Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Contents
- Leftovers
- Education
- Hardware
- Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
- Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Security
- Defence/Aggression
- Transparency/Investigative Reporting
- Environment
- Finance
- AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
- Censorship/Free Speech
- Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
- Civil Rights/Policing
- Internet Policy/Net Neutrality Monopolies/Monopsonies
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Leftovers
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Henrique Dias ☛ I Bought a Numeronym Domain Name
Some weeks ago, I read a post from Jan-Luka’s where he talked about what to do with his new domain. The most interesting part for me was not what to do with the domain, or the domain itself, but what the domain is: a numeronym.
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Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Thoughts on permanence
I think a lot about permanence — both as a broader concept and how it applies to myself, my life and my work on a more personal level. It's a comforting concept when you're seeking stability, but it's never truly attainable. It's aspirational, but unachievable — nothing is permanent, nothing is perfect.
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Tony Finch ☛ Resurrected link log
After an extremely long hiatus, I have resurrected my link log.
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Yukinu ☛ Yukinu 2.2
I've recently been doing a lot of work updating the code for my site in preparation for a new iteration of the Yukinu site dubbed Yukinu 3.0. The Yukinu 2.x site has worked well for many years, but over time it's accumulated some cruft and was in need of a bit of refactoring.
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Sumana Harihareswara ☛ A Few Artistic Principles and Practices
A few times in the past week, I've spoken with artists who are working on uncomfortable art -- the kind of art that intentionally challenges the audience with displeasure. In one of them, it's like "here is art that confronts the audience/participant with an uncomfortable topic in current events" and in another, it's "here is art focusing on a feeling of helplessness and apathy". In reaction, I was reminded of a few of my own artistic principles and practices which I thought I'd jot down here.
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Leon Mika ☛ On Post Headers
I generally don’t use headers, unless the post is so long it needs them to break it up a little. When I do, I tend to start with H2, then step down to H3, H4, etc.
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Education
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Tony Finch ☛ On "the OSI deprogrammer"
The main reason that OSI remains relevant is Cisco certifications require network engineers to learn it. This makes OSI part of the common technical vocab and basically unavoidable, even though (as Rob Graham correctly argues) it’s deeply unsuitable.
It would be a lot better if the OSI reference model were treated as a model of OSI in particular, not a model of networking in general. OSI ought to be taught as an example alongside similar reference models of protocol stacks that are actually in use.
One of OSI’s big problems is how it enshrines layering as the architectural pattern, but there are other patterns that are at least as important: [...]
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Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Chance of serendipity
Most of the best thing in my life has happened by accident. Or at least they have started by a serendipitous happenstance: meeting someone in an event and ending up chatting; working together with someone on an event or project and building a great relationship; being open to opportunities and putting myself to a position to be lucky.
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RFERL ☛ Poverty Forces Nearly 1 Million Iranians Out Of School
According to official data, there are 3,6 million individuals of school age in Iran.
In an analysis of the latest data from the Statistical Center, Tejarat News, a website that covers economic issues, said the majority of school dropouts -- 556,994 -- come from the 15-17-year age group.
The phenomenon has been attributed to deepening poverty in the country, an opinion echoed by educational activists and experts alike.
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Hardware
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Kev Quirk ☛ Wi-Fi + Old Houses = Painful
Living in a 200 year old stone barn conversation means one thing...thick walls. Really thick walls. The walls in our house range from 60 - 90cm (2 - 3 feet) thick and they're made of pure stone. No internal cavity, just stone. All the way through.
This means that Wi-Fi signals really struggle to penetrate between rooms. Add to this the fact that we live in a small village, so there's no fibre to the premises or anything like that. So the internet coming in is relatively slow, and the signal can't get around the house either.
It's a lose/lose situation.
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Bruce Schneier ☛ Security Vulnerability in Saflok’s RFID-Based Keycard Locks
If ever. My guess is that for many locks, this is a permanent vulnerability.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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Jeff Geerling ☛ Talking Hot Dog gives new meaning to 'Ham radio'
IMPORTANT: Do not attempt to replicate our experiment. It is meant to demonstrate the dangers of RF, and there are a number of radio engineers, landscaping professionals, and other personnel who have written RF safety rules with their blood (or, in most cases, a permanent and painful RF burn that goes through the inside of their body). Don't touch radio towers—AM or otherwise.
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The Register UK ☛ Singapore improves the AI it uses to detect smokers
Singapore has improved the AI it uses to detect smokers who light up in the many places where the practice is forbidden across the island nation, to help local law enforcement more efficiently stub out offenders.
The AI is called Balefire, and as recently explained by Pye Sone Kyaw – an AI engineer at Singapore's digital transformation agency GovTech – it's already reached version 3.0.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ WHO: Cyberbullying affects 1 in 6 school kids
The "Health Behaviour in School-aged Children" (HBSC) study was published March 27, 2024, by WHO/Europe (World Health Organization). It identifies "the increasing digitalization of young people's interactions" as a main cause of cyberbullying.
In a same-day media release, the WHO Regional Director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said the report was "a wake-up call."
