Links 28/01/2024: David L. Mill Obituary and Right of Publicity as Growing Issue Due to Fakes
Contents
- Leftovers
- Standards/Consortia
- 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 Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Greg Morris ☛ Not A Knowledge Problem
The reasons that have sparked this thought process are not sharable; however, it relates to quite a few things in our lives, and society at large, that I thought it worth sharing. It relates to the often used delaying tactic to action is the amount of knowledge we have. That we need to know more before we get started — leading, of course, to inaction.
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Manuel Moreale ☛ A People and Blogs PSA
Quick PSA for all the people who are subscribed to the People and Blog newsletter with an address that converts the newsletter to an RSS feed: there is a dedicated RSS feed.
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I'm Dead Serious ☛ Another year another...
Mid-January seems to be about when I usually get my act together enough to finalize my “end of year” mix. That’s a little late compared to the holiday cards, ‘best of’ lists, and everything else that gets produced to acknowledge that another year has passed.
It’s not that I don’t start the process early enough, and it’s not like I don’t have a deadline... it’s just that the timing of it, the expectation that it “should” be delivered before the end of the year, feels so arbitrary. Who made these rules?? And why do I have to follow them?
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Makoism ☛ The Curse of Meh
Shifting gears a bit, I wanted to put onto paper a few thoughts rattling around my skull lately around "The Curse of Meh" or, more precisely mediocrity brews mediocrity — the fate of being just, well, average.
When starting my career, one of the most powerful things I learned early on was in order to drive strong performance is to expect excellence.
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Ruben Schade ☛ Longer-form posts
The irony isn’t lost on me that this is a small post. I contemplated writing a few dozen paragraphs of pointless fluff to pad it out, but fluff tends to compress rather than expand.
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Rach Smith ☛ Roland F701
We asked a piano teacher what is the deal with digital pianos. Were they as good as acoustic? Or do they have quality issues? She said they are basically indistinguishable from acoustic pianos in terms of sound and feel, and had some extra benefits (like being able to plug in headphones).
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Standards/Consortia
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[Repeat] New York Times ☛ David L. Mills, Who Kept the Internet Running on Time, Dies at 85
Dr. Mills was among the inner circle of computer scientists who in the 1960s through the ’90s developed Arpanet, a relatively small network of linked computers located at academic and research institutions, and then its globe-spanning successor, the internet.
It was challenging enough to develop the hardware and software needed to connect even a small number of computers. But Dr. Mills and his colleagues recognized that they also had to create the protocols necessary to make sure the devices could communicate accurately.
His focus was time. Every machine has its own internal clock, but a network of devices would need to operate simultaneously, down to the fraction of a millisecond. His answer, first implemented in 1985, was the network time protocol.
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Science
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El País ☛ A legendary experiment that began in 1988 suggests that evolution is predictable
Gould's enigma will probably never be answered. “These new data, as well as other findings from the experiment I began in 1988, show that, even under these simple conditions, evolution produces a rich and fascinating mix of the predictable and the unpredictable. I suspect that the same thing happens when evolution is expanded to the large planetary scale that Gould was thinking about,” explains Lenski.
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Axios ☛ The search for quantum algorithms
One is the quantum simulation of materials that could enable researchers to screen hundreds of potential materials for different properties that could be harnessed in new batteries, catalysts and other critical technologies.
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European Commission ☛ Proposal for a Council Regulation amending Regulation (EU) 2021/1173 as regards an EuroHPC initiative for start-ups to boost European leadership in trustworthy Artificial Intelligence
The objective of this proposal is to widen the scope of Council Regulation (EU) 2021/1173 of 13 July 2021 on establishing the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking and repealing Regulation (EU) 2018/1488 in order to enable the Union to respond to new technological developments and strategic imperatives, namely the development of AI softwares and infrastructures, and to the need to open up supercomputing technologies to startups.
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Science Alert ☛ Pets Appear to Slow Cognitive Decline in Older People Who Live Alone
The best kind of friend.
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Science Alert ☛ People Are Paying Big For Moon Burials And It Could Be Crossing a Concerning Line
Just because we can doesn't mean we should.
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Science Alert ☛ Friction Plays a Surprising Role in The Development of Sea Squirt Eggs
Squish!
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Science Alert ☛ Diamonds Could Be Raining From The Sky on Far More Planets Than We Realized
Extreme weather expected.
