● 08.25.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Leftover Links 25/08/2023: Focus Shifts to Russia

Posted in News Roundup at 11:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Leftovers

• This last weekend I completed a bike rides project I started during the first Covid lockdown in 2020:

• I’ve cycled to every settlement (and radio observatory) within 20km of my house, in alphabetical order.

• If you’ve ever had trouble with a footpath, bus stop, or other piece of urban infrastructure, you probably know the hassles of dealing with a local council. It can be incredibly difficult just to track down the right avenue to report issues, let alone get them sorted in a timely fashion.

• Last year saw a surge in Americans moving – and more often away from big cities – compared with the pre-pandemic year of 2019. We explore the trends in maps and graphics.

• As a founder of Adobe Systems, he oversaw the development of software and systems that made modern personal computing possible.

Education

• Tirien Steinbach has left her role as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion dean at Stanford Law School following a protest four months ago against Judge Kyle Duncan that was criticized for being anti-free speech.

• Nearly 400 proposals aimed at allowing parents and government officials to change school lessons have been introduced in state legislatures since 2021, according to a new report from a nonprofit that defends free expression.

• Why it matters: Though less than 10% have passed, the climate around the bills has intimidated educators into self-censorship in schools, limiting discussions around racism and gender, PEN America said.

• The purpose of assessing a teacher’s digital competence is not just carrying out an assessment, but it is important for the process to be supported and transparent for the stakeholders involved. Self-assessment alone does not provide a comprehensive overview of a teacher’s digital competence, and it is important to implement systematic approaches that support the development of digital competence, found Linda Helene Sillat in her doctoral thesis.

• Washington education officials have barred a private special education school from accepting new students this fall after a state investigation found “unacceptably high” levels of physical restraints and of staff isolating students in locked rooms.

• The state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction launched the investigation after a Seattle Times and ProPublica series last year revealed that the Northwest School of Innovative Learning had long been the subject of allegations that it abused students, misused isolation rooms, let unqualified aides lead classes, and lacked basic educational materials, including textbooks.

• Bullying in schools has shot up over the past five years, according to an annual survey by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

• Why it matters: Years of pandemic disruption have caused students to struggle with stress management, problem solving and peer relationships, the survey found.

• Driving the news: 40% of child and teen respondents said they were bullied on school campuses in the past year, according to the Youth Right Now survey, conducted annually by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

Hardware

• Sensified.io Seguro 150 is a 4mm thick waterproof temperature logger designed for cold chain shipping applications in the food and healthcare industries and can also be used in retail settings. Most IoT devices require you to install some type of proprietary app, but the Seguro 150 is said not to require any app for the receiver and the temperature logger instead relies on Bluetooth LE and NFC so he/she can tap his/her phone to access the data and it’s also possible to receive PDF or Excel reports by email.

• SimplyNUC released details for their upcoming Onyx 4×4 NUC powered by the latest Intel 13th Gen Raptor Lake H series processors. The company indicates that these devices can operate 24/7 in office workstations or in high-demanding applications including robotics, IoT networks among others.

• The Macintosh Portable was possibly one of the coolest computing devices to be seen with back at the end of the 1980s, providing as it did a Mac in a slightly nicer version of the hefty luggable portables of the day than the PC world could offer. Inside was a mere 68000, but it ran Mac OS system 6 and looked light years ahead of any comparable PC in doing so.

• “The design and specifications of feature phones have not changed much over the last few years. This is one of the factors that keep consumers from purchasing a feature phone,” the company said.

• “The addition of some new hardware configurations and features that are abreast with the current trends while still maintaining the simplicity of usage, may open more gates for the growth of feature phones.

• “NFC is one such feature. NFC can enable payments, home automation, quick pairing, and make public transport access more convenient for users.

• “Similarly, eSIMs may also be a great hardware integration as it may attract consumers to adopt a feature phone as a companion device that they can easily switch to from their main device in situations where they do not want to bring out their expensive smartphone. Adding these attributes would help make feature phones more relevant for day-to-day use.”

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• Sara Van Horn and Cal Turner spoke with Finkelstein for Jacobin about the current failures of health care in the United States, the political struggles that led to universal coverage in other high-income countries, and the historical evidence that the United States is already committed to providing health care to all.

• The American Academy of Pediatrics published a study in the journal Pediatrics showing that firearms continued to be the leading cause of death among U.S. children.

• The study found that 4,752 children died from gun-related injuries in 2021, an 8.8-percent increase from the year before.

• It’s March 2020. The sun is shining on Kent State University. Centennial green is perfectly groomed, and groups of students are scattered about on blankets and beach towels. The mingling sounds of gossip, laughter and music drift to Tom Kijauskas’ ears.

• After two consecutive quarters of economic decline, Lima needs to renew its social contract with Peruvians, which was so badly damaged during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the years since.

• IPSO said it was a “significant” inaccuracy because it was on a “topic of national importance”.

• The study was done by the federally funded Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• The first of these tools, WormGPT, appeared on the dark web on 13 July. Marketed as a ‘blackhat’ alternative to ChatGPT with no ethical boundaries, WormGPT is based on the open-source GPT-J large-language model developed in 2021. Available in monthly (€100) or yearly (€550) subscriptions, WormGPT, according to its anonymous seller, has a range of features such as unlimited character inputs, memory retention and coding capabilities. Allegedly trained on malware data, its primary uses are generating sophisticated phishing and business email attacks and writing malicious code. The tool is constantly being updated with new features, which are advertised on a dedicated Telegram channel.

• Bad data does not only produce bad outcomes. It can also help to suppress sections of society, for instance vulnerable women and minorities.

• This is the argument of my new book on the relationship between various forms of racism and sexism and artificial intelligence (AI). The problem is acute. Algorithms generally need to be exposed to data – often taken from the internet – in order to improve at whatever they do, such as screening job applications, or underwriting mortgages.

• Excel is an excellent target for attackers. The Microsoft Office suite is installed on millions of computers, and people trust these files.

