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● Links 24/03/2023: Social Control Media Bans Advancing

Posted in News Roundup at 9:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ Switching To Linux Mint: The Benefits and Drawbacks

• Deciding to spend hundreds of dollars on new hardware – be it a laptop or a desktop component – is always a tough call. You might spend hours considering your options and working out the budget.

• But it’s also natural to think about all the money you spent buying, upgrading, and maintaining your current setup. Your desktop or laptop might not be broken. Rather, it might not be performing as well as you think it should.

• Installing a Linux distro like Mint is an excellent way to give older hardware new life. It’s common for Windows and macOS power users to switch to Linux to get a few more years of reliable use out of their machine.

=> ↺ XE Gen 2 Linux Laptop announced by Kubuntu Focus

• Kubuntu Focus have announced their next laptop with the XE Gen 2, here’s the details on what’s new and improved. The 14 inch laptop sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

=> ↺ Framework reveal new laptop with modular graphics, plus an AMD Ryzen model

• Framework Computer Inc have done it again! They’ve announced multiple big exciting things for their modular laptops today. Here’s what’s coming.

Server

=> ↺ The Indico software operator is now available to optimise event management

• Communities naturally need to meet, come together, have conversations, or exchange news. Communities like to see the people behind the work, hear about experiences first hand and meet new contacts. As the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic,  we are seeing a rising number of in-person events coming back.

• However, those who have organised events know it is a lot of work. And if the number of attendees grows beyond a dozen, it is challenging to manage registrations, speakers, the agenda, and web site content just with spreadsheets. Luckily, there are tools that make this easier. 

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ NVIDIA 530.41.03 driver out now for Linux

• NVIDIA has today released their latest stable driver 530.41.03 update for Linux users, following on from the 530.30.02 Beta last month.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Fixing ‘Umount Target is Busy’ Error in Linux

• Unmounting disks in the Linux command line is not complicated. All you have to do is to use the umount command…

=> ↺ SSD block discard in practice on Linux systems

• I’ll put the summary up front. If you have SSD based systems installed with a reasonably modern Linux, it’s pretty likely that they are quietly automatically discarding blocks from your SSDs on a regular basis. This is probably true even if you use software RAID mirrors (despite the potential problem RAID has with discarding blocks).

=> ↺ How to Install the Latest VirtualBox 7.0 on Ubuntu 22.04

• It is very simple to install the latest release of Oracle VirtualBox on your Ubuntu Jammy Jellyfish (22.04) by following the instructions below..

Games

=> ↺ Proton Experimental fixes up Call of Duty: Black Ops III videos

• Another fresh small update to Proton Experimental has landed on March 22nd, here’s what’s new and changed for Steam Deck and Linux desktop.

=> ↺ Atari are acquiring Night Dive Studios

• Well that is certainly unexpected news. Atari has entered into an agreement to buy up Night Dive Studios. Night Dive Studios are responsible for the upcoming System Shock remake, Forsaken Remastered, Turok and Turok 2 remasters, Blood Fresh Supply, Quake remaster and many more.

=> ↺ Squad-based tactical RPG Zoria: Age of Shattering releasing April 27th

• Squad-based tactical RPG Zoria: Age of Shattering from Tiny Trinket Games is set to hit Early Access on April 27th and they have a new trailer.

=> ↺ Xwayland Video Bridge created to improve Linux screen sharing

• With the move between X11 and Wayland still ongoing, and likely won’t finish for years, problems keep coming up like screen sharing but XwaylandVideoBridge may help solve this.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ The next generation of connected IoT

• Smaller, more efficient processors and wireless components will allow connected devices to further penetrate key markets, such as consumer appliances, cars and transportation, manufacturing and industry, and human health. Improved networks lead to more reliable connectivity, opening opportunities for previously infeasible applications.

• As interconnected devices demonstrate their value, demand booms. Rob Conant, vice president of software ecosystems at Infineon, which provides semiconductor and software solutions for IoT companies, describes the spread of IoT applications across industry after industry, from fleet tracking in the 1980s, to industrial manufacturing and the smart grid in the 1990s and 2000s. He sees the spread continuing across diverse businesses: [...]

=> ↺ Plasma Stick 2040 W adds RGB LED strip controller to Raspberry Pi Pico W board

• Pimoroni Plasma Stick 2040 W is a “Pico W Aboard” kit that adds a 5V RGB LED strip controller to the Raspberry Pi Pico W board, as well as a Reset button, and a Qwiic/STEMMA QT connector for expansion.

• Since it’s based on the Raspberry Pi Pico board it’s programmable with the official C/C++ and MicroPython SDKs, and Pimoroni also maintains a GitHub repository for their RP2040 boards with libraries and samples, and the schematic is also available as a PDF file.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ PayPal gets Passkeys on Android – Geeky Gadgets

=> ↺ PayPal’s passwordless future is here on Android

=> ↺ Could Pebble Make a Comeback as a Small Android Phone?

=> ↺ Could we See More Xbox Content on Android Soon? – Phandroid

=> ↺ Android 14 may make live wallpapers exciting again

=> ↺ How to get Android 14′s new notification powers now | Computerworld

=> ↺ Android phones might not blind you in dark rooms anymore soon

=> ↺ Android or iPhone: Why Android Is Better Than iPhone? GizCchina

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Open source tools for mind mapping

• In today’s world and social media, many people don’t have the patience to read lengthy textual content. Visuals are a great way to capture your audience’s attention span.

• Did you know that research at 3M Corporation concluded that visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text? Visuals are more impactful than words and enhance creative thinking and memory.

=> ↺ Open source maps and open data help humanitarian response

• Every day people use “open” to have an impact in their world. The Türkiye and Syria Earthquake Response includes over 9,000 people editing OpenStreetMap (OSM), partners providing open licensed satellite imagery, people generating and using open data, all collaborating across open source tools, like the Tasking Manager. Having the most up-to-date and accurate map data helps humanitarian organizations and civil societies navigate the disaster areas, coordinate response, and conduct damage assessments. The OSM data is shared on the Humanitarian Data Exchange and is used to develop information management (IM) products for decision-makers. Some of the examples of information products are shared on these two open source built platforms: The Deep and the IFRC GO platform. Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and the global OSM community are integral by connecting local communities and humanitarian organizations to urgent information.