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Science Alert ☛ Something Strange Happens to Wolves Infected by Infamous Mind-Altering Parasite
Their minds are not fully their own.
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Science Alert ☛ Hell Chicken Discovery Could Tell Us Just How Doomed The Dinosaurs Were
Was the end really nigh?
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Education
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India Times ☛ What artificial intelligence means for the future of education
Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT have made inroads to Indian classrooms with nearly 60% of the educators already using them for interactive learning experiences, new testing and assessing methods as well as reducing time for class preparations.
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Hardware
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India Times ☛ US to announce billions in subsidies for advanced chips
The Biden administration is expected to award billions of dollars in subsidies to top semiconductor companies including Intel, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co in the coming weeks to help build new factories in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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CBC ☛ 2024-01-25 [Older] B.C. sets grim record with 2,511 toxic drug deaths in 2023
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Gizmodo ☛ Elon Musk's Brain Implant Company Neuralink Fined for 'Hazardous Materials' Violation
Last February, the PCRM publicized a new batch of records, which it claimed showed that the company had illegally transported hazardous materials, including brain implants potentially contaminated with dangerous primate pathogens. Following this release, the DOT opened its own investigation, which included visits to Neuralink’s facilities in California and Texas.
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Reuters ☛ Exclusive: Musk brain implant company violated US hazardous material transport rules -documents
The DOT inquiry was launched last year after Reuters reported that Neuralink employees made internal complaints about animal experiments being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths.
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New York Times ☛ Covid Vaccine Hesitancy Took Off This Winter. Can We Fix It? [Ed: COVID-19 jabs have not proven to be good value thus far; this is why many people are still sceptical of them.]
A newer, more vague vaccine hesitancy is emerging. A New York doctor has some advice for how to stop it.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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NYMag ☛ Google’s New AI-Powered Browser Could Mark the End of the Human Internet
As generative AI rollouts go, though, this is a big one. For the first time, potentially billions of people will be confronted with the option to have software write on their behalf, in virtually every online context: not just emails or documents, but social-media sites, comment sections, forums, product reviews, feedback forums, job applications, and chat platforms. Instead of, or in addition to, people posting something themselves, Google will offer users statistically likely responses, as well as options for making them shorter or longer or adjusting their tone. The web as we know it is, basically, the result of billions of people typing into billions of browser text boxes with the intention of reaching other people, or at least another person. The experiences of searching, reading, shopping, and wandering on the web have depended on varying extents on the presence of text and media that other users have contributed, often for free and under the auspices of participation in human-centered systems — that is, as themselves, or some version of themselves, with other people in mind. What happens when the text boxes can fill themselves?
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Simone Silvestroni ☛ Leaving Soundcloud
I’ve just completed the process to delete my 14-years-old Soundcloud account. Not much to add here, the platform has been quite pointless to me for a long time. Without going deep into the quality of their audio codec, my issue is threefold: the intensified spam problem, the complete lack of genuine interaction on the site, and the more important fact that I’ve been leaving centralised ‘silos’ for a while now.
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Gizmodo ☛ Bad Internet Connection Concealed Cruise’s Pedestrian-Dragging Incident
Cruise, the self-driving car company whose robotaxi dragged a pedestrian, shared footage from the graphic incident with regulators using a bad [Internet] connection, according to an independent review. Cruise didn’t explicitly say that a pedestrian was dragged 20 feet, and hoped screen sharing a video would “speak for itself.” The [Internet] connection was so bad that regulators on the call never saw what happened.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Please, don’t force me to log in
If someone breaks into my apartment, them pushing a button on my Hue bridge is the least of my worries. Them being connected to my online account is way higher threat.
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JURIST ☛ US senator releases letter alleging NSA buys personal data without warrant
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) released a letter Thursday alleging that the US National Security Agency (NSA) buys Americans’ internet browsing information from commercial brokers without a warrant. According to the letter, US intelligence agencies are acquiring data about Americans from private data brokers, and have been for several years.
Senator Wyden likened federal agencies purchasing private records without a warrant to “using [a] credit card to circumvent the Fourth Amendment.” Wyden also argued that Federal agencies were purchasing consumer data in a manner which violates the FTC’s rules on data selling. In 2021, Wyden revealed that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had collected location data from Americans’ phones.
