Links 17/04/2024: TikTok Killing Youth, More Layoff Rounds
Contents
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Leftovers
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Manuel Moreale ☛ A comment on comments
Setting up your server to send a webmention is an extra bonus point but I don’t consider that to be necessary. That’s the ideal commenting setup in my opinion but I’m sure some of you out there disagree.
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Science
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Wired ☛ They Experimented on Themselves in Secret. What They Discovered Helped Win a War
In my field of dive research, there’s one story from eight decades ago that blows the rest of us out of the water. It concerns a group of scientists who conducted a series of tests on themselves so extreme, so dangerous, and so key to the outcome of the Second World War that it got buried under classification markings for generations. This groundbreaking research was so secret, in fact, that professionals in my field will learn about it here for the first time.
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NASA ☛ Engineers Pinpoint Cause of Voyager 1 Issue, Are Working on Solution – Voyager
The team suspects that a single chip responsible for storing part of the affected portion of the FDS memory isn’t working. Engineers can’t determine with certainty what caused the issue. Two possibilities are that the chip could have been hit by an energetic particle from space or that it simply may have worn out after 46 years.
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Space ☛ We finally know why NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped communicating — scientists are working on a fix
Voyager 1 currently sits around 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, which means it takes 22.5 hours to receive a radio signal from it — and another 22.5 hours for the spacecraft to receive a response via the Deep Space Network's antennas. Solving this communication issue is thus no mean feat.
Yet, NASA scientists and engineers are optimistic they can find a way to help FDS operate normally, even without the unusable memory hardware.
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Education
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Robin Rendle ☛ Longboarding
I zipped through Better Onboarding by Krystal Higgins a few weeks ago and, in my mind, it’s a classic that should be required reading for anyone who makes software. I am serious! It is very good! I can’t remember the last time a book about my job has been so obviously good and un-put-downable and almost infinitely quotable.
The book goes against convention when it comes to onboarding and how us designers should approach it. That’s exciting to me because I’m on an onboarding team at Retool where my job is to make sure that new or potential customers can build complex web apps. So I’ve been thinking a lot about onboarding over the past few months.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Hindustan Times ☛ What is Chroming, the dangerous viral TikTok trend claiming kids' lives?
In simple words, the chroming challenge requires inhaling toxic fumes. The breakout social media frenzy has seen many teenagers sniffing aerosol cans, detergent, paint thinner and other such solvents. The intoxicating practice temporarily uplifts the partakers' spirits, offering a brief and instant high. Teenagers or young adult participants in their early 20s have largely undertaken the growing trend.
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CTV News ☛ What is the TikTok 'chroming' trend? | CTV News
Tommie-Lee Gracie Billington, suffered a suspected cardiac arrest on Saturday after taking part in what TikTok users call “chroming," his family told local media.
Chroming, also known as "huffing," is the act of inhaling the fumes of household chemicals such as nail polish remover, hairspray, aerosol deodorant or permanent markers.
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University of Michigan ☛ New U-M study explores video game addiction rates
Previous research on the addiction rate of video games has focused on individual representations of addiction through surveys and questionnaires. Rather than looking at just time played as a key indicator for addiction, Manchanda and Branco explored the rates of consumption — whether playing video games makes a person play even more.
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CS Monitor ☛ Britain’s PM Sunak tries to ban youth smoking in bipartisan bill
The bill, a key policy announced by Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last year, will make it illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone born after January 1, 2009. It has the support of the opposition Labour Party and is expected to pass. But Mr. Sunak faces rebellion from more libertarian-minded members of his party, who criticized the proposals as “unconservative.”
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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David Rosenthal ☛ Elon Musk: Threat or Menace Part 4
So that's all there is to Autopilot. No radar, no lidar, no GPS, no map, no geofencing, no proper driver monitoring. It just uses the camera to follow the lines. It doesn't disengage if it can't see the lines, it just keeps going. So much for Tesla's vaunted AI capabilities! I wonder how much more you get for the $15K extra you pay for Fake Self Driving?
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Jamie Zawinski ☛ Fucking Apple
Apple Mail likes to keep our relationship spicy with little surprises like this: [...]
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US News And World Report ☛ Apple CEO Says Company Is 'Looking At' Manufacturing in Indonesia
Widodo’s administration has worked for years to bring manufacturing to the country to power economic development, while Apple is seeking to diversify its supply chains away from China, where most of its smartphones and tablets are assembled.
The company began moving some production to countries like Vietnam, and more recently India, after shutdowns to fight COVID-19 in China repeatedly disrupted the company’s shipments.
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Mike Rockwell ☛ The Magic Is Gone
Today, though, I can’t remember the last time I even went to an Apple Store. It was probably before 2020 and it was more than likely because I actually needed to go there for something. The last time I made a point to go to the Apple Store just to browse was probably a year or two prior.
The magic of Apple’s retail stores is gone.
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University of Michigan ☛ Study: Alphabetical order of surnames may affect grading
An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. This is due to sequential grading biases and the default order of students’ submissions in Canvas — the most widely used online learning management system — which is based on alphabetical rank of their surnames.
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The Telegraph UK ☛ Making sexually explicit 'deep fakes' to become illegal
Making a sexually explicit “deep fake” image is to become a new criminal offence with offenders facing unlimited fines.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is to introduce an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill so that anyone who makes such an image - even if they have no intent to share it - will be prosecuted and, if convicted, have a criminal record.
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Metro UK ☛ GTA owner lays off 550+ employees after making $2.2 billion profit last year
The industry wide spate of mass redundancies continues, with Rockstar Games owner Take-Two saying that they’ve cancelled several games.
