Links 12/04/2024: Big Brother in the Workplace and Profectus Browser Alpha 0.3
Contents
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Leftovers
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Ruben Schade ☛ Some footpath developments
Here are some footpath-related observations I’ve made recently (or sidewalk for my North American friends), that have caused me considerable concern.
The first is a farewell to an Australia Post and Express Post mailing box, which sat on the side of this footpath for decades before finally being removed this month. This is a busy thoroughfare opposite a large shopping centre in Sydney, so I’m a bit surprised. I guess we send parcels to each other from online commerce, but not as many letters anymore?
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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Silicon Angle ☛ Apple reportedly warns users in 92 countries about mercenary spyware attacks
Apple Inc. has notified iPhone users in 92 countries that their devices were likely targeted by mercenary spyware.
The company alerted the affected individuals via email and iMessage on Wednesday afternoon. “Apple detected that you are being targeted by a 2 that is trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID,” the alert reads.
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Marty Day ☛ blast-o-rama.
If the headline of “The Humane AI Pin is the solution to none of technology’s problems” wasn’t clear enough, here’s a pretty damning pull quote:
"Not only is the Humane AI Pin slow, finicky and barely even smart, using it made me look pretty dumb. In a few days of testing, I went from being excited to show it off to my friends to not having any reason to wear it."
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Mere Civilian ☛ Why I carry two phones?
• I have two mobile numbers: one for personal and one for work.
• I prefer to keep those numbers in different phones because there are times I prefer to disconnect. Therefore, not having the work phone is the easiest way to do that. (April 2024: My work has since changed and I receive less than 5 calls a week, as opposed to 20.. no longer an issue)
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Hardware
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Hackaday ☛ Do You Trust Your Cheap Fuses?
When a fuse is fitted in a power rail, it gives the peace of mind that the circuit is protected. But in the case of some cheap unbranded fuses of the type that come in kits from the usual online suppliers that trust can be illusory, as they fail to meet the required specification.
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Hackaday ☛ Cryo-EM: Freezing Time To Take Snapshots Of Myosin And Other Molecular Systems
Using technologies like electron microscopy (EM) it is possible to capture molecular mechanisms in great detail, but not when these mechanisms are currently moving. The field of cryomicroscopy circumvents this limitation by freezing said mechanism in place using cryogenic fluids. Although initially X-ray crystallography was commonly used, the much more versatile EM is now the standard approach in the form of cryo-EM, with recent advances giving us unprecedented looks at the mechanisms that quite literally make our bodies move.
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Hackaday ☛ Garage Door Automation With No Extra Hardware
Home automation projects have been popular as long as microcontrollers have been available to the general public. Building computers to handle minutiae so we don’t have to is one of life’s great joys. Among the more popular is adding some sort of system to a garage door. Besides adding Internet-connected remote control to the action of opening and closing, it’s also helpful to have an indicator of the garage door state for peace-of-mind. Most add some sensors and other hardware to accomplish this task but this project doesn’t use any extra sensors or wiring at all.
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Hackaday ☛ Small, Quiet Air Compressor Puts 3D-Printed Parts To Best Use
When the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. Similarly, while a 3D printer is a fantastic tool to have, it can make you think it’s possible to build all the things with printed parts. Knowing when to print ’em and when to machine ’em is important, a lesson that [Diffraction Limited] has taken to heart with this semi-printed silent air compressor.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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France24 ☛ ‘Aid in dying’: What’s in the new French bill on assisted suicide
The French government on Wednesday introduced a bill on assisted suicide, paving the way for euthanasia under strict conditions. The text, which was deemed too restrictive by some and irresponsible by others, will be debated by lawmakers at the end of May.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Techdirt ☛ An Only Slightly Modest Proposal: If AI Companies Want More Content, They Should Fund Reporters, And Lots Of Them
In Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” he satirized politicians who were out of touch and were treating the poor as an inconvenience, rather than a sign of human suffering and misery. So, he took what seemed like two big problems, according to those politicians, and came up with an obviously barbaric solution to solve both problems: by letting the poor sell their kids as food. This really only was designed to highlight the barbaric framing of the “problem” by the Irish elite.
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Security Week ☛ Sisense Data Breach Triggers CISA Alert and Urgent Calls for Credential Resets
The US government cybersecurity agency CISA on Thursday issued a red-alert for what appears to be a massive supply chain breach at Sisense, a New York company that sells big-data analytics tools to businesses.
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Wired ☛ No One Actually Knows How AI Will Affect Jobs
Someone with a bird's-eye view of the situation is Mary Daly, CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, part of the national system responsible for setting monetary policy, maintaining a stable financial system, and ensuring maximal employment. Daly, a labor market economist by training, is especially interested in how generative AI might change the labor market picture.
Daly spoke with WIRED senior editor Will Knight over Zoom. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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The Verge ☛ X’s Premium users can no longer hide their blue checks
Once a status symbol, the blue check lost some of its luster after X shifted to a paid verification system under Elon Musk’s ownership. A blue check then just became an indicator that the account holder paid for a Premium subscription. The feature was also abused by scammers and online impersonators, and some blue checks became the target of online harassment or mass blocking. X eventually rolled out the blue check to accounts with more than a million followers, covering most living celebrities (and some dead) as well as public figures.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Ex-Windows developer calls Windows 11 Start menu performance 'comically bad,' even with a Core i9 and 128GB of RAM
Andy Young, a former Microsoft Windows developer, has taken to social media to complain about the performance issues he's been experiencing in Windows 11. (Neowin first reported on Young's remarks.) The ex-Windows developer showed off a demonstration of his Windows 11 system bugging out simply by typing something into the start menu search box. The performance is so bad that Windows Enthusiast Albacore describes Windows 11 as an incomplete product that needs to be finished.