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Defence/Aggression
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Salon ☛ So much for moving to Europe: Trump's allies are plotting an EU takeover
As 2023 ended, European nations failed to agree on a $54 billion package of assistance for Ukraine at a time when that country was desperately trying to stay afloat and continue its fight against Russian occupation forces. Bizarrely, the failure of that proposal coincided with a surprising EU decision to open membership talks with that beleaguered country.
In other words, no military aid for Ukraine in the short term but a possible offer of a golden ticket to join the EU at some unspecified future moment. Ukrainians might well ask themselves whether, at that point, they’ll still have a country.
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Harvard University ☛ Want better democracy? Let’s talk
The original framework for American democracy was hammered out amid heated disagreement and rigorous debate. Now, in this period of hardening political and social schisms, what’s hampering progress isn’t that we disagree, but how we do it or worse, try to avoid it altogether, panelists at Harvard Kennedy School argued Thursday evening.
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ANF News ☛ People of Kobanê celebrate liberation from ISIS on its 9th anniversary
Speaking here, Mihemed Şahîn, the co-chair of the Executive Council of the Euphrates Canton Autonomous Administration, said: "Kobanê was surrounded by a number of enemies who targeted our city. They targeted the will of the people. However, the will of the people was greater than their plans. They fought until victory and defeated the gangs. The victory of Kobanê was the victory of all the peoples of the Middle East and the declaration of an autonomous administration was the most important step towards freedom. For this reason, we call out to those who are trying to frustrate our democratic project; you will not achieve your goal."
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New Yorker ☛ Biden’s Dilemma in the Israel-Hamas War
As Israel continues its military campaign in Gaza, President Biden navigates a divided Democratic Party.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ U.S takes the China chip war to the next level - will soon stop Chinese companies from using American clowns for Hey Hi (AI) training
The U.S. does not want Chinese companies to access American computing performance from the clown.
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Latvia ☛ Baltic parliamentary speakers visiting Canada and USA
The Speakers of the parliaments of the Baltic States Lauri Hussar, Daiga Mieriņa and Viktorija Cmilyte-Nielsen are visiting Canada and the United States to discuss the security situation, support to Ukraine and mutual cooperation from January 27 to February 2.
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JURIST ☛ Türkiye formally endorses Sweden NATO membership after Erdogan approves parliamentary ratification
Türkiye’s President Tayyip Erdogan officially approved Sweden’s bid to join NATO on Thursday, marking the end of months of delay and leaving Hungary as the remaining hurdle to Stockholm’s NATO membership. The approval came about 20 months after Sweden first requested to join NATO in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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RFERL ☛ Russia Marks 80 Years Since Nazi Siege Of Leningrad Broken
The Russian city of St. Petersburg on January 27 marked the 80th anniversary of the end of a devastating World War II siege by Nazi forces with a series of memorial events attended by President Vladimir Putin.
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New York Times ☛ A Collective ‘No’: Anti-Putin Russians Embrace an Unlikely Challenger
Long lines have popped up in Russia and beyond to get Boris B. Nadezhdin, an antiwar candidate, onto the ballot for Russia’s presidential election in March.
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LRT ☛ Destination – America. How Lithuanians fled Russian Empire
“What is your race”, “Do you have polygamous relationships”, “Are you an anarchist” – these were among the questions Europeans had to answer when they decided to look for a better life in the US a century ago. Extra attention was paid to migrants from the East: Poles, Ukrainians and Lithuanians.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine Says No Evidence That POWs Died In Russian Plane
Ukrainian officials say Russia has provided no credible evidence to back its claims that their own forces shot down a military plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war who were to be swapped for Russian POWs.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine Reports Intensified Russian Attacks As Details Of Plane Crash Remain Disputed
Ukrainian officials on January 27 said Russia had intensified attacks in the past 24 hours, with a commander saying the sides had battled through "50 combat clashes" in the past day near Ukraine's Tavria region.
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Meduza ☛ Ukraine’s POW Coordination Headquarters says 65 POWs from unofficial Russian list of those allegedly on crashed plane were to be part of prisoner exchange — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Russia’s Investigative Committee releases video which it alleges shows Ukrainian POWs loaded onto crashed military plane — Meduza
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JURIST ☛ The Court of Arbitration for Sports hears Russia appeal against International Olympic Committee ban
The Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) heard Russia’s appeal Friday against the sanctions imposed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC).
