Election - Page 4 of 6

Drug decriminalization in Oregon could be a step toward better public health

A few weeks ago, Oregon voters passed Ballot Measure 110, the Drug Decriminalization and Addiction Treatment Initiative. The measure eliminates criminal penalties for the possession of small quantities of drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. It was one of several drug reform victories on Election Day, but Oregon’s decision is of particular interest to public health experts and recovery advocates, many of whom have pointed to decriminalization as a necessity for any widespread reduction of substance use disorders, drug-related diseases, and overdoses.

“Our drug laws are a major driver of health outcomes,” says Leo Beletsky, director of the Health in Justice Action Lab. Though existing drug laws are ostensibly about public health, “if you unroll the tape,” he says, “it’s clear that they were never really designed with health interests at the center.” Instead, he says, they have been motivated by racism and other oppressive systems — leaving health concerns surrounding drug use by the wayside.

National and global health organizations have proposed decriminalization for years. Framing people with substance use disorders as people in need of health care and social services, rather than as criminals, opens paths to getting them the help they need. The American Public Health Association (APHA) recommended “ending the criminalization of drugs and drug consumers” in a 2013 policy statement, calling the war on drugs a “severely flawed” approach.

More recently, in 2017, the Global Commission on Drug Policy called for drug decriminalization in order to effectively address the opioid epidemic. With increased numbers of people dying of overdose during the COVID-19 pandemic, “there’s never been a more apt time to rethink our approach,” says Beletsky.

Oregon, like many other states, is in need of a new approach. From 2008 to 2018, there was a dramatic increase in hospitalizations in Oregon for serious bacterial infections associated with injection drug use, according to a recent study. The authors of the study say their findings highlight a crucial need for harm reduction services, such as clean needle programs, safe injection sites, and social support for people with substance use disorders.

Because decriminalization is rare in the United States, local governments often have to look outside the country to see how these programs might work. Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs in 2001, has served as an example of what happens when a nation focuses on harm reduction rather than punishment. Since 2001, Portugal has had decreases in the numbers of new HIV cases from drug injection, Hepatitis C and B cases in drug treatment centers, and deaths from drug overdose.

While many look to the Portugal model as a successful example of decriminalization, there are key differences between Portugal and the United States that will present challenges for Oregon’s new initiative. Portugal already had lax enforcement of drug laws in contrast to the United States, which invests more heavily in carceral systems than in health and support systems. “If we’re talking about deflecting people from systems of coercion and oppression into systems of care and support,” says Beletsky, “there are no systems of care and support in many communities.” Oregon, and any states that follow its lead, will have to invest in building those systems.

The initiative calls for the establishment of more addiction recovery centers, and it requires that services at the centers be provided free of charge. People with substance use disorders, in addition to being fearful of criminal charges if they seek help, are often unable to afford the price of costly treatment. According to the measure, all services must be “evidence-informed, trauma-informed, culturally responsive, patient-centered, non-judgmental, and centered on principles of harm reduction.”

These requirements are especially significant considering the exploitative practices of many existing addiction treatment centers across the country. Funding for public treatment centers will come from both marijuana tax revenue and the reallocation of money that would otherwise be used for the costs of arrests and incarceration.

Decriminalization still does not make these drugs legal, and possession of larger quantities will still lead to penalties, though they will be reduced to misdemeanors. Possession of one or two grams, depending on the substance, will now be considered a non-criminal Class E violation. Anyone who is found with these substances will have a choice between a $100 fine or a health assessment with an addiction treatment professional.

If drug users are no longer criminalized, those who need treatment will be more likely to get it. The hope is that, with greater access to health and social services and less fear of punishment, fewer people will contract drug-related illnesses, be involved in drug-related violence, or die of overdoses. “From a public health perspective, the basic premise is that the way that we do things now drives lots of health harms,” says Beletsky, “and so there’s an opportunity to do things better.”

Supporters hope this initiative, as with the legalization of marijuana, will start a domino effect of decriminalization in more states. Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a press release, “We expect this victory to inspire other states to enact their own drug decriminalization policies that prioritize health over punishment.”

Roblox goes public so that it can build a bigger metaverse

The company behind the hit kids game Roblox is going public after soaring use during the pandemic. The company now has 31.1 million daily users who have spent an average of 2.6 hours per day in the game this year, according to Roblox’s prospectus.