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Futurism ☛ Humane's AI "Pin" Is a $700 Flaming Dumpster Fire
And after months of testing, the review embargo has finally lifted — and as it turns out, the $700 gizmo, which also requires a $24 monthly subscription plan, is every bit as disappointing as we expected.
It sounds like the device couldn't even get the basics right. As The Verge's David Pierce discovered, interacting with the screenless and lapel-mounted device was an absolute nightmare, failing to even accurately report the current weather.
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Stephen Hackett ☛ Humane AI Pin Reviews Are Here
David Pierce has reviewed the Humane AI Pin, and it seems pretty, pretty, pretty bad. We already knew — from Humane’s recent video — that the device could be quite slow to respond. That was after the initial video, which was full of examples of the Pin giving downright incorrect information in response to requests.
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India Times ☛ Exclusive: Apple warns users of "mercenary spyware" attack; India, 91 other countries impacted
Apple has informed its users in India and 91 other countries that they could be possible victims of a “mercenary spyware” attack attempt, where someone tried to gain unlawful access to their devices, sources told ET.
Mercenary spyware attacks, such as those using Pegasus from the NSO Group, are exceptionally rare and vastly more sophisticated than regular cybercriminal activity or consumer malware, the threat notification mail sent by Apple read. ET has seen a copy of the threat notification sent to users.
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The Verge ☛ Humane AI Pin review: the post-smartphone future isn’t here yet
That raises the second question: should you buy this thing? That one’s easy. Nope. Nuh-uh. No way. The AI Pin is an interesting idea that is so thoroughly unfinished and so totally broken in so many unacceptable ways that I can’t think of anyone to whom I’d recommend spending the $699 for the device and the $24 monthly subscription.
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Federal News Network ☛ New Congressional task force looks to make sure it’s not left behind by AI advancements
Twelve members of Congress shave been appointed to a new commission to lead the House’s exploration of AI’s transformational opportunities and potential challenges. Their mission? To create guiding principles, recommendations and bipartisan policy proposals for the regulation of AI. One of those members joined Federal News Network’s Eric White on The Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss the task ahead: Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.)
Interview Transcript: [...]
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US News And World Report ☛ A Congressman Wanted to Understand AI. So He Went Back to a College Classroom to Learn
So when questions about regulating artificial intelligence emerged, the 73-year-old Beyer took what for him seemed like an obvious step, enrolling at George Mason University to get a master’s degree in machine learning. In an era when lawmakers and Supreme Court justices sometimes concede they don't understand emerging technology, Beyer's journey is an outlier, but it highlights a broader effort by members of Congress to educate themselves about artificial intelligence as they consider laws that would shape its development.
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Will Larson ☛ Notes on how to use LLMs in your product.
Pretty much every company I know is looking for a way to benefit from Large Language Models. Even if their executives don’t see much applicability, their investors likely do, so they’re staring at the blank page nervously trying to come up with an idea. It’s straightforward to make an argument for LLMs improving internal efficiency somehow, but it’s much harder to describe a believable way that LLMs will make your product more useful to your customers.
I’ve been working fairly directly on meaningful applicability of LLMs to existing products for the last year, and wanted to type up some semi-disorganized notes. These notes are in no particular order, with an intended audience of industry folks building products.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Scoop News Group ☛ Login.gov pilot to include option for biometric verification
GSA said in a release that the pilot will offer users the ability to match a “live selfie” with a self-supplied form of photo identification like a driver’s license. The agency said it will not use images “for any purpose other than verifying identity,” and reaffirmed the platform’s commitment to user privacy.
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EFF ☛ Bad Amendments to Section 702 Have Failed (For Now)—What Happens Next?
Yesterday’s vote means the House also will not consider amendments to Section 702 surveillance introduced by members of the House Judiciary Committee (HJC) and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). As we discuss below, while the HJC amendments would contain necessary, minimum protections against Section 702’s warrantless surveillance, the HPSCI amendments would impose no meaningful safeguards upon Section 702 and would instead increase the threats Section 702 poses to Americans’ civil liberties.
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US News And World Report ☛ House Will Try Again on Reauthorization of US Spy Program After Republican Upheaval
Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to bring forward a Plan B that would reform and extend a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act known as Section 702 for a shortened period of two years, instead of the full five-year reauthorization first proposed, in hopes that the shorter timeline will sway GOP critics.
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Reason ☛ States Keep Passing Unconstitutional Age-Verification Laws for Porn Sites
Last Friday, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear signed a controversial bill requiring age verification for individuals seeking to use pornography websites in the state. While the bill seeks to prevent minors from accessing explicit materials, the law will require a substantial invasion of adults' privacy.
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The Register UK ☛ Taxi software vendor exposes personal details of nearly 300K
The names, email addresses, phone numbers, and user IDs of the 287,961 affected individuals in the UK and Ireland were all exposed online. According to research shared with The Register ahead of publication, the details of individuals with senior roles in media outlets such as the BBC and various government departments such as His Majesty's Treasury, the UK Home Office, and the Ministry of Justice were included.