• A message sent by Dr Çevik, a Turkish surgeon treating people injured by the earthquake in Turkey, said (translated):

• OpenStreetMap and Organic Maps, a free privacy-focused fork of Maps.Me, were used in conjunction for localized response.

• Dr. Uçum from Kahramanmaraş talking about how maps from OSM data have helped logistics and operations in the camps. The maps were subsequently used by local authorities to support planning and infrastructure in the camp site. 

=> ↺ Cloudstream Takes Site and Code Offline in Response to Hollywood Complaint

• The operator of popular pirate streaming app Cloudstream has voluntarily taken down its code and disabled its website. The developer took action after the Motion Picture Association targeted the open-source Android app in a complaint filed at GitHub. The MPA hasn’t contacted the developer directly but the Hollywood group considers Cloudstream a prime enforcement target.

=> ↺ ChatGPT, how did you get here? It was a long journey through open source AI

Web Browsers/Web Servers

=> ↺ Health Benefits of Browser Diversity

• There are increasingly loud rumblings that Apple will be allowing other browser engines to be used on iOS, and all I can say is it’s about time.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Linearity and Control

• A week ago Niko published a post on linear types, introducing the idea of “must move” types, which he suggested could be implemented through some form of ?Drop bound. It’s far from the first time linear types have come up. Five years ago Gankra also published a post on linear types, explaining what they are and why they’re hard to get right.

• In this post I want to build on these two posts; expanding on what linear types are, why they’re useful, how they would interact with Rust, and share a novel effect-based design — which unlike many previous attempts would preserve our ability to implement and use destructors.

=> ↺ Planning Go 1.21 Cryptography Work

• This is the planning overview for the Go 1.21 release. There is some exciting API work going on, as well as some satisfying follow-ups on stuff that landed in Go 1.20.

• Now is a very good time to provide feedback (and you can do that by just replying to this if you’re reading it in your inbox)! You can also take a look at my public GitHub Projects planning board.

=> ↺ Fascination of AWK

• AWK is a delightful mini-language almost unchanged for decades.

• A bare minimum of features includes strings, numbers, functions, associative arrays, line-by-line I/O and shell invocation. Perhaps, if it had fewer features, it would be impossible to program in it at all.

• There is an opinion that AWK is not suitable for writing serious programs. Even Brian Kernighan (the K in AWK) is convinced that his language is only good for small one-liners. However, this does not prevent enthusiasts from creating rather voluminous programs in AWK: [...]

Python

=> ↺ Speeding up text processing in Python (is hard)

• If you’re doing text or string manipulation in Python, what do you do if your code is too slow? Assuming your algorithm is reasonably efficient, the next step is to try faster alternatives to Python: a compiled extension.

• Unfortunately, this is harder than it seems. Some options don’t offer an easy path to optimizations, others are actually slower. To see this limitation in action, we’ll consider some alternatives: [...]

Leftovers

=> ↺ Willis Reed Was the Best of New York City

• Hall of Fame New York Knicks center Willis Reed died earlier this week at the age of 80. With him, we lost a piece of the city where he became a legend.

=> ↺ Ondol: Korean Underfloor Heating

• One of the many aspects of the modern world we often take for granted is the very technology that keeps our accommodation at a habitable temperature. Examples of this include centralized heating systems using hot-water circulation, or blown air ducted to multiple rooms from a central furnace. Certainly in Europe, once the Romans shipped out, and before the industrial revolution, we were pretty cold unless someone lit a fire in the room. Every room. But not in Korea. The Ondol heating principles have been used constantly from about 5000 BC to only a few decades ago, keeping your average Korean countryman nice and toasty.

Science

=> ↺ Gladys West and the Global Positioning System

• This is where Gladys West came into the picture. From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, West programmed an IBM 7030 Stretch computer to deliver increasingly precise calculations to model the shape of the Earth; “an ellipsoid with additional undulations, known as the geoid.” These models accounted for the Earth’s shape being distorted by gravitational, tidal, and other forces. Without these calculations, GPS technology would not be able to provide accurate location information, making it much less useful for navigation and other applications.

• Throughout her career, West was incredibly dedicated to her work. She was tasked with incredibly important and challenging projects, and she is said to have worked long hours optimizing processing algorithms, and cut her team’s processing time down by half. She quite literally wrote the guide for the future of radar altimeter satellites by stressing the importance of increasing satellite geodesy’s precision with improved technology (check it out to learn more about GEOSAT).

=> ↺ Grow Your Own Brain Electrodes

• Bioelectronics has been making great strides in recent years, but interfacing rigid electrical components with biological systems that are anything but can prove tricky. Researchers at the Laboratory for Organic Electronics (LOE) have found a way to bridge the gap with conductive gels. (via Linköping University)

Education

=> ↺ Middle School Sued After Getting Stupid About ‘Justice For Lil Pickle’ T-Shirts Worn By Students

• A middle school in California has screwed up. And now it’s getting taken to court. Hillel Aron gives us the background over at Courthouse News Service:

Hardware

=> ↺ CNC Intaglio-Esque Engraving

• Intaglio is an ancient carving technique for adding details to a workpiece, by manually removing material from a surface with only basic hand tools. If enough material depth is removed, the resulting piece can be used as a stamp, as was the case with rings, used to stamp the wax seals of verified letters. [Nicolas Tranchant] works in the jewelry industry, and wondered if they could press a CNC engraving machine into service to engrave gemstones in a more time-efficient manner than the manual carving methods of old.

=> ↺ Enormous Metal Sculpture Becomes An Antenna

• Those who have worked with high voltage know well enough that anything can be a conductor at high enough voltages. Similarly, amateur radio operators will jump at any chance to turn a random object into an antenna. Flag poles, gutters, and even streams of water can be turned into radiating elements for a transmitter, but the members of this amateur radio club were thinking a little bit bigger when they hooked up their transmitter to this giant sculpture.

=> ↺ PCIe For Hackers: Link Anatomy

• Last time, we looked over diffpairs, their basics, routing rules and the notorious tolerances of PCIe when it comes to diffpairs. Now, let’s take a look at the exact signals that make PCIe tick, as well as give you an overview of which sockets you can get PCIe on.

