Links 21/04/2024: LINUX Unplugged and 'Screen Time' as the New Tobacco
Contents
- GNU/Linux
- Leftovers
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GNU/Linux
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Audiocasts/Shows
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Jupiter Broadcasting ☛ Linux is Bigger in Texas | LINUX Unplugged 559
We're back from Austin, with interviews and stories to share. Plus, it's Gentoo week and we take our first look at Fedora 40.
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Leftovers
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] Commonwealth Games faces uncertain future
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Games
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El País ☛ Fewer screens and more domino: Why playing cards and board games are staging a comeback in bars
These are not isolated facts, but proof that traditional games have established themselves as a leisure activity option among people in their 20s and 30s, something that few could have foreseen. We are told of a youth absorbed in the screens that would eventually lose all human contact but, all of a sudden, a bunch of kids under 20 are sitting at a table in a bar and one of them takes some cards out of his backpack and they all get into a game of something as unfashionable as Chinchón or Brisca (both popular Spanish card games).
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Education
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-14 [Older] Elementary students in Hamilton schools staying home more since pandemic, data shows
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The Kent Stater ☛ Unlocking the study secret: The impact of listening to music while studying – KentWired
The brain is both negatively and positively affected by listening to music while completing tasks like studying or doing homework.
Many students have different preferences about music when it comes to schoolwork.
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Daniel Lemire ☛ How do you recognize an expert?
Go back to the roots: experience. An expert is someone who has repeatedly solved the concrete problem you are encountering. If your toilet leaks, an experienced plumber is an expert. An expert has a track record and has had to face the consequences of their work. Failing is part of what makes an expert: any expert should have stories about how things went wrong.
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Bert Hubert ☛ NLNOG Presentation trilogy on technical jobs and careers
Over the past eight years I’ve held a trilogy of presentations over at NLNOG covering the working life and career of technical people. This is around two hours of video and slides (with notes), but I’ve heard from people who binge-watched all of it in one go. The presentations have been online for ages, but you had to know where to look for them. On this page I bring them all together, with some context.
All presentations were held at events hosted by the most wonderful NLNOG foundation. And this also would be my first tip if you want to improve your technical career: visit events where peers from the industry meet, and exchange experiences.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Nigerian's 60-hour chess marathon breaks record
The 29-year-old chess supremo is hoping to raise $1 million (€937,500) for children's education in Africa.
The record attempt began on Wednesday and continued for 60 hours, through to 12:40 a.m. on Saturday.
Tunde is the founder of Chess in Slums Africa. The organization aims to support the education of at least 1 million children in slums across the continent.
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-17 [Older] High cost of baby formula leaves parents stressed, desperate and seeking charity
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The Telegraph UK ☛ Too much screen time has turned my daughter into Gollum- we must vanquish our Ipads into Mordor
Jonathan Haight’s book The Anxious Generation sent parents (and grandparents) into a justified tailspin this spring, not least because millions of us can see the behavioural horrors he diagnoses in their own homes every day as a result of exposure to social media.
His preoccupation is the phone, but the tablet does the same damage with the same platforms. For children, they are like “hooking up your eyes and ears to a gigantic fire hose and pumping them full of garbage all the time” as Haidt said on Bill Maher’s Real Time HBO show last month.
What is going on when Penny hides under the duvet with her iPad, loses her temper when she can’t find it, or shuns the healthy light of day for the dim light of the screen?
Like Gollum with the Ring, the iPad encourages deception and a split personality.
