Links 04/02/2024: Protests and Strikes (Even Military Strikes) Carry on
Contents
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Leftovers
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Cole ☛ Where I write
Many months ago, I made a goal to write at least one blog post a month on here. I thought it would do me good to practice writing, and to publish things that were useful to other people. I still think that, however I clearly haven’t acheived this goal recently. But where did I write that goal? And where else have I been writing? In lieu of a hard hitting technical blog post, I’ll give an overview of some other places I’ve been putting down my thoughts.
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[Repeat] Tedium ☛ The Ballad Of Mark Discordia
Today in Tedium: Game culture has never been a high-minded affair, and if anything has been willing to bury itself in norms that align with other 12-year-old interests during the 1980s, including wrestling, PG-13 movies, and Saturday morning cartoons. Something tells me that the Venn diagram of people who like vintage video games and fart jokes might have a significant overlap. But gamer culture has evolved into something the whole family can get into, not just the teens. I wasn’t particularly surprised to learn, for example, that the mother of Blue Scuti, the Tetris-crashing 13-year-old, was also a gamer who spoke of “crushing” a classroom of kids at Rock Band. But we had to work our way up to that sort of general acceptance. And with that in mind, I want to talk about a meme from the past, a guy who had a bad brush with the internet, and didn’t handle it well. Today’s Tedium reconsiders the tale of Mark Discordia, the middle-aged Mario fan who became the subject of digital ridicule. — Ernie @ Tedium
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Thomas Rigby ☛ It's hard to give recognition
I'm subscribed to over 330 feeds full (for the most part) of brilliant, insightful, funny heartbreaking, and well-researched articles and posts on a million-and-one topics.
I love reading them but how do I let the author know I think their article is fabulous?
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Barry Hess ☛ Project Tapestry
What I’m hopeful for is that Project Tapestry finds a way to ease the ability for general users to add sites (RE: blogs) with RSS to their feed. To continue enabling blogs and the “personal internet” to get a foothold in amongst the behemoth attention-sucking companies, regular ol’ mobile users need to have an obvious interface to follow personal sites. Maybe Project Tapestry will figure something out here, or maybe they’ll be able to apply some pressure to Apple/Safari to help enable these things?
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Andreas ☛ Abandoning 100 Days to offload
So do I feel bad about “failing” the challenge? Not really, no. I gave it a go and discovered that it wasn’t for me, and rather than grit my teeth and try to force myself to do it, I’m content to realise that blogging a lot isn’t for me, and I’d rather take it easy than push myself to do something I’m not fully committed to.
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Dan Q ☛ Oldest Digital Photo… of Me
This got me thinking: what’s the oldest digital photo that exists, of me. So I went digging.
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The Straits Times ☛ The case of Philip Chan: Beijing steps up efforts to co-opt diaspora to ‘tell the China story well’
This comes amid a flagging economy and a wrestle for control over discourse said to be dominated by western liberal nations.
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The Straits Times ☛ Snowstorms hit China’s roads and railways ahead of Chinese New Year
Heavy snow and freezing rain in China’s central and eastern provinces are disrupting road and railway transport just as millions of people are embarking on Chinese New Year trips.
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Science
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Science Alert ☛ Your Skin Is a Billboard For Hidden Illnesses. Here's How to Read It.
Look carefully.
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Science Alert ☛ Nanoparticles in Some of The World's Oldest Rocks Found to Hide Clues on Life's Origins
How it all started.
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Science Alert ☛ Strange New Kind of Magnetism Found Lurking In Material Just Six Atoms Thick
Not your typical fridge magnet.
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Unixmen Posting SPAM Again
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Unix Men ☛ Linux Leaps Ahead: Dynamic Future of Linux in 2024 [Ed: VPN spam disguised as "Linux" article]
This integration of VPN technology is not just a trend but a testament to Linux’s commitment to providing robust and secure computing environments in an increasingly interconnected digital world. Moreover, the open-source community’s efforts to develop and refine VPN tools specific to Linux make it easier for users to maintain privacy and data security, cementing Linux’s position as a go-to platform for secure and private computing.
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Unix Men ☛ Linux vs. Mac vs. backdoored Windows OS Guide [Ed: More VPN spam, not an OS guide]
Linux, Windows, and MacOS are the three most prominent operating systems (OS) in the digital world, each offering unique features and experiences to users. Understanding their differences is critical to choosing the right OS for individual needs and preferences.
