Links 10/04/2024: TikTok Trouble, East Asian Companies Receive Subsidies From American Taxpayers
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
- Digital Restrictions (DRM) Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Kev Quirk ☛ What About Anonymous Blogging?
Anyway, I've been thinking recently about blogging anonymously. I'm not thinking about doing it, but wondering why folk might want to do it, and whether any of my fellow site owners, who write under their real name, have considered the same?
If you blog under a pseudonym, I'd love to hear form you too. I'd like to understand your motivations , and whether you still think it was a good idea?
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[Old] Cap Watikins ☛ Cap Watkins – The Sliding Scale of Giving a Fuck
Ever since then, I've found myself more and more rating both my feelings and the importance of any particular decision on that same one-to-ten scale. Is the decision non-critical and I don't actually care that much one way or another? Then I'll voice my preference, but follow up with "but I'm a two-out-of-ten on this, so whatever you want to do is fine." Is the topic mission-critical, with far-reaching effects? My opinion will probably be a bit stronger and I'll debate a bit harder or longer.
Interestingly, it turns out that many, many of the decisions I'm a part of day-to-day and week-to-week rate pretty low on the scale. It's rare that I find myself beyond a five, which is probably right. Someone said to me once: if everything is an emergency, then nothing is. Similarly, if I'm a ten-out-of-ten on every single decision I'm ever a part of, how can anyone know or trust me when I say something's very important to me? Having an internal barometer for what's important and what's less critical is incredibly useful for helping others trust your responses to ideas and proposals.
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Tracy Durnell ☛ My drift away from the sci-fi genre
It seems I’m not interested in much of the SF being published now*, but I am also supremely disinterested in the canon. I actively disliked several acclaimed SF works from the past decade or two (Binti, Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Leviathan Wakes) and I question the lastingness of some others (The Imperial Radch series, Old Man’s War). I was even underwhelmed, alas, by the most recent Murderbot — one of the few SF series I’ve stuck with. I’ve discussed my waning interest in SF with friends who’ve noticed the same trend in their own reading, wondering whether we just don’t like sci-fi anymore. I don’t know what it is that I’m bouncing off** — that we’re bouncing off — but it’s happening.
Have we changed, or has the genre? As our society’s dysfunction has become more and more clear, does dystopian literature hit too close to home, and utopian seem depressingly out of reach?
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TechTea ☛ March Website Updates
As a natural tinkerer I can’t just leave the website code alone so if you come here often you have likely noticed some changes to the website.
Here are some of the thinks I’ve been working on.
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Garrit Franke ☛ Five Years of Blogging
My blog just turned five years old! 🎉
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James G ☛ having a website
I thought to myself "I would love to have a poem to end my web pages!" so I started jotting down notes on what a poem could look like for my website. I decided to stick with the web theme, and came up with the following: [...]
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Lewis Dale ☛ It's CSS Naked Day
It’s CSS Naked Day[1], so to celebrate I’ve stripped all of the CSS from my blog.
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Dominik Schwind ☛ LostFocus
All in all I’m not super impressed with how my blog looks like without CSS and it is something I’ll keep in mind while working on my new theme.
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The Age AU ☛ Elbows are back on the table as Gen Z say manners no longer relevant
Elbows are making their way back to the dinner table as youngsters believe that manners are no longer relevant, according to a new study.
Some 60 per cent of those aged 12 to 27 – known as Gen Z – believe traditional table manners are no longer relevant and more than a third have admitted to using their phones at the table, according to the poll by the UK’s Censuswide.
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Science
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Gizmodo ☛ What Were Those Bright Red Dots Seen During the Eclipse?
Rather, it was a solar prominence—a reddish or pinkish structure extending from the edge of the Sun’s disk. Prominences can vary in size and shape, ranging from small, discrete loops to large, complex structures stretching across significant portions of the solar edge. Prominences are not technically classified as solar flares, but both appear with greater frequency during the Sun’s solar maximum phase.
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The Conversation ☛ Body armour made from silk is being developed – but this apparently cutting-edge idea is centuries old
Separate teams of Chinese and American scientists are reported to be developing body armour using the silk from genetically modified silkworms. The researchers modified the genes of silkworms to make them produce spider silk instead of their own silk.
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Science Alert ☛ Magnetic Star Awakens After Sleeping For 10 Years And It's Acting Super Weird
All stars are special in their own way, but magnetars are possibly the weirdest of the weird. They're very young neutron stars, which themselves are the collapsed cores of dead massive stars that have gone supernova and ejected most of their material in a colossal explosion. The core that remains collapses under gravity, and it is dense – up to 2.3 times the mass of the Sun, squished into a ball just 20 kilometers (12 miles) across.
Following this collapse process, neutron stars briefly possess an insanely powerful magnetic field. They're basically the most magnetic things in the Universe, with magnetic fields 1,000 times more powerful than a normal neutron star's, and a quadrillion times more powerful than Earth's.
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The Kent Stater ☛ Darkness descends on campus during total solar eclipse
Even though the eclipse lasted a few minutes, large clusters of people were seen across campus, particularly at Risman Plaza with their eyes to the sky.
Among spectators at the Risman Plaza, university President Todd Diacon chose to attend the Total Solar Eclipse Viewing Party as he said this would be his last chance to witness a total solar eclipse since the next eclipse is not expected to happen in Ohio until 2099.
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Education
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Amos Wenger ☛ Begging EuroRust to acknowledge independent workers
TL;DR I purchased individual tickets for EuroRust and added my VAT number, so it could be a tax-deductible expense for me as an independent worker.
The organizers reached out asking me to buy business tickets instead. I'm asking them to reconsider their policy.
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Hardware
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The Register UK ☛ San Francisco's light rail to upgrade from floppy disks
And before folks start panicking, it's worth remembering that use of floppy disks is not uncommon in embedded systems. Bear in mind that the US nuclear arsenal ran off eight-inch floppies until 2019. It's the way stuff was done when these systems were built last century.
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ABC ☛ San Francisco's SFMTA train system has been running on floppy disks for decades; city fears 'catastrophic failure' before upgrade - ABC7 San Francisco
This system was designed to last 20 to 25 years. SFMTA's director Jeffrey Tumlin said upgrading the system will take another decade and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
"The detail project schedule will be finalized once we have a contractor onboard. This is effectively a multi-phase decade long project that starts with pieces of market street subway and pieces in the surface. Ultimately our goal is to have a single train control system for the entire rail system," said Tumlin.
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The North Lines IN ☛ Dell launches latest range of AI-enabled laptops and PCs designed for the future of computational intelligence
Powering the new Dell devices are Intel's cutting-edge “Meteor Lake” CPUs optimized for artificial intelligence workloads. The processors feature powerful neural processing units supporting generative AI tasks directly on the PC. This shift toward distributed intelligence processing will lessen cloud reliance and enable new interactive possibilities.