Roblox has been around since 2004, but the game nearly doubled its daily users over the last nine months as it’s provided a social space where its players — mostly kids and teens — can hang out while stuck inside.

Roblox reported revenue of $588.7 million during the first nine months of 2020, a 68 percent increase over the same period in 2019. The company has spent a lot more money as it’s grown, though. Roblox reported losses of $203.2 million for the first nine months of 2020 — an increase so large that Roblox decided not to list the percentage jump from the prior year (it’s 339 percent, or more than quadruple the loss). Cost of revenue appears to have spiked as more people used the platform and Roblox began paying out more money to developers.

The title allows users to create experiences and games that they can then share with other people. That means there is no singular Roblox title that everyone is playing — you can jump in and pretend to be a bee, or work at a pizza place, or hang out at a resort. Roblox makes money when these games offer in-app purchases, and it gets a cut of sales of the in-app currency Robux. More than 18 million “experiences” have been created inside the game.

Roblox intends to increasingly turn its platform into a social space where players can have a variety of different experiences.

“In our vision, metaverse platforms will connect people from different life experiences with new and interesting ideas,” Roblox CEO David Baszucki wrote in the prospectus. “We believe these connections will help build empathy by safely immersing people in different perspectives, where they will hear diverse viewpoints. And someday, as the metaverse supports a broader range of positive educational and social experiences, we hope this can expand opportunities for all people around the world.”

Roblox’s IPO comes alongside a number of other startups that have rushed to go public after the chaos of the presidential election. Airbnb and DoorDash also filed to public over the past week. For Roblox, now appears to be a particularly auspicious time for it to go public — the company’s numbers look strong on the back of the pandemic. There’s no guarantee that’ll continue into the future, but Roblox has already started to preview how it plans to keep players’ interest in the months ahead.

Nintendo asks brands to keep politics out of Animal Crossing

Animal Crossing: New Horizons launched back in March, and since then, brands have jumped into the cozy virtual world to do everything from releasing streetwear to organizing voters. Now, however, Nintendo has decided to implement some rules that restrict some of what companies can do in the game. That includes keeping things family-friendly, not using Animal Crossing as a marketing tool, and, most notably, keeping politics out of the game. You can find the complete rules here.

“While our services and products are generally for personal use only, we understand there may be situations in which businesses and organizations would like to use or reference the game in relation to their business,” Nintendo says. “As such, we would like to share a few guidelines with those businesses, organizations, and anyone representing them, to preserve the experience for the millions of people enjoying the game recreationally.”

Many of the rules are to be expected. Animal Crossing is an E-rated game, so it makes sense that Nintendo would ban content that would be “considered vulgar, discriminatory, or offensive.” Similarly, the company says that “you are not allowed to obtain any financial benefit from using the game (including selling your custom design or earning any advertising revenue with the game content),” which is pretty typical with how Nintendo operates.

The most surprising restriction, though, is when Nintendo says to “please also refrain from bringing politics into the game.” This would presumably include things like the elaborate virtual headquarters made by the Joe Biden campaign ahead of this year’s US presidential election. Nintendo says that the only way to get around these rules is “with the separate and express, written permission of Nintendo.”

“If we see your activity is not following these guidelines or is damaging or having bad influence on the community, we may ask you to stop such activity or usage of our contents, and take appropriate actions, including prohibiting your future business usage of the game,” Nintendo continues.

Future political campaigns might have to stick with Among Us.

Facebook content moderators demand better coronavirus protections

More than 200 content moderators at Facebook have signed an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg demanding better COVID-19 protections. They say management has needlessly put their lives at risk by forcing them back into the office, even as full-time employees work from home until July 2021.

On October 12th, content moderators working for the third-party contracting firm Accenture in Austin, Texas were asked to return to the office. The company implemented additional cleaning measures and asked employees to wear masks. Despite these efforts, a contractor tested positive for COVID-19 shortly after returning to work, according to The Intercept.

Facebook has been under intense pressure to stop the spread of viral misinformation and take down incitements to violence, particularly around the 2020 US election. During the pandemic, it relied more heavily on artificial intelligence to detect content that violated its policies. “The AI wasn’t up to the job,” content moderators say in the letter, which was published by the law firm Foxglove. “Important speech got swept into the maw of the Facebook filter — and risky content, like self-harm, stayed up.”