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[Old] The Telegraph UK ☛ Four ways screens are harming our children's minds – and what we can do to help
At the start of Children’s Mental Health week, there are concerns about what this excessive screen use is doing to children’s brains and psychological wellbeing. So what can we do to protect them?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-17 [Older] Deadly cholera outbreak hits southern Africa
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] For new Alberta wildfire fighters, mental health and fatigue are top of mind
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] German commission recommends legalizing abortion before 12 weeks
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] Poland's abortion law bickering plagues Tusk coalition
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] Poland: Parliament to debate easing strict abortion law
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] Get drunk, not high at Oktoberfest, Bavaria says
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] Mobile freezers used to store corpses speak volumes about senior supports, advocates say
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] Poland: Lawmakers send forward bill to ease abortion law
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] Virtual doctor, virtual waiting room: New tech holds promise of speeding up ER wait times
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-17 [Older] N.S. hopes daycare will be key to keeping health-care system running
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Silicon Angle ☛ How chasing AI shifts tech spending patterns
Since the AI awakening in November 2022, the spending climate for enterprise tech has transformed. Customers are scraping money from other budgets to fund AI and running experiments in the desperate race for monetization. Names that were virtually unknown in early 2022 – such as OpenAI, Meta Llama and Anthropic PBC, are vying with the cloud-scale companies to get a piece of the pie. And notably, based on the latest Enterprise Technology Research survey data, though Google remains a distant third in cloud computing spend overall, it has dramatically accelerated its position in the all-important AI sector, closing the gap with Amazon Web Services Inc.
In this abbreviated Breaking Analysis, we’ll show you how the spending patterns have changed since early 2022, prior to the launch of ChatGPT, and we’ll share where customers are putting their bets on AI platforms.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] 'Woodland rapist' victim says genealogy website led police to alleged attacker
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] US House passes bill to renew controversial FISA spy program
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New York Times ☛ Opinion | Surveillance Law Section 702 Keeps Us Safe
That line blurred in the digital age. Many foreign nationals rely on American providers such as Google and Meta, which route or store data in the United States, raising questions as to whether the rules apply to where the targets are or where their data is collected. In 2008, Congress addressed that conundrum with Section 702. Instead of requiring the government to seek court orders for each foreign target, that provision requires yearly judicial approval of the rules that govern the program as a whole. That way, the government can efficiently obtain from communication providers the calls and messages of large numbers of foreign targets — 246,073 in 2022 alone.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ Paris tests AI surveillance ahead of Olympics
Police in the French capital Paris have given rail company SNCF and transport operator RATP authorization to conduct surveillance tests at four different train stations near two large events this weekend as a way to fine-tune their abilities ahead of this summer's Olympics.
The companies will have access to images from more than 100 cameras. Those images will then be analyzed using artificial intelligence to run "intelligent and algorithm-based technology" that will surveil crowds attending a pop concert by the Black-Eyed Peas as well as a soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Olympique Lyon.
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NPR ☛ Biden signs reauthorization of surveillance program into law despite privacy concerns
The proposal would renew the program, which permits the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. The reauthorization faced a long and bumpy road to final passage Friday after months of clashes between privacy advocates and national security hawks pushed consideration of the legislation to the brink of expiration.
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Defence/Aggression
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Pro Publica ☛ Netanyahu Resists U.S. Plan to Cut Off Aid to Israeli Military Unit
Israel’s leaders are fiercely pushing back against U.S. plans to withhold American assistance from an Israeli unit accused of human rights abuses.
Axios and Israeli news outlets reported over the weekend that Secretary of State Antony Blinken intends to ban U.S. support to Israel’s Netzah Yehuda unit, the country’s all-male, ultra-Orthodox battalion at the center of several controversies in the West Bank that go back years. Netzah Yehuda has been repeatedly accused of shooting and assaulting civilians, including in a 2022 case in which several commanders handcuffed, gagged and left for dead an elderly Palestinian-American man in Israel’s West Bank.
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New York Times ☛ Palestinians in West Bank Protest Israeli Raid That Killed at Least 10
At least 10 people were killed when Israeli forces raided the Nur Shams refugee camp, an episode that illustrated the territory’s continuing violence.
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India Times ☛ TikTok: TikTok says US House bill that could ban app would 'trample' free speech
Democratic Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday that TikTok could be used as a propaganda tool by the Chinese government, noting that "many young people" use TikTok to get news.
"The idea that we would give the Communist Party this much of a propaganda tool as well as the ability to scrape 170 million Americans' personal data, it is a national security risk," he told CBS News.
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France24 ☛ Bill to potentially ban TikTok in US advances in Congress
These critics also say TikTok is subservient to Beijing and a conduit to spread propaganda. China and the company deny these claims.