Security

• Linux security is more crucial than ever. With over 32 years of use, the operating system (OS) has grown immensely popular, with usage now spanning personal desktops to large scale enterprise servers, containers, and cloud infrastructure. However, this broad adoption makes it a prominent target for potential cyber threats.

• The evolution of the ransomware landscape has seen a shift from the more traditional approach involving Windows payloads to ones targeting other platforms, most notably Linux. In this shift, ransomware operators are shortening the time gaps between different payload releases and bringing feature parity across diverse platforms.

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (w3m), Fedora (libqb), Mageia (docker-containerd, kernel, kernel-linus, microcode, php, redis, and samba), Oracle (kernel, kernel-container, and openssh), Scientific Linux (subscription-manager), SUSE (ca-certificates-mozilla, erlang, gawk, gstreamer-plugins-base, indent, java-1_8_0-ibm, kernel, kernel-firmware, krb5, libcares2, nodejs14, nodejs16, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, poppler, postfix, redis, webkit2gtk3, and xen), and Ubuntu (php8.1).

• The Information Commissioner’s Office and eleven other data protection and privacy authorities from around the world have today published a joint statement calling for the protection of people’s personal data from unlawful data scraping taking place on social media sites.

• Data scraping is an automated way to pull large amounts of information from the web. Scraping from social media creates privacy risks and potential harms, such as the information people post online being used for reasons they don’t expect, exploited in cyberattacks or used for identity fraud.

• The joint statement published today sets expectations for how social media companies should protect people’s data from unlawful data scraping. It also recommends steps people can take to minimise risks when sharing information online.

• Rochester Public Schools has clarified what it believes opened the door to the large-scale cyberattack that crippled the district’s operations this spring.

• Superintendent Kent Pekel spoke about the issue on Wednesday, Aug. 23, while giving a presentation about the district’s upcoming technology referendum in November.

• “We weren’t negligent,” Pekel said. “But clearly one of two things happened.”

• Pekel went on to say that someone either clicked on a link they shouldn’t have. Or, they used the same password for a district account that they also used for some other account, such as one for social media.

• Asimily, an Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) risk management platform, announced the availability of a new report: Total Cost of Ownership Analysis on Connected Device Cybersecurity Risk. The following is their press release:

• The full report highlights the unique cybersecurity challenges that healthcare delivery organizations (HDOs) face and the true costs of their IoT and IoMT security risks. HDOs have a low tolerance for service interruptions to network-connected devices and equipment because of their crucial role in patient outcomes and quality of care. Resource-constrained HDO security and IT teams continue to face operational difficulties in sufficiently securing critical systems from increasingly-sophisticated attacks, as their vast and heterogeneous IoMT device fleets complicate management and, left unchecked, offer a broad attack surface. The report concludes that adopting a holistic risk-based approach is the most cost-efficient and long-term-effective path for HDOs to secure their critical systems and IoMT devices..

• EFF and our friends at Electronic Privacy Information Center filed an amicus brief in late November pointing this out to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in a case arising from the 130 million consumer records stolen from Marriott in 2018.  We detailed the science and evidence demonstrating that people impacted by such data breaches run the risk of identity theft, ransomware attacks and increased spam, along with corresponding increased anxiety, depression and other psychological injuries.

• The Fourth Circuit’s decision last week didn’t address our arguments; instead it just kicked the can down the road. The appeals court found that the trial court had not properly considered whether consumers had waived their rights to bring a class action by joining Marriott’s loyalty programs— those programs that advertise huge benefits to loyal customers but put the costs you pay (like decreased ability to sue) into the fine print that no one reads.

• We strongly disagree with the suggestion that any Marriott customer meaningfully agreed to waive a class action here. Few if any customers read a hotel loyalty program’s fine-print terms and conditions, much less knowingly waive their right to bring a class action if the company negligently lets their data fall into the hands of thieves. We hope that on remand, the trial court will reject Marriott’s poorly-taken waiver argument, and we can get back to trying to ensure that consumers have real accountability when companies fail to protect the data they increasingly extract from us.

• More than 3,000 Openfire servers are not patched against a recent vulnerability and are exposed to attacks employing a new exploit.

• Two teenagers have been found guilty of involvement in a number of attacks that included breahes of Uber, Nvidia and Rockstar Games, the BBC reported.

• Google has released the first weekly Chrome security update, which patches five memory safety vulnerabilities, including four rated ‘high severity’.

Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

• Given the strict rules in attaining the certification, such delicacies usually sell for higher prices, making it an enticing market for copycats. Indeed, the PRC estimates that annual global sales of counterfeit cheese reach about $2bn (£1.6bn), not far off those of the authentic product, which hit a record high of €2.9bn last year.

Privacy/Surveillance

• I still have concerns about this feature, since it doesn’t seem to work consistently or perfectly. If it is going to be effective, it absolutely must work 100% of the time, and every feature needs to work properly. This hasn’t been my experience, not with the AirTag that I own and control.

• Why didn’t I get the alert sooner, and why don’t I get this alert more frequently? I carry my AirTag with me along with my smartphone every time I leave the house. My AirTag hasn’t connected to my iPhone in days, and I needed to charge my phone for this story today. I should get an alert about this AirTag every day, until I do something about it.

• In at least two cases, police in Saxonia may have monitored building entrances with cameras hidden in parked vehicles. Apparently, these go to the account of the task force “Linx”.

• The Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS) has discovered that a former employee, who served as a practical nurse within the district, breached the privacy of nearly 1,000 patients.

• The case was confirmed by HUS Administrative Chief Medical Officer (AVMO) Teppo Heikkilä, who said the nurse gained access to the files through the Apotti patient record system.

• Most people think of communications between attorneys and their clients as being among those having the highest level of legal “privilege” against compelled disclosure to the government.  And it is widely believed that the US lacks a Federal “shield law” protecting journalists against being forced to reveal confidential sources.

• The assumptions are, in some situations and with respect to certain information, well founded. But a recent Federal decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has belied those assumptions and created a situation — at least in the 5th Circuit — in which attorney-client communications have significantly less protection at borders and ports of entry than information in the possession of journalists and others involved in communicating information to the public.

