Links 30/01/2024: Many More Layoffs (Microsoft the Most Tech Layoffs This Year)
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- 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
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Jeff Bridgforth ☛ Blogroll
One issue that Matthias mentioned is the problem of visibility and discoverability amid the social media chatter. One solution to this problem is to share our posts on our social media channels and links to posts we find interesting. He also encouraged the return to the practice of having a blogroll on our sites to help point our readers to other interesting people.
He challenged his readers to consider adding a blogroll to their site this week. Start small with eight links plus a description of each of those sites and why we picked them.
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Jim Nielsen ☛ Online Handles: A Round-Up
After asking about the origin of online handles, I heard back from a number of folks and loved the stories.
It’s fascinating to see an online name like “Apple Annie”, read the origin story, and see this wonderful, multi-faceted human being with a rich history behind the seemingly-random string of characters on screen.
It makes the [Internet] more human and I love it.
So I wanted to follow up with a collection of what I heard from folks.
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Chris McLeod ☛ Adding a Bookmarks Page
I mentioned over on The Underground that one thing I wanted to add to my site, to “do more” with it, was a space to collect bookmarks and fun links I com across. Well, I’ve added a quick and dirty “first draft” of the feature over on the new /bookmarks page. It’s even got its own feed you can use to follow along at home.
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Jake Lazaroff ☛ The Web Component Success Story
Tom MacWright wrote a short post wondering why we don’t see prominent applications using web components.
That’s a fair question! It’s easy to see the success of frameworks like React and Rails: just look at the thousands of websites built with them. What does the web component success story look like?
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Kevin C Tofel ☛ I love this "smart" home for minimalist retirement
The home in question is designed and built by ZenniHome. They’re based out in Arizona. Conincidentally, that’s one of my favorite states to be in. But that’s not why I’m loving Zenni’s Citizen home. Check out the walkthrough and then I’ll explain.
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The New Leaf Journal ☛ Missing Temu Ads Through Good Internet Usage
I recently learned about something called Temu from one of the Semafor newsletters (unfortunately I lost my link). According to the newsletter, Temu is some sort of Chinese shopping app that somewhat recently became available in the United States and had achieved early success thanks in part to an online advertising blitz. You can infer from my opening that I had never heard of Temu before. I followed a link from the newsletter to an article by Ms. Julia Wadlow at ModernRetail titled ‘I’ve never seen anything like this’: Temu’s ad spend soars as it embarks on a marketing blitz. From reading the article, I learned what Temu is and why some people are apparently talking about it. But my take-away was ultimately self-involved – I thought about why it is that I had no idea what Temu. The answer: I use the internet correctly.
I will work through the ModernRetail article and in so doing, highlight why I did not know what Temu is and how you too can achieve ignorance of annoying things on the [Internet].
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Gizmodo ☛ The Toy Shop That Inspired Toy Story Is Shutting Down After 86 Years
Jeffrey’s Toys, located in downtown SF, was a valuable resource for the team behind the first feature-length computer-generated animated film—inspiring tales of toys that secretly come to life, and spawning a long-running franchise in the process. Sadly, Jeffrey’s Toys is soon to go the way of many brick and mortar places where a kid could wander the aisles for that special gift. Its storied legacy was carried by the Luhn family for generations; in an interview with SF Gate, co-owner Matthew Luhn shared that the beloved shop “had this real magical thing.” Luhn is also an animator, and worked on Pixar films including Ratatouille and Cars.
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Science
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Omicron Limited ☛ Science sleuths are using technology to find fakery and plagiarism in published research
Many images appeared to have duplicated segments that would make the scientists' results look stronger. The papers under scrutiny involve lab research on the workings of cells. One involved samples from bone marrow from human volunteers.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Japan's moon lander comes back to life
Assuming it has enough juice, SLIM can now tackle its main mission of investigating an exposed area of the moon's mantle, the inner layer usually deep beneath its crust.
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Reason ☛ Should Government Fund Science? A Soho Forum Debate [Ed: AEI is a very malicious front group for nefarious oligarchs who deny science]
AEI's Tony Mills and British biochemist Terence Kealey debate whether science needs government funding.
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Think They're on The Verge of Breaching The Blood-Brain Barrier
At long last.
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Hardware
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University of Toronto ☛ Servers are (probably) starting to drop serial ports
One of the things that we have had for a long time is a serial console server, which is to say a server that collects and logs serial console output from all of our regular servers (this is primarily Linux kernel messages, as we've moved away from making the serial port the 'real' kernel console). To date we've done this through actual serial ports on the servers, which we set up as an additional console. However, this has an obvious issue, which is that your servers need actual serial ports.
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Dan Langille ☛ Spreading thermal paste – replacing Dell R730 CPUs
After cleaning four CPUs, I found the better approach was to remove them from the M/B first, and then wipe from the edge to the middle. The paste came off easily. I used the isopropyl alcohol by putting a small amount onto a paper towel and then wiping.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Techdirt ☛ South Dakota Legislature Passes Bill That Would Make It A Felony To Expose Officers To Drugs
Despite all evidence to the contrary, law enforcement officials continue to pretend being in the same room as dread drug fentanyl is enough to hospitalize officers, if not actually kill them. This myth has been irresponsibly perpetrated by a number of law enforcement agencies. To date, not a single case of contact overdose has been verified by medical professionals or toxicologists.
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Will COVID-19 vaccines drive an “epidemic of autism”? No, but Byram Bridle thinks so.
Sometimes there are topics that just demand that I write about them. So it was that when I saw the “target” of today’s post, I knew I had to write about this was because it so clearly vindicated what for me had started out as a bit of a quip that I had started repeating in the early months after the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna first rolled out in those heady days of early 2021, namely that the only reason antivaxxers weren’t claiming that COVID-19 vaccines could cause autism was because they were not being administered to young children. As the age range for the COVID-19 vaccines got younger and younger, I predicted that antivaxxers would soon be blaming them for autism, but that it might take a few years because autism spectrum disorders are usually not diagnosed until a child is around 3 years old and the characteristic behaviors start to manifest themselves to the point where the parents become concerned. Leave it to Byram Bridle to vindicate my prediction with a post over the weekend on his Substack entitled Will COVID-19 Shots Drive an Epidemic of Autism?, albeit not in the way that I expected. He did, however, echo a common variant of an old antivax claim that vaccines cause autism by adding the blurb If Yes, Those Who Coerced Pregnant Women to Take modRNA Shots Will Be Responsible For It.
