Zajímavé aktuální zahraniční články

[qnx]

Kyjevské síly se v uplynulém roce zaměřovaly na přehradu v Nové Kachovce v rámci ukrajinských úderů proti ruské civilní infrastruktuře. Kromě jiných rizik mohou útoky na vodní elektrárnu vést k problémům s dodávkami vody pro Krym: poloostrov se v posledním desetiletí potýkal s nedostatkem vody kvůli ukrajinské blokádě a tok byl plně obnoven až po zahájení ruské speciální operace. v únoru 2022.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230606/part- ... 39396.html

[qnx]

Video k aktuálnímu průběhu ukrajinské protiofenzivy. Takhle dopadla ta slavná západní technika, která měla Ukrajině vyhrát válku.
https://vk.com/video-211093965_456256270

[qnx]

Ještě jedno video. Míra konverze ukrajinské vojenské techniky na šrot je vskutku monumentální.
https://youtu.be/cClULMsLjVA

[Vaclav.Vcelica]

Přestože se povědomí o Julianu Assangeovi už vytrácí (,a i zde se téma Assange přesunulo do Archivu), tak mezitím začátkem června televizní stanice CNN informovala, že britský soud zamítl zakladateli Wikileaks Julianu Assangeovi „možnost odvolání proti příkazu k vydání jeho osoby do Spojených států“, kde čelí obvinění ze špionáže.
Julian Assange loses latest attempt to appeal against extradition to the US
Vypadá to tak, že svíčka už mu dohořívá. Mám trochu pochyby o téhle nezávislé justici.

Přál bych si, aby si šéf české diplomacie, předvolal na kobereček britského velvyslance a dal mu tak najevo, že by neměli ustupovat nátlaku. Tak hlavně, že na ochranu whistleblowerů si píšeme ty zákony, máme to v programech. Nakonec to skončí tak, že i Piráti přijdou o všechna svá témata a nahradí je těmi, co budou politicky "trendy". Jako novináři zůstanou jen ti, co budou mít dostatek sebekontroly, čti sebecenzury, aby nepsali o tom, co je byť jen elementárně kritické pro naši skvělou demokracii. Jenže pak už to nebude demokracie. Pak už se politici stanou jen bublifuky, kteří pouze vypouštějí pestrobarevné bubliny, které se mění podle osvětlení a nakonec prasknou, nebo je odvane čas, a jen tak meziřečí budou přijímat nesmyslné zákony, které běžné občany budou válcovat jako čerstvě položený asfalt, do hladka. Nebo už se to stalo?

Aktuálně vydal Prezident Mezinárodní federace novinářů DOMINIQUE PRADALIÉ výzvu k zastavení procesu vydání Assange do USA a vyzval novináře, aby Assange podpořili články a demonstracemi. A mezitím, co v Británii demonstrují novináři proti vydání Assangea do USA, u nás se nezvedne ani jeden novinář, ani jeden hlas nepočítám-li slovinského Slavoje Žižeka, jehož článek převzal DR. Smutné.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/ ... parliament
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article ... an-assange
https://denikreferendum.cz/clanek/35376 ... ad-ztracen

[Vojtech.Pikal]

Ehm - vlákno v žádném archivu není - viewtopic.php?t=46905

[Marek.Krejpsky]

https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/fakt ... dcu-234715

Srovnání důchodů s EU.

[davkol]

EXCLUSIVE: Naomi Wu and the Silence That Speaks Volumes

When China's prodigious tech influencer, Naomi Wu, found herself silenced, it wasn't just the machinery of a surveillance state at play. Instead, it was a confluence of state repression and the sometimes capricious attention of a Western audience that, as she asserts, often views Chinese activists more as ideological tokens than as genuine human beings.

…

Naomi Wu's devastating July 7th tweet alluded to a pressure that had long been feared by many, yet optimistically hoped she could manage to avoid indefinitely.