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Unix Men ☛ Mozilla Firefox 122: A New Milestone for Linux Users [Ed: ExpressVPN spam disguised as article about Firefox]
The release of Mozilla Firefox 122 with its DEB package also comes at a time when online privacy and security are more important than ever, particularly for users who rely on VPN routers for an added layer of protection, by offering an optimized version of Firefox for Debian-based Linux distributions, users who ExpressVPN routers can benefit from a more streamlined and secure browsing experience.
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Unix Men ☛ Navigating the Cloudscape: How a Cloud Application Development Company Fosters Business Agility [Ed: Pure spam stuffed as 'article']
In a business epoch marked by relentless change and burgeoning competition, agility emerges as the lodestar guiding enterprises through the tempest of market dynamics.
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Unix Men ☛ Ad Network vs. Ad Exchange: differences & similarities [Ed: And more pure spam]
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Hardware
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Hackaday ☛ Fixing A Tractor Dashboard From Over 10,000 Miles Away
[BuyItFixIt] is well known as a dab hand at, well, fixing things… and presumably buying them, too. Recently, they received an email calling for help of the former kind. One of their Australian viewers owned the same model of tractor, but with a dead digital dash. Thankfully, help was at hand!
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Hackaday ☛ Transforming EDF Backpack For A Speed Boost
Fighting against a tough headwind on your daily cycle can be a drag, but [Emiel] of The Practical Engineer, has a loud and bold solution. In the Dutch video after the break, he builds a transforming backpack with two electric ducted fans (EDFs), and takes to the bike paths.
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Hackaday ☛ Recovering A Busted Video Capture Device With Firmware Flashing Tricks
Sometimes, you have a piece of hardware that just up and stops working on you. In today’s fast-paced world, it’s easy to toss something broken and move on. [BuyItFixIt], as you imagine, makes it their purpose to, well, fix things instead. Their latest efforts involved resurrecting a dead AVerMedia Live Gamer 2 Plus capture device sourced off eBay.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Workaround helps improve gaming performance on outdated defective chip maker Intel CPUs — Resizable Bar UEFI mod works with CPUs as old as Sandy Bridge
A modder on Microsoft's proprietary prison GitHub has published a mod that can enable the Resizable Bar on "unsupported" motherboards by modifying the BIOS/UEFI on the motherboard.
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Hackaday ☛ Avocado-Shaped Robot Makes Its Way Through The Rainforest
When you think of a robot getting around, you probably think of something on wheels or tracks. Maybe you think about a bipedal walking robot, more common in science fiction than our daily lives. In any case, researchers went way outside the norm when they built an avocado-shaped robot for exploring the rainforest.
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Hackaday ☛ Tricky 3D Printed Joinery Problem? Give Heat Staking A Try
When you just can’t 3D print something as a monolithic part, you’re going to have to join pieces together. In such cases, most of us instinctively include threaded inserts or nut slots in the design, or even reach for a tube of CA glue. But perhaps you should be thinking more along the lines of heat-staking your printed parts together.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Vox ☛ The French farmers’ protests are more complex than they seem
There are two major — and interconnected — overarching concerns in France.
The first is income. French farmers, especially smaller and independent farmers, say they aren’t making enough and that their livelihoods will vanish in the near future. Suicide has plagued the agricultural industry in recent years as the sector has shrunk and farmers find themselves unable to earn a living. But French agriculture — wine and cheese, of course, as well as livestock and produce — is a distinct part of French cultural heritage, and France is the EU’s largest agricultural producer.
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Futurism ☛ There's a Terrible Cost to Stanley Cups' Use of Lead
Lead from the manufacturing process of these cups may get into the air and mix with soil, potentially endangering young children. Kids in Brazil and China would be the ones impacted, because that's where the tumblers are made.
Neltner told Vox there are safer alternatives to lead, such as tin, but that they're more expensive and would undercut the bonanza of profits Stanley Cups has reaped from its recent popularity.
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NYPost ☛ Washington state diverted $340M in federal COVID funds to migrants
A new report shows how federal COVID funds were used in Washington state to give $1,000 checks to illegal immigrants who were ineligible to receive federal economic impact payments during the pandemic.
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Science Alert ☛ Research Shows One Easy Diet Swap Can Reduce Blood Pressure And Heart Attacks
Why aren't more of us doing it?
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Science Alert ☛ 'Sudden Death' Discovery Defies Our Understanding of Superconductivity
"We can't explain at all this observation."