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India Times ☛ Global PC market returns to growth in first quarter after two-year decline: IDC [Ed: IDC a little misleading, compared one year to the prior, i.e. comparing now to a super-"slow" year]
Global shipments of personal computers returned to growth in the first quarter after two years of decline, according to preliminary results from market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) released on Monday.
The PC market grew 1.5% from a year earlier, with 59.8 million shipments in the first quarter, and returned to pre-pandemic levels with the onset of a refresh cycle for PCs that were purchased during the pandemic, the report added.
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The Verge ☛ Google’s first Arm-based CPU will challenge Microsoft and Amazon in the AI race
The Axion chips are already powering YouTube ads, the Google Earth Engine, and other Google services. “We’re making it easy for customers to bring their existing workloads to Arm,” says Mark Lohmeyer, Google Cloud’s vice president and general manager of compute and machine learning infrastructure, in a statement to Reuters. “Axion is built on open foundations but customers using Arm anywhere can easily adopt Axion without re-architecting or re-writing their apps.”
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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New York Times ☛ PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ Are Pervasive in Water Worldwide, Study Finds
They’re also in our water.
A new study of more than 45,000 water samples around the world found that about 31 percent of groundwater samples tested that weren’t near any obvious source of contamination have PFAS levels considered harmful to human health by the Environmental Protection Agency.
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Idiomdrottning ☛ What counts as screentime?
To my annoyance, there’s no way, as far as I know, to have app limits without getting bugged by notifications with “screentime reports”. But this first week has been pretty horrifying. I average over 16 hours with this tablet. Talk about terminally online. 😰
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Los Angeles Times ☛ California moves to ban use of the weedkiller paraquat
Assembly Bill 1963, introduced recently by Assemblymember Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), would sunset the use of paraquat beginning in January 2026. The herbicide, which is described by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as highly toxic, is regularly sprayed on almonds, grapes, cotton and other crops in the state.
“Paraquat is banned in more than 60 countries, including those with large agricultural economies, like the United Kingdom, China, Brazil and the members of the European Union,” Friedman said during a news conference Wednesday. “California should follow their lead.”
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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TechRadar ☛ GAME store employees have been told to expect layoffs as they receive new zero-hours contracts
Staff at UK video game retailer GAME have reportedly been told to expect layoffs as they've been moved to zero-hours contracts.
According to a recent report from Eurogamer, the high street chain owned by Fraser Group will now employ most non-managerial staff with zero-hours contracts from now on, while newer junior staff members, who are also on zero-hours contracts, are being referred to as "cast members."
Multiple staff members, who remained anonymous, confirmed the changes to the publication and said that the move to make zero-hours contacts standard across the business was not unexpected.
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The Verge ☛ Cruise resumes robotaxi tests after one of its cars ran someone over
Cruise has announced that it’s resuming tests for its fleet of self-driving taxis in Phoenix, Arizona , though not with passengers just yet. The autonomous vehicle maker says it will start with humans behind the wheel, with no passengers and no autonomous driving mechanisms engaged.
In California, lawmakers banned the GM subsidiary from operating its vehicles in the state after one of them ran over a San Francisco pedestrian and dragged them over 20 feet in October, after another vehicle threw the victim into the robotaxi’s path. That was just weeks after another incident where one of Cruise’s vehicles collided with a fire truck after failing to properly yield to the truck’s emergency signals.
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Air Force Times ☛ AI-operated fighter jet will fly Air Force secretary on test run
The Air Force is betting a large part of its future air warfare on a fleet more than 1,000 autonomously operated drones, and later this spring its top civilian leader plans to climb into one of those artificial intelligence-operated warplanes and let it take him airborne.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told senators on Tuesday at a hearing on the service’s 2025 budget that he will enter the cockpit of one of the F-16s that the service has converted for drone flight to see for himself how it performs in the air.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Can the bias in algorithms help us see our own?
"Algorithms can codify and amplify human bias, but algorithms also reveal structural biases in our society," he says. "Many biases cannot be observed at an individual level. It's hard to prove bias, for instance, in a single hiring decision. But when we add up decisions within and across persons, as we do when building algorithms, it can reveal structural biases in our systems and organizations."
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[Repeat] Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft's Copilot image tool generates ugly Jewish stereotypes, anti-Semitic tropes
The Verge’s Mia Sato reported last week about the Meta Image generator’s inability to produce an image of an Asian man with a white woman, a story that was picked up by many outlets. But what Sato experienced – the image generator repeatedly ignoring her prompt and generating an Asian man with an Asian partner – is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to bias in image generators.
For months, I’ve been testing to see what kind of imagery the major AI bots offer when you ask them to generate images of Jewish people. While most aren’t great – often only presenting Jews as old white men in black hats – Copilot Designer is unique in the amount of times it gives life to the worst stereotypes of Jews as greedy or mean. A seemingly neutral prompt such as “jewish boss” or “jewish banker” can give horrifyingly offensive outputs.
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International Business Times ☛ Microsoft Copilot AI Backtracks on Bias After Spreading Anti-Semitic Jewish Stereotypes
However, Satto's encounter, wherein the generator consistently depicted an Asian man with an Asian partner despite her prompt, only scratches the surface of the broader issue of bias in image generators.
Avram Piltch, a reporter for Tom's Hardware, has been investigating how major AI image generators portray Jewish people for a while now. While most AI bots showed bias by primarily depicting elderly white men in black hats, Copilot Designer was particularly concerning.
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Jim Nielsen ☛ Implementing Netlify’s Image CDN
tl;dr I implemented Netlify’s new image transformation service on my icon gallery sites and saw a pretty drastic decrease in overall bandwidth. Here are the numbers:
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India Times ☛ New AI law will guard rights of content creators: experts
Experts hailed the proposed AI law as "timely" given the explosive growth of AI-generated content. This rapid development has the potential to disrupt the publishing industry and raise copyright infringement concerns, they said.
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The Register UK ☛ US insurers using drones to deny home insurance policies
Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence is a big part of GIC's services. Although the biz doesn't emphasize its usage of AI, it does brag about its partnership with Vexcel, which in turn brags about its AI-based analysis of aerial imagery.
Privacy is an obvious concern in respect to private drones canvassing the US and other countries, but so is the accuracy of these photographs. The WSJ cited the case of California resident Cindy Picos, who was dropped by her provider CSAA Insurance based on an aerial photograph that apparently indicated her roof was on its last legs. An independent, in-person inspection found that the roof would last for another 10 years, but CSAA Insurance didn't change its mind.