=> ↺ A Little Chess With Your Timepiece

• Some things remain classics, even after centuries, and chess and watches have certainly stood the test of time. [W&M Levsha] decided to combine them both in this “Chess Club” watch containing a miniature chess game frozen in time.

=> ↺ Now your LLaMa is playing with POWER

• Now that the invasion of the large language models has occurred and we will all bow to our GPT overlords, I just generated a pull request to add additional POWER9-specific optimizations to llama.cpp, what all the cool kids are using for LLMs who aren’t down with OpenAI. This repo moves quick but it’s where the magic is happening if this is what you’re into. It will work with both Alpaca and LLaMa models.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ The Radioactive Legacy of Depleted Uranium Ammunition Comes to Ukraine

• Battlefields all over the world are rife with toxins, even near civilian locations. In Iraq, birth defects spike near U.S. military bases. There’s a lot of lead on the ground and the U.S. burned all its garbage in open air pits. People, both civilian and military personnel, who have lived and worked in these areas often have health problems.

• According to Weir, DU gets a lot of attention because people have a strong negative reaction to the idea of firing radioactive munitions. “Historically it has received more attention than other toxics because most people’s reaction to the idea that we fire uranium darts around—without any obligations to clear them up—is WTF? And because of that intrinsic and common sense WTF, militaries who use it have to work hard on the PR—‘DU is weakly radioactive,’ ‘there’s no evidence of civilian harm,’ etc.”

=> ↺ Utah governor signs bill to make it difficult for teenagers to get on social media

• The regulations will mean that if minors do get consent, social media companies will be banned from running ads on their accounts. These services will also be off-limits to youngsters between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. It will also mean that parents will have access to their children’s accounts – everything they post and message and respond to.

• Utah is the first state to take such action, although other U.S. states have mulled similar laws that will make social media less accessible for minors. Michael K. McKell, a Republican senator in Utah, in a press release said the state is worried about teens’ mental health. He cited statistics on depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation among the young, saying these things have “drastically increased.”

=> ↺ Cancer Patients Challenge Biden Admin’s Refusal to Lower Price of Lifesaving Drug

• Two days after President Joe Biden’s administration rejected a petition asking federal regulators to use their authority to lower the astronomical price of a lifesaving prostate cancer drug developed entirely with public funds, petitioners on Thursday filed an administrative appeal.

=> ↺ Calls to ‘Fight Back’ Grow as Medicaid Cliff and GOP Attacks Threaten Coverage for Millions

• The rapidly approaching end of pandemic-related Medicaid coverage protections and growing GOP attacks on the program at the state and federal levels have left millions of vulnerable people worried about being thrown off their insurance—and potentially losing access to lifesaving care.

=> ↺ Medicare Advantage Industry ‘Scare Tactics’ and Lobbying Intensify Over Efforts to Curb Fraud

• In the wake of numerous studies and investigations detailing the staggering level of fraud in the privately run Medicare Advantage program, the Biden administration proposed a new rule aimed at cracking down on upcoding—a common industry practice whereby plans describe patients as sicker than they actually are to reap larger payments from the federal government.

=> ↺ Promises, promises: how Labor and the Coalition stack up on election health pledges

• Stretched to breaking point by Covid, NSW’s public healthcare system is struggling to return to acceptable levels of staffing and efficiency. Labor is promising to remove the Coalition’s public services wages cap, while the Coalition promises to pour billions into attracting new healthcare workers. In the latest in his series on NSW election platforms. Callum Foote reports on health as voters go to the polls.

• NSW’s public health system is experiencing a healthcare worker exodus, with 12.6% of public nursing staff leaving in 2021-22 compared to 7% annually over the previous three years.

=> ↺ Tlaib Revives Bill to Remove Medically Necessary Debt From Credit Reports

• Asserting that “undergoing a medically necessary procedure should never haunt someone financially,” Democratic Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on Wednesday reintroduced legislation to ban the collection of medical debt for two years and prohibit such indebtedness from appearing on patients’ credit reports.

=> ↺ Nigerian politician found guilty in organ harvesting plot

• A jury in London on Thursday delivered guilty verdicts against Nigerian senator Ike Ekweremadu, his wife, and a doctor for conspiring to exploit a young man from Lagos for his kidney.

• The verdict is the first under the UK’s modern slavery laws to convict suspects of an organ-harvesting plot.

Proprietary

=> ↺ Accenture to lay off 19,000 people, 40% of its 7.38 lakh employees are in India

• Close to 40% of the company’s 7.38 lakh employees are in India. It is not clear yet how the current round of lay-offs will impact jobs in India.

=> ↺ Clippy gets smarter with Raspberry Pi and ChatGPT

• Maker and companion robot enthusiast David Packman was the special guest star this past Pi Day on the Let’s Get Personal: Computing show, hosted by our friend Jim Bennett. David introduced the world to a ChatGPT-powered Clippy he has made with Raspberry Pi. We’re delighted to meet it.

=> ↺ Dependence on Chinese-made tech threatens grid, experts warn

• The largely unknown amount of Chinese-made equipment within the North American grid is a threat to national security, experts warned during a Thursday congressional hearing that explored cybersecurity vulnerabilities within the electric sector.

• Witnesses from the Department of Energy and private sector testifying during the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee echoed a sentiment increasingly heard in Washington that a longstanding dependence on Chinese technologies and cheap components is now an alarming national security issues for U.S. critical infrastructure.

=> ↺ Microsoft admits Azure Resource Manager failed after code change

• “Between 02.41 UTC and 07.10 UTC on 23 Mar (sic) 2023 you may have experienced issues using Azure Resource Manager in West Europe when performing resource management operations. This would have impacted users of Azure Portal, Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell, as well as Azure services which depend upon ARM for their internal resource management operations.”

=> ↺ Bug Makes Windows 11 Snipping Tool Images Recoverable After Editing

• However, because the vulnerability existed for five years before it was discovered, cropped/edited images shared within the last five years are potentially at risk, depending on the platform they were shared to.

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ ChatGPT bug leaked users’ conversation histories

• A ChatGPT glitch allowed some users to see the titles of other users’ conversations, the artificial intelligence chatbot’s boss has said.

