ukrainian detainees headed for a prisoner exchange in a "monstrous act".
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France24 ☛ Russian military plane crash: Ukraine says no 'reliable information' regarding passengers aboard
Russia said Wednesday that everyone on board a military transport plane – allegedly carrying dozens of captured Ukrainian soldiers – had died after the aircraft crashed near the border with Ukraine. Ukraine responded by saying it had no "reliable information" on who was on board the plane and that its army would continue to target Russia’s military in the Belgorod region.
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LRT ☛ Lithuanian firm exports sanctioned equipment worth €62m to Russia – LRT Investigation
Water purification technologies made in Lithuania’s Kaunas continued to be exported to Russia even after its invasion of Ukraine. Companies in Estonia, Slovakia, Turkey, and China were used to ship the goods, worth nearly 62 million euros, and the customer for the equipment was a Russian company working with the sanctioned oil producer Gazprom Neft.
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LRT ☛ Lithuanian institutions give ‘positive vibe’ about withdrawing from cluster munition treaty – official
Various state institutions are holding consultations about withdrawing Lithuania from the Convention on Cluster Munitions, says a conservative MP. The move was prompted by last year’s decision by the US to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, despite the fact that they pose danger to civilians.
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LRT ☛ LRT launches second Radarom! campaign to support Ukrainian soldiers
LRT with its partners is launching the second donation campaign Radarom!, seeking to raise funds to send Lithuanian-made safe soldier packs to Ukraine.
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University of Michigan ☛ Pavlo Kukhta presents on the political and economic landscape of Ukraine
The University of Michigan Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia hosted Pavlo Kukhta, Ukraine’s former Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture for a lecture on Wednesday. Around 50 people attended the talk, which took place in Weiser Hall and centered on the modern history of Ukraine and its political and economic role in Europe.
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RFERL ☛ Russia Resumes Air Strikes On Odesa, Kharkiv, Wounding Several And Causing Material Damage
Russia launched fresh drone and missile attacks on Ukraine's southern regions of Odesa, Mykolaiyv, and Dnipropetrovsk early on January 25, wounding several people and causing material damage, the Ukrainian military and regional officials said.
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RFERL ☛ U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Approves Bill On Seizing Russian Assets To Help Ukraine Rebuild
A U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved legislation on January 24 that would help set the stage for the United States to confiscate Russian assets and hand them over to Ukraine for rebuilding.
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RFERL ☛ Two More Bodies Found Under Rubble In Kharkiv, Bringing Death Toll From Russian Strike To 10
Ukrainian rescuers have found two more bodies under the rubble of a house in Kharkiv destroyed by a Russian missile strike on January 23, bringing the total number of dead in the eastern city to 10, regional Governor Oleh Synyehubov said on January 24.
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RFERL ☛ Ukrainian And Slovak PMs Agree To 'New Pragmatism' To Aid Strained Relations
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal says he agreed with his Slovak counterpart, Robert Fico, on a policy of "new pragmatism" as the two neighbors try to improve relations that have soured since the populist Slovak leader won an election last year vowing to halt military aid to Kyiv.
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RFERL ☛ Moscow Accuses Kyiv Of Shooting Down Plane With Ukrainian POWs On Board
Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate said on January 24 that it does not have "reliable and comprehensive information" on who was on board a military plane that crashed in the Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine, killing everyone on board.
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RFERL ☛ Berlin To Give Ukraine Anti-Submarine Helicopters, Says German Defense Minister
Germany will give Ukraine six Sikorsky Sea King anti-submarine warfare helicopters, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has announced.
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RFERL ☛ Polish Foreign Minister: 'Time Is Of The Essence' In Helping Ukraine Defeat Russia
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said he is trying to “put some urgency” into providing ammunition and defense systems to avoid a “too little, too late” scenario as Ukraine fights off Russa’s full-scale invasion.