While high-risk workers do not have to return to the office, contractors say the policy doesn’t extend to those who live with high-risk individuals. They’re asking Facebook and Accenture to allow moderators to work from home if they live with someone who is high risk.

Workers are also demanding hazard pay of 1.5x their typical hourly wage and asking Facebook to stop outsourcing their work. “Facebook should bring the content moderation workforce in house, giving us the same rights and benefits as full Facebook staff,” the letter says.

The demands reflect longstanding tensions between content moderators and the big tech companies for which they contract. While these workers are asked to look at some of the most vile content on the internet, their jobs often lack the pay and benefits of full-time employees. Some, at Google and YouTube, have gotten PTSD from their work.

Roughly 63 workers signed the letter to Facebook by name. Foxglove says another 171 across the US and Europe signed anonymously. “This is the biggest joint international effort of Facebook content moderators yet,” the law firm tweeted. “Many more moderators in other sites wanted to sign, but were too intimidated by Facebook – these people are risking their livelihood to speak out.”

In a statement emailed to The Verge, a Facebook spokesperson pushed back on the idea that content moderators aren’t able to work from home and don’t have sufficient protection. “We appreciate the valuable work content reviewers do and we prioritize their health and safety. While we believe in having an open internal dialogue, these discussions need to be honest,” they wrote. “The majority of these 15,000 global content reviewers have been working from home and will continue to do so for the duration of the pandemic. All of them have access to health care and confidential wellbeing resources from their first day of employment, and Facebook has exceeded health guidance on keeping facilities safe for any in-office work.”

YouTube is adding information about COVID-19 vaccines to its fact-check panels

Earlier this year, YouTube started adding “information panels” to videos and searches about COVID-19, directing viewers to authoritative sources in an attempt to combat misinformation about the disease. Now, as work on a COVID-19 vaccine begins to show early results, the company is tweaking this panel to also link to info about vaccination.

It’s a small change to what is already a small intervention in the battle against online misinformation. For relevant videos, the panel will now prompt viewers to “learn about vaccine progress,” linking to sources like the CDC and WHO. The panels have already begun appearing in searches and under videos in the US, reports CNET, and should be rolling out globally in the next couple of days.

YouTube certainly has the right idea here. As work on various COVID-19 vaccines progresses, it’s guaranteed that anti-vax conspiracy theorists will try to discourage people from being vaccinated — a trend that will directly harm the public’s health and prolong the damaging effects of the coronavirus pandemic. YouTube will certainly be a prime vector for this sort of misinformation, allowing conspiracy theorists to easily reach viewers.

However, the Google-owned company has not inspired confidence in its ability to handle misinformation of late. It’s declined to take down videos spreading falsehoods about the outcome of the US election, for example; behavior that is in marked contrast to that of Twitter and Facebook, which have been more active in labelling and removing false claims. Once the anti-vax movement gets started on any viable COVID-19 vaccine, tiny information boxes under conspiracy theory videos will be all too easy to ignore.

Twitter’s disappearing tweets, called Fleets, are now available for everyone

Twitter on Tuesday announced a global launch of “Fleets,” the ephemeral tweeting feature it first announced earlier this year and tested in various markets around the globe.

Now, any mobile Twitter user, regardless of where they live or what platform they’re on, will have access to the disappearing messaging feature, which will sit right at the top of the timeline in a row of Stories-like bubbles. Twitter hopes the new feature will help reduce the pressure around tweeting by letting users express more casual thoughts and feelings while also concerning themselves less with saying something profound or racking up likes and retweets. Fleets starts rolling out today on Android and iOS and should be available for everyone in the coming days, the company says.

“Through our tests in Brazil, Italy, India, and South Korea, we learned Fleets helped people feel more comfortable joining the conversation — we saw people with Fleets talk more on Twitter,” explain design director Joshua Harris and product manager Sam Haveson in a blog post. “Those new to Twitter found Fleets to be an easier way to share what’s on their mind. Because they disappear from view after a day, Fleets helped people feel more comfortable sharing personal and casual thoughts, opinions, and feelings.”

At its most basic level, Fleets is a Stories clone, borrowing all of the best ideas implemented by Instagram and Snapchat. You can share text, respond to others’ tweets, or post videos with the same background color and overlaid text options you get on other messaging apps with ephemeral features, with every message disappearing after 24 hours. You can also respond to others’ fleets by tapping on one and sending a direct message or emoji to the creator, which will start a DM conversation similar to how the story reply process works on Instagram. Twitter says it will also be introducing stickers and live broadcasting at some point in the future.

