Links 04/05/2024: Tesla a "Tech-Bubble", YouTube Ads When Pausing
Contents
- Leftovers
- Science
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-04-23 [Older] New Vegas' Director Doesn't Mind Whatever Fallout Has Planned With It for Season 2
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Joel Chrono ☛ The Machine Stops
The Machine Stops, by E. M. Forster, was a fantastic short story that blew me away as much as the previously mentioned anthology.
It was published in 1909, and yet it contains one of the scariest, most accurate depictions of what a world dominated by reliance on technology could look like—and one might say, already looks like today.
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Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Indie Web Carnival May 2024: Creative environments
Indie Web Carnival is a monthly blogging event in the Indie Web community where each month a different person hosts the month: they select a topic, collect submissions and write a roundup post at the end.
For an individual blogger, it’s a great opportunity to write more and explore topics you might not otherwise explore. It’s also a great way to find new bloggers and expand your views on topics as you get to read other people’s writing on the same topic that you just did.
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Johnny Decimal ☛ 22.00.0034 The classes of to-do
As in, what types of to-do are there.
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Baldur Bjarnason ☛ React, Electron, and LLMs have a common purpose: the labour arbitrage theory of dev tool popularity
But we can form theories about what sustains popularity – why do some frameworks and libraries go from strength to strength and while others plateau or even peter out.
My theory is fairly straightforward:
"The long-term popularity of any given tool for software development is proportional to how much labour arbitrage it enables."
The more effective it is at enabling labour arbitrage, the more funding and adoption it gets from management.
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Science
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Omicron Limited ☛ Hungry, hungry white dwarfs: Solving the puzzle of stellar metal pollution
Despite their prevalence, the chemical makeup of these stellar remnants has been a conundrum for astronomers for years. The presence of heavy metal elements—like silicon, magnesium, and calcium—on the surface of many of these compact objects is a perplexing discovery that defies our expectations of stellar behavior.
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Flyngpenguin ☛ Polish Embassy Interviews 1st Person to Crack Enigma: Marian Rejewski
I just noticed a series of nine rare interviews were posted in June 2023 by the Polish Embassy in London.
Each has only a couple hundred views on YouTube despite significance of the subject. They feature war hero Marian Rejewski, the 1st person to crack the Enigma code, describing major breakthroughs before and during WWII (which the British rarely, if ever, gave proper credit to Poland): [...]
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Science Alert ☛ 8,000 Years Ago, Humans Navigated Deep Into a Dark French Cave. The Question Is: How?
The researchers examined the regrowth on the broken formations, but that's not all. They also analyzed the ratios of uranium and thorium in the speleothems, a technique known as uranium-thorium dating. It works because uranium is water soluble, but one of its decay products, thorium, is not – so any thorium in a sample is the decay product of uranium after the mineral has precipitated.
Because the decay rate of uranium into thorium is fixed and known, scientists can look at the amount of each in the sample to determine how long it has been since the mineral formed. Using these techniques, the researchers found that the speleothems mostly formed between 125,000 and 70,000 years ago.
The team found that the earliest broken tip was around 10,000 years ago. The most recent was around 3,000 years ago. But there was another clue. A large number of the broken pieces appear to have been deliberately placed, creating a structure in the chamber. This structure, the researchers found, was created around 8,000 years ago.
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The Scientist ☛ How to Write a Good Introduction Section | The Scientist Magazine®
In contrast to the constraints placed on the title and abstract, the introduction is the first real opportunity for the scientist to engage with their audience and showcase and convey their passions and motivations for the study in question. This opportunity is somewhat of a double-edged sword. Study authors inevitably have a treasure trove of knowledge and expertise when it comes to their projects and their fields. However, they must remember that the audience does not necessarily have this background information—and that they are only engaging with their audience for a finite amount of time. Despite the urge to excitedly write about all of the different aspects and intricacies of the project, it is very important that authors keep their introductions simple and well organized.
Therefore, the introduction should move from broad scopes to narrow focuses as the audience reads further. The author should direct the reader along this journey, focusing on topics with direct relevance to what was investigated in the study. A broad fact introduced early on should be linked or paired with a more specific fact along the same lines of thought, eventually culminating in how this information led to the motivation behind the study itself. It is vital to not go off on tangents or talk about things that are too esoteric. A confused audience is an audience that tends not to read further.
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Education
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DomainTools ☛ So You’re Going to RSA Conference 2024? - DomainTools | Start Here. Know Now.
No way, me too! This will be my second tour of duty at RSAC and I’m excited to return. In this article, we compiled some fun things to do at San Francisco and at RSAC itself.
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Barry Hess ☛ Work Hard
It’s also true that in your 20s there are many non-work experiences that you can have that you are not going to be able to have later in life. Traveling foreign countries on the cheap, staying in hostels. Joining remote-work tribes around the globe. Things like that. Lots to choose from, lots to experience, lots to try.
As a technologist, I know many of us feel a purpose when it comes to building things. If you feel that in your career, pursue it. Go deep into it. Commit your time to it. It may not read like the work-life balance as described on the tin, but in truth it is probably the proper work-life for you today. Tomorrow is a better time to worry about the you of tomorrow.
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Hardware
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Hackaday ☛ Here’s How That Disney 360° Treadmill Works
One thing going slightly viral lately is footage of Disney’s “HoloTile” infinite floor, an experimental sort of 360° treadmill developed by [Lanny Smoot]. But how exactly does it work? Details about that are less common, but [Marques Brownlee] got first-hand experience with HoloTile and has a video all about the details.
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TechTarget ☛ AHCI vs. RAID: Features, differences and applications
AHCI and RAID are fundamental concepts for running an efficient data management and storage infrastructure. Learn the AHCI and RAID basics, as well as how SATA and IDE compare.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Steve Kirsch: Vaccines cause The Trans and The Gay!
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived over three years ago, with COVID-19 vaccines arriving unexpectedly quickly nine months later, I’ve had a mantra about the anti-COVID-19 vaccine movement: Everything old is new again. In other words, there isn’t a single antivax trope created for COVID-19 vaccines that didn’t have clear precedents from long before the pandemic. Whether the trope was that the disease isn’t dangerous (to “most people”) or that COVID-19 vaccines permanently alter your DNA, kill you, cause cancer, make our women infertile, or any number of other bad things attributed to them, there truly was nothing new under the sun in that antivaxxers had been making the same claims about vaccines in general, particularly childhood vaccines, long before the pandemic. True, there were new twists added to old antivaccine tropes, such as the cancers caused by the vaccine not being your run-of-the-mill cancers but super-deadly “turbo cancers” and people weren’t just killed by vaccines, but they “died suddenly,” but overall every trope made up for COVID-19 vaccines was conceptually the same as old antivax tropes. Moreover, as I pointed out, the longer the pandemic went on, the more “new school” COVID-19 antivaxxers came to embrace “old school” antivax pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, including the false claims that vaccines turn our kids gay or transgender.
