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Techrights
Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 18, 2024
> GNOME bluefish
> Inspired by YouTuber Wintergatan’s instrument of the same name, the Modulin provided concert-goers with a multimodal experience to make music on the spot.
> The Shared Sky Project encourages people to express experiences tied to science, including events like the solar eclipse, through poetry.
> A time-capsule of human history.
> Two parts connected at last.
> A prominent education blogger receives multiple complaints about the incident at a high school.
> Aalto University's Espoo campus lost two expensive Karuselli chairs, but security cameras caught the theft on tape.
> The author of The Anxious Generation argues that parents, schools, and society must keep kids off of social control media.
> China's legacy chip production has skyrocketed since U.S. export sanctions took effect. In Q1 2024, China's legacy chip production was three times what it was in Q1 2019.
> This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. I don’t know about you, but I only learned last week that there’s something connecting MSG and computer chips.
> Riley, an 8 lb pug, has more beauty than brains, and a palate as unrefined as crude oil. While we hate criticizing others’ interests and tastes, his penchant for eating cat poop needed to stop. After a thorough exploration of a variety of options, including cat food additives that make its excrement taste worse (HOW? WHY? Clearly taste wasn’t the issue!), automatic litter boxes that stow the secretions, and pet doors that authenticate access to the room with the litter box, [Science Buddies] eventually settled on a solution that was amenable to all members of the family.
> I knew something had changed before I even paid for my ticket to this year’s Vintage Computer Festival East at the InfoAge Science and History Museum in Wall, New Jersey.
> Some mini PCs and firewall/network appliances are starting to show up with the defective chip maker Intel Processor U300/U300E penta-core CPU on Aliexpress and Amazon. It looks to be a 15W entry-level part for the 13th Gen Raptor Lake processor that may provide a more powerful and slightly more expensive alternative to the popular Alder Lake-N Processor and Core i3-N305 SoCs.
> We have a long-standing joke that dates from the early 2000s, when the hyperscalers – there were not yet cloud builders as we now know them – started having hundreds of millions of users and millions of servers and storage arrays to run applications for them at the same time there was the beginnings of consolidation among the OEMs who created the servers and storage used by nearly all enterprises, including dot-com startups.
> Theory didn't predict this one.
> But this discovery could be useful.
> Some people seem to have all the luck.
> Verdict: Missing Context
> New regimens in development, including once-weekly pills and semiannual shots, could help control the virus in hard-to-reach populations.
> Mexico has reported 859 probable cases of measles or rubella, all of which are suspected to have originated outside of Mexico.
> The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Defense Department launched a new Electronic Health Record (EHR) at the Lovell Federal Health Care Center in Chicago.
> More respondents to the survey are willing to live as a single and not get married.
> Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids are the drugs most frequently involved in overdose deaths.
> Hong Kong’s public hospitals saw a turnover rate of 6.1 per cent for full-time doctors in 2023, authorities have said as they continued to recruit non-local medics to address the manpower shortage.
> Spreading among the elite, coffee is replacing cigarettes as a typical bribe.
> Money supposedly spent to help Americans may actually have done a lot of damage.
> At a time of heightened confusion and legal battles over access to abortion, women are looking to social control media for answers.
> Global digital rights advocates are watching to see if Congress acts, worried that other countries could follow suit with app bans of their own.
> From N.C. Bar & Tavern Ass'n v. Cooper, decided yesterday by the N.C. Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge April Wood, joined by Judges Donna Stroud and Jefferson Griffin: Plaintiffs appeal from the trial court's order granting summary judgment for Defendant and dismissing all their claims arising [...]
> The number of influenza and Covid-19 patients continued to fall last week according to data published April 17 by the Disease Prevention and Control Center (SPKC).
> Canadian legislators proposed 19,600 amendments—almost certainly AI-generated—to a bill in an attempt to delay its adoption.
> ConnectWise today laid off “certain colleague positions” throughout the company to improve operations and spearhead partner growth opportunities.
> “ConnectWise has undergone limited organizational changes to improve operations and ensure resources align with our partners' growth opportunities,” the company told CRN in an emailed statement. “As part of these changes, the company has made the difficult decision to eliminate certain colleague positions. ConnectWise remains committed to our partners' experience and is confident in our plans to support their success.”