The bill, which could trigger the rare step of barring a company from operating in the US market, now goes to the Senate for a vote next week. It passed the House on Saturday with strong bipartisan support, by a margin of 360 to 58.
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CBC ☛ Halal mortgages in federal budget about 'being equal' for Muslims, providers say
In Tuesday's budget documents, the federal government indicated that it's "exploring new measures to expand access" to financing methods such as "halal mortgages."
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VOA News ☛ 8 suspected militants, linked to al-Qaida extremist group, arrested in Indonesia
Two laptops, several cellular phones and documents, including jihadi books were seized and suspects were being interrogated, Nugroho said.
National Police spokesperson Trunoyudo Wisnu Andiko said the arrests were the result of information obtained from 59 suspected militants detained in Oct. 2023.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] German police shut down pro-Palestinian conference
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] Brussels authorities order shutdown of right-wing gathering
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-17 [Older] 30 years after she was left for dead, London, Ont., woman reflects on surviving Rwandan genocide
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] Rwanda's village of reconciliation and unity
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] Mali junta cracks down on political activity
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] Mali: Junta bans media coverage of political parties
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] Mali widens crackdown on politics, media
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] US urges world to care more about Sudan
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] Sudan: EU ministers discuss aid on 1st anniversary of war
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-14 [Older] Sudan's year of war: Why there's no hope for a cease-fire
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-14 [Older] Somali pirates free Bangladesh cargo ship after ransom paid
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] US, Japan military alliance to get biggest revamp since 1951
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] US, Japan, Philippines hold summit amid China threat
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] The US Ambassador to Japan Says Boosting Arms Industry Ties Is Key to a Stronger Security Alliance
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] Terrorism and Extremism: Threat to the Security of Pakistan
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] Pakistan: 11 killed in suspected separatist raid
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] Germany pays Israeli Holocaust survivors amid Hamas war
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] France Steps up Security Around Synagogues and Jewish Schools
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] Germany: Police offer €5,000 for tips after synagogue attack
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Mexico News Daily ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] Federal government providing security protection for 250 political candidates
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] Niger protesters demand US troop withdrawal
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ADF ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] Nigerian Military Looks for Solutions to Complex Insecurity
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] Nigeria's Chibok girls: What happened 10 years ago
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] Nigeria rolls out world's first full shot against meningitis
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-14 [Older] Sydney stabbing: Police say no ideological motivation
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] Australia: Several injured in west Sydney church stabbing
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] Australia: Sydney knife attacker may have targeted women
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] Sydney police say 7 dead after shopping mall stabbings
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] German Bundestag approves payment cards for asylum-seekers
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] Germany: 3 teens held over suspected Islamist attack plans
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] Germany: New office targets police racism and discrimination
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] Women still rare in Germany's military
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] What to expect from Olaf Scholz's China visit?
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] Alexei Navalny memoir to be published this fall
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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US News And World Report ☛ 'Great Bravery and Resolve.' Reaction to the Death of Terry Anderson, AP Reporter Held Hostage
“Terry was deeply committed to on-the-ground eyewitness reporting and demonstrated great bravery and resolve, both in his journalism and during his years held hostage. We are so appreciative of the sacrifices he and his family made as the result of his work.” - Julie Pace, senior vice president and executive editor of the AP.
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[Old] NPR ☛ 'Poisoning The Press' Recounts Nixon-Anderson Feud
Nixon and Anderson were both extremely controversial figures, but Feldstein proves remarkably calm and even-handed throughout the book, even while discussing some of the men's lowest moments (Nixon's resignation in 1974; Anderson's inexplicable decision to censor his own expose on the Iran-Contra scandal). Feldstein has remarkable narrative skills -- if the names weren't so familiar, and the setting weren't decades ago, you could almost think you're reading a dystopian political thriller. And though the book deals in scandal, it's never lurid; Feldstein is engaging, but never sensationalistic. He writes with the kind of restraint and responsibility that always evaded his two main subjects, and the result isn't just interesting -- it's an absolutely essential book for anyone interested in American political history.