"With young people spending up to six hours online every single day, even small changes in the rates of bullying and violence can have profound implications for the health and well-being of thousands," said Kluge, highlighting self-harm and suicide as possible consequences.
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CBC ☛ Chocolate prices have tripled. What does that mean for your Easter egg basket?
If only the main ingredient weren't so expensive: Cocoa prices have tripled in the last 12 months due to the spread of bean disease among cacao crops in West Africa, where more than 70 per cent of the global cocoa supply is produced.
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Futurism ☛ The FDA Didn’t Inspect Neuralink Before Granting Human Trial Approval
"These alleged failures to follow standard operating procedures potentially endangered animal welfare," Blumenauer wrote, "and compromised data collection for human trials."
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Reuters ☛ Exclusive: US lawmaker seeks answers on FDA inspection of Musk's Neuralink
In a letter to the FDA on Monday, Democratic U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer said he was concerned the agency ignored "troubling evidence" of animal testing violations that had been raised dating back to at least 2019.
Blumenauer also cited reports by Reuters since late 2022 that described employees' complaints of "hack jobs" of animal experiments due to a rushed schedule, causing needless suffering and deaths. Employees also worried that data quality would be compromised, the media organization reported at the time. He asked the FDA to explain how it reconciled reports of such lapses with its decision to authorize Neuralink's human trial.
"These alleged failures to follow standard operating procedures potentially endangered animal welfare and compromised data collection for human trials," wrote Blumenauer, who serves on the House Ways and Means subcommittee on health.
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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The Nation ☛ How Much of Our Humanity Are We Willing to Outsource to AI?
It should come as no surprise that advances in AI have sparked debates about the future of work as well as concerns about misinformation, bias, and copyright infringements. Responding to the backlash, tech companies have (virtue-)signaled consideration for these issues by stressing the importance of Ethical AI, Responsible AI, or Trustworthy AI and developing guidelines for these noble goals. Indeed, OpenAI’s website includes the disclaimer that despite extensive testing, it cannot predict all possible benefits and harms of its technology, and that (ironically) it is critical to release (potentially harmful) AI into the real world to increase AI’s safety over time.
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The Register UK ☛ BBC exterminates AI experiments used to promote Doctor Who
The broadcaster announced its intention to use AI to create some promos in early March, a move that earned it a thorough pasting from fans – including the folks behind the Doctor Who Companion website, which declared itself "absolutely disgusted." And doubly so, after the BBC took down the page on which it announced its intentions.
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Silicon Angle ☛ Databricks open-sources its own large language model, DBRX
Although DBRX is nearly twice as big as Llama 2, at 132 billion parameters, it’s twice as fast, Databricks said. It claimed DBRX has outperformed existing open-source LLMs Llama 2 70B and Mixtral-8x7B — another model taking the MoE approach — and the proprietary GPT-3.5 – although not GPT-4 — in benchmarks for language understanding, programming, math and logic. The model cost $10 million to train on public and licensed data sources over a two-month period using using 3,000 H100 GPUs.
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Federal News Network ☛ How CDC’s data office is applying AI to public health
CDC stood up DST last year to coordinate its data strategy. That includes improving data exchange with other federal, state and local agencies and non-governmental partners; improving the ways data informs public health initiatives; and ways to better visualize and distribute data for public consumption. AI is quickly becoming a part of those efforts.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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The Telegraph UK ☛ How Ukraine is using mobile phones on 6ft poles to stop Russian drones
Kyiv’s national air defence command and control network, known as “Virazh”, relies on at least 40 separate kinds of sensor networks to detect, track and identify airborne threats.
The acoustic sensors gather uncharacteristic sounds from the environment before artificial intelligence is used to establish whether anomalies are incoming kamikaze drones or missiles.
Dr Thomas Withington, an expert in air defence at the Royal United Services Institute said: “It’s interesting that this technology is making a comeback because it was all the rage before the invention of the radar in the 1920s and 1930s
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Doc Searls ☛ Why selling personal data is a bad idea – Doc Searls Weblog
This post is for the benefit of anyone wondering about, researching, or going into business on the proposition that selling one’s own personal data is a good idea. Here are some of my learnings from having studied this proposition myself for the last twenty years or more.
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Digital Music News ☛ When it Rains, it Pours — TikTok Now Faces an FTC Investigation
The FTC is investigating allegations that TikTok and its Beijing-based parent ByteDance “deceived its users by denying that individuals in China had access to their data,” as well as violating a children’s privacy law, people with direct knowledge of the matter told Politico. In partnership with the Justice Department, the agency could either file a lawsuit or settle with the company, though a settlement is reportedly yet to be reached.
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404 Media ☛ Kansas Is About to Pass the Most Extreme Age Verification Law Yet
An age verification bill in Kansas that is the most extreme in the country has passed both House and Senate and is on its way to the governor’s desk. The bill will make sites with more than 25 percent adult content liable to heavy fines if they don’t verify that visitors are over the age of 18. It also calls being gay “sexual conduct,” which critics say could set up the state for more censorship of LGBT+ citizens.