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Security Week ☛ AT&T Data Breach Update: 51 Million Customers Impacted
During the Easter holiday weekend, AT&T said the leaked data appeared to belong to roughly 7.6 million current customers and approximately 65.4 million former customers, pointing out that the data appeared to be from 2019 or earlier.
The company at the time only specifically named social security numbers as being compromised.
However, in letters it’s now sending out to impacted individuals, AT&T says the compromised information includes full name, email and mailing address, phone number, date of birth, social security number, and AT&T account number and passcode.
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The Record ☛ Section 702 surveillance powers legislation hits another roadblock in House
House Republican leaders on Wednesday failed to overcome bipartisan opposition to proceeding with debate on the renewal of expiring government surveillance powers.
Lawmakers voted 193-228 against bringing up a bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which will sunset on April 19. Nearly 20 GOP members voted against the rule for consideration of the measure.
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The Register UK ☛ Palantir and Oracle buddy up on cloud infrastructure
The deal – announced last Thursday – says Palantir employing Oracle's distributed cloud and AI infrastructure to support its AI and decision acceleration platforms. The database, cloud, and application giant said that as part of the agreement, Palantir would move workloads for its Foundry analytics system for “data-driven decision making and situational intelligence” to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
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Confidentiality
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Mat Duggan ☛ Why Can't My Mom Email Me?
So the reason why so many people I know are moving to Proton is they seem to be the only game in town that has cracked sending encrypted emails in the least annoying way possible. Their encryption uses asymmetric PGP key pairs with lookup for other users public keys happening on their key server. This in conjunction with their Key Transparency technology that compares lookup requests by the client with requests on the server-side allows for easy encrypted message exchanges with a high degree of safety, at least according to them.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Box's strategic leap in AI and content management
The integration of AI into the fabric of cloud services and its role in enhancing data security were also key topics of discussion. Managing permissions and security around AI to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information is imperative, Kus pointed out.
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Defence/Aggression
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Techdirt ☛ Police Chief Hailed As A Hero For Crashing Into A Car While Fleeing The Scene Of A Shooting
I’ve been watching this story since late last week. A lot of what I saw then showed this was going to end in embarrassment and exoneration for Albuquerque (NM) police chief Harold Medina. But I still held out hope the city might find something to criticize about the chain of events that left city resident Todd Perchert with a totaled 1966 Ford Mustang and plenty of serious injuries.
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The Hill ☛ After climate tipping points, change will come slowly, then all at once
The planetary danger signals are increasing. Climate scientists are beginning to worry we may be at a terrifying juncture, where the climate shifts dramatically from one state to another. An abrupt global warming episode, during which climate changes happen in decades not centuries, and interrelated tipping points cascade into one another amplifying the sudden shift in the world climate, pushing the planet out of the temperate sweet spot we humans have been lucky enough to live in.
Could this sudden shift happen? Unfortunately, the answer is yes.
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[Repeat] Privacy International ☛ The EU Migration Pact: a dangerous regime of migrant surveillance
• The Pact will enable intrusive technological practices in various stages of asylum processing, such as the extraction of mobile phone data in the Asylum Procedures Regulation
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LRT ☛ Under EU asylum reform, Lithuania would have to accept 158 people or pay €3m – minister
Under the EU migration reform, Lithuania would have to take in around 158 migrants a year or pay 3.16 million euros, says Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė.
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Digital Music News ☛ ByteDance’s 2023 Profits Surge 60% to $40 Billion, Report Shows
ByteDance saw earnings surge from $25 billion to $40 billion in 2023, according to a report from Bloomberg, marking a 60% increase from the year prior for the Chinese parent company of short-form video app TikTok.
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India Times ☛ ByteDance profits jump 60%, beating tech rivals: report
The profits of TikTok owner ByteDance jumped around 60 percent in 2023, Bloomberg reported Wednesday citing sources, beating online rivals Tencent and Alibaba. The reported results mark the first time that ByteDance has overtaken archrival Tencent in both revenue and profit, Bloomberg said, adding that the internal figures had not been independently audited.
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El País ☛ European elections: Which parties are trying to influence the vote through Facebook or Instagram?
The threat of misinformation and the spread of fake news is now common in all elections, at least since the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The danger has increased considerably with generative artificial intelligence
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India Times ☛ Malaysia orders Meta, TikTok to forge plans to combat harmful content
Malaysia has ordered tech giants Meta and TikTok to present plans to combat harmful content online, authorities said Tuesday, after the Muslim-majority country reported an uptick in offensive material on social media platforms.
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Digital Music News ☛ US Senator Says TikTok Divestiture Period Could Be Extended
After the US House of Representatives voted an overwhelming 352-65 last month in favor of giving TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance approximately six months to divest its US TikTok assets or face a ban, the Senate has been more meticulous in its decision.
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The Nation ☛ Social Media Companies Are Having a Bad Moment
Social media companies and their apologists find themselves in an especially rough moment right now. Sociologist Jonathan Haidt has just released a new book, The Anxious Generation, which puts the severity of the screen-induced mental health crisis out of the question. The House just passed the TikTok ban, and bipartisan bills to regulate social media are moving forward in the Senate. State legislatures in Vermont, Minnesota and Maryland are contemplating bipartisan bills modeled to create greater online protections for kids. For a while, it was unclear whether any substantial anti–social media resistance would take shape. It’s happening now.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Meta is facing a backlash over its cautious policy on political content
In February, Meta announced new policies regarding limiting political content, given this year will see a U.S. presidential election and a groundbreaking number of elections around the world. Meta, like other big tech firms, is being cautious about how social media could be used and abused to affect the outcome of such elections.
