Links 20/02/2024: More GAFAM Layoffs, Assange Missing From His Trial for Heath Reasons (the UK's Own 'Navalny Treatment')
Contents
- Leftovers
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Leftovers
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Leon Mika ☛ Worse Is Better
Not to be someone who should tell Gabz how he should write on his own site, I will give you my opinion as a reader. And it’s this: I’d rather hear a review in your voice than some GPT. I read it because it sounds like another fellow human wrote it.
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Jeff Geerling ☛ My TODO list is a .txt file on the desktop
Using Markdown's checklist syntax and not deleting items or rearranging them until the end of the day means I have a nice visual indication of how much I've completed on a given weekday.
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Rob Knight ☛ More Things You Can Do on Your Website
James wrote a great post with
10083 ideas for things to do on a website[1] with a call for people suggest more so here's another ten suggestions to add to his list, most of which already exist on my site because I have no imagination.
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Science
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Vesuvius Challenge ☛ Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the scrolls!
There was one submission that stood out clearly from the rest. Working independently, each member of our team of papyrologists recovered more text from this submission than any other. Remarkably, the entry achieved the criteria we set when announcing the Vesuvius Challenge in March: 4 passages of 140 characters each, with at least 85% of characters recoverable. This was not a given: most of us on the organizing team assigned a less than 30% probability of success when we announced these criteria! And in addition, the submission includes another 11 (!) columns of text — more than 2000 characters total.
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Education
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Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Thank you, Startuplifers
For a while, after I had moved back home, the alumni community was such a lifeline for me. I had quite a big trouble adjusting back home and suffered from a reverse culture shock and it was so helpful to have fellow alumni who I could chat with.
I ended up working with some of the new friends I had made there and I became one of the alumni I had looked up to in the booklet I mentioned earlier.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Cureus shockingly does the right thing and retracts an antivax review about COVID-19 vaccines
Three weeks ago, I deconstructed an awful antivax “review” of “lessons learned” whose co-authors included some of the most bonkers conspiracy-minded antivaxxers who have risen to prominence since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The paper, published in Cureus, a Springer Nature open access journal with a rather odd open-access publishing model that has been the home to bad COVID-19 takes before, and co0authored by the likes of Steve Kirsch, Jessica Rose, Peter McCullough, Stephanie Seneff (!), and three people of whom I had never heard, M. Nathaniel Mead, Russ Wolfinger, and Kris Denhaerynck, was, as its most prominent antivax co-authors might have tipped you off to, a veritable “greatest hits” of COVID-19 antivax tropes, including bogus “reanalyses” of the Pfizer clinical trial data, misrepresentation of increases in all-cause mortality as being due to the mRNA vaccines rather than COVID-19 itself and the disruptions in society during the pandemic, misleading claims about the unblinding of the randomized controlled clinical trials after it had become apparent that the vaccines worked, and many more. When I saw the paper, I wondered how on earth such a misinformation- and disinformation-laden manuscript could have passed peer review and mocked the claims of rigorous peer-review made by the journal.
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Hackaday ☛ Gold Recovery From E-Waste With Food-Waste Amyloid Aerogels
A big part of the recycling of electronic equipment is the recovery of metals such as gold. Usually the printed circuit boards and other components are shredded, sorted, and then separated. But efficiently filtering out specific metals remains tricky and adds to the cost of recycling. A possible way to optimize the recovery of precious metals like gold could be through the use of aerogels composed out of protein amyloids to which one type of metal would preferentially adsorb. According to a recent research article in Advanced Materials by [Mohammad Peydayesh] and colleagues, such aerogels could be created from protein waste from the food industry.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Zombie deer disease is spreading and scientists are concerned that it could jump to humans
The potential for CWD to affect human health is not limited to direct transmission. The environmental persistence of prions means that humans may also be exposed through indirect routes, such as contaminated soil, water and other environmental sources. Given the resilience of prions and their ability to persist in the environment for extended periods, the long-term consequences of CWD on human health remain uncertain but warrant serious consideration.
