Monthly Review – June 2024 (Volume 76, Number 2)

Jun 012024
 

In this month’s “Notes from the Editors,” the editors confront the myth of Marx’s purported early Prometheanism and later rejection of the growth of productive forces altogether, favoring a “no-growth path to communism.” This ahistorical interpretation has engendered further critique of ecosocialism and degrowth on the part of self-identified productivist writers, who attempt incorrectly to paint degrowth as a Malthusian project, rather than a realistic effort to live within Earth’s planetary capacities. | more…

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 2024-06-01  Comments Off on Monthly Review – June 2024 (Volume 76, Number 2)

World Socialist Web Site (en) – Biden gives go-ahead for NATO attacks on Russia: A new stage in the escalating imperialist world war

May 312024
 

The American and European imperialist powers are recklessly escalating the war with nuclear-armed Russia towards a global conflagration, which can be halted only through the political mobilisation of the international working class in opposition to imperialist war.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/05/31/hfed-m31.html

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jwz – DNA Lounge: Wherein DOJ finally has the knives out for multinational superpredator Live Nation / Ticketmaster.

May 302024
 

404 Media has a good article explaining the new DOJ suit: The Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation/Ticketmaster isn’t really about high ticket prices, or ticket scalpers, or any individual offense. It is about a systematic vertical integration of the entire live music business, which has led to the company’s dominance over tickets, yes, but also over live music venues, artists’ tour booking, and concert promotion. […] In simple terms, Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, is not just selling fans tickets on Ticketmaster.com. It owns, operates, or has exclusive contracts with the vast majority of midsized and large concert venues, and a supermajority of all outdoor pavilions and amphitheaters. And it has a…

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Deeplinks – EFF Urges Supreme Court to Reject Texas’ Speech-Chilling Age Verification Law

May 212024
 

A Texas age verification law will rob people of anonymity online, chill access to speech for privacy- and security-minded internet users, and entirely block some adults from accessing constitutionally protected online content, EFF argued in a brief filed with the Supreme Court last week.
EFF joined the Woodhull Freedom Foundation in filing a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to grant review of—and ultimately overturn—the Fifth Circuit’s decision upholding the Texas law.
Last year, the state of Texas passed HB 1181 in a misguided attempt to shield minors from certain online content. The law requires all Texas internet users, including adults, to complete invasive “age verification” procedures on every website the state deems to be at least…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/05/eff-urges-supreme-court-reject-texas-speech-chilling-age-verification-law

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Richard Stallman’s Political Notes – US Mail system as degradable

May 182024
 

Laying out
DeJoy’s
plans to make US mail less reliable and frequently but unpredictably slower.

The anticipated slowdowns will interfere with postal voting. Many ballots will
arrive late due to USPS delays and then will not be counted.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2024-mar-jun.html#17_May_2024_(US_Mail_system_as_degradable)

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Ars Technica – Slack users horrified to discover messages used for AI training

May 172024
 

Enlarge (credit: Tim Robberts | DigitalVision)
After launching Slack AI in February, Slack appears to be digging its heels in, defending its vague policy that by default sucks up customers’ data—including messages, content, and files—to train Slack’s global AI models.
According to Slack engineer Aaron Maurer, Slack has explained in a blog that the Salesforce-owned chat service does not train its large language models (LLMs) on customer data. But Slack’s policy may need updating “to explain more carefully how these privacy principles play with Slack AI,” Maurer wrote on Threads, partly because the policy “was originally written about the search/recommendation work we’ve been doing for years prior to Slack AI.”
Maurer was responding to a…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=2025179

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Techdirt. – Flock Safety Customers Continue To Act As Government Contractors, Only Without All That Pesky Paperwork

