January 2023 - cypherpunks@lists.ogf.org

Re: FOIL Request No. 2022-090560 - Larson
by Gunnar Larson 09 May '23

09 May '23

Good morning: We would like to appeal this decision. “We would like to receive any and all records, relating to NY-DFS' 2021 Apple Card Investigation. This is one part of a broader discussion we must have about equal credit access. On March 23, 2021, Ms. Linda Lacewell published NY-DFS' Findings on Apple Card and its Underwriter Goldman Sachs Bank. As the former Superintendent of NY-DFS, Ms. Lacewell's stone faced propaganda assured that Apple Card did not discriminate against women, while under Goldman Sachs management. The red flags started to appear when an authorized user drew attention to the following: A person who relies on a spouse's access to credit, and only accesses those accounts as an authorized user, may incorrectly believe they have the same credit profile as the spouse. We recently collated 61 highlights to the Report on Apple Card Investigation from March 2021: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xH16OKyuXzB-MVqIznMWDE9w8RRdmZCw/view The Apple Card investigation was to assess women's access to equitable finance. The integrity of the Apple Card investigation must be rationally considered as flawed. We would like to receive any and all records of Ms. Linda Lacewell's (emails, texts, and similar) involvement with the 2021 Apple Card report. We would like to receive any and all records to NY-DFS association to evaluating Ms. Linda Lacewell's ability to score a report specific to the Apple Card's core subject of credit access for women. Finally, we would like to receive any and all records related to NY-DFS guidance on Interlocking Directorates ( https://www.dfs.ny.gov/apps_and_licensing/banks_and_trusts/other/Permission… rlocking_Directors_and_Officers), specific to Apple's Board of Directors and Goldman Sachs' Board of Directors.” Please forgive my candor, but if DFS actually conducted an 'Apple Card Investigation' ... There would be some records relating to the investigation. Warm regards and thank you, Gunnar Gunnar Larson xNY.io - Bank.org 646-454-9107 On Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:17 PM JeanBaptiste, Pascale (DFS) < Pascale.JeanBaptiste(a)dfs.ny.gov> wrote: > Dear Gunnar Larson: > > > > Please see the attached determination in response to your FOIL request. > Thank you. > > >

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[ot][crazy] task models
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 30 Apr '23

30 Apr '23

for some reason i poke at machine learning models now. if i keep doing this, here’s a thread for recent resources. 3D Shape Generation (for 3d printing): code + pretrained weights: https://github.com/yccyenchicheng/AutoSDF/ (size is under 1GB, on google drive. code is in ipython notebooks. have not tried it.) newer paper with code not yet released: https://yccyenchicheng.github.io/SDFusion/

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Adrienne Harris Is Crypto’s Most Powerful Regulator
by Gunnar Larson 28 Apr '23