Right now, the company says there will be no indicator if someone screenshots one of your fleets, and anyone who follows you will be able to see what you fleet by visiting your profile if they don’t immediately see your bubble at the top of the timeline. So it’s not exactly right to think of Fleets as a fix-all remedy to social media outrage culture or the platform’s propensity to direct large numbers of individual actions toward a single target — what we colloquially call “getting ratioed” or piled on or canceled or whatever name or phrase you’d like to attach to briefly becoming an internet punching bag.

But what Fleets seem likely to help with is dividing the sheer volume of opinions that get trafficked on Twitter every minute of every day into more digestible formats. That may spark changes in how we communicate on the platform. Undoubtedly, some users will try to push the limits of what can be said or shown on a fleet versus a tweet. Twitter is sure to face fresh moderation challenges when deciding whether to write new rules or modify for combating, say, harassment or misinformation as it pops up in Fleets.

But most of us can just use Fleets to send out the one-off reaction or hot take and let it expire in the void like most dumb opinions do anyway, just as Instagram Stories lets you share unpolished and (dare I say) fleeting snippets of our daily lives that don’t have to be framed or filtered to perfection.

That’s, of course, assuming people on Twitter actually want to use this feature and actually follow through in any meaningful capacity. Part of the great stories takeover of social media that Snapchat inadvertently kicked off more than a half-decade ago meant products and services that never needed ephemeral messaging got it anyway — from Facebook’s main app to YouTube to even LinkedIn. Those Stories clones may stick around, but they inevitably become ghost towns.

It’s not immediately clear that Twitter needs a Stories take of its own. But if any platform can benefit from disappearing messages that lower the stakes and promote perhaps healthier and more stress-free communication, it’s the social media platform the sitting president of the US is actively using to undermine election results. If we can’t or won’t log off in 2020, then we all need to chill out a bit — and maybe fleeting is one way to do that and make the internet more bearable in the process.

Social app Parler reportedly receives funding from the conservative Mercer family

Social media app Parler receives financial backing from conservative hedge-fund investor Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, The Wall Street Journal reported. The app, founded as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook and bills itself as “viewpoint neutral” saw nearly 1 million new downloads in the days after the US presidential election, rocketing it to the top of the iOS and Google Play app stores.

Parler turned into a kind of de facto home for conservatives’ protests against the election— including the persistent “Stop the Steal” campaign— after the race was called for former Vice President Joe Biden. Several high-profile conservative social media personalities encouraged people to abandon Twitter and Facebook because of their moderation policies, and instead follow them on Parler.

According to the WSJ, the Mercers, known for giving financial support to conservative causes and organizations, including Cambridge Analytica, have not previously revealed their connection to Parler.

Parler did not immediately return a request for comment Saturday. On its website, the Nevada-based company says it “is the solution to problems that have surfaced in recent years due to changes in Big Tech policy influenced by various special-interest groups.” As the Wall Street Journal notes, Parler doesn’t use the content recommendation algorithms that other social platforms do, algorithms which determine what content users ultimately see based on their behavior. Instead, Parler shows users all posts from other users they follow.

A longstanding gripe among conservatives on social media is that Twitter and Facebook’s algorithms discriminate against them, “shadowbanning” their content. So far, there’s been no conclusive evidence of such behavior.

Dow Jones is rising, tech stocks are less dragging

After a brilliant start to the week, the US leading index Dow Jones went a step further on Tuesday. It moved up by 0, 74 percent to 29. 420, 92 points before. The day before, the leading index had already reached a record high in early trading and was close to the 30. 000 points. He was driven by the prospect of an effective vaccine against the lung disease Covid – 19 and of the victory of the Democrat Joe Biden in the US presidential election.

Profit-taking from tech giants such as Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and AMD pushed against it the technology-heavy Nasdaq exchange. So the Nasdaq 100 extended the losses from Monday, he lost another 1, 74 Percent on 11. 624, 29 counter. This could mean that the big players in the Internet, social media, software and semiconductors industries could lose their status as the driving force behind the stock exchanges for the time being, which they had in recent months.

The S&P 500 announced on Tuesday at 0, 14 percent on 3545, 53 points after. Like the Dow Jones, the market-wide stock market barometer had reached a record high the day before.