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Science Alert ☛ Even More Evidence That Alzheimer's Was Being Spread by Now-Banned Injections
Devastating.
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Science Alert ☛ Want to Get More Exercise? Maybe Leave Your Spouse Behind
Here's what the science says.
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Arne Bahlo ☛ I Lived 7 Days without a Smartphone
And I’m trying to fix this: I don’t have TikTok1 or Instagram, I only use YouTube in Safari with Shorts blocked, and I use one-sec for apps that I don’t want to waste my time on. But still, time-sinks keep creeping in after a week or two.
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AJ Bourg ☛ The Anti Social
I saw a post on Instagram the other day that said something like, “Instagram is the new refrigerator. Am I going there and taking a look because I need something, or because I’m bored?”
And I think that’s the main fault I have with social media. I actually really like Instagram. And since leaving Twitter and joining Threads, I really very much like Threads, too. I legitimately laugh and learn new things from both sites. I have aggressively curated who I follow and quickly unfollow people who are not posting things that add to my enjoyment of the site.
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JURIST ☛ France government abandons plan to reduce state subsidies on agricultural diesel
The French government introduced a series of urgent measures on Friday that abandon its plan to reduce state subsidies on agricultural diesel. The measures included emergency solutions aiming to make the life of farmers easier and protect their income, and were announced within “a logic of agricultural independence and food sovereignty, with healthy, safe and sustainable production.”
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Omicron Limited ☛ Stricter parental monitoring of social media isn't always better, says study
In a new study published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, researchers surveyed 248 U.S. parents of middle schoolers about their media monitoring behaviors, the family context, and perceptions of their children's problematic [Internet] use. The results revealed that restrictive parental monitoring (including rules and limits of time or content) of adolescents' digital media use was associated with problematic [Internet] use.
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Zimbabwe ☛ Has access to Chinese satellites helped Zimbabwe’s agric revival?
Zimbabwe has had access to satellites but it has been limited for the most part. We have had access to Eumetsat (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites). However, apparently we only had access to their geostationary satellites.
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Vice Media Group ☛ How the U.S. Government Could Lower Food Prices for Everyone
This has made it easier for large corporations to raise prices in the U.S., something large corporations have sometimes acknowledged. In the spring of 2022, for example, the chief financial officer of Nestle said on an earnings call that it was “usually easier to implement pricing [in the U.S.] because we have less constraints than in Europe, timing-wise.” On the same call, an executive said Nestle was instituting “higher pricing in the U.S. market than comparatively in Europe or elsewhere” due to inflation.
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PsyPost ☛ Extreme metal guitar skills linked to intrasexual competition, but not mating success
One of the most significant findings was that the speed of guitar playing was a significant predictor of intrasexual competition. This indicates that guitarists who perceive themselves as playing faster than their peers tend to have higher levels of intrasexual competitiveness. Moreover, this fast-playing speed was specifically linked to the superiority enjoyment aspect of intrasexual competition, suggesting that these guitarists derive pleasure from feeling superior in their skill compared to other male guitarists.
These findings contribute to the broader understanding of the role of creative displays in human social and sexual behavior. They suggest that in the specific context of extreme metal music, guitar playing might be more about asserting dominance and status among male peers, rather than directly influencing mating success. This aligns with the idea that cultural displays, like music and art, can serve multiple social functions, including status elevation within a peer group, rather than being solely about attracting romantic partners.
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While COVID-19 surges, California guts mitigation efforts in schools
The new guidance came days before a Senate hearing on the dangers of long COVID
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Video ☛ Decisions, overwhelmingly wrong
I will be brief, because it is clear that there is far more demand to speak in the debate than there is time. That shows that we absolutely need a longer debate; we need a debate on the Floor of the House, because it is not just Members present who want to speak, and members of the public have shown enormous interest. I will not go over the excellent points that have been made and the data that has been shared. We know we have a problem in this country with excess deaths, particularly among younger people and particularly from cardiovascular disease. That, in itself, is a huge challenge. We need medical experts and statisticians to address those issues—I am not qualified to do so. What I will say is this: lockdown changed everything. Our response to covid changed everything. Just as we look back on different periods of history—before the war; before the industrial revolution—I believe we will look back at before and after lockdown. Lockdown has changed our economy and how we relate to each other. It has changed our health and our understanding of children’s development. The conditions under which those decisions were made—decisions that were overwhelmingly wrong, in my opinion, although I do not blame any individuals, given the pressure they were under—have not changed. The conditions under which we suspended the precautionary principle, ignored the fact that interventions may cause harm, suspended the importance of children’s education, suspended the safeguarding of children, suspended the need for medical trials and suspended all sorts of safeguards that have stood society in good stead for a long time have not changed. The conditions in Government, the media and wider society under which those decisions were made have not changed because, unfortunately, we have not yet got to the heart of the matter. Why did that pressure come from the media? Why did we have to follow what other countries were doing? Why were we obsessed with particular points of data, such as deaths from covid, rather than considering the wider impact on society? My concern about the covid inquiry is that it is asking all the wrong questions. It is concerned with who swore at whom on WhatsApp, and not the wider conditions under which decisions were made. When, several Education Secretaries ago, the former, former, former Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson), stood up in the House of Commons and said that he would close schools, I remember, as a mother, shouting at the television, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”. I could see the impact it would have—not just on my own children, but across all the wider components of society. Society is like a big machine; we cannot just take out one part and assume that the rest will continue to operate. We have seen that clearly over the past three years. We must address the reasons why these decisions were made. We cannot do that in three minutes each—we must have a longer debate.
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Video ☛ Covid inquiry no go zone
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Business Insider ☛ The full list of major US companies slashing staff this year, from Citigroup to Google and Microsoft
Discord employees learned about the layoffs in an all-hands meeting and a memo sent by CEO Jason Citron.
"We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020," Citron said in the memo. "As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated."
In August, Discord reduced its headcount by 4%. The company was valued at $15 billion in 2021, according to CNBC.