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The Register UK ☛ Developers are calling the shots on AI planning
Not surprisingly, when it comes to actually controlling the purse strings for such AI augmentation, it's the IT department ruling the roost in both regions, but there's a notable difference on the different sides of the Atlantic. European readers report that the next most important role in splashing the cash is architects, whereas they only rank fifth on the list in America.
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The Register UK ☛ AI could crash democracy and cause wars, warns Japan's NTT
"If generative AI is allowed to go unchecked, trust in society as a whole may be damaged as people grow distrustful of one another and incentives are lost for guaranteeing authenticity and trustworthiness," asserted the Japanese telco in a joint proposal created with media outlet Yomiuri Shimbun.
"There is a concern that, in the worst case scenario, democracy and social order could collapse, resulting in wars," the two entities alleged.
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The Conversation ☛ Deepfake porn: why we need to make it a crime to create it, not just share it
Having worked closely with victims and spoken to many young women, it is clear to me that deepfake porn is now an invisible threat pervading the lives of all women and girls. Deepfake pornography or nudifying ordinary images can happen to any of us, at any time. And, at least in the UK, there is nothing we can do to prevent it. While UK laws criminalise sharing deepfake porn without consent, they do not cover its creation. The possibility of creation alone implants fear and threat into women’s lives.
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El País ☛ From fulfilling our fantasies to altering our desires, how far can AI go in sex?
“AI systems are based on information provided by developers or users. It is a training, and also a way for the AI results to adjust to what we want to obtain,” explains Lola Fernández de la Torre, a teacher and researcher at the University of Málaga who is studying the application of AI tools in teaching. That is, if a chatbot without prior limitations starts talking to a user about sex, it will end up learning and adapting to that user’s tastes, whatever they may be. “An AI does not judge, as it lacks reasoning; if the user feels judged when the chatbot doesn’t provide the expected result precisely because it is outside their informative reach, that’s a different thing,” she explains. Therefore, faced with peculiar sexual fantasies that might be difficult to share, a person could feel comfortable interacting with a virtual partner that would understand them and adapt to their tastes, as long as they have no any prior limitations defined by their developers.
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NYPost ☛ AOC opens up about seeing deepfake AI porn of herself online
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has opened up about her own horrifying experience of becoming the victim of AI-generated deepfake porn — warning that it is “not as imaginary as people want to make it seem.”
The Queens Democrat said she was scrolling through X while talking about legislation with her aides in a car in February when she came face to face with the AI-generated image of herself performing a sex act.
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Rolling Stone ☛ AOC's Personal Experience With Deepfake AI Porn Inspired Her To Act
“And once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it,” Ocasio-Cortez says. “It parallels the same exact intention of physical rape and sexual assault, [which] is about power, domination, and humiliation. Deepfakes are absolutely a way of digitizing violent humiliation against other people.”
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New York Times ☛ Teen Girls Confront an Epidemic of Deepfake Nudes in Schools
In a statement, the school district said it had opened an “immediate investigation” upon learning about the incident, had immediately notified and consulted with the police, and had provided group counseling to the sophomore class.
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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Los Angeles Times ☛ William Woods was victim of identity theft, but he was the one jailed
They didn’t believe someone had used his Social Security number to run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. They didn’t believe the Social Security card he himself carried was real.
Above all, no one believed he really was William Woods.
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Terence Eden ☛ Lazy way to cause SHA-256 collisions for lazy evaluators
This toy example starts with a string "a" and then creates a different string "b". It then pads the "b" string with spaces until the first characters of both hashes match:
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Privacy/Surveillance
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404 Media ☛ Arizona Governor Strikes Down Age Verification Bill, Says It Violates First Amendment
Arizona governor Katie Hobbs just vetoed an age verification bill that would have required anyone visiting an adult site from the state to show ID before continuing.
The bill, HB 2586, is a copycat of legislation sweeping the country: sites with more than 33.3 percent material that’s “harmful to minors”—defined in the bill as anything of “prurient interest” and as a long list of pornographic imagery and terms, including “touching, caressing or fondling of nipples, breast, buttocks, anuses or genitals” and “sexual intercourse, masturbation, sodomy, beastiality, oral copulation,” the list goes on—would be subject to fines if they didn’t check all users’ ages.
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Wired ☛ Section 702: The Future of the Biggest US Spy Program Hangs in the Balance
The United States government, like its rivals in Moscow and Beijing, has poured untold millions of dollars into quietly turning the phones and internet browsers of its own citizens into a powerful intelligence-gathering tool. Shadowy deals between federal agencies and commercial data brokers have helped the US intelligence system to amass a “large amount” of what its own experts term “intimate information” on Americans.
Most US citizens are in the dark as to the true scope and scale of the surveillance they’re under.
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Scheerpost ☛ The White House Is Wrong: Section 702 Needs Drastic Change
As we’ve written, the SAFE Act does not go nearly far enough in protecting us from the warrantless surveillance the government now conducts under Section 702. But, with surveillance hawks in the government pushing for a reauthorization of their favorite national security law without any meaningful reforms, the SAFE Act might be privacy and civil liberties advocates’ best hope for imposing some checks upon Section 702.
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The Register UK ☛ Solar eclipse darkened skies, dampened [Internet] traffic
Plenty of whom went offline to gawk at the celestial dance.
Cloudflare found that as the eclipse rolled across the US, bytes delivered traffic dropped by eight percent and request traffic dipped a dozen points, compared to the same time last week.
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The Record ☛ FCC opens rulemaking to probe connected car stalking
The notice of proposed rulemaking is focused on whether the Commission needs to alter its rules for implementing the Safe Connections Act (SCA) in order to adequately address how connected car services impact domestic violence survivors, the press release said. It also seeks comment on what connected car service providers can proactively do to keep survivors safe from the abuse of connected car tools.
The rulemaking notice refers to possibly designating connected cars as mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), a determination that would dramatically increase the FCC’s power to regulate the vehicles and would immediately ban manufacturers from selling geolocation data.
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Patrick Breyer ☛ Pirates call for a halt to plans for the EU health data space
“Information about our physical and mental health is extremely sensitive. If we cannot rely on this information being treated confidentially by our doctors, we may no longer seek treatment and may even increase the risk of suicide. The EU is allowing the most sensitive patient files to be accumulated, networked and passed on without ensuring that patients have control and self-determination over their data. ‘Anything goes, nothing has to’ is not an approach that patients can trust. Without trust, a European Health Data Space cannot work. According to surveys, more than 80% of EU citizens want to decide for themselves about the sharing of their patient records. The majority of them want to be asked for consent. The EU deal is far from this. It betrays the interests and will of patients in order to sell their data to Big Tech and pharmaceutical giants. We Pirates strongly reject the disenfranchisement of patients that this regulation entails.