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The Kent Stater ☛ These athletes suffered life-changing injuries. Then, they turned to psychedelics – KentWired
Small clinical trials have shown that one or two doses of psilocybin, given in a therapeutic setting, can make dramatic and long-lasting changes in people suffering from treatment-resistant major depressive disorder, though scientists are still exploring the how and the why behind the connection between psychedelics and improved mental health.
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CBC ☛ More than a bad trip: Experts warn about the risk of cannabis-induced psychosis
Researchers are also sounding the alarm that, while casual cannabis use isn't harmful for most people, possible connections are being found between using cannabis products with high-potency THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis) and harmful health effects, particularly among young men.
"I think that people remain unaware of this connection between cannabis use and potential risk of chronic psychotic disorders," said Dr. Daniel Myran, a researcher with the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and a family physician.
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Chuck Carroll ☛ Training Attention
I was chatting with a friend recently about reading and he said he doesn't read books because he struggles with concentration (I thought this was odd since he seems very up-to-date on the latest celebrity and political gossip on social media). However, what he said really resonated with me because I've also found myself struggling with both concentration and motivation in the past (and still do today to a lesser degree) and I did little very little reading up until about six years ago. I did, however, seem to have plenty of focus on video games, social media, and TV shows. Over the past several years I've become, what I consider, to be an active reader, though this habit was not an easy habit to cultivate. The behaviors or "tricks", for lack of a better word, that I've utilized to make me become a more active reader has been applicable to many other facets of my life.
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Futurism ☛ Regulators Alarmed by Doctors Already Using AI to Diagnose Patients
You may remember a series of lawyers who have attempted to use AI tools in court — and were subsequently embarrassed and sanctioned when the chatbots screwed up, sometimes even inventing plausible-sounding cases that didn't actually exist.
So consider this: how would you feel if your doctor did the same thing, feeding your symptoms into an AI system to diagnose what's wrong with you?
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The Hill ☛ Alabama Supreme Court rules frozen embryos are ‘children’
The court issued this majority decision in a lawsuit brought forth by a group of in vitro fertilization (IVF) patients whose frozen embryos were destroyed in December 2020 when a patient removed the embryos from a cryogenic storage unit and dropped them on the ground.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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The Register UK ☛ Big Tech promises to counter 2024 election misinformation
Accord members unveiled their effort on February 16 by issuing a statement [PDF] about how the members developed "a set of commitments to deploy technology countering harmful AI-generated content meant to deceive voters."
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Cyble Inc ☛ Securing The Web Application: Alex Patterson Interview
As a Google Developer Expert in Firebase and AWS Community Builder in Amplify, Alex’s expertise extends far beyond conventional boundaries. His dedication to driving change and continuous improvement has earned him recognition as a thought leader in the developer community. But what truly sets Patterson apart is his unwavering commitment to education and knowledge-sharing.
To delve deeper into this crucial aspect of web application, The Cyber Express had the opportunity to sit down with Alex Patterson as he brings a wealth of experience and knowledge, not only in software development but also as a proactive advocate for web security.
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404 Media ☛ Do Spencer’s Vibrators Have Malware on Them? An Investigation
Someone claims to have accidentally downloaded malware by plugging a cheap vibrator from the mall store Spencer’s into their computer. If true, it’d be one of the first times this type of attack has been documented. So we decided to do our best to replicate this.
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The Register UK ☛ Compliance with EU AI law will satisfy UK guidance
With the UK launching its guidance for governing AI development and deployment last week, legal experts are warning that most organizations will look to the proposed EU AI Act as a means of complying with both regimes.
The AI Act, which proposes a tiered approach to bans, restrictions, and safeguards in the introduction of AI, got backing on February 13 from two key groups of lawmakers at the European Parliament. Members in both committees for justice and the single market ratified a provisional agreement launched late last year.
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Report: Activision Blizzard cutting 136 jobs in Ireland
As reported by the Irish Examiner, the country's Tánaiste, Michéal Martin, said that the company is cutting 136 jobs from its office in Cork. The government's deputy head said that these redundancies would be "very serious" for those involved.