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NYPost ☛ IQ scores decline in the US — where does your state rank?
A report from 2023 revealed the depressing reality — that the average intelligence test score fell from 100 to 98, a dismal, two point decline after a previously uninterrupted 30 point rise that began in 1905.
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NYPost ☛ Study suggests IQ scores in the US have fallen
In their study, they looked at nearly 400,000 IQ tests completed online by US adults from 2006 through 2018 through the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment Project (SAPA Project) and data from the International Cognitive Ability Resource (ICAR) from 2011 to 2018.
They used data from both tests and compared them to each other. Both were used to examine the trends, and compared two kinds of scores: one having to do with cognitive ability, and the other having to do with skills like matrix and verbal reasoning.
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[Old] CNN ☛ IQ scores are falling and have been for decades
Norwegian researchers analyzed the IQ scores of Norwegian men born between 1962 and 1991 and found that scores increased by almost 3 percentage points each decade for those born between 1962 to 1975 – but then saw a steady decline among those born after 1975.
Similar studies in Denmark, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Finland and Estonia have demonstrated a similar downward trend in IQ scores, said Ole Rogeberg, a senior research fellow at the Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research in Norway and co-author of the new study.
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NPR ☛ Cicadas are back on the menu. One chef shares his dish ideas — and an easy recipe
With the arrival of trillions of cicadas this year, Yoon is preparing to cook up some tasty recipes, like tempura-fried cicadas and cicada kimchi. With the right ingredients and preparation, he says, the taste isn't too unfamiliar.
"If you think about it, they've been living underground, slowly feasting on plant and tree xylem for 13 or 17 years. And so they have this really beautiful vegetal quality and a nutty quality as well. And so when you deep fry them, they're just so delicious and so special," says Yoon.
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The Conversation ☛ 2024-04-29 [Older] Many old books contain toxic chemicals – here’s how to spot them
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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VOA News ☛ Ukraine unveils AI-generated foreign ministry spokesperson
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the new spokesperson was a "technological leap that no diplomatic service in the world has yet made."
The main reason for creating her was "saving time and resources" for diplomats, he said.
Shi's creators are a team called The Game Changers who have also made virtual reality content related to the war in Ukraine.
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Air Force Times ☛ AI-controlled fighter jet takes Air Force secretary on historic ride
It was fitting that the dogfight took place at Edwards Air Force Base, a vast desert facility where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound and the military has incubated its most secret aerospace advances. Inside classified simulators and buildings with layers of shielding against surveillance, a new test-pilot generation is training AI agents to fly in war. Kendall traveled here to see AI fly in real time and make a public statement of confidence in its future role in air combat.
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The Verge ☛ Google bans advertisers from promoting deepfake porn services
The change, which will go into effect on May 30th, prohibits “promoting synthetic content that has been altered or generated to be sexually explicit or contain nudity,” such as websites and apps that instruct people on how to create deepfake porn.
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Teleport ☛ How To Detect Compromised Identities with Teleport
Teleport also allows querying the commands the users are submitting to the resources.
It can be done using the following query: [...]
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Otávio C ☛ The day I emailed Tim Cook
A few hours later, I received a call from Apple, from a representative who worked for the Vice President of Retail for Latin America. It was a brief call; they didn’t inquire much and stated, “I’m calling to resolve your problem.” They didn’t say they would attempt to resolve it; they asserted they would indeed resolve it. I surmised that individuals at this level do not waste time; they take actions. All they asked of me was to pick the nearest authorized store to my home, where the replacement part would be delivered. They also assured me that once the part arrived, the store would call me to arrange for its replacement.
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[Old] Baldur Bjarnason ☛ Again, my position on LLMs is that you absolutely shouldn't be using them with very, very few exceptions – Baldur Bjarnason
Almost everything positive about LLMs you see today is based on extremely unreliable evidence, much of it from some of the most dishonest people you’ll find in tech (cryptocoiners, effective altruists, etc.).
Given that these models are obscenely power-hungry during a global climate crisis it’s my opinion that integrating these tools into your daily work is inherently unethical and irresponsible.
That’s without getting into the ethics of how the training data is handled or how these systems are largely being used to replace labour. I know where I stand on those topics, but you don’t need to have an opinion on them to understand that very few people should be using these systems. Just look out of the window and see that we’re in a climate crisis. That should be enough for you to step away from LLMs.
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Baldur Bjarnason ☛ The unsustainability of the AI Bubble
Well, those calculations were based on pure compute costs, which DON’T include capital expenses like chips or hardware and it didn’t include labour costs which are, ironically, quite high for generative models.
All of which means the economics for “AI” is much much worse than most people think.
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Security
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Security Week ☛ Botnet Disrupted by FBI Still Used by Russian Spies, Cybercriminals
A botnet dismantled in January and used by Russia-linked APT28 consisted of more than just Ubiquiti Edge OS routers.
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The botnet of hijacked Ubiquiti routers used by Russia-linked APT28 to conduct global espionage operations consists of more than just Ubiquiti devices, Trend Micro reports.
A cyberespionage group linked to Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU), APT28 – also tracked as Forest Blizzard and Pawn Storm – had been using the network of small office/home office (SOHO) Ubiquiti Edge OS routers for years before the US dismantled it in January 2024.
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France24 ☛ Germany's FM says Russia will face consequences for 'intolerable' cyberattack
Germany's top diplomat on Friday said Russia will face consequences after accusing its military intelligence service of masterminding an “absolutely intolerable” cyberattack, as NATO and European Union member countries said they will not let Russia’s “malicious" behavior in cyberspace go unanswered.
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RFERL ☛ U.S. Condemns Russian Intelligence Unit For Cyberattacks On European Targets
The United States has "strongly" condemned a series of cyberattcks it says were conducted by a unit of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) on several countries in Europe, including Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, and the Czech Republic.
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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The Record ☛ Email security loopholes are latest path for North Korean social engineering attacks
According to the agencies, North Korean hackers are targeting improperly configured DMARC setups to make it look like their emails are coming from a legitimate domain’s email exchange, allowing them to masquerade as experts or academics with credible links to North Korean policy circles. The campaign tracked by the agencies ran from the end of 2023 into early 2024.
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Ali Reza Hayati ☛ Backups
But all my data was lost due to a faulty database. If I didn’t have a backup, you probably wasn’t reading this post.
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Terence Eden ☛ Bank scammers using genuine push notifications to trick their victims
This is a genuine notification. It was sent by the bank.
You proceed to do as the fraud department asks. You give them more details. You move your money into a safe account. You're told you'll hear from them in the morning.
Congratulations. You just got played. Scammers have stolen your life savings.