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teleSUR ☛ Russian Aircraft With 65 Ukrainian Prisoners Crashes
State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin believes the Ukrainian military shot down the plane.
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CS Monitor ☛ Russia has long sold arms to Iran. Now Iran is returning the favor.
Russia, fighting in Ukraine, needs a source of weapons untouched by Western sanctions. Iran seeks to upgrade its military. Deal done.
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New York Times ☛ Orban Urges Hungary’s Parliament to Back Sweden’s NATO Bid
The Hungarian leader has repeatedly opposed European efforts to boost Europe’s security in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He also blocked a $52 billion aid package for Ukraine.
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New York Times ☛ Russian Plane Crashes Near Border With Ukraine, Killing All Aboard, Moscow Says
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the transport plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war and accused Ukraine of shooting it down. The claims could not be independently verified.
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Meduza ☛ Zelensky says Ukraine ‘will insist on international investigation’ into crash of Russian military plane allegedly carrying Ukrainian POWs — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Ukrainian military intelligence comments on Russian military plane crash, says Russia may have deliberately endangered lives of POWs — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Military plane reportedly transporting over 60 Ukrainian POWs crashes in Russia’s Belgorod region — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Ukrainian media report Russian military plane that crashed was carrying S-300 missiles, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry ‘still clarifying information’ — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Russian Foreign Ministry official says Belgorod plane crash casts doubt on future negotiations, blaming incident on Ukraine — Meduza
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Latvia ☛ Over 250 cases launched for goods movement sanctions violations
Since the introduction of sanctions imposed on Russia and Belarus, the State Revenue Service (VID) has started more than 250 criminal proceedings for their violations, Raimonds Zukuls, Director of the VID Customs Administration, told Latvian Television's “Morning Panorama” on January 25.
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LRT ☛ Third of Lithuanians in favour of allowing Russians to partake in Olympics – survey
Almost a third of the Lithuanian population is in favour of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decision to allow individual Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate in the Olympic Games, according to a survey commissioned by LRT.
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LRT ☛ Lithuania bars soldiers, police officers from travelling to Russia, Belarus, China
The Lithuanian government on Wednesday banned members of professional military service, as well as border guards and police officers from travelling off-duty to Russia, Belarus, and China.
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LRT ☛ Police receive false bomb threat on Lithuanian-Russian border bridge
Police received a false report of a bomb on a bridge on the border between Lithuania and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave late Tuesday night.
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Environment
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Omicron Limited ☛ Researchers advocate for sustainable logging to safeguard against global flood risks
When it comes to understanding how logging might increase flood risk, a deterministic approach would look at the logging alone and try to figure out its direct effect. But the risk of flooding is influenced by many things, such as how much snow is on the ground, whether it's melting or not, how much rain is falling, and the characteristics of the landscape itself. These factors interact over time in complex ways.
Taking them all into account is called a "probabilistic" approach and provides a better overall picture of flood risk. It's like a savvy board game player considering all the game's variables instead of just one.
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University of Michigan ☛ Biological Station’s snowpack sensors help study changing winters
Researchers at the U-M Biological Station in northern Michigan are strengthening their snow science with new technology to track snowpack at an hourly rate.
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University of Michigan ☛ Study examines carbon footprint of urban-farmed food
An international study led by U-M finds that fruits and vegetables grown in urban farms and gardens have a carbon footprint that is, on average, six times greater than conventionally grown produce.
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Energy/Transportation
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Tracy Durnell ☛ Challenging the “rights” of cars for the rights of people
I believe we should restrict overweight vehicles, incorporate pedestrian survivability into car safety ratings, lower speed limits and use photo enforcement priced by income instead of flat rates so rich people will pay attention too, and build roads designed for safety instead of speed. Other industries design technology to fail safe; how could we rethink road design and cars from this perspective?
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DeSmog ☛ Havas CEO Yannick Bolloré Staked His Brand on Caring About the Climate. So Why Is His Company Working for Shell?