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The Straits Times ☛ New Zealand aims to boost U.S. ties amid global instability
New Zealand is facing the most unstable global environment in decades, Foreign Minister Winston Peters said on Friday, as he pledged to boost ties with the United States amid conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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CS Monitor ☛ Ukraine, short of soldiers, passes controversial new conscription law
Two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine is in dire need of more soldiers. Yet lawmakers dragged their feet for months over the new, likely unpopular law, which goes into effect a month after President Zelenskyy signs it – if and when he does.
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CS Monitor ☛ Ukraine aid deadlock could threaten peace in Europe. Does Congress care?
Ukraine must convince Americans that its fate matters, and that a Russian victory would threaten European security and American interests.
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New York Times ☛ Ukraine’s New Draft Unsettles the Young
Reporters from The New York Times spoke to men who could be affected by the change.
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New York Times ☛ Ukraine’s Parliament Passes Mobilization Bill as Russia Strikes Kyiv Power Plant
The legislature approved a law to replenish Ukrainian forces. Lawmakers said the bill included incentives for volunteers and new penalties for those trying to evade conscription.
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Security Week ☛ US Government on High Alert as Russian Hackers Steal Critical Correspondence From Microsoft
The US government says Midnight Blizzard’s compromise of Abusive Monopolist Microsoft corporate email accounts "presents a grave and unacceptable risk to federal agencies."
The post US Government on High Alert as Russian Hackers Steal Critical Correspondence From Microsoft appeared first on SecurityWeek.
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NYPost ☛ Russian spacecraft, US satellite nearly collided in shockingly close call that ‘really scared’ NASA
"We recently learned that the path ended up being less than 10 meters apart -- less than the distance of me to the front row," NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy told the live audience.
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Meduza ☛ ‘Just when we thought things settled down’: Kremlin insiders on how Putin might overhaul Russia’s government after his upcoming inauguration — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ Ukrainian parliament passes law amending mobilization rules — Meduza
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Latvia ☛ Latvia and Ukraine step up cooperation at parliamentary and presidential levels
On April 10, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine ratified the Agreement on Technical and Financial Cooperation between the Government of Latvia and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Ukraine pleads for Patriot air defense systems as Russia destroys power grid
Officials in Kyiv are calling on partners to urgently supply Patriot systems as Russia capitalizes on Ukraine's weakening air defenses to methodically destroy the country's power grid, writes Peter Dickinson.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Ukraine’s veterans can transform the country’s postwar political landscape
While the Russian invasion of Ukraine is still far from over, it already looks likely that Ukrainian military veterans will play a key role in their country's postwar politics, writes Kateryna Odarchenko.
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France24 ☛ Macron calls for 'sustainable' effort to scale up arms production
France's President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday called for a "sustainable" effort to scale up weapons production following the Russian invasion of Ukraine as he laid a foundation stone for a much-needed gunpowder factory.
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JURIST ☛ Ukraine legislature passes law revising military mobilization rules amid ongoing war
Ukraine’s Parliament, known as the Verkhovna Rada, passed a bill on Thursday to overhaul the country’s military mobilization rules.
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JURIST ☛ 2 Russian billionaires win appeal against EU sanctions
The General Court of the EU revoked on Wednesday the restrictive measures imposed on Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, two Russian billionaires, between February 2022 and March 2023. The two were originally sanctioned in connection with Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
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LRT ☛ Zelensky in Vilnius calls for implementation of Western aid initiatives
Initiatives to support war-torn Ukraine must not only be launched but also implemented, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in Vilnius on Thursday.
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LRT ☛ Zelensky arrives in Lithuania for Three Seas Summit
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Lithuania on Thursday. He will take part in the Three Seas Summit and meet with a dozen leaders of Central, Eastern, and Southern European countries.
When Beijing put diplomatic and economic pressure on Lithuania, trade between the two countries plummeted. The hope that the Taiwanese market would compensate for this has not materialised – statistics show that trade between Vilnius and Taipei has been declining for the past few years.
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RFERL ☛ Recent Attacks On Nuclear Plant In Ukraine Raise Safety Concern To New Level, IAEA Chief Says
Attacks over the weekend on the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine have raised the level of concern over the safety of the facility to an even higher level, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog told his agency's board of governors on April 11 in Vienna.
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RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Parliament Passes New Mobilization Law
Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has passed a law on military mobilization that will boost the number of its troops, two lawmakers reported, as the country struggles with depleted forces in the face of the more than 2-year-old Russian invasion.
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RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy In Vilnius To Press For Aid As Russia Strikes Power Infrastructure
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has again called on Ukraine's allies to give the embattled country more air-defense systems as Russia struck Ukrainian energy infrastructure targets, including a major power plant south of Kyiv.
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RFERL ☛ Freedom House Sounds Alarm As Democracy Plummets Amid Autocratic Surge For 20th Year
Democratic governance in Central Europe and Central Asia declined for a 20th consecutive year, according to rights watchdog Freedom House, driven by Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Azerbaijan's "military conquest" of Nagorno-Karabakh.
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TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ House Speaker Mike Johnson negotiating with White House to advance Ukraine aid
By STEPHEN GROVES (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson is negotiating with the White House as he prepares for the treacherous task of advancing wartime funding for Ukraine and Israel through the House, a top House Republican said Thursday.