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The Verge ☛ The Israeli military is using facial recognition in Gaza
The facial recognition program was built in tandem with Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, according to the Times report. After the October 7th attacks, officers within the Israeli military’s Unit 8200, the Israeli Defense Forces’ main intelligence unit, identified potential targets by watching security camera footage and videos Hamas had uploaded to social media. Soldiers also asked Palestinian prisoners to identify people from their communities who were affiliated with Hamas.
Corsight, which has boasted that its technology can accurately identify people even if less than 50 percent of their face is visible, used these photos to build a facial recognition tool Israeli officers could use in Gaza. To further build out its database — and identify potential targets — the Israeli military set up checkpoints equipped with facial recognition cameras along major roads Palestinian used to flee south. The goal, one officer told the Times, was to create a “hit list” of people who participated in the October 7th attack.
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New York Times ☛ Israel Deploys Expansive Facial Recognition Program in Gaza
It turned out Mr. Abu Toha had walked into the range of cameras embedded with facial recognition technology, according to three Israeli intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. After his face was scanned and he was identified, an artificial intelligence program found that the poet was on an Israeli list of wanted persons, they said.
Mr. Abu Toha is one of hundreds of Palestinians who have been picked out by a previously undisclosed Israeli facial recognition program that was started in Gaza late last year. The expansive and experimental effort is being used to conduct mass surveillance there, collecting and cataloging the faces of Palestinians without their knowledge or consent, according to Israeli intelligence officers, military officials and soldiers.
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Le Monde ☛ France's Assemblée passes bill against foreign interference
France's Assemblée Nationale on Wednesday, March 27, adopted a bill to counter foreign interference including the use of an experimental algorithm to monitor suspicious activity. The bill, put forward by President Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party, received the approval of 171 lawmakers, with just 25 against. The Sénat now has to give its green light.
Algorithm-based online surveillance has existed in France since 2015, but has only so far been used to hunt down potential "terrorists." This new law would expand the practice to pinpoint potential perpetrators of foreign interference during a four-year test period.
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Scheerpost ☛ Cops Running DNA-Manufactured Faces Through Face Recognition Is a Tornado of Bad Ideas
Simply put: police are using DNA to create a hypothetical and not at all accurate face, then using that face as a clue on which to base investigations into crimes. Not only is this full dice-roll policing, it also threatens the rights, freedom, or even the life of whoever is unlucky enough to look a little bit like that artificial face.
But it gets worse.
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Defence/Aggression
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Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Should South Africa ban kids from social media?
The Republican-controlled state government in Florida this week approved a bill banning children under 14 from social media and requiring 14- and 15-year-olds to get parental consent to access apps like Instagram and TikTok.
The state’s decision was based on the premise that children this age do not have the ability to know when they’re being sucked into addictive or harmful technology.
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International Business Times ☛ DeSantis Signs Bill Restricting Social Media Access for Minors in Florida
HB3, the bill in question, instructs social media companies to remove the existing accounts of those who are under 14. Failure to comply with this directive could result in legal action being taken against the platform on behalf of the underage user who created the account.
"Ultimately, [we're] trying to help parents navigate this very difficult terrain that we have now with raising kids, and so I appreciate the work that's been put in," DeSantis said in remarks during the bill-signing ceremony.
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India Times ☛ Tiktok: Biden administration pursuing TikTok over data practices: report
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has been investigating TikTok over allegedly faulty privacy and data security practices, and could decide to bring a lawsuit or settlement in the next few weeks, Politico reported on Tuesday citing people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Earlier in March, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to pass a bill giving ByteDance about six months to sell the U.S. assets of the app, or face a ban.
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ADF ☛ Burkina Faso Accounted for One Quarter of World’s Terrorism Deaths in 2023
One quarter of all deaths related to terrorism globally in 2023 occurred in Burkina Faso making it the most severely impacted country in the world. Nearly 2,000 people were killed in 258 terror incidents, a rise of 68 percent from the previous year, according to the 2024 Global Terrorism Index (GTI).
“Deaths from terrorism have increased successively each year since 2014,” the authors of the GTI wrote. “Given the successive years of escalating violence in Burkina Faso and the uncertain political situation the country is likely to experience further increases in terrorism.”
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The Telegraph UK ☛ Vladimir Putin can be tried for his crimes now
This month, the Russian people chose as their president for the next six years an international criminal for whose crimes they bear the same political responsibility as Germans who once supported Hitler. Both leaders are guilty of what the court at Nuremberg described as “the supreme international crime”, that of aggression – i.e. invading an unthreatening country for no good reason – and thereby becoming liable for “all the evils, all the horrors of war; all the effusion of blood, the desolation of families, the rapine, the ravages – they are his works and his crimes”.
It is possible to envisage a modern Nuremberg tribunal, with Putin taking Goering’s place in the dock, flanked by co-conspirators like Lukashenko from Belarus, Dmitry Medvedev, the commanders who supervised the destruction of Mariupol and the executions at Bucha, and the lying propagandists from state television and the Orthodox Church.