=> ↺ Why a broad US TikTok ban is unlikely to take effect soon

• It is unclear how the Biden administration might implement such a ban, if it chose to move forward with a plan, but if history is any guide, a prohibition is unlikely to take effect any time soon. Here is why: [...]

=> ↺ The US Government Has Not Justified A TikTok Ban

• Freedom of speech and association include the right to choose one’s communication technologies. Politicians shouldn’t be able to tell you what to say, where to say it, or who to say it to.

=> ↺ France turns towards AI-powered surveillance to secure Olympics

• If formally adopted, France would become the first country in the European Union to legalise AI-powered surveillance. That would be setting a worrying surveillance precedent, a group of several dozen European lawmakers said last week.

=> ↺ Amazon Sued for Not Disclosing Collection of Customers’ Biometric Data

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ Orbán’s political director lists reasons for Hungary’s blocking of Sweden’s NATO accession

=> ↺ A Police Killing Inside a Hospital: Ben Crump on Death of Irvo Otieno During Mental Health Crisis

=> ↺ Attack with stones in the West Bank city of Nablus: A German tendency to drama

• The alleged German „tourist“ Gerald Hetzel is travelling with right-wing extremists in Israel

=> ↺ Artyom Uss, due for extradition to U.S., flees from under house arrest near Milan — Meduza

• Artyom Uss, son of the current governor of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region, has fled from under house arrest, two days after the Italian court had approved his extradition to the United States. The extradition was pending approval from the Italian Ministry of Justice.

=> ↺ Swedish PM demands explanation from Orbán about delay on Hungary’s vote on Sweden’s NATO membership

=> ↺ ‘Putin wouldn’t be arrested in Hungary’ – Gulyás

=> ↺ Iceland recognizes Holodomor as genocide of Ukrainian people — Meduza

• Althingi, the supreme national parliament of Iceland, has recognized Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.

=> ↺ ‘Mexico Is Not a US Colony!’: AMLO Condemns Invasion Threats, Celebrates Nationalization of Oil and Lithium

• Mexico’s leftist President AMLO condemned “hypocritical” Republicans who want the US military to invade, declaring “Mexico is an independent and free country, not a US colony or protectorate!” In a massive rally, López Obrador also celebrated the expropriation of oil and lithium, condemning exploitative foreign corporations.

=> ↺ “Disaster”: Iraqi Journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on U.S. Invasion, Sanctions, Occupation & What’s Next

• As we continue to mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we are joined by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, an award-winning Baghdad-born Iraqi journalist and author. Abdul-Ahad has received the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, the British Press Awards’ Foreign Reporter of the Year and the Orwell Prize. His new book is A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War. “I want the history to be told properly,” says Abdul-Ahad about his hopes for the future of Iraqi society after decades of dictatorship, sanctions, war, occupation and corruption.

=> ↺ Blowing Out the Candles in Iraq

• I read the news—invasion of Iraq! twentieth anniversary!—and struggle to transcend the abstraction of my remorse. A million killed? Half a million? The mortality stats vary depending on the source’s politics.

=> ↺ Russian War Crimes in Ukraine 20 Years After US Criminal Invasion of Iraq

• This week marked the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. The war left at least 800,000 to 1.1 million Iraqis dead, and certainly many more injured, maimed, and permanently displaced.

=> ↺ Biden, Congress, and Nuclear Disarmament Leadership

• President Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that Russia was suspending its participation in the New START Treaty—the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia—is the latest, stark reminder of the nuclear brink on which the world finds itself. This is on the heels of repeated reckless threats from Putin and other Russian officials to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine and at a time of rapidly deteriorating relations with China.

=> ↺ A Police Killing Inside a Hospital: Ben Crump on Death of Irvo Otieno During Mental Health Crisis

• As new footage is released about the shocking killing of Irvo Otieno inside a hospital in Virginia, we speak with civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents Otieno’s family. Surveillance video shows seven sheriff’s deputies and three hospital workers violently pinned Otieno to the floor and piled on him for more than 11 minutes, suffocating him. New video released Wednesday reveals at least one officer had also repeatedly punched Otieno earlier that day. A grand jury has indicted the 10 men involved on second-degree murder charges. Otieno was having a mental health crisis, which Crump says is too often a death sentence for Black people in police encounters. “What happened to Irvo isn’t an isolated incident in America,” says Crump.

=> ↺ Wave of Stealthy China Cyberattacks Hits U.S., Private Networks, Google Says

• The researchers said [crackers] are compromising devices on the edge of the network and targeting software from VMware Inc. or Citrix Systems Inc., among others, which often run on computers without antivirus or endpoint detection software.

=> ↺ Needs no sermon on human rights from Pakistan where terrorism thrive in its streets: India

• India has slammed Pakistan at the United Nations Human Rights Council during its right of reply where it warned Islamabad against spreading propaganda and attempts to foment communal disharmony in India.

• The statement comes after Pakistan during the General Debate under Agenda item 4 at the UNHRC spoke about Jammu and Kashmir.

• India called on Pakistan to focus on the safety, security and well-being of its minority communities instead of engaging in “futile propaganda” to create communal disharmony in India, PR Thulasidass, Under Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, Permanent Mission of India at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

=> ↺ Slovakia hands 4 MiG fighter aircraft to Ukraine, with 9 more on their way — Meduza

• Slovak Republic has handed over the first four MiG-29 fighter jets out of 13 decommissioned aircraft it had promised to Ukraine.

=> ↺ Charity facilitates the return of 17 Ukrainian children deported by Russia — Meduza

• On Thursday, the Save Ukraine charity facilitated the return of 17 Ukrainian children taken from the Kherson and Kharkiv regions and relocated to Russian and occupied territories.

=> ↺ Russia’s Justice Ministry names blogger Ilya Varlamov and lawyer Pavel Chikov ‘foreign agents’ — Meduza

• The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation has labeled Ilya Varlamov, a blogger, and Pavel Chikov, head of the international human rights group, Agora, “foreign agents.”

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ ‘It’s Not Something We Can Leave in the Past.’ George Packer on the Iraq War’s Long Legacy

• Packer is the author of nine other books, including The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, which won the 2013 National Book Award for nonfiction; Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, which won the 2019 Hitchens Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and, most recently, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. He writes regularly about U.S. foreign policy for The Atlantic, including a devastating, impeccably reported account last year of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Biden administration’s failure to plan for the evacuation of thousands of Afghan allies, titled “The Betrayal.”