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LRT ☛ Vičiūnai Group to be probed over alleged sanctions violation following LRT investigation
The Prosecutor General’s Office has opened a pre-trial investigation into the violation of international sanctions, following the LRT Investigation Team’s publication, which revealed that a company owned by the Vičiūnai Group has transported sanctioned dual-use goods to Russia.
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RFERL ☛ Russian 'Shadow Fleet' Ups Risk Of Baltic Sea Spill, Finland's Border Guard Says
The risk of a large Baltic Sea oil spill has risen since Russia began using a "shadow fleet" of tankers to circumvent curbs on its oil exports, Finland's Border Guard warned.
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RFERL ☛ Ambassador Warns Georgia 'Foreign Agents' Bill 'Incompatible' With EU Values
The European Union's ambassador to Georgia has criticized the reintroduction of a "foreign agents" bill in parliament -- legislation compared with a similar law in Russia that the Kremlin has used to stifle dissent -- saying it's "incompatible" with the values of the bloc Tbilisi is looking to join.
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RFERL ☛ Record Flooding In Russia, Kazakhstan Expected To Worsen
Heavy rains and a rapid rise in temperatures causing a massive snowmelt continue to create "difficult" conditions in southern Russia and northern Kazakhstan, with rivers bursting their banks amid forecasts that the worst may be yet to come.
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RFERL ☛ Russia Says It Killed 2 Militants In North Caucasus
Russia's National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAK) said two alleged militants were killed in a "counterterrorism" operation that started on April 11 in the North Caucasus.
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The Straits Times ☛ Water level rises sharply in Russia's Kurgan region
The village of Kaminskoye in Russia's Kurgan region was being evacuated on Friday morning after the water level there rose 1.4 metres (4.59 ft) overnight, regional governor Vadim Shumkov said on the Telegram messaging app.
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CS Monitor ☛ Terrorists attacked Moscow. Now Russia’s migrants are feeling the backlash.
Russia’s migrants have long been tolerated by both authorities and the public. But when several Tajiks became suspects in the March 22 terror attack in Moscow, the whole community came under withering scrutiny.
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RFERL ☛ Belarusian Accused Of Insulting Lukashenka Dies Awaiting Trial
A Belarusian man accused of insulting authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka has died in a pretrial detention center in the city of Brest, just days before his trial was to begin.
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Environment
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Omicron Limited ☛ Ocean currents threaten to collapse Antarctic ice shelves, study finds
A new study published in Nature Communications has revealed that the interplay between meandering ocean currents and the ocean floor induces upwelling velocity, transporting warm water to shallower depths. This mechanism contributes substantially to the melting of ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea of West Antarctica. These ice shelves are destabilizing rapidly and contributing to sea level rise.
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Energy/Transportation
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Hackaday ☛ Tearing Into A Sparky Sandwich
We’re still in the early days of modern EV infrastructure, so minor issues can lead to a full high voltage pack replacement given the lack of high voltage-trained mechanics. [Ed’s Garage] was able to source a Spark EV battery pack that had succumbed to a single bad cell and takes us along for the disassembly of the faulty module.
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Futurism ☛ The Cybertruck's Battery Pack Is Half Empty, a Teardown Found
During a teardown of the unusual pickup truck by automotive engineer and car expert extraordinaire Sandy Munro and his team, they discovered that the vehicle's massive battery pack is half empty, with tons of space above a layer of cylindrical, lithium-ion 4680 battery cells.
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The North Lines IN ☛ Tata Teams Up with Shell India to Roll Out Electric Vehicle Charging Stations for Passengers
The collaboration will leverage Shell's widespread fuel station network and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility's (TPEM) insights from over 1.4 lakh Tata EVs on Indian roads to set up chargers at locations frequently visited by EV owners, the company, a part of Tata Motors, said in a statement.
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European Commission ☛ Speech by Executive Vice-President Šefčovič at the Innovation Fund Cleantech Conference 2024 [Ed: The buzzwords industry has turned "clean tech" into one word]
It is a pleasure to be here for this event, to engage with you on how we can move Europe's cleantech industry forward.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Techdirt ☛ Elon Musk’s Lawyer Faces Sanctions After Deposition Meltdown, While Engaging In Unauthorized Practice Of Law
Elon Musk’s favorite lawyer, Alex Spiro, isn’t having a great week. Sure, sure, he just signed up embattled NYC mayor Eric Adams as a new client, but he seems to have royally fucked up in defending Elon.
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The Register UK ☛ Amazon CEO: GenAI bigger than the cloud — No, the web!
It's safe to say Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is pretty jazzed about generative AI's potential to drive profits.
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Wired ☛ Eric Schmidt Warned Against China’s AI Industry. Emails Show He Also Sought Connections to It
Just two months earlier, Schmidt was also seeking potential personal connections to China’s AI industry on a visit to Beijing, newly disclosed emails reveal. Separately, tax filings show that a nonprofit private foundation overseen by Schmidt and his wife contributed to a fund that feeds into a private equity firm that has made investments in numerous Chinese tech firms, including those in AI.
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The Record ☛ Lindy Cameron, former UK cybersecurity chief, appointed British High Commissioner to India
States within the Commonwealth of Nations exchange high commissioners as their most senior diplomatic envoys rather than ambassadors, although the roles are largely equivalent.
Cameron’s departure from the NCSC was first reported by Recorded Future News in December, when it was said she would be taking up an unspecified diplomatic posting. The government announced on Thursday that she would be heading to New Delhi.