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Reuters ☛ Somali pirates return, adding to global shipping crisis
While the threat is not as serious as it was in 2008-2014, regional officials and industry sources are concerned the problem could escalate. "If we do not stop it while it's still in its infancy, it can become the same as it was," Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told Reuters last month at his highly-fortified art deco palace, Villa Somalia.
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ADF ☛ Nigeria Shows That Emerging Technology Can Help Protect Waters
The RMAC receives, integrates, displays, records and distributes data from sensors and systems, including maritime and air surveillance radars, global positioning systems (GPS), the automatic identification system (AIS), cameras and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast technology. Other tools can include drones and satellite tracking data.
Falcon Eye uses a number of radars, electro-optic systems and cameras operated from a command center to monitor the country’s waters and track vessel movements around the region. Former Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo commissioned Falcon Eye in 2021.
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CBC ☛ Afghan interpreter hunted by Taliban safe after campaign by retired brigadier-general in Newfoundland
After more than two years of evading the Taliban — and a dogged campaign led by retired Canadian military members urging the federal government to keep its promise — Afghan interpreter Mohammad Arif Yousafi is safe in Alberta.
"Finally we get into Canada. We arrived in Canada. So we are happy," he said.
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Hong Kong Free Press ☛ UK, US, NZ say China targeted 'democratic institutions'
In rare and detailed public accusations against China — Washington, London and Wellington described a series of cyber breaches over the last decade or more, in what appeared to be a concerted effort to hold Beijing accountable.
The US Justice Department charged seven Chinese nationals over what it said was a 14-year “prolific global hacking operation” designed to aid China’s “economic espionage and foreign intelligence objectives.”
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RFA ☛ Invest in Tibet and give your child a leg up on college exams
The weightings are calculated based on past regional performance, which means that if students from better-resourced regions of China start going to Tibet, they could push up the score threshold for everyone, including Tibetans.
Tibetans and rights groups warn that the program will deprive Tibetan students of educational and job opportunities and worsen unemployment among them.
“This recent development will further rob Tibetan students of opportunities,” a source in Tibet’s capital of Lhasa told Radio Free Asia.
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CBC ☛ Mysterious writer behind ISIS-K propaganda calls himself 'the Canadian'
Sulaiman Dawood al-Kanadie appears as the author of a sprawling June 2023 essay, in which he seems to suggest that he is living under the radar in a Western country. He chastises Muslim men "especially where I live" who are more likely to "put on skinny jeans" and "fill their faces with food at a 'Free Syria' or 'Free Palestine'" fundraiser than commit to fighting in an armed conflict on behalf of ISIS.
His name appears again on a July 2023 piece demanding a jihadist invasion of Israel and again in the August issue, where he says the West has grown bolder "as they are now back to oppressing and killing Muslims, burning Qur'an, and occupying Muslims' settlements in Palestine."
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ ISIL growing stronger in Syria
The country is crumbling, after 13 years of conflict, and some groups that we thought were defeated are coming back. And, in the meantime, none of the root causes of the conflict have been dealt with. ISIL has been growing in strength in Syria and, this year alone, there have already been more than 35 attacks.
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International Business Times ☛ Taxpayers Footing ISIS Bride's £250,000 Legal Fees As She Tries To Return To UK
This week, Begum lost another appeal against the UK government's decision to strip her of her British citizenship.
"She chose to leave the UK to join a terrorist group of her own free will," said Anthony Glees, a professor of politics and national security expert.
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Sightline Media Group ☛ The roots of this unofficial Nazi-inspired Army Green Beret logo
Maj. Russell Gordon, a spokesperson for the 1st Special Forces Command, confirmed that 3rd Special Forces Group elements formerly used the “unofficial” emblem, which was “banned in 2022 by 3rd Special Forces Group leadership when it was brought to their attention.” Leaders banned the logo because of “its historical use,” added Gordon, whose command oversees 3rd Group.
It’s unclear how long the patch was in use with active duty Green Berets, nor is it clear how many teams adopted it or similar imagery in their local logos.
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USDOD ☛ Charting a Digital Path: DOD's Social Media Campaign to Build Next-Gen Civilian Talent > U.S. Department of Defense > Release
The "discover your future at DoD" will focus on overcoming barriers candidates may face in considering, pursuing, and applying for DoD Civilian Careers. The campaign will run through April 2024 on a range of social media channels like Instagram, LinkedIn, Spotify, Reddit and other relevant channels for those under 30.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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Federal News Network ☛ What to do about those ever-rising FOIA request backlogs
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests keep rising every year. Some agencies have trouble responding to them on time, leading to growing backlogs. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Justice Department bureau that oversees FOIA activity could improve its guidance on how to get out from under backlogs. For more, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with GAO’s Director of Strategic Issues, Jay McTigue.
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Gizmodo ☛ Boeing Demands Virgin Galactic Destroy All Data From Its Failed Space Tourism Partnership
There’s new drama in the space industry. Boeing filed a lawsuit against Virgin Galactic, accusing it of retaining trade secrets that the two companies had exchanged while working to develop a new mothership, which is still in development.
