today's leftovers
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Open Access/Content
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CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: MIT libraries are thriving without Elsevier
Here's how the scholarly publishing scam works: academics do original scholarly research, funded by a mix of private grants, public funding, funding from their universities and other institutions, and private funds. These academics write up their research and send it to a scholarly journal, usually one that's owned by a small number of firms that formed a scholarly publishing cartel by buying all the smaller publishers in a string of anticompetitive acquisitions. Then, other scholars review the submission, for free. More unpaid scholars do the work of editing the paper. The paper's author is sent a non-negotiable contract that requires them to permanently assign their copyright to the journal, again, for free. Finally, the paper is published, and the institution that paid the researcher to do the original research has to pay again – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars per year! – for the journal in which it appears.
The academic publishing cartel insists that the millions it extracts from academic institutions and the billions it reaps in profit are all in service to serving as neutral, rigorous gatekeepers who ensure that only the best scholarship makes it into print. This is flatly untrue. The "editorial process" the academic publishers take credit for is virtually nonexistent: almost everything they publish is virtually unchanged from the final submission format. They're not even typesetting the paper: [...]
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Standards/Consortia
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Federal News Network ☛ GPS governance should expand beyond DoD, President’s advisory board says
The White House National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) advisory board says GPS, which is primarily managed by the Defense Department, lacks a cohesive governance structure, suggesting that accountability and decision-making authority for PNT should extend beyond the DoD.
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Kernel Space
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[Old] France ☛ Certification report ANSSI-CSPN-2024/02: Nftables (Linux kernel subsystemm): Debian 12.1 / Linux kernel 6.1.55-1 Release: Courtesy translation [PDF]
This certificate attests that the productg "Nftables (Linux kernel subsystem), Debian Release 12.1 / Linux Kernel 6.1.55-1" submitted for evaluation meets the security characteristics specified in its security target [ST] for the level of evaluation expected at the time of a first-lebvel security certification.
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Graphics Stack
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Arm reportedly developing gaming GPU in Israel to compete with Nvidia and Intel
Arm, known for building the architecture behind many SoCs, including Qualcomm and Apple chips, is reportedly building a GPU to compete against industry bulwarks Nvidia and Intel. The company is said to have a hundred chip and software developer engineers in its Israel office dedicated to the global graphics processing group working on the project.
The Globes report says that GPU development is focused primarily on gaming. However, it also doesn't discount the application of such development in AI processing, should its research result in an actual product. We also don't know if it will be a discrete GPU, as the company said it does not comment on rumors or speculation.
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