At this point, almost every Western video game publisher has announced massive layoffs of staff, from Microsoft and Sony to EA and Embracer Group, but for a moment it did seem as if Rockstar Games owner Take-Two Interactive would buck the trend. But unfortunately that’s not the case.
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Ziff Davis ☛ Tesla Plans To Lay off Over 10% of Its Global Workforce
In his internal memo to Tesla’s employees, the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, said that the company had conducted a thorough review of the organization and had decided to reduce the global headcount by over 10%, which means at least 14,000 employees.
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Security
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Integrity/Availability/Authenticity
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Krebs On Security ☛ Who Stole 3.6M Tax Records from South Carolina?
For nearly a dozen years, residents of South Carolina have been kept in the dark by state and federal investigators over who was responsible for hacking into the state's revenue department in 2012 and stealing tax and bank account information for 3.6 million people. The answer may no longer be a mystery: KrebsOnSecurity found compelling clues suggesting the intrusion was carried out by the same Russian hacking crew that stole of millions of payment card records from big box retailers like Home Depot and Target in the years that followed.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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EFF ☛ Americans Deserve More Than the Current American Privacy Rights Act
In general, the APRA would require companies to minimize their processing of personal data to what is necessary, proportionate, and limited to certain enumerated purposes. It would specifically require opt-in consent for the transfer of sensitive data, and most processing of biometric and genetic data. It would also give consumers the right to access, correct, delete, and export their data. And it would allow consumers to universally opt-out of the collection of their personal data from brokers, using a registry maintained by the Federal Trade Commission. We welcome many of these privacy protections. Below are a few of our top priorities to correct and strengthen the APRA bill.
The APRA should not preempt existing and future state data privacy laws that are stronger than the current bill. The ability to pass stronger bills at the state and local level is an important tool in the fight for data privacy. We ask that Congress not compromise our privacy rights by undercutting the very state-level action that spurred this compromise federal data privacy bill in the first place.
Subject to exceptions, the APRA says that no state may “adopt, maintain, enforce, or continue in effect” any state-level privacy requirement addressed by the new bill. APRA would allow many state sectoral privacy laws to remain, but it would still preempt protections for biometric data, location data, online ad tracking signals, and maybe even privacy protections in state constitutions or some other limits on what private companies can share with the government. At the federal level, the APRA would also wrongly preempt many parts of the federal Communications Act, including provisions that limit a telephone company’s use, disclosure, and access to customer proprietary network information, including location information.
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Site36 ☛ Facial recognition from parked vehicles: Professor questions legal basis of dragnet searches by German police
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Site36 ☛ Frontex Director calls for “gender-sensitive borders” and now explains the concept
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Techdirt ☛ Internet Child Safety Laws Will Lead To Helpful Sites Being Blocked; Just Look At Schools
Various states and the federal government are proposing and passing a wide variety of “kid safety” laws. Almost all of them pretend that they’re about conduct of social media sites and not about the content on them, but when you boil down what the underlying concerns are, they all end up actually being about the content.
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The Hill ☛ Intelligence community largely won House FISA fight. Now comes the Senate
In a nail-biter of a Friday vote, the House declined to approve an amendment spearheaded by the House Judiciary Committee that would require law enforcement to get a warrant before looking at Americans’ data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
At the same time, they approved a suite of amendments from an earlier House Intelligence bill dealing with Section 702 of FISA, including allowing its use for anyone entering the country as well as another provision requiring a greater number of electronic service providers to aid the government in surveilling foreigners.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ New EU cybersecurity rules push carmakers to shun old models
The European Union now wants to put the brakes on the growing security threats connected with modern car technology, especially in electric vehicles (EVs). The electronic equipment in cars not only serves the convenience of their drivers and contributes to road safety, but also allows cars and their users to be increasingly monitored.
The United Nations and the European Union have recognized this and responded with UN regulations R155 and R156, which address cybersecurity threats from software updates in cars. The new rules impose higher requirements on car companies and their suppliers and will be implemented in the EU starting July 7.
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EFF ☛ How Political Campaigns Use Your Data to Target You
Political campaigns use the same invasive tricks that behavioral ads do—pulling in data from a variety of sources online to create a profile—so they can target you. Your digital trail is a critical tool for campaigns, but the process starts in the real world, where longstanding techniques to collect data about you can be useful indicators of how you'll vote. This starts with voter records.
Politicians have long had access to public data, like voter registration, party registration, address, and participation information (whether or not a voter voted, not who they voted for). Online access to such records has made them easier to get in some states, with unintended consequences, like doxing.
Campaigns can purchase this voter information from most states. These records provide a rough idea of whether that person will vote or not, and—if they're registered to a particular party—who they might lean toward voting for. Campaigns use this to put every voter into broad categories, like "supporter," "non-supporter," or "undecided." Campaigns gather such information at in-person events, too, like door-knocking and rallies, where you might sign up for emails or phone calls.
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Confidentiality
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Cryptography Engineering ☛ A quick post on Chen’s algorithm – A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering
If you’re a normal person — that is, a person who doesn’t obsessively follow the latest cryptography news — you probably missed last week’s cryptography bombshell. That news comes in the form of a new e-print authored by Yilei Chen, “Quantum Algorithms for Lattice Problems“, which has roiled the cryptography research community. The result is now being evaluated by experts in lattices and quantum algorithm design (and to be clear, I am not one!) but if it holds up, it’s going to be quite a bad day/week/month/year for the applied cryptography community.