On Friday, Boeing asked a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, to issue a court order blocking Virgin Galactic from further using proprietary data that was shared between the two companies as part of an agreement in 2022, according to the complaint. Boeing is accusing Virgin Galactic of “retaining, using, and threatening further use of trade secrets” that belong to the company and its Virginia-based subsidiary, Aurora Flight Sciences, the complaint read.
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Environment
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BBC ☛ Canada's maple syrup reserve hits 16-year low
Experts link the shortage to both a rise in demand and warmer weather, which has disrupted production.
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Global News CA ☛ Sticky spot: Canada’s maple syrup production hits 5-year low, reserves sink
The slow supply of syrup isn’t causing producers to panic quite yet, but a perfect storm of several unseasonably warm winters combined with an ongoing spike in demand that hasn’t let up since the start of the pandemic means that if price-stabling reserves continue to dwindle, shoppers might be in for a bout of sticker shock at the grocery store.
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Energy/Transportation
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The Telegraph UK ☛ Customers left with shock bills as 4 million smart meters 'go dumb'
Suppliers are legally required to fix or replace broken smart meters for free under a scheme put in place by Ofgem last month. The devices previously only had a one-year warranty.
Energy companies will now have to play catch-up with millions of faulty smart meters that have ceased working in “smart mode” and potentially left consumers with incorrect bills.
Peta Butler, 97, who lives near Tunbridge Wells, said she had been through “two years of hell” dealing with issues with her meter. “It’s affected my health. And it’s completely taken away any confidence I’ve got. If I have to do anything, I just panic,” said told the BBC.
Her problems began when she switched to a smart meter with a single tariff in 2022.
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[Repeat] ADF ☛ Islamic State Group Uses Cryptocurrency to Fund Attacks in Africa
Private donations, known as “sadaqah” in Arabic, make up one of IS’s largest sources of revenue. Although much of this money moves through the informal system known as hawala, some IS supporters use digital currencies such as Bitcoin or Tether to transfer money quickly while avoiding detection by international agencies seeking to disrupt terror financing, according to Beatrice Berton, an analyst with the European Union Institute for Security Studies.
The Counter ISIS Finance Group (CIFG) reports that West Africa, home to Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), has become a focal point for cryptocurrency transfers. The CIFG represents about 80 countries and international organizations targeting IS.
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Finance
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India Times ☛ Amazon, Google & Microsoft Paying Rs 1 Lakh Stipend To Interns Amid Layoffs
As per a recent ET report, the number of Indian undergraduate engineering students obtaining internships with monthly stipends of Rs 1 lakh or more from major corporations like Amazon, Google, Intuit India, Microsoft, Palo Alto, and Goldman Sachs is on the rise, which is indicative of the growing demand for qualified engineers in the tech industry. These three to six month internships are a great way to get a full-time job in a field that's in high demand, like analytics, cloud computing, and data science.
This year, stipends totaling Rs 1 lakh or more have been given to 27 students at IIT Mandi. 39 students at Bengaluru's RV College of Engineering are receiving monthly stipends of more than Rs 1 lakh, up from 8 the previous year. Additionally, according to Vellore Institute of Technology, 30 students receive stipends of Rs 1 lakh, while companies such as Couchbase and Amazon offer stipends of Rs 1.2 lakh and Rs 1.1 lakh, respectively. For the ultimate tally this year, the internship window is still open.
There is a lot of competition for these lucrative internships. The director of VIT's career development center, V Samuel Rajkumar, emphasized the value of having a learning mindset, problem-solving skills, and technical proficiency in order to secure these opportunities.
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IGN ☛ Nintendo Confirms Testing Layoffs Amid First-Party 'Lull' and Reports of Switch 2 Delay
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Federal News Network ☛ Why selling software to the government is like visiting a confessional booth
Final rules have kicked-in for companies selling software to the government. They must now attest to the fact that they used secure development practices. Their reference must be the Secure Software Development Framework from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. For more, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked with the Chief Technology Officer of Legit Security, Joe Nicastro.
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The Register UK ☛ Amazon finishes pumping $4 billion into Anthropic
In September, the Big A plowed $1.25 billion into the upstart, and it's now added the final $2.75 billion as promised.
The deal makes Amazon Web Services the primary cloud provider for Anthropic, with the understanding that the machine-learning upstart will deploy its future foundation models on AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips.
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The Register UK ☛ Dell slashes its workforce by 13,000 since 2023
Dell this week disclosed it has 120,000 workers, which is about 13,000 fewer than it had at the start of 2023. That means it has laid off almost double the number of people it previously indicated.
The revelation is somewhat buried in a 198-page 10-K submission by the IT giant to America's securities watchdog, the SEC, yesterday.
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Quartz ☛ Adobe launches new AI tools and Microsoft partnership
The design software giant Adobe unveiled a dozen new generative AI tools and capabilities Tuesday, and also revealed a partnership with Microsoft to expand the audience for its AI offerings. The moves, announced at Adobe’s conference in Las Vegas, signal the company’s aggressive push to integrate generative AI across its product portfolio.