28 Apr '23

THE MONEY GAME MAR. 30, 2022 Crypto’s Most Powerful Regulator Is Here Adrienne Harris, New York’s financial watchdog, has enormous sway over the industry’s future. By Kevin T. Dugan, staff writer at Intelligencer, who covers money and business Photo: Victor Llorente Thirteen years after the birth of cryptocurrency, it was supposed to be time for Washington to rein it in. Instead, the White House punted, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is still hashing out how it’s going to oversee the $2 trillion industry. State watchdogs have filled that vacuum, making Adrienne Harris, the head of the New York State Department of Financial Services, by default the most powerful crypto regulator in the country. While states such as Florida and Wyoming have adopted a laissez-faire approach to regulation, attracting a sizable chunk of the booming industry, more money and jobs are still flowing into New York than any other city, making it the de facto crypto capital of the U.S. “There’s a misconception that having rigorous regulation turns off innovative companies,” Harris tells me during an hour-long interview at her office looking out onto the Statue of Liberty last month. “That hasn’t been our experience here.” Sign up for Dinner Party A lively evening newsletter about everything that just happened. SIGN UP Harris was tapped as the first Black woman to lead DFS last year. She came into her position after a turn working in Silicon Valley and representing Wall Street banks, a résumé that critics have used to paint her as too close to the industries she is regulating. She’s eager to dispel any criticism that she’s soft as a regulator, especially when it comes to crypto. Harris says she’s looking to expand the agency’s remit, hire new regulators, and possibly watch over lending and asset management in decentralized finance, a.k.a. DeFi, one of the fastest-growing crypto industries, which has been prone to very large hacks. The agency’s power over the industry lies mostly with the BitLicense, a required if unloved permit for crypto exchanges to operate within state lines. When it was first introduced in 2014, it was meant to be a model for the country, but the crypto industry has attacked the license for being too strict, limiting what people can trade, and requiring expensive anti-money-laundering operations, which, it should be noted, most traditional financial institutions are required to maintain. For Harris, the problem isn’t that it’s too restrictive — it’s that the process of getting one, which has stretched years for some companies, is too slow. “If you think about the companies that are BitLicensees, and even the companies in the queue, having the imprimatur of ‘Have you passed regulatory muster with a stringent regulatory regime?’ — I think the good actors see that as a good thing,” she says. Created in 2011, DFS has been a regulator feared more than any of its counterparts in other states for the power it has over banks, insurance companies, and a host of other financial institutions. It brought ambitious money-laundering cases against banks like BNP Paribas (a settlement that resulted in several bankers losing their jobs), fined Deutsche Bank for its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and levied a $2.5 million fine on the National Rifle Association for selling its so-called murder insurance in the state. “DFS has a lot of teeth, and the sky’s the limit if the agency is exercised properly,” says state Sen. John Liu of Queens, a member of the state finance committee. “DFS compelled multinational banks to cough up $15 billion. We were able to build a couple bridges with that money. We still have much infrastructure in the state of New York that might benefit from DFS’s vigorous functions.” But part of DFS’s mandate is to keep the state’s economy healthy, a balancing act when it means protecting consumers from predatory, but also lucrative, companies. “For me, it’s an opportunity to bring my lived experience as a woman of color,” Harris says. So far, she has established the agency’s first climate division, frozen fees for check-cashing businesses that target the poor, and looked into non-bank lenders for evidence of redlining. “It’s important to me that those voices are at the table and being heard,” she says. “I bring a sort of pragmatism. It’s one thing to sit in our offices with nice views and make policy, but it’s another thing, in my mind, to really run the water through the pipes.” In 2008, Harris joined Sullivan & Cromwell, a law firm so close with Goldman Sachs that it has long sent its lawyers to work in-house at the investment bank. It was there that she worked for H. Rodgin “Rodge” Cohen, then the law firm’s chairman and the so-called trauma surgeon of Wall Street. Cohen remembers Harris working late into the night writing near-flawless memorandums so they’d be ready on his desk in the morning. “She just brought what I’d call a penetrating intelligence to the problems that were at hand,” Cohen tells me. “Many of the problems we get, you cannot just look up the answer in a book. It’s a question of judgment and trying to apply rules written often for other circumstances.” Still, it was clear that corporate law wasn’t for her. “Her heart was really in public service,” he says. From there, she went on to work for the Treasury Department, then the Obama White House, where she focused on policies around the then-upstart fintech industry. After the administration turned over, Harris took a spin through the revolving door between government and business. Her New York financial-disclosure forms show a superabundance of work with the tech and finance industries: She sat on the boards of six companies and nonprofits, including LendingClub, which had recently settled with the Federal Trade Commission over claims it had misled users on fees. She also advised 11 companies, owned two, and invested in or on behalf of two others. “I just thought, well, if you’re going to make policy about it, you should do the thing — run the company, build the company,” she says. “At the time, I felt very comfortable going to a start-up because I thought, well, coming out of government, you’re not making a ton of money. And if this start-up blows up, I’ll probably be no worse off, financially speaking.” It seems Harris did well enough. One real-estate tech company at which she worked went public last summer, and Harris appears to have cashed out. Since the disclosures were for 2020, they didn’t include her stake in Forethought, a private A.I.