> Despite the staggering artificial intelligence (AI) boom that has permeated the stock market and multiple industries since at least the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, employment in the technology sector has been far from stable.
> In fact, since the start of 2023, approximately 300,000 workers lost their jobs and Elon Musk’s beleaguered electric vehicle (EV) maker, Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) is poised to add several tens of thousands more to the tally.
> Google LLC is said today it’s letting go a significant number of workers in what will be its second round of layoffs this year. The layoffs will mostly affect the company’s financial and real estate departments, a report in Business Insider said.
> The dismissals escalated longstanding tensions between company leaders and activist employees opposed to supplying technology to Israel’s government.
> EDPB Opinion: Meta cannot rely on "Pay or Okay"
> First Update on the EDPB's "pay or okay" opinion on larger platforms.
> The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act would prevent law enforcement and intelligence agencies from purchasing data that they would otherwise need a warrant to obtain.
> Ahead of an expected U.S. Senate vote this week that would not only reauthorize but expand the spying law Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) [...]
> Civil liberties advocates want to narrow the scope of an amendment to a controversial surveillance law.
> An interview with Consumer Choice Center Deputy Director Yaël Ossowski.
> The bill’s passage was cheered by privacy advocates, but faces an uncertain future in the Senate and with the White House.
> Myanmar’s jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest as a health measure due to a heat wave, the military government said. On Wednesday it also granted amnesty for over 3,000 prisoners to mark this week’s traditional New Year holiday.
> The exercises will be focused near the potential flashpoints of the South China Sea and Taiwan.
> US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Chinese counterpart Dong Jun via video teleconference Tuesday, in the first substantive talks between the superpowers’ defense chiefs in nearly 18 months.
> Chinese foreign ministry says the expanded annual exercise Balikatan destabilizes the region.
> The Philippines urged China to "reflect upon its own actions" in the South China Sea.
> Chinese investment in Indonesia reached more than $10 billion in 2023.
> Nvidia's Jetson TX2i system-on-chip is good enough for hypersonic weapons.
> “Australians who have used LabHost to steal data should not expect to remain anonymous. Authorities have obtained a vast amount of evidence during this investigation and we are working to identify anyone who has used this platform to target innocent victims.”
> Media reports in Kyrgyzstan cited the Digital Development Ministry as saying that it had instructed Internet providers to limit access to Fentanylware (TikTok) as of April 18.
> A special State Department panel recommended months ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid after reviewing allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses.
> But Blinken has failed to act on the proposal in the face of growing international criticism of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials.
> Jean-Loup Samaan joins to dissect the rise of the new minilateral movement in the Middle East, IMEC, the groundbreaking corridor, and its impact on the region compared to Chinese initiatives.
> A group of Iranian political prisoners around the country have launched a hunger strike to protest a wave of death sentences that could push Iran's execution rate even higher, human rights activists reported.
> A year and a half after the start of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, police in Iran have resumed “morality patrols” to crack down on women violating the Islamic Republic’s strict hijab rules. Patrols consisting of uniformed male officers and female officers in black chadors have been seen in the capital Tehran and other cities, along with the notorious white vans used to transport arrested women to police stations.
> Rumours that cannibalism is common in Haiti circulated in March on social control media. FRANCE 24's Observers team looked into these reports and found that several of the videos upon which these rumours seem to be based actually have nothing to do with Haiti – even though several real instances of cannibalism appear to have taken place in Haiti between 2019 and 2024. However, this gruesome practice remains extremely rare. But this hasn’t stopped conservative social control media accounts based in the United States and the Dominican Republic from widely spreading this rumour. Elon Musk shared one of the most widely shared posts, which garnered around 17 million views.
> The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is increasingly taking a stand against corruption in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Bribing foreign officials in securing projects has always been an unspoken BRI mechanism, but what’s become ...
> In the Philippines, the proponents of the trilateral alliance frame it as a response to the “threat of assertive China.” In reality, the unwarranted trilateral alliance seems to be the result of a longstanding US maritime counter-insurgency (COIN) campaign, resting on the work of the US Navy Department and other US interests.
> Israeli officials say they didn’t see a strike on a high-level Iranian target in Syria as a provocation, and did not give Washington a heads-up about it until right before it happened.
