ReHacked vol. 228: How to Think Better, MIT Press's Direct to Open opens access to 82 new books in 2023, Record Labels Hit Internet Archive With New $400m+ Copyright Lawsuit and more
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CargoCult Science (1976) #society #pdf
HalvarFlake: "Downloading a YouTube video sh…" - Mastodon #copyrights
Downloading a YouTube video should be just as covered by "fair use" as recording a song from the radio onto cassette was.
Unfortunately, courts tend to continuously weaken society in the grand bargain between society and copyright holders.
NASA Software Catalog #software #engineering
NASA's Software Catalog offers hundreds of new software programs you can download for free to use in a wide variety of technical applications.
Microsoft Continues About Face On ‘Right To Repair,’ Makes Its Hardware Easier To Fix | Techdirt #copyrights
> Microsoft has long been one of several companies that attempted to monopolize repair in a bid for profit, particularly when it has come to the company’s game consoles. But in recent years the company appears to have realized that with state and federal lawmakers and regulators cracking down on this behavior, it might be smart to stop swimming upstream when it comes to “right to repair.”
Our Fight is Far From Over | Internet Archive Blogs #copyrights #freeinternet
Statement from Internet Archive founder, Brewster Kahle:
“Libraries are under attack at unprecedented scale today, from book bans to defunding to overzealous lawsuits like the one brought against our library. These efforts are cutting off the public’s access to truth at a key time in our democracy. We must have strong libraries, which is why we are appealing this decision.”
Record Labels Hit Internet Archive With New $400m+ Copyright Lawsuit * TorrentFreak #copyrights #freespeech
Record labels including UMG, Capitol and Sony have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States targeting Internet Archive and founder Brewster Kale, among others. Filed in Manhattan federal court late Friday, the complaint alleges infringement of 2,749 works, recorded by deceased artists, including Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby.
Carrot Problems #history
In World War II, the story goes, the British invented a new kind of onboard radar that allowed its pilots to shoot down German planes at night.
They didn't want the Germans to know about this technology, but they had to give an explanation for their new, improbable powers.
So they invented a propaganda campaign that claimed their pilots had developed exceptional eyesight by eating "an excess of carrots."
If you're going to trick people into doing something pointless, eating excessive carrots seems like one of the better ones. Still, there's an issue: people who believed the propaganda and tried to get super-sight would be spending time and effort on something that couldn't possibly solve their issue.
Wendelstein 7-X erreicht Meilenstein | Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik #engineering
During the three-year completion work that ended last summer, Wendelstein 7-X was primarily equipped with water cooling for the wall elements and an upgraded heating system. The latter can now couple twice as much power into the plasma as before. Since then, the nuclear fusion experiment can be operated in new parameter ranges. "We are now exploring our way towards ever higher energy values," explained Prof. Dr. Thomas Klinger, head of the Stellarator Transport and Dynamics Division at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald. "In doing so, we have to proceed step by step so as not to overload and damage the facility."
On 15 February 2023, the researchers reached a new milestone: for the first time, they were able to achieve an energy turnover of 1.3 gigajoules in this device. This was 17 times higher than the best value achieved before the conversion (75 megajoules). The energy turnover results from the coupled heating power multiplied by the duration of the discharge. Only if it is possible to couple large amounts of energy continuously into the plasma and also remove the resulting heat, a power plant operation is possible.
Youtube-dl Site Goes Offline as Hosting Provider Enforces Court-Ordered Ban * TorrentFreak #copyrights
Hosting provider Uberspace has taken down the website of YouTube-ripping software, youtube-dl. The removal is the result of a German court order in a copyright infringement lawsuit, filed by Sony, Warner and Universal. While Uberspace didn't host the open source software, it was held responsible for the website linking to the software hosted on developer platform GitHub.
In 2020, the RIAA infuriated many players in the open source community by targeting YouTube-ripping tool, youtube-dl.
The RIAA sent a takedown notice to GitHub, claiming that the software bypassed technological protection measures, in violation of the DMCA.
Thanks to the support of libraries participating in Direct to Open (D2O), the MIT Press will publish its full list (see below) of 2023 scholarly monographs and edited collections open access on the MIT Press Direct platform.
Launched in 2021, D2O is a sustainable framework that harnesses the collective power of libraries to support open and equitable access to vital, leading scholarship. D2O moves scholarly books from a solely market-based, purchase model, where individuals and libraries buy single eBooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model. Instead of purchasing a title once for a single collection, libraries now have the opportunity to fund them one time for the world through participant fees.
“With the successful conclusion of our second year of Direct to Open, we are thrilled to make the Press’s complete list of 2023 monographs openly available,” said Amy Brand, director and publisher of the MIT Press. “This achievement comes at a pivotal time for open science, research, and publishing and would not be possible without the partnership and collaboration of D2O member libraries and consortia. Together, we are proving open access scholarship is not only achievable, but sustainable and scalable.”
Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists #society #education
Say that when people apply for their first driver’s license, 1% get Executive Platinum licenses. For life, they get free use of toll roads and can drive 20% over the speed limit. People argue—fiercely argue—if these should be awarded based on the written test, the driving test, or based on personal essays on What Driving Means to Me.
That would be weird, right?
Or say there’s a school. When kids enter as five-year-olds, the school deems 5% of them to be Gold Elites. They get special lunches and when they graduate as ten-year-olds, get preferred admission to competitive middle schools.
The question is not if Gold Elites should be chosen based on finger-painting or kickball competitions. The question is, why do they exist at all?
World's Strangest Research Vessel Heads for Scrapyard After 60 Years #technology #history
The Scripps Instition of Oceanography's innovative Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP) has been towed off into the sunset for the last time. It may well have been the strangest, most recognizable research vessel ever built - and its users remember that it was exceptionally effective.
For more than 50 years, FLIP provided a stable research station at sea for Scripps' scientists and their colleagues from around the world. The one-of-a-kind vessel (technically a platform) could be partially flooded to sink the stern and change the orientation of its buoyancy. In less than an hour, it could transition seamlessly from a horizontal barge for transit into a vertical spar platform for stationary operation. To refloat from vertical to horizontal mode, the crew would pump out the ballast tanks with compressed air, and the vessel's stern would rise back up to the surface.
Nana Anime Locations Blur the Lines Between Reality and Fiction | Tokyo Weekender #art
The more realistic the anime and manga scenes, the stronger the feeling that we share the same world with the characters. In manga and anime, the names of places are sometimes slightly changed. Often this is to avoid copyright issues. Other times, landmarks are removed to create a more fictional city on purpose. For instance, the Kabukichou Sherlock anime perfectly captures the streets and seedy nightlife of east Shinjuku, but it swaps the Toho Cinema Godzilla head with an elephant. Another example is in Persona 5: The Animation (originally a game). It takes place in the Sangenjaya neighborhood but calls it Yongenjaya. It’s a play on words, the original toponym meaning “three teahouses” and the slightly changed fictional one meaning “four teahouses.” But, aside from the supernatural elements of the plot, this name change is enough to disconnect you from real Tokyo.
How to Think Better: The Skill You've Never Been Taught #career #learning #personaldevelopment
Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.
Life Has Been Found Beneath Hydrothermal Vents For The First Time | IFLScience #nature
“Our understanding of animal life at deep-sea hydrothermal vents has greatly expanded with this discovery, ” said expedition lead Dr Monika Bright of the University of Vienna. “Two dynamic vent habitats exist. Vent animals above and below the surface thrive together in unison, depending on vent fluid from below and oxygen in the seawater from above.”
The discovery of a new ecosystem is always an exciting one, but it also represents a new consideration in the ongoing debate over the safety of deep-sea mining. Some argue that the sea bed is the path of least destruction when it comes to mining the planet for the metals needed to supply the green battery revolution, but others warn we have a long way to go before we can establish the possible harms of digging in the deep sea.
Wells Fargo, other Wall Street banks fined $549 million for record keeping failures #economy #privacy
U.S. regulators on Tuesday announced a combined $549 million in penalties against Wells Fargo and a raft of smaller or non-U.S. firms that failed to maintain electronic records of employee communications.
The Securities and Exchange Commission disclosed charges and $289 million in fines against 11 firms for “widespread and longstanding failures” in record-keeping, while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission also said it fined four banks a total of $260 million for failing to maintain records required by the agency.
Amazon Says It Doesn't 'Employ' Drivers, But Records Show It Hired Firms to Prevent Them From Unionizing #politics #bigcorp
Amazon hired at least two union-busting consulting firms specifically to prevent its drivers from joining the International Brotherhood of Teamsters over the course of 2022, according to six reports filed to the Department of Labor and obtained by Motherboard. This is notable because Amazon claims that the drivers who deliver its packages are not its employees.
Motherboard reviewed five reports filed to the Department of Labor, which showed that Amazon spent more than $14.2 million total on anti-union consulting in 2022. Of that, $160,595 went to Optimal Employee Relations and Action Resources, who, on their own reports, specifically referred to “drivers” as the target group of their persuasion. Amazon and the contractors it hired are required to file these reports with the government each year.
Police raid WorldCoin cryptocurrency warehouse in Nairobi » Capital News #blockchain
Police raided a warehouse belonging to WorldCoin cryptocurrency in Nairobi and carted away documents over the weekend.
The officers went to the offices along Mombasa Road armed with a search warrant and left with machines they believe stores data gathered by the firm.
The team took the data to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters for analysis.
Data Commissioner Immaculate Kassait defended her office and said Tools for Humanity, the parent company of Worldcoin, failed to disclose its true intentions during registration.
The government has suspended Worldcoin’s operations in Kenya, citing security concerns paving the way for investigations into the activities of the company.
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