Rather than elaborate at length, here’s quick set of five bullet-points giving the background.
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Defence/Aggression
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MI5 ☛ Response to Manchester Arena Inquiry report
MI5 exists to stop atrocities. To all those whose lives were forever changed on that awful night: I am so sorry that MI5 did not prevent the attack at the Manchester Arena.
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The Guardian UK ☛ Manchester Arena attack survivors and relatives take legal action against MI5
More than 250 people have joined the group action against MI5 and have submitted their claim to the investigatory powers tribunal, which hears complaints against the intelligence services.
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New York Times ☛ Families of Manchester Bombing Victims File Lawsuit Against MI5
It appears to be the first time MI5 has been sued for its failure to prevent a terror attack, a maneuver that is sure to be legally and bureaucratically complicated should the tribunal accept the case.
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France24 ☛ Hundreds of Manchester Arena attack survivors file lawsuit against MI5
Inspired by the Islamic State group, he used a homemade shrapnel bomb to target crowds of mostly young people who had been attending the concert by the US pop star, as well as parents who had come to pick up their children.
The IPT is an independent body that investigates complaints from people who believe they have been a victim of unlawful action by a public authority using covert investigative techniques and those targeting the intelligence services.
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Air Force Times ☛ ‘The flak can’t always miss. Somebody’s gotta’ die’
The airmen would be woken up at 3:00 a.m. for breakfast — fresh eggs on mission mornings, “combat eggs,” instead of powdered “square eggs.” Some men didn’t eat a thing, and others ate like it was their last meal. “You could hear a pin drop,” a crewman remembered. “You had a 50 percent chance of returning. You don’t want to think about it, but it’s there.”
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Poynter Institute ☛ Trump didn’t violate Logan Act with reshare of old Iran social media post, experts say
The Logan Act says that a U.S. citizen "without authority of the United States" can be fined or imprisoned for up to three years for "directly or indirectly" corresponding with a foreign government to influence "any disputes or controversies with the United States."
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New York Times ☛ Far Right’s Ties to Russia Sow Rising Alarm in Germany
In the past few months alone, a leading AfD politician was accused of taking money from pro-Kremlin strategists. One of the party’s parliamentary aides was exposed as having links to a Russian intelligence operative. And some of its state lawmakers flew to Moscow to observe Russia’s stage-managed elections.
“To know with certainty that sitting there, while these sensitive issues are discussed, are lawmakers with proven connections to Moscow — it doesn’t just make me uncomfortable. It worries me,” said Erhard Grundl, a Green party member of the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
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The Independent UK ☛ Ruling over prayer rituals ban ‘victory for all schools’, headteacher says
In a judgment on Tuesday, a judge concluded the ban did not interfere with the student’s rights and was “proportionate” amid the school’s aim to promote an ethos of inclusivity and social cohesion.
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The Independent UK ☛ Muslim student loses challenge against prayer ritual ban at ‘Britain’s strictest school’
But in a written ruling on Tuesday, Mr Justice Linden dismissed the pupil’s arguments and backed the school, which had argued its policy was justified after it faced death and bomb threats linked to religious observance on site.
Ms Birbalsingh, a former government social mobility tsar who co-founded the school with former home secretary Suella Braverman, said: “A school should be free to do what is right for the pupils it serves. The court’s decision is therefore a victory for all schools.
“Schools should not be forced by one child and her mother to change its approach simply because they have decided they don’t like something at the school.”
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The Straits Times ☛ US and Asia allies push for new panel to monitor North Korea sanctions
SEOUL - The U.S., South Korea and Japan are pushing for a new multi-national panel of experts, possibly outside the U.N., to ensure sanctions enforcement against North Korea after Russia and China thwarted monitoring activities at the world body, three sources said on Wednesday.
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RFERL ☛ Poland Deports Tajik Citizen With Links To Islamic State
A Tajik citizen has been deported from Poland on suspicion of "terrorist activities" and links to the Islamic State group that claimed responsibility for a deadly attack at a concert hall outside Moscow last month.
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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The Straits Times ☛ Blinken to raise US concerns over China’s support for Russia’s defence industrial base during visit
US officials said Mr Blinken would travel to China in the coming weeks.
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Meduza ☛ Russia’s Health Ministry introduces bill allowing law enforcement access to medical records of ‘socially dangerous’ patients — Meduza
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Meduza ☛ ‘Business as usual’: How some E.U. companies are sending Russia parts for warships, sanctions be damned — Meduza
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JURIST ☛ Canada imposes additional sanctions on Belarus officials over ongoing human rights violations
Canada announced on Monday that it would impose additional sanctions on 21 Belarus officials under the Special Economic Measures (Belarus) Regulations.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Western fear of escalation will hand Putin an historic victory in Ukraine
The West's self-defeating fear of escalation has allowed Russia to regain the initiative in Ukraine and is now threatening to hand Putin an historic victory, writes Mykola Bielieskov.
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France24 ☛ Russia but not Putin invited to French D-Day anniversary, say organisers
Russia but not President Vladimir Putin will be invited to the French ceremony in June to mark 80 years since the D-Day landings during World War II, organisers said Tuesday.
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TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ James Stavridis: Putin’s new front in the Ukraine war is in the Balkans
He knows that if NATO member states are dragged back into policing a restive Balkans, they will be distracted from their focus on supporting Ukraine.
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European Commission ☛ Address by Commissioner Lenarčič at the 3rd Senior Officials Meeting for the people of Ukraine
No far away from here is the Emergency Response Coordination Centre...