> In debating how to respond to last weekend’s Iranian airstrike, Israel’s war cabinet is choosing between options that could deter future attacks or de-escalate hostilities.
> The Lebanese militant group said the drone and missile attack was in response to Israeli airstrikes that killed two Hezbollah commanders.
> The talk before the opening ceremony of the Paris Games ideally should be about its grandiose backdrop: a summer sun setting on the Seine River as athletes drift by in boats and wave to cheering crowds. But behind the romantic veneer that Paris has long curated, mounting security concerns already have had an impact on the unprecedented open-air event.
> Japan expects AUVs to be used for inspecting offshore wind power generation facilities and underwater surveillance.
> After a former student killed six people last year at the private Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, state leaders have been looking for ways to make schools safer. Their focus so far has been to ramp up penalties against current students who make mass threats against schools.
> Months after the killings, legislators passed a law requiring students who make such threats to be expelled for a year (unless a school superintendent decides otherwise) and allowing schools not to enroll them afterward. This year, the legislature passed bills that make the offense a felony and that revoke driving privileges for a year.
> Those arrested range from 15 to 90 years old, the government says.
> An editorial in a Chinese state-controlled newspaper admonished "two-faced" Japan for inaccurately portraying it as a regional security threat.
> The upcoming European Parliament elections are more important than ever to the EU citizens, the latest Eurobarometer survey shows. The most pressing issues for Europeans are poverty reduction, health, as well as defence and security. The latter is also the most important topic for Lithuanians.
> The visit is meant to boost cooperation between the Nordic countries "in the current security policy context, both bilaterally and as members of Nato", according to the Office of the President.
> Boeing is the subject of back-to-back Senate hearings Wednesday, as Congress examines allegations of major safety failures at the embattled aircraft manufacturer.
> It could collapse into the sea.
> Doing nothing has come at a devastating cost.
> The heavy rains also flooded parts of Dubai International Airport, causing scores of flight delays and cancellations, and brought other cities in the U.A.E. to a standstill.
> The design was approved by the the government in Jiangsu province and the China Railway Group.
> Many beginner woodworkers, looking to offset the introductory costs of starting a hobby, will source their wood from pallets. Generally they’re easily found and can be low or no cost, but typically require a bit of work before they’re usable in a project. [Garage Avenger] is looking to do something a little outside of the box with his pallet project, though. He’s using raw pallets as a chassis for a four-speed go-kart, partially for the challenge and excitement and also to one-up a Pinterest post.
> 'CP3O' allegedly exploited clown computing providers by creating two companies where multiple accounts were created under respective names, and exploited benefits without paying the bills.
> AI’s voracious need for computing power is threatening to overwhelm energy sources, requiring the industry to change its approach to the technology, according to Arm Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer [...]
> In 2023, conservationists and carpenters converged on Peru to build luxury accommodations in the rain-forest canopy.
> As long as two buses!
> Scientists found out by accident.
> California regulators voted Wednesday to establish a drinking water limit on hexavalent chromium, a toxic chemical compound made infamous by the movie “Erin Brockovich.”
> China’s economy expanded far more than expected in the first quarter of 2024, data showed Tuesday, but disappointing retail and industrial figures suggested leaders face severe headwinds to hit their annual growth target.
> Opposition parties were unhappy with plans announced on Tuesday to raise taxes and cut spending to improve the state's bottom line by some three billion euros in 2025.
> Students will no longer receive general housing benefits, high-earners and pensioners will pay more tax and VAT will increase by 1.5 percentage points.
> A social policy professor says that students and people reliant on public healthcare will likely lose out the most.
> As the economy cools, pressure is building on the Bank of England to cut interest rates.
> Chocolate biscuits and crumpets have fallen in price
> “We collectively have to make tough decisions,” Google Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat wrote in a memo that underlined the importance of organising teams to leverage changes AI has brought to the tech sector.
> Google is cutting an unspecified number of jobs, the technology giant has confirmed, as part of its latest efforts to cut costs.
> The tech firm said the cuts were not company-wide and that affected employees will be able to apply for internal roles, but it has not confirmed how many people have been affected or the teams involved.
> For the second time this year, Google is laying off a large number of employees. The round of layoffs mainly affects the finance and real estate departments of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
> The layoffs follow an earlier major round of layoffs this year. Last year, Google and other Alphabet subsidiaries also laid off employees. Like other tech companies, Google wants to spend more on AI development. To do so, it needs the relevant staff and to fund such positions, it is cutting jobs that do not contribute to technological innovation.