In a June 2023 video interview, Yannick Bolloré looks relaxed. The rolled-back cuffs of his rumpled blue button-down reveal an array of mismatched wristbands. His collar is open just enough to glimpse a gold pendant gleaming in the early summer sunshine.
Bolloré, the chair and CEO of the Havas Group, is on the French Riviera to attend the annual Cannes Lions festival, “a week of world-class networking, learning, and history-making creativity” that draws thousands of PR and marketing professionals from around the world.
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DeSmog ☛ Leading Climate Science Denial Group Registers Lowest Income for Seven Years
The UK’s most prominent climate science denial group has seen its income drop to the lowest level since 2016, DeSmog can reveal.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) filed its latest accounts on 18 January, showing an income of £280,000 for the year ending 30 September 2023, a drop of £110,000 from the previous year. Total annual losses increased from £17,000 to over £150,000.
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Overpopulation
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Overpopulation ☛ The Other Side of Reproductive Coercion
That brings up the other side of reproductive coercion—women are often forced to bear, and raise, children that they did not intend to have.
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Finance
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Chris Coyier ☛ What happened with the Web Monetization API?
I was pretty hot on it for a minute. I wanted it to succeed and thought it had the bones to make it. Coil was the main startup trying to push it. They did the right thing by just making it work first, showing there is interest, then pushing to get it standardized. But Coil failed.
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RFA ☛ Kim Jong Un acknowledges dire state of economy, urges action
But N Korea’s economy may see gains in 2024, fueled by tourism, stronger ties with China, Russia: South think tank
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Pro Publica ☛ “We Buy Ugly Houses” Company Overhauls Policies Following ProPublica Investigation
HomeVestors of America, the self-described largest home buyer in the country, is continuing to reform some of its business practices in the wake of a ProPublica investigation last year that revealed predatory tactics used by the company’s franchises toward homeowners in vulnerable situations.
The company’s 1,100 “We Buy Ugly Houses” franchises will now be required to provide homeowners who sell to them with a simple disclosure. The disclosure provides a three-day window to terminate a sales contract — a safeguard that housing advocates say is critical to guarding against aggressive tactics often employed by cash homebuyers.
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YLE ☛ Paper workers join strike wave
Unions are gearing up for a wave of protest at government plans.
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New York Times ☛ Nationwide Union Strike Tests Milei’s Policies for Argentina
Argentine unions are striking to protest President Javier Milei’s economic policies, which have accelerated inflation. He says they are needed to fix the country.
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Mexico News Daily ☛ Mexico begins the year with a spike in inflation
The cost of fruits and vegetables, 20% higher than in January 2023, drove the increase in the annual headline rate.
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The Straits Times ☛ Australian government reshapes tax cuts to woo low-income voters, rejects inflation risks
Under the new policy, people earning up to $119,000 will fall into lower tax brackets from July 1.
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CS Monitor ☛ U.S. consumer satisfaction is on the rise for first time in years [Ed: These are mere sentiments, which are biased (can be shaped and warped by media), those are not facts]
Higher incomes and slower inflation may finally have American consumers excited about the economy – a shift that could bode well for President Biden’s reelection campaign.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Atlantic Council ☛ Your primer on Finland’s presidential election
While the job is ceremonial in many ways (such as the president’s role in formally appointing the government), the president is a central figure in setting the course for Finland’s foreign and security policy—an unusual duty for many European heads of state. As such, Niinistö has played a key role in diplomacy with Russia and in securing Finland’s accession into NATO.
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India Times ☛ SAP to restructure 8,000 roles in push towards AI
German software firm SAP SE unveiled on Tuesday a $2.2 billion restructuring programme for 2024 that will affect 8,000 roles, as it seeks to better focus on growth in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven business areas.
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Silicon Angle ☛ SAP announces major restructuring plan affecting 8,000 jobs
In a statement, SAP promised that its overall headcount should remain the same at the end of the year. It’s believed to have 108,000 full-time employees at present, which means the restructuring effort will affect about 7% of its staff.