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[Old] The Washington Post ☛ The Lid On The Iran-Contra Story
We knew the administration was offering arms to the most deadly terrorist of them all, Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and published columns protesting that Khomeini, not Gadhafi, was behind most terrorist acts against the United States.
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Environment
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NPR ☛ Startups want to geoengineer a cooler planet. With few rules, experts see big risks
"At some point down the road, they're going to do this at a big enough scale to trigger some sort of climate impact," Talati says. "It can be done in an effective, globally governed way, or it can be done by two crazy people in California, and it can look horrible for a lot of people."
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Hindustan Times ☛ World Earth Day 2024 today: Google Doodle marks event with aerial views of planet's ‘natural beauty’
Google Doodle treated viewers to a one-minute video showcasing the process of selecting nature images from around the globe to transform Google's logo for this Earth Day tribute.
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Hindustan Times ☛ Earth Day: Clean-up drive fetches 8 sacks of trash in 1.5 hours from Kukrail Picnic Spot
Eight gunny bags full of trash, the heaviest weighing about 8 kilograms was what the 1.5 hour long clean-up drive fetched from Kukrail picnic spot on the Earth Day on Sunday.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] Belarus: FSC accused of greenwashing furniture trade
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Energy/Transportation
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] 174 People Stranded in the Air Are Rescued, Almost a Day After a Fatal Cable Car Accident in Turkey
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] Volkswagen to invest €2.5 billion in China
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] Scholz welcomes Chinese cars but urges 'fair' competition
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] Turkey: 174 people rescued after deadly cable car accident
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] Don't shut Line 5: Biden administration issues long-awaited position on Canada-U.S. pipeline
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-14 [Older] In an Ontario town split over a nuclear dump site, the fallout is over how they'll vote on the future
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-14 [Older] Anyone want a camper? It's a buyer's market for RVs as pandemic-era sales fizzle
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] General Motors to move Detroit HQ to new downtown building, plans to redevelop Renaissance Center
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] Quebec wants to stop sky-high prices from ticket resellers. It won't be easy
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] Argentina's Milei meets Elon Musk at Tesla factory
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Wildlife/Nature
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] Drought puts Alberta farmers at risk of another scourge of grasshoppers
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] 'A race against time': Alberta community chasing solutions after months of hauling water
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] Fashion giants linked to deforestation in Brazil
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] World's oldest gorilla celebrates 67th birthday in Berlin
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] EU pledges €3.5 billion to protect world's oceans
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] Rescue of trapped killer whale calf temporarily suspended
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Overpopulation
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[Repeat] Ruben Schade ☛ Singaporeans delaying or giving up on kids
The first is that it’s telling people think it’s a problem in the first place. We’ve built our economic systems to be growth dependent, meaning we need an ever-expanding population to make and buy things to merely break even. If we acknowledge Earth is a closed system with finite resources, and that economists can’t (in fact) bend the laws of physics, this can’t continue indefinitely.
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Finance
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] Bell Canada CEO Mirko Bibic defends job cuts in Commons committee testimony
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] New report slams RCMP treatment of homeless Indigenous women in Northwest Territories
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] Shoppers Drug Mart faces proposed class action for alleged 'unethical corporate practices'
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] One year of Germany's Supply Chain Act — some progress made
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] Suspended police officers blame unfair disciplinary process for costing taxpayers millions
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] 140 BMO customers say they lost $1.5M in transfer frauds, plan to sue bank
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] Quebec's biggest nurses' union rejects government deal
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] Lufthansa reaches pay deal with cabin crew after strikes
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] ECB holds interest rate at record high 4.5%
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] US: Joe Biden rescinds $7.4 billion of student debt
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-17 [Older] Dollar strength: Why developing countries are nervous
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] Third of German firms skeptical about 2024 — survey
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-10 [Older] B.C. labour board to consider union votes at 2 Amazon warehouses
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] Chinese custom or suspicious sale? Judge questions debtor's sale of house to son for $1
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] German housing crisis: Finding a home 'like winning the lottery!'