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New York Times ☛ Rare Editions of Pushkin Are Vanishing From Libraries Around Europe
At first, it seemed like a one-off — bad luck at a provincial library. It wasn’t. Police are now investigating what they believe is a vast, coordinated series of thefts of rare 19th-century Russian books — primarily first and early editions of Pushkin — from libraries across Europe.
Since 2022, more than 170 books valued at more than $2.6 million, according to Europol, have vanished from the National Library of Latvia in Riga, Vilnius University Library, the State Library of Berlin, the Bavarian State Library in Munich, the National Library of Finland in Helsinki, the National Library of France, university libraries in Paris, Lyon and Geneva, and from the Czech Republic. The University of Warsaw library was hardest hit, with 78 books gone.
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International Business Times ☛ 2024-04-24 [Older] Sugar Baby Gets 9 Years In Jail For Scamming $1M From Men And Selling How-to Manuals
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Privacy/Surveillance
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EFF ☛ CCTV Cambridge, Addressing Digital Equity in Massachusetts
How did the partnership with the Massachusetts Broadband Institute come about, and what does it entail?
What is CCTV Cambridge’s approach to digital equity and why is it an important issue?
It’s amazing to see organizations like CCTV Cambridge making a difference in the community, what do you envision as the results of having the Digital Navigators?
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The Age AU ☛ Ecuador beauty queen shot after posting ceviche to Instagram
The beauty queen and social media influencer was gunned down shortly after her name appeared in a corruption inquiry linking judicial officials to organised crime.
Parraga had just posted a photo of the ceviche she was about to eat for lunch to her 173,000 followers on Instagram when two armed men burst into the restaurant in Quevedo and fired several times at her.
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The Verge ☛ Here’s the letter from 14 senators slamming TSA facial recognition in airports
They add later that “this powerful surveillance technology as deployed by TSA does not make air travel safer” and suggest that the TSA’s current error rate of 3 percent would lead to 68,000 mismatches each day if expanded to all US airports.
And, they argue, there’s a slippery slope: “Once Americans become accustomed to government facial recognition scans, it will be that much easier for the government to scan citizens’ faces everywhere, from entry into government buildings, to passive surveillance on public property like parks, schools, and sidewalks.”
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[Old] The Verge ☛ How the TSA created two classes of travelers
But what do programs like PreCheck and the larger surveillance apparatus that theoretically keep us safe mean for the choices we make? What do we give up to get into the shorter security line, and how comfortable should we be about that?
This week, The Verge launches “Homeland,” our special series about the enormous influence of the Department of Homeland Security and how it has dramatically changed our country’s relationship with technology, surveillance, and immigration. So we have a special episode of Decoder with Dan McCoy to see where the TSA fits into that picture.
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Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Adblocker required
You close the tab, head over to Google News and search for some coverage. You find it, open it and it routes the link through Google’s servers while attaching some UTM parameters.
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The Telegraph UK ☛ Cash-paying passengers pay double price of contactless in London
Prices for single ticket “cash” fares and Oyster pay-as-you-go fares have differed since 2003. Mr Khan introduced contactless bank card payments in 2014.
About 20pc of all journeys on the Tube network are not paid for using contactless options. This includes single tickets, travelcards, bus passes and Oyster pay-as-you-go top-ups.
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WhichUK ☛ Contactless cards explained
Banks routinely issue customers with contactless cards, and 57% of all card transactions were contactless in 2022.
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The Register UK ☛ Indonesia sneakily buys spyware, says Amnesty International
Indonesia has acquired spyware and surveillance technologies through a "murky network" that extends into Israel, Greece, Singapore and Malaysia for equipment sourcing, according to Amnesty International.
The human rights org alleged its investigation showcased "the continued failure of multiple countries to regulate and provide transparency on the exports of dual-use technologies, such as spyware, and the non dual-use hardware that hosts the spyware or surveillance technology which pose serious human rights risks."
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Defence/Aggression
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El País ☛ Russia leaves thousands of planes without GPS in northern Europe
GPS is no longer reliable around the Baltic Sea and northern Norway. Interference in the Global Positioning System (GPS), which has affected all NATO members bordering Russia for two years, has worsened in recent months. Alternative systems to GPS have had to be activated on tens of thousands of flights and the main Finnish airline has suspended one of its routes due to the problem, which is also disrupting maritime navigation. Several of the affected countries accuse Moscow of intentionally jamming signals with its electronic warfare systems.
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Sightline Media Group ☛ Faceless people, invisible hands: Army video targets PSYOP recruits
Perhaps the most celebrated PSYOP was in World War II, when the so-called U.S. Ghost Army outwitted the Germans using inflatable tanks, radio trickery, costumes and impersonations. In what was dubbed Operation Viersen, the soldiers used the inflatables, sound trucks and phony headquarters to draw German units away from the point on the Rhine River where the 9th Army was actually crossing. Several of the last surviving members of the unit were recently awarded the Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony in Washington.
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New Republic ☛ The Tech Baron Seeking to Purge San Francisco of “Blues” | The New Republic
“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”
[...]
Simply put, there is a ton of fascist-chic cosplay involved. Once an officer joins the Grays, they get a special uniform designed by their tech overlords. The Grays will also donate heavily to police charities and “merge the Gray and police social networks.” Then, in a show of force, they’ll march through the city together.
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RFERL ☛ Russian State Media Posting More On TikTok Ahead Of U.S. Election
[...] The report states that Russia is increasingly leveraging TikTok to disseminate Kremlin messages in both English and Spanish, with state-linked accounts posting far more frequently on the platform than they did two years ago. [...]
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RTL ☛ Months-long dispute: TikTok reaches music licensing deal with Universal, ending feud
The companies released a joint statement that said the new deal included "improved remuneration" for artists and songwriters under the Universal Music Group (UMG) umbrella, and will also assuage concerns over the growth of AI-generated content on TikTok.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Atlantic Council ☛ UK gives Ukraine green light to use British weapons inside Russia
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron has confirmed that Ukraine can use British weapons to attack Russia as Western leaders continue to overcome their fear of provoking Putin, writes Peter Dickinson.
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teleSUR ☛ Study Reveals UAE and Wagner Group Support and Arm RSF in Sudan
A recent report by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, based in Qatar, said that the RSF took advantage at the operational level the characteristics of urban warfare to reduce the conquest of the Sudanese army.
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Latvia ☛ "Latvijas Gāze" dividends payment to Russian companies challenged in court
How correct is it that the Latvian gas company "Latvijas gāze" paid out several million euros in dividends to Russian state companies on its profits last summer? This question has been brought to court. The case against the company was brought by lawyer Mārtiņš Kvēps, who believes that the fact that we are allowing dividends to end up in the hands of the Kremlin is a stain on the entire country, Latvian Television reported on May 2. Energy prices soared around the world after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This helped energy companies, including Latvijas gāze, to make good profits. Coupled with the company's retained earnings from previous years, Latvijas gāze could pay out a significant sum to its shareholders - almost €110 million.