• This makes it more important than ever for all travelers — including lawyers who assume that the information in their possession is best protected under the attorney-client privilege, and individuals who don’t think of themselves as journalists — to be familiar with the protections of the Federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980 (42 US Code §2000aa), and to proactively assert their protected status and their rights under this law if their data or devices are searched or seized

Defence/Aggression

• The Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) of six Central American nations – namely Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic – convened on Monday in Managua to propose advocating the replacement of Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan with the All-China Assembly of People’s Representatives in an observer capacity.

• Aamnesty International on Thursday called for the application of universal jurisdiction against members of the Taliban accused of crimes under international law. Universal jurisdiction in this case would give any country the ability to prosecute Taliban members for violations of international law.

• Amnesty International said on the platform X (Twitter), “The new UNAMA report demonstrates an unending pattern of extrajudicial killings against members of the former government and security forces since Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.”

• The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court warned that Azerbaijan is preparing genocide against ethnic Armenians in its Nagorno-Karabakh region and called for the U.N. Security Council to bring the matter before the international tribunal.

• A report by Luis Moreno Ocampo issued Tuesday said Azerbaijan’s blockade of the only road leading from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh seriously impedes food, medical supplies and other essentials to the region of about 120,000 people.

• According to a police source, a couple walking in Verrières-le-Buisson in the Essonne department were attacked at around 10.30 pm on Wednesday. The person allegedly spat in the man’s face before his companion intervened. After this initial confrontation, the attacker “pulled out a hinged object which one of the victims described as a knife”, our sources continue. The perpetrator chased the couple, yelling “dirty Jews” and “Allah Akbar”. Fortunately, they were able to find refuge in a restaurant to call the police. On the spot, the police did not manage to find the suspect.

• A group of party supporters, including three Rassemblement National parliamentary workers, were attacked and robbed on Sunday morning August 6 at the Old Port in the first arrondissement of Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône) by six people who stole jewellery from them. A complaint was filed.

• The man, who had been sentenced to 12 years in prison in February 2023 as part of the trial for the 2015 Bataclan attacks, began shouting the following phrases in a rage: “… you pigs, Islam will fight you, long live the Koran, Muslim until death…”. The day before, he had already attacked his guards, calling them “dogs” and “Islamophobic assholes”, among other things.

• The China-Africa Leaders’ Dialogue Roundtable session took place at the Hilton Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg, within the framework of the 15th BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Summit, held in South Africa.

• The JAXA H2-A rocket is scheduled to take off on Sunday from Tanegashima Space Centre.

• Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on August 24 said they have arrested two people suspected in the killing of female YouTuber Hora Sadat in the capital, Kabul, three days ago.

Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

• On Wednesday, August 23, Wagner Group PMC founder Yevgeny Prighozhin and many of his top brass were reportedto be killed in a plane crash. Rumors swirled shortly thereafter as to the nature of the crash.

• Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, was on board a plane that crashed in Russia on Wednesday, leaving no survivors, according to Russian media reports. While many details are yet to be confirmed, many Russia watchers wonder how and why Prigozhin survived so long after his June 23 mutiny attempt – and what that means for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

• A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that an intentional explosion caused the plane crash presumed to have killed a Russian mercenary leader. Yevgeny Prigozhin was eulogized Thursday by Vladimir Putin, even as suspicions grew that the Russian president was the architect of the assassination. One of the U.S. and Western officials who described the initial assessment said it determined that Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and that the explosion falls in line with Putin’s history of trying to silence his critics. The officials did not offer any details about what caused the explosion. Several of Prigozhin’s lieutenants were also presumed dead.

• The Pentagon spokesman, Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, declined to detail how the U.S. reached its assessment. Putin made comments on the apparent death of the Wagner mercenary leader for the first time but did not officially confirm it.

• The alleged death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, hardly changes anything and does not improve the security situation in Lithuania, says President Gitanas Nausėda.

• Online comparisons made between Russia and China – and with communist party history.

• Images obtained by RFE/RL show that a suspected tent camp thought to be occupied by troops from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group near the Belarusian village of Tsel is being dismantled.

• There were no survivors in the crash that occurred in the Russian region of Tver, near the town of Kuzhenkino.

• Among them was Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, a private military company involved in conflicts in Syria, Libya and Ukraine.

• The death of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash, the latest Kremlin irritant neutralized in suspect circumstances, likely means the end of Russia’s use of mercenaries in its foreign policy.

• The Wagner mercenary group leader, who staged a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in June, was listed as a passenger on a plane that crashed on Wednesday. Here’s what to know.

• The Wagner Group has not confirmed its leader’s death, nor has the Russian government.

• The officials stressed that multiple theories about what brought down a plane in Russia were still being explored. President Putin acknowledged the incident and spoke about Yevgeny Prigozhin in the past tense.

• The killing of Wagner’s leader, who is presumed dead after his private plane crashed en route to St. Petersburg, won’t address the deeper sources of stress affecting the Russian President’s grip on power.

• The fate of Yevgeny V. Prigozhin is a reminder of all those who have paid a heavy price for standing up to President Vladimir V. Putin, and of how quickly people can fall from his favor.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin called Yevgeny Prigozhin a man with a “complicated fate” in his first comments since Wednesday’s plane crash that is believed to have killed the Wagner boss.

• European Commission Speech Brussels, 24 Aug 2023 President von der Leyen congratulated President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people on their Independence Day.

• On August 24, the Ukrainian independence day, a charity breakfast organized by the Ukrainian embassy in Latvia and the organization Agendum, known as Twitterconvoy, was held in Rīga along with an auction of unique items.

• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky can count the past week as a successful one.

• Temperatures soared in Kyiv last weekend. Stuffy apartments were swapped for leafy dachas and crowds flocked to the Dnipro River’s sand beaches.

• Moscow said on Friday its forces had thwarted a barrage of 42 drones launched by Ukraine in an attempt to attack Russia-annexed Crimea overnight. An attempted Ukrainian missile attack near Moscow was also blocked, Russia said. The US said Thursday it would begin training Ukrainian F-16 pilots in the United States starting next month so they can use the sophisticated fighter jets against Russian forces.