Amazon fell by 3.5 percent. According to the EU competition watchdog, Amazon violates antitrust regulations. The EU Commission accuses the company of systematically using non-public business data from independent retailers for its own retail business. If the competition watchdogs stick to their assessment, Amazon threatens a billions in fine.

The shares of the pharmaceutical wholesaler Walgreens Boots Alliance sat at the top of the Dow, they rose by 6.5 percent. The investment bank Morgan Stanley identified an additional sales potential of 8.5 billion US dollars for the company, should it play an important role in the distribution of a corona vaccine in the USA.

Biontech flying high Biontech papers rose by a further 7.6 percent after they had already been changed the day before 14 percent climbed. Pfizer lost 1.3 percent. Positive study results on a corona vaccine had driven the papers of the two cooperation partners and also the stock markets up strongly the day before.

The papers of Curevac traded in the USA advanced by more than twelve percent. They benefited from the interim results of a study on a Covid vaccine candidate from the biopharmaceutical company. Like Biontech, Tübingen-based Curevac is also working at full speed on a vaccine against the coronavirus.

The meat substitute manufacturer Beyond Meat suffered heavily from the corona crisis in the third quarter and clearly fell short of expectations. The bottom line was a loss of 19, 3 million dollars. The sales of the company, which is actually known for its rapid growth, only increased by a meager 2.7 percent. The shares plummeted by almost 17 percent.

Stable euro The euro was stable and was most recently listed at 1, 1807 dollars. The European Central Bank (ECB) previously had the reference rate at 1, 1808 (Monday: 1, 1883) US dollars. The dollar had thus cost 0, 8469 (0, 8415) euros. On the bond market, the prices increased the losses from the beginning of the week. The futures contract for ten-year Treasuries (T-Note-Future) fell by 0.2 percent to 137, 52 points. The yield on the ten-year bond rose accordingly to 0, 92 percent.

(olb)

Digital capitalism: Public law platforms against Facebook & Co.

“The social media are outside of our constitutional system,” complained Shoshana Zuboff, who coined the term surveillance capitalism, on Tuesday at the start of the online congress “Digital capitalism – a turning point through Corona?” of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. When Facebook went public, the founder Mark Zuckerberg was given “total control over the world’s dominant communication channels”. For the US economist there is no doubt: The big platforms must be “placed under democratic control”.

Our dependency made clear The corona pandemic “shows us our dependence,” said Zuboff. Even politicians rely on Facebook and Twitter “to communicate with their voters”. The greats from Silicon Valley have achieved “unacceptable power”. The invasion of almost all living spaces and privacy by tech companies such as Amazon, Google or Microsoft is meanwhile so total “that we can no longer bear it”.

Citizens would have to resist and encourage politics to hunt in the event of drastic regulatory measures, the Harvard professor emeritus put forward as the slogan. We humans have entered the digital age “naked”, “without specific rights and institutional forums”. This is comparable to the situation at the end of 19. Century in industrial capitalism, when there was no fair pay and no regulated working hours for workers and, for example, no banking supervision. Political reactions are now comparable to those in 20. Century, on surveillance capitalism.

It is important to dissuade the digital economic system from purely extracting and marketing personal information, said Zuboff at the 26. November conference a solution approach into play. A competition between public and private actors is important in order to use data appropriately in the interests of the people and, for example, to cure diseases and to counter climate change.

Facebook’s renewed failure The team of the newly elected US President Joe Biden has said little about “tech regulation”, has not escaped the researcher. The failure of Facebook in particular in the past few weeks was so colossal that the “Stop the Stealing” movement was able to organize itself over the network before and after the election. Zuckerberg just looked at the whole “well-oiled machine for disinformation” without doing anything.

Meanwhile, however, 74 percent of the US worried -Americans for misinformation, 75 percent are in favor of better privacy protection, Zuboff referred to studies by the Knight Foundation and Accountable Tech. An even larger proportion of the population has completely lost trust in social media. On Facebook, the “overwhelming majority” is that the platform divides, disseminates toxic content, does not fight against racism and puts “profit over community”. The industry has “a comparably bad image as the tobacco industry”, which will be the wind in the sails of the legislature.