May 142024
 

Flock Safety wants in on the law enforcement surveillance action. It began making inroads by appealing to the next best fascists: homeowners associations. Pitching its ALPRs (automatic license plate readers) to gated communities, Flock promises a crime-free future its pseudo-research can’t back up.
Not that any of that mattered to any of these suburban authoritarians. All they knew is they had cameras capable of surveilling unwanted “intruders,” even if these were just lost drivers, people passing through their “exclusive” neighborhoods on the way to their own less-exclusive neighborhoods, or just kind of “brown.”
Since the rich and the (predominately) white consider law enforcement to be little more than a customer service department, pitching to HOAs meant drawing in…

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Phoronix – KDE Making Good Progress On HDR, Better Gamescope Integration

May 112024
 

KDE developer Xaver Hugl has written a third blog post outlining some of the latest HDR and color management improvements that have been readied for KDE’s KWin compositor as well as ongoing improvements to Valve’s Gamescope compositor…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-HDR-Colors-Part-3

 2024-05-11  Comments Off on Phoronix – KDE Making Good Progress On HDR, Better Gamescope Integration

Hackaday – Gather ‘Round This Unique 4-Player Arcade Cabinet

May 112024
 

Usually when we see arcade cabinet builds, they’re your standard single-player stand up variety. Even one of them takes up quite a bit of room, so as appealing as it might be to link up two or more cabinets together for the occasional multiplayer session, the space required makes it a non-starter for most of us.
But this cleverly designed 4-player cocktail cabinet from [OgrishGadgeteer] goes a long way towards solving that problem. The circular design of the cabinet gives each player a clear view of their respective display in a much smaller footprint than would otherwise be possible, and the glass top allows the whole thing to double as an actual cocktail table when it’s not…

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The Intercept – October 7 Survivors Sue Campus Protesters, Say Students Are “Hamas’s Propaganda Division”

May 112024
 

Survivors of the October 7 attacks filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court last week alleging links between Hamas and the pro-Palestinian student groups leading nationwide protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. The survivors claim the student groups are liable for monetary damages because of the purported terrorism links. “When someone tells you they are aiding and abetting terrorists — believe them.” That’s the opening line the suit filed Wednesday against the Palestinian advocacy groups American Muslims for Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine, the umbrella group supporting student organizers for Palestine, which supports more than 350 Palestine solidarity groups, including more than 200 campus organizations across the country. The lawsuit is part of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2024/05/10/october-7-survivors-lawsuit-palestine-hamas-sjp-protests/

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New on MIT Technology Review – The way whales communicate is closer to human language than we realized

May 072024
 

Sperm whales are fascinating creatures. They possess the biggest brain of any species, six times larger than a human’s, which scientists believe may have evolved to support intelligent, rational behavior. They’re highly social, capable of making decisions as a group, and they exhibit complex foraging behavior.   But there’s also a lot we don’t know about them, including what they may be trying to say to one another when they communicate using a system of short bursts of clicks, known as codas. Now, new research published in Nature Communications today suggests that sperm whales’ communication is actually much more expressive and complicated than was previously thought.  A team of researchers led by Pratyusha Sharma at MIT’s Computer…

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 2024-05-07  Comments Off on New on MIT Technology Review – The way whales communicate is closer to human language than we realized

CounterPunch.org – Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Attacked in St. Louis

May 012024
 

Kelly Merrill, Jill Stein, Jason Call with arrest charges. April 28, 2024. Photo by Barbara Chicherio.
After attacking Dr. Jill Stein, St. Louis police charged her with assaulting them.  Stein is the presumptive Presidential candidate of the Green Party.  On April 27 she spoke at a program of the Green Party of St. Louis and then went to support student protesters at Washington University.  There, she was arrested along with Green Party campaign managers Jason Call and Kelly Merrill with about 100 others.
As students peacefully gathered in tents and on the lawn, they were soon confronted by police from four departments: University City, Richmond Heights, St. Louis City and St. Louis County.  When Stein arrived at the…

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The Onion – What Biden Can Do To Win Over Gen Z

May 012024
 

Although the youth vote was integral in his victory against Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Joe Biden’s approval ratings have tanked amongst 18-to-27-year-olds. If President Biden is interested in winning back Gen Z voters, he’ll have to do the following things.