-based customer-service company that announced in December that it had attracted such investors as Harris, Ashton Kutcher, and Gwenyth Paltrow. When I asked her about Forethought, Harris said her investment in the company predated her time at DFS, that all her investments are now in a blind trust, and that she would recuse herself from any dealings with companies she has conflicts with. So when Hochul appointed Harris to lead DFS, she was attacked by the left. Zephyr Teachout and Cynthia Nixon both criticized Harris as being insufficiently independent, thanks to her connections in tech and finance. The American Prospect dug up a speech in which she characterized regulators as looking for “no-nos” and “icky things.” Harris has also advised the cash-advance companies Earnin, Brigit, and SmartWage (based in South Africa), according to her disclosures. In 2019, DFS led a multi-state investigation into the cash-advance industry over whether they created debt traps and state banking and anti-usury laws, since equivalent interest rates for the fees they charged would reach as high as 469 percent. A person directly familiar with the investigation told me that Harris’s predecessor was presented with multiple options for furthering the investigation, including reaching a settlement, but ultimately never made a decision. DFS wouldn’t comment. So, of all the companies to work for, why them? “My role, when I was working with those companies, was not to dictate price pricing or business model. It was more to say: Here’s how regulators would view this. Here’s why you should engage with them. Let me help you engage with them and figure out these issues and how you can also serve customers. Less pricing and business model, but, as an adviser who’s not in the day-to-day, helping to sort of guide a culture and mentality,” she says. Did she disagree with those arguing that these companies created debt traps for consumers? “I think it’s hard to paint with a broad brush,” she says. “I think we should always always be careful with any new products and services, that they are affordable and non-predatory, not creating debt traps, and that they’re solving a real problem for consumers. And I think some do that and some don’t.” Last summer, after Andrew Cuomo resigned as governor, many of his appointees went with him, including then-superintendent of DFS, Linda Lacewell. Soon Harris’s old boss, Cohen, had recommended her to Kathryn Wylde, the president and CEO of the Partnership for New York, a business-advocacy group that has advised DFS. “The folks at Sullivan & Cromwell thought that Adrienne would be a terrific candidate to field for that job given her eight years of experience in the Obama administration and the fact that she was somebody who understood industry,” Wylde says. “On the theory that a regulator should know something about the industries they’re regulating — which may be a novel concept but struck me as a valid one — I thought she sounded like a terrific candidate.” Harris sailed through her confirmation, with 63 senators voting for her and nine against. “When the regulated are complaining that the regulator is being too aggressive, that generally means the regulator is doing their job.” said Michael Gianaris, the state senator from Queens who voted against Harris’s nomination and, in 2019, tanked Amazon’s proposed HQ2 in New York. “Cuomo was a prick, and the people he appointed tended to share his bare-knuckles approach to the world. In some cases, that’s actually not a bad thing.” While the crypto industry doesn’t appear to be getting the reprieve it had been hoping for, other industries will surely lobby Harris to make similar gestures toward the business community. For instance, Wylde says that insurance companies are hoping that Harris will lower the reserves they are required to have on hold, which they claim are higher than what’s required by other states. “There are some long-standing issues that the industry has that they feel that they’ve got a fresh start on with Adrienne’s leadership,” she says. Still, crypto is going to play a major part in how Harris’s tenure is defined. “It’s clear that New York is doing well now and the companies that came and started here five to ten years ago are doing well,” says Matt Homer, a former deputy superintendent at DFS and the current executive-in-residence at the venture-capital fund NYCA Partners. “It’s not totally clear what the future will look like five to ten years from now.” New York is the home base for major exchanges such as Coinbase and Gemini, and it’s also home to shady NFT front-running scandals and alleged rapping billionaire money launderers. That such a volatile industry could implode and damage New York’s economy is apparent. “I understand that other states may have gone the opposite way of the BitLicense, but there are things we can do here in New York that will hopefully inform the federal regulators as they continue to think about this space,” Harris said. “It’s a new world with crypto, with DeFi, with NFTs.” SIGN UP FOR THE INTELLIGENCER NEWSLETTER Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world. Email SIGN UP TAGS: THE MONEY GAME CRYPTOCURRENCY LEAVE A COMMENT 12/12/2022 CRIME Sam Bankman-Fried Has Been Arrested in the Bahamas By Kevin T. Dugan The disgraced FTX founder is facing charges from both the Justice Department and the S.E.C. 12/12/2022 POLITICS Twitter’s Former Safety Head Forced From Home After Being Smeared by Elon Musk By Chas Danner Former Twitter executive Yoel Roth and his family have reportedly faced a torrent of harassment and threats after Elon Musk’s false claims. 