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] IMF cuts growth outlook for Germany
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Wired ☛ Here’s a Clever Way to Uncover America’s Voting Deserts
In a paper due to be published this summer in the journal SIAM Review, Mason Porter, a mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his students used tools from topology to do just that. Abigail Hickok, one of the paper’s coauthors, conceived the idea after seeing images of long lines in Atlanta. “Voting was on my mind a lot, partly because it was an especially anxiety-inducing election,” she said.
Topologists study the underlying properties and spatial relations of geometric shapes under transformation. Two shapes are considered topologically equivalent if one can deform into the other via continuous movements without tearing, gluing, or introducing new holes.
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India Times ☛ Mega Networks: Mega Networks plans to make AI servers in Maharashtra
Computer hardware company Mega Networks is planning to set up a factory by the third quarter of the ongoing fiscal 2024-2025 to locally manufacture artificial intelligence servers, its chief executive said.
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VOA News ☛ Apple pulls WhatsApp and Threads from App Store on Beijing's orders
The apps were removed from the store Friday after Chinese officials cited unspecified national security concerns.
Their removal comes amid elevated tensions between the U.S. and China over trade, technology and national security.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-14 [Older] More and more German mayors want to quit
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BIA Net ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] CoE Committee of Ministers urges Turkey to comply with ECtHR decision on Kavala
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-17 [Older] X blocks posts in India after election commission order
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-04-13 [Older] Elon Gives a Cringe Deposition, X Screws Up Twitter Links, LG TV Needs an Update and More
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Gizmodo ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] X/Twitter Wants New Users to a Pay Fee Before They Can Post
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-17 [Older] Croatia holds parliamentary polls amid PM-president rivalry
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-17 [Older] Croatia's election offers voters little prospect of change
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-15 [Older] Meta to Temporarily Shut Down Social Media Platform Threads in Turkey
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US News And World Report ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] Portugal's Far-Right Chega Vows Legal Action Over 10-Year Facebook Curbs
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Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda
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Futurism ☛ Internet Fooled by AI-Generated Kendrick Lamar Diss Track
A diss track featuring the apparent vocals of rapper Kendrick Lamar made its rounds on social media earlier this week, escalating the beef between him and Aubrey "Drake" Graham.
Now a 23-year-old musician who goes by the moniker Sly the Rapper has come forward, alleging he's behind the viral track, which was titled simply "Freestyle." And guess what? He says it was AI-generated.
That's impressive, because it fooled plenty of people into believing it was the real thing.
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Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] Biden considers Australia request to drop Julian Assange case
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] Greek journalists launch 24-hour strike over low wages
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Doc Searls ☛ Archives as Commons – Doc Searls Weblog
That ride began with the Santa Barbara News Press Controversy in 2006 and ended when Ampersand, the company McCaw created to hold the paper’s bag of assets (which did not include its landmark building downtown, which McCaw kept), filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in late July of last year. Here are stories about the death of the paper in three local news journals that have done a great job of taking up the slack left when the News-Press began to collapse, plus one in the LA Times: [...]
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Deccan Chronicle ☛ Terry Anderson, US journalist held captive for years in Lebanon, dies at 76
Anderson, who chronicled his abduction and torturous imprisonment by Islamic militants in his best-selling 1993 memoir “Den of Lions,” died on Sunday at his home in Greenwood Lake, New York, said his daughter, Sulome Anderson.
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Reuters ☛ Terry Anderson, US journalist held hostage nearly seven years in Lebanon, dead at 76
Under pressure from the media and the U.S. hostages' families, the Reagan administration negotiated a secret and illegal deal in the mid-1980s to facilitate arms sales to Iran in return for the release of American hostages. But the deal, known as the Iran–Contra affair, failed to gain freedom for any of the hostages.
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New York Times ☛ Terry Anderson, Reporter Held Hostage for Six Years, Dies at 76
Terry Anderson, the American journalist who had been the longest-held Western hostage in Lebanon when he was finally released in 1991 by Islamic militants after more than six years in captivity, died on Saturday at his home in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., in the Hudson Valley. He was 76.