Read more…

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AnandTech – Report: Seagate, Western Digital Hike HDD Prices Amid Surge In Demand

Apr 242024
 

Seagate Technology has reportedly notified its customers abouts its plans to raise prices on new hard drive orders and for demands that exceed prior agreements, echoing a similar move by Western Digital, which increased its prices earlier this month. These changes come in response to a surge in demand for high-capacity HDDs and constraints in supply due to decreased production capabilities of both Seagate and Western Digital, reports TrendForce. According to industry insights reported by TechNews, the sector anticipates that the scarcity of high-capacity HDD products will persist throughout the current quarter and possibly extend over the entire year. It is forecasted that HDD prices will rise by 5% to 10% in Q2 2024 alone and…

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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – Pluralistic: The specific process by which Google enshittified its search (24 Apr 2024)

Apr 242024
 

Today’s links

The specific process by which Google enshittified its search: Ed Zitron has Prabhakar Raghavan bang to rights.

Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2024

Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.

Recent appearances: Where I’ve been.

Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Colophon: All the rest.

The specific process by which Google enshittified its search (permalink)
All digital businesses have the technical capacity to enshittify: the ability to change the underlying functions of the business from moment to moment and user to user, allowing for the rapid transfer of value between business customers, end users and shareholders:

Twiddler


If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this…

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Ars Technica – FTC bans noncompete clauses, declares vast majority unenforceable

Apr 232024
 

Enlarge / Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan talks with guests during an event in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 03, 2024 (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla )
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today announced that it has issued a final rule banning noncompete clauses. The rule will render the vast majority of current noncompete clauses unenforceable, according to the agency.
“In the final rule, the Commission has determined that it is an unfair method of competition and therefore a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act, for employers to enter into noncompetes with workers and to enforce certain noncompetes,” the FTC said.
The US Chamber of Commerce said it will…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=2019469

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World Socialist Web Site (en) – Number of bodies found in Palestinian hospital mass graves rises to 310 as Israel prepares assault on Rafah

Apr 232024
 

The horrific discovery over the past 72 hours provides further evidence of Israel’s imperialist-backed genocide against the Palestinians, which is set to escalate imminently due to the looming assault on the more than 1.5 million Palestinians struggling to survive in Rafah.

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Deeplinks – U.S. Senate and Biden Administration Shamefully Renew and Expand FISA Section 702, Ushering in a Two Year Expansion of Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance

Apr 232024
 

One week after it was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate has passed what Senator Ron Wyden has called, “one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.” President Biden then rushed to sign it into law.  
The perhaps ironically named “Reforming Intelligence and Security America Act (RISAA)” does everything BUT reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). RISAA not only reauthorizes this mass surveillance program, it greatly expands the government’s authority by allowing it to compel a much larger group of people and providers into assisting with this surveillance. The bill’s only significant “compromise” is a limited, two-year extension of this mass surveillance. But…

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 2024-04-23  Comments Off on Deeplinks – U.S. Senate and Biden Administration Shamefully Renew and Expand FISA Section 702, Ushering in a Two Year Expansion of Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance

Ars Technica – After 48 years, Zilog is killing the classic standalone Z80 microprocessor chip

Apr 232024
 

Enlarge / A cropped portion of a ca. 1980 ad for the Microsoft Z80 SoftCard, which allowed Apple II users to run the CP/M operating system. (credit: Microsoft)
Last week, chip manufacturer Zilog announced that after 48 years on the market, its line of standalone DIP (dual inline package) Z80 CPUs is coming to an end, ceasing sales on June 14, 2024. The 8-bit Z80 architecture debuted in 1976 and powered a small-business-PC revolution in conjunction with CP/M, also serving as the heart of the Nintendo Game Boy, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Pac-Man arcade game, and the TI-83 graphing calculator in various forms. In a letter to customers dated…

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 2024-04-23  Comments Off on Ars Technica – After 48 years, Zilog is killing the classic standalone Z80 microprocessor chip
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