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Latvia ☛ Latvia-led drone coalition ready to start deliveries to Ukraine
There are already 14 countries in the 'drone coalition' founded by Latvia, and after a decision made by the government April 16 Latvia will send the first significant cargo of drones to Ukraine, Prime Minister Evika Siliņa (New Unity) told the media after a cabinet meeting Tuesday.
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Latvia ☛ Around 4,000 Ukrainians studying in Latvia
The latest Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) estimate published April 16 shows that around 4,000 Ukrainian citizens with temporary protection status in Latvia were registered with Latvian education institutions on 1 January 2024.
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AntiWar ☛ The War in Ukraine and Judeo-Christian Values
Mixing religion with politics is generally not a good idea. Still, it looks like it is one of the few remaining options to avoid what then-Senator Sam Nunn and his colleagues described in 2020 as continuing to sleepwalk towards a nuclear WWIII.
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Reason ☛ Massie's Move To Fire Speaker Mike Johnson Is About More Than Ukraine Spending
It's a test of the unofficial coalition that's effectively ruling the House right now.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Ukrainian nuclear energy can fuel country’s recovery and power Europe
Ukraine's nuclear energy industry could help fuel the country’s reconstruction and power Europe’s energy transition, writes Suriya Evans-Pritchard Jayanti.
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France24 ☛ Ukraine identifies 37,000 people as missing, warns the figure may be 'much higher'
Ukraine said Tuesday it had identified almost 37,000 people, including military personnel, who are unaccounted for since Russia's invasion began in February 2022, warning the actual figure may be "much higher".
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RFERL ☛ Countries In Czech-Led Initiative Pledge Enough To Buy 500,000 Shells For Ukraine
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on April 16 that 20 countries had pledged enough money to buy 500,000 artillery shells under the Czech Republic's international fundraising drive to buy badly needed ammunition for the Ukrainian Army.
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RFERL ☛ Explosions Reported At Military Airfield In Russian-Occupied Crimea
A series of explosions rang out overnight in the area of the military airfield in the city of Dzhankoy in the north of Ukraine's Russian-occupied Crimea region.
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RFERL ☛ Facing Republican Revolt, House Speaker Pushes Ahead On U.S. Aid For Ukraine, Other Allies
House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican-Louisiana) pushed back on April 16 against mounting anger within his own party over proposed U.S. security aid for Ukraine, Israel, and other allies, and rejected a call to step aside or risk a vote to oust him from office.
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RFERL ☛ U.S. To Hit Iran With New Sanctions, Yellen Says; U.S. Looking To Use Russian Assets For Ukraine
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on April 16 warned that the United States intends to hit Iran with new sanctions over its unprecedented attack on Israel, and these actions could seek to reduce Iran's capacity to export oil.
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RFERL ☛ Fire At Zoo In Russian-Occupied Crimea Leaves More Than 200 Animals Dead
More than 200 animals died on April 16 in a fire at a zoo in Yevpatoria in Russian-occupied Crimea.
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RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Official Estimates 37,000 People Missing Since February 2022
Ukraine said on April 16 it had identified almost 37,000 people who have not been accounted for since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
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RFERL ☛ Scholz Urges China To Use 'Influence' On Russia To End Ukraine War
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says he urged Chinese President Pooh-tin Jinping to press Russia to end its "senseless" war in Ukraine during a visit to Beijing on April 16.
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RFERL ☛ Zelenskiy Signs New Law On Military Mobilization In Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on April 16 signed into law legislation on mobilization is expected to address a shortfall in troops that by requiring men to update their draft data with the authorities.
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RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Nuclear Plant 'Dangerously Close' To Accident, Atomic Watchdog Chief Warns
Recent drone attacks on the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine have raised the risk of a nuclear accident to a new level, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency warned on April 15, calling on the UN Security Council to do everything in its power to minimize the risk.
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RFERL ☛ John Bolton Says Growing U.S. Isolationism Threatens Ukraine's War Effort
Ukraine faces "danger" if the United States does not quickly pass much-needed military aid, former U.S. national-security adviser John Bolton told Current Time, as Russia's advantages in troops and weaponry help the Kremlin edge deeper into its neighbor more than two years into the war.
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RFERL ☛ Russian Radar Destroyed By Ukranian Drones, Says Kyiv
Drones belonging to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) have destroyed a military radar installation in Russia's Bryansk region, according to an SBU source, in what would be another blow to Russia's ability to monitor activities deep inside Ukraine.
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TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Trump to meet with Polish president Duda as NATO leaders call for additional support for Ukraine
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Wednesday in New York.
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New York Times ☛ Johnson’s Plan for Ukraine Aid Meets Republican Pushback, Muddying Its Path
The Republican speaker’s strategy for moving foreign aid measures for Israel and Ukraine through the House has outraged many in his own party, increasing calls for his ouster.
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New York Times ☛ In Ukraine With Soldiers From the International Legion
Our photographer spent four days at a remote Ukrainian trench outpost manned by soldiers who signed up from abroad.
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New York Times ☛ Ukraine’s Big Vulnerabilities: Ammunition, Soldiers and Air Defense
The shortages add up to a dire situation for Ukraine in the third year of the war, presenting commanders with near impossible choices on how to deploy limited resources.
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ADF ☛ Russia Uses Grain Shipments to Exert Influence on African Nations
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 disrupted grain shipments to countries across Africa. In response, Russia has begun shipping free grain to six African countries, but those shipments come with strings attached. According to Zimbabwean economist Godfrey Kanyenze, Russia is exploiting the suffering of African citizens for its own benefit.
