Links 08/04/2024: Chatbots Failing Badly (Recycling Their Own Spew), Microsoft Sabotages Third-party Interface Customisation Software
Contents
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Leftovers
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Ruben Schade ☛ Gymnastics New Zealand’s new attire rules
New Zealand’s new attire… New (Zealand, attire)? Damn my compulsive need to factorise all the things.
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Tedium ☛ Three Flavors, One Carton
Explaining why the multi-layer Neapolitan ice cream exists, and why it’s never actually appeared on a space shuttle despite strong suggestions otherwise.
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Junichi Uekawa: Trying to explain analogue clock.
Trying to explain analogue clock. It's hard to
explain. Tried adding some things for affordance, and it is
still not enough. So it's not obvious which arm is the hour
and which arm is the minute.
analog clock
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Ruben Schade ☛ Waking up to Daylight Savings ending
Daylight Savings (do we capitalise that?) ended across south-east Australia early this morning, so it’s now 05:16 and I’m wide awake. Specifically, awake enough to know you won’t be getting back to sleep.
I tended to find that I’d go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier during school holidays back in the day, and I guess it’s still my natural inclination now.
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Science Alert ☛ Ancient Roman Site Found Frozen in Time in The Wreckage of Pompeii
Buried for nearly 2,000 years.
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Science Alert ☛ Mysterious Fragments of Glass in Australian Outback Have Cosmic Origins
Something big happened here.
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New York Times ☛ ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Finale Brings Memories of Divisive ‘Seinfeld’ Ending
As “Curb Your Enthusiasm” draws to a close, the “Seinfeld” co-creator gets another shot at ending a TV show.
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LRT ☛ Lithuania’s only Amsterdam School-style building in Kaunas houses uique museum
Karolis Banys and Petras Gaidamavičius founded the Art Deco Museum in Kaunas several years ago. Last year, they also opened the Amsterdam School Museum, inviting visitors to explore the luxurious urban interiors of the First Republic of Lithuania.
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Hackaday ☛ DIY 6 GHZ Pulse Compression Radar
Conceptually, radar is pretty simple: send out a radio wave and time how long it takes to get back via an echo. However, in practice, there are a number of trade-offs to consider. For example, producing a long pulse has more energy and range, but limits how close you can see and also the system’s ability to resolve objects that are close to each other. Pulse compression uses a long transmission that varies in frequency. Reflected waves can be reconstituted to act more like a short pulse since there is information about the exact timing of the reflected energy. [Henrik] didn’t want to make things too easy, so he decided to build a pulse compression radar that operates at 6 GHz.
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Hackaday ☛ Understand Your Tools: Finger Exercises
A dip meter is basically a coil of wire that, when you excite it, you can use to tell if something inside that coil is resonating along. This lets you measure unknown radio circuits to figure out their resonant frequency, for instance. This week, we featured a clever way to make a dip meter with a nanoVNA, which is an odd hack simply because a dip meter used to be a common spare-parts DIY device, while a vector network analyzer used to cost more than a house.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Floppy disk-reliant San Francisco train control system spurs concerns of 'catastrophic failure' — and it won't be replaced for at least another decade | Tom's Hardware
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s train control system has been reliant on a floppy disk-based computer system since 1998. It won't be replaced for at least another decade.
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Science
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Science Alert ☛ Lightning Really Does Strike Twice, And This Is Where It Happens Most
Head for safe ground.
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Education
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Hardware
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CNX Software ☛ CWWK NAS mini-ITX motherboard features six SATA connectors, three 2.5Gbps Ethernet ports
In our last post, we wrote about the CWWK X86-P1 which is a fanless SBC and mini PC that goes for $101 and up, but while writing another product that got my attention was the CWWK NAS motherboard which is built around the defective chip maker Intel Celeron J Series SoC and features six SATA connectors and three 2.5GbE network ports, two of which are connected to defective chip maker Intel i226-V controllers and the other one to a Realtek RTL8125BG controller. The board also has support for dual 2280 M.2 NVMe SSDs and DDR4 memory.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Laptop BIOS password reset technique uses contorted paperclips stuffed into a parallel port
Retro tech enthusiast Bob Pony recently shared an image of an old Toshiba Satellite laptop’s parallel port sprouting a tangle of contorted paperclips - showcasing an unofficial BIOS reset method.