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New York Times ☛ Focused Cuts and Fewer Layers: Tech Layoffs Enter a New Phase
Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other tech companies have been on a layoff spree this month, with the latest cuts differing from last year’s mass reductions.
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The Verge ☛ Microsoft stole my Chrome tabs, and it wants yours, too - The Verge
Microsoft Edge’s import feature has been automatically importing Chrome tabs without consent. Windows users have been complaining about the issue for months.
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GamingOnLinux ☛ Eidos-Montréal cut nearly 100 staff with new Deus Ex reportedly cancelled
Hopes for a new Deus Ex have been dashed, with the Embracer Group owned Eidos-Montréal confirming that they've cut 97 people go as the mass-layoffs continue. This is just another in a long list of developers and publishers cutting staff and cancelling projects, all while the Embracer Group try to reduce their costs. It's also another in a long list of just industry-wide layoffs lately.
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Deus Ex Game Reportedly Cancelled As Another Embracer Studio Hit By Layoffs
Bloomberg is reporting that another Embracer Group development team has been hit by layoffs, resulting in the cancellation of a brand-new Deus Ex game.
We don't have too many details on the project — it was unannounced at the time of its reported cancellation — but the outlet claims the game was "slated to enter production later this year" after being in early development for two years.
Eidos was the team behind this project - the very same studio that delivered the last Deus Ex game; Mankind Divided. That one launched on Xbox One in 2016, so it's safe to say it's been quite a wait for a new entry in the franchise.
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CNBC ☛ Amazon terminates iRobot deal, Roomba maker to lay off 31% of staff
Amazon said on Monday it would not move forward with a planned acquisition of vacuum-maker iRobot , with the two companies saying in a release there was “no path to regulatory approval for the deal.”
The Roomba maker also announced it would lay off 31% of its employees, around 350 people, and that its chair and CEO, Colin Angle, would step down effective immediately.
Shares of iRobot fell 10% in morning trading on the news.
The fate of the deal was plunged into uncertainty after The Wall Street Journal reported that the European Union would not offer regulatory approval.
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Massive Layoffs Shake an Already Chaotic Video Game Industry
A series of devastating layoffs rocked the video game industry to its core after one of the greatest years in gaming history. In 2023, the market returned to growth after a post-COVID supply-chain-induced slump, largely on the back of strong console sales and several instantly classic titles being released to critical and financial success.
For gamers, things might never have been better, but a peek behind the curtain revealed a business that’s nearing a breaking point. More than 6,500 game developers were laid off in 2023. In just its first month, 2024 layoffs have nearly matched that number, with no end in sight. Part of that is simply a post-pandemic, post-zero-interest-rate correction that we’re seeing play out across the entire tech industry — but gaming’s problems go a lot deeper.
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The Register UK ☛ SolarWinds slams SEC lawsuit against it as 'unprecedented' victim blaming
SolarWinds – whose network monitoring software was backdoored by Russian spies so that the biz's customers could be spied upon – has accused America's financial watchdog of seeking to "revictimise the victim" after the agency sued it over the 2020 attack.
In a motion to dismiss [PDF] the SEC's lawsuit, the embattled developer described the fraud charges leveled against it, and its CISO Tim Brown, "as unfounded as they are unprecedented."
In a statement to The Register, Serrin Turner, an attorney at Latham and Watkins, which is representing SolarWinds, railed against the SEC's charges.
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NL Times ☛ Dutch State Sec. of Digitalization quits X
Outgoing State Secretary Alexandra van Huffelen (Digitalization) is quitting X because the platform does not comply with EU laws and does not appear to have any intention of doing so, she told NU.nl. “For me, it is done,” she told the newspaper.
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New York Times ☛ Nvidia’s Big Tech Rivals Put Their Own A.I. Chips on the Table
The boom in generative A.I. over the last year exposed just how dependent big tech companies had become on Nvidia. They cannot build chatbots and other A.I. systems without a special kind of chip that Nvidia has mastered over the past several years. They have spent billions of dollars on Nvidia’s systems, and the chipmaker has not kept up with the demand.
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Connor Tumbleson ☛ AI & Cicada 3301
I've been reworking the puzzles one by one - slowly getting to the point that I'm in unsolved territory. I find solving previously solved puzzles, but forcing myself to just use the source material and attempt solves myself are the most rewarding. Lots of guides jump rather quickly or go from one step to another with no description on why.
When you work to solve them without just following an older guide - you understand the puzzles far better. So I've started working on the puzzles again, but wanted to leverage the type of technology available in this day in age.
So I decided to build my own tools for understanding the Liber Primus as well as leveraging AI models to help me in this journey. This post is describing some of that success.
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Jon Udell ☛ You say feature, I say bug: the enshittification of Microsoft Paint
I never asked for these “long-awaited” new features, Paint is (or was) useful to me precisely because it only does the kind of basic bitmap editing I need when compositing screenshots. But I can opt out, right?
Nope.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Gizmodo ☛ Roomba Won’t Give Amazon a Map of Your Home After Merger Implodes
Regulators in the EU sent the companies a list of concerns in November regarding how Amazon’s acquisition would stifle innovation in the robot vacuum cleaner marketplace. Privacy was not a concern brought by EU regulators, but consumer advocates have spoken out about how the Roomba acquisition would give Amazon another device to track you and dominate your home’s systems. That pressure from regulators seems to have blown up this deal, and it seems to be an inadvertent, but major, win for your home’s privacy. The company has been growing its presence in consumer homes with Amazon Alexa, Ring doorbells and cameras, and Amazon Fire TV Stick.
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Rach Smith ☛ I turned off analytics
Something’s changed with my traffic over the last few months. Maybe I hit some sort of “regular posting” threshold for the algorithm to deem me worthy, but some pages have started ranking with Google, and so now the majority of my traffic comes from search.
It’s made the analytics data boring, to be honest. I don’t care about what gets ranked on Google, I’m not trying to optimise for the people who come from that channel.
I keep writing on this site because it is the best way to find people who have similar interests as me. In particular - the nerds, because my IRL social relationships are with people who are very much on the normy side of the normy-to-nerdy spectrum.