That an initiative for better conditions for drivers from Uber & Co. has failed in California, the author described as a “tragic decision”. The companies concerned had packed their resistance to the project in an ideological campaign in order to preserve alleged freedoms. The gig economy often tries to circumvent laws and builds on the “greed society”. Zuboff urged patience. It also took a long time to enforce a ban on child labor.

Preparation for the next crisis Overall, the 68 – year-old hopes that the world will embark on a third, democratic path between Silicon Valley and China, so that the major platforms are also under a leadership role USA to contain. The EU Commission is planning to take the first steps in December with the draft of a Digital Services Act (DSA). It should oblige systemically important companies to open up their data resources and thus strive for “a little more equality of power”, demanded the Berlin sociologist Philipp Staab. Politicians should secure public control over such portals via open interfaces.

For many areas, the professor considers it crucial to set up public platforms straight away. According to him, it would make sense, for example, to network the retail sector locally with this approach in such a way that it is capable of “same-day delivery” and can involve bicycle couriers immediately. Bringing oneself into complete dependency on a “small number of US leading companies”, on the other hand, is bad for the resilience required especially in times of corona and similar future crises At the hands of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, the Berlin professor for sustainable digitization Tilman Santarius pointed out. Since these are also among the content providers, not only is net neutrality at risk, but also the common good in the medium term. The latter also applies to mobility providers who have “not yet implemented any ecological route guidance”.

Public law portals for the public “We need data governance,” countered the expert. Trustees should be installed “who have at least a public mandate” and regulate access to the measured values. Interoperability is also “extremely useful”. But European governments have problems with know-how, money and the will to “achieve the primacy of the political at all”.

That was grist to the mill of SPD leader Saskia Esken, who has long advocated the “sharing” of non-personal company data and a “public infrastructure company”, at least for broadband expansion. It is overdue to bring such projects into the hands of the state in order to “finally put an end to the embarrassing failure” in closing white gaps in the Internet supply, the Social Democrat now underlined. She advocated the motto: “Public money, public good.”

“We need platforms for collaboration, of which we know that the communication and the data remain private,” emphasized Esken. The state should offer this. She raised the question of whether a search engine that opens up “central access to the knowledge of the world” for many should be in private hands. Online portals would also have to give users “insight into their sorting and filtering algorithms”, which should be enforced at EU level. In any case, she wants to strengthen the “ability of civil society to organize itself via public service platforms”.

(mho)

Elon Musk’s Boring Company is hiring for a possible tunnel project in Austin

The Boring Company, Elon Musk’s tunnel-digging venture, may be eyeing its next project in Austin, Texas. The company recently posted half a dozen new jobs in the city and tweeted favorably about Austin’s soil.

It’s not surprising that the Boring Company would target Austin for its next project. Musk’s other company, Tesla, recently announced that the city would be the site for its next factory, with a focus on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck production.

Rumor has it that “Austin Chalk” is geologically one of best soils for tunneling. Want to find out? Austin jobs now available.https://t.co/imlQMDfprJ

— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) November 9, 2020

The jobs available in Austin range from electrical engineer to mechanical engineer, business development lead, and technical recruiter. It’s unclear whether the Boring Company has actually initiated conversations with local officials about a tunneling project. A spokesperson for the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Whether a possible Austin project is connected to Tesla’s planned factory there also remains up in the air. If so, Tesla certainly has laid the groundwork by working with local officials for months on issues surrounding the factory. In July, officials in Austin approved a total of at least $60 million in property tax rebates for the company.

Tesla plans to hire up to 5,000 workers at an average salary of $47,147, with entry-level positions starting at $35,000. It will invest at least $1 billion and is planning to make a factory of between 4 and 5 million square feet.

The Boring Company has a 1.14-mile test tunnel near SpaceX’s headquarters in Los Angeles. It is also currently working on a system of tunnels to shuttle people under the Las Vegas Convention Center — though that project won’t carry as many passengers as originally estimated. The company’s plans to build a fast transit system in Maryland were recently scaled back, and its Chicago project is all but dead after Lori Lightfoot’s election as mayor in 2019.

Edit Policy: ECJ could tip upload filters and embarrass Berlin

“Compromise on copyright: No upload filters!” Was the title of a decision by the CDU a few weeks before the EU copyright reform was passed last year. Even then, the promise to dispense with upload filters when implementing the directive in German law was not very convincing. The controversial article 17 leaves platforms little choice but to use an upload filter. Internal documents of the federal government now show that the CDU has not only forgotten its election promise, but is actively trying to achieve the opposite.