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Latvia ☛ 103 Latvian-produced drones to go to Ukraine
103 Latvian-made drones "IRSIS" will be sent to Ukraine. Marking the anniversary of the restoration of Latvia's independence, Latvian society and companies send drones to Ukraine during this time along with a wish that they could soon restore their independence, Latvian Television reported on May 2.
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France24 ☛ France estimates that 150,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the Ukraine war
France estimates that 150,000 Russian soldiers have been killed during Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné said in an interview published on Friday.
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H2 View ☛ UK Government funds 100MW electrolysis project in Ukraine
Hydrogen Ukraine and AB5 Consulting have won a grant to advance its H2U Renewable Hydrogen Project, located in Ukraine’s Odesa region.
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LRT ☛ Lithuania is a gateway for sanctioned shipments to Russia – LRT Investigation
At least 130-million-euro-worth of dual-use goods have been shipped through Lithuania to Russia since the start of the Ukraine invasion. The shipments are routed via countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan. Lithuanian companies involved in the exports claim they did not know that the dual-use goods and technologies would eventually end up in Russia.
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LRT ☛ LRT English Newsletter: Sending Ukrainians back?
LRT English Newsletter – May 3, 2024.
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RFERL ☛ Ukraine's Central Bank Sets Largest Currency Liberalization Move Since Full-Scale Invasion
Ukraine’s central bank (NBU) on May 3 introduced a package of measures easing currency restrictions for enterprises, the largest such move since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
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RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Marks 800th Day Of Full-Scale Invasion As Russian Missiles Hit Civilian Sites
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy marked the 800th day since Russia’s full-scale invasion, saying “all Ukrainians" and allies must do everything to block the Kremlin’s plans, as authorities said Russian shelling killed at least three people in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Officer Convicted Of Murdering Chechen Civilians Killed In Ukraine
Captain Eduard Ulman of Russia's military intelligence, who was sentenced in absentia to 14 years in prison for shooting to death six Chechen civilians in 2002, has been killed in the war in Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Russia's FSB Says Alleged Ukrainian 'Saboteur' Killed
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on May 3 that its officers had "liquidated" an agent from Ukraine's military intelligence who had allegedly arrived from Lithuania to carry out "terrorist acts" against military and energy objects in the Moscow and Leningrad regions.
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teleSUR ☛ Russia Warns Reprisals if West and Ukraine Attacks Crimea
"I want to warn Washington, London and Brussels once again that any aggressive action against Crimea is not only doomed to failure, but will be dealt a blow in retaliation that will be crushing," the spokeswoman said.
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New York Times ☛ Drones Changed This Civil War, and Linked Rebels to the World
Consumer technologies are altering the course of the battle in Myanmar, and rebel drone units are taking notes on Ukraine and other conflicts.
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New York Times ☛ U.S. Approved More Weapons for Ukraine. Now It’s a Race Against Time.
President Biden and Ukraine’s allies have invoked a sense of urgency over weapon deliveries. But there are logistical hurdles, and Ukraine has little time to lose.
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Meduza ☛ Russian defense minister claims Ukraine has lost 111,000 troops in 2024 — Meduza
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LRT ☛ Vilnius says Russian FSB’s allegations about saboteur from Lithuania are disinformation
After the Russian security service FSB reported killing an alleged saboteur from Lithuania, the country’s authorities call it disinformation.
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RFERL ☛ Turkey-Based Ingush Group Labeled 'Undesirable' in Russia
The Russian Justice Ministry on May 3 added a Turkey-based group called the Committee for the Ingush Independence to its registry of "undesirable organizations."
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RFERL ☛ Kyrgyzstan Advises Citizens To Avoid Traveling To Russia
Kyrgyzstan has advised its citizens to refrain from traveling to Russia amid increased pressures faced by Central Asians there following the deadly Crocus City Hall attack near Moscow in late March.
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CS Monitor ☛ Niger is telling US troops to leave as it ushers in Russian soldiers. Here’s why.
As U.S. and other Western troops get the boot from African countries, Russian soldiers are taking their place at air bases. The Kremlin, meanwhile, continues to court African leaders and expand its influence in the region.
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New York Times ☛ U.S. Seeks to Build World Pressure on Russia Over Space Nuclear Weapon
An American official said the United States had information undermining Russia’s claim that a device it is developing is for peaceful scientific research.
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New York Times ☛ The Death of a Treaty Could Be a Lifesaver for Taiwan
Since pulling out of an arms-limitation agreement with Russia in 2019, the U.S. has quickly developed new weapons that could be used to stop a Chinese invasion force.
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Meduza ☛ Watch your language How Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan resist Russia’s linguistic influence — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ A downward spiral: How Russia is trying to combat ruble devaluation — and why even the government doubts it will be enough — Meduza
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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The Dissenter ☛ Unauthorized Disclosure: Liz Oliva Fernández
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Maine Morning Star ☛ Rep. Golden doubles down on campaign finance reform with new legislation
U.S. Democratic Rep. Jared Golden of Maine introduced six bills this week aimed to increase transparency in and limits on political spending.
Some of the legislation specifically limits elected officials from using their positions for personal profit, including by permanently banning former members of Congress from working as federal lobbyists and prohibiting some federal office holders and their close family from earning a salary or holding investments in foreign businesses while in office.
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NPR ☛ Whistleblower Joshua Dean, who raised concerns about Boeing jets, dies at 45
Dean was one of the first to flag potentially dangerous defects with 737 Max jets at Spirit AeroSystems, a major Boeing supplier that was spun off from the planemaker in 2005.
Now federal investigators are looking more closely at Spirit and Boeing to understand what went wrong with the door panel that blew off an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 in midair in January — the latest chapter in a long and troubled relationship between the two companies.
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Environment
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El País ☛ Light pollution is a risk factor for various illnesses: ‘We’re facing a global threat’
That was no coincidence. According to numbers from the report The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness, published by Science magazine in 2016, more than 80% of the global population and nearly 100% of the U.S. and Europe live underneath skies that are contaminated by light. This has led to the disappearance of the Milky Way for six out of every 10 Europeans. On 88% of European land surface, residents experience nights with light pollution.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Uncovering the reasons behind the rapid warming of the North Pole
The North Pole region heats up faster than the rest of the world. Though this is a known fact, climate models underestimate the speed with which the region warms up. Sjoert Barten obtained his PhD on this subject at Wageningen University & Research on 26 April and shares his insights.
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The Kent Stater ☛ Trashed or trash? St. Patty’s Day leaves lasting effect on environment
The legendary signal of a party, the red solo cup, takes 450 years to decompose — if it’s even able to.