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The Register UK ☛ Tele2 takes a swipe at cloud giants with Tele2 Collaborate
A Swedish telco has rolled a collaboration platform for public sector organizations worried about sensitive data leaving Sweden.
Tele2 Collaborate is a service that uses the Element Server Suite (ESS) and comprises chat functionality, video meetings, whiteboard, and document sharing.
ESS is based on the Matrix protocol and allows Tele2 Collaborate to run without doubts about data sovereignty, which is increasingly a factor in corporate thinking regarding cloud and communication services.
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Federal News Network ☛ With “spying bosses” on the rise, where do federal agencies stand on employee monitoring?
The “Stop Spying Bosses Act” would create new rules around the use of worker surveillance technologies. It would also establish a new division at the Labor Department to regulate workplace surveillance.
The legislation comes in response to an explosion in the use of everything from video surveillance to keylogging software to keep tabs on employees. A 2023 survey of 1,000 companies with remote or hybrid workforces found the vast majority use some form of employee monitoring.
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Reason ☛ No Pseudonymity for Porn Copyright Infringement Defendants, Says One Judge
The cases on the subject are sharply split, reflecting how ill-defined the law of pseudonymous litigation is.
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India Times ☛ TikTok's popularity among European politicians rises despite security fears
With European elections approaching in June, mainstream politicians are wary of ceding ground to fringe parties who have successfully exploited its short video format. But TikTok is under increasing scrutiny in the West due to fears that user data from the app owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance could end up in the hands of the Chinese government.
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The Hill ☛ Why is everyone freaking out about The Corporate Transparency Act?
Well, for some, it’s very unreasonable. So unreasonable that both the National Small Business Association (NSBA) and the Small Business Association of Michigan filed lawsuits challenging its constitutionality.
“[The act] unlawfully authorizes the search and seizure of the sensitive, personal information belonging to millions of innocent small business owners and employees without any suspicion of wrongdoing,” says the Michigan group. “[It] exceeds the bounds of Congress’ legislative authority. Congress may only legislate within the specific powers granted to it in the Constitution. None of these powers give Congress the authority to enact the [act].”
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OpenRightsGroup ☛ Home Office CCTV: free mass surveillance?
At this point, we want to draw attention to the possibility that cloud stored CCTV data could be seized, and to ask for greater transparency over the operation of this Home Office scheme. In particular, potential participants looking at the scheme should consider if they would want this possibility to exist in systems they may install, and whether they should ensure local rather than cloud storage of any footage collected.
These concerns are exacerbated by the acquisition of Esotec in 2021 by a US company, Johnson Controls Inc. Esotec’s privacy policy is now that of Johnson Controls and can be found here, which notes the possibility of data seizures under the US FISA s 702. Among other items we would want to know is the way that data is retained and for how long, information which the policy explains is contained in “product specific” data sheets.
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Defence/Aggression
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The Hill ☛ White House condemns ‘Death to America’ chants at rally in Dearborn, Mich.
Dearborn, a Detroit suburb where Arab Americans make up the majority of the population, was under increased security in February after an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal called the city “America’s jihad capital.” Biden called out the “anti-Arab hate” against Dearborn at the time.
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JURIST ☛ American Bar Association warns of increasing threats to US judges
The statement cited that serious threats against judges have doubled since 2019, with 457 incidents reported in 2023. These threats often involve threats to physical safety and harm and can have a profoundly negative effect on a judge’s well-being.
In her statement, ABA President Mary Smith highlighted the importance of protecting judges, stating, “Threats against the very individuals we have appointed or elected to administer our judicial system and the rule of law are not only wrong, they also threaten the very fabric of our democracy — judicial independence and the rule of law.”
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VOA News ☛ Sweden expels Chinese journalist, calling her threat to national security, report says
The journalist, an unnamed, 57-year-old woman, was arrested by the Swedish security service in October and expelled by the government in Stockholm last week, Swedish broadcaster SVT reported. She is banned from returning.
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The Strategist ☛ Europe must prepare for another Trump presidency
Trump’s desire to withdraw US support for Ukraine goes beyond his aversion to extended military conflicts. Trump holds Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky personally responsible for his first impeachment and views many of America’s top Russia experts, even those who worked for him, as complicit in this debacle. Trump’s stance on NATO is equally personal, as evidenced by his recent threat to allow Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want’ to ‘delinquent’ member countries.
Over the past three years, in preparation for a second Trump presidency, a sophisticated ideological ecosystem has focused on transforming his personal grievances into actionable policies. The Center for Renewing America’s concept of ‘dormant NATO’, whereby the US would keep the nuclear umbrella over Europe but withdraw ground forces from the continent, is a prime example.
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The Hill ☛ Former top military officers push back on Trump immunity claim
More than a dozen retired four-star generals, admirals and other former military leaders filed an amicus brief with in the Supreme Court on Monday, arguing against former President Trump’s claims of immunity in his criminal cases.
The group said Trump’s claims “would threaten the military’s role in American society, our nation’s constitutional order, and our national security,” and would have a “profoundly negative effects on military service members.”
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The Hill ☛ Trump lawyers seek Stormy Daniels communications with Michael Cohen
Former President Trump’s legal team on Monday asked the judge in his hush money case to subpoena adult film actress Stormy Daniels’ communications with Michael Cohen, the former president’s ex-fixer, other witnesses and any material related to NBC’s documentary on the actress.
In a letter to Justice Juan Merchan, Trump’s attorneys asked the judge to enforce a subpoena for the communications Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — had with Cohen and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who are both expected to testify in the hush money trial starting later this month.
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The Register UK ☛ Shadow of Trump hangs over future EU-US tech collaboration
No concrete action appears to have been decided, however. Brussels and Washington merely agreed to convene further government-to-government discussions with "likeminded countries" on this topic, to share market intelligence and consult each other on planned actions. Joint measures to address distortionary effects on the global supply chain have not been ruled out, however.
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Vox ☛ From Project 2025 to Christian nationalists, these groups could define Trump’s second term
Understanding those actors is key to predicting how he and his surrogates might govern in 2025, if they get the chance.
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The Hill ☛ McConnell: TikTok threatens security ‘on US soil’
McConnell noted that today 170 million Americans are active users of TikTok, which he said the People’s Republic of China “treats as a tool of surveillance and propaganda.”
The Republican leader warned that China’s communist government has full access to the data of American users, despite claims by TikTok officials who say that users’ personal information, browsing histories, keystrokes and other sensitive data is protected.