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Irish Examiner ☛ TikTok to cut hundreds of jobs in Ireland
Social media giant TikTok has announced it will be laying off Irish staff as part of global restructuring plans.
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Build A Rocket Boy Layoffs Staff In Multiple Departments, It’s Claimed
Build a Rocket Boy, the studio founded by Rockstar North president and Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies, is holding layoffs.
A new report from PCGamesN says that the studio is laying off, a currently unknown number of, employees across multiple departments, including publishing, QA, and art. The layoffs, the report says, were announced internally on Monday.
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Activision Blizzard Sued by Pro Players
Activision Blizzard finds itself embroiled in legal turmoil as two prominent pro players, Hector “H3CZ” Rodriguez and Seth “Scump” Abner, file a lawsuit against the gaming giant, accusing the Call of Duty League of operating as an unlawful monopoly. The lawsuit, seeking an astounding $680 million in damages, alleges that the league’s monopolistic practices stifle competition, impose unjust financial burdens on players and teams, and restrict their ability to seek alternative revenue streams.
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Yahoo News ☛ Google Lays Off Thousands More Employees Despite Record Profits One Year After Laying off 12,000 Employees As Workers Begin Worrying AI is Slowly Replacing Them
Google has initiated significant layoffs across its various teams, including the Voice Assistant, hardware, engineering and ad sales teams, marking a continuation of the tech industry’s trend towards reducing workforce expenses. The layoffs have affected hundreds of employees within the Voice Assistant unit; hardware teams responsible for Pixel, Nest and Fitbit products; and a considerable portion of the augmented reality (AR) team. This move is part of Google’s broader effort to streamline operations and align resources with its most significant product priorities.
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Firstpost ☛ Mega mayhem at Meta: Zuckerberg to layoff scores more in latest iteration of downsizing
In a recent podcast appearance, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg provided insights into the ongoing wave of layoffs in the tech industry, shedding light on the reasons behind this persistent trend. Zuckerberg attributed the continued layoffs to a broader paradigm shift among companies towards leaner operations and ongoing adjustments in response to the post-pandemic landscape.
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Tech Times ☛ Mark Zuckerberg Says Big Tech Layoffs Are Not AI's Fault
Mark Zuckerberg, in a recent Morning Brew Daily Podcast episode, has pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason for the ongoing tech layoffs surrounding the industry. Reportedly noting that it is not AI taking jobs but rather, the Meta founder and CEO claimed it is the company overbuilding during the pandemic that led to the ongoing layoffs.
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India Times ☛ Why Tech Companies Are Cutting Jobs: Insights from Facebook Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg |
The new year hasn't brought much relief to the tech sector, as job cuts continue to dominate headlines. 2024 has already seen over thousands of tech workers laid off. From giants like Meta and Amazon to promising startups, companies have shed thousands of employees. Reasons cited for the layoffs vary. Some, like Meta, point to pandemic-era overhiring and the need for "efficiency." Others, like Unity, a gaming software company, attribute it to restructuring and refocusing priorities. The rise of automation and AI is also seen as a factor, with repetitive tasks becoming increasingly automated.
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The Spokesman Review ☛ Bay Area tech layoffs finally start to weigh down region’s job market
Two years of wrenching tech layoffs have weighed down the Bay Area’s job market in a big way — but experts say the impact has been somewhat mitigated by an industry realignment that’s led to significant hiring even as thousands of positions have been cut.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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CBC ☛ No more Pornhub? That will depend on what happens with a Senate bill
The legislation doesn't specify how sites should verify a user's age, but options include the establishment of a digital ID system or services that can estimate an individual's age based on a visual scan of their face.
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Bruce Schneier ☛ EU Court of Human Rights Rejects Encryption Backdoors
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that breaking end-to-end encryption by adding backdoors violates human rights: [...]
