UK leaves EU. Brexit happens!

BBC: Brexit: UK leaves the European Union.

The UK has officially left the European Union after 47 years of membership - and more than three years after it voted to do so in a referendum.

The historic moment, which happened at 23:00 GMT, was marked by both celebrations and anti-Brexit protests.

Candlelit vigils were held in Scotland, which voted to stay in the EU, while Brexiteers partied in London's Parliament Square.

Boris Johnson has vowed to bring the country together and "take us forward".
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Britain joined what was then European Economic Community on 1 January, 1973, at the third attempt. Two years later the country voted by an overwhelming majority to remain in the bloc in the first nationwide referendum.

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron held another referendum in June 2016, amid growing pressure from his own MPs and Nigel Farage's UK Independence Party.

Mr Cameron led the campaign to stay in the EU but lost by the narrow margin of 52% to 48% to the Leave campaign, fronted by fellow Conservative Boris Johnson.

Mr Cameron's successor as prime minister, Theresa May, repeatedly failed to get her version of an EU withdrawal agreement passed by Parliament and was replaced by Mr Johnson, who also failed to get his plans through.

Mr Johnson managed to secure an early general election in December last year, which he won with an 80 seat majority, on a promise to "get Brexit done".

[.] Most EU laws will continue to be in force - including the free movement of people - until 31 December, when the transition period comes to an end.

Tech News

AI:

TechTalks: In which direction is AI headed?

...we’ve reached a point where artificial intelligence algorithms can solve very complicated problems, and in many cases with speed and accuracy that is far superior to those of humans. But whether contemporary AI works likes the human mind is up for debate.

TechSpot: AI coming soon to a McDonald's drive thru near you.

McDonald’s will put its newfound technology to work in the drive thru. Working in conjunction with the company’s digital menus, Dynamic Yield technology will account for factors like weather, time of day, current restaurant traffic and trending menu items to display items that customers are more likely to purchase.
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McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook said they have a really straightforward business. “People only come to us if they want something to eat, or something to drink. We’re not in the business of using technology to try to change people’s lives.”

McDonald's predictive menu ordering=here. Change people's lives? They'll get there sooner rather than later.

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EU Articles 11 and 13 Copyright Reform:

Beta News: EU approves copyright reform despite massive opposition.

Known respectively as the "link tax" and the "upload filter", these two clauses have generated a great deal of interest from internet users and the technology industry alike. In particular, article 13 has proved especially controversial, holding websites responsible for material uploaded without a licence [sic] [.]

ZD Net: Social media platforms affected by new EU copyright regulations.

The European Parliament said the directive aims to ensure that copyright law also applies to the internet. It added that YouTube, Facebook and Google News are some of the internet household names that will be "most directly affected" by this legislation.

TechDirt: MEP's say mistaken in their vote on Articles 11 and 13. EU replies, "pound sand.".

...the key vote was whether to allow amendments that could have deleted those two articles. That vote failed by just five votes, 317 to 312. Unfortunately, soon after the vote was finalized, a few of the MEPs who voted against the plan for amendments -- Peter Lundgren and Kristina Winberg -- said they voted incorrectly and meant to vote for the amendments in order to get rid of Articles 11 and 13. Apparently, someone changed the vote order which threw them off[.]

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Dark Reading: Russia regularly spoofs regional GPS.

A large-scale analysis of global positioning data has discovered widespread Russian spoofing over the past three years of the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) used by ships and autonomous vehicle systems to find their positions and safely chart courses, according to a new report.

The report — published by the Center for Advanced Defense (C4ADS), a nonprofit intelligence firm focused on worldwide security issues — found that at least 9,883 instances of spoofing occurred near sensitive areas in Russia and Crimea and during times when high-ranking officials, such as President Vladamir Putin, were present.

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Ars Technia: Microsoft discover Huawei driver that opened systems to attacks.

...it wasn't malware that was injecting and running code in a user process; it was a Huawei-written driver. Huawei's driver was supposed to act as a kind of watchdog: it monitored a regular user mode service that's part of the PCManager software, and if that service should crash or stop running, the driver would restart it. To perform that restart, the driver injected code into a privileged Windows process and then ran that code using an APC—a technique lifted straight from malware.

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Technocracy: Sweden expected to force banks to handle cash transactions.