(Image:

Diana Levine, CC-BY

) In the Edit Policy column, former MEP Julia Reda comments on developments in of European and global digital politics. In doing so, she wants to show that European and global network policy developments can be changed and encourage political commitment.

Lump sum compensation through collecting societies Article 17 makes commercial platforms liable for their users’ copyright infringements. The only way to avoid this liability is to seek licenses for copyrighted content and to block copyright infringements for which the rights holder has not given you a license. Since platforms live on user-generated content, they cannot limit in advance which licenses they need for legal operation. That depends on what content is uploaded to the platform by third parties.

There will also always be rights holders who do not want to grant licenses for their works, and instead they will be blocked request of uploads. Platforms under Article can only do without upload filters if the legislator allows the use of copyrighted content on these platforms lump-sum allowance and the rights holders are compensated for these uses via collecting societies.

Flat-rate license – A barrier to copyright The idea of such a blanket license was the core of the position paper that CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak tried last year in the face of mass protests against the copyright reform to swear his party to renounce upload filters. The paper says: “All content can be uploaded. Below a time limit, uploads are free of license fees. Above a time limit, the platform must acquire licenses for copyrighted works that have a digital fingerprint (identification of the author). Legally, the flat-rate license model represents a barrier to copyright. ”

In other words : All uploads are legalized – short excerpts from external works should be able to be used free of charge, for long excerpts or entire works the platforms have to pay a statutory flat-rate fee. If all uploads are legal, the use of upload filters will be superfluous.

SPD proposal not very user-friendly The SPD-led Federal Ministry of Justice has a significantly weakened version of this CDU proposal in its draft bill for the German implementation of Article 17 According to the proposal of the Ministry of Justice, only the use of short excerpts from protected works should be permitted and remunerated at a flat rate, up to 20 Seconds of video or audio, up to 1000 character T ext, or image files up to 20 kilobytes. In addition, uses that generate significant income should not be able to benefit from this exception.

This draft is obviously already much less user-friendly than the CDU promise to make upload filters completely superfluous. Longer excerpts or entire works must be automatically blocked according to the Ministry of Justice’s plans. There is no longer any question of doing without upload filters. The only goal is to “avoid upload filters as much as possible”. But even this small concession to the users, who loudly warn against the blocking of legal content by upload filters, is a thorn in the side of the CDU-led ministries.

If your screen time was up during election week, you’re not alone

As Election Day came and went and we still didn’t know who was going to win the presidency, many of us ended up glued to our devices last week— moreso than usual— seeking the latest news. Whether it was the obsession with MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki and his map wizardry or the constant updates about how many votes were left to count in Pennsylvania or Georgia, Americans likely spent more time doomscrolling through their Twitter feeds and other apps than they normally do.

Depending on who your preferred candidate was, by Saturday morning —when the networks called the election for Joe Biden— your doomscrolling may have turned into gleefreshing— the newly-coined term for manually updating your feed to read good news.

On Sunday, we started seeing the updates: the iOS Screen Time feature helpfully lets you know how your screen time compares to the week before.

Gene Park of The Washington Post got down into the nitty gritty of exactly how many hours of screen time he averaged (although it’s sort of his job to be a power user):

Not everyone was interested to learn (or to tell others) how much more screen time they had last week compared to the week before, however.

Good morning to everyone except my weekly screen time report.

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) November 8, 2020

There’s a lot of research on screen time but it’s not all that conclusive; some studies suggest too much screen time makes people anxious, other studies say not so much.

Whatever the case, if you’re worried about last week’s screen time, maybe let yourself off the hook a little.

By the power vested in me, I hereby absolve you of all the sins contained in your weekly screen time report. God loves you and forgives you, and your eyes will heal in time.

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) November 8, 2020

Awaiting the results of a momentous presidential election during a pandemic is probably a good reason for people to be looking at their phones, tablets, or even TVs for more information.

People are making fancams for states that have gone blue

It’s the third day of the US presidential election, and the country is finally starting to get some clarity on who actually won the race. As states have been finalizing their vote counts, election maps have been updating their colors. And now, as a result, we have these.

These are colloquially known as fancams. (More on that in a minute.) The videos have even extended to people like MSNBC anchor Steve Kornacki and Joe Biden.