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European Court of Human Rights ☛ CASE OF PODCHASOV v. RUSSIA (Application no. 33696/19) JUDGMENT
36. The applicant complained about the statutory requirement for ICOs to store the content of all Internet communications and related communications data, and to submit those data to law-enforcement authorities or security services at their request together with information necessary to decrypt electronic messages if they were encrypted. He relied on Article 8 of the Convention, which reads as follows:
“1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
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Jamie Zawinski ☛ My "device", I am told, might be "unverified"
Does the fact that they found my browser acceptable mean that their surveillance is working on me? Or does it mean that they just haven't decided to block me yet? Neither possibility is good.
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The Verge ☛ Wyze says camera breach let 13,000 customers briefly see into other people’s homes
Last week, co-founder David Crosby said that “so far” the company had identified 14 people who were able to briefly see into a stranger’s property because they were shown an image from someone else’s Wyze camera. Now we’re being told that number of affected customers has ballooned to 13,000.
The revelation came from an email sent to customers entitled “An Important Security Message from Wyze,” in which the company copped to the breach and apologized, while also attempting to lay some of the blame on its web hosting provider AWS.
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Defence/Aggression
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The Gray Zone ☛ Exclusive: ADL pushed BMG to drop Roger Waters by threatening to weaponize company’s Nazi past
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The Nation ☛ Will a Florida Ballot Measure to Protect Abortion Shake Up the State’s Politics This November?
I’m calling it now: Florida is going to be the most important state to watch in the 2024 election.
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The Nation ☛ Black History, All Year
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India Times ☛ TikTok: TikTok violates Indonesian in-app transactions ban, says minister
Following the implementation of Indonesian regulations in October 2023 aimed at safeguarding local businesses and user data, TikTok was compelled to discontinue its fledgling ecommerce venture, TikTok Shop, within the country's social media landscape. The ban specifically targeted online shopping functionalities within social media platforms.
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Silicon Angle ☛ EU launches probe into TikTok over possible failure to protect minors
The European Union today said it’s investigating TikTok over potential Digital Services Act breaches concerning whether the social media platform has done enough to protect children from harm in the bloc.
ByteDance Ltd.-owned TikTok, which recently cried foul over the fees it will have to pay for the EU’s new online moderation policies, was fined over $350 million in 2023 for not doing enough to protect young people’s privacy in the EU. The current probe is far-reaching, covering whether the platform does enough to prevent “addiction,” and it will also look at ad transparency and data access for researchers. It’s thought TikTok currently has about 150 million users in the EU.
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The Hill ☛ Haley knocks Trump on TikTok concerns
“Well, President Trump said he would ban TikTok, and then when President Xi asked him not to, that fell to the wayside,” she said during the town hall.
“And even if it is helpful in elections, I think that the tone at the top and the leadership of what you show matters,” she added. “If I were to go and jump on TikTok or Republicans were to jump on TikTok, that’s not showing anyone why they shouldn’t be on it.”
Haley has been vocal about supporting a TikTok ban, clashing with former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in a debate last year when he mentioned her daughter when talking about social media regulation.
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Meduza ☛ E.U. to rename human rights sanctions regime in honor of Navalny
E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrel said Monday that the E.U. plans to rename its human rights sanctions regime after Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison colony last week after years of abuse.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ EU opens TikTok probe over child protection
In the case of TikTok, the investigation is set to focus on advertising, access to platform data and measures taken to protect users from harmful content. In particular, the EU Commission wants to determine whether TikTok's algorithm can lead to addiction.
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India Times ☛ TikTok: EU opens formal proceedings against TikTok under Digital Services Act
The European Commission has opened formal proceedings against ByteDance's TikTok under the Digital Services Act (DSA), according to a document seen by Reuters, to see if the social media platform is doing enough to protect children.