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Michael Geist ☛ The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 190: Debating Bill S-210 – Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne Defends Her Internet Age Verification Bill
I’ve described Bill S-210, the Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act, as the most dangerous Internet bill you’ve never heard of as it contemplates measures that raise privacy concerns, website blocking, and extend far beyond pornography sites to include search and social media. The bill started in the Senate and having passed there is now in the House of Commons, where MPs voted in favour of it at second reading and sent it to committee for further study. Senator Julie Mivelle-Dechêne is the chief architect and lead defender of the bill. A former Radio-Canada broadcaster who was appointed to the Senate by Justin Trudeau in 2018, she joins the Law Bytes podcast to debate her bill as she provides her rationale for it and defends against the criticism and concerns it has sparked.
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OpenRightsGroup ☛ How a weaker data watchdog impacts you
When things go wrong with people’s data they turn to the UK’s data watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). This could be about anything, including workplace disputes, discrimination cases, or campaigners challenging why a public body has refused a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
Sadly there are many failings within the ICO. It is widely considered to be one of the weakest data regulators in Europe. Too often it has failed to hold government departments and companies to account for data protection abuses. For example ORG’s report Data privacy and the Information Commissioner’s Office During a Crisis exposed failures by the ICO in protecting the public privacy and data rights during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Despite there already being problems the Government’s Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) Bill will weaken the ICO further, attacking its independence, granting it powers to ignore complaints, and giving Ministers too much power to set its direction and priorities. Our briefing on the bill sets out these problems.
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Techdirt ☛ Well, That’s Everyone: Senator Wyden Letter Confirms The NSA Is Buying US Persons’ Data From Data Brokers
Buying domestic data from data brokers is just something the government does all the time. Bypassing restraints enacted by the Supreme Court, federal agencies (along with local law enforcement agencies) are hoovering up whatever domestic data they can from private companies all too happy to be part of the problem.
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Defence/Aggression
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Gizmodo ☛ TikTok Testing Whether Users Will Put Up With Every Video Being an Ad
TikTok has grabbed the world’s attention in recent years, averaging 73 million American users every month. The app knows exactly what you like, and now it’s rolling out phase two: selling you something with every single video. TikTok is testing out a new feature that will identify objects in a video automatically, and encourage viewers to “find similar items on TikTok Shop,” according to Bloomberg.
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The Verge ☛ TikTok goes full YouTube
The YouTube-ization of TikTok has been happening for a while. The platform is testing 30-minute long videos, and that comes just a few months after it began expanding video lengths up to 15 minutes. Most YouTube videos tend to be 10 minutes or longer (think of “a week in the life” vlogs) for monetization reasons rather than the bite-sized-length content for which TikTok is famous.
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Vox ☛ America no longer has a monopoly on deadly drones
The US military has gotten used to owning the skies. American air superiority in recent conflicts has been so complete that no US ground troops have been killed by an enemy aircraft since the Korean War, which ended more than 70 years ago.
Depending on your definition of “aircraft,” however, that may have changed on Sunday, when three US troops were killed in a drone strike on a US base in Jordan near the Syrian border. More than 40 service members were injured in the strike, according to the Pentagon. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of militias backed by the government of Iran that oppose both the US’s presence in the region and its support for Israel, took responsibility for the attack. Tehran has denied involvement, but Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters on Monday that “we know that Iran is behind it.” President Joe Biden vowed to “hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing,” and a number of GOP lawmakers have called for direct strikes against Iran in retaliation.
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Greece ☛ Islamic State group claims responsibility for an attack on an Istanbul church
Yerlikaya said police raided 30 locations and detained a total of 47 people as part of the investigation into the attack.
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NPR ☛ Pelosi accuses some protesters demanding Gaza cease-fire of having ties to Russia
Asked for clarification on whether she thought some anti-war protesters were plants, Pelosi said: "I don't think they're plants. I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that."
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Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Trounces YouTube in Total User Minutes Among Kids Aged 2-18
TikTok is trouncing YouTube in total user minutes for the youngest generation (2-18 year-olds). The study reveals kids are spending 60% more time on TikTok compared to YouTube. Is there any wonder why YouTube launched its Shorts feature to compete?
The study was conducted by parent control software maker Qustodio and surveyed the media habits of over 400,000 families and schools. The annual report reveals that children aged 4-18 spent 112 minutes daily on TikTok in 2023—an increase over the 107 minutes reported in 2022. While YouTube still remains king among streaming, it shows TikTok’s short-form video format is catching up.
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FAIR ☛ The Real Border Crisis: Texas vs. the Constitution
The United States is on the verge of a constitutional crisis, one that enlivens the nationalist fervor of Trump America and that centers on a violent, racist closed-border policy.
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RFERL ☛ Tajik, Russian Nationals Suspected Of Deadly Church Shooting In Istanbul
One Tajik and one Russian were detained in Istanbul over a church shooting, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said late on January 28, describing the two men as members of the Islamic State (IS) extremist organization.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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RFERL ☛ Man Detained Over Mass Rallies In Russia's Bashkortostan Dies In Custody
Rifat Dautov, a resident of Ufa, the capital of Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan, has died after police detained him last week in a village on suspicion of taking part in mass rallies protesting the imprisonment of noted Bashkir activist Fail Alsynov in mid-January.
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RFERL ☛ Kremlin Critic Kara-Murza Reportedly Moved From Siberian Prison
Russian rights defender Aleksandr Podrabinek said on January 29 that a letter he sent to longtime Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza at the IK-6 prison in the Siberian city of Omsk was sent back marked "return to sender."
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Insight Hungary ☛ Hungary is the last one to approve Sweden's NATO bid
Turkey has approved Sweden's NATO accession, leaving Hungary as the last member yet to greenlight the bid. Despite persistent calls from Western allies urging progress on Sweden's application, Hungary remains a focal point after more than a year of delays.
The country's far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has consistently pledged that Hungary wouldn't be the last NATO member to endorse Sweden's entry into the alliance, is under scrutiny following Turkey's parliamentary nod on Monday.
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AntiWar ☛ Nancy Pelosi’s New Adventures in McCarthyism
Over the weekend, noting the ongoing opposition to the far-right Israeli regime’s war on the civilians of Gaza, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi charged that: …For them to call for a cease-fire is Putin’s message, Mr. Putin’s message.
