Month: September 2024

“Fascists”: Elon Musk responds to proposed fines for disinformation on X

“Elon Musk’s had more positions on free speech than the Kama Sutra,” says lawmaker.

A smartphone displays Elon Musk's profile on X, the app formerly known as Twitter.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Dan Kitwood )

Elon Musk has lambasted Australia’s government as “fascists” over proposed laws that could levy substantial fines on social media companies if they fail to comply with rules to combat the spread of disinformation and online scams.

The billionaire owner of social media site X posted the word “fascists” on Friday in response to the bill, which would strengthen the Australian media regulator’s ability to hold companies responsible for the content on their platforms and levy potential fines of up to 5 percent of global revenue. The bill, which was proposed this week, has yet to be passed.

Musk’s comments drew rebukes from senior Australian politicians, with Stephen Jones, Australia’s finance minister, telling national broadcaster ABC that it was “crackpot stuff” and the legislation was a matter of sovereignty.

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Remembering where your meals came from key for a small bird’s survival

For small birds, remembering where the food is beats forgetting when it’s gone.

a small, black and grey bird perched on the branch of a fir tree.

Enlarge (credit: BirdImages)

It seems like common sense that being smart should increase the chances of survival in wild animals. Yet for a long time, scientists couldn’t demonstrate that because it was unclear how to tell exactly if a lion or a crocodile or a mountain chickadee was actually smart or not. Our best shots, so far, were looking at indirect metrics like brain size or doing lab tests of various cognitive skills such as reversal learning, an ability that can help an animal adapt to a changing environment.

But a new, large-scale study on wild mountain chickadees, led by Joseph Welklin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Nevada, showed that neither brain size nor reversal learning skills were correlated with survival. What mattered most for chickadees, small birds that save stashes of food, was simply remembering where they cached all their food. A chickadee didn’t need to be a genius to survive; it just needed to be good at its job.

Testing bird brains

“Chickadees cache one food item in one location, and they do this across a big area. They can have tens of thousands of caches. They do this in the fall and then, in the winter, they use a special kind of spatial memory to find those caches and retrieve the food. They are little birds, weight is like 12 grams, and they need to eat almost all the time. If they don’t eat for a few hours, they die,” explains Vladimir Pravosudov, an ornithologist at the University of Nevada and senior co-author of the study.

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French Pirate Site Blocking Order Targets Expired and Seized Z-Library Domains

A court in Paris, France, has ordered major Internet providers to block 98 domain names used by popular book download portal Z-Library. The order comes in response to a complaint from the National Publishers Union (SNE), but the victory may be bittersweet. Many of the listed domain names were previously seized by U.S. authorities, and expanding the current order could prove time-consuming.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

zlibA few weeks before the U.S. Department of Justice announced the criminal prosecution of two alleged Z-Library operators in 2022, the French Publishers Union (SNE) had already targeted the site indirectly.

In August that year, SNE obtained an order at a Paris Court, requiring French ISPs to block more than 200 domain names.

By November 2022, the order was largely moot. U.S. authorities didn’t just call for the arrest of two people connected to the site in Argentina, the feds also seized the majority of the shadow library’s domain names.

In theory, this chain of events shouldn’t be a problem for the publishers but it ended up working against them as Z-Library didn’t fold. The site registered dozens of new domain names and continued operations after a short hiatus.

As a result, the earlier blocking victory turned out to be short-lived. The new domain names rendered the hard-fought Z-Library blockades useless and French readers continued to flock to the site.

Legally, there was no easy solution to add new domains, so SNE eventually had to go back to court, which it did this spring. Armed with a list of nearly a hundred new domain names, supported by the earlier win, there was little doubt that the Paris Court would rule in favor of an expansion.

Court Grants New Z-Library Blockades

Yesterday, Marc Rees at L’informé reported that the Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris signed a new blocking order on SNE’s request. The action targets 98 domain names in total, which were found to be predominantly copyright infringing.

As is often the case in these blocking procedures, the rightsholders supplied the necessary evidence. In this case, they presented analyses from anti-piracy outfit LeakID, which found that in a sample of 500 works listed on Z-Library, 83% were from SNE publishers.

“SNE established in a sufficiently convincing manner that the disputed site, which is aimed at a French-speaking audience, allows Internet users […] to download protected works from links without having the authorization of the rights holders, which constitutes copyright infringement,” the court concluded.