Technocrats pushing for a cashless society are seriously conflicted as its flagship experiment in Sweden is coming unravelled. The people in Sweden have spoken, and cash stays. ⁃ TN Editor

Sweden will likely push through a proposal to force banks to keep offering cash to customers who require it as the Nordic nation grapples with how to balance the rapid transformation into a cashless society.

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Security Week: Ransomware hits aluminum giant Norsk Hydro.

Norwegian metals and energy giant Norsk Hydro, one of the world’s biggest aluminum producers, has been hit by a ransomware attack that has impacted operations, forcing the company to resort to manual processes.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Norsk Hydro representatives revealed that the attack, which they described as extensive, started on Monday at around midnight, Norway time, when the company’s security team noticed some unusual activity on its global network. They said the ransomware is designed to encrypt files, but they have yet to determine exactly which malware family it belongs to.

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C|Net: Twitter birthday prank will lockout your account.

The hoax, which appears to have begun making the rounds on Monday, promises to make users' feeds more "colourful" if they change the birth year in their profile to 2007. An early tweet on the trick has been retweeted more than 13,000 times[.]

Tech News

ArsTechnia: A history of Japan's car industry.

Hit the link. Check out the image gallery of cars.

Extreme Tech: Best cars of the 2019 Chicago auto show.

Hit the links in the link for more images.

Technocracy: Self-driving cars are INCREASING urban congestion.

Self-driving cars will likely jam up downtown streets by cruising at slow speeds rather than parking, according to a new analysis published in the journal Transport Policy. Using game theory and simulated traffic models, report author Adam Millard-Ball found that the vehicles will be incentivized to circle streets rather than pay for parking.

According to Millard-Ball’s model, even as few as 2,000 self-driving cars in downtown San Francisco could slow traffic to less than 2 miles per hour.

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Tech Dirt: Italy tells EU to drop Articles 11 and 13 in copyright reform.

Italy... has now made a pretty clear statement that if the country is going to support the latest directive, it needs to protect the users of the web, and the only way to do that is to remove Articles 11 and 13.

Good for Italy!
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ZD Net: Will Robot love fulfill emotional needs?

I wonder...how close are we to the era of when our robots will need shrinks?

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Beta News: Spotify to ban ad-blockers.

Under the heading "the following is not permitted for any reason whatsoever" Spotify lists, among other things:

   - circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify Service, or creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements in the Spotify Service[.]

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TechSpot: Senate investigations into government workers use of VPNs.

Recent months have been filled with news of international cybersecurity concerns and foreign meddling, and now two US Senators are going after a new target – virtual private networks (VPNs) used by governmental employees.

Who are the two senators? Marco Rubio (Republican) and Ron Wyden (Democrat).

10,000 to one odds that, three weeks ago, there might have been two - at most - two senators, who know what a VPN is.  This is similar to when John McCain was convinced the 2016 presidential election was hacked, and he pretended to know about hacking, yet didn't know what an exit node is. Sputnik News:

When questioned by a Sputnik reporter following the hearing about the debunking of the Joint Annual Report by security experts, including the finding that 43 percent of the IP addresses attributed to ‘Russian hackers’ were generic web-browser Tor exit nodes, the Senator responded by saying that he had “no idea” what she was talking about.

Lawmakers getting involved in Tech. Again. You have better odds in uniting the properties of water and electricity.
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Tech News World: Wireless carriers really selling our data.

AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint have sold access to subscribers' real-time location data to aggregators, which in turn have sold it to about 250 bounty hunters and related businesses, Motherboard reported Wednesday.

In some cases, the data allowed users to track individuals to their specific locations inside a building.

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Gizmodo: Washington state's snow-induced mayhem.

Yeah, and hey, Washington, your snows keep coming our way, hitting the central Midwest. So...stop it!
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Computer World: Apple is disabling Safari's "do not track" feature.

The list of online entities who do not respect DNT requests includes all the usual privacy-eroding suspects, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Medium, Pinterest, and Reddit do honor these requests, which rather suggests you can find alternative ways to make a business.

World News

EU (still) Making Sausages Reforms in Copyright Laws

This is a Must Read by, and at, Julia Reda.com. 

Article 13 is almost finished – and it will change the internet as we know it.

... EU copyright reform law have resumed: After missing the original Christmas deadline, negotiators for the European Parliament and Council are now aiming to finalise the text on January 21, 2019.

The negotiators have reached agreement on the core of Article 13, which will change the internet as we know it: They want to make internet platforms directly liable for any copyright infringements their users commit.