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Federal News Network ☛ CYBERCOM considers options for future force generation model
“We now have the budget responsibility for equipping the offensive and defensive cyberspace force for the Department of Defense, that force that we operate,” Haugh said. “So now we have the ability to be able to validate a requirement under our authorities that we’ve been given. We can allocate the resources against whatever that need is. And then we will be able to acquire that under our own authorities, either inside U.S. Cyber Command or in partnership with the services, where we drive the requirement, we have the resources, and now we’re going to be able to produce the capability that we need for our forces. That’s a pretty radical change from where we started.”
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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VOA News ☛ How Russia's disinformation campaign seeps into US views
But as lawmakers debated a $95 billion package that includes about $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, Cullinane noticed an increase in narratives alleging Ukrainian corruption. What stood out is that these were the same talking points promoted by Russian disinformation.
So, when The Washington Post published an investigation into an extensive and coordinated Russian campaign to influence U.S. public opinion to deny Ukraine the aid, Cullinane says he was not surprised.
"This problem has been festering and growing for years," he told VOA. "I believe that Russia's best chance for victory is not on the battlefield, but through information operations targeted on Western capitals, including Washington."
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Variety ☛ CBS News Plans Streaming Overhaul With New 'Whip-Around' Program
A new show focused on disinformation, “CBS News Confirmed,” will debut this summer. CBS News earlier on Tuesday said it had hired Melissa Mahtani, who had previously been a producer at CNN, as executive producer of a new “Confirmed” unit that seeks to identify and fight the spread of false stories, conspiracy theories and bad facts.
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Axios ☛ Gen Z increasingly turns to TikTok, YouTube for online searches
Driving the news: 46% of those ages 18-24 start their information quests by searching on Google, per data shared exclusively with Axios from YPulse, a youth research firm.
• That's compared with 58% of those ages 25-39.
• 21% of 18- to 24-year-olds start with TikTok, while 5% start on YouTube.
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Matt Birchler ☛ A trifecta of Elon Musk garbage
We should all do a better job of vetting the things we repost online, but I’d argue it’s pretty clear that people wish as much power and influence as Elon Musk should be even more careful. My sphere of influence is quite small, but Musk is idolized by millions of people who take whatever he says as gospel. As Mark Bankston put it:
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Censorship/Free Speech
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RTL ☛ Uncovering the truth: Kremlin foe Navalny's posthumous memoir out in October
Titled "Patriot," the book will be released on October 22, publisher Knopf said in a statement, while his widow confirmed the book would also be issued in Russian.
"It is the full story of his life: his youth, his call to activism, his marriage and family, and his commitment to the cause of Russian democracy and freedom in the face of a world super-power determined to silence him," Knopf said.
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JURIST ☛ Malaysia urges TikTok and Meta to monitor harmful social media content
In the statement, the MCMC stressed that they are working with other government departments and enforcement agencies to combat the dissemination of sensitive content relating to “3R,” which are race, religion and royalty. The MCMC observed an increase in harmful content recently, with a total of 51,638 cases that the authorities have required online social media platforms to conduct further actions within the first three months of this year. In 2023, the number of cases that attracted the government’s attention was 42,904 throughout the whole year.
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Locus Magazine ☛ ALA Most Challenged Books of 2023
The ALA listed the top 10 most challenged books amid a record number of books targeted for censorship in 2023. Over 4,240 challenges were recorded by the ALA, a “65% surge over 2022 numbers.” The ALA archive of the most challenged books dates back to 2001, and the ALA is accepting donations to strengthen their efforts to fight censorship in publishing, schools, and libraries.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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RFA ☛ In China, drones, social media monitor foreign journalists: report
More than 80% of journalists say they have faced harassment and violence while doing their jobs.
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Substack Inc ☛ I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.
For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically different from our own—engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
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Rolling Stone ☛ How the O.J. Simpson Car Chase and Trial Changed Media
No one who covered the 1995 trial would have called it an innocent time; but in retrospect, in some ways, it was. It unfolded in the final decade before broadband [Internet], social networks, and smartphones. A relatively small number of networks and newspaper columnists dominated the coverage. Stars were made, TV fortunes were won and lost, and viewer expectations were rewritten. “Infotainment” was the new normal.
An untold number of almost forgettable trials and scandals would receive the “O.J. treatment” in the years to come. The proverbial car chases continue to this day across social media.
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BBC ☛ Biden considering Australian request to drop Julian Assange charges
The US wants to extradite the 52-year-old from the UK on criminal charges over the leaking of military records.
Mr Assange denies the charges, saying the leaks were an act of journalism.
The president was asked about Australia's request on Wednesday and said: "We're considering it."
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The Nation ☛ End the Persecution of Julian Assange
Assange requested that Sweden provide assurances that it would not extradite him to the United States—a principle known in international law as “non-refoulement.” According to the former UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer, “In the world of diplomatic relations, the fact that Stockholm refused to issue a non-refoulement guarantee to Assange spoke a clear language and left no room for misunderstandings.”
Instead of allowing Assange safe passage, British police spent millions of pounds surrounding the embassy. If the WikiLeaks founder left, the United Kingdom planned to arrest him. It even pressured Sweden not to withdraw the extradition request or interview Assange in the embassy. And when Sweden did close the investigation without charging Assange, the UK, at the request of the Trump White House, brought its own charges against Assange for jumping bail. Assange was trapped.
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VOA News ☛ Wife of Julian Assange: Biden's comments mean case could be moving in right direction
Biden said Wednesday that his administration is "considering" a request from Australia to drop the decade-long U.S. push to prosecute Assange for publishing a trove of classified American documents. The proposal would see Assange, an Australian citizen, return home rather than be sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges.