> Another tech giant is laying off its workers amid economic uncertainty and the push to invest more in AI.
> Google is laying off an undetermined number of workers, the company announced Wednesday, as the company aims to lessen costs amid economic uncertainties.
> The Alphabet-owned company left much to the imagination as it did not specify what departments or the amount of employees which would be effected by the cuts.
> However, this is nothing new in tech nor for Google, as the new announcement comes after a flurry of layoffs across the company and the tech sphere. The tech giant laid off hundreds of employees just this January, across its engineering, assistant, and hardware teams.
> Layoffs were announced at high-profile companies, including IBM, Stellantis, and Evonik in the US as well as Sainsbury’s, Metro Bank, and Unilever in the UK.
> China's foreign minister is expected to sign an economic cooperation deal on a visit to Papua New Guinea on Saturday, just days before Australia's prime minister arrives to mark historical defence ties by walking a famous World War Two trail.
> It’s enough to make you want to shoot yourself in the face in embarrassment. It’s enough to make you want to dress as a mime when visiting Europe because at least you won’t be mistaken for an American. It’s enough to make you wonder how the Land of the Free became the Land of the Besotted Idiots so quickly during the four years overseen by a lame duck president more famous for sexual harassment, failed lawsuits, and bankruptcies than actual governance.
> Australians are demanding answers after a deadly knife attack in a Sydney mall and a stabbing during a church service. Some locals argue that tough gun laws prevented a deadlier attack. Others worry religious extremism is rising unchecked.
> The UK Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that part of the UK’s trade union laws are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
> In his last book, “American Spirits,” Banks took stories from the news about rural, working-class life and turned them into fables of national despair.
> A back-room deal between the former President, his then lawyer, and the C.E.O. of American Media plays a central role in the criminal felony charges he faces in Manhattan.
> Kansas had among the most lax civil asset forfeiture laws in the country, but a bill sent to the governor's desk would strengthen protections for property owners.
> The US Senate voted Wednesday to dismiss two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The US House of Representatives impeached Mayorkas in February over his handling of the migrant situation at the US-Mexico border.
> Democrats quickly swept aside the articles of impeachment accusing the homeland security secretary of refusing to enforce immigration laws and breach of public trust, calling them unconstitutional.
> The impeachment trial for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is headed to the Senate. It could be over before it begins. “Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.
> Authorities interrogated him several times before suspending his teaching license.
> A Hong Kong court has refused three activists’ applications to challenge their convictions over refusing to comply with a data request from national security police at the city’s top court.
> Independent Kazakh journalist Duman Mukhammedkarim, on trial for what he says are politically motivated charges, has launched another hunger strike to protest against the delay of an investigation into his complaint that he was tortured in custody.
> Not every bad mistake is evil. Not every poor decision is deliberate. Especially in these more automated times. Sometimes, machines just make mistakes, and it’s about time we came to terms with that simple fact.
> Jimmy Lai had mentioned in late November 2019 the idea of conducting a primary poll to “continue the momentum” of the pro-democracy camp in a legislative race originally scheduled for 2020, an activist has told the media tycoon’s landmark national security trial.
> Stella Assange denounced that the U.S. assurance regarding the First Amendment is not really an assurance.
> Considering the tale of the longtime NPR editor who decided to pull a Bulworth at the tail end of his long career.
> Iranian reporters and broadcasters in Britain have suffered physical attacks, threats and surveillance, a report by Reporters Without Borders said, weeks after a newscaster was stabbed in London.
> The chair of the conscripts' union says that hopefully it won't take another 30 years for the military to revamp the ill-fitting uniform pieces.
> They recorded two Fentanylware (TikTok) videos to ease racial tensions on social control media.
> But what knocked everyone's socks off was the massive victory in Greece, where EDRi member Homo Digitalis' strategic complaint led to a record-breaking fine to the Ministry of Asylum and Migration for violating people's data protection rights in its border management systems KENTAUROS and HYPERION.
> On 3 April, the Greek Data Protection Authority (DPA) slapped the Ministry of Asylum and Migration with a record-breaking €175,000 fine under the General Data Protection Regulation for the border management systems KENTAUROS and HYPERION. The DPA’s investigation started back in 2022, following a strategic complaint filed by the EDRi member Homo Digitalis and its partners in Greece.