What remains to be decided: Exactly what lengths will platforms need to go to to avoid or limit their liability? Just how much they will need to restrict our ability to post and share our creations online?

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NYT: New caravan forming in Honduras.

More than 300,000 Central Americans entered Mexico last year, most of them illegally, and an estimated 80 percent of them were bound for the United States border, Ms. Sánchez Cordero said.

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Reuters: PG&E multi-billion dollar bankruptcy?

PG&E, which carries a hefty debt load of more than $18 billion, is expected to soon disclose a large financial charge related to liabilities resulting from catastrophic November blazes.

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France 24: Macron looks to calm the Yellow Vests.

Macron's initiative comes after nine weeks of protests by the "yellow vests" -- named after the high-visibility jackets they wear. The disparate anti-government uprising has wreaked havoc in Paris and French cities, shaken the economy and challenged his authority.

BBC: Yellow Vests disable 60% of speed cameras.

Good for them!
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Sky News: Polish mayor stabbed on stage.

Pawel Adamowicz, who is the mayor of Gdansk, was attacked in front of hundreds of onlookers in the city during an event in aid of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity.

Doctors said he underwent five hours of surgery for wounds to his heart and abdomen but that "the next hours will decide everything".
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According to Polish broadcaster TVN, the suspect shouted from the stage and claimed that he had been wrongly imprisoned by the previous government.

Sky News: Stage of stabbing attack.

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The Diplomat: China's interest in Antarctica, space, the moon AND Antarctica.

China views exploration of outer space as part of its overall national development. Its space-based BeiDou 2 system aims for global coverage by 2020. Furthermore, China aims to have a human-crewed space station by 2020-22 and a space-based solar power station by 2050, all to protect China’s national interests. Comparable to its actions in Antarctica, Chinese nationalistic goals and somewhat imperialistic advance will likely determine the shape of future conflict.

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ING: Why a Brexit delay is likely.

 ...it’s worth noting that there are at least two ways the law-making process alone could force a Brexit delay.

BBC: "Brexit Box" survival kits flying off shelves.

"People from all over the UK are buying it and those that can afford more are purchasing more than just the Brexit box, perhaps the three-month or six month packs."

BBC: Theresa May says no Brexit more likely than no deal.

Labour has vowed to table a vote of no confidence if Mrs May loses.

Its leader Jeremy Corbyn said Labour would vote against the deal and would start moves to trigger a general election if it is voted down.

Daily Mail: Boris stirs up the anti-Mays.

9 News: May says no deal means catastrophe.
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GLB News: The already overcrowded 2020 declared Dem presidential candidates.

Easier to raise hands if you're a Dem and not running for president.
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SMH: Australia, where some workers choose lifestyle over pay.
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Singapore Straits: Stowaway bird appears 12 hours into flight.

Business-class passengers [were] greeted by [ a mynah bird ]  about 12 hours into the flight. A typical Singapore-London flight takes about 14 hours.

My mind is completely blank. Can't think of a one-or-two-liner on the stowaway bird. Anyone?

EU + Copyright Reform = Making Sausages

The quote is attributed to Otto von Bismarck: "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."

And in some cases, this with the EU, these sausages internet regulations should simply be abandoned.

From The Journal.ie:

The EU [Legal Affairs Committee] narrowly passed the reform, with 13 votes in favour and 11 against in a ballot that was kept secret given the bitter divisions on the issue. This means the Copyright Directive is now in its final form.
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* Article 11 would force online platforms like Google and Facebook to pay for links to news content they use. Major publishers have pushed for the reform, seeing it as an urgently needed solution against a backdrop of free online news that has decimated earnings for traditional media companies.

* Article 13 would require websites to monitor copyrighted material and would make them legally liable for any copyrighted material shared by users.

From Futurism:

Article 11 would create a new “link tax” that would force news aggregators, search engines, blogs, social networks, and publishers to get a license before linking to any other news source.
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Article 13 would institute “censorship machines” that would scan every piece of user-uploaded content for any copyright infringement, no matter whether it’s a meme, a parody, or some other totally innocuous piece of content.
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We already know this kind of link tax doesn’t work to bring more income to publications. As Julia Reda, German Member of the European Parliament, points out, the result of similar “link taxes” in Germany and Spain was disappointing. “Journalists certainly never saw additional remuneration,” she writes[.]
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“Algorithms that do content-matching are frankly terrible at it,” writes Cory Doctorow, journalist and co-editor of Boing Boing, in a blog post for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.