• This week, the Lithuanian-built kindergarten Rūta opens in Irpin, a town north of Kyiv that was the site of Russia’s attempt to take the Ukrainian capital. The renovation cost almost 5 million euros and, given the shortage of childcare facilities, it is up for further expansion.

• Lithuania is sending a new package of military assistance to Ukraine, worth 41 million euros, the Defence Ministry reported on Thursday.

• Russia said it has thwarted a massive wave of drone attacks on occupied Crimea and a missile strike on Kaluga as Ukraine’s military reported deadly air and drone strikes on its regions.

• The United States said it will begin training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 warplanes in October, joining a Western coalition that is helping to prepare Kyiv’s fliers on the sophisticated combat aircraft to join the fight against the Russian invasion.

• The U.S. State Department on August 24 imposed sanctions on 13 people and entities it said are reportedly connected to the forced deportation and transfer of Ukraine’s children.

• The Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said it had conducted a special operation in Russian-annexed Crimea along with the Ukrainian Navy in a mission coinciding with the country’s Independence Day and leading to the raising of the national flag again in the region.

• The Finnish government is also leaning towards granting Patria an export licence for the UAE, which was previously suspended due to the Arab country’s involvement in the Yemen Civil War.

• A court in Ufa, the capital of Russia’s Republic of Bashkortostan, on August 24 began the trial of noted activist Ramila Saitova, who was arrested in May over her online posts against Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

• The decision is a shift from last week, when a U.S. official said the pilots could be trained in the United States if European training programs reached capacity.

• Six Ukrainians who were forcibly removed from Kherson by the Russian military are trapped in a buffer zone between Russia and Georgia.

• Taking back the peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, has remained a core part of the Ukrainian war effort.

• On the second Independence Day since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the mood in Kyiv was subdued.

• The Ukrainian authorities said the national holiday, which comes exactly 18 months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, won’t include public celebrations amid concerns about Russian attacks.

• The State Security Service (VDD) has detained four Latvian citizens for suspected activities carried out on behalf of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), directed against the security of Latvia’s state and residents, the VDD said in a statement on August 25.

• Host and Nonresident Senior Fellow Alia Brahimi speaks with Libya expert Emadeddin Badi about tthe surge of African, Syrian and Russian mercenaries in Libya since 2019.

• A Moscow court on Thursday extended Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich‘s detention by three months, multiple outlets reported.

• A Moscow court extended on Thursday the pre-trial detention of detained Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter Evan Gershkovich in a closed hearing, according to reports from Russian state media source TASS. Gershkovich’s detention was previously extended until August, and will now continue until his trial on November 30.

• Russia’s Southern District Military Court on August 24 sentenced Oleg Vazhdayev to a six-year prison term under a strict regime after he was found guilty of attempting to set fire to a military enlistment office in the Krasnodar region in southern Russia.

• U.S. authorities slapped financial sanctions and a travel ban on the mother of Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov and 10 others under Russian-related sanctions.

• Canadian authorities have updated their sanctions list to include another 29 Russian companies.

• Prosecutors asked a court on August 24 in Russia’s Siberian region of Buryatia to sentence 61-year-old Natalya Filonova to three years in prison on a charge of assaulting police.

• A court in Russia’s Urals city of Yekaterinburg on August 24 fined the local branch of the Memorial human rights group 350,000 rubles ($3,700) for “failure to properly report its activities as a foreign agent.”

• Police in the Russian city of St. Petersburg have detained and reportedly sent back a woman who had fled her native North Caucasus region of Chechnya because of fears for her safety, the SK SOS human rights group said, adding that Seda Suleimanova may face an “honor killing” upon her return.

• When discussing proposed restrictions on Belarusians coming to Lithuania, politicians invoke the threat of ‘Litvinism’. According to Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD), this fringe nationalist ideology is not seeing an upswing.

• Russian investigators are reportedly considering the possibility that a bomb was placed in the landing-gear bay of the plane that crashed outside Moscow on Wednesday, killing mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and nine other people. According to the Telegram channel Shot and its law-enforcement sources, preliminary data suggest that the explosion that disrupted the aircraft’s flight occurred near the landing gear. The blast reportedly ripped off the wing, which then hit the plane’s stabilizer, causing the jet to climb sharply before it went into a tailspin.

• As of Thursday morning, Russian officials still hadn’t confirmed that the founder of Russia’s notorious Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin had died after the prior evening’s plane crash. Six different sources have nevertheless confirmed his death to BBC News Russian, citing Prigozhin’s presence on the passenger list. A day earlier, the Telegram channel Grey Zone (associated with Wagner Group) and the pro-Kremlin TV channel Tsargrad both reported that Prigozhin and his close associate and Wagner commander Dmitry Utkin had been killed when Prigozhin’s Legacy 600 jet plummeted from its cruising altitude, smashing into the ground between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

• Exactly two months after Yevgeny Prigozhin led an armed insurrection, occupying the Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, his private jet crashed while flying over Russia’s Tver region en route to St. Petersburg. The 10 people onboard, including three crew members, have all been killed. Prigozhin himself was on the passenger list (and likely onboard), though some speculate he might have switched planes just before departure. Here are the first media reactions to the likely demise of Russia’s most notorious mercenary leader.

• Meduza special correspondent Lilia Yapparova spoke to current and former Wagner mercenaries, and other people with working knowledge of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s business empire, about what will happen to the Wagner Group now that its leader has been killed. The general consensus is that Prigozhin personally controlled most of Wagner Group’s activities, from missions in Ukraine and Africa to finances and general organization. Without him, the private military company seems likely to crumble, sources said. Some former Wagner fighters expressed surprise that Prigozhin wasn’t more concerned with his personal safety. Others wanted to retaliate against the Defense Ministry or Vladimir Putin, whom they assumed were responsible for shooting down or blowing up Prigozhin’s private jet, though they doubted that any organized effort at revenge could cohere at this point. Meduza in English shares an abridged translation of the responses of former mercenaries and sources close to Russia’s Defense Ministry about what consequences, if any, could follow the deaths of Prigozhin and members of his his innermost circle.