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RFERL ☛ Imprisoned Russian Rights Defender Gregori Vinter Asks Putin To Euthanize Him
Russian activist Gregori Vinter, who was sentenced to three years in prison earlier this month on a charge of distributing "false" information about Russian armed forces, has asked President Vladimir Putin to euthanize him "to avoid an excruciating death of diabetes."
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teleSUR ☛ Russian President Putin To Seek Re-Election in March
Latest polls show that his campaign starts with the support of 80 percent of Russian citizens.
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France24 ☛ Blinken warns Ukraine's gains could be reversed without more US aid
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Monday that Ukraine's gains over two years of fighting were all in doubt without new US funding, as NATO's chief visited to lobby Congress.
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Environment
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New Statesman ☛ The problem with heat pumps
Still, their hesitancy is not unique. A 2022 survey by the sustainable consultancy firm, DG Cities, found that almost half of respondents (46 per cent) only knew “a little” about heat pumps. One in five said they had heard of the systems, but didn’t actually know what they were.
Misinformation about heat pumps – whether they work effectively in cold weather or will reduce a bill-payer’s heating costs – is rife. Last week, the Energy Minister, Martin Callanan told Sky News’ ClimateCast that “vested interests” are “funding campaigns of misinformation” about heat pumps.
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DeSmog ☛ Reform Mayor Candidate Attends Anti-ULEZ Protest Run by ‘Climate Lockdown’ Conspiracy Theory Group
The Reform UK candidate for London mayor has been accused of ignoring science after joining a rally organised by conspiracy theorists who say green policies are a plot to impose “climate lockdowns”.
Howard Cox, director of the FairFuelUK lobby group against charges on motorists, attended Saturday’s protest in Trafalgar Square against London’s ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) expansion, which has been seized on by opponents of climate action.
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Energy/Transportation
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ Crypto…Terrorism?
Whilst the onset of the digital age and the subsequent rise of cryptocurrencies has heralded an era of exciting innovation, it has also brought with it unprecedented and ever-changing challenges to global security.
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Bloomberg ☛ Electricity Demand at Data Centers Seen Doubling in Three Years
There are more than 8,000 data centers globally, with about 33% in the US, 16% in Europe and close to 10% in China, with more planned. In Ireland, where data centers are developing rapidly, the IEA expects the sector to consume 32% of the country’s total electricity by 2026 compared to 17% in 2022. Ireland currently has 82 centers; 14 are under construction and 40 more are approved.
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The Atlantic ☛ Don’t San Francisco–ize Clean Energy
Many environmentalists, civic groups, and sympathetic lawmakers fail to recognize that demanding too much community input and legal review has a downside. But the consequences are evident in San Francisco, where, as The New York Times recently noted, getting permission to build new housing takes more than 1,100 days on average, and the city government has failed for years to navigate its own process for installing a single public toilet. In addressing the climate crisis, the U.S. does not have the luxury of time.
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Luke Harris ☛ The Fast and the Featureless: Features I like and don’t like in vehicles.
I wish public transit was more of an option, but until then here’s what I look for in a vehicle. The list is heavy on details because implementations vary by manufacturer, and things that might fall into the common sense category are often missing. For example, the loaner vehicle I’m driving has a one-touch lower feature for the driver’s window, and I expect it to work for raising the window. It does not.
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Tracy Durnell ☛ Electrifying my house: the first year with a heat pump
Now that I’ve had a heat pump for a year, I wanted to share my experience, because I had questions and misconceptions that I didn’t get answered beforehand. Tl;dr it’s great, especially the cooling, just works a little differently.
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Latvia ☛ Change to European power grid could affect prices: minister
Synchronization with the European electricity grid and abandoning synchronization with Russia could also affect the electricity price, but the extent of this impact is currently unknown, Climate and Energy Minister Kaspars Melnis (Union of Greens and Farmers) said in an interview with Latvian Television on January 30.
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Wildlife/Nature
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The Revelator ☛ Helping Bison Find Their Way Home
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Science Alert ☛ First-Ever Footage of a Newborn Great White Shark Has Scientists in a Frenzy
What a beauty!
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Finance
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Gadget Bridge ☛ Massive layoffs at Swiggy, to enhance IPO readiness
Indian online food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy has laid off approx. 7%, affecting 350–400 employees. According to Source, the company has cut its workforce by 6 percent, which includes roles across technology, call centres, and corporate roles. Besides Swiggy, other tech companies like Flipkart, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have also announced employee layoffs.
Swiggy and Flipkart have announced staff layoffs. Approximately 350–400 workers, or about 7% of the company, will be fired by Swiggy. According to speculations and sources, people from tech, a portion of the customer service division, and corporate will lose their jobs. Notably, the company has 6,000 employees, and the staff layoff is part of an effort for efficient operations. However, sources say that the Bangalore-based firm is laying off its employees because of its planned IPO.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Scoop News Group ☛ A tangled mess: Government rules for social media security lack clarity
It’s a straightforward question that would seem to lend itself to a straightforward answer, but instead reveals a tangled web of authorities and rules. In the wake of this most recent breach, it’s unclear whether the SEC — or another other federal agency — is formally required to deploy MFA on their social media.
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India Times ☛ White House AI council meets Monday as legislative action stalls
The White House said nine government agencies - including defence, transportation, treasury, and health and human services - submitted risk assessments to the Department of Homeland Security required under Biden's order.
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Gizmodo ☛ Microsoft Lays Off 1,900 Activision Blizzard, Xbox Staff One Day After $3 Trillion Valuation
Microsoft laid 1,900 employees in its gaming division, according to an internal memo seen by The Verge on Thursday, with a majority of the layoffs hitting its newly acquired Activision Blizzard employees. Some Xbox and ZeniMax employees were also affected, according to the memo. The layoffs come roughly three months after Microsoft closed a $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
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Site36 ☛ Antifa trial in Budapest: One defendant admits membership in organisation, two deny accusations
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France24 ☛ Former PM Stubb, Green candidate Haavisto set for Finland's presidential run-off
Favourites Alexander Stubb and Pekka Haavisto on Sunday qualified for the second round of Finland's presidential election, which took place against a backdrop of soured relations with neighbouring Russia.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Project Censored ☛ Battling Censorship, Propaganda, and Nuclear Colonialism
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Omicron Limited ☛ When Chinese citizens are surveyed anonymously, support for party and government plummets
The study by researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences shows an enormous drop in citizen support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and government policies when citizens are surveyed using a method that hides their identities and makes them feel more anonymous than a typical survey.