America’s beloved cup is made of six plastics, quantified as no. 6 plastic, each being incredibly difficult to break down. In return, many of our recycling centers can’t break down the red solo cup because of the chemicals they release when heated.
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Omicron Limited ☛ Oil palm plantations are driving massive downstream impact to watershed
The global demand for palm oil—the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet, in everything from instant noodles to lipstick—is driving worldwide tropical deforestation. While many studies have shown the loss of biodiversity when rainforests are converted to oil palm plantations, researchers at the University of Massachusetts of Amherst are the first to show far-reaching and wide-ranging disturbances to the watersheds in which such plantations occur.
Because many Indigenous peoples rely on water downstream from the plantations for their daily needs, the marked decrease in water quality has the potential to exacerbate public health issues in Indigenous communities.
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Energy/Transportation
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DeSmog ☛ BP Was Warned Gas-Driven Climate Change Could Cause ‘Unprecedented Famine’
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Ruben Schade ☛ Why do you hate cars?
Which leads us to the unfortunate truth. Since the mid 20th century, cars became a requirement to live in much of the world. What proponents see as four-wheeled symbol of freedom, I see a mobility tax. You want to participate in society? Get a licence, pay for the car and insurance, and get used to refuelling it. What’s free about that, in any sense of the word?
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Wildlife/Nature
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The Revelator ☛ Smothered by Seaweed: Sargassum Wreaks Havoc on Caribbean Ecosystems
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CBC ☛ When this orangutan got roughed up, he treated his wound with a medicinal plant
In June 2022, the Sumatran orangutan in Indonesia sustained a wound to his face, likely during a scrap with another male. So he grabbed some liana plant, which is known for its medicinal properties, and gave it a good, long chew.
Scientists then watched in awe as the great ape used his finger to carefully rub the plant's juices directly onto his injury. When he was done, he took the chewed-up plant out of his mouth and placed the whole thing over his wound, like a salve or a plaster.
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Science News ☛ This orangutan used a medicinal plant on his face wound
With their bright eyes and prominent beards and mustaches, it’s easy to see how orangutans got their name; “orang” is Malay for person, while “hutan” means forest. Their similarity to humans doesn’t stop there. Researchers have observed a male orangutan treat a wound on his face with a plant that’s also used in human medicine.
It’s the first time any wild animal has been seen caring for a wound using a natural substance with known medicinal properties, researchers report May 2 in Scientific Reports.
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Finance
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Pro Publica ☛ More States Are Allowing Child Support Payments to Reach Children
It is one of the enduring myths of the U.S. child support system: that payments made by fathers actually make it to their families. And yet, every year, hundreds of millions of dollars in child support is instead intercepted by federal and state governments — as reimbursement for the mother having received welfare at some point.
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Federal News Network ☛ How to avoid bad advice or outright fraud when finding financial advice
An Army financial counselor will spend years in prison after his conviction on defrauding Gold Star Families. Military families should use care with adviser.
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Green Party UK ☛ 2024-04-25 [Older] Green Party reaction to Labour's rail 'nationalisation' plans
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Tech Giants Halt Green Card Sponsorship For Immigrant Workers
Amazon and Google recently paused applications to sponsor foreign workers for green cards. This decision comes after major tech companies like Microsoft went through layoffs. Increased competition for jobs is making things tougher for immigrant workers in the tech industry. Because these companies aren’t sponsoring green cards, it’ll be harder for overseas candidates to live and work in the US legally. Both Amazon and Google have stopped accepting applications until next year.
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Chris ☛ Why Donate to Charity
To some extent, the system we live in is shaped around this structure. I want to provide nice things and financial stability for my family, so I can’t just give away most of what I earn. And I don’t know what the right fraction to give away is.
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2024-04-23 [Older] Amazon Flex Drivers Are Constantly at Risk
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Futurism ☛ Economist Slams Elon Musk for Making Tesla a "Tech-Bubble" Meme Stock
Despite posting disastrous quarterly earnings, Tesla is still worth more than Toyota, Porsche, Mercedes, and Hyundai combined.
But experts are becoming wary of the company's sky-high valuation of well over half a trillion dollars in market capitalization — long a subject of debate — especially now that sales are in freefall and Tesla's competition is flourishing.
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India Times ☛ Reddit CEO beneficially owns 61.5% of class A shares, regulatory filing shows
Reddit cofounder and CEO Steve Huffman beneficially owns 62.4 million Class A shares of the social media company, a regulatory filing showed on Friday.
Those shares were equivalent to 61.5% of the share class, based on a calculation that includes factors such as the right to acquire more shares by exercising stock options and the conversion of Class B shares into Class A shares, according to the filing.
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Federal News Network ☛ ‘We have to find talent’ Cyber leaders push for skills-based hiring
The goal isn’t just to fill open cyber positions now. Advocates of skills-based hiring argue it will open up IT and cyber jobs to a wider range of applicants, at a time when digital technologies are growing in importance. Former Federal Chief Information Officer Suzette Kent, who now works as an advisor to technology training firm SkillStorm, said the government is in sore need of more technical talent across the board.
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Federal News Network ☛ Senate bill would tighten up Zoom, Teams security for government use.
A bill sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), would require vendors of online collaboration tools, like Zoom or Slack, to boost their security. It would require the National Institute of Standards and Technology to come up with the standards, as well as have Homeland Security make sure the companies comply. For analysis, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Miller and Chevalier attorney, and former CIA attorney, Ashley Powers.
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The Verge ☛ Tesla’s Supercharger layoffs couldn’t have come at a worse time
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Tesla was on the verge of making its vehicle charging plug the de facto standard in North America, and its competitors and stakeholders are counting on a smooth ride. But Musk claims the leaner team will focus less on deploying new Supercharger locations and instead focus on “100 percent uptime.” How that will translate into reality is unclear, with laid-off employees telling InsideEVs that reduced manpower will affect their ability to respond to outages.
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-04-27 [Older] Google Wants to Show You More YouTube Ads When You Pause Videos
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Insight Hungary ☛ New law in Hungary says toys have to be wrapped in plastic if they depict gender reassignment or homosexuality
According to a new government decree published on Tuesday, not only books but also other objects that depict homosexuality will be banned from being displayed in store windows. Regarding products for children, they will only be allowed to be sold in closed packaging.
The regulation says that a product intended for children that has a defining characteristic of deviating from the identity of the sex of birth, the representation or promotion of gender reassignment homosexuality, or a direct or self-serving representation of sexuality may not be displayed in a store window, and should be marketed separately from other products intended for children in closed packaging.
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New Yorker ☛ Trump Is Turning Victimhood Into His Legal Strategy
In the early days of the trial, lawyers on both sides have started to reveal their strategies. Will the jury believe that Trump’s sordid acquisition of the White House was political business as usual?