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New York Times ☛ When a Spouse Goes to the Nursing Home
The move to a long-term care facility is often difficult but necessary for frail patients. For their partners, it can mean a new set of challenges.
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YLE ☛ Six Finnish cities place in top 100 of global happiness ranking
The British research firm the Institute for Quality of Life ranks Helsinki as the 11th happiest city in the world for 2023.
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YLE ☛ Orpo: Strikes excessive and disproportionate
Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) justifies his government's plans for labour market reforms due to the governing coalition's majority in Parliament.
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Science Alert ☛ 4 Out of 5 Autoimmune Patients Are Female: The X Chromosome Could Explain Why
This is a bit unfair.
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France24 ☛ In Azerbaijan, UK-based gold mine accused of pollution
Six journalists from the independent Azerbaijani investigative website Abzas Media have been under arrest since November 2023. They had previously transmitted elements of their investigations to the Paris-based Forbidden Stories collective, which took over their work in collaboration with 14 European news organisations in the "The Baku Connection" project, including FRANCE 24 and RFI. This article focuses on the tensions surrounding a mine in the west of the country, whose gold ends up in the products of major high-tech brands.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Futurism ☛ AI Search Engine Bungles Facts When Profiled by the New York Times
There's a new-ish artificial intelligence-powered search engine on the scene — but in a high-visibility debut, it was caught lacking.
In a profile for the New York Times, tech columnist Kevin Roose said that he tried the Perplexity search engine, a year-old ad-free Google alternative built on models from OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic, for "several weeks" to see how well it compared to its more established competitors.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Vice Media Group ☛ Zuckerberg Boasts He Will Be AI God King Because We Already Gave Him All Our Data
While Meta has yet to truly compete with its rivals on the scale of GPT, it’s no secret that the company leverages user data for its AI products. The company already admitted last year that it had used public posts—but, it claimed, not private messages—to train its Meta AI assistant. Much furor has been raised in recent months over the unauthorized scraping of the web to train AI models; OpenAI even thanked the faceless “millions of people” who created the data to train GPT-3 in its paper describing the model. But when it comes to data willingly shared with Facebook and Meta, that Faustian bargain was struck long ago.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Facebook: 20 years of hope, manipulation and data trading
Facebook, the world's largest social media network, is 20 years old. More than 3 billion people are active on their Facebook page at least once a month — more than one in three people on the planet. That's quite the success story.
But just a few days before its 20th anniversary, any celebratory mood was dampened when Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced harsh criticism at a hearing before the US Senate. "You have blood on your hands," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham shouted at Zuckerberg. "You have a product that's killing people."
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Security Week ☛ Netherlands Fines Uber Over Data Protection
Dutch regulators impose a 10 million euro ($10.8 million) fine on ride-hailing app Uber for lack of transparency in treating the personal data of its drivers.
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Defence/Aggression
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The Straits Times ☛ Women, old men in military? South Korea debates solutions for looming conscript shortfall
Experts are warning of a drastic decline in South Korea's military resources due to the falling birth rate.
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ Trump Spent $50 Million Paying Lawyers But Taxpayers Are Providing Loaner Laptops
Donald Trump is spending a good deal of his campaign fundraising -- over $50 million -- paying for lawyers for loyal employees. But taxpayers are loaning two of the most important laptops to review surveillance footage.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Iran is on its way to replacing Russia as a leading arms exporter. The US needs a strategy to counter this trend.
In recent years, and even more so in the last year alone, Iran has been increasing the pace of its sales and transfers of UAVs to various parts of the globe, including Ethiopia, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Western Sahara’s Polisario Front. Iran is well on its way to becoming a leading arms exporter globally, especially since additional countries are interested in buying these capabilities.
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The Straits Times ☛ 39 of 131 detainees recaptured so far after breakout in Malaysian detention centre
One Rohingya refugee was killed in an accident on the expressway after fleeing the detention centre.
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France24 ☛ What is Kataeb Hezbollah, the militia accused of killing American soldiers in Jordan?
The United States launched air strikes against Iranian forces and allied militias in Iraq and Syria on Friday, with President Joe Biden vowing more to come in retaliation for a deadly drone attack on a US base in Jordan. The Pentagon particularly has its sights on Kataeb Hezbollah, one of the main militias responsable for attacking US troops.