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uni Cambridge ☛ Do Chinese Citizens Conceal Opposition to the CCP in Surveys? Evidence from Two Experiments
Most public opinion research in China uses direct questions to measure support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and government policies. These direct question surveys routinely find that over 90 per cent of Chinese citizens support the government. From this, scholars conclude that the CCP enjoys genuine legitimacy. In this paper, we present results from two survey experiments in contemporary China that make clear that citizens conceal their opposition to the CCP for fear of repression. When respondents are asked directly, we find, like other scholars, approval ratings for the CCP that exceed 90 per cent. When respondents are asked in the form of list experiments, which confer a greater sense of anonymity, CCP support hovers between 50 per cent and 70 per cent. This represents an upper bound, however, since list experiments may not fully mitigate incentives for preference falsification. The list experiments also suggest that fear of government repression discourages some 40 per cent of Chinese citizens from participating in anti-regime protests. Most broadly, this paper suggests that scholars should stop using direct question surveys to measure political opinions in China.
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Meduza ☛ Russia sentences 72-year-old woman to 5.5 years in prison for sharing two social media posts
The Russian authorities launched the case against Yevgenia Maiboroda in response to two posts she shared on the social media site VKontakte. One reportedly contained information about the number of Russian servicemen killed in the Ukraine, while the other was described by the Net Freedoms Project simply as an “emotional video.”
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RFA ☛ London YouTuber hid in van, received death threats after piano face-off
Kavanagh, who turned up at the piano again on Friday with a plushie Winnie the Pooh toy and a sticker bearing a reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre – both of which are banned by Chinese censors – said the incident was about defending freedom of speech and artistic expression.
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RFERL ☛ Moscow Court Issues Arrest Warrants For Four Of Navalny's Self-Exiled Associates
A Moscow court on January 29 issued arrest warrants for imprisoned opposition politician Aleksei Navalny's self-exiled associates -- Maria Pevchikh, Kira Yarmysh, Dmitry Nizovtsev, and Anna Biryukova -- on charges of organizing an extremist group. [...]
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Meduza ☛ Nighttime mobile Internet outages in Russian regions reportedly linked to anti-drone measures, not routine technical work
The Russian government announced planned nighttime mobile Internet outages in the country’s Leningrad, Pskov, and Novgorod regions in late January. While the authorities attributed the outages to “technical work on the configuration of the radio frequency spectrum,” Kommersant’s sources said telecom companies are not conducting the shutdowns on their own initiative.
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RFERL ☛ Kremlin Critic, Political Observer Krasheninnikov Not Allowed To Enter Georgia
Fyodor Krasheninnikov, an outspoken Kremlin critic and Russian political observer, said on January 29 that he was not allowed to enter Georgia for unexplained reasons.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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BIA Net ☛ Journalist detained and allegedly beaten by police faces charges
Mehmet Altıntaş was allegedly subjected to a physical assault by police officers when he refused to bowing his head while an officer attempted to push his head down.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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RFA ☛ China ‘gamed’ UN human rights review, experts say
A Chinese diplomat said the majority of the 428 recommendations it received were ‘constructive.’
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New York Times ☛ An Italian Holocaust Survivor Asks if She Has ‘Lived in Vain’
Liliana Segre, who has become Italy’s conscience on the Holocaust, says she is pessimistic in the face of rising anti-Semitism.
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France24 ☛ Germany: After leaked deportation plans, civil society urges ban on far-right AfD
Germany's far-right AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) party is gaining momentum. For the past few months, it has been capitalising on widespread fears among the population over the war in Ukraine, immigration and inflation, as well as the challenges faced by the ruling coalition.
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France24 ☛ In pictures: French farmers maintain 'siege' of Paris in standoff with government
Protesting farmers prepared to encircle Paris with traffic-snarling barricades for a second day Tuesday, using hundreds of lumbering tractors and mounds of hay bales to block highways leading to France's capital to pressure the government over the future of their industry, which has been shaken by repercussions of the Ukraine war.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine Holds Talks With Hungary As Aid Package Hangs In Balance Before EU Summit
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he held "constructive talks" with his Hungarian counterpart as Kyiv looks to ease tensions ahead of a crucial European Union summit next week where it hopes Budapest will withdraw its veto on a massive aid package.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Court Sentences In Absentia Wife Of Imprisoned Anti-War Activist
A Russian court sentenced Maria Rouz, the self-exiled wife of imprisoned anti-war activist Richard Rouz, to 5 1/2 years in prison in absentia on charges of calling for extremist activities and distributing false information about Russia's armed forces involved in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine Says It Shot Down Eight Russian Drones Over Four Regions
Ukraine's air defenses say all eight drones launched by Russia early on January 29 at targets in four regions -- Mykolayiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Khmelnytskiy, and Rivne -- were shot down.
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New Yorker ☛ The Opera “Chornobyldorf” Channels Ukrainian Rage and Sorrow
The experimental work, recently staged at La Mama, feels eerily resonant in a time of war.
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New Yorker ☛ Ukraine’s Democracy in Darkness
With elections postponed and no end to the war with Russia in sight, Volodymyr Zelensky and his political allies are becoming like the officials they once promised to root out: entrenched.
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New York Times ☛ For Europe and NATO, a Russian Invasion Is No Longer Unthinkable
Amid crumbling U.S. support for Ukraine and Donald Trump’s rising candidacy, European nations and NATO are making plans to take on Russia by themselves.
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Meduza ☛ Ukrainian news outlet asserts AFU Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhnyi’s resignation was discussed during meeting with Zelensky — Meduza
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LRT ☛ Latvian MEP is Russian intelligence agent – investigation
Latvian MEP Tatjana Ždanoka has been an agent of the Fifth Directorate of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) since at least 2005, working with two intelligence contacts, the investigative media centre The Insider has revealed.
