“Four environmental groups are crying victory after France was found guilty of failing to meet climate change goals it committed to in a historic accord signed in and named after its own capital city,” reports CBS News: The Administrative Tribunal in Paris ruled Wednesday that France had fallen short of its promise to reduce greenhouse gases under commitments made in the…
Tag: petition
Sci-Hub: Scientists, Academics, Teachers & Students Protest Blocking Lawsuit
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Torrent Freak: On December 21, 2020, Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society, filed a lawsuit hoping to have the court compel Indian ISPs to block both Sci-Hub and Libgen. Accusing the platforms of blatantly infringing their rights on a massive scale, the publishers said that due to the defiant nature of the platforms, ISP…
The Free Software Foundation Wants You To Celebrate Its 35th Anniversary
“Today, on October 4th, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) celebrates its thirty-fifth year of fighting for software freedom,” announces a blog post at FSF.org:
Our work will not be finished until every computer user is able to do all of their digital tasks in complete freedom — whether that’s on a desktop, laptop, or the computer in your pocket. The fight for…
YouTube Celebrates Deaf Awareness Week By Killing Crowd-Sourced Captions
Two days after the International Week of the Deaf, which is the last full week in September, YouTube is killing its “Community Contributions” feature for videos, which let content creators crowdsource captions and subtitles for their videos. Ars Technica reports: Once enabled by a channel owner, the Community Contributions feature would let viewers caption or translate a video and submit it…
Israeli Phone Hacking Company ‘Cellebrite’ Sued To Stop Sales To Hong Kong
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Human rights advocates filed a new court petition against the Israeli phone hacking company Cellebrite, urging Israel’s Ministry of Defense to halt the firm’s exports to Hong Kong where security forces have been using the technology in crackdowns against dissidents as China takes greater control of Hong Kong. In July, police…
Trump Asks Supreme Court To Let Him Block Critics on Twitter
The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling that found President Trump violated the First Amendment by blocking his critics on Twitter. From a report: The lawsuit arose in 2017 after Trump’s social media account blocked seven people who had tweeted criticism of the president in comment threads linked to his @realDonaldTrump Twitter handle….
As Colleges Move Classes Online, Families Rebel Against the Cost
“A rebellion against the high cost of a bachelor’s degree, already brewing around the nation before the coronavirus, has gathered fresh momentum as campuses have strained to operate in the pandemic,” reports the New York Times. “Who wants to pay $25,000 a year for glorified Skype?” one incoming freshman tells them: Incensed at paying face-to-face prices for education that is increasingly…
Should the U.S. Pardon Edward Snowden?
Long-time Slashdot readers 93 Escort Wagon and schwit1 both shared the news that U.S. President Trump is “considering” a pardon for Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who “leaked a trove of secret files in 2013 to news organizations that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations” carried out by the agency, according to Reuters: U.S. authorities for years…
FCC Chair Says Agency Will Take Public Comment on Trump Social Media Petition
The Federal Communications Commission will take public comment for 45 days on a petition filed by the Trump administration seeking new transparency rules in how social media companies moderate content, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said on Monday. From a report: Pai rejected calls from Democrats that he summarily dismiss the petition without public comment. The decision came after President Donald Trump…
YouTube Criticized For Ending Its Community Captions Feature
Long-time Slashdot reader xonen quotes the Verge:
YouTube plans to discontinue its community captions feature, which allowed viewers to add subtitles to videos, because it was “rarely used and had problems with spam/abuse,” the company announced. It says it’s removing the captions and will “focus on other creator tools.” The feature will be removed as of September 28th. “You can still use…