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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DeSmog ☛ Pro-Trump Platform Promotes Climate Science Denial Ads to Millions Across Europe
Epoch Times accounts in Europe have run 425 adverts on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) that have attacked or undermined climate science, green energy, or climate action since the start of the year. These adverts have been run in the UK, Germany, Slovakia, and Bulgaria, appearing on social media feeds at least 2.3 million times across Facebook and Instagram, and 3.1 million times on X.
These anti-climate ads were active for 22 days on average on Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram), while they were displayed for 9.5 days on average on X.
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Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ US election disinformation targets non-citizen voting
AFP has extensively debunked those claims in both English and Spanish, explaining that non-citizens cannot vote in federal elections -- and that safeguards such as double verification prevent them from registering to do so.
But former president and Republican candidate Donald Trump recently shared a video on his Truth Social platform that claims Democrats are encouraging migrants to come to the country to sway the contest in favor of the Democratic incumbent.
X owner Elon Musk amplified the clip, gathering hundreds of thousands of additional interactions.
Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene has added to the false narrative, warning that Democrats "are going to steal the election with illegal votes."
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VOA News ☛ Germany warns Russia about cyberattacks
The NATO statement said the attacks included cyber and electronic interference, disinformation campaigns, and other hybrid operations. The EU statement said the cybercampaign targeted “democratic institutions, government entities and critical infrastructure providers across the European Union and beyond.”
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Censorship/Free Speech
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: CDA 230 bans Facebook from blocking interoperable tools
CDA 230 isn't a gift to big tech. It's literally the only reason that tech companies don't censor on anything we write that might offend some litigious creep. Without CDA 230, there'd be no #MeToo. Hell, without CDA 230, just hosting a private message board where two friends get into serious beef could expose to you an avalanche of legal liability.
CDA 230 is the only part of a much broader, wildly unconstitutional law that survived a 1996 Supreme Court challenge. We don't spend a lot of time talking about all those other parts of the CDA, but there's actually some really cool stuff left in the bill that no one's really paid attention to: [...]
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BIA Net ☛ Two rights advocates acquitted over ‘Armenian Genocide’ remarks
Then Keskin spoke, saying, "We did not insult anyone. We believe that what happened before the establishment of Turkey was a genocide. I also believe that the state continues this thought. We think this should be discussed. We believe it will liberate our region. It will contribute to the democratization of the country. No law prevents us from expressing this. Turkey was convicted on this issue.
"In a rule of law, when a prosecutor is faced with this accusation, they should say, 'There is a decision from the European Court of Human Rights, Turkey has been convicted on this issue, I cannot open this case.' It's not a rule of law here anyway. I believe that 1915 was a genocide. I believe that the Turkish state should face this issue and compensate for the damages. I do not accept the accusation."
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RFERL ☛ Eyewitnesses Say Georgian Police Used Rubber Bullets In Crackdown On Protesters
Some demonstrators were arrested in Heroes' Square as police made attempts to clear the roadway, but it soon filled up with people again after those protesting in front of the parliament building marched to Heroes' Square.
The country has been rocked by days of protests over the proposed law, denounced by opponents as being inspired by similar repressive legislation in Russia that Moscow has used to stifle dissent.
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EFF ☛ The U.S. House Version of KOSA: Still a Censorship Bill
EFF has consistently opposed KOSA because, through several iterations of the Senate bill, it continues to open the door to government control over what speech content can be shared and accessed online. Our concern, which we share with others, is that the bill’s broad and vague provisions will force platforms to censor legally protected content and impose age-verification requirements. The age verification requirements will drive away both minors and adults who either lack the proper ID, or who value their privacy and anonymity.
The House version of KOSA fails to resolve these fundamental censorship problems.
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RFERL ☛ Detention Of Russian Theater Director, Playwright Extended
A military court in Moscow on May 3 extended the pretrial detention until at least October 22 for theater director Yevgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriichuk in a high-profile terrorism case that rights defenders call trumped-up.
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RFERL ☛ Biden Calls For Release Of Imprisoned Journalists, Including RFE/RL's Kurmasheva
U.S. President Joe Biden has called for the release of all imprisoned journalists, including RFE/RL's Alsu Kurmasheva and Evan Gershkovich of The Wall Street Journal, who have been detained in Russia on charges they, their employers, and their supporters reject as politically motivated.
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RFERL ☛ Eastern Europe, Central Asia See 'Spectacular' Rise In Media Censorship, RSF Says
Suppression of press freedom has been on the rise over the past year in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where governments with increasingly authoritarian tendencies have taken after Russia's example, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in their annual media world ranking published on May 3.
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RFERL ☛ In Rare Move, Russian Court Acquits Jehovah's Witness
In an unusual move, a court in Russia's North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria acquitted a Jehovah's Witness in an extremism case.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Anti-War Activist Gets 15-Year Prison Term
A military court in Russia's Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk on May 3 sentenced anti-war activist Angel Nikolayev to 15 years in prison on a charge of arson against a military recruitment center, desecration of Russia's national flag, and vandalism.
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EFF ☛ On World Press Freedom Day (and Every Day), We Fight for an Open Internet
Journalists everywhere face challenges in reporting on climate change and other environmental issues. Whether lawsuits, intimidation, arrests, or disinformation campaigns, these challenges are myriad. For instance, journalists and human rights campaigners attending the COP28 Summit held in Dubai last autumn faced surveillance and intimidation. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has documented arrests of environmental journalists in Iran and Venezuela, among other countries. And in 2022, a Guardian journalist was murdered while on the job in the Brazilian Amazon.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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The Dissenter ☛ The Biden Administration's Hypocrisy On World Press Freedom Day
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BIA Net ☛ Union report sheds light on journalists' economic struggles in Turkey
On World Press Freedom Day, the Journalists’ Union of Turkey (TGS) released its 2023-2024 Press Freedom Report, shedding light on the precarious conditions faced by journalists in Turkey. The report’s focus this year is on “journalist poverty,” highlighting the struggle with low wages, long working hours, and forced disorganization.
Key findings from the report: [...]
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VOA News ☛ World Press Freedom Day in Iran: Journalists face rising threats
To mark World Press Freedom Day, which the U.N. celebrates every year on May 3 to defend media freedom, VOA's Persian Service has engaged in a comprehensive look at some of the events of the past year in which Iran was accused of violating freedom of expression.
Amid the unfolding events concerning Tehran’s crackdown on journalists, Iran’s judiciary has issued summonses to multiple reporters, among them Marzieh Mahmoudi, Asal Dadashloo and Mohammad Parsi.
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Press Gazette ☛ BBC plan to cut TV news in Scotland set to be cleared by Ofcom
Ofcom has said it is likely to approve a plan to halve the amount of peak evening news programming on the BBC Scotland channel.