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The Strategist ☛ Why cyber indictments and sanctions matter
The British and US responses are weak, in the sense that the consequences for China are virtually nil. Britain sanctioned two people and one front company, while the US charged seven individual hackers. The UK attacks were in 2021, and critics have complained about the lack of urgency. The US attacks took place over the past 14 years.
Are these reprisals too little, too late? It might be easy to think so, but it must be acknowledged that attributing an attack to a particular country is bureaucratically and technically difficult and politically hazardous. Sanctions and indictments add more layers of complexity. Some countries are still developing the processes and legislative tools required. New Zealand, for example, has yet to develop an autonomous sanctions regime.
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Futurism ☛ Zuckerberg Emailing Random Google Employees, Asking Them to Work for Facebook Instead
In the emails, Zuckerberg stressed the importance of AI to his company in a bid to attract them to Meta.
Other extraordinary measures that Meta has taken to recruit AI researchers include waiving interviews and directly offering job offers to promising candidates — as well as jacking up pay to Meta employees who want to jump ship to another AI outfit, according to The Information's reporting. In other words, the funding floodgates are wide open for the AI hype train.
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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TruthOut ☛ RNC Is Demanding New Job Applicants Say Whether 2020 Election Was “Stolen”
Neither Trump nor his supporters have provided any evidence to back up their claims. Numerous fact-checks have disproven their suppositions, and dozens of court cases by Trump and his allies in the aftermath of the election have similarly dismissed such claims.
Despite the lack of evidence on his part, Trump has continued to wrongly insist to this day that he was the true winner of the 2020 election, going so far as to suggest at one point that the Constitution should be “terminated” in order to put him back into the White House.
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The Hindu ☛ 3 held in Kashmir for ‘false social media posts’
The J&K Police arrested three locals on Wednesday for creating “fake accounts” and “misleading locals” in the Kashmir valley.
A police spokesman said Sameer Ahmed Paray from Kanikoot area, was arrested for allegedly “uploading a false post on his fake Facebook account, Babar Azam.”
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Axios ☛ How TikTok's creator program incentivizes AI misinformation
TikTok's cash-for-creators program could speed the spread of spammy misinformation on the platform as video makers lean on AI to hook viewers with outlandish images, conspiracy theories and hokum.
Why it matters: The crazier the video, the higher the engagement — and now, more engagement directly translates to more dollars.
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RFERL ☛ Why Putin Is Trying To Pin The Concert Hall Attack On Kyiv And The West
Among other wording clearly meant to convey to Russians that Ukraine and the West were behind the attack, Putin said that the United States was “using every channel to try to convince its satellites and other countries…that there is supposedly no indication of involvement by Kyiv.” And he suggested that the attack was part of what he described as efforts by Ukraine, “carrying out the orders of its Western handlers,” to “sow panic” in Russia as Moscow’s forces make gains in the invasion of its neighbor.
Meanwhile, state-run media in Russia have avidly played up the idea that Ukraine and the West were behind the attack, as have senior officials and lawmakers. In a brief exchange posted on Telegram, a reporter asked Security Council Secretary and close Putin ally Nikolai Patrushev, “[IS] or Ukraine?” and Patrushev replied, “Of course, Ukraine.”
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Atlantic Council ☛ The Russian people have been victimized twice—by ISIS-K terrorists, then by the Kremlin’s deception
This deception has consequences, most notably in the road not taken by Russia after Friday’s terrorist attack. Consider what a truly responsible Russian government would have done: It would have taken better precautions after the early March warning from US intelligence that an attack was imminent. It appears senior Russian officials, including Putin, downplayed the intelligence warning, perhaps thinking it part of a US plot to disrupt Putin’s reelection. Even if the attack could not have been prevented, a responsible Russian government would now call for international solidarity and joint action against a deadly terrorist group responsible for thousands of deaths in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and elsewhere. A responsible Russian government would convene an honest accounting of its security failure to detect the plot and disrupt it.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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Techdirt ☛ Nigerian Woman Faces Jail Time For Facebook Review Of Tomato Sauce
By now you’re wondering what actually happened here. Well, Okoli got on Facebook after having tried a can of Nagiko Tomato Mix, made by local Nigerian company Erisco Foods. Her initial post essentially complained about it being too sugary. So pretty standard fair for a review-type post on Facebook. When she started getting some mixed replies, some of them told her to stop trying to ruin the company and just buy something else, with one such message supposedly coming from a relative of the company’s ownership. To that, she replied: [...]
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NDTV ☛ Nigerian Woman Faces Jail for Reviewing Tomato Puree Online
Chioma Okoli, a children's clothing importer, turned to her 18,000 Facebook followers on September 17th for their thoughts on a tomato puree substitute she'd recently purchased. Disappointed by its sweetness, she sought their opinions.
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CNN ☛ A Nigerian woman reviewed some tomato puree online. Now she faces jail | CNN
A Nigerian woman who wrote an online review of a can of tomato puree is facing imprisonment after its manufacturer accused her of making a “malicious allegation” that damaged its business.