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RFERL ☛ Man Detained Following Bashkortostan Protests Dies In Custody, Family Says
Relatives of a man detained following a series of protests this month in Russia's Bashkortostan region said the man has died in custody, according to OVD.info, which monitors repression in Russia.
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RFERL ☛ Russia Puts Writer Akunin On Wanted List After Anti-Kremlin Comments
Russia's Interior Ministry has put prominent writer Grigory Chkhartishvili, known under the pen name Boris Akunin, on a wanted list for alleged criminal activity, although specific charges were not listed.
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The Straits Times ☛ India pivots away from Russian arms, but will retain strong ties
But New Delhi must step carefully to avoid pushing Moscow closer to China.
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Environment
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Idiomdrottning ☛ Recycling of TetraPaks in Sweden
10000 tons Tetra style packages get recycled every year in Sweden. That’s way more than I feared. I’m such a pessimist and knowing how Tetra loves to greenwash things, I expected way less. This is millions of packages.
Just over half of what gets collected (19800 tons), the rest is used as fuel.
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Wildlife/Nature
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-01-24 [Older] Alaska Charter Company Pays $900k After Guide Caused Wildfire by Not Properly Extinguishing Campfire
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El País ☛ Will we ever be able to have a conversation with animals?
The arrival of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have set expectations on their head when it comes to achieving complex communication with other species. These technologies allow experts to analyze animals’ sounds, movements and behaviors with a speed and precision that would be impossible for unassisted humans. In the Whale SETI team’s study, for example, this technology was essential to be able to decode and reproduce the whales’ calls. They used advanced equipment to listen and analyze recordings of the animals’ sounds, which helped scientists to detect patterns and variations in their communication, as well as variations in the tone of their calls and in the way they produce sounds.
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Finance
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Common Dreams ☛ Loser: Bewildered By Water and 83.3 Million Other Things
Okay, we know there are far more substantive things going on. But we join the multitudes celebrating Schadenfreude Friday, when the lying, raping, bullying "love child of a Hapsburg inbred and a necrotic squash" got "beaten like a drum" by an 80-year-old woman who steadfastly insisted the rule of law applies even to clowns in orange makeup who claim it doesn't. Hence, the sidewalk troll outside Trump Hotel: "Ha ha ha ha ha. Keep talking loser," with smiley face. No wonder God made Trump smell.
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New York Times ☛ Finland Votes for President
The election comes as the alliance’s newest member is grappling with concerns about potential aggression from its neighbor, Russia.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Deutsche Welle ☛ EU elections a 'prime target' for disinformation
A dedicated EU task force investigated 750 incidents of deliberately misleading information being spread by foreign actors last year, published in a new report. As in previous years, Russia was the primary source, "trying to justify its war of aggression against Ukraine," the authors of the European Union External Action Service (EEAS) document wrote.
Ukraine was the number one targeted country, followed by the United States, Germany and Poland. Close to 150 institutions, including the EU, NATO and media outlets like Deutsche Welle, Reuters and Euronews, were affected.
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India Times ☛ Elon Musk is spreading election misinformation, but X's fact checkers are long gone
This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Trump's claims about the U.S. voting system, putting forth distorted and false notions that American elections were wide-open for fraud and illegal voting by noncitizens.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Wired ☛ How Beloved Indie Blog 'The Hairpin' Turned Into an AI Clickbait Farm
In 2018, the indie women’s website The Hairpin stopped publishing, along with its sister site The Awl. This year, The Hairpin has been Frankensteined back into existence and stuffed with slapdash AI-generated articles designed to attract search engine traffic. (Sample headlines: “What Does It Mean When You Remember Your Dreams?” and “White Town’s ‘Your Woman’ Explained.”) Some original articles remain but have been reformatted in a strange way, and the authors’ bylines have been replaced by generic male names of people who do not appear to exist. One piece by writer Kelly Conaboy about celebrity teeth now appears under the name “James Nolen,” of whom I can’t find a single trace online.
This would be a nasty end for any independent media property. For The Hairpin, it’s especially repulsive, because the site was the antithesis of a content mill. It never courted a huge audience or chased trending topics—it was a writer-led website that found an audience by being experimental and intimate and odd. It served as a launching pad for bona fide stars like former New York Times reporter Jazmine Hughes, Bojack Horseman designer Lisa Hanawalt, and New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino precisely because it valued nurturing fresh ideas—and letting people make jokes!—not optimizing revenue per click.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Iran sentences niece of DW journalist to jail
Payar believes his niece's arrest and subsequent prison sentence in Iran can be attributed to his journalistic activities with DW Persian and Iran Journal, even though Zarea never collaborated with these media in any way.