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The Register UK ☛ eBay tells 1,000 employees their days at company are numbered
In the nine months ended September 30, 2023 [PDF], eBay reported revenue of $7.55 billion, up from $7.285 billion, and a net profit of $2.04 billion versus a loss of $1.9 billion. Operating expenses were up to $3.89 billion from $3.5 billion.
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NPR ☛ eBay to lay off 1,000 workers as tech job losses continue in the new year
Online retailer eBay is shedding 1,000 jobs, or about 9% of its workforce, as the company faces a business slowdown that is rippling across the technology industry.
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Hindustan Times ☛ eBay to cut 1000 roles for company's ‘long-term, sustainable growth’
The ‘most significant and toughest of these decisions,’ Iannone said, is to reduce the current headcount by '1000 roles or an estimated 9% of full-time employees.
He further stated that in addition to the layoffs, eBay will ‘scale back’ the number of contracts the San Jose-based firm has within its alternate workforce, with this to be done over the next coming months.
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Democracy Now ☛ “MAGA vs. MAGA Polite”: Trump Beats Haley in New Hampshire, Haley Vows to Fight On
Former President Donald Trump won New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday with 54% of the vote to 43% for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, the last major challenger to Trump’s Republican bid. “If there was a state she could win in, in the entire United States, it was this state, and she still lost by 11 points,” says Arnie Arnesen, longtime New Hampshire radio and TV host and former politician. “She doesn’t have a future.” On the Democratic side, President Biden won his party’s primary as a write-in candidate after the state refused to cooperate with Democratic National Committee rules, and therefore did not win any delegates from New Hampshire. Refusing to recognize the state’s primary and not campaigning in the state was “a stupid political mistake” by Democrats that allowed Trump’s claims to go uncontested, says Arnesen. “This is an invitation to fascism.”
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Democracy Now ☛ “Trump Is the Nominee. Fascism Is on the Ballot.” Author Jeff Sharlet on New Hampshire & Beyond
Former President Donald Trump trounced runner-up Nikki Haley in Tuesday’s Republican primary, in what Jeff Sharlet, expert on the far right, says is another landmark in the acceleration of fascism in the United States. “Trump is the nominee. Fascism is on the ballot,” says Sharlet, who describes how Trump is appealing to broader groups of Americans, why the political press is failing to capture the fascist movement, and the importance of resisting its growth. “It’s popular front time. It’s broad coalition time.”
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Democracy Now ☛ Should Trump Be Barred from the Ballot? A Debate over the Insurrection Clause
Former President Donald Trump is the clear front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination despite efforts nationwide to remove him from the 2024 presidential ballot based on the 14th Amendment, which says public officials who have “engaged in insurrection” are disqualified from ever serving again. Did Trump violate the Constitution, and should he be barred from running for president based on his attempts to overturn the 2020 election? Or is taking Trump off the ballot an anti-democratic measure that will only energize his base? Democracy Now! hosts a debate with Praveen Fernandes, vice president at the Constitutional Accountability Center, who argues the amendment clearly applies to the president and enforcing the law protects democracy, and Samuel Moyn, a professor of law and history at Yale University, who says the legal case is not strong enough and Democrats must appeal to more voters to defeat Trump. The Supreme Court has agreed to review Colorado’s case and will hear oral arguments next month.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Techdirt ☛ Robocallers Used Sloppy Biden Deepfake To Try And Keep Voters From The Polls On Presidential Primary Day
It’s equal parts annoying and bizarre that we’ve normalized the fact that scammers, scumbags, debt collectors, partisan operatives, and marketers have made the U.S.’ primary voice communication platform largely unusable. Americans received 3.8 billion robocalls last month, and despite some modest inroads in fighting the problem, it continues to grow for reasons we’ve already well established.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ UN experts call for all charges against Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai to be dropped
The charges against Lai — founder of the now-shuttered popular Chinese-language tabloid Apple Daily — revolve around the newspaper’s publications, which supported pro-democracy protests and criticised Beijing’s leadership.