Let’s talk about fancams. As Twitter user @S_Bareerah pointed out in an archived thread, fancams are fan-made concert videos of idols taken by fans. “They often (but not always) focused on a ‘bias’, their favourite member of a particular group,” they wrote. “For a popular group you could find fancams of each member for any particular performance from a specific date.”

Right! Cool. Fancams don’t just live on YouTube or forums anymore, though. People started replying with them on Twitter, and eventually the meaning of a fancam changed. They became an aesthetic and stopped referring to a specific thing.

This, of course, is how you turn a fancam into an AMV (anime music video). Time, semantic drift, and the eternal September.

fancams are just AMVs for zoomers. we need to stop erasing history

— brian feldman (@bafeldman) November 6, 2020

For the record: AMVs are an old form of fan-made media. Teens used to take pivotal moments of popular shows like Naruto or Sailor Moon and set them to emotional music. They’re beautiful!

Anyway, next time you see a fancam on Twitter, now you’ll know where it came from. For best results, log onto YouTube and watch a ton of AMVs.

Vulnerabilities in iOS are actively exploited – no update for iOS 13

With the latest series of updates, Apple is eliminating several critical vulnerabilities in its operating systems that allow remote attackers to smuggle in malicious code. Users should install the updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS provided on Friday night as soon as possible.

Targeted attacks on Apple users The security risk does not seem to be purely theoretical: At least three of the vulnerabilities are actively used for attacks on Apple devices, Google security researchers who discovered the bugs and emphasize reported to the manufacturer. A vulnerability in the FontParser and two holes in the kernel can allow malicious code to be executed with kernel rights, Apple admits in a security notice on the updates. According to the manufacturer, there are “reports that there is an exploit for this problem in the wild.”

The vulnerabilities are used for targeted attacks, the Google Security researcher Shane Huntley only with and emphasized at the same time that these are not attacks around the US presidential election. For the in-house web browser Chrome, Google recently released important security updates, and there was talk of actively exploiting the vulnerabilities – the attacks are similar, according to Huntley. Whether the attacks are only aimed at iPhones and how code is smuggled in remains open, as does the order of magnitude.

No updates for iOS 13 and macOS 10. 14 Apple has not only eliminated the three vulnerabilities found by Google in current operating system versions, but also in older versions: In addition to iOS and iPadOS 14. 2 is also iOS 12 .4.9 available for download. A security update for iOS 13 is not available, although the gaps are probably also there – users of iOS 13 should therefore consider installing iOS 13. 2. All devices running iOS 13 can also use iOS 14 to install.

For watchOS, Apple delivers security updates for three different versions: In addition to watchOS 7.1, there is also watchOS 6.2.9 (only for Apple Watch Series 1 and 2) and watchOS 5.3. 9 (for Apple Watch users who still use an iPhone with iOS 12). For Apple TV 4K and HD (4th generation) tvOS 14. 2 is available for download, for the old Apple TV 3 there is also an update available from user reports .

For macOS there is currently only one additional update for macOS 10. 15 7 Catalina, which also fixes the three critical vulnerabilities. Whether security updates for macOS 10. 14 Mojave and 10. 13 High Sierra follow, remains unclear . (lbe)

The winners of the European Hardware Community Awards 2020

After the announcement of the manufacturer of the year 2020 At the end of last week, the European Hardware Community Awards will be announced for the year 2020. These no longer only contain the voices of the Hardwareluxx community, but are made up of nine European hardware sites.

These include Hardwareluxx from Germany, KitGuru from Great Britain, iO-Tech from Finland , PurePC from Poland, Lab 477 from Romania, Geeknetic from Spain, Hardware Upgrade from Italy and Tweakers from the Netherlands and CowCotland from France. Just as with Hardwareluxx, the readers of the other eight pages cast their votes – together they could 16. 00 0 individual votes can be booked.

The results do not only represent our readership , but offer a European overview. Brands that are particularly strong in Germany do not necessarily have to have a prominent position in the whole of Europe.

We want to go into some highlights in more detail: As expected, AMD wins the choice of processors. The best GPUs apparently come from NVIDIA and with the GeForce RTX 3080 this is also the product of the year – AMD comes with the Radeon RX – 5151 – Series a little late for this election. All other winners can be found in the overview. Otherwise there are many overlaps between our manufacturers of the year 2020 and the European Hardware Community Awards.

We congratulate all winners!