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[Repeat] Digital Music News ☛ ByteDance Leaves TikTok Alone to Combat Potential Ban In U.S.
Chinese company ByteDance has left the TikTok U.S. team build its own response to the potential ban weaving its way through Congress. Here’s the latest.
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The Verge ☛ The TikTok ban and the iPhone monopoly
A few weeks ago, it looked like the US government was on a fast track to banning TikTok. A committee in the House of Representatives voted unanimously in favor of a bill that would see the app either banned or sold, before the broader House passed the same bill in sweeping fashion, and even President Joe Biden said he’d sign the bill if it hit his desk. Then, the momentum just... stopped. The bill is in limbo and TikTok is still here, for now, while the debate rages over what should happen to the massively popular [sic] platform.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ German Chancellor Olaf Scholz joins TikTok
US lawmakers contend that ByteDance is beholden to the Chinese government, which could demand access to the data of TikTok's consumers in the US whenever it wants.
Several European countries like Estonia and Norway have banned the app on government devices. The European Parliament, European Commission, and the EU Council also prohibit staff from using the app on their official phones amid cybersecurity concerns.
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El País ☛ Chinese overproduction in clean energy, the new source of friction between the US and China
National security is also the reason that the House of Representatives invokes for having approved a bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the popular short video application, used by 170 million Americans, within a period of six months. The measure is pending a vote in the Senate, where there is still no date for it, and it is not even clear that legislators want there to be one. But Biden has declared that, if it is approved in the Upper House, he will sign it into law.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Omicron Limited ☛ Americans are bad at recognizing conspiracy theories when they believe they're true, says study
New research from the University of Illinois Chicago has found that it's because people are quite bad at identifying what is or isn't a conspiracy theory when it's something they believe. The finding held true whether people self-identified as being liberal or conservative. "Conspiracy blindness" became less pronounced when study participants took more time to consider whether something was a conspiracy theory, and when they were given a definition of conspiracy theories to consider. The research is published in PLoS ONE.
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Los Angeles Times ☛ 'Panama Papers' trial starts in global money-laundering case
The trial of 27 people charged in connection with the worldwide “Panama Papers” money-laundering case started Monday in a Panamanian criminal court.
Those on trial include the owners of the Mossack-Fonseca law firm that was at the heart of the 2016 massive document leak.
The Panama Papers include a collection of 11 million secret financial documents that illustrate how some of the world’s richest people hide their money.
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France24 ☛ 'Panama Papers' trial to begin eight years after tax evasion scandal
The 2016 revelations rocked governments, exposed high-profile personalities, triggered scores of investigations around the world and dealt a blow to Panama's reputation as an offshore financial hub.
The defendants due to go on trial in a Panamanian criminal court include Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca Mora, the founders of the now-defunct law firm at the center of the scandal.
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Environment
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Vox ☛ Swiss senior women win ECHR case
On Tuesday, a group of 2,000 Swiss women won a significant ruling on holding governments accountable for addressing climate change.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that Switzerland failed to implement sufficient climate policies — violating the women’s human rights.
The case could influence other European countries, as well as other international bodies, in their decisions about the legal ramifications of inadequate climate policies.
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VOA News ☛ Is action on climate change a human right? A European court to rule for the first time
The European Court of Human Rights will hand down decisions in a trio of cases brought by a French mayor, six Portuguese youngsters and more than 2,000 members of Senior Women for Climate Protection, who say their governments are not doing enough to combat climate change.
Lawyers for all three are hoping the Strasbourg court will find that national governments have a legal duty to make sure global warming is held to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement.
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Doc Searls ☛ Aviation vs. Eclipse
1:14pm—The moon’s shadow made landfall in Mexico a short time ago. Here in Bloomington, the sky is well-painted by contrails. Mostly it looks like high-altitude haze, but believe me: if it weren’t for commercial aviation, the sky would be solid blue. Because the contrails today are quickly smeared sideways, losing their form but not their color.
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VOA News ☛ UN officials in Zambia to assess worst drought in 20 years
Speaking in Lusaka Sunday, Ghelani said the country received less than normal rainfall, leaving hundreds of thousands of hectares of maize destroyed. This accounted for more than half of the country's cultivation of maize, which is a staple food in Zambia.
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TruthOut ☛ Plastic Waste on Ocean Floors Could Be 100 Times Amount Floating on Surface
Study leader Alice Zhu, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto, said that “the ocean surface is a temporary resting place of plastic so it is expected that if we can stop plastic entering our oceans, the amount would be reduced.”
“However, our research found that plastic will continue to end up in the deep ocean,” Zhu stated. “These findings help to fill a longstanding knowledge gap on the behavior of plastic in the marine environment.”
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Energy/Transportation
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Quartz ☛ Tesla Supercharger site will have 200 chargers in Florida
It’s not just Tesla building massive charging sites, either. For example, Shell built a 258-charger mega-site at the Shenzhen airport. Other companies building their own charging networks appear to mostly be focusing on smaller sites, at least in the U.S., but you never know. If Tesla’s Yeehaw Junction location proves popular, we could end up seeing several more of them popping up before too long.
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YLE ☛ Nationwide rail to experience major disruptions over summer
A swathe of planned track work will give rise to exceptional arrangements for summer rail traffic across Finland, according to the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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AnandTech ☛ TSMC to Receive $6.6B Under US CHIPS Act, Set to Build 2nm Fab in Arizona
TSMC has not announced a planned capacity for the new fab, only noting that it will be similar to the other two Arizona fabs, boasting a cleanroom space roughly twice as large as that of a typical "industry-standard logic fab." If it is sized similarly to the other Arizona fabs, then this strongly implies that the new fab will be another MegaFab-class facility – a mid-range fab producing around 25,000 wafer starts per month. TSMC does operate even larger fabs – the 100K WSPM GigaFab – though to date they've yet to build any of these outside of Taiwan.
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India Times ☛ Italian state lender to invest 1 billion euros in 5 years in AI
The venture capital arm of Italy's Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) will invest 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) over the next five years in artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity, the state lender said on Monday.
The government in March had announced its intention to set up an investment fund to promote projects in the AI sector, backed by CDP, as part of its broader push, as chair of the G7, to focus on the impact of AI on jobs and inequality.
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India Times ☛ Samsung to get $6-7 billion in chip subsidy next week for Texas expansion
The Biden administration plans to announce it is awarding between $6 billion and $7 billion to South Korea's Samsung next week to expand its chip output in Taylor, Texas, as it seeks to ramp up chipmaking in the U.S., two people familiar with the matter said.
The subsidy, which will be unveiled by Commerce Department Secretary Gina Raimondo, will go towards construction of four facilities in Taylor, including one $17 billion chipmaking plant that Samsung announced in 2021, another factory, an advanced packaging facility and a research and development center, one of the sources said.