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The Nation ☛ Free Speech?
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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LA Times fires 115 journalists in ‘HR Zoom webinar’
The Los Angeles Times has announced that it was laying off 115 journalists, or more than 20 percent of its newsroom.
Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, the paper’s billionaire owner, had earlier told the New York Times that Los Angeles Times was losing $30 million to $40 million a year and needed to make more progress in building a larger audience.
On Friday, the union representing the newsroom’s journalists held an unprecedented daylong walkout, urging Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong to reconsider any planned job cuts to tackle the paper’s struggling finances.
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Techdirt ☛ Sports Illustrated Implosion Perfectly Encapsulates The Ugly, Ongoing Collapse Of U.S. Journalism
When we last checked in with what’s left of Sports Illustrated, its owner, The Arena Group, had just got done baring its ass as part of a giant ‘AI’ related scandal. Company executives apparently thought it would be a great idea to create a bunch of fake, AI-generated writers to shit out lazy, uninteresting clickbait, without really telling any of the folks that create actual journalism at the company.
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BoingBoing ☛ Sports Illustrated "dead" as 70-year-old magazine hit with mass layoffs
Sports Illustrated, the "bible of sports journalism" fresh off an AI-generated content scandal, is widely reported to be "dead" after mass layoffs. The two things are tied: Arena Group, the organization which publishes the magazine and website under "complicated" arrangements, is losing its license to do so following its use of AI content and weird lies about it. As of Tuesday, there's still fresh stories, but it looks like everyone's going to be gone within weeks.
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Zimbabwe ☛ This program trains journalists and independent media houses to become sustainable
Innovate360 says traditional journalism models are no longer sustainable in Zimbabwe.
Therefore, there is a need for journalists to develop entrepreneurial skills to build and run their own media businesses. I don’t think you can argue with that.
So, they launched an entrepreneurial journalism program for Zimbabwean media creators. At least that’s who they targeted at first, they expanded to include Zambia and Namibia in the second edition.
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FAIR ☛ Skip the Last Two Paragraphs—and Other Time-Saving Tips for Healthcare News Consumers
A year ago, I returned to journalism after 26 years working in the labor movement. The most surprising aspect of the job change has been discovering how many healthcare stories are nearly indistinguishable from those written or broadcast 10, 20 or 30 years ago.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Axios ☛ Condé Nast union workers walk out following layoff announcement
Following the layoff announcement in November, the NewsGuild of New York filed an unfair labor practice charge against Condé Nast with the National Labor Relations Board, arguing the company violated labor laws when it countered a severance proposal with half of the initially offered payout.
The NewsGuild said Monday that "any changes to working conditions, including layoffs, must be negotiated."
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Mexico News Daily ☛ Workers strike at Audi plant in Puebla
This is the first automotive sector strike since President López Obrador took office in 2018.
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The Dissenter ☛ Texas Drone Restrictions Opposed By Journalists Once Again Upheld By US Appeals Court
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Futurism ☛ HP CEO Says Goal Is to Make "Printing a Subscription"
Let's circle back to the Dynamic Security system, which can lock a user out of using HP printers when loaded with a non-HP ink cartridge. According to Lores, this measure is taken to protect customers against potential viruses.
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Of0x ☛ A christmas tale: pwning GTB Central Console (CVE-2024-22107 & CVE-2024-22108)
But keep this in mind: this platform, and other similars, are widely deployed in corporative infrastructure. Tons of companies run products without knowning how insecure they are just because they are black-boxes that nobody wastes time to check. Most of cyber-cyber-cyber products are just clusterfucks of scripts in bash, perl, python or PHP combined with duct tape waiting to be pwned.