"The protection of minors is a top enforcement priority for the DSA. As a platform that reaches millions of children and teenagers, TikTok must fully comply with the DSA and has a particular role to play in the protection of minors online," said EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, in the document.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Site36 ☛ Unmanned arms race: Russia and Ukraine battle each other in an unprecedented drone war
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Democracy Now ☛ Russian Dissident Alexei Navalny Dies in Arctic Prison; “No Doubt” He Was Killed, Says Masha Gessen
More than 400 people have reportedly been detained in Russia for publicly mourning the death of Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic penal colony on Friday at age 47. He was the most prominent critic of Vladimir Putin in Russia and was serving a 19-year sentence at the time of his death on “extremism” charges. U.S. President Joe Biden and other Western leaders directly have blamed Putin for Navalny’s death. Prison authorities say Navalny died of “sudden death syndrome,” but his family has not yet been given access to his body to allow for an independent autopsy. For more, we speak with Russian American writer Masha Gessen, who charts Navalny’s political evolution from an ethnonationalist libertarian tapping into “xenophobic discontent” to an anti-corruption activist promoting a vision of civic nationalism. “I have no doubt … that he was killed,” says Gessen. “Putin was determined to see Navalny die in prison.”
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Environment
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Energy/Transportation
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Omicron Limited ☛ Economists have proposed a $100 billion-a-year fossil fuel tax: A debate Australia should embrace
Garnaut and Sims say proceeds in the first year of the levy would be well over A$100 billion. They say the money should be spent on a rapid acceleration of Australia's renewable energy expansion, as well as subsidizing the development of low-carbon manufacturing for products such as steel and aluminum.
The proceeds would also be spent on cost-of-living relief for consumers, such as energy bill relief and scrapping the current excise on petrol and diesel fuel.
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Wildlife/Nature
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Omicron Limited ☛ Birds have been adapting to human activity for millennia, research suggests
"The presence of eggshells and bones of juvenile ducks and swans in the archaeological record indicates that these birds did indeed remain year-round to breed in the wetlands instead of returning to Europe. We know that the modern descendants of these birds can stay and breed in the region, but only if the environment is suitable for them, and we think that human management of the wetland vegetation did provide suitable ecological niches for them through harvest of the vegetation," added Lisa Yeomans.
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Overpopulation
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Omicron Limited ☛ Eight ways that the stopping of overfishing will promote biodiversity and help address climate change
The intricate relationship between climate change and ocean ecosystems was the subject of recent collaborative research—led by researchers at the University of British Columbia—that highlighted the crucial links between overfishing and climate change.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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The Scotsman ☛ Obituaries: Wayne Kramer, co-founder of garage rock revolutionaries the MC5
They quickly made their mark with the rabble-rousing Kick Out the Jams, released on Elektra Records in February 1969. The album peaked at No.30 on the Billboard charts before the expletive hit the fan. A spat with Detroit department store Hudson’s escalated, with the store dropping all Elektra releases from sale. Elektra responded by dropping the MC5. They moved to Atlantic Records for two more albums, now established in the rock canon, but which sold poorly at the time,
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Silicon Angle ☛ FBI warns Chinese hackers’ malware prepositioning efforts at a ‘fever pitch’
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday, Wray said that such hacking groups’ malware prepositioning operations against critical infrastructure have reached a “fever pitch.” Prepositioning is a term for a situation where hackers embed malware into a network with the goal of carrying out cyberattacks in the future. Wray said that the U.S. has been tracking Chinese prepositioning operations for over a decade.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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India Times ☛ online disinformation: EU, India explore cooperation in combatting online disinformation
Over 35 experts from the European Union and India will hold extensive deliberations on Wednesday to unpack the security and policy aspects in jointly combating online disinformation campaigns. The peer-to-peer discussion in Delhi will explore trends in the use of disinformation online and encourage EU and Indian governmental and non-governmental actors to compare notes and share best practices for countering disinformation.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Meduza ☛ Russian digital map service reportedly blocking reviews at memorial sites visited by Navalny mourners
The Russian digital map service 2GIS is no longer allowing users to leave reviews at memorials for victims of political repressions, where people have created makeshift memorials for Alexey Navalny. Over the past three days, residents have been using the review sections to write about memorial events for Navalny at these sites.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ EU mulls fresh sanctions over Navalny death
Borrell gave no timeline or details on possible sanctions, which will likely include asset freezes and travel bans against people or entities suspected of involvement in Navalny's death. "We will try and identify who is directly responsible. It's not easy because of course there we rely on Russian information," he told reporters.