"Two weeks after Ghazaleh's arrest, I received a message from her mobile phone. Initially, they tried to pretend that Ghazaleh herself contacted me, but it was clear that they were interrogators intending to threaten me directly," Payar told DW.
During the call, Payar asked about his niece's location and what she was being charged with. In response, he was told: "Cooperation with you [Iran Journal] and Deutsche Welle Persian and...."
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JURIST ☛ Moscow court extends WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich prison sentence
A Moscow court ruled on Friday to extend the sentence of imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich by two months. Gershkovich, a US citizen, has been detained in Moscow since March 29, 2023 on espionage charges. This is the fourth extension of his sentence. He will now spend more than a year behind bars before the trial begins.
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RFERL ☛ Uzbek Rights Defender Given Rare Access To Imprisoned Bloggers
Sattoriy, 42, is known for investigating corruption allegations against local officials and criticizing regional authorities in his native Surkhondaryo Province on his vlog People's Opinion, which was on YouTube and Telegram until his arrest in 2021.
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ANF News ☛ MA journalist Altıntaş taken into custody in Adiyaman
The journalist was going to follow a news in the city’s Yeni Mahalle, when the vehicle he was traveling in was stopped by the police. Altıntaş was taken into custody and brought to the Provincial Security Directorate on the grounds that there was a detention warrant against him.
No other information was given to the people who were with Altıntaş in the car.
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The Dissenter ☛ Project Censored Radio: Assange Update—Plus, Book Conversation At Red Emma's
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JURIST ☛ Moscow court extends prison sentence for WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich
A Moscow court ruled on Friday to extend the sentence of imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich by two months. Gershkovich, a US citizen, has been detained in Moscow since March 29, 2023 on espionage charges. This is the fourth extension of his sentence.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Axios ☛ Apple announces sweeping EU App Store changes
Driving the news: Europe's major tech competition law, set to go into effect March 7, requires Apple to loosen its strict rules requiring developers to rely on the App Store for distribution and payment processing.
• Apple has long resisted any changes to its App Store rules, citing security and privacy. The company also argues its services for developers are best-in-class and ensure smooth user experiences free of spam or harmful content.
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India Times ☛ Spotify says Apple's plan to comply with EU regulation 'farce'
From early March, developers will be able to offer alternative app stores on iPhones and opt out of using Apple's in-app payment system, which charges commissions of up to 30%, under the bloc's new rules.
However, developers will still be required to pay a "core technology fee" of 50 euro cents per user account per year under Apple's new EU regime.
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Greg Morris ☛ Other App Stores
I, as a user, have absolutely no desire to install another App Store on my device, nor buy my apps from anywhere else. It is a terrible experience on desktop to need several stores to just play a few games, and will only make things worse. I will also happily pay a little extra to be able to manage all the payments that I make to companies in one place and easy to access on my iPhone. However, I can be happy with my view point and also think that Apple treats developers horribly.
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John Gruber ☛ Apple’s Plans for the DMA in the European Union
But Rovensky’s framing captures the dichotomy. Anti-big-business regulation and pro-consumer results often do go hand-in-hand, but the DMA exposes the fissures. I do not think the DMA is going to change much, if anything at all, for the better for iOS users in the E.U. (Or for non-iOS users in the EU, for that matter.) And much like the GDPR’s website cookie regulations, I think if it has any practical effect, it’ll be to make things worse for users. Whether these options are better for developers seems less clear.
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Ruben Schade ☛ The EU’s iPhone plans
The European Union is fascinating case study in law and geopolitics, which I may write in more detail about at some point. It also increasingly represents a check and balance on an industry used to getting its way without repercussions, for which some of us outside Europe are thankful.
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Jamie Zawinski ☛ "International" Version
Apple is being forced to allow outside web rendering engines on iOS in the EU, so in the full spirit of malicious compliance, they are going to allow that only in the EU. Mozilla's mad that they will have to maintain two different browser releases.
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Trademarks
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Right of Publicity
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Digital Music News ☛ Explicit AI-Generated Taylor Swift Pics Circulate Online — X/Twitter in Damage Control
X has effectively gutted its moderation team since its transition into Elon Musk rule, relying primarily on user reporting and automated systems, but most social media companies don’t really have plans in place to tackle the moderation of fakes. Similarly, Meta made significant cuts to its moderation teams that otherwise tackled coordinated harassment and disinformation campaigns.