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Meduza ☛ Frontline fractures Ukraine’s use of drones to compensate for critical ammo shortage isn’t enough to stop Russia’s creeping advance — Meduza
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Latvia ☛ Police raid Latvian border area to prevent illegal TV distribution
The State Police regularly go on raids to guesthouses and public institutions in the border area to check contracts with TV providers and assess the range of available TV channels. This is done to prevent the broadcasting of Russian TV in the territory of Latvia. One such raid took place Monday in Krāslava, Latgale regional television reported.
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Atlantic Council ☛ Ignac interviewed by Al Jazeera on the Russian influence in the Western Balkans
On April 10, Transatlantic Security Initiative assistant director Luka Ignac was interviewed by Al Jazeera on the Russian influence on the security situation in the Western Balkans (source in Croatian).
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RFERL ☛ Organizer Of 'Nearly Naked' Party Charged With Discrediting Russia's Armed Forces
The organizer of the so-called "Nearly Naked" party, Russian blogger Anastasia Ivleyeva, has been charged with discrediting Russia's armed forces and will face a hearing on April 25 at Moscow's Tver district court..
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RFERL ☛ More Evacuations Ordered in Russia Amid 'Colossal' Flooding
Russian officials continued to order the evacuation of areas in Siberia and parts of the south as massive floods sparked by heavy rains and a rapid snowmelt show few signs of letting up.
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Environment
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University of Michigan ☛ Students turn fallen campus trees into public tables
“We are using dead, dying trees or trees that had to be removed for development. I have partnered with Grounds and Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum to write a grant for a campus-based sawmill to be located on North Campus. I hope this will be funded and open many new opportunities for sustainable wood products coming from campus and serving our campus.”
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Los Angeles Times ☛ Red state coal towns still power the West Coast. We can't just let them die
Hedges and her fellow Montana environmentalists were happy when Oregon and Washington passed laws requiring 100% clean energy in the next two decades. But they’re furious that electric utilities in those states are planning to stick with coal for as long as the laws allow, and in some cases making deals to give away their Colstrip shares to co-owners who seem determined to keep the plant running long into the future.
“Coal is not dead yet,” Hedges says. “It’s still alive and well.”
That’s an uncomfortable reality for West Coasters critical of red-state environmental policies but not in the habit of urging their politicians to work across state lines to change them — especially when doing so might involve compromise with Republicans.
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Energy/Transportation
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DeSmog ☛ ‘Hard-Right’ NatCon Event Was Organised by Oil Funded Group
A gathering of “Europe’s hard-right elite” held in Brussels today was organised by a fossil fuel funded think tank, DeSmog can reveal.
The National Conservatism (NatCon) conference was mired in controversy after the mayor of Brussels ordered police to shut down the event, leading to a standoff with its organisers.
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Overpopulation
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Kansas Reflector ☛ If we're to save the Ogallala for future Kansans, current Kansans need to act right away
The difficult reality is that continuing the status quo regarding use of the Ogallala is unsustainable.
There cannot be any doubt about that. When a large portion of the economy at local and state levels is built on premises that no longer mesh with reality, there are really only two types of solution. First, it can be top down, where change is imposed by higher levels of government. Second, it can come from a combination of local and state input. In other words, a collaborative effort. Even though someone living in Lawrence might think that what happens in Tribune does not have any impact, the reality is that it does. The entire state of Kansas will suffer if the Ogallala continues to decline.
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Finance
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Companies that laid off the most employees across the United States so far in 2024
In a wave of layoffs that has been occurring since 2023, major tech companies including Apple, Dell, and IBM are downsizing their global workforce. Thousands of jobs were slashed in the sector but it is just one of the industries where people have been laid off over the past three months. In January alone, companies and government agencies across the United States laid off and discharged more than 1.57 million employees.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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New Republic ☛ Russia Is Buying Politicians in Europe. Is It Happening Here Too?
“I think Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base,” Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Puck’s Julia Ioffe last week. Representative Mike Turner, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, went further, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper a few days later, “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.”
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The Telegraph UK ☛ Watch: Iranian state TV claims fans of One Direction star were 'Israelis panicking'
The propaganda blunder emerged when the clip – shared by the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN) on X, formerly Twitter – was compared with footage taken last week near a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the pop star greeted fans.
It is one of several fake videos circulated by Iranian news organisations since the missile and drone attack on Israel last weekend.
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Vox ☛ Amazon ebooks: Are the Mikkelsen twins running a scam? Here’s our investigation
In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Ashley Vanicek said, “We aim to provide the best possible shopping, reading, and publishing experience, and we are constantly evaluating developments that impact that experience, which includes the rapid evolution and expansion of generative AI tools.”
Yet the garbage books predate the problem of AI. Here’s how they get made in the first place.
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CBC ☛ Meta's news ban changed how people share political info — for the worse, studies show
The blocking of news links has led to profound and disturbing changes in the way Canadian Facebook users engage with information about politics, two unpublished studies shared with Reuters found.
"The news being talked about in political groups is being replaced by memes," said Taylor Owen, founding director of McGill University's Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, who worked on one of the studies.
"The ambient presence of journalism and true information in our feeds, the signals of reliability that were there, that's gone."
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CBC ☛ In the face of online misinformation, these teens are learning how to sort fact from fiction
He's also active on social media, like the vast majority of teens, but he's worried about the misinformation he sees on his feed.
"Anyone can make a post and spread it to millions of people," said the Mississauga, Ont., student. "I've seen a lot more fake news. That kind of sparked my interest for chasing the truth."