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France24 ☛ Israel launches strikes on Rafah ahead of Gaza truce push
Deadly strikes were reported early Saturday in the overcrowded Gaza border town of Rafah – dubbed a "pressure cooker of despair" by the UN – as international mediators readied a new push to seal a tentative truce deal between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Read our blog to see how the day's events unfolded.
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France24 ☛ What we know about US strikes on Iran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria
The United States on Friday carried out strikes against Iranian forces in Iraq and Syria in retaliation over a drone attack that killed three US soldiers in Jordan.
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RFERL ☛ U.S., U.K. Launch Fresh Retaliatory Strikes Against Iran-Linked Sites In Yemen
The United States and Britain launched fresh retaliatory strikes against Iran-linked sites late on February 3, hitting at least 30 Huthi targets in Yemen as they followed through on threats to continue military action against groups that have attacked Western interests in the region.
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New York Times ☛ U.S. and U.K. Launch Heavy Strikes on Houthi Sites in Yemen
The airstrikes, meant to deter attacks on ships in the Red Sea, came one day after the United States struck at other Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria.
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France24 ☛ Tripoli's Syria Street: A symbol of Lebanon's divisions
In the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, one road symbolises the complex relationship between Lebanon and neighbouring Syria: the aptly named Syria Street. With the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, Tripoli street also become a conflict zone. On one side, the Alawite district sided with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Sunni neighbourhood on the other side supported the rebels. For several years, the street was transformed into a battlefield. Young Lebanese living in Tripoli fought each other, ready to die for a cause that was not their own. Today, calm has returned to the street and communities that were once divided are learning to live together again.
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New York Times ☛ U.S. Strikes Test Iran’s Will to Escalate
American airstrikes hit Iran-linked targets in Syria and Iraq to retaliate for the recent killing of three U.S. soldiers in Jordan.
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New York Times ☛ Mideast Crisis : U.S. and U.K. Launch Heavy Strikes on Houthi Sites in Yemen
The two countries said targets included weapons storage facilities, missile systems and launchers, air defense systems, and radars.
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New York Times ☛ Syria and Iraq Say U.S. Strikes Killed Civilians
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France24 ☛ US reprisal strikes against Iran-linked groups anger Iraq, Syria, Russia calls for UN meeting
The United States struck overnight Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for a deadly attack on US troops, drawing condemnation Saturday from government and groups in the region.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-02-01 [Older] Russia arms deal revives North Korea's struggling economy
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-02-03 [Older] Ukraine Downs 9 Russian Drones, Energy Facilities Hit in Kryvyi Rih
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-02-02 [Older] WP: Ukraine’s hopes for victory over Russia are slipping away
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-02-02 [Older] How are Ukrainian children faring in Russian adoptive families?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-02-02 [Older] Putin challenger's paperwork has 'errors,' says Russian electoral body
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-02-02 [Older] Ukraine updates: ICJ rules case against Russia can proceed
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Meduza ☛ At least eight people killed after shelling of bakery in self-proclaimed ‘Luhansk People’s Republic,’ say occupation authorities — Meduza
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RFERL ☛ Moldova's Separatist Transdniester Region Says It Needs More Russian Gas
Moldova's pro-Russia separatist region of Transdniester said on February 3 that it needs more Russian natural gas to operate its industry.
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New York Times ☛ Germany Braces for Decades of Confrontation With Russia
Leaders are sounding alarms about growing threats, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz is wary of pushing the Kremlin, and his own ambivalent public, too far.
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Reason ☛ "God Has Left"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6UKQMzTHoU This is by Diana Arbenina of the Night Snipers, a prominent Russian rock group; Arbenina, unlike many critics of the war, has stayed in Russia, where her career has unsurprisingly suffered because of her position.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-02-01 [Older] Anti-war Russian fencers target spot on US Olympic team
2024-02-01 [Older] Russian dissident wins German human rights prize
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-02-01 [Older] Russia's Bi-2 anti-war band flees Thailand for Israel
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-01-31 [Older] 'Make It Look Like Suicide': Russian Exile Says He Is Still Being Hunted By Putin
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JURIST ☛ ICJ rules it has jurisdiction on some aspects of Ukraine genocide case against Russia
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled Friday that it has jurisdiction to determine aspects of a case, brought by Ukraine against Russia, concerning allegations of genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
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RFERL ☛ Serbian-Born Russian Actor Dropped From White Lotus TV Show After Ukraine Accusation
HBO has said it is "parting ways" with Serbian-born Russian actor Milos Bikovic two weeks after announcing that the 36-year-old would play a Russian yogi in the hit show White Lotus.