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CJR ☛ 404 Media and the hopes of worker-owned journalism - Columbia Journalism Review
It wasn’t so different from the kind of reporting Koebler had done for years at his previous employer, Vice’s Motherboard. But this time, he was doing it for 404 Media, a new publication that he, along with his three coeditors, don’t just work for, they own.
“I didn’t realize how important it would feel that the articles I do belong to me,” Koebler told CJR. “It gives me a sense of agency that I don’t think I ever had.”
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Civil Rights/Policing
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-11 [Older] Australia: Court nixes Qatar Airways strip-search suit
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-17 [Older] Germany: Far-right leader on trial for using Nazi slogan
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-17 [Older] Germany busts people-smuggling ring for Chinese nationals
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CBC ☛ 2024-04-12 [Older] Canada broke its treaty promise, but Blood Tribe is barred from suing, Supreme Court rules
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2024-04-16 [Older] Georgia: Riot police clear 'foreign agents' bill protesters
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Philosophical Case for a Four-Day Workweek
Philosopher Jason Read discusses his new book on the politics of work, in which he draws insights from Marx, Spinoza, and elements of popular culture to tackle an urgent question: Why do people fight for their servitude as if it were their salvation?
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JURIST ☛ UK police issues apology after officer's 'openly Jewish' comment at pro-Palestine protest
Calls for the head of the Metropolitan police, Sir Mark Rowley, to resign or to be fired were issued by the CAA, the former home secretary Suella Braverman and other Ministers because of the handling of the protests. Braverman stated “[t]wo-tier policing has now reached the stage where a Jewish person cannot cross the road. We’ve had countless mistakes & apologies. We don’t need more speeches. Enough is enough. Someone needs to take responsibility.”
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ANF News ☛ Kurdish teacher sentenced to ten years in prison in Iran
Soma Pourmohammadi is a member of the board of the socio-cultural organisation Nojîn (also Nozhin), which is based in Sine. The organisation offers lessons in Kurdish literature and language and promotes other civil society and educational initiatives, especially in remote regions without schools. In this way, even disadvantaged children receive basic education that will help them on their future path in life. However, this commitment is a thorn in the side of the Iranian regime, which has systematically discriminated against Kurds for decades.
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Los Angeles Times ☛ California releases hatchery-raised salmon in Klamath River
“It’s going to be a very, very, very healing experience to be able to see the salmon come back, to have our religion come back, and to be able to live as Karuk people,” he said in a video recorded after the release. “It’s like a new beginning.” Advertisement Hornbrook, CA - February 28: The Klamath River runs free through the former Iron Gate Reservoir, cutting through sediments to the river's original course on Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024 in Hornbrook, CA. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Leaders of the Shasta Indian Nation and the Quartz Valley Indian Tribe also watched as the salmon headed downstream.
It was the first major release of coho salmon into the Klamath since the removal of four dams began last year.
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US News And World Report ☛ Autoworkers Union Celebrates Breakthrough Win in Tennessee and Takes Aim at More Plants in the South
The UAW won a stunning 73% of the vote at VW after losing elections in 2014 and 2019. It was the union's first win in a Southern assembly plant owned by a foreign automaker.
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YLE ☛ Workplace old age discrimination starts at 50, professor says
As Finland plans to raise the age of retirement, the assumption is that people will continue to work longer. But at the same time, people over 50 face increasing age discrimination. Melin said that a change in attitude is needed.
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Top 10 Biggest IT Companies That Have Stopped Work From Home For Millions Of Employees
Historically known for its eco-friendly remote work policies, Dell is now asking all those employees who live within an hour’s commute to come down to office 3 days a week.
An American video game company, Activision Blizzard faced the flak for its return-to-office mandate, with concerns about potential layoffs.
On one side, IBM has issued a relocation ultimatum to its US managers and on other side, citing collaboration and security concerns, Rockstar enforced in-office requirements.
Following suit, HCL Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have emphasized in-office work for various roles.
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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El País ☛ Yemeni women become mobile phone technicians to curb sextortion
And mobile phones store a lot of that honor in the form of personal images and confidential information, even if these images are neither explicit nor revealing.
