Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

Hamas and Israel begin 3rd exchange of hostages for prisoners

Summary: Despite a series of delays and apparent technical and practical issues and misunderstandings, the swap of a third group of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel has begun.

Context: This is a fast-moving story as although the groups involved are spacing-out the exchange effort, there’s only a finite amount of time in which to make this happen, as there’s a four-day ceasefire agreement included in this deal that is allowing aid trucks to enter the devastated Gaza Strip, with food and water and medical supplies, while also making the swap of hostages and prisoners feasible; Hamas has the option of increasing the duration of the ceasefire by releasing more hostages, but it’s not clear at this point if they will choose to do so, and if so, for how long; Hamas has also said there are issues related to which prisoners are being released by Israel, and how, and the amount of aid trucks being allowed into Gaza, which they say are fewer in number than was originally agreed—all of which could indicate the ceasefire and exchange will be limited in scope, but these could also be negotiation-related complaints, meant to get more done in less time, or to get more from Israel than was originally agreed.

—The New York Times

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Spotify plans to leave Uruguay over change to copyright laws

Summary: Audio streaming service Spotify has issued a statement indicating they plan to exit the Uruguayan market beginning in January and completely by February, due to a bill that was recently passed by the country’s parliament that would require the company pay more money to artists whose work they distribute, possibly up to twice as much as they currently do.

Context: Part of Spotify’s complaint is that the bill isn’t very clear about how much additional money they would need to set aside for artists, and their press release on the matter suggests they already pay nearly 70% of every dollar they take in to the record labels and publishers, making a payout increase untenable; artists have long complained that they make incredibly little money from Spotify, but there’s a debate as to whether there’s another feasible option in the post-physical-music-medium age, in which the abundance of music being generated and streamed has spread out the profits being earned by the industry more widely than was the case in the age of the cassette tape and CD.

—Billboard

Meta disbanded its Responsible AI team

Summary: A new report indicates that Meta, the umbrella-company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has broken up its Responsible AI team, reallocating those on it to other AI-focused teams within the company.

Context: This is mostly notable because of the recent tumult within OpenAI, which seems to have reoriented the company toward a “move fast and break things” sort of approach to artificial intelligence, and to have massively reduced the influence of those who wanted to take a more careful approach to developing these tools, which some experts think might be dangerous if developed and deployed inappropriately; Meta’s team responsible for that type of caution is now defunct, basically, which suggests they, and possibly other tech behemoths, as well, might be recalibrating their internal setups to better compete with OpenAI and other entities that have seemingly pulled out all the stops, and may thus be evolving their offerings a lot faster than before, despite the potential negative consequences of doing so.

—The Verge

For the first time, Microsoft’s gaming efforts are expected to surpass those of Sony (monetarily) due to their closing of a $69 billion acquisition deal with Activision in October, which will give the Xbox-maker a huge new collection of revenue sources.

—Quartz

75

Number of Iranian-made Shahed drones Russian forces launched, all at once, at Kyiv over the weekend.

The Ukrainian military says it intercepted all but one of these drones, and that five people were slightly injured by the attack, which was the largest since last winter.

This is thought to be the first of a new wave of large attacks against Kyiv and Ukrainian infrastructure (especially energy infrastructure) now that winter is descending across the region and troop positions are largely stable across active combat zones—the Russian military has supposedly been stockpiling drones and missiles in recent months, and is expected to use them to make the winter difficult for Ukrainian forces and civilians.

—The Wall Street Journal

Trust Click

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