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Censorship/Free Speech
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The Gray Zone ☛ Facebook designates Grayzone journalist Kit Klarenberg a ‘dangerous individual’
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NPR ☛ Two nights before the attack, Salman Rushdie dreamed he was stabbed onstage
"Many of the doctors who I have been involved with in the last year and a half are not only surprised that I survived — which they are — but they're surprised that I have recovered to the degree that I have," he says. "Miracles are all around me, it seems." Related Story: Why Salman Rushdie's work sparked decades of controversy
In his new book, Knife, Rushdie writes about the attack, the damage to his body (including the loss of sight in one eye) and more existential questions about facing death and finding his identity in an altered body and state of mind. Rushdie says he was initially reluctant write about the Chautauqua incident, but he's glad he did.
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The Atlantic ☛ Salman Rushdie Strikes Back
Back in 1989, the fatwa hardly turned Rushdie into a hero. Plenty of Western politicians and writers, along with millions of Muslims around the world, put the blame on him for insensitivity if not apostasy. The knife attack was different—it drew nearly universal outrage and sympathy. Perhaps the horror of an attempted murder overcame any squeamishness about offending religious feelings. Perhaps the statute of limitations on blasphemy had run out, the fatwa too long ago to count. Perhaps there’s been too much violence since then in the name of a vengeful God and other ideologies. “This is bigger than just me,” Rushdie tells his wife in the trauma ward. “It’s about a larger subject.” The subject—the idea for which Rushdie nearly died—is the freedom to say what he wants. It’s under as much pressure today as ever—from fanatics of every type, governments, corporations, the right, the left, and the indifferent. Rushdie survived, but he has too many scars to be certain that the idea will. This book is his way of fighting back: “Language was my knife.”
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NPR ☛ ISIS destroyed his instruments. He made a new one from scraps and composed an album
Despite the risk of persecution, he recorded his music and uploaded it to the internet for the world to hear.
One day, ISIS stormed Mokdad's home and found his stash of instruments. They destroyed all of them but agreed to spare his life.
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The Telegraph UK ☛ Iran's fatwa on Salman Rushdie marked the end of tolerance
This reminds us that the idea we may have the freedom to criticise or even question a faith is not one that certain parts of the Islamic world will tolerate. Of course, this is not the way of all Muslims but to deny that this threat exists is insulting to those who have fought for freedom of expression.
In poll after poll, young people are much more concerned about hate speech and giving offence than older liberals. Maybe that is not surprising as they have grown up in the untrammelled world of online cacophony. Maybe their desire for safe spaces is understandable. Yet their pronouncements that no speech should be consequence-free soon becomes stifling. Can there be no challenge to ideas? How can lobby groups like Stonewall issue soft fatwas like “no debate”?
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YLE ☛ Lapland tourism workers mourn dead colleague — "I have never worked in such a bad company"
Giada has requested that only their first name be used in this article, as they do not want to get a reputation as a "problem worker" for speaking publicly about the company's failure to provide a safe working environment.
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NPR ☛ 5 takeaways from Salman Rushdie's new memoir 'Knife'
Matar is in custody at Chautauqua County Jail, being charged with second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault. The judge in his case actually postponed Matar's trial after Rushdie announced his memoir, in order to give Matar's lawyers an opportunity to see what's inside the book.
The book is out Tuesday. Here's what you can expect from it: [...]
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VOA News ☛ Report: Chinese authorities impose collective punishments on families of detained dissidents
In a new report, Chinese Human Rights Defenders said authorities have held the children of detained human rights defenders in custody and put them in psychiatric hospitals or orphanages, forced school-age children to drop out of school, imposed exit bans on children of human rights defenders and imprisoned some family members of rights activists.
The collective punishment carried out against families of Chinese human rights defenders “is completely illegal and violates all sorts of international human rights laws and conventions,” Renee Xia, director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said during an online press briefing on April 11.
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EFF ☛ Speaking Freely: Lynn Hamadallah
Lynn Hamadallah is a Syrian-Palestinian-French Psychologist based in London. An outspoken voice for the Palestinian cause, Lynn is interested in the ways in which narratives, spoken and unspoken, shape identity. Having lived in five countries and spent a lot of time traveling, she takes a global perspective on freedom of expression. Her current research project investigates how second-generation British-Arabs negotiate their cultural identity. Lynn works in a community mental health service supporting some of London's most disadvantaged residents, many of whom are migrants who have suffered extensive psychological trauma.
York: What does free speech or free expression mean to you?
Being Arab and coming from a place where there is much more speech policing in the traditional sense, I suppose there is a bit of an idealization of Western values of free speech and democracy. There is this sense of freedom we grow up associating with the West. Yet recently, we’ve come to realize that the way it works in practice is quite different to the way it is described, and this has led to a lot of disappointment and disillusionment in the West and its ideals amongst Arabs. There’s been a lot of censorship for example on social media, which I’ve experienced myself when posting content in support of Palestine. At a national level, we have witnessed the dehumanization going on around protesters in the UK, which undermines the idea of free speech. For example, the pro-Palestine protests where we saw the then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman referring to protesters as “hate marchers.” So we’ve come to realize there’s this kind of veneer of free speech in the West which does not really match up to the more idealistic view of freedom we were taught about.