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BIA Net ☛ Lawyer Feyza Altun detained after ‘sharia’ post on social media
Feyza Altun, a lawyer and a TV pundit, was detained today due to the expressions she shared on the social media platform X.
Altun had posted a Persian poem on her X account the day before, and another social media user madne a sarcastic comment under Altun's post, saying, "Feyza has received a Sharia attack."
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RFERL ☛ Afghan Province Orders Officials Not To Photograph Living Things
Authorities in the Afghan province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, ordered officials on February 18 not to take pictures or videos of "living things." In a letter addressed to civilian and military officials, the provincial department of the interior directed them "to refrain from taking pictures of living things in your formal and informal gatherings, because it causes more harm than good." It said text or audio content on officials' activities was allowed. Images of humans and animals are generally avoided in Islamic art, extending for some Muslims to an aversion to any images of living things.
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RFERL ☛ Pussy Riot Members, Others Honor Navalny At Berlin Memorial Event
"Aleksei Navalny's murder and threats to Pussy Riot members are attacks on the fundamental values of freedom, justice, and human dignity that we have to defend with determination," the group said.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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France24 ☛ UK court to hear Wikileaks' Assange final appeal against extradition to US
If this week's two-day bid to appeal -- set to begin at 10:30 am (1030 GMT) Tuesday -- is successful, he will have another chance to argue his case in a London court, with a date set for a full hearing.
If he loses, Assange will have exhausted all UK appeals and will enter the extradition process, although his team have indicated they will appeal to European courts.
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Truthdig ☛ Julian Assange’s High Stakes Appeal Begins
Truthdig has relentlessly covered the criminalization of Julian Assange’s reporting for over a decade. We are proud to have a Truthdig reporter in the courtroom for this week’s hearing who will be providing a dispatch later this week.
For continuing updates be sure to follow our Dig Series, The Persecution of Julian Assange, which includes a timeline of the significant developments in the life, career and prosecution of the WikiLeaks founder.
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The Dissenter ☛ VIDEO: Eve of Day X—The Assange Appeal Hearing
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The Dissenter ☛ Countdown To Day X: Assange May Die If Extradited
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Counter Punch ☛ What’s at Stake for Julian Assange—and the Rest of Us
Julian, an award-winning journalist and publisher, a life-long promoter of peace, a nine-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, is quite obviously not in that category, though there are those who think he is. Most notable among these is former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who pronounced Julian “a darling of terrorist groups”, and defined WikiLeaks as a “nonstate, hostile intelligence service”.
The crime that Julian is essentially “guilty” of is revealing truths most uncomfortable to the ruling powers—practicing journalism as it should be practiced.
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Patrick Breyer ☛ EU parliamentarians call for protection of Julian Assange from possible extradition to the USA
46 Members of the European Parliament today made a final appeal to the UK Home Secretary to protect Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and prevent his possible extradition to the United States. The day before the final court hearing on Julian Assange’s extradition, the signatories emphasise their concerns about the Assange case and its impact on press freedom, as well as the serious risks to Assange’s health if he is extradited to the US.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Wikileaks founder Julian Assange: Will he be extradited?
If the High Court clears the way for extradition, Assange could be charged and sentenced in the US under the Espionage Act. The law was passed over 100 years ago to convict traitors and spies during World War I. Never before has it been used against a journalist.
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US News And World Report ☛ WikiLeaks Founder Assange May Be Near the End of His Long Fight to Stay Out of the US
Assange and his supporters argue he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing and is protected under press freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Among the files published by WikiLeaks was video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
“Julian has been indicted for receiving, possessing and communicating information to the public of evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. government,” Stella Assange said. “Reporting a crime is never a crime.”
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VOA News ☛ French Journalist Says She Has Been Forced to Leave India
Vanessa Dougnac denies the accusations and Indian authorities have not identified the reports in question.