Bittersweet

The publishers will be pleased that the court granted their extended Z-Library blocking request. However, this is yet another bittersweet victory; perhaps more bitter than sweet.

Firstly, Z-Library can circumvent the blocking measures without much effort by registering new domain names. The court recognized the ‘dynamic’ nature of the problem but the order doesn’t allow the publishers to add new domains on their own accord.

If SNE wants to block additional domain names in the future, it must go back to court. This update process can take weeks, if not months, after which the same cycle can start all over again.

Blocking Seized Domains

The second ‘bittersweet’ element is related to this blocking lag. SNE submitted its recent blocking request on May 21st this year, just a few days before the FBI carried out its latest round of Z-Library domain seizures.

As a result, the majority of the Z-Library domain names listed in the latest court order no longer pose a threat. Put differently, French ISPs have been ordered to block dozens of domain names that have a prominent seizure banner, and are no longer controlled by Z-Library.

These seized domains include go-to-zlibrary.se, singlelogin.se, booksc.eu, zlibrary-fr.se, zlibrary-redirect.se, z-library.se, go-to-zlibrary.se and many others (full list here).

One of the ‘blocked’ Z-Library domains

seized and blocked

Other ‘blocked’ domain names have expired in recent months and become available for registration again. That applies to frenchbooks.se, greek-books.se, korean-books.se, and many more. A few other domains appear to be parked.

Expired and available

available

This means that, of the 98 domain names targeted in the latest court order, only nine are still active today. The others haven’t been available for weeks and Z-Library has put up several replacement domains, which are not covered by the blocking order.

It’s not difficult to see how this whole process must be a massive source of frustration for the publishers. If they go back to court, this will likely serve as an example of why more ‘flexible’ blocking measures are needed.

At the same time, it begs the question of why the Paris court grants a new blocking order for domain names that no longer link to any infringing material, as well as domains that have expired.

—

The court order, as published by L’informé, lists the following 98 domain names that ISPs are required to block:

– go-to-zlibrary.se (seized)
– singlelogin.se (seized)
– booksc.eu (seized)
– cn1lib.is (not loading)
– zlibrary-africa.se (parked)
– zlibrary-es.se (seized)
– afrikaans-books.se (expired)
– arabic-books.se (expired)
– azerbaijani-books.sk
– bengali-books.se (expired)
– bulgarian-books.se (expired)
– catalan-books.se (expired)
– croatian-books.se (expired)
– frenchbooks.se (expired)
– german-books.se (expired)
– go-to-zlibrary.se (seized)
– greek-books.se (expired)
– hebrew-books.se (expired)
– hindi-books.se (expired)
– hungarian-books.se (expired)
– indonesian-books.se (expired)
– italian-books.se (expired)
– japanese-books.se (expired)
– kazakh-books.sk
– korean-books.se (expired)
– latin-books.sk
– latvian-books.se (expired)
– portuguese-books.se (expired)
– russian-books.se (expired)
– serbian-books.se (expired)
– singlelogin.re
– slovak-books.sk
– spanish-books.se (expired)
– swedish-books.se (expired)
– turkish-books.se (expired)
– ukrainian-books.se (expired)
– urdu-books.sk
– z-library.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ae.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ar.se (seized)
– zlibrary-sg.se (seized)
– zlibrary-sk.se (seized)
– zlibrary-sng.se (seized)
– zlibrary-th.se (seized)
– zlibrary-tr.se (seized)
– zlibrary-tw.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ua.se (seized)
– zlibrary-vn.se (seized)
– zlibrary-za.se (seized)
– lithuanian-books.se (expired
– malayalam-books.sk
– pashto-books.sk
– polish-books.se (expired)
– zlibrary-asia.se
– zlibrary-at.se (seized)
– zlibrary-au.se (seized)
– zlibrary-be.se (seized)
– zlibrary-bg.se (seized)
– zlibrary-bl.se (seized)
– zlibrary-br.se (seized)
– zlibrary-by.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ca.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ch.se (seized)
– zlibrary-china.se (parked)
– zlibrary-cl.se (seized)
– zlibrary-cz.se (seized)
– zlibrary-de.se (seized)
– zlibrary-east.se (parked)
– zlibrary-eg.se (seized)
– zlibrary-es.se (seized)
– zlibrary-et.se (seized)
– zlibrary-fr.se (seized)
– zlibrary-fr.se (seized)
– zlibrary-global.se (seized)
– zlibrary-gr.se (seized)
– zlibrary-hk.se (seized)
– zlibrary-hu.se (seized)
– zlibrary-id.se (seized)
– zlibrary-in.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ir.se(seized)
– zlibrary-it.se (seized)
– zlibrary-jp.se (seized)
– zlibrary-kp.se (seized)
– zlibrary-kr.se (seized)
– zlibrary-lk.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ma.se (seized)
– zlibrary-my.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ng.se (seized)
– zlibrary-nl.se (seized)
– zlibrary-nz.se (seized)
– zlibrary-pb.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ph.se (seized)
– zlibrary-pk.se (seized)
– zlibrary-pl.se (seized)
– zlibrary-pt.se (seized)
– zlibrary-redirect.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ru.se (seized)
– zlibrary-sa.se (seized)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Kuipergürtel: Elf Objekte im äußeren Sonnensystem entdeckt