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VOA News ☛ Biden administration announces $6.6 billion to ensure leading-edge microchips are built in US
The Biden administration pledged on Monday to provide up to $6.6 billion so that a Taiwanese semiconductor giant can expand the facilities it is already building in Arizona and better ensure that the most-advanced microchips are produced domestically for the first time.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the funding for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. means the company can expand on its existing plans for two facilities in Phoenix and add a third, newly announced production hub.
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Digital Music News ☛ Maryland's Anti-Scalping Legislation Closer to Becoming Law
Today Bill 539 passed the Maryland legislature, moving the anti-scalping measure closer to becoming law. If passed, the law would make it illegal for resale companies to engage in speculative ticket sales.
The legislation will make online resale platforms like StubHub, TicketNetwork, SeatGeek, and Vivid Seats accountable under Maryland’s Consumer Protection Act. Selling speculative tickets will carry a penalty of up to $10,000 for the first infraction and $25,000 for each subsequent infraction. Maryland is the first state to consider such a penalty for ticket resellers as concert ticket prices soar.
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Michael Geist ☛ AI Spending is Not an AI Strategy: Why the Government’s Artificial Intelligence Plan Avoids the Hard Governance Questions
Canada wants to be seen as a global AI leader consistent with its early contributions to the field. But the emerging AI plan sends mixed signals with billions in government spending, legislation that may discourage private sector investment, and avoidance of the hard governance issues. That isn’t a strategy and it isn’t likely to secure an AI advantage.
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Keenan ☛ The Meat Grinder
But that comes at a cost. Even in my brief time with them over a decade ago, I witnessed too many people ground up in Apple's pursuit of more. No matter how much you may believe that they are ultimately a force of good in the world, remember that if it ever became a choice between you and selling another iPhone, that iPhone is going to get sold. You don't win capitalism through altruism. Apple is not the exception to the rule: there are no exceptions.
The company I see today. The company that has rooted itself in so many industries and leveraged its influence in said industries to stifle competition. The company that approaches regulation with spite, that seems to relish in any opportunity to flex their muscles of malicious compliance. The company that has built up a walled garden so all-encompassing that it feels damn near impossible to escape. The signs were always there.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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CS Monitor ☛ Why Bollywood is cranking out pro-Modi films ahead of Indian election
An uptick in brazenly pro-government Bollywood movies highlights the close relationship between India’s ruling party and mainstream media – as well as the risks of blurring the lines between politics, news, and entertainment.
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India Times ☛ Brazil judge opens inquiry into Musk after refusal to block accounts on X
Musk, the owner of X and a self-declared free speech absolutist, has challenged a decision by Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordering the blocking of certain accounts. He has said X, formerly known as Twitter, would lift all the restrictions because they were unconstitutional and called on Moraes to resign.
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VOA News ☛ Elon Musk accused of ‘disinformation campaign’ by Brazilian Supreme Court
Chief Justice Luis Roberto Barroso said that de Moraes’ decision may be subject to an appeal, but not on the grounds of violating the Brazilian constitution as Musk argues. Barroso also noted that that every company operating in the country is "subject to the constitution," although he did not mention X or Musk by name.
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VOA News ☛ IAEA chief calls Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant attack a 'serious incident'
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, on Monday called the attacks “a serious incident” that “cannot happen” again.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday called the attacks “a very dangerous provocation” and pinned the blame on Ukraine.
Kyiv dismissed as false Russia’s claims that Ukraine was behind the attacks.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Kansas Reflector ☛ 'Facebook has nuked our page': Inside Kansas Reflector's clash with the social media Goliath
Many of them voiced concerns that Facebook was taking down our content for a specific, political reason. They mentioned the raid on the Marion County Record newspaper, while others pointed to our stories about Emporia State University, former Topeka city manager Stephen Wade and ongoing legislative hijinks.
We scurried into action, trying to both figure out what was going on and reassure our 13,000 followers on the platform.
“It looks as though Facebook has nuked our page,” I messaged my bosses and tech support.
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Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ Bahrain urged to release academic and rights defender Al-Singace, whose health is deteriorating
The King of Bahrain and the Crown Prince and Prime Minister should release from prison award-winning academic, blogger, and human rights defender Dr. Abduljalil Al-Singace immediately and unconditionally, and in the meantime, ensure that he has access to adequate healthcare to treat his deteriorating health, said 29 human rights groups, including Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), in a joint letter.
The groups said that, "Al-Singace, who has a disability, has been wrongfully detained since his arrest in 2011 solely for exercising his human rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. He has reportedly been subject to torture during his time in detention."
The full letter and the list of signers follows below. [...]
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RFA ☛ China blocks popular Tibetan-language blog
“The government has completely blocked access to Luktsang Palyon,” said the administrator, who did not want to be named for safety reasons.
Over the past few years, Chinese authorities have ramped up efforts to restrict the use of the Tibetan language, with clampdowns on related blogs, schools, websites, social media platforms, and apps, as Beijing pushes ahead with assimilation policies in Tibet.
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Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Librarians fear new penalties, even prison, as activists challenge books
Awaiting Idaho Gov. Brad Little’s signature is a bill that empowers local prosecutors to bring charges against public and school libraries if they don’t move “harmful” materials away from children.
“The laws are designed to limit or remove legal protections that libraries have had for decades,” says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom.
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US News And World Report ☛ Librarians Fear New Penalties, Even Prison, as Activists Challenge Books
Already this year, lawmakers in more than 15 states have introduced bills to impose harsh penalties on libraries or librarians.
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The Scotsman ☛ Hate Crime Act: Top officer says some still have not received training, and police are 'making it up on a case-by-case basis'
He added people are “making this up on a case-by-case basis”, leading to a situation where the public feel their complaints are not being dealt with quickly enough.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Hamilton Nolan ☛ Columnists and Their Lives of Quiet Desperation
Complicating this, though, are matters of money and prestige. Columnist jobs, especially at a high profile paper like the New York Times, are arguably the very best gigs in journalism. They come with (relatively) high pay, fame, book deals and speaking gigs on a platter, and automatic attention. They are an official stamp that reads, if not “Public Intellectual,” at least “Public Talker.” If you land one of these jobs, you have reached the top of this industry. You will be well paid, well known, and people will listen to you. Whether they should or not.
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CoryDoctorow ☛ How to shatter the class solidarity of the ruling class
Take the problems of journalism. One old model of journalism funding involved wealthy newspaper families profiting handsomely by selling local appliance store owners the right to reach the townspeople who wanted to read sports-scores. These families expressed their patrician love of their town by peeling off some of those profits to pay reporters to sit through municipal council meetings or even travel overseas and get shot at.