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RFERL ☛ Polish President Says He Doesn't Know If Ukraine Can Retake Crimea
Poland's president said he was unsure if Ukraine would be able to regain control over Russian-occupied Crimea but believed it could retake Donetsk and Luhansk, in comments that drew criticism from politicians in the governing coalition.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Refinery Ablaze After Apparent Ukraine Strike; Moscow Claims Bakery Hit In Lysychansk
One of the largest oil refineries in the southwestern Russian region of Volgograd caught fire after a drone attack early on February 3 in an apparent continuation of Ukraine's recent targeting of Russian infrastructure to blunt Moscow's ongoing 23-month-old full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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New York Times ☛ House GOP Plans Vote on Israel Aid as Senate Tries to Close Ukraine Deal
The move comes as the Senate is racing to finalize and vote on a bill that would also include new border policies and funding for the war in Ukraine.
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Meduza ☛ Russian oil refinery catches fire after overnight drone attack — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Advisor to German lawmaker steps down after allegations of working for Russian FSB — Meduza
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LRT ☛ Cameroonian Lionel fled death at home, found love in Lithuania, but his future remains uncertain
Cameroonian Lionel came to Lithuania in July 2021 with the largest wave of irregular migrants crossing from Belarus. He says he left Cameroon because his life was at risk. In Belarus, he was granted asylum but did not receive any help from the state, so he used the first opportunity to get to a safer country. In Lithuania, his asylum case has been rejected and Lionel is facing deportation despite having a fiancée and a son here.
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Meduza ☛ American political commentator Tucker Carlson spotted attending ballet in Moscow — Meduza
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France24 ☛ Ukrainian shelling in Eastern occupied city kills dozens in bakery, Russia says
Ukrainian shelling on the eastern occupied city of Lysychansk killed at least 20 people, Russia said Saturday, with at least 10 others wounded and rescue operations ongoing.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Scheerpost ☛ Biden Justice Department Makes An Example Out Of IRS Whistleblower
President Joe Biden's campaign seized on IRS whistleblower Charles Littlejohn's revelations about Trump's tax returns. Instead of honoring Littlejohn, the Justice Department sought one of the harshest prison sentences ever.
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ Josh Schulte Sentenced to 40 Years
This week, at the age of 35, Josh Schulte got sentenced to 40 years in prison for stealing CIA's hacking tools and sharing them with WikiLeaks.
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Environment
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Deutsche Welle ☛ No space for SUVs? Paris to vote on tripling parking fees
The stylized red car splashed against a black background certainly looks threatening. The question posed on posters lining the streets of the French capital ahead of a referendum on Sunday is rhetorical: "Do you want more SUVs on the streets of Paris or fewer?"
Mayor Anne Hidalgo is hoping the 1.3 million Parisians entitled to vote will opt for the latter choice. "The bigger, the more environmentally damaging" is how the center-left politician sums up her views on cars. It's around this stance, and others, that she has been radically remodeling Paris in recent years.
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Science Alert ☛ More And More Hermit Crabs Are Wearing Trash as a Home Instead of Shells
New research by Polish researchers studied 386 images of hermit crabs occupying these artificial shells. The photos had been uploaded by users to online platforms, then analyzed by scientists using a research approach known as iEcology.
Of the 386 photos, the vast majority, 326 cases, featured hermit crabs using plastic items as shelters.
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Say They've Found The Trigger For Ancient Maya's Collapse, And It Reads Like a Warning
Researchers peering back through 800 years of history have concluded that Mayapan – the capital of culture and politics for the Maya people of the Yucatán Peninsula in the 13th and 14th century CE – may well have been undone by drought.
That drought would have led to civil conflict, which would, in turn, have brought about political collapse, according to the researchers.
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Reason ☛ Study Funded by Shell Convinced Pennsylvania To Give Shell $1.6 Billion Tax Break
While that's a huge investment from the state—and, by extension, from taxpayers—proponents said the project would more than pay for itself, generating millions of dollars in economic benefit that would create thousands of jobs. Two economic impact studies—each funded by Shell—backed up their claims.
But as it turns out, that optimism was misplaced, and the studies used to support the largest subsidy in Pennsylvania's history were themselves shoddy. That finding comes from a new report by the Ohio River Valley Institute (ORVI), a think tank located in the Appalachian region.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Governments spend US$22 billion a year helping the fishing industry empty our oceans. This injustice must end
Nearly all governments, including Australia's, subsidize their fishing industries. Financial support comes in many forms, from taxpayer-funded fuel to reduced boat-building costs. These subsidies are harmful because they encourage overfishing. Some of the most environmentally damaging and least efficient fishing activities, such as bottom trawling and distant water fishing, would become unprofitable and cease without government subsidies.