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Techdirt ☛ Fractured Streaming Services Don’t Suck Enough To Keep The NFL’s Peacock Experiment From Being A Success
There can’t really be much doubting the fact that the fracturing of streaming content and the silos that are being built around that content are not a good thing. Examples of what was an ecosystem that mostly consisted of Netflix and Amazon being ruptured into streaming services offered by content producers themselves, such as Disney for instance, has resulted in frustration in the market for some and resorting back to piracy for others.
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Techdirt ☛ The Day Before Servers Shut Down: It’s Officially Over
The saga of PC title The Day Before is finally over. Like, completely over. Whatever this game was, and that is still very much an open question at a 10,000 foot level, it’s not gone. And I can’t say that I know for sure that the speed with which this game went from being launched to being completely shut down set any sort of records, but it sure does appear that developer Fntastic was trying to do so. What many thought was purely vaporware went from a trademark dispute delaying its launch to the company shutting down almost exactly 1 week after a game that took 5 years to release was launched. And because of this whole fiasco, there have been plenty of rumors and accusations floating around out there that, whatever this developer actually is, it might not be a legit developer at all interested in making and releasing a real video game.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Bing, Edge to avoid EU digital crackdown
Under the law, it will be illegal for the designated firms to favour their own services over those of rivals. They’ll be barred from combining personal data across their different services, prohibited from using data they collect from third-party merchants to compete against them, and will have to allow users to download apps from rivals’ platforms.
The Brussels-based commission and Microsoft declined to comment on the EU carve-outs.
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India Times ☛ Explained: Why are Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta facing antitrust lawsuits and huge fines?
The United States Justice Department is set to file a lawsuit against Apple for potentially breaching antitrust laws. Antitrust laws originated with the US Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and are enforced at domestic levels. Of the big four tech companies, Apple is the latest to be accused of breaching antitrust laws. The lawsuit alleges that Apple is using hardware and software limitations to stifle competition with iPhones and iPads.
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International Business Times ☛ EU Exempts Microsoft's Bing, Edge From Digital Markets Act, Report
It is worth noting that Bing's market share has remained stagnant despite the addition of Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat). Nevertheless, Microsoft Bing managed to cross 100 million daily active users for the first time last year, courtesy of Bing Chat AI.
Microsoft argued that forcing it to provide users access to rival search engines would negatively impact Bing's value. The EU gave companies included in the gatekeeper list six months to comply with the DMA, warning them that there would be hefty fines and penalties if they failed to do so.
Under the DMA, the Commission also requires the gatekeepers to ensure their service is interoperable. To those unaware, interoperability alludes to a system's ability to work with or use the parts or equipment of another system.
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[Old] USDOJ ☛ U.S. V. Microsoft: Proposed Findings Of Fact
Microsoft's predatory campaign worked. It succeeded in preserving Microsoft's monopoly power by preventing the successful development of alternative platforms that could have eroded its Windows monopoly and given consumers greater choice. In other words, Microsoft prevented consumers from getting what they wanted so that Microsoft could keep what it had -- a monopoly in operating systems.
For a long time now -- and, if Microsoft's actions to maintain its monopoly are not halted, for well into the future -- personal computer consumers are locked into a Microsoft world, one in which a single company essentially controls the configuration of desktop computing. The evidence detailed in these Proposed Findings establishes both the anticompetitive tactics Microsoft employed and the harm to competition and consumers those tactics caused. What can never be fully known, of course, are (i) the innovative products that would have come to market had developers not been deterred by Microsoft's illegal assault on potential competitors; and (ii) the benefits that consumers would have realized if Microsoft's operating systems monopoly had been eroded. Such products and consumer benefits are inevitable wherever market competition flourishes.
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Trademarks
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Right of Publicity
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404 Media ☛ Iceland Has Its Own AI George Carlin Moment, Considers Law Against Deepfaking the Dead
The video featured comedian Hemmi Gunn, who died in 2013, and was played on a program called “Áramótaskaupin,” a New Year’s Eve variety show that is one of the most popular annual television events in Iceland. The video was made with the help of Icelandic startup OverTune, a phone app for making musical beats that also has AI voice features.