12/12/2022 WHAT WE KNOW How Big Is the U.S. Fusion Breakthrough? By Chas Danner The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has reportedly achieved a historic milestone in nuclear fusion. MOST POPULAR The ‘Twitter Files’ Is What It Claims to Expose By ERIC LEVITZ Twitter’s Former Safety Head Forced From Home After Being Smeared by Elon Musk By CHAS DANNER How Big Is the U.S. Fusion Breakthrough? By CHAS DANNER Red-Pilled Elon Musk Still Loves the Chinese Communist Party By JONATHAN CHAIT Elon Musk Gets Loudly Booed at Chappelle Comedy Show By BENJAMIN HART 12/12/2022 EARLY AND OFTEN Here Come the Trump 2024 Alternatives By Ed Kilgore A crop of presidential hopefuls represent Republican fantasies of something better for them than a Trump-Biden rematch. 12/12/2022 POLITICS Scott Stringer Files Defamation Suit Against Harassment Accuser By Nia Prater The former comptroller is suing lobbyist Jean Kim, alleging that her accusations against him were defamatory. 12/12/2022 LOS ANGELES L.A. Councilman Calls Guy He Fought Last Week ‘Hostile Individual’ By Matt Stieb Kevin de León, who was caught making racist remarks on a recording earlier this year, did not apologize after a scuffle with a protester on Friday. 12/12/2022 THE MONEY GAME Now That FTX Is Toast, Is Binance Too Big To Fail? By Kevin T. Dugan The Justice Department is weighing criminal charges against the world’s biggest crypto exchange. 12/12/2022 THE NATIONAL INTEREST Red-Pilled Elon Musk Still Loves the Chinese Communist Party By Jonathan Chait The Twitter owner may hate the left, but he does admire Leninism. 12/12/2022 ELON MUSK Elon Musk Gets Loudly Booed at Chappelle Comedy Show By Benjamin Hart “It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience.” 12/12/2022 POLITICS Jay Jacobs Has Few Regrets and No Apologies By Nia Prater Despite a bruising midterm, the Democratic boss isn’t going anywhere, to the frustration of critics. 12/10/2022 THE MEDIA The ‘Twitter Files’ Is What It Claims to Expose By Eric Levitz The purported exposé of Twitter’s political bias is itself an attempt to weaponize control of Twitter for political purposes. 12/9/2022 BRITTNEY GRINER What’s Next for Viktor Bout, According to His Lawyer By Amos Barshad Steve Zissou predicts the notorious arms dealer will now lead a “quiet existence.” 12/9/2022 WORLD CUP The Best Team in the World Is Out of the World Cup By Benjamin Hart Another devastating quarterfinals defeat for Brazil. 12/9/2022 POLITICS What Happens to Paul Whelan Now? By Nia Prater President Biden said his administration is not giving up on securing the former marine’s release from Russia. 12/9/2022 JUST ASKING QUESTIONS A Crisis-PR Veteran on Sam Bankman-Fried’s Odd Media Strategy By Benjamin Hart Eric Dezenhall thinks the explanation for SBF’s behavior is pretty straightforward. 12/9/2022 WORLD CUP Goalkeepers Gone Wild By David Gendelman At the World Cup, netminders are increasingly going on offense. The consequences can be miraculous or disastrous. 12/9/2022 THE NATIONAL INTEREST Kyrsten Sinema Is Playing Chicken By Jonathan Chait Declaring herself an independent is a way to force the Democratic Party into embracing her. 12/9/2022 FINDINGS Why Spending Time With Kids Might Actually Help Protect You From COVID By David Zweig Two studies find an immunological downside for adults who stay away from children. 12/9/2022 FIRST PERSON I Lost My Brother Twice By Alex Brook Lynn First to schizophrenia, then forever to the city. 12/8/2022 SPORTS Brittney Griner Is Coming Home From a Russian Prison By Margaret Hartmann And Nia Prater The WNBA star is headed home after being released in a prisoner swap for the notorious international arms dealer. 12/8/2022 STOP THE PRESSES Just What Did the Times Walkout Change? By Shawn McCreesh Some employees have said they are ready to vote on a strike authorization as soon as tomorrow. Others worry this has all gone too far. 12/8/2022 TREMENDOUS CONTENT Do the Trumps Want to Crop Kimberly Guilfoyle Out of the Family? By Margaret Hartmann Eric Trump felt compelled to announce that, despite the rumors, he doesn’t hate his brother’s fiancée. Ivanka Trump’s silence may say more. 12/8/2022 SAM BANKMAN-FRIED Sam Bankman-Fried’s Parents Are No Longer Teaching Law at Stanford By Kevin T. Dugan His mother says her sudden decision to retire now has “nothing to do with anything else going on.” 12/8/2022 TREMENDOUS CONTENT Donald Trump Cost Lara Trump Her Fox News Gig By Margaret Hartmann Nepotism giveth, and nepotism taketh away. 12/8/2022 And now the House 258-169-1, House passes bill to protect same sex marriages. 39 Rs vote for it. Bill heads to Biden —@mkraju 12/8/2022 BRITTNEY GRINER The 7 Craziest Facts About Arms Trafficker Viktor Bout’s Career By Matt Stieb Getting to know the “merchant of death” the U.S. just sent to Russia in a prisoner swap for basketball star Brittney Griner. SIGN IN TO COMMENT Like Us Follow Us ABOUT INTELLIGENCER ABOUT NEW YORK MAGAZINE NEWSLETTERS HELP CONTACT PRESS MEDIA KIT WE’RE HIRING PRIVACY TERMS AD CHOICES DO NOT SELL MY INFO ACCESSIBILITY INTELLIGENCER IS A VOX MEDIA NETWORK. © 2022 VOX MEDIA, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Holiday Sale: Save up to 70% and get two exclusive gifts with any annual plan. SUBSCRIBE NOW " https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/adrienne-harris-is-cryptos-most-pow…