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Wildlife/Nature
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Omicron Limited ☛ Hungry sea otters are helping save California's marshlands from erosion
Sea otters eat constantly and one of their favorite snacks is the striped shore crab. These crabs dig burrows and also nibble away roots of the marsh grass pickleweed that holds dirt in place.
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Overpopulation
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CS Monitor ☛ Winter drought: Drinking water runs dry in northern Spain
Gualba’s name, according to local lore, means “white water” – for the streams flowing down from the Montseny Mountain overlooking the village. The village of around 1,500 residents has been without drinking water since December, when the local reservoir fell so low that water became undrinkable and only good for washing clothes and dishes.
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Finance
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YLE ☛ HS: Henrikkson wants to reconsider three-month unemployment limit
The government programme currently stipulates that individuals holding a work-based residence permit would have their permit revoked if they are unable to secure a new work contract within three months after losing their previous job.
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New York Times ☛ Turkey’s Central Bank Chief Steps Down Amid Long Inflation Battle
The government swiftly replaced her and said the change did not reflect a policy shift for the country, where annual inflation is about 65 percent.
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Security Week ☛ Layoffs Hit Security Vendors Okta, Proofpoint, Netography
Prominent security vendors Okta and Proofpoint announced layoffs affecting almost 1,000 employees in the United States and Israel.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2024-02-01 [Older] Why Is Nancy Pelosi Slandering Democrats’ Own Voter Base?
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Pro Publica ☛ Mexico’s López Obrador Demands Apology From Biden After ProPublica Story
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico demanded an apology from President Joe Biden after a ProPublica story disclosed that the Drug Enforcement Administration had found evidence that one of López Obrador’s closest aides accepted donations of around $2 million from a drug cartel in 2006.
In a press conference on Thursday, López Obrador denounced the accusations as “slander” and threatened to curtail U.S.-Mexican cooperation on drug trafficking and immigration issues.
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Rolling Stone ☛ Wayne Kramer Looks Back at the MC5 and His Wild Life
Your friend John Sinclair had formed a sort of sister group to the Black Panthers called the White Panthers, and the official ethos was “rock and roll, dope, and fucking the streets was the platform.” Did you guys consider yourself White Panthers as well?
Absolutely. We were founding members of the party. I was a minister of culture in the streets, was my title. And it was in the beginning it was a semi-serious way to express solidarity with the Black Panther Party. And to express our frustration with the slow pace of change. We saw the great injustices in the world around us. Being young and being extremely idealistic, we wanted to do something about it. We wanted to make a difference. And I think one person can make a difference. I think five people can make an incredible difference. I think a dozen people could do phenomenal things if they’re organized and focused. And so the White Panthers became a delivery system to send a message to America that we wanted things to change.
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India Times ☛ More than 30,000 tech employees lose jobs globally in first month of 2024
Tech companies, including startups, around the world fired more than 425,000 employees in 2022 and 2023, with more than 36,000 employees being sacked in India in the same time frame.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Meta, Amazon and Microsoft post huge earnings, but tech layoffs pile up
Meantime, though, layoffs continued and even some big tech companies such as Alphabet warned that hiring would remain flat at best. These layoffs may be more strategic than last year’s — which no doubt helped produce those improved profits — but that’s cold comfort to those without a job.
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Futurism ☛ Mark Zuckerberg Still Bleeding Money on Metaverse
While that may sound like an important achievement, the company's metaverse division lost a whopping $4.6 billion that same quarter, an operating loss record.
In other words, Zuckerberg's cartoonish vision of a VR future is still a seemingly bottomless money pit.
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Silicon Angle ☛ EU member states approve landmark AI regulation
The proposed legislation is known as the AI Act. The version that received provisional approval in December called for a ban on harmful AI use cases such as emotion recognition in the workplace and educational institutions. Additionally, the draft contained rules designed to regulate the use of high-risk neural networks such as those used in the insurance and banking sectors.