“Widespread IT illiteracy amongst women and their reliance on strangers to set up their emails or fix their devices makes them prone to extortionists,” said activist Mokhtar Abdel Al-Moez, founder of Sanad, a nonprofit organization with around 400 volunteer digital experts offering support to cybercrime victims since March 2020.
Ultimately, Warda gave up, joining the ranks of many women who go for months, even years, without mobile phones because they’re unable to fix technical mishaps that can befall any device, and are unable to buy new ones.
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History
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[Old] PBS ☛ Who Made America? | Innovators | Gary Kildall
A technology industry urban legend claims that Kildall went flying rather than meet with IBM, thus causing IBM to market Microsoft's inferior operating system, changing the course of computer history. The story is untrue.
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[Old] DR ☛ Digital Research - Gary Kildall
Gary created the first Operating System for the microprocessor, CP/M. The most advanced current version of CP/M in 1999 is IMS Ltd. REAL/32. CP/M also serves as the basis of all modern DOS versions including the outstanding Caldera DR DOS and other derivitaves including PC-DOS from IBM, and MS-DOS from Microsoft, whose position in the computer industry is based on its unauthorized 1981 "cloning"of Dr. Gary Kildall's Digital Research CP/M, which gave birth to the IBM PC standard upon which Microsoft MS-DOS, Windows CE, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 00 (now 2000, formerly NT) are based today.
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[Old] Forbes ☛ Gary Kildall The DOS that wasn't
Kildall was bitter. He said DOS, which Microsoft bought from Seattle Computer Products, copycatted all the best features in CP/M, and that Gates then made DOS just different enough to be incompatible with CP/M. He threatened to sue, but never did. Particularly galling for Kildall was having to compete in the IBM-compatible market with a clone of what he saw as his own work. This MS-DOS substitute, which Digital Research called DR-DOS, never dented Microsoft's sales.
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[Old] Bryan Lunduke ☛ Remembering Gary Kildall on what would have been his 80th birthday
As a kid in the 1980s, I would watch The Computer Chronicles every chance I got. I even had some episodes recorded to VHS — which I would watch repeatedly. Gary (along with Stewart) helped to inspire and foster a deep passion for all of computing.
Back in 2017, I had the honor of spending a little time with Gary’s friend, Stewart Cheifet. The topic, naturally, drifted towards Gary. I will always be thankful to Stewart for the time he shared.
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[Old] Computer History ☛ Gary Kildall and the 40th Anniversary of the Birth of the PC Operating System
Working in the tool shed behind his home in Pacific Grove, Kildall “loaded my CP/M program from paper tape to the diskette and ‘booted’ CP/M from the diskette, and up came the prompt: *. This may have been one of the most exciting days of my life, except, of course, when I visited Niagara Falls,” [2] he exclaimed, “We now had the power of an IBM S/370 [mainframe computer] at our fingertips.” [1] This is going to be a “big thing” they told each other. There is no record of the precise date of this event, but Torode recalls that it was before he moved to Chicago in the fall of 1974. [3]
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Mark Nottingham ☛ Considerations for AI Opt-Out
Creating a Large Language Model (LLM) requires a lot of data – as implied by the name, LLMs need voluminous input data to be able to function well. Much of that content comes from the Internet, and early models have been seeded by crawling the whole Web.
This now widespread practice of ingestion without consent is contentious, to put it mildly. Content creators feel that they should be compensated for providing this input data, or at least have a choice about whether it is used; AI advocates caution that without easy access to input data, their ability to innovate will be severely limited.
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Copyrights
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Torrent Freak ☛ Premier League Wants GoDaddy to Identify Live Streaming Pirates
The Premier League wants domain registrar GoDaddy to identify people connected to dozen of pirate sports streaming domains that broadcast live football matches. The information, including IP-addresses and payment information, could assist with enforcement efforts. In addition, the Premier League would like GoDaddy to take action against these infringements but, as far as we know, that hasn't happened yet.
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Monopolies/Monopsonies
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