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LRT ☛ Vilnius schools to replace Russian classes with Spanish
Vilnius City Municipality is planning to stop offering Russian as a second foreign language to future sixth graders as of the new academic year. In exchange, the availability of Spanish language classes will be expanded.
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RFERL ☛ Latvian Member Of European Parliament Reportedly Leaked Information To Russian Intelligence
Tatjana Zdanoka, a Latvian member of the European Parliament, has been a trusted asset of Russian intelligence for two decades, an investigative report by The Insider, in collaboration with the news site Delfi Estonia, Latvia’s Re:Baltica, and Sweden’s Expressen newspaper, claimed on January 29.
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Latvia ☛ EP, Latvian services to look at Ždanoka's alleged cooperation with Russia
The State Security Service (VDD) will assess publicly outspoken information about Tatjana Ždanoka's activities between 2005 and 2013, namely her alleged cooperation with Russian special services, the service said in a statement to the media on January 29.
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Latvia ☛ Coalition agrees on Russian grain import ban in Latvia
The ruling coalition has agreed to ban imports of Russian and Belarusian grain into Latvia, Latvian Television reports January 29.
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NYPost ☛ US to receive Olympic gold medals after Russia’s Kamila Valieva gets retroactively disqualified
Members of the U.S. Olympic figure skating team learned late Monday they will receive gold medals now that Russian skater Kamila Valieva has been disqualified for doping at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Teen Skater Valiyeva Suspended Four Years For Doping, Loses 2022 Olympic Team Gold
Teen figure-skating star Kamila Valiyeva has received a four-year suspension for doping, a move that effectively strips the Russian team of its gold medal in the 2022 Beijing Olympics and hands the title to the U.S. squad.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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APNIC ☛ Thinking about Internet history
If we want to make sure the Internet’s story is preserved for future scholars in a quantifiable way, and pull together the data to defend it against irreversible damage, we basically have three big collective tasks to undertake before we all forget how it worked:
• Preserve the history by gathering the irreplaceable records of how the Internet grew.
• Curate the history to interpret it and make it accessible and meaningful for future scholars.
• Explore the history, creating tools and visualizations that everyone can enjoy and celebrate.
What follows is a brief overview of what I think that process might entail, mostly in the form of notes to myself to help me figure out what I should be working on in 2024. If any of this strikes a chord with you, drop me a note and I’ll keep you in the loop.
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BW Businessworld Media Pvt Ltd ☛ Internet Bandwidth Consumption Jumps 52% Across 24 Indian Cities: Report
The study highlighted Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi and Chennai as the leading four cities. The study emphasised that while average data used per month has increased by 25 per cent, average downloads per month surged by 27 per cent in the last two years.
The report by ACT Fibernet also discovered the new prime time for [Internet] consumption at home is between 8 pm to 11 pm, when people generally return from the office.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Zimbabwe threatens to arrest Starlink users
The government-owned information website, H-Metro, said last week that Potraz would conduct nationwide raids to confront all those who may have installed the [Internet] network.
Starlink has yet to be licensed by the regulator, but the service kits have been advertised on social media platforms, including Facebook, and distributed in the country.
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MacStories Inc ☛ Understanding Apple’s Response to the DMA
However, that’s not the case with most of what was announced last week. Instead, the changes announced are carefully tailored to address the DMA and nothing more. These aren’t product announcements. They’re regulatory compliance responses by a company that has made clear in various contexts that it will respect local law that impacts its products, but isn’t interested in letting one country (or countries in this case) dictate how it designs its products. I’ll revisit this point at the end of this story, but it’s important to keep in mind from the outset. Once you view the details through this prism, you can see the shape of the DMA in every facet of what Apple announced, which makes the situation easier to understand.
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Digital Music News ☛ Spotify Demands EU Regulatory Action Against Apple’s Continued App Store ‘Extortion’: ‘The Ball Is in Your Court, European Commissioners’
Ahead of a March deadline for companies including Apple and Google to comply with the entirety of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Spotify last week revealed plans for a revamped app experience in Europe. Now, to the streaming giant’s apparent dismay, Apple has unveiled its “new business terms for apps in the EU” – including a flat-rate fee for installs.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Spotify calls Apple’s EU changes a ‘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 Є0.50 per user account per year under Apple’s new EU regime.
“From the beginning, Apple has been clear that they didn’t like the idea of abiding by the DMA. So they’ve formulated an undesirable alternative to the status quo,” the music streaming giant said on Friday.
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Apple Inc ☛ Understanding the Core Technology Fee for iOS apps in the European Union
The Core Technology Fee (CTF) is an element of the new business terms in the European Union (EU) that reflects the value Apple provides developers through ongoing investments in the tools, technologies, and services that enable them to build and share innovative apps with users around the world. Developers can choose to remain on the App Store’s current business terms or adopt the new business terms for iOS apps in the EU.
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Dave Rupert ☛ At last, browser choice*
The EU Digital Markets Act is making waves in the Apple ecosystem. For the first time ever you’ll be able to install a browser other than Safari/Webkit on iOS (as long as you live in the EU). While there are other browsers on the iOS App Store, they’re all Safari/Webkit under the hood due to non-competitive App Store submission guidelines.
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Stephen Hackett ☛ Understanding Apple’s Proposed Changes to Meet the DMA’s Demands
John Voorhees has a great walk-through of the changes Apple is making in response to the DMA: [...]
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Trademarks
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Right of Publicity
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Gizmodo ☛ George Carlin’s Family Takes This AI Bullshit to Court
The estate of George Carlin filed a suit in California over the “George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead” comedy special produced by Dudesy. The lawsuit claims the special constitutes copyright infringement and was created to profit off of Carlin’s likeness without permission. According to the suit, the estate is seeking the immediate removal of the special and an unspecified amount for damages.
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Quartz ☛ Taylor Swift AI deepfakes took over the Internet. Here's what to know
Deepfakes use a form of machine learning called deep learning, whereby an algorithm gets fed examples and learns to produce outputs that resemble them, generating an artificial image, video, or audio.