> On Wednesday (10 April), the EU is set to vote on a new set of asylum and migration reforms. Among the many controversial changes proposed in the new migration pact, one went almost unnoticed — a seemingly innocent reform of the EU's asylum database, EURODAC. Although framed as purely technical adjustments, the reality is far more malicious. The changes to EURODAC will massively exacerbate violence against people on the move.
> The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), part of the 2021 infrastructure bill, currently provides 23+ million low-income Americans a $30 broadband discount every month. But those 23 million Americans are poised to soon lose the discount because key Republicans — who routinely dole out billions of dollars on far dumber fare — refuse to fund a $4-$7 billion extension.
> Byung-Chul Han, in treatises such as “The Burnout Society” and his latest, “The Crisis of Narration,” diagnoses the frenetic aimlessness of the digital age.
> Dr Mona Jaber from QMUL discusses her research into the use of fibre optic communication systems to measure traffic, digital twins and social-science led research.
> As it exports internet infrastructure, China is expanding its authoritarian model of the web, report says.
> Telecommunications services are getting more expensive. Companies explain that they have provided better internet and other improvements, so customer bills are also rising, Latvian Television reported April 16.
> JUVE Patent: What are your goals as the new president of the 3rd chamber? Anne-Claire Le Bras: It is very important to me to promote exchange between judges and lawyers.
> The Federal Circuit is set to consider the use of terms like “patented,” “proprietary,” and “exclusive” in commercial advertising can be actionable under § 43(a)(1)(B) of the Lanham Act when their use is not entirely accurate. The key issue on appeal is whether the district court erred in granting summary judgment for Crocs on Double Diamond Distribution and U.S.A. Dawgs’ (“Dawgs”) counterclaim for false advertising under the Lanham Act.
> I’m always on the lookout for interesting new scholarship related to intellectual property and innovation policy. The following are a few of the articles that I’ve been delving into this past week: [...]
> French electronics giant subsidiary Thales and UK firm Kigen have settled their dispute in the UK, just one week before their scheduled FRAND trial on 12 April 2024 went ahead (HP-2022-000011). The terms of the settlement are confidential.
> On April 15, 2024, less than one month after Unified filed an ex parte reexamination, the Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) granted Unified’s request, finding substantial new questions of patentability on the challenged claims of U.S. Patent 11,738,659, owned and asserted by Emerging Automotive LLC. The ‘659 patent monopoly generally relates to systems and methods for generating and sharing electronic keys (e-Keys) with users and cloud-based processing systems making e-Keys sharable for enabling shared use of a vehicle.
> Unified is pleased to announce PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winners below totaling $4,000 in cash prizes. The patents are owned by S3G Technology LLC, an NPE. The patents generally relate to a computerized system for efficiently modifying remote software. The patents have been asserted against Foursquare, TripAdvisor, HTC, Acer, ASUSTek, and Samsung.
↺ 4th Circuit Upholds District Court and TTAB: Timberland Boot Design Lacks Acquired Distinctiveness
> The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed-in-part the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, concluding that the lower court did not err in finding that Timberland’s product configuration mark (shown immediately below) lacked acquired distinctiveness and was therefore unregistrable. The district court had also found the configuration to be de jure functional. [TTABlogged here], but the appellate court declined to reach the functionality issue. TBL Licensing v. Vidal, Appeal No. 23-1150 (4th Cir. April 15, 2024).
> Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” will be released on April 19. In advance, we asked poets what they think of the pop star’s wordsmithing.
> Australian model Leah Halton’s Fentanylware (TikTok) video featuring YG Marley’s ‘Praise Jah in the Moonlight’ is on track to break the record for the most-viewed and most-favorited Fentanylware (TikTok) video of all time.
> In 1927, a pair of lurid “translations” appeared in English, marketed as authentic tales by Giovanni Boccaccio and illustrated with supposedly new works by Aubrey Beardsley. Jonah Lubin and Maria Laurids Lazzarotti search for the origin of these fakes, in which illicit sex begets terrible violence, and uncover a story involving pseudotranslation, Yiddish shund literature, and the piracy king of literary modernism, Samuel Roth.
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