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Hackaday ☛ Voyager 1 Issue Tracked Down To Defective Memory Chip
After more than forty-six years all of us are likely to feel the wear of time, and Voyager 1 is no different. Following months of harrowing troubleshooting as the far-flung spacecraft stopped returning sensible data, NASA engineers now feel confident that they have tracked down the cause for the problem: a single defective memory chip. Why this particular chip failed is unknown, but possibilities range from wear and tear to an energetic particle hitting it and disrupting its operation.
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Hackaday ☛ Linear Feedback Shift Registers For FPGAs
If you want to start an argument at a Hackaday meeting, you have only to ask something like “How much does this weigh?” or “What time is it?” But if you really want to start a street brawl, you can always say, “Are these numbers random?” Making random numbers that are actually random is actually a tough nut to crack. Most of what we do is, technically, pseudo-random (but we’ll say random number and assume you know what we mean). One way to generate seemingly random sequences is to use a linear feedback shift register or LFSR. You can use LFSRs in software, but they are also very useful in hardware design and [Adam Taylor] takes us through his use of them on FPGAs in a recent post.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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New York Times ☛ Teen Drug Use Habits Are Changing, For the Good. With Caveats.
Dr. Nora Volkow, who leads the National Institutes of Drug Abuse, would like the public to know things are getting better. Mostly.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] Cocaine vaccine: Could it help drug addicts?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-29 [Older] Polish president vetoes bill to provide morning-after pill
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] Autism awareness: See with the eyes of autistic people
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] There's no such thing as 'looking autistic' in film, TV
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-30 [Older] Shops in Vancouver meet growing demand for alcohol-free drinks
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-01 [Older] Berlin celebrates legal cannabis possession
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-01 [Older] Cannabis in Germany: Legalization with limits
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] Cannabis is emerging as a new battleground over Mi'kmaw rights
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-01 [Older] Florida: Six-week abortion ban to take effect
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Cloudbooklet ☛ Google Books Controversy: Flood of Inferior AI-Written Publications
Explore the debate on AI’s role in the surge of low-quality Surveillance Giant Google Books publications.
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Alan Pope ☛ Alan Pope: SAP Upgrade: The Sound of Silence
This is the seventh in an increasingly infrequent series of Friday Tales From Tech Support. Some stories from the past featuring broken computers and even more broken tech support operatives - mostly me.
London. Summer 2002
In the early 2000s I worked as a SAP Technical Consultant which involved teaching courses, advising customers, and doing SAP installations, upgrades and migrations.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Steam download causes M2 MacBook Pro SSD to became so full that data couldn't be deleted — user had to wipe SSD to make system functional again
An Fashion Company Apple Mac expert has written about an unfathomable issue one of his children faced after downloading a Steam game to an almost full SSD.
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New York Times ☛ What to Know About Tech Companies Using Hey Hi (AI) to Teach Their Own A.I.
As artificial intelligence developers run out of data to train their models, they are turning to “synthetic data” — data made by the Hey Hi (AI) itself.
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Ruben Schade ☛ Editing Dynmap YAML directly
Dynmap is one of those plugins that feels integral to Minecraft once you start using it. I’ve joked with Clara that I spend as much time cataloguing, mapping, and exploring our Dynmap than I do playing the host game itself, which perhaps says more about me than I care to admit.
This is our first, and still current world that we started during COVID lockdowns in 2020. Seasoned Minecraft players could probably immediately spot the original four 1.16 maps, and the new 1.17+ areas: [...]
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft stifles third-party interface customization apps in Windows 11 Version 24H2 | Tom's Hardware
As the release date for Windows 11 24H2 nears, the RTM version of Windows has blocked customization options, citing security and stability concerns.
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Dot Esports ☛ ‘An avoidable f**k-up’: Larian director criticizes state of gaming industry, mass layoffs
In an April 5 interview with Game File, Larian’s director of publishing, Michael Douse, expressed his opinions on the recent string of layoffs that have affected the gaming industry.