• He spoke to Democracy in Exile days after the 20th annivesary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. As he says, “the Iraq War continues to haunt us and to offer lessons for the future.”

• The following transcript has been edited lightly for clarity and length.

=> ↺ The New York Times Still Can’t Face Its Iraq War Shame

• Rubin offered only glimpses of responsibility. Of the George W. Bush administration’s claims of weapons of mass destruction, she simply wrote, “no evidence to back up those accusations was ever found.” Of the power vacuum that Iran stepped into, Rubin wrote, “Abetting and expanding Iran’s influence in Iraq was hardly the intention of American policymakers in 2003.” The power-sharing government system the US installed “is regarded by many as having undermined from the start any hope of good governance,” she explained. “But Mr. Crocker and others said that at the time it seemed the only way to ensure that all sects and ethnicities would have a role in governing.”

Environment

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Big Oil Firms Touted Algae as Climate Solution. Now All Have Pulled Funding

• By Amy Westervelt, The Guardian. This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

• One by one, big oil firms have touted their investments in algae biofuels as the future of low-carbon transportation – and one by one, they have all dropped out. Now in the wake of the last remaining algae proponent, ExxonMobil, announcing its withdrawal, insiders say they are disappointed but not surprised.

=> ↺ Linus Tech Tips YouTube Channel Hacked to Promote [Cryptocurrency] Scams

• Major PC tech YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has been hacked and is unavailable at the time of publishing. From the events that have unfolded, it looks like [crackers] gained access to the YouTube creator dashboard for various LTT channels. After publishing some scam videos and streams, control of the account was regained by the rightful owners, only to fall again to the hackers. Now the channels are all throwing up 404 pages.

=> ↺ US SEC threatens to sue Coinbase over some [cryptocurrency] products

• The SEC has been ratcheting up efforts to crack down on the [cryptocurrency] industry since the implosion of FTX last year, and staking services such as Coinbase’s Earn are under increased scrutiny for not being registered.

• Staking is a process in which cryptocurrency holders volunteer to take part in validating transactions on the blockchain. These products often offer customers eye-popping yields.

=> ↺ Climate Advocates Call Out House GOP Push to Fast-Track Mountain Valley Pipeline

• As congressional Democrats launch new clean energy and environmental justice efforts, House Republicans outraged climate campaigners and frontline communities on Thursday with a move to fast-track a long-delayed fracked gas pipeline.

Finance

=> ↺ The “small nonprofit school” saved in the SVB bailout charges more than Harvard

• Now, on the one hand, it’s easy to dismiss these guys as very, very, very stupid. After all, they played a game of prisoner’s dilemma in which they were allowed to talk to each other as much as they wanted – and they still sold each other out: [...]

=> ↺ Dems Detail ‘Catastrophic’ Costs If GOP Hostage-Takers Force US Default

• Congressional Democrats on Thursday forcefully called out their Republican colleagues for holding the economy hostage by refusing to raise the country’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling without major spending cuts, risking the first-ever U.S. default.

=> ↺ Cost of living, rental crisis, soaring tolls loom large as NSW voters head to the polls

• As voters head to the polls in NSW, the cost of living crisis looms large as a defining electoral issue. Households across the state have been feeling the crunch. In the final instalment of our series highlighting the similarities and differences in Labor and Coalition policies, Callum Foote looks at which party will do the most to address everyday expenses.

• At the end of the December quarter last year, the consumer price index rose to the highest level since the 90s at 7.8%. Inflation is at its highest level in 30 years.

=> ↺ Consumer Advocates Applaud as Federal Court ‘Yet Again’ Finds CFPB’s Funding Constitutional

• U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2010, was among the consumer advocates celebrating on Thursday as a federal court in New York City ruled that the bureau’s funding structure is constitutional—rebuking years of right-wing and corporate attacks on the agency.

=> ↺ Why We (Still) Need a Federal Reserve for the People—Not Wall Street

• The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by another quarter point yesterday, despite recent bank failures that undermined public faith in the financial system. The Fed, which failed to properly supervise these banks, will now make things harder on working people. Why? To address inflation which has been caused by the war in Ukraine, supply-chain disruptions, excesses in profit-taking, and the slight additional effect of government efforts to minimize public suffering during a pandemic.

=> ↺ Scott Ritter: G7 vs BRICS — Off to the Races

• An economist digging below the surface of an IMF report has found something that should shock the Western bloc out of any false confidence in its unsurpassed global economic clout.

=> ↺ Ellen Brown: Banking Crisis 3.0: Time to Change the Rules of the Game

• On CNN March 14, Roger Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, said that American banks were on the verge of being nationalized: What the authorities did over the weekend was absolutely profound. They guaranteed the deposits, all of them, at Silicon Valley Bank.

=> ↺ Republican Who Rails Against Student Loan “Bailout” Got $1.5M of Loans Forgiven

=> ↺ Sanders Introduces Bill to Stop Bank CEOs From Serving as Fed Bank Regulators

=> ↺ Sanders Introduces Bill to Ban Bank Execs From Fed Boards

• U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday introduced the Federal Reserve Independence Act to prevent bank executives from serving on regional Fed boards that are responsible for regulating their institutions.

=> ↺ Democrats Introduce Housing Is a Human Right Act

=> ↺ Child Labor Is on the Rise as Republicans See an Answer to Labor Shortages

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ Activists, Progressive US Lawmakers Oppose ‘Xenophobic’ TikTok Ban

• Civil and digital rights groups this week joined a trio of progressive U.S. lawmakers in opposing bipartisan proposals to ban the social media platform TikTok, arguing that such efforts are rooted in “anti-China” motives and do not adequately address the privacy concerns purportedly behind the legislation.

=> ↺ Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional, Ludicrous, and a National Embarrassment

• It would also be an act of charity for Facebook, which the government has utterly failed to meaningfully regulate.