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India Times ☛ Deepfake explicit images of Taylor Swift spread on social media: Swifties are fighting back
The deepfake-detecting group Reality Defender said it tracked a deluge of nonconsensual pornographic material depicting Swift, particularly on X. Some images also made their way to Meta-owned Facebook and other social media platforms.
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The Verge ☛ X appears to block Taylor Swift searches... barely
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre weighed in yesterday as well, calling on Congress to create legislation to protect people from deepfake porn.
X replied to our email asking whether Swift’s name is being blocked intentionally with an emailed auto-reply.
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Salon ☛ Taylor Swift and George Carlin nonconsensual deepfakes prompt possible legal actions against AI use
However, this is not the first time this has happened to a celebrity and certainly won't be the last as the unregulated technology continues to rapidly develop. Any person whose image is accessible online could become the victim of those who want to create pornographic deepfakes of them. The 17-year-old "Doctor Strange and the Mulitverse of Madness" star Xochitl Gomez said she has been unable to remove explicit fakes of herself from the [Internet]. Even social media influencers and online personalities have deepfake nudes circulating. And while these people may not have the clout to effect change, the collective power of Swifties have forced the issue to light.
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NPR ☛ Deepfakes exploiting Taylor Swift images exemplify a scourge with little oversight
The assault on Swift's famous image serves as a reminder of how deepfakes have become easier to make in recent years. A number of apps can swap a person's face onto other media with high fidelity, and the latest iterations promise to use AI to generate even more convincing images and video.
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ABC ☛ Fake explicit Taylor Swift images: White House is 'alarmed'
"While social media companies make their own independent decisions about content management, we believe they have an important role to play in enforcing their own rules to prevent the spread of misinformation, and non-consensual, intimate imagery of real people," she added.
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Silicon Angle ☛ George Carlin’s estate files suit over AI-generated comedy special
The lawsuit was filed on Thursday by the estate’s executor, Jerold Hamza, who was Carlin’s manager for 30 years. The development is not unexpected. Carlin’s daughter, Kelly Carlin, told The Daily Beast last month that she was holding talks with attorneys about pursuing legal action over the video.
“The ‘George Carlin’ in that video is not the beautiful human who defined his generation and raised me with love,” Kelly Carlin wrote in a statement obtained by Variety. “It is a poorly executed facsimile cobbled together by unscrupulous individuals to capitalize on the extraordinary goodwill my father established with his adoring fanbase.”
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ IPTV Lawsuit With 19TB of Data & ONE TON of Print Discovery Heads For Trial
According to the U.S. government, subscription IPTV services Jetflicks and iStreamitAll were once two of the largest piracy platforms in the country. Eight Las Vegas residents were indicted in 2019 but while some pled guilty and were sentenced years ago, others are now heading to trial, 700 case filings later. With 19TB of data and 175,000 pages of print discovery weighing roughly a ton in paper form, this could be the most convoluted streaming piracy prosecution ever seen in the United States.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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Finding DEIMOS: — Johnny as the fool
Helen awoke to two sharp knocks on her apartment door.
In a daze, she rose from her chair, staggered to the door and swung it open, not bothering to check the peep-hole.
"Johnny, what THE FUCK?", Helen gasped at the sight of an aberration.
Johnny grinned at her, dried blood crusted beneath his cracked aviators. He was soaking wet, rain pouring behind him.
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🔤SpellBinding: DHIMORU Wordo: POPES
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UNDERSIDE
Playing around with govidious, I grew comfortable enough to make something more useful. This gopher hole now hosts lists of various privacy respecting foss front-ends in _ /files/underside/ _[1], sourced from the fantastic farside[2] project.
Instances for each service are divided up into individual txt files in the said directory. While you're welcome to manually visit everytime you're looking for a front end, the idea behind creating this was to have an updated list that is easily accesible and can be incorporated into custom scripts.
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Technology and Free Software
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Firefox tip
A quick tip - if you spend a lot of time on the smolnet, you'll invariably end up on non-encrypted www sites. Later versions of Firefox will "helpfully" block downloads, such as PDFs, from such sites. To disable this annoyance, go to about:config and set 'block_download_insecure' to false.
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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.