• A Russian friend texted me soon after learning that the head of Wagner private military company (PMC), Yevgeny Prigozhin, had been killed in a private plane crash, midway between Moscow and his native city of St. Petersburg. My friend had just seen the New York Post headline, “Russian dissident Prigozhin reported dead after a plane crash outside Moscow.” My friend, a longtime independent editor whose paper has published—and protected—dissidents, was apoplectic. “Dissident!?” Between May 2022 and May 2023, the Russian government paid $1 billion to Wagner for military and other services (including inflated catering prices for poorly paid soldiers). Indeed, Putin has said, “We fully funded this group.” (At the time this went to press, Prigozhin’s death had still not been officially confirmed.)

• In his first public comments on the plane crash that killed mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, Vladimir Putin said he’d known the St. Petersburg businessman “for a very long time, since the early 90s.” As journalist Farida Rustamova noted on her Telegram channel, Russia’s president had never before revealed this information. Meduza reviews the conflicting reports about when and where exactly the two men first became acquainted.

• Nearly 24 hours after a plane with Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin on board crashed in Russia’s Tver region, President Vladimir Putin has made his first public statement.

• On the evening of August 23, Wagner Group leader Evgeny Prigozhin’s private plane crashed in Russia’s Tver region, northwest of Moscow. Ten people were killed in the crash, three of them members of the plane’s crew. According to Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, the passenger list included both Yevgeny Prigozhin and Wagner commander Dmitry Utkin. The official cause of the incident is still unknown. Meduza spoke to journalist Denis Korotkov, who has covered Prigozhin and Wagner Group for many years, about what made the Wagner founder’s death possible and what will become of his mercenaries now.

• Like our earlier reports on the combat situation in Ukraine, this article takes stock of the recent developments in the battlefield, based on open-source information. Meduza has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from the very start, and our detailed military analyses are part of our commitment to objective reporting on a war we firmly oppose. Here’s what we knew about the state of combat as of 8 p.m. Moscow time (5 p.m. GMT) on Wednesday, August 23.

• Ukraine’s defense intelligence forces landed early today on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, as part of a joint operation by the Ukrainian navy and intelligence forces.

• The first Republican presidential primary debate highlighted “deep divisions within the Republican Party about foreign policy,” says The Nation’s national affairs correspondent John Nichols. He says the nationalist “America First” ideology championed by former President Donald Trump is now being pushed even further by Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis, who are critical of U.S. funding to Ukraine, while more establishment candidates like Nikki Haley insisted on continued support for the country’s defense against Russia.

• Yevgeny Prigozhin, longtime leader of the private Russian mercenary Wagner Group, has reportedly died in a plane crash two months after his group launched a short-lived armed mutiny against Vladimir Putin. Several other key figures with the Wagner Group were also reportedly killed in the crash. The crash was “not unexpected,” says Kimberly Marten, Barnard College professor of political science, who has been researching and writing about the Wagner Group for years. “We know that Putin takes revenge on people who are disloyal,” says Marten, who expects the Wagner Group’s operations in several African countries to continue, but says political infighting in Russia has weakened the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

• Although it’s been two months since the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) launched their counteroffensive in the south of the country, only by mid-August did the operation mature into its decisive phase. Earlier, the defenders used relatively small forces in different operating areas, from the banks of the Dnipro River just south of Zaporizhzhia to Bakhmut. Now, the Ukrainian command seems to have prioritized two segments. The main thrust of the offensive now unfolding south of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region is directed towards Tokmak and, if successful, further south towards Melitopol. This operation is supported by the Ukrainian Marine Corps, deployed south of Velyka Novosilka on the Zaporizhzhia-Donetsk regional border. Predictably, the injection of major AFU reserves into action has produced a crisis of defense for the Russian side. The situation isn’t yet critical for the Russian forces: they could even take advantage of it, if they can promptly mobilize their own remaining reserves to deplete the second (and final) echelon of the Ukrainian offensive. While this is hypothetically possible, the reality is bound to be more complicated. Here’s Meduza’s complete analysis of why Kyiv’s counteroffensive hasn’t yet achieved its goals — and whether the war has reached a stalemate.

Environment

• Republicans are more than ready to let the planet burn. The debate took place on the hottest day of the summer in Milwaukee, as temperatures soared past the 100-degree mark and the humidity made it feel like it was exponentially hotter. Milwaukee schools were closed on Wednesday because of the excessive heat, and they were set to close again on Thursday. Sure, it can get hot in Wisconsin in August. But the temperatures Milwaukee was experiencing didn’t feel normal for a lakefront city in the upper Midwest. And the heat wave was definitely on the mind of Milwaukeeans as the GOP debate approached. “It’s almost as hot as hell in Milwaukee today for the GOP debate. Coincidence? I think not,” mused Wisconsin labor activist and congressional candidate Randy Bryce. With devastating wildfires leaving hundreds dead in Hawaii, tropical storms and unprecedented flooding in California, and a massive “heat dome” hovering over middle America and producing record temperatures, the big question going into the debate was whether the candidates for the nomination of the party of climate denial would even mention the crisis. If it was left to the contenders, they almost certainly would have neglected the issue. MacCallum and Baier featured a question from a college-age conservative about whether the contenders could respond to the concerns of young voters regarding climate change. Then the Republicans who would be president revealed themselves—and their party—as the problem rather than the solution.

• We feature highlights on climate change, foreign policy and Trump from the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 race and speak with John Nichols, The Nation’s national affairs correspondent. We also look at how former president and front-runner Donald Trump refused to attend the debate ahead of turning himself in at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia, to face racketeering charges for running a criminal enterprise with 18 co-defendants to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. The debate felt like “an argument at the kids’ table on Thanksgiving rather than a classic political debate,” says Nichols, who says candidates were attempting to become Trump’s vice president or project themselves as leaders in a post-Trump Republican Party.