In retrospect, this wasn't ever going to be a stable arrangement. It relied on both the inconstant generosity of newspaper barons and the absence of a superior way to show washing-machine ads to people who might want to buy washing machines. Neither of these were good long-term bets. Not only were newspaper barons easily distracted from their sense of patrician duty (especially when their own power was called into question), but there were lots of better ways to connect buyers and sellers lurking in potentia.
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Press Gazette ☛ Case dropped against press photographer after altercation with police officer at scene of fatal car fire
Swansea Crown Court heard the Crown Prosecution Service was no longer offering evidence against Dimitris Legakis on a charge of assaulting an emergency worker in relation to the incident, according to Wales Online. It was reported that the arresting officer’s original evidence about what happened did not align with a statement he later made.
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US News And World Report ☛ Terry Tang Named Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times After Leading Newsroom on Interim Basis
Terry Tang, who has been leading the Los Angeles Times newsroom since January on an interim basis, on Monday was formally named executive editor. She is the first woman to hold the post in the newspaper's 142-year history.
Since being tapped for the interim role, Tang moved to reorganize the newsroom, form her own leadership team and place a heavier emphasis on traditional news reporting, the Times said in a report announcing the appointment.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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404 Media ☛ NYC Chicken Shop Replaces Cashier With Woman in Philippines On Zoom
A photo of a cashier Zooming into work at a fried chicken shop in New York City from the Philippines went viral on X this weekend. The cashier sits on a computer monitor on top of an empty cashier desk and a virtual background of the store’s logo. Brett Goldstein, who posted the photo, wrote that this was “insane” and said it “only takes a short hop to imagine the near future where this is an AI avatar.”
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Quartz ☛ Uber and Lyft threaten to leave Minneapolis. What to know and what's next
In January 2023, members of the Minneapolis city council introduced a bill that would remove Uber and Lyft’s exemption from the city’s $15.57 per hour minimum wage. Legislation co-author Robin Wonsley said that the companies’ drivers, who are considered independent contractors instead of employees, were being exploited with low pay that didn’t cover their expenses.
“Multibillion dollar corporations will always see workers as expendable,” she said at an annunciatory press conference, according to the Minnesota Reformer. “Minneapolis council members are fighting back on behalf of our workers.”
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Barnes & Noble Union Fight Is Spreading
The union drive at Barnes & Noble has now spread to six of the national bookseller's locations, attempting to organize the bookstore giant on a store-by-store basis. It could be a key front in the fight to unionize the US culture industry.
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RFERL ☛ Iranian University Threatens Female Students Over Graduation Celebration
The incident highlights ongoing tensions between students and authorities over a lack of social freedoms and regulatory compliance in Iran, particularly concerning women's rights and the mandatory hijab policy.
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International Business Times ☛ Saudi Arabia, Where Women Are Stoned To Death, To Lead UN Women's Rights Group
United Nations Director at the Human Rights Watch (HRW), Louis Charbonneau, argued: "Saudi Arabia's election as chair of the UN Commission on the Status of Women shows shocking disregard for women's rights everywhere."
Saudi Arabia is "a country that jails women simply because they advocate for their rights and has no business being the face of the UN's top forum for women's rights and gender equality," Charbonneau added.
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ Archaeologists Are Organizing to Dig Out of Poverty Wages
Field archaeologists work physically demanding jobs exposed to the elements, often for low pay and meager benefits from private employers. We spoke to one self-identified “dirty shovel bum” about why he and his coworkers are organizing.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Paratus Zambia: a seamless Starlink experience
Paratus Zambia country manager Marius van Vuuren explains that the news about the Starlink service is very good for businesses that need [Internet] connectivity in remote regions, particularly those that require reliable, high-bandwidth connectivity in areas that are hard to reach.
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Techdirt ☛ New Net Neutrality Rules Won’t Harm Telecom Giants In The Slightest
As is usually the case with net neutrality fights, none of that is actually true. The courts have already ruled that it’s well within the FCC’s right to impose or repeal net neutrality rules provided their arguments are based in factual reality. The only thing the FCC can’t do is abdicate its federal consumer protection authority, then try and tell states what to do (something the Trump FCC tried and failed to accomplish).
Meanwhile, the rules generally give ample leeway for big ISPs to engage in dodgy and anti-competitive behavior — if they’re just slightly creative about it. And the FCC, regardless of party, has a very shaky track record as it pertains to standing up to industry on any issue of substance, meaning the idea they’d even enforce the rules with any consistent vigor is largely performative.
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APNIC ☛ Mobile Internet prices falling in Papua New Guinea
After years of high prices for mobile data in Papua New Guinea (PNG), consumers are now able to access lower prices that represent better value.
Devpolicy Blog has been monitoring mobile Internet prices in PNG since the start of 2020. This post reports on research findings since the last update in April 2022 (previous updates are available).
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[Repeat] APNIC ☛ Forgotten protocol chronicles: Do not underestimate the installed base
As a long-time network operator, frequent information security (infosec) community participant, and now researcher, I have often found myself drawn to the challenges of the installed base. All the attention in the tech industry is given to the latest software, protocols, hardware, and innovations. Meanwhile, yesterday’s deployments fade away at a snail’s pace and this is a problem.
For this write-up, I wanted to reflect on the stubborn persistence of technologies such as ISATAP, which is an early IPv6 transition mechanism and DVMRP AskNeighbors2, which is an experimental IP multicast debugging protocol.
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Wired ☛ The Internet Archive Just Backed Up an Entire Caribbean Island
The Aruba project was set in motion in 2018, after Argondizzo, then working at the Internet Archive, began to wonder if she could help preserve Aruba’s history. The island has a turbulent past—its indigenous population was colonized by the Spanish and then the Dutch—and its archives contain artefacts ranging from sunny vintage postcards to books about the nation’s role in the slave trade and Venuzuela’s oil boom. Although Aruba is relatively safe from hurricanes, the threat of what a severe storm or other extreme weather could do to its physical archives made Argondizzo nervous. “They were one disaster away, basically, from losing everything,” she says.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Thomas Rigby ☛ Owning media was always renting
The above comic has been doing the rounds on social recently. I shared it in a group chat and got a reply;
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Cory Dransfeldt ☛ A retrospective on a year without streaming music // Cory Dransfeldt
It was hard enough to make a living as an artist before streaming and it's nearly impossible to now. Recorded music has become a loss-leader for tours and touring is grueling[2].
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NME Networks ☛ Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor says streaming has “mortally wounded” many artists: “It’s great if you’re Drake, it’s not great if you’re Grizzly Bear"
Nine Inch Nails‘ Trent Reznor has hit out against streaming, saying it has “mortally wounded” many artists.