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[crazy] Jay Hack was a Machine Learning Engineer at Palantir
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 07 Apr '23

07 Apr '23

Note: Mostly closed source. https://github.com/jayhack AI enthusiast and entrepreneur. Formerly Mira AI, Inc. (Acq. 2021), Palantir Machine Learning and CS at Stanford. 82 followers · 33 following Mira AI, Inc. San Francisco https://jay.ai @mathemagic1an ### Hi there 👋 I'm an AI enthusiast and entrepreneur based in SF. I've been doing AI product develpment and research for over 10 years, most recently at [AI startup](https://beautymatter.com/articles/femtec-health-acquires-mira-beau… applying personalization to beauty shopping (Mira AI, Inc.). A few things I've built: - [Tensai](https://twitter.com/mathemagic1an/status/1610023513334878208): A conversational UI for your codebase. Ask questions & make codebase-wide changes. - [text-to-figma](https://twitter.com/mathemagic1an/status/1589657222094934016): A natural language UI for creating/editing components in Figma - [AutoTool](https://twitter.com/mathemagic1an/status/1587443727735214080): A conversational UI for building Retool dashboards - [LLM.sh](https://twitter.com/mathemagic1an/status/1590480438258462721): Type english commands into your shell => be a bash ninja - [ThoughtSpeed](https://twitter.com/mathemagic1an/status/1599818115831205888): A replit-based IDE and hosting platform for AI apps - [text-to-notion](https://twitter.com/mathemagic1an/status/160379499152003481…: A conversational UI for creating Notion templates - [GP-Tutor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VpMCMYI5rw&ab_channel=JayHack): Turn Quizlet flashcards into a conversational partner using GPT-3 - [Shameo.tv](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue8N4ezBp_4&ab_channel=JayHack): Cameo for deepfakes - make celebrities say anything you want in videos - [Autodoc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grRVXcqAfOY&ab_channel=JayHack): a GPT-3-powered plugin for text-to-code on docs pages - [MIRA BEAUTY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbgiF6vKwC8&ab_channel=JayHack): a personalized shopping platform for cosmetics - [AR for Beauty Discovery](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LCRLtbHE_w&ab_channel=JayHack): a "smart mirror" for exploring makeup products and tutorials - [CVChess](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZOA1ew-zYc&ab_channel=JayHack): automatic tracking of chess moves via computer vision

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Re: FOIL DHSES-22-06-028
by Gunnar Larson 29 Mar '23

29 Mar '23

Mr. Callahan: There is an and/or argument to each definition. You are lieing about Sonic Weapons here and using Brody as a scape goat. For example, your office would have records on sonic weapons. How the FOIL was written is not a good enough defense because we are operating under and/or connotation. For these reasons, we seek to receive any and all records your department has concerning obstruction of justice. The same FOIL file can be used for organizing. Gunnar Larson On Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 5:01 PM Callahan, James (DHSES) < James.Callahan(a)dhses.ny.gov> wrote: > Dear Mr. Larson, > > > > The response to your appeal is attached. Your appeal has been denied. A > copy of your appeal and this determination is being sent to the Committee > on Open Government. > > > > Sincerely, > > > > *Jim Callahan* > > Senior Attorney > > *Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Services* > > 1220 Washington Avenue, Building 7A, Albany NY 12226 > > (518) 292-2849 | james.callahan(a)dhses.ny.gov > > www.dhses.ny.gov > > > > CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail, including any attachments, may be > confidential, privileged or otherwise legally protected. It is intended > only for the addressee. If you received this e-mail in error or from > someone who was not authorized to send it to you, do not disseminate, copy > or otherwise use this e-mail or its attachments. Please notify the sender > immediately by reply e-mail and delete the e-mail from your system. Thank > you. > > > > *From:* Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> > *Sent:* Tuesday, July 12, 2022 9:43 AM > *To:* DHSES, FOIL (DHSES) <FOIL.DHSES(a)dhses.ny.gov> > *Cc:* cypherpunks <cypherpunks(a)lists.cpunks.org> > *Subject:* Re: FOIL DHSES-22-06-028 > > > > *ATTENTION: This email came from an external source. Do not open > attachments or click on links from unknown senders or unexpected emails.* > > > > We would like to appeal this decision. > > > > On Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 9:41 AM DHSES, FOIL (DHSES) <FOIL.DHSES(a)dhses.ny.gov> > wrote: > > Attached please find correspondence regarding the above Freedom of > Information Law request. Thank you. > >

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[ot][spam][crazy] karl has stopped eating food
by Karl Semich 21 Mar '23

21 Mar '23

some time ago i posted to this list i was having trouble eating. i think it was during the crazy posts around my interaction with cecilia. after that post, i began eating again. i was using eating this past couple months to help me with other tasks. i didn't want to eat quite as much as i was, but i found a way to make it so incredibly helpful. i have now stopped eating again, and the other tasks these were basic tasks, like making a todo list, or taking a shower. thank you for your aid these past months and years. i have had nothing but 1 meal in the last three or four days. i know humans are fine for a week without food. due to my dissociation and historic experience with fasting, this isn't very uncomfortable for me. hunger is a small feeling compared to other things. i'll try to write here when i eat until i resume.