• An International Monetary Fund report, released on Thursday, found that worldwide fossil fuel subsidies spiked to nearly $11 trillion in 2022, or 7.1 per cent of global GDP, driven by fuel price support to soften the pain from the global energy crunch after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• The double debris collision is not just ironic, but also highlights the growing issue of space junk in Earth’s orbit. More than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris are currently being tracked by the Department of Defense’s global Space Surveillance Network, with lots of smaller pieces also floating around undetected. That number is expected to increase as the global space industry continues to grow, launching more spacecraft to orbit and thereby increasing the chances of collision around our planet.

• The east coast of the US saw a dramatic increase in asthma-related hospital visits after smoke caused by Canadian wildfires blanketed its skies with an orange haze, according to two new studies published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Thursday (Aug. 24).

• One report—which used data from roughly 4,000 hospitals across the country—showed that visits to the emergency room related to asthma spiked by 17% during the 19 days of above-average wildfire smoke, mostly concentrated in June.

• On the same day a heat wave forced Milwaukee, Wisconsin, public schools to close for the day, moderators at the first Republican presidential debate in the city asked candidates if they believed climate change was caused by human activity. Their answers ranged from avoidance to outright denial. “I think this sums up the Republican Party at this point,” says John Nichols, national affairs correspondent at The Nation. “The moderate position in the Republican Party is avoidance, but I think a very … popular position within the party is one of actual denial.” Nichols added that the heat index was 114 degrees in Milwaukee on the day of the debate. “We saw peak climate denial in a Republican debate, and it’s kind of amazing at this late stage in history.”

Energy/Transportation

• We’ve found 161 cars from our testing – up from 129 in 2018 – which are longer than a standard UK parking bay – 16ft x 8ft (4.8m x 2.4m) – and 12 of these exceed the limit by more than 11.8 inches (30cm).

• We’ve also found 27 cars so wide you may struggle to open the doors when parked in a bay.

• Researchers are engaged in furthering battery technologies as demand for EVs is slated to grow leaps and bounds across the globe. Most studies look at the possibilities of increasing range, reducing charging times, and making batteries more affordable for transition to EVs on a mass scale.

• Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is headlining an oil and gas industry event this week alongside a U.S. “fossil fuels advocate” named Alex Epstein who says that human-caused climate change is “not a crisis” and that rising global temperatures are only “a minor variable” in out-of-control wildfires.

• Epstein and Smith are both speaking at the Energy Business Forum, part of a conference hosted by the Canadian Energy Executive Association. It is being held in the mountain resort town of Banff, Alberta, only several hundred kilometres from Kelowna, where thousands of people recently fled their homes due to severe wildfires that scientists say are being intensified by climate change.

Finance

• Wireless carrier T-Mobile said Thursday it plans to cut 5,000 jobs, or about 7% of its workforce.

• In email to employees shared in a regulatory filing, CEO Michael Sievert said the layoffs would come over the next five weeks and impact T-Mobile workers across the country — particularly those working in corporate and back-office roles, as well as some technology positions. Retail and customer service teams will not be part of the cuts.

• “This is a large change, and an unusual one for our company,” Sievert wrote. “Because of this, we do not envision making additional largescale reductions across the company again in the foreseeable future.”

• T-Mobile estimated it will book a pre-tax charge of about $450 million in the third quarter related to the job cuts. Laid-off employees will receive severance payments based on tenure, 60 days minimum of transition leave, career transition services and other benefits, Thursday’s announcement said.

• Wireless carrier T-Mobile said Thursday it plans to cut 5,000 jobs, or about 7% of its workforce.

• In email to employees shared in a regulatory filing, CEO Michael Sievert said the layoffs would come over the next five weeks and impact T-Mobile workers across the country — particularly those working in corporate and back-office roles, as well as some technology positions. Retail and customer service teams will not be part of the cuts.

• 2023 has been a year in which many tech companies had to lay off their workforce. The T-Mobile layoffs 2023 join the list, too, as the company announced that it will be parting ways with 5,000 workers.

• T-Mobile is reducing its workforce by around 7 percent, affecting approximately 5,000 positions at the company. This move will primarily impact employees in corporate, back-office, and technology roles, while those in retail or customer care positions will not be affected.

• Wireless carrier T-Mobile has announced it will lay off 5,000 employees, or around 7% of its total staff, over the next five weeks.

• In a letter to employees Thursday, CEO Mike Sievert said the layoffs will largely affect corporate and back-office roles that are “primarily duplicative” or may be aligned to changing systems or processes, or “may not fit” with the company’s current priorities.

• After cutting its workforce by approximately one per cent in May, Canada’s biggest bank is planning to pull out the axe again.

• In its Q3 2023 earnings release, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) said it expects to further reduce its number of full-time equivalent (FTE) employees by approximately one to two per cent next quarter.

• “Despite a complex operating environment, our Q3 results exemplify RBC’s ability to consistently deliver solid revenue and volume growth underpinned by prudent risk management,” CEO Dave McKay said in the release.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• “We ratify the will to implement the important consensuses adopted during our visit to Beijing in 2022…”

• On June 3, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that lifted the government’s debt ceiling and capped some categories of government spending. The big winner was—surprise, surprise!—the Pentagon.

• The field of International Relations has studied the enemies of the Klept in detail: the Transnational Activist Network is a well-documented phenomenon. But far more poorly understood is the Transnational Uncivil Society Network, who will polish any turd of sufficient wealth to a high, professional gloss.

• These TUSNs are the subject of a new, timely scholarly paper by Alexander Cooley, John Heathershaw and Ricard Soares de Oliveira: “Transnational Uncivil Society Networks: kleptocracy’s global fightback against liberal activism,” published in last month’s European Journal of International Relations:

• If you held a gun to my head (no pun intended) and demanded an answer, I’d say that our decision to respond to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with the military invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq, as well as the launching of a “Global War on Terror,” played a major role in shaping the sort of worldview that’s now become all too American.