Officials have not provided more details, but Stella Assange said the comments are "a good sign."
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New York Times ☛ Julian Assange’s Family React to Biden Suggesting U.S. Might Drop Case
President Biden, when asked by a reporter on Wednesday about a request from Australia, Mr. Assange’s home country, that he be allowed to return there, replied, “We’re considering it.” Those three words offered the suggestion that the United States might no longer pursue Mr. Assange on charges under the Espionage Act over WikiLeaks’ publishing of tens of thousands of secret military and diplomatic documents more than a decade ago.
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The Hill ☛ NPR editor’s tell-all confirms what we already knew about the media
What’s troubling today is the new ideology that’s taken over newsrooms during the Trump years. Journalism is now focused more on political correctness and political point scoring than on traditional journalistic ethics like fairness, independence and truth-seeking. It enforces a rigid orthodoxy that promotes specific viewpoints while shutting out other voices that don’t stick to the approved narrative. In short, the news today tells its readers, viewers and listeners what to think.
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The Dissenter ☛ Five Years At Belmarsh: A Chronicle Of Julian Assange's Imprisonment
At the behest of the United States government, the British government has detained WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in His Majesty's Prison Belmarsh for five years.
Assange is one of the only journalists to be jailed by a Western country, making the treatment that he has endured extraordinary. He has spent more time in prison than most individuals charged with similar acts.
Since December 2010, Assange has lived under some form of arbitrary detention.
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CPJ ☛ At least 4 Ukrainian journalists injured in consecutive attacks on Ukraine
“That journalists come under fire while covering the aftermath of previous attacks shows the extent of the risks they are taking and their commitment to documenting Russia’s war in Ukraine,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Russian and Ukrainian authorities should investigate the recent attacks that injured Ukrainian journalists in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, and Russia must stop targeting civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.”
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[Repeat] Tedium ☛ Sherwood’s Big Innovation: A Post-SEO News Feed
A while back, I took a bit of a swipe at Axios, which I felt was selling bullet points as something innovative when there were so many more ways to stretch the alt-story-form model.
I surmised in the piece, I think correctly, that the reason Axios did it this way comes down to a simple fact: The SEO-driven model is basically incompatible with factbox-driven journalism. Quick hits are not what Google wants, despite the fact that they would likely do a better job of informing readers.
But what if we built a site that kind of ignored that mandate, and just trusted readers would go to the front page?
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teleSUR ☛ Assagne’s Future Finally Looks Promising
In the words of his lead attorney Barry Pollack, "It is encouraging that President Biden has confirmed that the US is considering dropping its case against Julian Assange. This unprecedented prosecution of someone for publishing truthful and newsworthy information should never have been filed. It is time to end the matter and allow Mr Assange to return to Australia".
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El País ☛ The US is ‘considering’ dropping charges against Assange, according to Biden
“We are considering it,” Biden responded to journalists’ questions while heading to the Oval Office with the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, for a meeting during the latter’s visit to Washington. Until now, the United States has been immersed in a long legal battle to obtain the extradition of Assange, currently behind bars in a maximum security prison on the outskirts of London. He has been indicted in the U.S. with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act and one charge of computer misuse. Washington has alleged that the leak of nearly 250,000 diplomatic and military cables in 2010 endangered American sources, citizens, and national security.
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The Register UK ☛ US ‘considering’ end to Assange prosecution bid
Asked "Do you have any response to Australia's request that you end Julian Assange's prosecution?" Biden offered a terse: "We're considering it."
While those three words are far from definitive, they're an advance on the US's previous position – which has seen the Department of Justice pursue Assange for what it describes as his "alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States." That's a reference to WikiLeaks courting former US Army soldier Chelsea Manning to share classified material.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ Big Brother Is Watching Amazon and Walmart Warehouse Workers
Both Amazon and Walmart invest massively in highly invasive technological surveillance of their warehouse workforce — surveillance that then enables the hyperexploitation both companies’ workers are subject to.
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Pete Brown ☛ Some people still like to visit websites with a browser. From a laptop.
Oh, the experience is so much better in the app you say, NYT? No shit—because you keep deliberately degrading the web experience.
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CBC ☛ B.C. labour board to consider union votes at 2 Amazon warehouses
Unifor, Canada's largest private sector union, began a card-signing drive last summer citing labour laws favourable to unions in the province.
If certified, Unifor says, this would be the first successful unionization effort for Amazon workplaces in Canada.
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India Times ☛ Apple's New Jersey store workers file petition for unionisation
Companies including coffee-chain Starbucks, ecommerce firm Amazon.com and software giant Microsoft are facing unionisation efforts from employees who want better working conditions.
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CoryDoctorow ☛ The unexpected upside of multinational monopoly capitalism
Here's a silver lining to global monopoly capitalism: it means we're all fighting the same enemy, who is using the same tactics everywhere. The same coordination tools that allow corporations to extend their tendrils to every corner of the Earth allows regulators and labor organizers to coordinate their resistance.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Techdirt ☛ No, The Internet Hasn’t Gotten Worse: Just Your Outlook
Ah, the good old days of the internet – a utopian paradise where everyone was kind, respectful, and definitely not arguing about Hitler. Or was it? A recent study published in Nature has some surprising findings that might just shatter your rose-tinted glasses about this past internet that never actually existed. Brace yourself for a shocking revelation: the internet has always been a bit of a dumpster fire.