=> ↺ GOP Is Seeking Rich, Self-Funding Candidates as Party Is Outraised by Democrats

=> ↺ TikTok Stars Go On a D.C. Field Trip

• Ms. Ok, 26, was one of more than 30 TikTok stars who took part in an all-expenses paid trip to speak on behalf of the platform amid rising TikTok tensions as the Biden administration has pushed TikTok’s Chinese ownership to sell the video app or face a possible ban in the United States. TikTok’s Singapore-based chief executive, Shou Chew, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday.

• ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, flew the creators (and their plus-ones) first class to Washington and put them up in a high-end hotel for the week. On Tuesday, the group had dinner with Mr. Chew, who appeared in a number of videos posted that night.

=> ↺ TikTok CEO Tells US Congress — “ByteDance Is Not An Agent of China”

• TikTok says it limits the amount of information it collects when setting up an account, but Chew fails to mention how his company was caught accessing users’ clipboards to view pasted information. He also fails to mention how ByteDance employees were caught accessing U.S. user data through backdoors written into the app as reported by both Forbes and BuzzFeedNews.

=> ↺ Remarks on “Chat Control”

• On March 23 I was invited to participate in a panel discussion at the European Internet Services Providers Association (EuroISPA). The focus of this discussion was on recent legislative proposals, especially the EU Commission’s new “chat control” content scanning proposal, as well as the future of encryption and fundamental rights. These are the introductory remarks I prepared.

=> ↺ Five brutal hours for TikTok: CEO raked over coals amid privacy, security concerns

• Thursday’s hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee represented a landmark moment in TikTok’s attempt to build support for a $1.5 billion plan — known as Project Texas — that relies on tech giant Oracle to operate the app’s American technical infrastructure and build a firewall between U.S. TikTok users and Beijing.

• But in a highly anticipated appearance, Chew won few, if any, allies, and the hearing instead offered a clear view of the bipartisan consensus in Washington that TikTok poses a security and privacy threat.

=> ↺ Is the clock ticking for TikTok?

• As the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon floated across the United States last week, it provided a vivid, 200ft-tall illustration of what many Washington policymakers view as the growing national security threat from China. Rolling news coverage across the major television networks mapped the balloon’s position against the location of strategic sites such as the silos of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in Montana. Even before it was shot down by a heat-seeking missile on 4 February, prominent Republicans had linked the balloon to other perceived vulnerabilities to Chinese surveillance, such as the TikTok social media platform.

=> ↺ Manhattan DA Accuses House GOP of ‘Unlawful Incursion’ Into Trump Probe

• The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday accused House Republicans of an “unlawful incursion” into New York authorities’ investigation of former President Donald Trump, who is expected to face criminal charges over a 2016 pre-election hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

=> ↺ TikTok CEO Testifies Before US Congress, Calls India’s Ban “Hypothetical”

• India imposed a nationwide ban on TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps, including the messaging app WeChat, in 2020 over privacy and security concerns. The ban came shortly after a clash between Indian and Chinese troops at LAC that killed 20 Indian soldiers and injured dozens. The companies were given a chance to respond to questions on privacy and security requirements but the ban was made permanent in January 2021.

• “You damn well know that you cannot protect the data and security of this committee or the 150 million users of your app because it is an extension of the CCP,” Lawmaker Kat Cammack of Florida told Chew after playing a threatening video that was still on the platform more than a month after it had been posted, despite community guidelines barring violence or threats.

=> ↺ Why TikTok’s security risks keep raising fears

• Both the FBI and officials at the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share TikTok user data – such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers – with China’s authoritarian government.

=> ↺ British parliament blocks TikTok over security concerns

• The United States, Canada, Belgium and the European Commission have already banned the app from official devices.

• TikTok has come under increasing scrutiny due to fears that user data from the app owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, undermining Western security interests.

=> ↺ TikTok CEO commitments not enough for the parents of America: US lawmaker

• TikTok has said it has spent more than $1.5 billion on what it calls rigorous data security efforts under the name “Project Texas” that currently has nearly 1,500 full-time employees and is contracted with Oracle to store TikTok’s U.S. user data. It also says it rigorously screens content that could harm children.

• Congresswoman Diana DeGette at the hearing before the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee asked Chew what TikTok was doing to prevent the spread of misinformation on the platform.

=> ↺ TikTok creators, some US Democratic lawmakers oppose ban on app

• Representatives Jamaal Bowman, Mark Pocan and Robert Garcia and TikTok creators called a press conference in Washington for broad-based privacy legislation that would address all large social media companies.

=> ↺ Jack Dorsey Loses $526 Million Net Worth Hours After Hindenburg Report

• Hindenburg released a report Thursday claiming Block had inflated user metrics, and that the stock has downside of 65% to 75% “on a purely fundamental basis.” The company denied the allegations and said it plans to explore legal action against the short-seller.

• Block fell as much as 22% on Thursday, before closing down 15%.

=> ↺ Bye-bye blue tick for ‘legacy’ Twitter verified users in April: What it means

• Twitter’s blue check-mark verification regime will soon be a history. The social media giant on Friday announced that from April 1, it will begin removing legacy verified program and legacy verified checkmarks from user accounts. It will allow only paid subscribers and members of approved organisations to have the respective status.

=> ↺ Twitter to remove legacy verified badges from April 1

• Elon Musk on Friday said that Twitter will remove all legacy Blue verified checkmarks for both individual users and organisations from April 1. Twitter Blue in India will cost Rs 9,400 a year for individual users.

• Twitter Blue is now available globally and the users can get Blue Verified for $7 a month if they sign up via web browser, Musk announced.

=> ↺ Women Are Waiting to Cheer the Misogynist’s Indictment

• On Monday night, supposedly “Arrestmas” Eve (Donald Trump claimed, falsely as usual, that he’d be “arrested” Tuesday), I dreamed about him. I was being held captive by Trump at Mar-a-Lago with a lot of other women. He was more deranged than usual, as he apparently is right now as he awaits arrest. It was terrifying. But somehow I escaped. I didn’t know what would happen next.

=> ↺ Orban’s chief of staff: Putin would not be arrested in Hungary

• On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Hungary blocked European Union member states from issuing a joint statement about an ICC (International Criminal Court) arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin. EU diplomat Josep Borrell released a statement saying.” “The EU sees the decision by the ICC as a beginning of the process of accountability and holding Russian leaders to account for the crimes and atrocities they are ordering, enabling or committing in Ukraine”.  