• I need to start this post by making it clear that I am a supporter of publicly funded broadcasting and the CBC. With the increased use of paywalls and dramatic shifts in the media landscape, there is value in a public broadcaster that fills the gaps in the privately owned media world by ensuring that all Canadians have open, freely available access to reliable news. That requires embracing all forms of distribution, maintaining steadfast independence, and limiting direct competitive overlap with the private side that is currently facing significant digital transition challenges. This should be an easy value proposition for the CBC and one that would provide a compelling case for public funding. Yet the CBC’s approach to Bill C-18 and other government digital policies seems determined to do the opposite and, in doing so, threatens its future support.

• The Biden administration’s cornerstone artificial intelligence policy documents, released in the past year, are inherently contradictory and provide confusing guidance for tech companies working to develop innovative products and the necessary safeguards around them, leading AI experts have warned.

• Oh yeah. The way-too-long awaited and historic mug shot of Donald J. Trump, now listed in the Fulton County Jail database as prisoner number P01135809, has been released to joyful applause by beleaguered Americans who never thought we’d get here. We thank God, Fani Willis, Jack Smith and all the other tireless, principled defenders of democracy who ignored the lies, threats, feints and bluster to teach a lifetime crook what happens when you fuck around and find out.

• Former Fox News Host Tucker Carlson gave a speech at MCC Feszt in which he attacked US Ambassador David Pressman. Carlson called Pressman “a creep”, and “a villain” and his actions “disgusting” and “inexcusable”, claiming that he is representing the so-called gender lobby instead of the American people.

• According to the conservative US broadcaster, the American Ambassador is not a diplomat but a political activist appointed by US President Joe Biden. Carlson said he finds it outrageous and shameful that Pressman was “lecturing Hungarians about their own culture”. According to the right-wing commentator, it is not the job of the United States to “tell people in other countries how to live their lives”.

• Wrap your minds around this: Donald Trump scheduled his fourth arrest for Thursday, the day after the first GOP presidential debate, in part to step on any positive storylines coming out of the tangle, which he skipped. A fourth perp walk seems like a weird way to hog the spotlight, but none of Trump’s prior indictments have hurt his poll numbers; his lead over sad Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has steadily grown.

• The video site took out ads touting social media’s benefits.

• Starting Friday, Europeans will see their online life change. People in the 27-nation European Union can alter some of what shows up when they search, scroll and share on the biggest social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook and other tech giants like Google and Amazon.

• Google, Facebook, TikTok and other Big Tech companies operating in Europe are facing one of the most far-reaching efforts to clean up what people encounter online. The first phase of the European Union’s groundbreaking new digital rules will take effect this week. The Digital Services Act is part of a suite of tech-focused regulations crafted by the 27-nation bloc. The biggest platforms must start following the DSA starting Friday. The law is designed to keep users safe online and stop the spread of harmful content that’s either illegal or violates a platform’s terms of service. Some online platforms have already started making changes, and they could have worldwide effects.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Given how many potentially interesting edits there are to discover that reveal some peculiar tendencies from our governments and the world’s most powerful corporations, it’s only natural that someone would want to categorize and organize this data. That’s why Jari Bakken, a developer from Oslo, put together this archive of edits from the Austrian, Australian, Canadian, German, Irish, Israeli, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, and Ukrainian governments. He also organized edits made from the CIA and the Pentagon. Not to mention several corporations considered to be Big Oil, along with the United Nations, NATO, and more.

• I make the occasional political comment in posts in the “ethos” category of this blog. This current post is about misinformation on YouTube. I want to remain as politically neutral as possible, just present the issues that I have recently experienced, and leave it open for the reader to draw conclusions.

Censorship/Free Speech

• An Afghan press freedom organization has called for the release of an Iranian photojournalist detained by the Taliban, which has arrested around a dozen reporters over the past two weeks.

• Denmark has historically had some of Europe’s most lenient laws regarding freedom of speech. But following backlash from a number of Middle Eastern nations, the new Social Democrat-led government in Copenhagen is moving to crack down on free expression.

• Which is more important: the freedom of speech of Danish citizens or the desire to stop the outrage from abroad caused by the burning of the Quran? This was the dilemma the Danish government was facing just a few weeks ago—until it decided to go with the latter and move to weaken free speech laws in Denmark.

• Eight years in prison. That is the sentence handed down in absentia today by a Moscow court to opposition politician Maxim Katz for disseminating supposed “disinformation” about the Russian military. Prosecutors opened the case against Katz in April 2022 in response to his YouTube video where he addresses Russian war crimes committed against civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, outside Kyiv.

• I guess the feeling was that some protesters needed to be arrested. And when most protesters are protesting cops, it’s probably a whole lot easier to go after those that aren’t.

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

• The Women’s Press Union (YRJ) in North-East Syria released a statement denouncing the Turkish drone attack on Wednesday that targeted a car belonging to the Jin TV channel, which reports on current developments and backgrounds from a women’s perspective. Necimedîn Feysel Hec Sînan, the driver of the car, which was on the move on the Qamishlo-Amude road, was killed in the attack and a female journalist, Delila Ağît, suffered injuries.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The Kenosha, Wisconsin, police department said it is investigating an incident in which officers were caught on video apparently striking a man</a> inside a local Applebee’s. The officers believed the man was one of three people involved in a hit-and-run crash. He was not. They later found the actual suspects in the Applebee’s restroom.

• Human rights activists at the crisis group SK SOS, which helps people escape persecution in Chechnya, say a woman has been abducted in St. Petersburg and will likely be returned to Chechnya, where she could be murdered by her own family. Project SK SOS told Meduza that police in St. Petersburg arrested a 26-year-old woman named Seda Suleymanova who fled Chechnya.

• Researchers have found that the Lytton fire and heat dome would’ve been virtually impossible without fossil-fuel-charged climate change, which disrupted an east-to-west jet stream and dried out the soil.

• Now, across western Canada, the same Indigenous communities that gave early warnings against burning fossil fuels are among the first to be permanently displaced by climate change—or face a real risk of it. But leaders like Michell are also leading a charge for solutions, such as cutting greenhouse gas emissions, building more resilient communities and transitioning First Nations to clean energy sources.