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You Might Survive a Nuclear Blast—if You Have the Right Shelter The escalating risks of Russia’s war in Ukraine have led scientists to study the unthinkable and model the aftermath of nuclear detonation.
by Gunnar Larson 21 Mar '23

21 Mar '23

My University of Nicosia in Cyprus is at it again, "Even people at a bank would have to get into the vault to be in the safest place..." https://www.wired.com/story/you-might-survive-a-nuclear-blast-if-you-have-t… WIRED JAN 25, 2023 8:00 AM You Might Survive a Nuclear Blast—if You Have the Right Shelter The escalating risks of Russia’s war in Ukraine have led scientists to study the unthinkable and model the aftermath of nuclear detonation. Nuclear test PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES IN A FLASH, a nuclear warhead unleashes the destructive power of hundreds of kilotons of TNT. The resulting inferno, and the blast wave that follows, instantly kill people directly in their path. But a new study finds that some people two to seven miles away could survive—if they’re lucky enough to find just the right kind of shelter. Dimitris Drikakis, a fluid dynamics researcher at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus, led the study both to illuminate the ongoing risks of nuclear escalation and to examine how one might have a chance at survival if the unthinkable should come to pass. “People have forgotten the devastating impacts nuclear war can have. But now we’re seeing the discussion starting again, and there’s a debate about the potential for nuclear war in Ukraine,” says Drikakis. “I think this kind of study raises awareness within the wider population that nuclear explosions are not a joke.” His grim research comes just as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that it has ticked the Doomsday Clock forward, to 90 seconds until an apocalyptic midnight, citing the increasing nuclear tensions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Scientists and artists developed the metaphorical clock to communicate risks posed by global, human-caused problems including climate change, but the dangers of nuclear war have been a major focus since its inception. Drikakis combed through scientific research on what the aftermath of nuclear weapon use would look like, and he spotted a gap: There’s little knowledge of the effects on humans indoors in the “moderate damage zone” a few miles from the epicenter, far enough away that buildings might not get blown to bits. He and his colleague Ioannis Kokkinakis focused on this area and published their work in the Physics of Fluids journal last week. Since no one’s going around testing nukes on buildings these days, this kind of research employs computer simulations. Drikakis and Kokkinakis simulated the blast effects of a 750-kiloton warhead—like the hundreds of larger bombs in Russia’s arsenal—delivered by an intercontinental ballistic missile, which would detonate about 3 kilometers above a metropolis. They studied how the supersonic shock waves would propagate through a three-room concrete structure situated in the moderate damage zone and assumed that the concrete was strong enough to withstand the 3 to 5 pounds per square inch of pressure from the blast wave. This is a 3D illustration of the simulated air blast and generated blast wave 10 seconds after the detonation of a 750 kiloton nuclear warhead above a typical metropolitan city; the radius of the shock bubble at ground level is 4.6 kilometers. COURTESY OF I. KOKKINAKIS AND D. DRIKAKIS/UNIVERSITY OF NICOSIA Their research shows that, if a nuke were ever detonated in a modern city, some people in the surrounding areas would make it. They might have about five to 10 seconds after the initial flash to get to safety. If they happened to be in a thick concrete structure with few openings, like in a bank or a subway, they might survive if they used that limited time to run into the corner of a back room with few openings. Being in an enclosed space matters because, the researchers find, the blast winds following the initial fireball can be even more dangerous and deadly than the blast itself. These winds push outward behind the shock wave, and anyone facing the brunt of them could be slammed against a wall at high speed. The winds are especially dangerous if a person is near a door or window or in a corridor or an opening to a room. Winds quickly funnel through such areas, throwing people and furniture around—it’s like a storm let loose in a building. (If you are wondering whether you could copy the Indiana Jones move in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, surviving a nuclear blast by jumping inside a fridge, Drikakis says that might be possible. But it’s also possible the strong wind would hurl the fridge with Indy inside.) Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, a scientist-in-residence and nuclear physicist at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, points out that if multiple buildings happen to lie between the structure you’re in and the incoming blast wave, that shadowing effect can lessen the airspeed and forces involved. Those in a basement might avoid the worst blast effects too. “A lot of people have a nihilistic point of view that there’s nothing we can do about it,” but that’s not the case, he says. Shown are the contours of the maximum airspeed attained during the first 10 seconds after the blast wave enters the window; overpressure equals 5 pounds per square inch. COURTESY OF I. KOKKINAKIS AND D. DRIKAKIS/UNIVERSITY OF NICOSIA But let’s be honest: Most people, even in the moderate damage zone, won’t survive. Hardly anyone lives or works in nearly windowless reinforced-concrete buildings, nor in the vicinity of a concrete bunker. (Even people at a bank would have to get into the vault to be in the safest place; people in a subway would get the most benefit in a station that’s very deep underground.) Most people live in timber-frame or other less-armored buildings. This shouldn’t be construed as a way to be safe in a nuclear explosion, says Dylan Spaulding, an earth scientist and nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Strong structures made of concrete with metal reinforcement and designed for seismic safety would survive the pressures the team modeled, he says, but those pressures would be enough to destroy most traditional, wood-framed houses and brick structures without reinforcement. And he points out that the blast wave is only part of the story. While it is the main source of danger in a non-nuclear explosion—like the one that rocked Beirut in 2020, which was caused by a large quantity of flammable ammonium nitrate stored at the city’s port—nuclear weapons also throw out ionizing radiation and heat, followed by radioactive fallout. Radiation exposure through the skin or inhalation can have many health effects, including skin burns, organ damage, and cancer. The range of radiation exposure could extend tens of miles from the epicenter, so people who survive the blast could later be felled by the radiation. Drikakis’ example focused on what’s called a “strategic” nuke deployed on an ICBM, but there are also “tactical” nukes, which are dropped by a plane onto a battlefield and which can blow up on the ground. Such explosions play out differently but can be as deadly and destructive, potentially exposing more people to lethal radiation doses, Spaulding says. Russia and the US also possess so-called low-yield nukes, which have 5 to 10 kilotons of yield and are a little smaller than the 15-kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima. These would still inflict massive devastation and cross a dangerous red line, possibly escalating a conflict to the use of larger weapons. Humanity’s most destructive weapons have been used in war only once, when the US demolished Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, with two atomic bombs at the end of the Second World War in 1945. Together they killed more than 100,000 Japanese civilians and injured many more. And Spaulding points out that along with experiments conducted at the Nevada Test Site, they offer some of the only real-world evidence about the kinds of structures that can survive an atomic blast, and how well. But last year Russian president Vladimir Putin insinuated that nukes are not off the table in his attack on Ukraine. While NATO leaders have not used such threatening rhetoric, the international organization conducted nuclear exercises in October, simulating dropping B61 nuclear bombs. US president Joe Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review the same month abandoned a “no first use” policy he previously supported. One could imagine nuclear risks in other conflicts too, like the possibility of North Korea using a nuke against South Korea, or Pakistan and India using them against each other. The world’s arsenals add up to about 12,700 warheads, according to an inventory by the Federation of American Scientists. That’s fewer than their peak of around 70,000 near the end of the Cold War, thanks to arms reduction treaties. But some of those pacts have since been dissolved, and the dangers never went away, as the Doomsday Clock’s metaphor illustrates. This is not a game, Drikakis says. The risks of a devastating nuclear strike are all too real, he says: “We have to maintain peace by understanding the risks of not maintaining the peace.”