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Techdirt ☛ Blame Silly Politicians For Google Starting To Block News Sites In California
That thing is happening again, where politicians are pushing a bad law that will benefit Rupert Murdoch, while harming the public. Rather than blaming Murdoch or the politicians pushing the law, they’re blaming “big tech” for actually responding to the law accordingly. Because that’s easier. But it’s wrong.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Los Angeles Times ☛ NPR suspends journalist who publicly accused network of liberal bias
The suspension came after Berliner put a harsh spotlight on NPR with an April 9 opinion piece for the Substack newsletter the Free Press. He said the decline in NPR’s audience levels is due to a move toward liberal political advocacy and catering to “a distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.” The overall thrust of the piece asserted that NPR has “lost America’s trust.”
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Craig Murray ☛ The Farce of Diplomatic Assurances - Craig Murray
Let me dispense with the assurance against the death penalty. I am sure it will be accepted by the court. The USA does not need to execute Julian, it can incarcerate him in a tiny concrete tomb for life, under extreme sensory deprivation, as a terrible half living warning to any journalist who might reveal their crimes.
Should that ever become inconvenient, he can be Epsteined or Seth Riched at any moment. Remember this is a government that plotted to kidnap and/or assassinate him, as pled and not denied in court.
The assurance required on First Amendment protection is being misunderstood by almost everybody reporting it, and the US Diplomatic Note seeks to take advantage of the confusion.
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Los Angeles Times ☛ L.A.'s ultimate heartbreak industry isn’t Hollywood. It's local news
Every generation in L.A. seems to suffer a journalism mass extinction event. In addition to what’s happening right now and what happened in 2017, there was the shuttering of two alt-weeklies, Los Angeles CityBeat and the Long Beach-based The District Weekly, at the turn of the aughts. I remember the demise of La Banda Elastica and Al Borde, two Spanish-language publications that focused on rock en español through the late 1990s and 2000s. Older folks will remember the end of the L.A. Herald Examiner in 1989, whose grandiose downtown headquarters are now used as a satellite campus by Arizona State University.
L.A.’s heartbreak industry isn’t Hollywood; it’s journalism. To paraphrase what the late A. Bartlett Giamatti said about baseball, it’s designed to break the hearts of those who work it.
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JURIST ☛ Committee to Protect Journalists calls for investigation into alleged targeting of Ukraine journalist
While Ukraine has made progress in promoting press freedom and media pluralism, the country still faces significant challenges in this area. According to Reporters Without Borders’ 2023 World Press Freedom Index, Ukraine ranks 79th out of 180 nations. Ukrainian journalists continue to be targeted for attacks and abuse by Russia, in addition to facing cases of harassment from authorities within their own government. International organizations such as the International Press Institute have documented a concerning trend of state-backed intimidation and harassment against investigative journalists in Ukraine. A notable example is the case of Bihus.Info, who uncovered that the SBU had covertly recorded some of their employees consuming drugs during a New Year’s celebration, subsequently leaking the footage to discredit the organization. In response to this revelation, the security service dismissed the implicated employees and pledged to uphold press freedom, though doubts remain about their genuine commitment to this fundamental principle.
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CS Monitor ☛ Should you trust the Monitor? We asked one media watchdog to audit us.
We know identifying responsible, credible journalism in a sea of agenda-driven messages and misinformation can be exhausting and overwhelming. As people who study trust in news and train journalists to demonstrate credibility, we believe all people should have access to factual, evenhanded news that reflects their priorities and values.
That’s why we were thrilled when Editor Mark Sappenfield invited our team at Trusting News to do an audit of the newsroom’s trust and transparency efforts as part of the staff’s Rebuilding Trust series. We have held The Christian Science Monitor up as an example for the news industry to follow, and we were eager to take a deeper dive into the newsroom’s practices.
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Democracy Now ☛ “Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism”: Yanis Varoufakis on New Book & Why Assange Should Be Freed
Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, one of the most vocal supporters of Julian Assange, says the United States must drop its espionage case against the jailed WikiLeaks founder. He faults the Australian government for pushing for a plea deal that would allow Assange to walk free from Belmarsh Prison in London in exchange for an admission of guilt. “Julian is never going to plead guilty as if journalism is a crime,” says Varoufakis. He also discusses his new book Technofeudalism, which argues that platforms like Amazon have destroyed the idea of buyers and sellers operating in an open market. “Capitalism was killed by capital,” he says.
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The Dissenter ☛ US Government Rejects Australia’s Call To End Assange Case, Submits 'Assurances' For Extradition
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Democracy Now ☛ Yanis Varoufakis Banned from Germany as Berlin Police Raid & Shut Down Palestinian Conference
As Germany intensifies its crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices, we speak with Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis, one of the planned speakers at a conference in Berlin last weekend that was forcibly shut down by police. The Palestine Congress was scheduled to be held for three days, but police stormed the venue as the first panelist spoke. Germany’s Interior Ministry had also banned some conference speakers from even entering the country, including Varoufakis, the Palestinian British surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah and the Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta. “This is not about protecting Jewish lives and Jews from antisemitism. It’s all about protecting the right of Israel to commit any war crime of its choice,” says Varoufakis.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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MIT Technology Review ☛ AI was supposed to make police bodycams better. What happened?
But this time, Nicholson Goetz and her team were using JusticeText, an AI-powered evidence management program that two former University of Chicago computer science students named Devshi Mehrotra and Leslie Jones-Dove developed when they were outraged at the police killing of Laquan McDonald in their city in 2014. JusticeText analyzes the audio from bodycam footage, transcribes it, and marks it up in minutes, not hours. Released in 2021, it now aids private criminal attorneys as well as public defenders in states such as Texas, Massachusetts, and Kentucky.
Although it did not reveal anything that would have directly proved her client’s innocence, JusticeText did bring to light possible evidence of police malfeasance—specifically, destruction of “apparently and potentially exculpatory evidence,” according to the motion.