In the interview, Douse said that the notion that layoffs are inevitable is simply not true. He also said that as more companies lay off employees, other companies will feel more confident in doing the same.
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Game-News24 ☛ Larian director slammed the state of gaming industry, massive layoff statistics and an avoidable miscalculation:
Douse considered the layoffs as a very complex and nuanced decision, adding that it’ll just go without saying that its an inevitability but not true. He went on saying they are an extremely risky f*ck up. That’s actually all they are, adding. It is why you see one by the other people for your own best interests and interests Because company is going, okay? Now we also can. We’ve been wanting for ages. Everyone else is. Why don’t we keep an eye on it? That is really very sick.
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Security
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K12 SIX Applauds Launch of K-12 Education Cybersecurity Council
On March 28, 2024, the U.S. Department of Education—in coordination with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—held the kickoff meeting of the Education Facilities Subsector Government Coordinating Council (GCC), designed to facilitate formal, ongoing collaboration between all levels of government and the education sector on issues of K-12 cybersecurity risk management. Organized in response to the growing frequency and severity of cybersecurity incidents being experienced by school systems nationwide, the convening of the GCC was in fulfillment of White House commitments made in August 2023 and in response to U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports requested by Members of Congress (2021, 2022). The launch of the GCC marks an inflection point for the K-12 education sector, bringing it on par with other critical infrastructure sectors and subsectors that have previously established such stakeholder councils.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Security Week ☛ House to Take up Bill to Reauthorize Crucial US Spy Program as Expiration Date Looms
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expires on April 19.
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Defence/Aggression
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New York Times ☛ New England Journal of Medicine Ignored Nazi Atrocities, Historians Find
The New England Journal of Medicine published an article condemning its own record during World War II.
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JURIST ☛ HRW report alleges Israel airstrike on civilian apartment building is a war crime
A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released on Thursday alleged that an Israeli airstrike conducted on a civilian apartment building on October 31, 2023, is a war crime.
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RFERL ☛ Washington Says It Warned, Not Asked, Iran Against Attacks On U.S. Troops
The United States has warned Iran against attacking its troops and bases in the Middle East as Tehran plans its response to a suspected Israeli strike that killed seven military men on April 1.
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New York Times ☛ Iran vows revenge at a funeral for commanders killed in an Israeli airstrike.
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New Yorker ☛ After the World Central Kitchen Attack, How Far Will Biden Shift on Israel?
“There is a degree to which Biden has looked around and realized,” Evan Osnos says, “that he had to catch up to where the country was.”
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Hackaday ☛ How To Properly Patch Your Iowa-Class Battleship
There’s a saying among recreational mariners that the word “boat” is actually an acronym for “bring out another thousand”, as it seems you can’t operate one for long without committing to expensive maintenance and repairs. But this axiom isn’t limited to just civilian pleasure craft, it also holds true for large and complex vessels — although the bill generally has a few more zeros at the end.
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JURIST ☛ UN experts report growing humanitarian crisis due to ongoing fighting in Myanmar
Two senior UN officials told the UN Security Council on Thursday, during the council’s first meeting about Myanmar since the military seized power from the democratically elected government, that the ongoing fighting in Myanmar since the military takeover in 2021 has deprived local communities of basic needs and access to essential services [...]