"Ok for those of you that haven't figured it out I got my wings clipped and they weren't gentle about it- so there's not going to be much posting on social media anymore and only on very specific subjects. I can leave but Kaidi can't so we're just going to follow the new rules and that's that. Nothing personal if I don't like and reply like I used to. I'll be focusing on the store and the occasional video. Thanks for understanding, it was fun while it lasted."
–@RealSexyCyborg, July 7, 2023

…

The omission of her predicament by the media isn't just an oversight—it's a signal suggesting that a significant portion of western media may be increasingly compromised by Beijing's influence, finding themselves unable to criticize foreign policy, lest they rile the tiger and negatively impact their business. A key reason influencers like Wu are able to gain traction is because of the validation they receive from the public and media alike. Silence in such distressing situations can easily be misinterpreted as indifference. Furthermore, when cultural ambassadors like Wu find themselves precipitously exiled from public life, it sends a cautionary tale to those who might have once been emboldened to share their own stories.

These conditions are exacerbated by an apparent and ever-tightening grip on information from inside China, and amidst these macro concerns lies an added poignant truth about representation and freedom of expression: Naomi Wu is not just a tech virtuoso; she is a living embodiment of resilience for a global LGBTQ community which is navigating increasingly restrictive terrains. Wu's pullback from the public gaze not only deprives the tech world of an icon, it also robs Wu's wider community of a valuable symbol of tenacity, hope, and self-love in the face of repressive state control.

The relentless surveillance and censorship tactics utilized by the Chinese Communist Party are not unfamiliar to the global audience. The tragic predicament of the Uyghurs, a cultural and ethnic Chinese minority subjected to what many have called genocide, stands testament to the CCP's intent to tightly control the cultural viewpoints of its population by any means they consider necessary, even if brutal.

Given these precedents, there is a growing apprehension that Wu's digital silence signals a new chapter in China's human rights transgressions–one in which the LGBTQ community potentially emerges as the newest target of state-led oppression, in keeping with global trends.

…

Jackie Singh
August 16, 2023

[Filip.Krska]

It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/priva ... r-privacy/

Nadace Mozilla: Moderní auta jsou noční můra pro soukromí

https://www.abclinuxu.cz/zpravicky/nada ... o-soukromi

(i s petici)

[davkol]

The First of Several Trials of the Century

U.S. v. Google, which begins today, is part of a litany of cases against dominant firms from Biden’s reinvigorated antitrust enforcers. Here’s what it’s all about.

…

This particular case against Google matters, however, because in many ways it’s designed to appeal to more traditional legal strains of thought on antitrust. It’s not a particularly novel application of the law. Google used special deals to get priority for their products over rivals. As I noted last week, in many ways it mirrors the last major monopolization case, the one against Microsoft, where the company was convicted of bundling the Internet Explorer browser with its operating system, giving it an advantage over Netscape and others.

…

The inability of even deep-pocketed companies to challenge Google, the government will argue, is by design. Google is the default search engine on almost all phones and web browsers in America. They pulled this off by engaging in a number of interlocking agreements that exchange this default status for money, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars that Google has paid to Apple, Mozilla, Samsung, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and others. (We don’t know the exact amounts because Google considers this a classified trade secret, and the court has not forced disclosure. But the Apple contract, which involves revenue sharing, is reputed to be as high as $20 billion in 2022.)

…

But whose product is better is not really being adjudicated in this case; the question is whether Google used these special deals to give the company a head start. Moreover, as Judge Mehta has already said in the pretrial phase, if Google is such a superior product, why is it paying billions of dollars to maintain that default position?

…

In other words, because Google’s product is free to use, the harms are not necessarily price-related. They are harms to innovation from competitors who can’t get out of the starting gate; harms to quality because the lack of competition enables Google to pollute its searches with ads; harms to privacy because Google’s ubiquitous ads track users across the internet and competitors don’t do so, which means they can’t reach users.

The harm to quality seems like something the Justice Department will harp on in the case. In a recent press call, several antitrust advocates and former enforcers have explained the slow decline of Google Search. “My partner and I are going to Mexico City,” said Maria Langholz of Demand Progress. “If you Google Mexico City, you get Google Flights, a way for them to make money. You get Google Maps, links to restaurants and bars optimized by Google, and YouTube videos. (YouTube is owned by Google.) Most of [the links] are directed back to ways they can sell things and make money.” If the government can make the connection between this degraded quality and Google’s monopoly, it would go a long way toward proving the case.

…

Though the Justice Department had enough evidence to bring the case, they will also argue that Google destroyed documents—both emails and chats—that would have revealed even more about its practices. That will play into a narrative of a company that sees itself as above the law.