• Mate Paczolay, a spokesman for the Hungarian Foreign ministry later called the report a “lie”.  “Hungary has taken note of the ICC decision and does not wish to comment on it in any way. However, if the High Representative or any member state wishes to issue a statement, Hungary will not object to it,” Paczolay said. 

=> ↺ Hungary not invited to Biden’s Democracy Summit this year either

=> ↺ Amnesty International Hungary not allowed to attend conference on judicial independence, citing lack of space

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ QAnon Will Not Be Leaving Us Anytime Soon

• QAnon is one of the strangest developments in the Trump era: a pastiche conspiracy theory involving Satanic rituals, child abuse, the US military, Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and the former host of The Apprentice. In many ways, QAnon should have died in 2021 when, contrary to the eponymous “Q”’s various prophecies, Donald Trump departed the White House and Joe Biden was sworn in as president. Instead, it was supercharged by the global pandemic and exported to countries as far afield as Germany, France, and Japan.

• Investigative journalist Will Sommer has been following QAnon since it first emerged in 2017. His new book Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America is an extended interrogation of the theory’s genesis and roots. Sommer joined Jacobin’s Luke Savage to discuss the book, the state of QAnon, and what has enabled the movement to endure and grow despite its many failed prophecies.

=> ↺ It takes a few dollars and 8 minutes to create a deepfake. And that’s only the start

• Concerns about deepfakes have been around for years. What’s different now is technology has advanced and become accessible to anybody with a smartphone or computer.

• People are having fun using them for jokes and memes, like a viral TikTok trend of videos using synthetic audio to spoof Presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama and Joe Biden playing video games.

• But deepfakes are already being used for political ends.

=> ↺ Fact check: No, Putin did not kneel before Xi Jinping

• A strange image has gone viral. Did Vladimir Putin really get down on one knee and kiss the hand of Xi Jinping? No. The picture, which was allegedly taken during the Chinese leader’s recent trip to Russia, is fake.

=> ↺ Friday’s papers: Hungary’s Nato promise, train traffic resumes and TikTok’s election influence

• Among the survey’s findings was that young people’s votes are more influenced by how party candidates discuss their policies rather than what those policies are. The survey also found that the left-right divide no longer felt relevant to 15-29-year-olds.

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Judge Says White House Can’t Get Out Of Lawsuit Over Pressuring Social Media To Moderate

• Well, this is unfortunate. Back in May of last year we wrote about how Missouri and Louisiana had sued the Biden administration, claiming “censorship” over social media based on a bunch of convoluted and nonsensical claims, most of which were about events that happened during the Trump administration.

=> ↺ Canadian Court Upholds ‘God Given Right’ To Give Your Obnoxious Neighbor The Finger

• The international sign language for “go fuck yourself” isn’t just a protected right in the US of A. Although we may make more use of it than most, a Canadian court has declared this particular form of expression to be blessed by [insert deity of choice here]. Canadians may have a reputation for civility, but less civil forms of expression are welcome, if not exactly encouraged.

=> ↺ The Imbued Test, Or How To Know Whether Section 230 Applies

• The biggest mistakes people make about Section 230 involve thinking that it is somehow a complicated law. In reality, its operation is not all that complex. Accordingly, determining whether it applies to any particular situation should not be all that difficult to evaluate, even when we think about hard or edge cases. Ultimately what we care about is who imbued the objectionable quality into the content at issue. This question, put like this, gets right to the heart of what Section 230’s operation pivots on and prevents us from getting sidetracked by other considerations that might lead to weakening the statute’s critical protection by suddenly making it seem a lot less applicable than it is.

=> ↺ Cops Sue Afroman for ‘Emotional Distress’ After He Made Music Videos of Botched Raid

• A group of police officers who raided the home of rapper Afroman have sued the musician for “emotional distress” after he used footage of the botched raid in music videos for his songs “Lemon Pound Cake” and “Will You Help Me Repair My Door,” as well as in social media posts. The officers allege they have faced embarrassment, ridicule, humiliation, and loss of reputation from Afroman’s posts.

=> ↺ Principal Fired Over Parent Complaints on Lesson Showing Michelangelo’s “David”

=> ↺ DeSantis Admin Seeks to Expand “Don’t Say Gay” Restrictions to Older Grades

=> ↺ Critics Say DeSantis Move to Expand ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Exposes Law’s True Intentions

• Florida’s Republican governor and presumed 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is moving to expand his state’s prohibition on classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity to all grades.

=> ↺ As Ramadan Begins, Ilhan Omar Introduces House Resolution to Condemn Islamophobia

• Joined by Democratic House colleagues and activists outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday—the first full day of Ramadan—Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar announced a new resolution condemning Islamophobia and commemorating the recent anniversary of the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand mosque massacre.

=> ↺ Twitter blocks access to accounts of prominent Canadians at request of India’s government, Sikh group alleges

• The move was apparently made at the request of India’s government, according to a Sikh organization. The government has shut down the internet in the northwestern, Sikh-majority state of Punjab as they seek to apprehend Amritpal Singh, dubbed a “self-styled preacher” in India’s English-language media.

=> ↺ Attempts to Ban Books Hit a Record High in 2022, New Report Says

=> ↺ ‘Never Seen Anything Like This’: US Librarians Report Book Bans Reached Record High in 2022

• Librarians from across the United States released a report showing that pro-censorship groups’ efforts to ban books with LGBTQ+ themes and stories about people of color have driven an unprecedented rise in the number of book challenges, with right-wing organizers pushing library workers to remove works ranging from the dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale to children’s books about foods enjoyed in different cultures.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ Turkey regulator forces closure of German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle’s office

• On March 28, DW plans to close its Turkey office after the country’s Industry and Technology Ministry declined to extend its license, allegedly due to a technical error in its application forms, according to news reports, a report by DW, and Erkan Arıkan, director of Turkish Services for DW, who communicated with CPJ by email.

=> ↺ New Ukrainian army regulations limit reporters’ access to frontlines

• On March 19, the Ukrainian army’s Operational Command East, one of four regional commands, published new rules for journalists covering military actions in its jurisdiction. The following day, the Operational Command South issued similar regulations.