• “We’re no longer planning for extreme weather events,” he said. “We’re living it.”

• When they heard of the incoming mob last week, some residents of Jaranwala’s Christian Issa Nagri neighborhood hid in fields or factories. Others were sheltered by Muslim friends as rioters looted homes and set churches ablaze, enraged by allegations that two residents had defaced the Quran.

• Non-Muslims [now] make up around 3.5% of Pakistan’s predominantly Sunni Muslim population, and though the country was envisioned as a secular state, it has frequently been accused of majoritarianism. Experts say the state’s policies have allowed religious hostility to flourish, creating a powder keg for violence.

• If you applied for a new job in the last few years, chances are an artificial intelligence (AI) tool was used to make decisions impacting whether or not you got the job. Long before ChatGPT and generative AI ushered in a flood of public discussion about the dangers of AI, private companies and government agencies had already incorporated AI tools into just about every facet of our daily lives, including in housing, education, finance, public benefits, law enforcement, and health care. Recent reports indicate that 70 percent of companies and 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies are already using AI-based and other automated tools in their hiring processes, with increasing use in lower wage job sectors such as retail and food services where Black and Latine workers are disproportionately concentrated.

• Jailed Iranian dissident rapper Saman Yasin, who was detained during the nationwide protests in Iran last year, says he has endured mock executions, beatings, and other forms of torture while in prison on a charge to which he was forced to admit guilt.

• In an audio file released by the Kurdistan Human Rights Network on August 23, Yasin detailed harrowing accounts of physical and psychological torture he says he has endured since being taken into custody. He also says prison officials threatened to harm his family if he didn’t admit to being involved in the shooting of a paramilitary officer during the protests.

• This case involves both civil forfeiture and criminal forfeiture. First one, then the other. Not that the order matters as much as the government’s unwillingness to do much more than sit on the $30,000 in cash they took from an Ohio couple during a supposed drug investigation.

• As President Joe Biden announces major reforms to how the military prosecutes sexual assault, the U.S. Navy is still shrouding those court proceedings in secrecy and fighting a ProPublica lawsuit to make such cases public.

• Last month, Biden issued an executive order that finalized a mandate from Congress to drastically change who had authority over sexual assault and murder cases in the military. The order strips military commanders of the power to press charges or drop a case. Instead, a special military prosecutor will make the decision.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• Just days after Apple introduced new features aimed at podcast creators, Spotify has previewed its changes. Here’s a peek at what’s new in Spotify for Podcasters. One of the first new features is giving creators the ability to curate listeners’ introduction to their podcast on the platform.

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has backed off of its ill-advised opposition to right to repair after presumably getting an earful from reformers and the Biden administration.

Monopolies

• Well, this certainly isn’t an outcome I would have predicted. While the saga of Microsoft’s attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard has certainly taken a long and winding road, as it stands today all the regulatory hurdles have seemingly been cleared save for the UK’s Competition & Markets Authority (CMA). Unlike the FTC’s challenge to the deal, which objected more holistically, the CMA’s comments on its concerns over the merger largely focused on how Microsoft’s future titles would handle cloud/streamed-gaming.

Trademarks

• Earlier this summer, we talked about Trader Joe’s joining the list of large companies combatting unionization efforts through the most petty of methods: complaining about those unions over “trademark infringement.” Trader Joe’s isn’t the first company to go down this route of course, as we’ve seen Walmart and Medieval Times have behaved similarly. Nor will it be the last, unless things change such that there are real consequences for pulling this kind of bullshit just to fight a labor union.

• In a 63-page opinion, the Board dismissed Nautica Apparel’s Section 2(d) and Section 43(c) claims in this opposition to registration of the mark NAUTICA for “[r]ecreational vehicles, namely, motor homes.” The Board found no likelihood of confusion primarily due to the differences in the involved goods. As to dilution-by-blurring, Nautica failed to prove that is mark NAUTICA is “widely recognized by the general consuming public of the United States as a designation of source, ” as required by the dilution statute. Nautica Apparel, Inc. v. REV Recreation Group, Inc., Opposition No. 91263603 (August 16, 2023) [Opinion by Judge Jonathan Hudis).

Copyrights

• The exodus of talent from manager Scooter Braun has left the exec joking he no longer manages himself. But what is actually going on? Scooter Braun’s noted beef with Taylor Swift was the subject of much debate on social media—and this latest exodus seems to be filling the same space.

• Lora: Lawyers told The Atlantic that the legality of using such tools is still under discussion. Even if it’s not illegal, is it unethical for AI tools to use scraped novels and creative work?

• Damon: I would say yes. To the extent that people have an ethical issue with something being stolen, this is the same issue. There is some legal haziness around this. The ethical standard in my view is simply: Was something taken and used for a for-profit program without permission? And I think that’s fairly simple.

• Fmovies is one of the most popular pirate sites on the internet yet over the last three months the site has still managed to grow at an extraordinary rate. In May, Fmovies serviced around 98 million visitors but in July, in excess of 122 million called in for the latest movies and TV shows. How many users are affected isn’t clear but over the past 48 hours a sudden flurry of malware alerts have had some site users spooked.

• Canada’s Federal Court has granted several piracy-blocking injunctions as part of lawsuits against actual infringers, such as IPTV services. However, these underlying cases seem to go nowhere. A few days ago, rightsholders including Bell and Rogers quietly discontinued their claims against pirate streaming services after a temporary blocking injunction expired. Is this a mere coincidence, or a pragmatic legal strategy?

• Back in June, we wrote about a ridiculously weak lawsuit from the big music publishers against exTwitter, claiming that the platform, mostly known for text, and which barely has any reasonable system for posting or listening to music, was a music piracy haven.

• Stephen Thaler has spent years trying, and almost always failing, to convince both patent and copyright bodies to give him patents and copyrights on works he says are created by AI systems he’s built.

• YouTube is testing a new feature to allow people to hum for a song to search for it on the platform. Here’s the latest. A new experimental YouTube feature reported by some users allows anyone to hum or record three or more seconds of a song to try and identify it.

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