…

Importantly, this is not the only case against Google, and therefore it will not contain arguments about a number of other aspects of the company’s power. There’s a whole other Justice Department and state attorney general case targeting Google’s monopoly in advertising technology, which leads to more expensive ads and insulation from competition. (Ironically, in a motion in that case issued last Friday, Google released confidential information from News Corp, a non-party to the case, at the same time that it has been asking for trial information to be rendered a secret.) Unlike the case starting today, the ad-tech case will be a jury trial. (Google has claimed that Antitrust Division leader Jonathan Kanter has a “deep-seated bias” against the company.)

This still doesn’t exhaust the list of possible cases that could be brought against Google. There’s also a potential DOJ case coming over Google Maps. Another Google monopolization case with private litigants over its app store practices was just settled last week. A $5 billion class-action suit alleging that Google deceptively acquires user information faces a trial in November. And outside of Google, there’s an ongoing monopolization case against Meta and there will almost certainly be a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit coming imminently against Amazon, in addition to likely suits against Ticketmaster and possibly Apple.

Many of the theories of monopolization in the case starting today could have been available in 2013, when the Federal Trade Commission, against the advice of its own staff, decided not to pursue a case against Google. In a way, that’s what U.S. v. Google signals, that the government is no longer willing to turn its back to market consolidation anymore. The only real difference between this Google case and all the other ones against Google and other assorted companies is that this one made it to the trial phase first.

David Dayen
September 12, 2023
The American Prospect

Justice Department Says Google ‘Flexed Its Muscle’ as a Monopolist

On day one of the historic monopolization trial, the government put Google’s chief economist on the stand to show that the company valued default status on browsers and devices.

…

The first witness examination called forward by the government cast doubt on this claim. While examining Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist and longtime consultant, Dintzer pointed to internal company communications showing that Google viewed the “power of defaults” as “the Achilles heel” for competitors Yahoo and Bing (owned by Microsoft). Varian is credited with coining the term “power of defaults,” though he downplayed his role on the stand.

…

Besides the default strategy’s windfalls to Google, the government presented evidence that over the course of its relationship with Apple, Google leveraged its revenue-sharing agreements to limit access to alternative search engines, as well as Apple’s development of its own search engine.

In a lesser-known case, Dintzer showed how Samsung’s plan to develop a search engine tool called Branch Metrics, which would help consumers switch browsers more easily, was squashed by Google because it threatened their default position. Google leveraged its Android agreement to undercut the development of Branch, the government said. Though not a direct competitor search engine, it would have enhanced competition against Google.

These default deals locked consumers into Google search and eventually led to scale, the second major monopolistic feature that the DOJ identified. Scale allows Google to collect vast amounts of data to train its search engine, and also optimize data portfolios on user patterns for advertisers. By achieving unprecedented scale, Dintzer argues that Google’s data collection places barriers to entry for competitors.

The graveyard of competitors includes not just Bing and Yahoo, which have waned over the years in the shadow of Google. The scale and data advantage make it all but impossible for new entrants to gain a foothold, one example being the recent failure of newcomer Neeva, a once-promising search engine startup created by former Google engineers.

The final component of the DOJ’s argument is that Google has used these massive troves of data on users to dominate the advertising technology for placing general search ads.

…

Google also will try to make the case about Microsoft, claiming the government is merely protecting another dominant incumbent firm from Google’s own competitive forces in the search market. Other search engines like DuckDuckGo and Neeva have been relatively ignored by the defendants’ legal team.

Pro-antitrust enforcement attendees at the trial noted that it was a bold decision to call on Varian, a luminary in the economics field within academia, as the government’s first witness for examination. Some initially questioned the strategy, but after the testimony many were singing the government’s praises for Dintzer’s handling of the examination. Along with showing that the power of defaults was a conscious strategy to acquire monopoly power and that antitrust issues were a concern inside the company, another Google memo brought forward by the government exposed scale as a company priority.

Varian, in an interview with CNET from 2009, famously was quoted saying, “Scale is bogus.” However, communications between Varian and Google’s head of search, along with other company employees, illustrates that many top-level technologists at the company vehemently disagreed. Google’s chief scientist even said, “We don’t have better algorithms, we just have more data.”

…

Luke Goldstein
September 13, 2023
The American Prospect

[qnx]

Migrační služba Ukrajiny žádá EU, aby nevytvářela pohodlné podmínky pro ukrajinské uprchlíky.
https://zi.ua/news/migratsionnaya-sluzh ... ev_196230/