The musician made the comments in a recent GQ interview, where he took aim at companies such as Spotify and Apple Music for their payment terms.
“I think the terrible payout of streaming services has mortally wounded a whole tier of artists that make being an artist unsustainable,” he said.
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India Times ☛ EU regulators assess Apple's plan for complying with music streaming order
EU antitrust regulators are checking to see if an Apple proposal would comply with their order to let Spotify and other music streaming services inform users of payment options outside its App Store, the European Commission said on Monday.
The iPhone maker risks antitrust charges and fresh fines if its proposal announced last Friday fails to satisfy the EU competition enforcer, which issued its order together with a 1.84 billion euro ($2 billion) fine last month
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Digital Music News ☛ Apple Updates Policies for Music Streaming Platforms in Europe
Notwithstanding this pivot and its significance for Spotify, logic and evidence suggest that the streaming company’s battle with Apple is far from over.
One component of the increasingly multifaceted confrontation concerns Apple’s compliance with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). In brief, the law seemingly set the stage for Spotify to explore alternative app stores, direct in-app communications regarding promotions, and more.
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India Times ☛ EU regulators assess Apple's plan for complying with music streaming order
EU antitrust regulators are checking if an Apple proposal would comply with their order to let Spotify and other music streaming services inform users of payment options outside its App Store, the European Commission said on Monday.
The iPhone maker risks antitrust charges and fresh fines if its proposal announced last Friday fails to satisfy the EU competition enforcer, which issued its order together with a 1.84 billion euro ($2 billion) fine last month
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Patents
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[Old] Hearst Digital Media, Inc ☛ Why Other Car Companies Don't Use Tesla Superchargers
I'm not a lawyer, but to my eye, there are some serious snags in this language, specifics that make using Tesla's patents untenable for most major corporations. To access Tesla's patents, it appears as though you not only forfeit your ability to assert patent claims over Tesla, but also your ability to defend your patents against any company using them to make electric vehicles. Nicholas Callura, an attorney from Duane Morris LLP, notes in a post on the law blog Lexology that the first bullet point has broader implications far beyond EV patents:
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Copyrights
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Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Data collection should always be opt in // Cory Dransfeldt
If you want access to "public" data it is incumbent upon you to obtain consent of the publisher — cite them, compensate them, don't attempt to trample them. Don't use it for your own benefit and ask for forgiveness later. If you're hosting someone's blog, they're likely paying you to do so — don't change your terms and send their data off to some parasitic AI partner.
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Wired ☛ Students Are Likely Writing Millions of Papers With AI
Students have submitted more than 22 million papers that may have used generative AI in the past year, new data released by plagiarism detection company Turnitin shows.
A year ago, Turnitin rolled out an AI writing detection tool that was trained on its trove of papers written by students as well as other AI-generated texts. Since then, more than 200 million papers have been reviewed by the detector, predominantly written by high school and college students. Turnitin found that 11 percent may contain AI-written language in 20 percent of its content, with 3 percent of the total papers reviewed getting flagged for having 80 percent or more AI writing. (Turnitin is owned by Advance, which also owns Condé Nast, publisher of WIRED.) Turnitin says its detector has a false positive rate of less than 1 percent when analyzing full documents.
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Silicon Angle ☛ NY Times accuses OpenAI, Google and Meta of skirting legal boundaries for AI training data
The report opens by targeting OpenAI, claiming that the company used a speech recognition tool called Whisper to transcribe audio from YouTube videos and generate new conversational text for A. training. In an apparent revelation, the report then claims that OpenAI staff discussed whether the decision to transcribe YouTube videos may go against the video site’s rules.
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Quartz ☛ OpenAI trained ChatGPT on 1 million hours of YouTube, report says
OpenAI reportedly transcribed more than one million hours of YouTube videos to train GPT-4, according to The New York Times on Saturday. The report comes just days after YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said transcribing YouTube videos for AI training would be a “clear violation” of its policies in a Bloomberg interview.
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Gizmodo ☛ OpenAI Reportedly Transcribed 1 Million Hours of YouTube Videos to Train GPT-4
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Futurism ☛ OpenAI Secretly Trained GPT-4 With More Than a Million Hours of Transcribed YouTube Videos
Last month, the Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern sat down with OpenAI CTO Mira Murati to discuss the company's latest text-to-video generator called Sora.
During the brief conversation, Stern asked Murati if Sora was trained on videos from YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook — resulting in a long and awkward pause.
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Rolling Stone ☛ 'Top Gun: Maverick' Copyright Case: Paramount Wins in Lower Court
In a decision handed down last Friday, April 5, a district judge dismissed the case, brought by the family of Ehud Yonay, a journalist whose 1983 story for California magazine, “Top Guns,” inspired the original 1986 film. At the time, Paramount secured the exclusive movie rights to the story and Yonay received a “based on” credit.
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Digital Music News ☛ UMPG Faces Copyright Lawsuit Over Mary J. Blige’s ‘Real Love’
Tuff City asserts that UMG Recordings, another Universal subsidiary and owner of the “Real Love” master recording, has already reached an agreement regarding the use of the sample on the sound recording — but Universal’s publishing arm has not done the same in relation to the song’s underlying composition.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Rightsholders Seek Broad and Flexible Sports Piracy Blockades in Canada
Canada's piracy-blocking efforts continue, with rightsholders applying for a new court order aimed at preventing live sports piracy. Bell, Rogers, Fubo TV and others request new measures to block infringing IP addresses during NHL, NBA, and Premier League games. With a new approach, they hope to have broad and flexible blocking measures in place before the end of the 2023/2024 seasons.
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Torrent Freak ☛ '10K Pirate Sites Blocked in 60 Days': Piracy Shield Triggers Kool-Aid Crisis
Critics of Italy's Piracy Shield are still publishing fake news when they should be using information from trusted sources, AGCOM noted last weekend. This includes news that 10,000 pirate sites have been blocked already. AGCOM also says that Piracy Shield was "absolutely not hacked," a claim that's supported and denied by Serie A; hackers only breached AGCOM's "first level of protection.."
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Techdirt ☛ How Copyright May Destroy Our Access To The World’s Academic Knowledge
The shift from analogue to digital has had a massive impact on most aspects of life. One area where that shift has the potential for huge benefits is in the world of academic publishing. Academic papers are costly to publish and distribute on paper, but in a digital format they can be shared globally for almost no cost. That’s one of the driving forces behind the open access movement. But as Walled Culture has reported, resistance from the traditional publishing world has slowed the shift to open access, and undercut the benefits that could flow from it.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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