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Wired ☛ Give This Rich Dude $1 or The Onion Disappears Forever
Since he’s a rich person, Lawson has the means to acquire all the chuckles he could ever need, with some belly laughs thrown in. Last week he bought the legendary, though somewhat faded, satire factory The Onion. To do so, he set up a company called Global Tetrahedron, inspired by the name of an evil fictional corporation used as a running gag by Onion writers.
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University of Michigan ☛ Journalist promotes kindness to graduates at Rackham ceremony
She said she has encountered a change in her readers over the years. When she used to respond to negative emails, readers were often appreciative.
“Today, a polite response is often met with more anger for an unwillingness to engage in a verbal wrestling match,” she said. “I’m not sure why we’re so ready to punch each other in the face. But we’re all in this together — otherwise, this will disintegrate. We need to remember that.”
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The Verge ☛ Environmental journalism is under attack
UNESCO and the International Federation of Journalists surveyed 905 journalists across 129 countries. Between 2009 and last year, more than 70 percent of reporters experienced attacks while working on environmental stories ranging from mining and deforestation to protests and land grabs.
There were more than 300 attacks reported over the past five years alone, a 42 percent jump from the previous five-year period. The attacks come in many forms, from legal threats and online harassment to physical violence and death threats — although physical attacks were most common. They were carried out by authoritarian governments, corporations, and criminal groups.
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RFERL ☛ Silencing The Press: A Global Map Of Imprisoned Journalists
Over 300 journalists are imprisoned worldwide. Journalists are imprisoned on charges ranging from violating censorship to insulting religions and defamation. Explore the map to discover the number of journalists behind bars in each country and the charges (if any) they face.
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VOA News ☛ US journalist held in Russian prison for 400 days
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Thursday at a U.S.-hosted event on the eve of World Press Freedom Day that reporters are too often wrongfully detained for "simply telling the truth."
"That was Evan's crime. Reporting the facts about Russia's illegal war in Ukraine," she said.
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Press Gazette ☛ RSF Press Freedom Index 2024: UK & US scores drop amid layoffs
The US fell ten spots on the ranking to 55th, with its overall press freedom situation classed as “problematic”.
RSF said the decline was “at least in part fuelled by open antagonism from political officials, including calls to jail journalists” and police actions against journalists and newsrooms in the past year.
O’Brien added that in the US, “anti-media policies are gaining in prevalence, especially at the local level, and there have been significant layoffs and media closures, impacting the economic context score.
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RFERL ☛ Kazakh Journalist On Trial For Voicing Support For RFE/RL
The charge stems from an article she posted on her ProTenge Telegram channel in January where she raised the issue of problems faced by Radio Azattyq on obtaining official accreditation from the Foreign Ministry, which had sparked fears the government was trying to stifle independent media.
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France24 ☛ Tens of thousands protest in Georgia as parliament advances 'foreign influence' bill
The Black Sea Caucasus nation has been gripped by mass anti-government protests since April 9, after the ruling Georgian Dream party reintroduced plans to pass a law, which critics say resembles repressive Russian legislation used to silence dissent.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Green Party UK ☛ 2024-04-23 [Older] Greens pledge to support repeal of new Rwanda deportation law
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France24 ☛ Saudi court ‘secretly’ hands 11-year sentence to women's rights activist
But over the last two years the government has convicted and sentenced dozens of people for expressing their views against the authorities online, according to a statement published Tuesday by human rights groups.
In the statement, Amnesty International and ALQST, a London-based Saudi rights organisation, called for the immediate and unconditional release of Manahel al-Otaibi, a 29-year-old fitness instructor and women’s rights activist who was sentenced to 11 years in prison by a Saudi court on January 9.
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India Times ☛ external funding: Only 3% women entrepreneurs in tier 2-3 cities have access to external funding: study
Also, only 20% of India's 61 million micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are led by women, with almost half of them located in rural areas, according to a whitepaper by the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) in collaboration with financial management app Salt.
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International Business Times ☛ The Best European Countries for Female Workers and 2 With No Female CEOs Listed
The study highlighted which nations on the continent lack female representation, and it named Ireland and Luxembourg as the two countries without female business leaders.
The controversial findings came as a reminder to boost women's roles in business. They exposed that Europe has a long way to go until women have equal opportunities in high-earning jobs.
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The Kent Stater ☛ Metal detectors. No banners, flags or clear bags. Expect heightened security at university commencements after protests
All guests will enter through metal detectors. All bags will be subject to inspection.
“Guests are permitted to bring clear bags that are approximately the size of a one-gallon freezer bag or small clutch approximately the size of a hand,” the university said. “Prohibited items include backpacks, banners, placards, flags, noise makers, weapons, packages and outside food and beverage.”
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Robert Reich ☛ Robert Reich (Should Billionaires Exist? Do billionaires have...)
Do billionaires have a right to exist?
America has driven more than 650 species to extinction. And it should do the same to billionaires.
Why? Because there are only five ways to become one, and they’re all bad for free-market capitalism: [...]
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The Telegraph UK ☛ Iranian women are spying on fellow females to enforce regime's strict rules
Dressed in black from head to toe, thousands of female “hijab enforcers” have swarmed the streets of Iranian cities over the past three weeks, patrolling supermarkets, metro stations, cafes, restaurants and universities amid a sweeping crackdown.
Women deemed in violation of the requirement to wear a headscarf, or found to be wearing fitted trousers, are confronted and sent to the feared morality police. Patrol locations are decided and assigned to the enforcers by the Iranian authorities.
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University of Michigan ☛ UM-Flint archive helps digitize historical Black newspapers
Newspapers are notoriously difficult documents to preserve. Newsprint is, by definition, a low-cost and non-archival paper. That means it’s all too easy for the history contained in those newspapers — particularly smaller publications without the resources to house a dedicated archive — to be lost.
“Unless they were microfilmed or someone digitized them, chances are historical papers no longer exist,” said Callum Carr, associate archivist at the Genesee Historical Collections Center at UM-Flint’s Frances Willson Thompson Library. “After a certain amount of time, that cheap paper is just going to be gone. And if it’s been stored in somebody’s basement, attic or outbuilding, there’s no hope.”
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-28 [Older] How to Design a Volunteering Program in Your Workplace
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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TechTarget ☛ FCC broadband labels explained: Everything you need to know
Similar to how a nutrition label details food content, the FCC now mandates labels for internet providers to clarify service details for consumers to improve transparency.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Icasa says still no Starlink application for South Africa
This is despite news last week that SpaceX has applied to Zimbabwe’s communications regulator, Potraz, for an operating licence in that country. Starlink is already commercially available in South African neighbours Mozambique and Eswatini.
“Icasa has not received any application as yet,” an Icasa spokeswoman told TechCentral in response to a query on Friday.