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Craig Murray ☛ I Stand in Blackburn
I shall be standing for election to Parliament as the member for Blackburn. This unexpected turn of events requires an honest declaration.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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Techdirt ☛ Bell Canada, After Nixxing Most Hardware DVR, Changes Cloud PVR Recording Retention
We’ve written about Bell Canada plenty over the years and not typically for good reasons. This is a company that wanted to ban VPNs to combat people getting around geo-blocked content, has a habit of acting petulant when it comes to regulators, and has engaged in other consumer-unfriendly practices. So, not the best reputation when it comes to treating its own customers, and the larger public, particularly well. You can think of them as something like a Canadian version of Comcast in the States.
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EFF ☛ Tell the FCC It Must Clarify Its Rules to Prevent Loopholes That Will Swallow Net Neutrality Whole
Net neutrality is the principle that all ISPs should treat all traffic coming over their networks without discrimination. The effect of this principle is that customers decide for themselves how they’d like to experience the internet. Violations of this principle include, but are not limited to, attempts to block, speed up, or slow down certain content as means of controlling traffic.
Net neutrality is critical to ensuring that the internet remains a vibrant place to learn, organize, speak, and innovate, and the FCC recognizes this. The draft mostly reinstates the bright-line rules of the landmark 2015 net neutrality protections to ban blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.It falls short, though, in a critical way: the FCC seems to think that it’s not okay to favor certain sites or services by slowing down other traffic, but it might be okay to favor them by giving them access to so-called fast lanes such as 5G network slices. First of all, in a world with a certain amount of finite bandwidth, favoring some traffic necessarily impairs other traffic. Secondly, the harms to speech and competition would be the same even if an ISP could conjure more bandwidth from thin air to speed up traffic from its business partners. Whether your access to Spotify is faster than your access to Bandcamp because Spotify is sped up or because Bandcamp is slowed down doesn’t matter because the end result is the same: Spotify is faster than Bandcamp and so you are incentivized to use Spotify over Bandcamp.The loophole is especially bizarre because the 2015 FCC already got this right, and there has been bipartisan support for net neutrality proposals that explicitly encompass both favoring and disfavoring certain traffic. It’s a distinction that doesn’t make logical sense, doesn’t seem to have partisan significance, and could potentially undermine the rules in the event of a court challenge by drawing a nonsensical distinction between what’s forbidden under the bright-line rules versus what goes through the multi-factor test for other potentially discriminatory conduct by ISPs.The FCC needs to close this loophole for unpaid prioritization of certain applications or classes of traffic. Customers should be in charge of what they do online, rather than ISPs deciding that, say, it’s more important to consume streaming entertainment products than to participate in video calls or that one political party’s websites should be served faster than another’s.
When the FCC under the previous administration abandoned net neutrality protections in 2017 with the so-called “Restoring Internet Freedom” order, many states—chief among them California—stepped in to pass state net neutrality laws. Laws more protective than federal net neutrality protections—like California's should be explicitly protected by the new rule.
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Techdirt ☛ Telecoms To Get $45 Billion In Taxpayer Broadband Subsidies, But Are Whining Because They Might Have To Deliver Affordable Broadband To A Few Poor People
The 2021 infrastructure bill is throwing more than $42 billion at America’s mediocre broadband networks. And while a lot of that money will be put to good use shoring up fiber, a lot of it is being dumped in the laps of regional monopolies with a long, long history of taking subsidies in exchange for broadband networks they repeatedly, mysteriously, leave half completed.
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Techdirt ☛ Techdirt Podcast Episode 387: Abolishing Section 230 Would Abolish Wikipedia
Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee had a hearing all about Section 230, in which they didn’t even attempt to find a witness pointing out its benefits. Among the many organizations that could have provided that vital perspective is the Wikimedia Foundation (as seen in three excellent posts on Medium), and this week we’re joined by Rebecca MacKinnon, Wikimedia’s VP of Global Advocacy and long-time open internet defender, to talk about why the hearing was bad and Section 230 is very, very important.
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Patents
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Software Patents
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Techdirt ☛ Roku Eyes Patent That Would Inject Ads Into… Everything
When last we checked in with our friends at Roku, they had made the unpopular decision to effectively “brick” user streaming hardware and television sets if users didn’t agree to a typically draconian end user agreement that effectively bans your legal right to sue the company.
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Copyrights
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NYPost ☛ 'Poohniverse' horror movie slated for 2025 Disney characters enter public domain
Over the decades, Disney has made several legal maneuvers to try and extend the copyright.
In 1998, it lobbied for the Copyright Extension Act, which added 20 years, adding up to 95 years.
That act would eventually be dubbed the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” as it showed Disney’s congressional influence.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Manga Publishers Grill YouTube & TikTok on Piracy and Content ID Restrictions
During a recent copyright meeting at Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, representatives from Google (YouTube) and ByteDance (TikTok) were asked to give presentations on the topic of appropriate compensation. Soon, however, questions turned to Content ID, with a representative for manga publishers noting that, while record labels receive billions of dollars, the manga industry receives nothing.
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Torrent Freak ☛ Key Defendant in Anna's Archive Lawsuit Denies Any Involvement With the Site
American nonprofit OCLC sued Anna's Archive in February for allegedly hacking its WorldCat database and posting the records online. The only named defendant, a software developer from Washington, denies any involvement with the hack and the pirate library, suggesting that the plaintiffs targeted the wrong person. With a motion to dismiss, the defendant hopes to end the case here and now.
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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.