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Stanford University ☛ Harmful 5G Fast Lanes Are Coming. The FCC Needs to Stop Them
The FCC released its draft rules early in April and there’s much to celebrate in them. Mobile carriers like T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon that have been degrading video quality for mobile users will have to stop. The FCC kept in place state neutrality protections like California’s net neutrality law, allowing for layers of enforcement. The FCC also made it harder for ISPs to evade net neutrality at the point where data enters their networks.
However, there’s a huge problem: the proposed rules make it possible for mobile ISPs to start picking applications and putting them in a fast lane - where they’ll perform better generally and much better if the network gets congested.
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India Times ☛ Google to invest $1 billion to boost connectivity to Japan via two subsea cables
The two subsea cables, Proa and Taihei, will improve connectivity between the U.S., Japan and multiple Pacific island countries and territories, Google said in a blog post.
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Stanford University ☛ FCC chair highlights net neutrality push in Campbell
Net neutrality has been supported by both Democratic and Republican administrations, van Schewick added.
Rosenworcel said she wants to make sure that net neutrality is the law of the land.
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ABC ☛ Santa Clara County Fire Department backs push to reinstate nationwide net neutrality laws - ABC7 San Francisco
"It's vitally important that every one of us can go where we want and do what we want online without our broadband provider making choices for us," Rosenworcel said.
We live in a world where [Internet] connectivity is no longer just nice to have - it's essential.
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Digital Restrictions (DRM)
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Techdirt ☛ Apple App Store Update Says Emulation Is Coming Back. Kind Of. Well…Maybe.
For years and years, Apple has done its best to prevent emulators from appearing in its App Store. Given Apple’s walled-garden approach, not to mention console manufacturers never-ending hatred for emulators generally, it wasn’t a huge shock that Apple went this route. Even when the occasional workaround has been discovered to allow people to get emulators onto their iPhones, Apple has been consistent about shutting those down.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Report: Apple is planning on bringing new AI-focused M4 chips to entire line of Macs
Gurman says the iMac, low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro, high-end 14-inch MacBook Pro, 16-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini machines will be the first to receive the M4 chips in 2024, followed by updates to the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models sometime in the middle of 2025. The Mac Studio and the Mac Pro will get the update a bit later that year if the reports are correct.
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Robert Reich ☛ Robert Reich (Is It Inflation? Or Is It Greedflation? It’s a...)
It’s a paradox. Inflation is dropping but prices aren’t coming down. How can this be?
Because corporations have enough monopoly power to keep them high.
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India Times ☛ EU's new tech laws are working as small browsers gain market share
The early results come after the EU's sweeping Digital Markets Act, which aims to remove unfair competition, took effect on March 7, forcing big tech companies to offer mobile users the ability to select from a list of available web browsers from a "choice screen."
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Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ The “follow” button is Substack's attempt to extinguish newsletter competition
It may seem just a detail, but it’s in fact something very important. Signing up for a newsletter is the link that unites creator and followers. This link, although important, is straightforward: an e-mail address cession, an event that is easy to understand and a data point easy to handle and move around.
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The Verge ☛ Apple’s antitrust case is getting a new judge
It’s not clear why Judge Farbiarz was disqualified from the case, but there are a couple of possibilities. The specific rule mentioned by the filing — Canon 3(C)(1)(d) — says a judge must disqualify themselves from a proceeding when the “judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” That could mean Farbiarz, or someone he’s related to, is too closely tied to the case.
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Trademarks
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TTAB Blog ☛ S.D. Ohio District Court, Despite Default, Stays Infringement Action in Favor of Pending TTAB Proceeding
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio stayed this trademark infringement action even though Defendant Goatlift had defaulted by not filing an answer to the complaint. The court had serious doubts that Goatlift's mark posed a likelihood of confusion, and therefore whether Plaintiff 1661 was entitled to judgment. Instead of deciding that issue, the court chose to stay the lawsuit in favor of an opposition pending between the parties (Opposition No.91264548). 1661, Inc. d/b/a GOAT v. Goatlift, LLC, Case No. 2:24-cv-78 (S.D. Ohio, March 27, 2024).
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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Lesmosyne
On an overcast day in hell
you and I had been resting
on the shores of the Lḗthē.
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Technology and Free Software
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Profectus Browser Alpha 0.3 Update
This is another small update to Profectus that contains very basic CSV/TSV/PSV file support, and more fixes to DPI/High DPI on macOS and Linux Wayland.
On Wayland and macOS, SDL gives the window size and mouse positions in points, and these points are based on the DPI scaling; a scale of 1.0 would just mean that 1 pixel equals 1 point, and so the window size matches the rendering pixel size. You can get this pixels-per-point scale by dividing the Renderer's Output size with the Window Size SDL has provided you. SDL will also give the mouse events' X and Y positions in *points* rather than pixels. Lastly, all of the SDL drawing functions want their rects and positions in *pixels* and not points!
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Too fast
This week was a lot. The theme seemed to be that process matters as much as results. Maybe this is ultimately what disturbs me so much about so called "artificial intelligence".
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Programming
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First Car
My first car must have been in a LISP program, though I have no idea when or where; it might have been back in the elisp days (so, the 1990s) or as late as the 2010s when dabbling with Common LISP. Not a very noteworthy event, and I'm too sloppy with repositories to leave that detailed a history. The Common LISP practice area has a first commit in 2017 from merging two other, older, and now lost repositories.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.