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Russian State-Sponsored TV Network's Attempt to Dismiss Copyright Lawsuit On Fair Use Grounds Denied
by Gunnar Larson 21 Mar '23

21 Mar '23

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ff9f1af5-cc8a-473a-822b-8890… March 18, 2022 TV-Novosti, a non-profit operating the Russian state-controlled RT(formerly Russia Today) television networks and 38 associated RT YouTube channels, has been sued for copyright infringement by Business Casual, an American media company that creates documentary content, based on its use of translated clips of Business Casual's documentaries in its own videos posted to YouTube. Business Casual creates short original historical documentaries which it posts to its YouTube channel. Its documentaries frequently feature photographs of historical figures, using a process called “parallax” which “transforms century-old low-resolution photographs into dramatically restored high-resolution photographs” and “turn[s] two-dimensional images into three-dimensional models . . . simulating a depth-of-field. This optical illusion provides Business Casual’s videos with an immersive three-dimensional look and feel.” The lawsuit relates to two of Business Casual’s documentaries—“How Rockefeller Built His Trillion Dollar Oil Empire” and “J.P. Morgan Documentary: How One Man Financed America”—clips of which Business Casual alleges TV-Novosti incorporated into three separate videos on its "RT-Arabic" YouTube channel, including portions featuring parallax-enhanced images, altering the brightness and saturation of the copied content and replacing Business Casual's watermark with TV-Novosti's own in order to hide from YouTube's algorithms. TV-Novosti moved to dismiss the copyright claims, arguing that it's use of the clips is protected as fair use. However, after considering each of the four statutory factors, Judge Koeltl of the Southern District of New York denied TV-Novosti's motion, holding that while three of the four factors weighed against finding fair use, "[t]he fourth factor, which the Supreme Court has described as 'the single most important element of fair use,' cannot be determined without further factual development." Specifically, regarding the first factor, concerning the transformation of the use, Judge Koeltl found that while TV-Novosti's videos take portions of the plaintiff’s videos, re-arrange them, and add new commentary to them, TV-Novosti had not made any meaningful changes to the visual clips themselves, and "[m]erely overlaying new audio does not effect a sufficient transformation . . . to find fair use as a matter of law." The Court further noted that TV-Novosti had "not changed the purpose of the parallax-enhanced images," i.e., to provide visual illustration for the overlain audio commentary, but had instead "simply lifted the copyrighted depictions . .. for the purpose of illustrating [TV-Novosti's] own video." In addition, the Court found that the fact that TV-Novosti could have sought to pay for the clips, but didn't, and tried to hide its use of the excerpts from YouTube's algorithms, also weighed against a finding a fair use under the first factor. Regarding the second factor, concerning the nature of the copyrighted work, the Court initially noted that factual material such as that at issue, "cuts less closely to the core of copyright." Nevertheless, the Court held that the fact that source material for Business Casual's videos was in the public domain weighed against finding fair use, because TV Novosti could have simply used public domain photos of the historical figures, rather than the modified clips, to create its videos. Regarding the third factor, concerning the amount of use in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, the Court noted that while only "small portions of the entire copyrighted works were used"—excerpts of 7 seconds, 1 minute and 28 seconds, and 8 minutes and 50 seconds in length—the portions were "not so trivial as to warrant dismissal under the de minimis doctrine." Lastly, regarding the fourth factor, concerning the effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work, the Court noted that this factor “ask[s] not whether the second work would *damage* the market for the first (by, for example, devaluing it through parody or criticism), but whether it *usurps* the market for the first by offering a competing substitute.” With this framing, the Court thus found that while one the one hand, TV-Novosti's "videos are alternative ways of learning about the lives of J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller," on the other hand, they "have a broader focus and are in a different language, meaning that they cater to a different audience." These differences, the Court held, were significant enough to preclude the Court from "determining the effect of [TV-Novosti's] videos on the market for [Business Casual's] videos at this time." The Court's recognition of the weight of the fourth factor in determining fair use means that there may still be hope for TV-Novosti—time (and fact discovery) will tell. For now, the takeaway may very well be that parties seeking to raise a fair use defense should take care to emphasize any characteristics of their use that distinguish not just their work, but its target audience, including the scope of the work and the language (if any) which communicates it. *** *Business Casual Holdings, LLC v. TV-Novosti*, No. 21-CV-2007 (JGK), 2022 WL 784049 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 14, 2022)

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RNC Funding of Trump's Legal Campaign Undermines GOP State AGs' Attack on Litigation Funding - Litigation Finance Journal
by Gunnar Larson 21 Mar '23

21 Mar '23

Check out my new article: https://litigationfinancejournal.com/rnc-funding-of-trumps-legal-campaign-u… Litigation Finance Journal recently reported on a group of 14 state attorneys general that have called for action from the Department of Justice to review potential threats to U.S. national security from foreign adversaries’ engagement of litigation investment. Litigation funders and industry advocates have new ammo in response to the AGs’ claims, given recent news of the RNC funding former President Donald Trump’s various legal entanglements. According to ABC News, RNC leaders earmarked $1.6M in legal funding to support President Donald Trump’s defense over lawsuits brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Meanwhile, the United States Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform’s research has prompted 14 state attorneys general to ask for the Justice Department to assess national security risks of adversaries ‘undermining’ the United States by engaging litigation funding and third party investment vehicles. The group of 14 state attorneys general are concerned about foreign adversaries ‘weaponizing’ United States legal frameworks via litigation investment, to attack critical national industry and infrastructure, such as energy sectors. The group of 14 seeks the Department of Justice to detail how a network of federal agencies could engage a blueprint for defending United States independence from international litigation investors, hostile groups, agencies or governments such as Russia and China. This latest attack on the industry, prompted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is simply another attempt to undermine the nascent and growing litigation funding sector. It is ironic, given that in the case of Consumer Legal Funding–which the Chamber specifically targets–the funding in question does not go to support legal fees, but rather to finance claimants’ livelihoods while they remain injured and unable to work. While the RNC’s funding of Trump’s legal battles does not constitute foreign investment, it illustrates the acceptance of third party legal funding across political lines, and should be noted by industry advocates looking to respond to the negative publicity put forth by the U.S. Chamber.

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Wikileaks: Julian Assange - Journalism, Leaks, Collateral Murder, Censorship
by grarpamp 20 Mar '23

20 Mar '23

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVoUPnXqvNE The War on Journalism: The Case of Julian Assange Julian Assange MUST BE FREED. "If wars can be started by lies, then they can be stopped by truth. -- Julian Assange"

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