• The rules bar journalists from working in so-called “red zones” deemed most dangerous, and require a military press officer’s escort to work in less dangerous yellow zones. Journalists can work freely in green zones.

=> ↺ Turkish authorities arrest employee of Yeni Yaşam newspaper in terrorism investigation

• On March 16, authorities in the southern city of Mersin detained Bayram, who works in distribution for the pro-Kurdish daily newspaper Yeni Yaşam, as part of the investigation into those journalists, according to multiple news reports and court documents reviewed by CPJ.

• On March 21, the First Court of Penal Peace in Ankara, the capital, formally arrested Bayram and also accused him of being a member of the PKK, according to those sources. He is being held in Ankara’s Sincan Prison.

=> ↺ Journalists find two new Russian oil companies with links to Medvedchuk family businesses — Meduza

• Journalists with the publications Skhemi (from Radio Liberty) and Scanner Project have discovered two new Russian oil extraction companies linked to the family of Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk.

=> ↺ ‘Negative, obscene, and impermissible’: Belarusian journalist sentenced to 3 years in penal colony, allegedly for criticizing Lukashenko — Meduza

• A Belarusian court has sentenced the journalist Gennady Mozheiko to three years in a penal colony, qualifying his writing for the Russian media Komsomolskaya Pravda as “inciting hatred and insulting an official.”

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ Keep Your Laws Off My Uterus

=> ↺ Labor History Can Help Us Learn to Fight Like Hell

=> ↺ Russian authorities sentence draft-evading FSO officer who was deported from Kazakhstan to 6.5 years in prison — Meduza

• A Barnaul court has sentenced Mikhail Zhilin, a Russian Federal Protective Service officer who fled to Kazakhstan after the start of Russia’s fall mobilization campaign, to 6.5 years in prison on desertion and illegal border crossing charges.

=> ↺ Moscow police spokesman who was fired after Ivan Golunov case named deputy head of Russian Interior Ministry’s media relations department — Meduza

• Former Moscow police department press service head Yury Titov, who left his position after officers fabricated a case against journalist Ivan Golunov in 2019, has been appointed as the Russian Interior Ministry’s new deputy head of media relations.

=> ↺ 3 Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil group activists appeal against national security conviction and sentence

• The trio were sentenced to four-and-a-half months in jail earlier in March by Principal Magistrate Peter Law after they were convicted of failing to comply with a notice from national security police demanding information.

• Tang and Tsui were granted bail pending appeal, while Chow, the former vice-chairperson of the Alliance, rejected bail “on grounds of freedom of expression.”

=> ↺ Democrats in Wisconsin Introduce Bill to Restore Abortion Rights in State

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

=> ↺ ISA Over TPM To Your PC

• Sometimes you really want to use your legacy SoundBlaster instead of emulating it for classic games. While modern PCs don’t have ISA slots, [TheRasteri] is fixing this shortcoming with his dISAppointment board. (via Adafruit)

=> ↺ Russian streaming services lose up to half of Hollywood-produced content — Meduza

• The number of Hollywood-produced films and TV series offered by Russia’s streaming services has been slashed by 40–50 percent, an RBC-commissioned study shows. 

Monopolies

=> ↺ CYBER: Scalpers Are Selling Whole Ticketmaster Accounts Now

• This week on Cyber, Joseph Cox and Motherboard Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler take us into the world of the ticket scalper, where whole Ticketmaster accounts are being sold in bulk and a “verified fan” is just someone the algorithm approves of.

=> ↺ NLRB Says Amazon Illegally Union-Busted by Limiting Worker Access to Warehouses

• The Amazon Labor Union celebrated Wednesday as a lawyer for the National Labor Relations Board in Brooklyn determined that Amazon acted illegally when it adopted a rule barring warehouse workers from being present at their workplace when they were not scheduled to work—a transparent effort, the board said, to limit union activity.

=> ↺ Microsoft must do more to resolve antitrust issues, say European rivals

• Resolving the complaints with the companies could help Microsoft stave off a possible EU antitrust investigation that could lead to a fine as much as 10% of its global turnover.

• Nextcloud took its grievance to the European Commission in 2021, alleging that Microsoft abuses its dominance by bundling its OneDrive cloud storage service with its Windows 10 and 11 operating system.

=> ↺ Leaked Doc From Microsoft To UK’s CMA Says ’10 Years Enough For Sony To Make Its Own CoD’

• Well, well. The fight between Sony and Microsoft over the latter’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard continues to get more and more interesting. As three regulatory bodies have been poking at the deal — the European Commission for the EU, the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) in the UK, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the States — Microsoft’s featured attempt to appease the concerns over Call of Duty suddenly going exclusive has been its inking of 10 year deals to keep the series multi-platform. This seems to have placated the EU thus far, though its impact on the CMA and FTC remains to be seen. The idea, though, is that it is a demonstration of Microsoft’s commitment to keep CoD multiplatform generally. As I have pointed out in repeated posts, that doesn’t necessarily make sense. After all, Microsoft could be playing the long game, inking these deals to get the purchase done with plans to yank the series back to an exclusive after the ten year deals expire.

=> ↺ Big Four Networks Push FCC To Further Erode Media Consolidation Limits

• If you recall, the Trump FCC under Ajit Pai spent several years stripping away popular media consolidation limits established over decades with bipartisan approval. The push was ironically to directly help aid Sinclair broadcasting’s steady consolidation of local broadcast news, which resulted in a homogenized soup of well-funded propaganda and the erosion of real, local reporting.

Copyrights

=> ↺ The Complex World of Style, Copyright, and Generative AI

• The issue in a nutshell: Artists have raised legal claims against particular users who prompt a GAI and generate an output that copies from their original expressions. However, style is not generally protected by copyright, and that’s a good thing; if one artist were given a monopoly over anime, grunge music, or other styles, that would frustrate copyright’s core purpose of supporting creativity. What’s more, GAI tools provide myriad legitimate uses, and creators of those tools generally don’t directly control the actions of their users or financially benefit from uses that may infringe on pre-existing works. As such, they generally should not be held liable when actions of their user cross over the line into infringement.

=> ↺ The EU has brought back opt-in copyright for text and data mining: let’s build on that foundation – Walled Culture

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