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Truthdig ☛ Congress Must Act To Make Internet Access Equitable - Truthdig
Affordable internet access isn’t just about surfing the web or scrolling social media. High-speed broadband is a gateway to education, job opportunities, health care, and so much more. By taking this important program away from low-income families, Congress is not only driving up costs for an already vulnerable population, but potentially taking away their educational, employment, and economic opportunities as well.
If Congress is serious about both closing the digital divide and achieving racial equity, it will have to act now to keep the ACP up and running.
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404 Media ☛ Facebook’s AI Spam Isn’t the ‘Dead Internet’: It’s the Zombie Internet
Over the last few months, many have proposed that the AI spam taking over Facebook is a great example of the “Dead Internet Theory,” which posits that large portions of the [Internet] are made up of bots talking to bots, filtered through the lens of recommendation and engagement algorithms. Facebook is undeniably cooked, a decaying, depressing hall of horrors full of viral AI-generated content that seemingly gets worse every day.
But I do not think Facebook is the dead [Internet]. Instead, I think it is something worse. Facebook is the zombie [Internet], where a mix of bots, humans, and accounts that were once humans but aren’t anymore mix together to form a disastrous website where there is little social connection at all.
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India Times ☛ Google trial wraps up as judge weighs landmark US antitrust claims
Mehta said a central issue was platform "substitute-ability" for advertisers, which the court must resolve. He will now begin preparing to render a major decision on whether Google's conduct broke civil antitrust law. He did not indicate when he would rule, but experts say he could potentially order changes to Google's business practices.
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India Times ☛ US antitrust case against Google is just the start
Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission started investigating Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta, the parent company of Instagram and WhatsApp, for monopolistic behavior. The government has since sued all four companies -- Google twice -- in what it says is an effort to rein in their power and promote more competition.
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New York Times ☛ Final Arguments in Google Antitrust Trial Conclude, Setting Up Landmark Ruling
“The importance and significance of this case is not lost on me, not only for Google but for the public,” Judge Amit P. Mehta said in the final moments of the proceedings on Friday. He thanked the lawyers who argued the case, and then added, “I guess you’ve passed the baton to us.”
Now, he must decide the case in which the Justice Department and state attorneys general say that Google has abused a monopoly over the search business, stifling competitors and limiting innovation, something the company denies.
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New York Times ☛ U.S. Antitrust Case Against Google Is Just the Start
In September, the F.T.C. and 17 states sued Amazon, accusing it of protecting a monopoly by squeezing sellers on its vast marketplace and favoring its own services. The practices also harmed consumers, the F.T.C. argued, and resulted in some cases of “artificially higher prices” because Amazon prevented those selling goods on its site from offering the same products on other online sites for less.
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Google defends Play store in battle with Epic Games
In another even more far-reaching antitrust case, Google on Thursday squared off for closing trial arguments with the US justice department and a group of states in a Washington, DC courtroom over claims that it unfairly dominates the market for mobile web search.
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India Times ☛ Google: Google faces second day of closing arguments in US antitrust trial
Mehta is expected on Friday to take up the government's claim that Google intentionally destroyed internal documents that were relevant to the issues in the lawsuit. The government wants Mehta to presume that Google deleted chats that were unfavorable to the company.
Google has defended its data preservation practices, calling them reasonable, and urged the court not to sanction the company.
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New York Times ☛ Why Google Employees Aren’t Reacting to US Antitrust Trial
Executives shared highlights from a recent earnings report and cloud-computing conference, and warned workers against taking disruptive actions in the wake of internal protests against a cloud-computing contract with Israel.
But no one in the meeting, two employees said, broached a topic that could have a dramatic impact on Google: its landmark antitrust trial with the Justice Department, where arguments are finally coming to an end this week.
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Google is (still) losing the spam wars to zombie news-brands
It's nice that Google has finally stopped gaslighting the rest of us with claims that its search was still the same bedrock utility that so many of us relied upon as a key piece of [Internet] infrastructure. This not only feels wildly wrong, it is empirically, provably false:
[...]
Not only that, but we know why Google search sucks. Memos released as part of the DOJ's antitrust case against Google reveal that the company deliberately chose to worsen search quality to increase the number of queries you'd have to make (and the number of ads you'd have to see) to find a decent result: [...]
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Trademarks
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Right of Publicity
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Scheerpost ☛ Congress Should Just Say No to NO FAKES
Under NO FAKES, any person has the right to sue anyone who has either made, or made available, their “digital replica.” A replica is broadly defined as “a newly-created, computer generated, electronic representation of the image, voice or visual likeness” of a person. The right applies to the person themselves; anyone who has a license to use their image, voice, or likeness; and their heirs for 70 years after the person dies. It’s retroactive, meaning the post-mortem right would apply immediately to the heirs of, say, Prince, Tom Petty, or Michael Jackson, not to mention your grandmother.
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate Site Blocking Agency Reveals How and Why Pirates Circumvent Blocking
As the Motion Picture Association's site-blocking drive lands back on home turf, countries that have already implemented their own site-blocking programs are evaluating their effectiveness. A new survey carried out by French anti-piracy agency Arcom reveals how internet users circumvent blocking and their preferred tools. More importantly from a piracy mitigation perspective, the survey reveals why users feel the need to circumvent blocking in the first place.
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Reason ☛ Again, Someone Trying to Vanish My Post About a Case on One-Sided Pseudonymity
In February, I wrote about a Fourth Circuit decision in Doe v. Sidar, which discusses one-sided pseudonymity. On Wednesday, Surveillance Giant Google received a request that it remove that post from its indexes—and thus vanish it from search results—on the theory that the post violated the copyright monopoly in a blog post, https://europeannewschannels.blogspot.com/2024/01/fourth-circuit-on-one-sided.html: Re: Unknown NOTICE TYPE: DMCA Copyright…
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The Register UK ☛ UK inertia on LLMs and copyright is 'de facto endorsement'
However, holders of copyrighted material – text, image, and audio data – have complained that their intellectual property has been stolen on an industrial scale to create them. Model builders argue their use of the material is fair.
In a letter to science and technology minister Michelle Donelan, the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications and Digital said the government's record on copyright is "inadequate and deteriorating."
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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saccharine rudiment
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AAPI heritage month is dumb
Happy AAPI heritage month to you, America! Being someone who constantly gets asked about where I'm from despite having the most common last name in the most populous country on Earth, I am fairly sure I have the authority to say that this is a really stupid idea.
AAPI is one of the most useless labels on the planet. "Asian American" is already dumb because when people say it, you know they mean people from East Asia. Maybe Southeast Asia is included in that if they're really globally-minded. Anyone else from Asia need not apply - I'm pretty sure Indian people still get told that they're not Asian, and let's not get started on West Asia. But people keep trying to push the idea that all people from Asia qualify as Asian American when that is clearly not the connotation in the US.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.