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New York Times ☛ At Rally for Border Security in Texas, Fears of ‘Invasion’ and ‘Civil War’
A conservative convoy gathered on the Texas border to support the state’s defiant stance on immigration. Despite worries over potential violence, the event was peaceful.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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CS Monitor ☛ How Taiwan became a model for beating election disinformation
Worries that China would use disinformation to undermine the integrity of Taiwan’s vote dogged the recent election, a key moment in the young democracy’s development that highlighted tensions with its much larger neighbor.
In repelling disinformation, Chinese and domestic, Taiwan offers an example to other democracies holding elections this year.
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VOA News ☛ Hezbollah-Linked Media Spread Falsehoods to Undermine US Efforts to Secure Red Sea from Houthi Attacks
Polygraph.info reporting exposed one of the key tactics of this campaign as based on recycling old unrelated footage to back the Houthi’s false claims of successful attacks.
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RFERL ☛ Two Years Into EU Ban, Russia's RT And Sputnik Are Still Accessible Across The EU
Nearly two years after EU-wide sanctions were imposed to blunt Russian propaganda supporting the Kremlin's war on Ukraine, the websites of the Kremlin-backed RT and Sputnik media outlets are still easily accessible in many countries across the EU, including in the very institutions that drafted the regulations targeting them.
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New York Times ☛ A Public Inquiry Into Foreign Election Meddling Comes Up Against Secrecy
The first week of hearings by a special commission focused on the question of how top-secret intelligence can be made public.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Article 23 then and now: What changed between 2002 and 2024, as Hong Kong’s local security law is resurrected
A planned security law which in 2003 brought half a million Hongkongers onto the streets in protest is back in the spotlight. Chief Executive John Lee has vowed to complete the enactment of legislation as stated in Article 23 of the city’s mini-constitution, a homegrown security law which was long a politically taboo subject.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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CPJ ☛ 2024-02-01 [Older] Russia extends detention of U.S.-Russia journalist Alsu Kurmasheva; CPJ calls for release
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RFERL ☛ Rights Groups, U.S. Assail Serbian Court's Acquittal Of Ex-Intelligence Officers In 1999 Murder Of Journalist
Western nations, rights groups, family members, and opposition activists condemned a February 2 ruling by a Belgrade appeals court to acquit four former Serbian intelligence officers who had been convicted and imprisoned in the 1999 murder of a prominent journalist and government critic.
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JURIST ☛ UN expert urges Philippines to better protect safety of journalists
Irene Khan, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion, expressed concerns Friday about the escalating number of journalist killings in the Philippines and called for immediate action. Khan emphasized that the murder of journalists constitutes the “most egregious form of censorship.”
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RFERL ☛ Rights Groups, U.S. Assail Serbian Court's Acquittal Of Ex-Intelligence Officers In 1999 Murder Of Journalist
Western nations, rights groups, family members, and opposition activists condemned a February 2 ruling by a Belgrade appeals court to acquit four former Serbian intelligence officers who had been convicted and imprisoned in the 1999 murder of a prominent journalist and government critic.
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Meduza ☛ Russian police detain journalists at rally organized by wives of draftees calling for end of mobilization — Meduza
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France24 ☛ Russian police detain reporters covering Moscow protest by soldiers' wives
Russian police on Saturday detained a group of around 20 journalists, including an AFP reporter, covering a protest in Moscow by the wives of men mobilised to fight in Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Police Detain Journalists Covering Flower-Laying By Wives Demanding Return Of Mobilized Men
Police in Moscow on February 3 detained about two dozen members of the media covering an event by the wives of men mobilized to fight in Ukraine.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ Afghanistan: Taliban’s crackdown on women over ‘bad hijab’ must end
UN independent human rights experts on Friday expressed profound concern over multiple reports detailing arbitrary arrests, detention and ill-treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan.
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RFERL ☛ Human Rights Advocates Worried Over Treatment Of Afghan Women Detained By Taliban
"They also face torture and are being subjected to horrible preconditions before being released," she added.
In addition, Barr said the Taliban was forcing families of detained women activists who don't comply with the rules to hand over their property documents.
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IranWire ☛ Being a Woman Against Compulsory Hijab in an Iranian Religious City
Last week, the police commander in the central city of Qom, Mohammadreza Mirheidari, stated that warning messages had been sent to the owners of 74,000 cars in the past 10 months for hijab violations.
Mirheidari also reported that 13,000 cars had been impounded because their occupants opposed mandatory hijab.