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Copyrights
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EFF ☛ What Home Videotaping Can Tell Us About Generative AI [Ed: EFF fronting for FB (follow the money), mentioning "Bill Gates and Paul Allen" etc. EFF is working for oligarchy, too.]
It’s 1975. Earth, Wind and Fire rule the airwaves, Jaws is on every theater screen, All In the Family is must-see TV, and Bill Gates and Paul Allen are selling software for the first personal computer, the Altair 8800.
But for copyright lawyers, and eventually the public, something even more significant is about to happen: Sony starts selling the first videotape recorder, or VTR. Suddenly, people had the power to store TV programs and watch them later. Does work get in the way of watching your daytime soap operas? No problem, record them and watch when you get home. Want to watch the game but hate to miss your favorite show? No problem. Or, as an ad Sony sent to Universal Studios put it, “Now you don’t have to miss Kojak because you’re watching Columbo (or vice versa).”
What does all of this have to do with Generative AI? For one thing, the reaction to the VTR was very similar to today’s AI anxieties. Copyright industry associations ran to Congress, claiming that the VTR "is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone" – rhetoric that isn’t far from some of what we’ve heard in Congress on AI lately. And then, as now, rightsholders also ran to court, claiming Sony was facilitating mass copyright infringement. The crux of the argument was a new legal theory: that a machine manufacturer could be held liable under copyright law (and thus potentially subject to ruinous statutory damages) for how others used that machine.
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Creative Commons ☛ What did Creative Commons do for Open Culture in 2023?
2023 was quite a year for the Creative Commons (CC) Open Culture Program, thanks to generous funding from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing & Peter Baldwin. As the team grew from one full time employee to a team of three, we have had increased capacity to carry out our programmatic work. At the same time, pandemic-related travel restrictions eased, allowing the Open Culture Team to lead and participate in events and convenings in diverse locations, including Morocco, Uruguay, USA, Switzerland, UK, Mexico, and Portugal, to name a few. This allowed us to connect with community members in person, further cementing pre-existing strategic partnerships and engaging with new audiences. In this blog post we look back on some of the year’s key achievements.
Here are the top 5 things we are particularly proud of (in no particular order): [...]
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Walled Culture ☛ A Swiftian solution to some of copyright’s problems
Pervasive use of the Internet means that artists’ fans are more aware of how the recording industry works, and thus better able to adjust their purchasing habits to punish the bad behaviour, and reward the good. One factor driving this is that musicians can communicate directly to their fans through social media and other platforms. They no longer need the marketing departments of big recording companies to do that, which means that the messages to fans are no longer sanitised or censored.
This is another great example of how today’s digital world makes the old business models of the copyright industry redundant and vulnerable. That’s great news, because it is a step on the path to realising that creators – whatever their field – don’t need copyright to thrive, despite today’s dogma that they do. What they require is precisely what innovative artists like Taylor Swift have achieved – full control over all aspects of their own creations – coupled with the Internet’s direct channels to their fans that let them turn that into fair recompense for their hard work.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Reddit: IP Address Disclosure Puts User Anonymity At Risk
A third attempt by film companies to obtain information on Reddit users is facing opposition from the social media platform. The rightsholders, who want to use comments posted to Reddit as evidence in a lawsuit against an ISP, argued that disclosing IP addresses doesn't violate their right to anonymous speech. Reddit wholeheartedly disagrees and has asked the court to deny the request, just like it did the others.
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Torrent Freak ☛ beIN Sports' Football Piracy Blitz Adds Blocking to Domain Seizures
With no obvious signs that piracy of live sporting events is on the wane, beIN Sports appears to be waging war against unlicensed providers on multiple fronts. With the Africa Cup of Nations tournament now in full swing, a report that beIN has obtained an order to block 56 pirate sites coincides with action against dozens of others reported earlier this week.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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