Chioma Okoli, a 39-year-old entrepreneur from Lagos, is being prosecuted and sued in civil court for allegedly breaching the country’s cybercrime laws, in a case that has gripped the West African nation and sparked protests by locals who believe she is being persecuted for exercising her right to free speech.
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ChronicleNG, Nigeria ☛ Police rearrest Chioma Okoli over Erisco tomato review
Chioma Okoli, on September 17, 2023, made a post on her Facebook page, highlighting the high sugar content in the tomato mix and inviting her followers who might have used the same product to share their opinions. Her post reads: [...]
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Reason ☛ Free Speech Is Under Attack in the U.S., but It’s on the Ropes Elsewhere
If you think free speech is under attack in the United States—and it is—you should see its besieged status in the rest of the world. Open contempt for unrestricted debate prevails in even many supposedly "free" countries and finds its expression in laws that threaten harsh penalties for those who dare to speak in ways that offend the powers that be.
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RFA ☛ China steps up checks for people bypassing the ‘Great Firewall’
Police in China are stepping up spot searches of people’s phones for apps enabling them to bypass the Great Firewall of government [Internet] censorship, residents told Radio Free Asia in recent interviews.
A resident of the southwestern province of Sichuan who gave only the surname Huang for fear of reprisals said he had recently been stopped on the subway in the provincial capital, Chengdu.
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RFERL ☛ Iran Rejects Release Plea By Dissident Rapper Toomaj Salehi
Salehi is currently in prison after an Iranian court sentenced him to six years for his involvement in the 2022 protests triggered by the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been detained for improperly wearing a mandatory Islamic scarf.
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RFERL ☛ Pussy Riot Member Gets Six Years In Absentia
A self-exiled member of the Pussy Riot protest group, Lyusya Shtein, has been sentenced in absentia to six years in prison over her online posts about Russian armed forces involved in the war in Ukraine.
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RFERL ☛ Russia sentences Pussy Riot activist to six years in absentia for Ukraine “war fakes”
A Russian court sentenced Lyusya Shtein, a member of Pussy Riot and a former municipal deputy in Moscow, to six years in prison in absentia for anti-war social media posts, the court’s press service said on Wednesday.
Shtein, 27, was found guilty of spreading “war fakes” in connection with a March 2022 post on X, in which she accused Russian soldiers captured by Ukraine of “bombing foreign cities and killing people”, Russian independent news outlet Mediazona reported.
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The Globe And Mail CA ☛ Russia sentences Pussy Riot activist to six years in absentia for Ukraine ‘war fakes’
At least 19,855 people have been detained in Russia for expressing anti-war views since President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors crackdowns on dissent.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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The Nation ☛ Ronna’s Out. But the Folks Who Hired Her Remain at NBC News.
The official news came Tuesday afternoon. But will there ever be a reckoning for the clueless people who hired her?
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Press Gazette ☛ Met settles with journalists detained during BLM protest
The Metropolitan Police has settled with three journalists detained and stopped from covering a Black Lives Matter protest in London in 2014.
Video journalist Jason N Parkinson, photographer Jess Hurd and another unnamed photojournalist, all members of the National Union of Journalists, have accepted an apology and out-of-court settlement from the police force.
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Press Gazette ☛ What news publishers should do now to avoid extinction in 2025
While publishers continued focusing on diversifying revenue streams beyond ad sales – such as generative AI, e-commerce, subscriptions, community, newsletters, acquisitions, editorial shifts, podcasts, content licensing to LLMs, and lawsuits – it may not be enough.
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Scheerpost ☛ Assange Extradition Delayed Unless US Provides ‘Assurances’ He Won’t Be Executed for Revealing the Truth
Significantly, the court also rejected “fresh evidence” from the Assange team with regards to the Yahoo News article written by Zach Dorfman, Sean D Naylor and Michael Isikoff that exposed a plot by former CIA Director Mike Pompeo and others to kidnap or assassinate Assange during his time at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Despite the evidence exposed by the article, the judges ruled, “Extradition would result in him being lawfully in the custody of the United States authorities, and the reasons (if they can be called that) for rendition or kidnap or assassination then fall away.”
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RFERL ☛ Serbian Court Holds Hearing On Extradition Of Belarusian Journalist Wanted By Minsk
Andrey Hnyot was arrested on October 30 at Belgrade airport based on an Interpol warrant issued at the request of Minsk for alleged tax evasion. Since then, he has been held in detention at Belgrade Central Prison.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Scoop News Group ☛ Peaceful protests, lawful assembly can’t be sole reason for DOJ facial recognition use under interim policy
Activities protected under the First Amendment, such as peaceful protests and lawful assembly, “may not be the sole basis for the use of” facial recognition technology under the Justice Department’s interim policy governing its deployment of the technology, the agency told a civil rights panel.
In written testimony submitted to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last week, the DOJ shared details of its approach to using facial recognition technology, or FRT, including its interim policy, which it issued in December but hasn’t shared publicly. The testimony came a couple of weeks after the civil rights panel held a briefing on federal use of facial recognition technology that the DOJ didn’t testify at in-person or submit testimony for in advance.