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New York Times ☛ Amid a Fraught Process, Penn Museum Entombs Remains of 19 Black People
Skulls from a collection used to further racist science have been laid to rest. Questions surrounding the interment have not.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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The Verge ☛ ‘There is no such thing as a real picture,’ says Samsung exec
Chomet’s take has a bit more nuance to it than “nothing is true, everything is permitted,” though. He told TechRadar that the industry does need to be regulated, that governments are right to be concerned, and that Samsung intends to help.
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Kev Quirk ☛ I Think YouTube Is Throttling Me Because I’m Using an Ad-Blocker
I don't have the fastest internet connection at home, but it's fast enough. I have fibre to the cab, and I average around 30Mbps on wifi throughout the house. But over the last week or so, I've noticed that YouTube seems to be running really slowly. Like, 10 seconds between page loads kinda slow. But it's weird as most of the page content loads, then it just hangs for like 5 or so seconds right at the end of the page load.
The weird thing is, if I turn my ad-blocker off, this no longer happens. I've tried this a hundred times and the behaviour repeats, every single time.
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India Times ☛ US judge certifies Apple app store class action
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had in March 2022 refused to certify a class action, but changed her mind after the class was narrowed to include only Apple account holders who spent $10 or more on app or in-app content.
While remaining "concerned" that the narrowed class might include more than 10 million accounts that suffered no harm, or 7.9% of the total, Rogers said that number could be reduced and there was no fixed "cutoff" for denying certification.
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Worker misclassification is a competition issue
If there was any doubt that Congress created the agencies as flexible and adaptive hedges against new threats and problems, then the legislative history of the FTC Act should dispel it.
Congress created the FTC through the FTCA because the courts kept misinterpreting its existing antitrust laws, like the Sherman Act. Companies would engage in the most obvious acts of naked, catastrophic fuckery, and judges would say, "Welp, because Congress didn't specifically ban this conduct, I guess it's OK."
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TechCrunch ☛ Mark Zuckerberg calls Apple’s DMA rules ‘so onerous’ he doubts any developer will opt in
The new regulations were meant to increase competition in the app economy by allowing other companies to run their own app stores and collect their own payments, which would, in theory, allow them to bypass Apple’s commissions and fees. But Apple’s compliance with the DMA reduced commissions but added other, new fees — including a new “Core Technology Fee” — that would apply to any developer who adopted the DMA rules, regardless of where their app was distributed, including on the App Store. Otherwise, Apple said developers could choose to remain on the same commission structure that exists today, where Apple takes a 15% to 30% cut of in-app purchase revenues, depending on the app’s reach and other factors.
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Patents
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Security Week ☛ In Other News: Palo Alto Loses Patent Lawsuit, Identity Firms Get Funding, Government Hackers
Noteworthy stories that might have slipped under the radar: Palo Alto Networks ordered to pay $150 million in patent monopoly lawsuit, identity solutions firms get big funding, government hacker techniques.
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Trademarks
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Right of Publicity
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Gizmodo ☛ Congress Might Actually Do Something About AI, Thanks to Taylor Swift
Now, legislation has been introduced to combat the issue. The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act was introduced as bipartisan legislation by Sens. Dick Durbin, (D-Ill.), Josh Hawley, (R-Mo), and Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.). If enacted, the bill would allow victims of deepfake porn to sue individuals who distributed “digital forgeries” of them that were sexual in nature. The proposed law would basically open the door for high-profile litigation on the part of female celebrities whose images are used in instances like the one involving Swift. Other women and victims would be able to sue too, obviously, but the wealthier, famous ones would have the resources to carry out such litigation.
The bill defines “digital forgery” as “a visual depiction created through the use of software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or any other computer-generated or technological means to falsely appear to be authentic.”
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ IPTV Anti-Piracy Threats May Increase Male Motivation to Pirate By 30%
Through social media platforms, targeted advertising, and 'news' articles published in the tabloids, UK consumers of pirate IPTV and similar streaming platforms are being exposed to very specific messaging. Broadly speaking, pirates face threats to their security, finances, even their identities. So how do they feel after 120+ days of threat message exposure? According to a new study, women may respond positively to this kind of messaging while motivation to pirate in males could increase by up to 30%.
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Techdirt ☛ And That’s A Wrap! Check Out The Entries In The Public Domain Game Jam
As you likely know, at the beginning of January we launched the latest edition of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1928! We invited designers of all stripes to make analog and digital games using the material that entered the public domain this year (including the big one, Mickey Mouse). Now, the jam has come to a close, and we’re thrilled to have received a whole bunch of exciting entries.
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