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MIT Technology Review ☛ Dear Taylor Swift, we’re sorry about those explicit deepfakes
First, the bad news. At the moment, we have no good ways to fight this. I just published a story looking at three ways we can combat nonconsensual deepfake porn, which include watermarks and data-poisoning tools. But the reality is that there is no neat technical fix for this problem. The fixes we do have are still experimental and haven’t been adopted widely by the tech sector, which limits their power.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Microsoft and X respond to Taylor Swift AI misuse with increased content moderation
The politics that are in play aside, Microsoft was at the center of the Taylor Swift story: The company’s AI-powered Designer software appears to have been used to generate the images.
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The Verge ☛ Trolls have flooded X with graphic Taylor Swift AI fakes
One of the most prominent examples on X attracted more than 45 million views, 24,000 reposts, and hundreds of thousands of likes and bookmarks before the verified user who shared the images had their account suspended for violating platform policy. The post was live on the platform for around 17 hours prior to its removal.
But as users began to discuss the viral post, the images began to spread and were reposted across other accounts. Many still remain up, and a deluge of new graphic fakes have since appeared. In some regions, the term “Taylor Swift AI” became featured as a trending topic, promoting the images to wider audiences.
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India Times ☛ Taylor Swift, Joe Biden: massive deepfakes tsunami floods the [Internet]
Pornographic images of singer Taylor Swift, robocalls of US President Joe Biden’s voice, and videos of dead children and teenagers detailing their own deaths all have gone viral — but not one of them was real.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Taylor Swift searches blocked on X as fake explicit images spread
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the fake images “alarming” on Friday, and said social media companies have a responsibility to prevent the spread of such misinformation.
Jean-Pierre said at a news briefing that lax enforcement against false images, possibly created by artificial intelligence, disproportionately affects women.
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CoryDoctorow ☛ I assure you, an AI didn't write a terrible "George Carlin" routine
Maybe that's what happened with the George Carlinbot 3000: the Dudesy dudes fell in love with their own vision for a fully automated luxury Carlinbot and forgot that they had made it up, so they just cheated, assuming they would eventually be able to make a fully operational Battle Carlinbot.
That's basically the Theranos story: a teenaged "entrepreneur" was convinced that she was just about to produce a seemingly impossible, revolutionary diagnostic machine, so she faked its results, abetted by investors, customers and others who wanted to believe: [...]
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US News And World Report ☛ X Pauses Taylor Swift Searches as Deepfake Explicit Images Spread
After the images began spreading online, the singer's devoted fanbase of “Swifties” quickly mobilized, launching a counteroffensive on X and a #ProtectTaylorSwift hashtag to flood it with more positive images of the pop star. Some said they were reporting accounts that were sharing the deepfakes.
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RTL ☛ 'Taylor Swift' searches blocked on X after AI porn outrage
This decision comes amid criticism from fans, the White House, and others regarding the circulation of explicit content using Swift's likeness.
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Gizmodo ☛ Taylor Swift AI Porn Forces Changes at Twitter and Microsoft
“Something went wrong,” says X when you search for “Taylor Swift” on Monday morning. “Try reloading.”
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Copyrights
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Techdirt ☛ Research Suggests A Large Proportion Of Web Material In Languages Other Than English Is Machine Translations Of Poor Quality Texts
The latest generative AI tools are certainly impressive, but they bring with them a wide range of complex problems, as numerous posts on Techdirt attest. A new academic paper, published on arXiv, raises more of them, but from a new angle. Entitled “A Shocking Amount of the Web is Machine Translated: Insights from Multi-Way Parallelism”, it studies the impact of today’s low-cost AI translation tools on the online world:
" We explore the effects that the long-term availability of low cost Machine Translation (MT) has had on the web. We show that content on the web is often translated into many languages, and the quality of these multi-way translations indicates they were primarily created using MT. "
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Torrent Freak ☛ Music Labels 'Gramophone' Copyright Lawsuit Comes Too Late, Internet Archive Says
Several major music labels including Capitol, Sony, and UMG, sued the Internet Archive over its phonograph archiving project, Great 78. Hundreds of millions of dollars in potential damages are at stake but IA says that many of the claims are simply too late. IA has asked the court to dismiss those that occurred over three years ago, citing an RIAA cease-and-desist letter as evidence.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Viewing Illegal Streams: No Cautions, Fines or Arrests Say GM Police
After two UK regional police forces refused to supply information on the number of people cautioned, fined or arrested for simply watching illegal streams, this weekend it emerged that Greater Manchester Police received the same request and actually responded. For the years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, the number of people cautioned, fined and/or arrested for simply watching illegal streams was.....zero.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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24C01 animal sounds
ok so ive been working on this one project for like 2 years now I think? my fantasy console project. it has had multiple redesigns over [some timespan] starting with FLC16 which I made before I even knew how CPUs actually worked. after that came the "batbox" and then "woof" which had two different versions. i now will not touch it anymore because its FINISHED.
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Life is _____
I don't know what to say that hasn't been said already. Everyone already knows life is hard, but sometimes I don't think even words can describe the borderline confusion you get when you step onto that yellow brick road called Life. Do people just live life without questioning every single thing?
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OpenQuest Dungeons
The current version of OpenQuest is probably a little more stripped down than I prefer for my D100 systems, but it's a good system, of the Mongoose RuneQuest lineage. OpenQuest Dungeons is designed to ease a DM and players of “The World's Favorite Fantasy Game” to the different pace and approach of dungeons in a D100 game. It contains a general introduction to OpenQuest for those used to the other games dungeons, some stock NPCs, a list of 26 traps expressed in OpenQuest mechanics, and three short dungeons. The adventures made me want to run them, so that's a plus.
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🔤SpellBinding: HLOYSTR Wordo: DOZER
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Technology and Free Software
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A01 Don't buy autonomy, buy efficiency
If you plan to buy an EV Car, you're perhaps looking for data like price, autonomy, power, time to recharge 60% of your battery.... Perhaps real consumption in KWh/100 km. Or perhaps you don't understand what are all these figures and names. Most of the cars cited below are on the European Market, and also on the US/Canadian Market. There are some Chinese cars too, the first to be available on those markets.
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veilidchat part2
the next day I tried to run veilidchat and it failed to finish loading. today I figured it was probably because it needed some of those env vars set that I had set to get it built.
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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.