Tea

Before the Oscars are handed out early March, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) has announced its own annual awards. Wicked director Jon Chu is a proud recipient, but the bulk of the accolades go to lawmakers and the U.S. Government's IPR Center, who helped to combat online piracy. Perhaps not coincidentally, those lawmakers could help to push a pirate site blocking bill over the line.

WTF!

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Google says it is in the process of removing the "state" designation from Canadian government buildings, as well as provincial parks, following widespread backlash.

On Monday, the company said it would be updating its categorization of provincial parks after receiving hundreds of complaints over the weekend from Canadians upset about the designation.

Although the locations were titled "provincial park" in large text, in small print, many across the country were labelled as "state parks" — a longstanding practice, according to the company.

However, that language came under increased scrutiny in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump's repeated threat that he wants to annex Canada against the wishes of Canada's political leaders and widespread public opinion.

In 2025, we find that the student use of AI has surged in the last year, with almost all students (92%) now using AI in some form, up from 66% in 2024, and some 88% having used GenAI for assessments, up from 53% in 2024. The main uses of GenAI are explaining concepts, summarising articles and suggesting research ideas, but a significant number of students – 18% – have included AI-generated text directly in their work.

As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella presented new products at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, a group of employees positioned themselves about 15 feet to his right. They then unveiled T-shirts which spelled out the question: “Does Our Code Kill Kids, Satya?”

Photos and videos of the protest, which was live-streamed across Microsoft, show CEO Satya Nadella continuing his speech without acknowledging the demonstrators. Two men quickly approached the protesting employees and escorted them out of the room.

Microsoft defended its actions in a statement, saying: “We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard. Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring our business practices uphold the highest standards.”

In order to streamline our free consumer communications offerings so we can more easily adapt to customer needs, we will be retiring Skype in May 2025 to focus on Microsoft Teams (free), our modern communications and collaboration hub.

Edit: I changed the link to the official source.

Governments frequently disagree over the names of places. Here’s how mapping apps have dealt with various feuds.

Mozilla has just deleted the following:

“Does Firefox sell your personal data?”

“Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise. "

Source: Lundke journal.

A sustained campaign by U.S. authorities has led to the seizure of a growing number of pirate sports streaming domains. The IPR Center is now listed as the owner of dozens of .DEV domains, which were signed over as part of the seizure operation. Previously, close to a hundred .APP domains linked to piracy suffered the same fate.