1% of Farms Operate 70% of World’s Farmland

One percent of the world’s farms operate 70% of crop fields, ranches and orchards, according to a report that highlights the impact of land inequality on the climate and nature crises. The Guardian reports: Since the 1980s, researchers found control over the land has become far more concentrated both directly through ownership and indirectly through contract farming, which results in more…

France Orders Tech Giants To Pay Digital Tax

New submitter Based.Tech writes: The French Finance Ministry has sent out notices to big tech companies liable for its digital service tax to pay the levy as planned in December, the ministry said on Wednesday. France suspended collection of the tax, which will hit companies like Facebook and Amazon, early this year while negotiations were underway at the Organisation for Economic…

The Digital Nomads Did Not Prepare for This

They moved to exotic locales to work through the pandemic in style. But now tax trouble, breakups and Covid guilt are setting in. From a report: For a certain kind of worker, the pandemic presented a rupture in the space-time-career continuum. Many Americans were stuck, tied down by children or lost income or obligations to take care of the sick. But…

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Has Applied To Become a Citizen of Cyprus

The former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, is finalizing a plan to become a citizen of the island of Cyprus, Recode has learned, becoming one of the highest-profile Americans to take advantage of one of the world’s most controversial “passport-for-sale” programs. From the report: Schmidt, one of America’s wealthiest people, and his family have won approval to become citizens of the…

HP Replaces ‘Free Ink for Life’ Plan With ’99 Cents a Month Or Your Printer Stops Working’

In a new essay at EFF.org, Cory Doctorow re-visits HP’s anti-consumer “security updates” that disabled third-party ink cartridges (while missing real vulnerabilities that could actually bypass network firewalls). Doctorow writes that it was just the beginning: HP’s latest gambit challenges the basis of private property itself: a bold scheme! With the HP Instant Ink program, printer owners no longer own their…

A Biden Victory Positions America For a 180-Degree Turn On Climate Change

“Joe Biden, the projected winner of the U.S. presidency, will move to restore dozens of environmental safeguards President Donald Trump abolished,” reports the Washington Post, “and launch the boldest climate change plan of any president in history.” destinyland shares their report: While some of Biden’s most sweeping programs will encounter stiff resistance from Senate Republicans and conservative attorneys general, the United…

San Francisco Voters Approve Taxes On Highly Paid CEOs, Big Businesses

San Francisco voters have overwhelmingly approved several tax measures targeting property owners and big businesses with CEOs who are paid far more than their average workers. The Los Angeles Times reports: Under a newly approved law, any company whose top executive earns 100 times more than its average worker will pay an extra 0.1% surcharge on its annual business-tax payment. If…

How Stijn landed his new job after completing the IBM Applied AI Professional Certificate

Meet Stijn, a project assistant from Brussels, Belgium. He recently earned his IBM Applied AI Professional Certificate and it opened new career opportunities and helped him build the skills and confidence to ace his job interviews. He shares his story below and offers his insights about the program as well as some valuable advice on […]
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Security Blueprints of Many Companies Leaked in Hack of Swedish Firm Gunnebo

Brian Krebs: In March 2020, KrebsOnSecurity alerted Swedish security giant Gunnebo Group that hackers had broken into its network and sold the access to a criminal group which specializes in deploying ransomware. In August, Gunnebo said it had successfully thwarted a ransomware attack, but this week it emerged that the intruders stole and published online tens of thousands of sensitive documents…

Lee Kun-hee, Who Built Samsung Into a Global Giant, Dies At 78

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Lee Kun-hee, who built Samsung into a global giant of smartphones, televisions and computer chips but was twice convicted — and, in a pattern that has become typical in South Korea, twice pardoned — for white-collar crimes committed along the way, died on Sunday in Seoul, the South Korean capital….