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] Germany star Rüdiger slams Islamist gesture allegation
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-03-30 [Older] Canada to Train Troops From Caribbean Nations for Haiti Mission
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-30 [Older] Family calls on Canadian government to help Fredericton man kidnapped in Congo
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] Rwanda: From colonialism to genocide
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] Senegal inaugurates youngest president, who promises change
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-31 [Older] A new era for Senegal after the election?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-01 [Older] German military to get Islamic chaplaincy
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-01 [Older] When colonial Germany committed genocide in Namibia
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-01 [Older] Germany looks back at Adolf Hitler’s coup attempt
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-01 [Older] How can EU support Philippines in South China Sea dispute?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-31 [Older] Rearmament: tailwind for the German arms industry?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-30 [Older] Austria: Explosive device found at Jehovah's Witness hall
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Environment
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] How unsealing your paved garden can help reduce city heat
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-31 [Older] Carbon tax opponents 'just playing politics,' Trudeau says as protesters hit the streets across Canada
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Energy/Transportation
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YLE ☛ Spot prices exceptionally low on Sunday
The spot price of electricity will tumble into negative territory on Sunday.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-31 [Older] Germany shuts 7 coal power stations after winter ends
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] WestJet Encore pilots vote for strike mandate, adding to airline's turbulence
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] Germany's postal service ceases domestic mail flights
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] Germany: Flixbus crash driver investigated for manslaughter
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] France set to commission new nuclear plant
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] Chinese company Xiaomi releases first electric vehicle
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] Baltimore bridge collapse: Maryland seeks millions in aid
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-29 [Older] Baltimore bridge collapse: Huge crane arrives for cleanup
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-31 [Older] Baltimore: Crews to lift first piece of collapsed bridge
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Wildlife/Nature
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Science Alert ☛ This Tiger Was Thought Extinct. Then a Single Strand of Hair Was Found.
It could still be out there.
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-31 [Older] New Brunswick moves to pay farmers who set aside land for conservation
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Reveal What a Future 'Mega-Drought' in Australia Would Look Like
It could last for decades.
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-31 [Older] Residents stroll riverbed in Prince George, B.C., amid unprecedented drought
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] A pipeline to send water to southern Alberta? Ideas float to the surface in times of drought
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] Endangered monkey stolen from Leipzig Zoo in Germany
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-29 [Older] At least 3 endangered North Atlantic right whale calves have died so far this year, conservation group says
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] Once endangered, brown bears bounce back in the Pyrenees
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Science Alert ☛ Scientists Accidentally Made a Mouse Grow Legs in Place of Genitals
A very strange result.
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] P.E.I. river otters caught on camera as their population grows
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Finance
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YLE ☛ Paper: Purra says raising retirement age necessary
Finance Minister Riikka Purra (Finns) claims that raising the pension age will be necessary in the future, according to Iltalehti.
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] Canadian economy starts the year on a rebound with 0.6 per cent growth in January
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] A settlement in a U.S. lawsuit could upend the cornerstone of real estate industry: commissions
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] German store Karstadt insolvency procedures underway
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] Inflation in Germany drops again in March
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] What's behind high joblessness among India's youth?
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-01 [Older] Some consumers, businesses are feeling more optimistic about the economy, say BoC surveys [Ed: Focus on sentiments instead of reality or simple facts]
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Taiwan lashes out after Bolivia expresses solidarity with China over quake that killed 10 on self-ruled island
Taiwan’s foreign minister lashed out at Bolivia Saturday for expressing solidarity with China following an earthquake that struck the island Beijing views as its own.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] Biden speaks with Xi on Taiwan and AI
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-02 [Older] DR Congo appoints 1st female prime minister
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France24 ☛ US and China agree to start new talks on 'balanced' economic growth
The United States and China have agreed to hold "intensive exchanges on balanced growth", the US Treasury Department said in a statement, after two days of talks between Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and her Chinese counterpart He Lifeng in Guangzhou.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-01 [Older] Pakistan court suspends ex-PM Imran Khan's graft conviction
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-29 [Older] Northern Ireland party chief quits over sex offenses charges
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-30 [Older] Peru police raid president's home looking for Rolex watches
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-30 [Older] In Venezuela, a divided opposition weighs its chances
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-31 [Older] Somalia: Puntland pulls recognition of federal government
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China using Hey Hi (AI) to divide voters in US ahead of presidential election, Abusive Monopolist Microsoft says [Ed: This is one way Microsoft is distracting from the report about how China cracked Microsoft's entire infrastructure and the US Government blasted it for it only days ago]
China is ramping up use of AI-generated content and fake social control media accounts to inflame division in the United States and elsewhere, according to the latest report from Microsoft’s threat center.
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] B.C. Conservatives drop candidate amid misinformation claims
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-01 [Older] April Fool's Day: Why the press is now avoiding pranks
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-01 [Older] South Korea battling deepfakes ahead of key election
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Censorship/Free Speech
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RFA ☛ Netflix's take on ‘Three-Body Problem’ gets mixed reviews in China
Viewers argue about the show's merits despite it not being officially available behind the Great Firewall.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-31 [Older] Amsterdam police clear area around central metro station
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New York Times ☛ New York City Set to Pay a Record $28 Million to Settle Rikers Island Suit
Eight correction officers and a captain stood by for seven minutes and 51 seconds as Nicholas Feliciano tried to hang himself in a jail cell in 2019.
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NYPost ☛ NYC paying record $28M settlement to family of Rikers inmate left severely brain damaged after suicide attempt: report
Nicholas Feliciano needs help walking and eating, and remembers little from before the 2019 suicide attempt.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-31 [Older] EU candidate Georgia wants to outlaw LGBTQ 'propaganda'
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] French National Assembly votes to outlaw hair discrimination
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-31 [Older] Spanish game abandoned after alleged racist slurs from crowd
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-03-29 [Older] Why are South Koreans less welcoming of LGBTQ+ neighbors?
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] Supreme Court upholds Yukon First Nation's residency requirement for elected officials
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-28 [Older] Man switched at birth renews calls for N.L. government to apologize
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-29 [Older] Doug Ford calls on federal workers in Ottawa to return to office
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CBC ☛ 2024-03-31 [Older] Little recourse for parents denied rentals because of kids, says couple
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Trademarks/Identities
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Copyrights
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Techdirt ☛ Game Jam Winner Spotlight: Letters To Cthulhu
And here we are! We’ve arrived at the end of our series of posts looking at the winners of the sixth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1928! We’ve already featured Best Visuals winner Flight from Podunk Station and Best Adaptation winner Mickey Party, Best Remix winner The Burden Of Creation, Best and Deep Cut winner Solar Storm 1928, and Best Digital Game winner Millions of Cats, and today we’re looking at our sixth and final game, Best Analog Game winner Letters To Cthulhu by Lucienne Impala.
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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Loneliness and Solitude
Struggling in the quiet moments is something I've been working on with my therapist for quite a while. This has been a problem my whole life: I get home, it's quite and dark, and I'm all alone. My friends are busy, I have no one really to talk to, so now what?
Well, I would get sad. I might try and throw on a video or something to occupy my time; but more often than not I have a short queue and I ended up done in 30 minutes to an hour and we're back to square one. So then I'd either just get really depressed and let the suicidal ideation creep in or just dig and dig at YouTube re-watching videos, start to dig through some creators back catalog, or something, anything, to not have to be alone with my thoughts.
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Parental instincts, I guess?
Good evening, I feel incredibly exhausted, going out of town tomorrow despite going out of town so many times these past couple months, but hopefully this will be the last one for a long time.
Recently, I have been thinking more about what having a child will be like. Not that I have any plans for it in the near future, but it is a thought I keep pondering on.
What would it feel like to have someone to care about? I guess the parents here may have an answer or something.
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All my friends hate me (2021)
I didn't get it. I think it's trying to depict social anxiety, using some codes of the horror movie.
We follow this guy, Pete, played by Tom Stourton. He meets a bunch of old friends in a mansion, and he hasn't seen them for a few years it seems. And then the entire movie is depicting situations where Pete's friends are awful to him. Not really straight up mean, but kind of shitty and then either gaslighting him or saying that was just a joke.
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Technology and Free Software
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Disconnection Weekend
My wife and I just returned from a weekend trip with two friends to a remote cabin near the Ozarks. The building had heat and running water, as well as plumbing, but no WiFi, and our mobile phone signal was poor. Thus, we decided to disconnect and enjoy nature as much as possible.
I was worried I would be bored once we got there. The majority of my day-to-day activities involve electronics, from my job to Gemini to video games. I even keep my to-do list in a text file and primarily exercise by playing arcade dance games. What if I couldn't resist the digital itch and spent the entire weekend cursing the lack of signal on my smartphone?
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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.