Dougnac was a New Delhi-based correspondent for several media outlets in Europe, including the French mainstream daily La Croix, weekly magazine Le Point, Swiss daily Le Temps and Belgian daily Le Soir. Her journalism career in India spanned 23 years.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Pete Brown ☛ Buildings and property should be owned by the people that live and work there.
Any individual home or storefront is, at most, an entry on a spreadsheets somewhere. The lived experiences of its occupants and the people who live around it are of no consequence to anyone in any of the layers upon layers of financialization that have become encrusted over the top of every aspect of our society. Storefronts can sit empty and houses and buildings can be abandoned and fall into disrepair, but as long as someone somewhere can figure out how to keep squeezing some money out of them, no one in a position to do anything about making the neighborhood better has any motivation to actually do so.
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Jeff Bridgforth ☛ Working remotely
I have been working from home for 10 years now. It has worked out well for me and been well suited for my life situation. There are times when I miss the personal interactions that come with working in an office with other people but all and all, remote working has agreed with me.
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The Nation ☛ Enjoy Labor’s Tailwinds—but Don’t Forget to Keep Rowing!
The tight labor market signaled by the Great Resignation—when so many workers took individual action, leaving jobs and employers they hated—has converged with other economic and cultural trends to create a unique set of conditions that support union organizing. From Trader Joe’s to Apple to smaller, regional chains and one-off kitchen shops, workers have been turning individual indignation into collective action to change the quality of their work lives by staying put and transforming their workplaces rather than hopping between shitty jobs. But once the unemployment rate begins to rise again and it becomes harder to walk away, it will matter whether they’ve done the work to build durable organizations and a good union standard across their sectors—and whether they know how to keep doing it when times get tougher.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Acid attacks are a form of violence against women—the law needs to treat them as such, researcher says
At the end of January, a 31-year-old woman and her daughters suffered horrifying injuries after being assaulted with an alkaline corrosive substance in London. Sadly, acid attacks like this are not isolated incidents. Over the last 15 years, they have been on the rise across the world, including in the UK.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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APNIC ☛ What’s the deal with Media Over QUIC?
In 2022, the IETF formed a working group for Media over QUIC (MoQ) — a media delivery solution that has the potential to transform how media during live streaming, real-time collaboration, gaming, and more, is sent and received.
For those unfamiliar with this IETF work, here’s a primer on what you need to know — from what MoQ is, to how it works, to how it can completely change the game of media delivery.
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Trademarks
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Quartz ☛ OpenAI can't trademark GPT
“[T]he fact that consumers may not know the underlying words of the acronym does not alter the fact that relevant purchasers are adapted to recognizing that the term ‘GPT’ is commonly used in connection with software to identify a particular type of software that features this AI ask and answer technology,” the USPTO wrote.
The USPTO went on to say that it was denying OpenAI’s petition to prevent the company from stifling competition in its industry and keep it from filing expensive trademark infringement lawsuits.
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The Register UK ☛ OpenAI tries to trademark 'GPT'. US PTO says nope
Officials pointed out that GPT describes a family of neural networks, whose architecture is used in lots of AI models built by other companies. Its common use means that people will understand that it's a term used to describe generative AI technologies. OpenAI, however, reportedly disagreed and said that people wouldn't understand what "Generative Pre-trained Transformer" means.
The USPTO wasn't convinced, and ruled in its final action that the "applied-for mark appears to be generic in connection with the identified goods and/or services. A generic mark, being the 'ultimate in descriptiveness,' cannot acquire distinctiveness and thus is not entitled to registration…under any circumstances," it wrote [PDF].
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate IPTV Astrologer Received Signals But Failed to Predict Copyright Lawsuit
A self-styled astrologer, who allegedly sold subscriptions to a 10,000 channel pirate IPTV service, was warned that his illegal business had no future. A complaint filed at a California court claims the defendant believed he had enough time and space to dodge a cease-and-desist. Ultimately, the stars failed to align, rendering an inevitable copyright infringement lawsuit impossible to predict.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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