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Associated Press ☛ Wisconsin Supreme Court lets ruling stand that declared Amazon drivers to be employees
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand a lower court ruling that declared some delivery drivers for Amazon were employees as the state argued, not independent contractors as the online retail giant contended.
The court, in a unanimous decision, said the appeal was “improvidently granted,” meaning the Supreme Court should not have reviewed the case. That decision dismissing the case, issued after the court heard oral arguments, leaves a 2023 Wisconsin appeals court ruling against Amazon in place.
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The Hill ☛ Wisconsin top court upholds ruling that declared Amazon drivers to be employees
The Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission upheld the department’s argument the drivers were employees, prompting Amazon Logistics to sue in Waukesha County, Kan., circuit court, the AP reported. A judge ruled the drivers were independent contractors and the Wisconsin Court of Appeals overturned the ruling last year, setting up a battle at the state Supreme Court.
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Seattle Times ☛ Wisconsin Supreme Court lets ruling stand that declared Amazon drivers to be employees
The court, in a unanimous decision, said the appeal was “improvidently granted,” meaning the Supreme Court should not have reviewed the case. That decision dismissing the case, issued after the court heard oral arguments, leaves a 2023 Wisconsin appeals court ruling against Amazon in place.
That ruling found that drivers in the Amazon Flex program are a part of the state’s unemployment insurance system and entitled to jobless pay if they are laid off. The decision means an Amazon subsidiary, Amazon Logistics, will likely be hit with a tax bill of more than $200,000.
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US News And World Report ☛ Wisconsin Supreme Court Lets Ruling Stand That Declared Amazon Drivers to Be Employees
The case was closely watched for what effect a ruling would have on workers in the “gig economy.”
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Thomas Rigby ☛ Designing for older adults
In 2022, there were nearly 50,000 registered doctors over the age of 60 in the UK - that's 12%!
For context, that's around half the market share of Safari or nearly three times the percentage of the population with colour blindness.
We routinely consider the needs of colour blind users and we'd be strung from the rafters if our solution didn't work for half of Safari users so designing for older adults should be given the same prominence in our work.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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El País ☛ Telegram: The internet is not theirs: shifting towards a public service
It’s up to us, the citizens, and our political representatives to establish and fund a new type of network — an [Internet] designed to serve the public. This was the original vision of its creators, a group of scientists who generously applied their immense talents for the betterment of society.
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US News And World Report ☛ Amazon Fined $7.8 Million by Polish Consumer Watchdog
Chrostny said that UOKiK had questioned practices such as displaying a time counter on the screen indicating a period in which the order should be placed without a guarantee that it will arrive within the timeframe given.
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Copyrights
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Digital Music News ☛ Trefuego Ordered to Pay $800K+ in Sony Music Copyright Suit
Surprisingly, SME only learned of the alleged infringement – with the appropriate track ultimately appearing in about 155,000 TikTok videos and generating north of 100 million Spotify streams – in early 2021, according to the original complaint.
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Walled Culture ☛ We risk losing access to the world’s academic knowledge, and copyright makes things worse
That in itself is bad news, but new research from Martin Paul Eve (available as open access) shows that the way the shift to digital has been managed by publishers brings with it a new problem. For all their flaws, analogue publications have the great virtue that they are durable: once a library has a copy, it is likely to be available for decades, if not centuries. Digital scholarly articles come with no such guarantee. The Internet is constantly in flux, with many publishers and sites closing down each year, often without notice. That’s a problem when sites holding archival copies of scholarly articles vanish, making it harder, perhaps impossible, to access important papers. Eve explored whether publishers were placing copies of the articles they published in key archives. Ideally, digital papers would be available in multiple archives to ensure resilience, but the reality is that very few publishers did this. Ars Technica has a good summary of Eve’s results: [...]
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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hisacro's distorted pleasure
Okay today is the day! I don't know how to console or pamper you and the worst, I'm starring blank at ceiling when all you asked for is a simple talk. Now we have resolved things - you can hold on to that teeny tiny grudge at side but as always I'll be grateful for meeting my companion. Have a good sleep.
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easter looms...
pardon the weird title i just couldn't flamen think of anything better
hiyerrrr how we all doing? answer right now. speak out loud to your screen like it's Dora the sodding explorer
i've been having an alright time lately so that's fun. had a few tweets blow up (cringe), drew a few shit so-called "webcomics" on me cohost profile (cringe). visited my bestie up in Glasgow last week and while the weather was shite i had a really nice time!! and it's only like two weeks til i fly all the way to CANADA!! if you can believe it!! off to see me girlfriend, can't bloody wait hehe
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🔤SpellBinding: EGHILTM Wordo: DUSTS
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a question for the writers
hi my friends, the writers of this fine establishment.
how did you get started with creative writing?
i am a digital artist, when i feel my work can improve i know i can just practice more and i will get better! i've always felt atleast a little bit confident that i can do it, i am able to push though and get something on the page no matter how bad i think it is.
but i find writing to be different, it doesn't feel like a lack of practice but a lack of tools. even just writing dot point character descriptions i struggle with.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.