263 neue Objekte wurden im Sonnensystem entdeckt. Elf davon sollen so weit entfernt sein, dass die bisherigen Größenangaben vom Kuipergürtel nicht stimmen. (Astronomie, New Horizons)

263 neue Objekte wurden im Sonnensystem entdeckt. Elf davon sollen so weit entfernt sein, dass die bisherigen Größenangaben vom Kuipergürtel nicht stimmen. (Astronomie, New Horizons)

Rocket Report: China leaps into rocket reuse; 19 people are currently in orbit

Launch startups in China and Europe are borrowing ideas and rhetoric from SpaceX.

Landspace's reusable rocket test vehicle lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, September 11, 2024.

Enlarge / Landspace's reusable rocket test vehicle lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (credit: Landspace)

Welcome to Edition 7.11 of the Rocket Report! Outside of companies owned by American billionaires, the most imminent advancements in reusable rockets are coming from China's quasi-commercial launch industry. This industry is no longer nascent. After initially relying on solid-fueled rocket motors apparently derived from Chinese military missiles, China's privately funded launch firms are testing larger launchers, with varying degrees of success, and now performing hop tests reminiscent of SpaceX's Grasshopper and F9R Dev1 programs more than a decade ago.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Landspace hops closer to a reusable rocket. Chinese private space startup Landspace has completed a 10-kilometer (33,000-foot) vertical takeoff and vertical landing test on its Zhuque-3 (ZQ-3) reusable rocket testbed, including a mid-flight engine reignition at near supersonic conditions, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The 18.3-meter (60-foot) vehicle took off from the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China, ascended to 10,002 meters, and then made a vertical descent and achieved an on-target propulsive landing 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) from the launch pad. Notably, the rocket's methane-fueled variable thrust engine intentionally shutdown in flight, then reignited for descent, as engines would operate on future full-scale booster flybacks. The test booster used grid fins and cold gas thrusters to control itself when its main engine was dormant, according to Landspace.

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Rocket Report: China leaps into rocket reuse; 19 people are currently in orbit

Launch startups in China and Europe are borrowing ideas and rhetoric from SpaceX.

Landspace's reusable rocket test vehicle lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, September 11, 2024.

Enlarge / Landspace's reusable rocket test vehicle lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (credit: Landspace)

Welcome to Edition 7.11 of the Rocket Report! Outside of companies owned by American billionaires, the most imminent advancements in reusable rockets are coming from China's quasi-commercial launch industry. This industry is no longer nascent. After initially relying on solid-fueled rocket motors apparently derived from Chinese military missiles, China's privately funded launch firms are testing larger launchers, with varying degrees of success, and now performing hop tests reminiscent of SpaceX's Grasshopper and F9R Dev1 programs more than a decade ago.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Landspace hops closer to a reusable rocket. Chinese private space startup Landspace has completed a 10-kilometer (33,000-foot) vertical takeoff and vertical landing test on its Zhuque-3 (ZQ-3) reusable rocket testbed, including a mid-flight engine reignition at near supersonic conditions, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The 18.3-meter (60-foot) vehicle took off from the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China, ascended to 10,002 meters, and then made a vertical descent and achieved an on-target propulsive landing 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) from the launch pad. Notably, the rocket's methane-fueled variable thrust engine intentionally shutdown in flight, then reignited for descent, as engines would operate on future full-scale booster flybacks. The test booster used grid fins and cold gas thrusters to control itself when its main engine was dormant, according to Landspace.

Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments