America, Japan and South Korea are bunking together – it isn’t summer without camp!

Officials say leaders from the United States, Japan and South Korea are meeting at Camp David to launch new defense steps. The three countries will launch a series of joint initiatives on technology and defense this Friday.

US officials, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the summit will see the three leaders agree to a mutual understanding about regional responsibilities amid mounting shared concerns about China.

US President Joe Biden will host at his presidential retreat. Photo: AFP.

A three-way hotline will be set up to communicate in times of crisis, but the summit is unlikely to produce a formal security arrangement that commits the nations to each other’s defense.

US President Joe Biden invited Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, to the storied presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains.

Camp David’s a little better than cabins in the woods. dapd via AP, FILE

For the two Asian nations, the trip will be part of their work to mend tattered diplomatic relations in the face of a greater regional threat posed by both China’s rise and North Korea. US officials hope this will be the first of many meetings, to become an annual gathering between the three leaders.

The summit on Friday will also see the three leaders signal deeper cooperation in areas including cybersecurity and supply chain resilience.

In March this year, South Korea and Japan held their first summit in 12 years. The meeting this week will mark another step towards easing tensions between the two states after years of dispute.

Photo via Reuters.

Washington has formal collective defense arrangements in place with Tokyo and Seoul separately, but wants the two countries to work more closely with one another in the face of China’s mounting power.

“We are anticipating some steps that will bring us closer together in the security realm,” said one of the U.S. officials, and that doing so would “add to our collective security.”

But the U.S. official added that, “it’s too much to ask – it’s a bridge too far – to fully expect a three-way security framework among each of us. However, we are taking steps whereby each of the countries understand responsibilities with respect to regional security, and we are advancing new areas of coordination and ballistic missile defense, again technology, that will be perceived as very substantial.”

It’s likely that a joint statement between the three countries will come out of the summit. It will include language speaking to concerns about China’s desire to change the status of Taiwan, which it claims as its own territory.

Taiwan’s TSMC powers the chip industry. © Illustration by Michael Tsang via Financial Times.

The language used will have to be consistent with previous US positions on the subject, avoiding an escalation in rhetoric that would undermine efforts to ease tensions ahead of potential talks between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Christopher Johnstone, a former Biden White House official now with Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told Reuters he expected a summit statement recognizing that the security of the three countries is linked, “and that some measure of threat to one is a threat to all,” even if this would fall short of NATO’s Article 5 language, that sees an attack on one as an attack on all.

All of this comes after a collaboration between the Chinese and Russian militaries that unsettled the US.

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The South China Morning Post reports that China is on “high alert” as Biden hosts – building what some have called a “de facto Asian Nato.”

Some are saying that, given the integration of the Asian countries’ economies with China, they have no intention of picking sides between Beijing and Washington.

For the Japanese government, the alliance with the U.S. is an easy tool for concrete interests, and a condition in exchange for Washington’s support on international issues.

Of course, all of this is happening amidst the silicon blockade imposed on China by America. Beyond maintaining US primacy in the tech world, the effects will cut into Chinese military advancements, and threaten its economic growth and scientific leadership.

As a result, China is working hard to develop its own domestic semiconductor industry, leading to increased competition and vulnerabilities in the software supply chain, too.

This could result in increased attacks on the U.S. supply chain and attempts to gain access to U.S. suppliers’ networks and facilities to both exfiltrate intellectual property and introduce malicious code or components into the supply chain.

“Another potential risk is that this increased competition could lead to the fragmentation (or Balkanization) of the global cybersecurity ecosystem, with different regions using different standards and technologies,” said Ted Miracco, CEO at Approov.

It’s likely that the closeness between the US, Japan and South Korea will include moves to universalize their technological aims and defenses to avoid any such fragmentation. Until a statement from the three leaders, all anyone can do is watch and wait.

The post Camp David will host diplomatic meeting on China defense plan appeared first on TechHQ.

• A draft ruling includes directives not to use facial recognition technology to disrupt social order, endanger national security, or infringe on the rights of individuals and organizations.
• CAC also noted that facial recognition tech must be used only when non-biometric measures won’t do.
• The draft ruling is open for comment until September 7.

Over the last decade, we have witnessed the rise of surveillance states worldwide, yet, to date, no country is more surveilled than China. Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has expanded domestic surveillance, putting the Eastern powerhouse at the forefront of global facial recognition technology for years. 

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Dubbed the “global capital of surveillance,” China also saw the rise of a new generation of companies that make sophisticated technology at ever-lower prices. What’s worse is that Chinese companies were operating with less scrutiny and regard for corporate social responsibility than similar companies in other countries.

Go ahead – Jaywalk, we dare ya…

Today, the Chinese facial recognition system logs nearly every citizen, with a vast network of cameras nationwide. Every move in cities around China is being captured digitally. Not only is facial recognition software used to access office buildings, but it has also been used to snare criminals and even shame jaywalkers at busy intersections. 

Surveillance at Tiananmen Square Monument. Source: Shutterstock

The scope of the data collected by Chinese authorities became more apparent when the database of SenseNets Technology, a Shenzhen-based biometrics provider, was leaked in 2019, exposing the personal information of millions of people for months.

According to security researcher Victor Gevers, who found the database, SenseNets collected nearly 6.7 million GPS coordinates in one database. Within just 24 hours, SenseNets has data taken from cameras positioned around hotels, parks, tourism spots, and mosques, logging details on people as young as nine days old. 

The location data was matched to names — many of which were Uighur — as well as ID numbers, home addresses, photos, and employers, according to Gevers, who said he also discovered a large number of organizations were connecting to the database, including police stations, hotels, and various companies. Simply put, the database leak showed how pervasive China’s surveillance tools are.

China is finally drawing the line with facial recognition.

To put into context how heavy surveillance is in China, it is essential to know that the country has over 700 million surveillance cameras, according to online data. That means there is one lens for every two citizens. But now, China wants to create some boundaries and limit the use of facial recognition technology, finally.

On August 8, via the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), China released draft regulations to govern its facial recognition technology, including prohibitions on its use to analyze race or ethnicity. The purpose is to “regulate the application of face recognition technology, protect people’s rights to personal information and other personal and property rights, and maintain social order and public safety” as outlined by a smattering of data security, personal information, and network laws.

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The news may come as a shock for many around the world, because China is notoriously known for its heavy surveillance nationwide. The draft rules, which are open for comments until September 7, include some vague directives not to use face recognition technology to disrupt social order, endanger national security, or infringe on the rights of individuals and organizations.

The internet regulator noted that the “Face Recognition Technology Application Safety Management Regulations (Draft for comment) is drafted according to existing laws and regulations such as the Network Security Law, Data Security Law, and the Personal Information Protection Law.”

The draft of the newest ruling says that “If there are non-biometric verification technologies for achieving a similar purpose or business requirements, those non-biometric verification methods should be preferred” (in Chinese, translated by Tech Wire Asia). Individual consent, however, isn’t required for certain administrative situations. Should facial recognition be used, the proposed rules encourage the use of national systems.

Image collection and personal identification equipment should be installed in public places to maintain public safety, the draft rules said, noting that clear signage is required. The draft also states that building managers will not need to use facial recognition to monitor entries and exits on the property – they must provide alternative measures of verifying a personal identity for those who want it.

Kids using face identification before entering a turnstile gate. Source: Shutterstock

It also can’t be leaned into for “major personal interests” such as social assistance and real estate disposal. For that, manual verification of personal identity must be used, with facial recognition used only as an auxiliary means of verifying personal identity. Should there be a collection of images for internal management, it can only be done for a reasonably-sized area, the draft reads.

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Businesses like hotels, banks, airports, and more should refrain from deploying facial recognition to verify personal identity. If the individual links their identity to the image, they should be informed verbally or in writing and provide consent. 

Collecting images is also prohibited in private spaces like hotel rooms, public bathrooms, and changing rooms. Lastly, all entities in China currently using the technology in a public space, or those with more than 10,000 facial recognition records stored, must register with their local internet regulator within 30 working days.

The post China changing its stance on facial recognition appeared first on TechHQ.

• Price increases feel inevitable as Asian manufacturers raise wages.
• The price rises will correspond to Gen Z demands in Asian factories.
• The prices of consumer goods have been minimized by very low wages.

Price increases on items manufactured in Asia are coming to a toy store near you!

Americans have grown used to a wide range of products being available at (relatively) cheap prices, including clothes, electronics, furniture, and toys. The rise in online sellers from China have only reinforced this snese of continual availability at inexpensive prices.

The issue with this model of relative cheapness is that for all of those things to be so affordable, they have to be manufactured at an even lower cost. For years, that’s meant that stores in America have lined their shelves with items made in factories in Asia.

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For the past couple of decades, cheaper overseas manufacturing costs in Asian countries like China have kept prices low in the US and Europe.

However, the younger generation in Asia don’t want to be factory workers. So, factories need to represent better prospects; manufacturers are raising wages and offering other perks.

The average age of factory workers in Asia has gone up. Source: EPA-EFE via South China Morning Post.

Yoga classes, better cafeteria food, and subsidized kindergarten for workers’ children are all good news for Asian factory workers. They will all also inevitably drive up the cost of manufacturing. To offset that, there have to be price increases in retail.

Price increases a result of staff shortages

The rising costs in factories haven’t come out of nowhere: in China, manufacturing workers’ wages have more than tripled in the last ten years. Japan, Vietnam and Malaysia have also seen notable bumps.

“For US consumers that have been used to having goods at a certain and relatively stable part of their disposable income, I think that foundation is going to have to be rejigged,” Manoj Pradhan, a London-based economist, told the Journal.

It’s hard to feel that much sympathy for Westerners who will be upset about price increases when those increases will represent fairer employment practices in Asia.

The labor shortage in Asia’s factories is attributed to several factors. Firstly, young workers are pushing back on working conditions, while others hold out for higher-paying jobs in line with their education levels.

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“After a while, that work makes your mind numb. I couldn’t stand the repetition,” former Chinese factory worker Julian Zhu told VOA News last November.

Even though many factories are in need of workers, unemployment rates among China’s 16-24-year-olds hit 21% last quarter. In 2001, Nike’s typical Asian factory worker was 22. Today, the company’s average Chinese worker is 40, and in Vietnam the standard age has reached 31 years old.

As an effect, price increases have already begun. Companies like Nike, as well as toymakers Hasbro and Mattel have attributed price hikes to elevated labor costs in Asia.

The pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused supply chain trouble that made businesses consider how far their products had to travel before going on sale. The broader decoupling between the US and China, dating back to the trade wars of the Trump administration, hasn’t helped, either.

What can be done about price increases?

Some companies might move operations from Asia onto home soil. This would have the advantage of creating American jobs, and of improving supply chain resiliency – but it isn’t going to stop price increases.

And before we roll our eyes at Asia’s Gen Z workers, asking their employers for more money, better conditions, and better prospects than their mothers’ and their grandmothers’ generations, it’s worth considering how much an American manufacturer pays its staff.

Even given the absurdly low wages of most American factory workers, products are always more expensive when they’re Made in America due to relative living standards.

The Asian economies remain a production juggernaut…but…

Late in 2022, Apple, Walmart, Intel and Lockheed Martin were among corporations that were reported to be taking steps to “reshore” or “onshore” their supply chains. The moves caused warnings about the inflationary implications of a Made in America economy: in November 2022, a Goldman Sachs report said that among the efforts made by US companies to improve supply chains, “reshoring poses the risk of boosting prices.”

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Ynon Kreiz, CEO of Mattel IRL. Source: CNN.

Another option is “nearshoring.” Companies including Mattel are shifting supply cahins to countries closer to the US: in 2019, the company closed two of its Asian factories and spent US$50 million on the expansion of an existing plant in Mexico.

Will Ferrell as Mattel CEO in the Barbie movie.

According to Mattel’s Latin America managing director, Gabriel Galvan, “being able to have product close to your consumer and not having to transport it from Asia, that’s going to be more profitable and more competitive when you take costs into account.”

Mexico offers cheaper labor than the US and lower shipping costs than Asia. Whether that’s enough to offset price increases remains to be seen.

Barbie is a revolutionary movie. But real-world economic and personal aspirations in Asian manufacturing mean This Barbie could cost Americans more money, sooner rather than later. Maybe put the Dream House on hold…

The post This Barbie was made in the USA – or nearby appeared first on TechHQ.

• More companies require staff in office some of the time. 
• Meta staff are due back in the office from September.
• With digital nomads on the rise, real estate is suffering. 

Post-pandemic, many bosses share the feeling that remote work was a short-term fix. Working from home was a necessary deviation the norm but employees should be back at their desks ASAP.

Bart Valdez, CEO at Ingenovis Health, a Colorado-based staffing firm with 1,600 corporate employees, said the environment he grew up in required a suit and tie, and to be “at the office at 8AM – no excuses.”

However, he’s listened to his employees and had a change of heart: the younger generations have different lifestyles and pressures, and working from home better meets their needs.

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It helps that remote work hasn’t harmed productivity at Ingenovis, where recruiting has improved because the company gets more applicants as a direct result of its approach. One-third of the company’s employees are back in the office, another third are totally remote, and the last group follow a hybrid pattern, a mix of at-home and in-office work.

This represents a trend that has developed post-pandemic. As more corporations call workers back into the office, few employers have required on-site work five days a week from staff. Despite arguing the importance of preserving company culture, most businesses, including the likes of Meta, have called for a partial return.

From September, Meta staff will be required to return to the office three days a week.

Some firms have backtracked in favor of a more flexible system, and others have abandoned back-to-work plans after resistance from employees and other pandemic-based changes. All of this is to say that the overall amount of work done from home has remained steady this year.

According to monthly surveys of thousands of workers by WFH Research, the proportion of work carried out remotely has stayed at about 28%. Another survey by Leger showed that 27% of full-time workers said their employers had become more lenient about remote work over the last year.

Early in the pandemic, Valdez found that managers could make intense use of technology to keep energy up. He didn’t want to lose the culture at the $700-million staffing company, spread across seven units, which he described as “really dynamic, so energetic.”

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In order to maintain this, Valdez said there was “a significant amount of forced communication,” that saw some employees working from home on Zoom fairly constantly.

Zooming back to the office

Ahh, Zoom. The backbone of lockdown socialization. In 2020, the company’s shares skyrocketed sixfold as it emerged as the go-to video conferencing service for online meetings. Zoom remains a leader in the post-pandemic remote work trend – but is gradually calling its own staff back into the office.

For the first time since the pandemic began, all employees within a 50-mile radius of a company office are now required to go into the office at least two days a week on a hybrid schedule. As of January 2022, only 2% of Zoom’s employees worked on-site.

According to a Business Insider report, Zoom’s stock stagnated this year as workers across the country returned to the office and the reliance on video communications dropped. This comes after a plummet in the company’s stock towards the end of 2021, since which time it’s lost at least $100 billion in market value.

A spokesperson said “we believe that a structured hybrid approach – meaning employees that live near an office need to be on-site two days a week to interact with their teams – is most effective for Zoom.

“As a company, we are in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate, and support our global customers.”

One commenter on the report asked if the back-to-work order from Zoom meant “get back to the office so we can tell other companies that it’s best to work remotely and use zoom [sic]?”

Another argued that “this is all because companies are getting pressured to bring tax revenue back into cities. Has nothing to do with productivity. If you pave roads, you have to physically go to work. If you write code, you don’t.”

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Remote work enabling a new way of life

Another trend that has emerged post-pandemic is the concept of the digital nomad. Although they existed before 2020, a generation adapted to online work and itching to explore the world as it emerged from lockdown was ready to embrace a new lifestyle.

Before COVID, the number of people who could be called digital nomads was minimal enough that the impact of the lifestyle couldn’t be definitively tracked. The phenomenon was niche and saw travellers working illegally on tourist visas.

Remote work means scenic locations. Source: Twitter.

Now, the most recent estimate puts the number of digital nomads from the US alone at 16.9 million – that’s an increase of 131% from pre-pandemic 2019.

A recent survey commissioned by SafetyWing of 550 respondents – 250 office workers, 250 remote workers and 50 digital nomads – showed that almost three-quarters of digital nomads chose to go remote as a direct result of the pandemic.

It also found 90% and 86.8% of respondents expressed interest in becoming a remote worker and a digital nomad respectively. The cost of living helps explain this rise, with 78.3% of Americans considering or committing to working remotely citing this issue as a reason.

Theoretically, supporting digital nomad employees widens the pool of talent. Further, they are often highly motivated and productive (Wouldn’t we all be?).

There are issues with compliance that arise, meaning a company that allows remote work from across the world will have to develop policies and procedures that ensure compliance with local and international regulations.

Source: Creative Commons

Several categories of digital nomad have emerged. However, the impact of their travel is reshaping the communities from which they work. Chiang Mai in northern Thailand is often dubbed the digital nomad capital of the world.

Areas of the city are lined with coffee shops, co-working spaces, Airbnbs and short-term lets, all affordable to those on western wages – but out of reach for locals.

There’s some irony at play there. Workers don’t want to return to their offices in the US, for example, due to commute time and cost (they can’t afford to live closer to the office). It makes financial sense to move somewhere cheaper (and, let’s face it, often sunnier and prettier).

Lisbon is in the middle of a housing crisis: with the average salary in Portugal under US$20,000 (£16,226), a one-bedroom apartment in digital nomad hotspots in the capital account for at least 63% of a local wage – one of the highest ratios in Europe.

Of course, back at home, commercial real estate isn’t doing well either: empty office buildings are a money pit for landlords and companies that invested millions in office space in city centers. And the damage extends far beyond the big businesses with downtown office blocks – the community of smaller businesses that exist to serve on-site workers, from coffee shops to restaurants, to gyms and bars and book stores – will all feel the pinch of empty commerical buildings.

If workers don’t return to the office, it could have significant impact on businesses in big cities. With business down, tax revenue declines. Conspiracists say that’s why there’s such a push for staff to work a hybrid pattern, if not come into the office full time.

One response to the New York Post’s report on Zoom’s return to the office. *Contentious opinions and atrocious spelling both the poster’s own.*

Either way, with even Zoom saying goodbye to remote work, the option of taking calls in your PJs after a lazy breakfast-in-bed might soon be a distant memory. The labor market is consumed by the debate, and workers’ rights feel like they’re being debated anew.

The post The end of the Zoom boom? appeared first on TechHQ.

• H-1B visa holders offered more in Canada than US.
• The Canadian Government will incentivize digital nomads to enter the country.
• The flexibility of the Canadian approach has lessons to teach the US.

Tech layoffs have been disrupting the technology sector since late in 2022, and the stress is heightened for those working in America on an H-1B visa.

During the tech boom years, the US tech industry relied on foreign workers – but the regulation enabling them to stay is unusually punitive.

Many technology workers move to the US on an H-1B visa, which ties their employment to their residency; without a job, immigrants have only 60 days to find new employment before their visa is revoked.

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More than 15% of Meta’s workers are on H-1B visas – and the company announced plans in March to lay off 10,000 staff.

Canada helping H-1B visa holders

In the midst of these tech layoffs, Canada is stepping up as an alternative option, and will soon offer 10,000 work permits to foreigners currently in the US on H-1B visas.

The move demonstrates that H-1B visas are effective for attracting talented immigrants, but that the value proposition to prospective immigrants is weak long term; given the option, H-1B holders would relocate to Canada.

In fact, Canada has already been able to act faster than the US in improving standards. Lawmakers and industry advocates have urged the USCIS to extend the 60-day period in America, but, according to the agency, the required lawmaking process would take more than a year.

Immigrants already at risk of losing their jobs would see no benefit from this timescale.

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Adding to Canada’s appeal is the fact that since 2020, Vancouver and Toronto have seen the largest growth in high-tech jobs in North America. Making the move would give H-1B holders open work permits for three years – which if nothing else is ample time to look for work in America.

Furthermore, rather than waiting decades for a US green card, skilled workers can get permanent residency in Canada in under a year. Canada also issues open work permits to the spouses of H-1B workers; in the US, only spouses of those with approved green card applications are allowed to work.

Skilled professionals moving for work naturally want to bring family with them, but holding onto a job in the technology sector and being the sole earner in a household isn’t an easy or appealing choice.

New Canadian aims on H-1B visas

Canada’s government, led by Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Sean Fraser, recognizes the potential of attracting talented immigrants. The Canadian program recently announced a set of aims to fill Canada’s immediate skill shortages and also focus on attracting talent to foster the growth of tomorrow’s jobs.

The announcement reads that the Government of Canada is “embracing Canada’s emerging role as a leader in global tech talent recruitment and attraction.”

Canada has launched a website to help H-1B visa holders.

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) introduced four key pillars that offer a glimpse of the future for highly skilled workers. They (the pillars) provide a better sense of security and long-term prospects for US H-1B visa holders. The four pillars are:

1. Streamlining Canadian work permits for H-1B visa holders.

From July 16, 2023, US-based H-1B workers and their families can apply for open Canadian work permits of up to three years.

2. New innovation stream under the International Mobility Program

Canada plans to launch the Innovation Stream by the end of 2023. This will exempt highly skilled workers from the labor market impact assessment process, streamlining the hiring process for high-growth employers, in alignment with Canada’s innovation priorities and high-tech industries. This could take one of two routes:

• Employer-specific work permits for up to five years;
• Open work permits for up to five years for highly skilled workers in in-demand occupations.

3. Promoting Canada as a destination for skilled workers and their families – digital nomads.

The prevalence of remote work means Canada is aiming to position itself as a destination for skilled professionals. Government will collaborate with public and private partners to explore policies to attract workers seeking to relocate to Canada and integrate into its job market. Currently, a digital nomad can stay in Canada for up to six months under visitor status. Ideally, a digital nomad might choose to stay in Canada with a Canadian employer.

4. Strengthening existing programs for high-skilled tech workers

Canada is also focusing on improving existing immigration programs. The Start-up Visa Program provides a pathway to permanent residence for foreign entrepreneurs with the support of designated Canadian venture capital funds or angel investor organizations.

Regardless of its impact, the move from Canada should stand as a warning to the US that change is necessary to keeping H-1B workers in the country. Doing so will be critical to America’s economic growth, innovation, and maintaining its position as a leader in the tech industry.

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Even if only for its own benefit, the US government urgently needs to address the concerns of immigrant workers.

Approved? Not nearly enough – in which case, try Canada.

According to Sam Adair, a business and immigration lawyer, the option of Canada is likely better suited to someone who wasn’t selected in the H-1B lottery and doesn’t have the ability to stay in the U.S. Going to Canada could give them an agreeable alternative.

He also said that it’s interesting to see Canada make moves that he wishes the U.S. would make to clear away some of the hurdles for skilled immigrants.

The decision to make a move to Canada is obviously a personal one, but for individuals just starting off in their career, it may be a path forward if they are unable to get a visa in the U.S. and want to continue their careers outside of their home countries. 

For more on the topic from expert barristers, you can visit the Graham Adair website, or head to its YouTube channel.

The post Canada defusing American visa time bomb appeared first on TechHQ.

Z library alternatives are out there, if you know where to look.

Last month, Z library returned after a long game of legal cat and mouse. The shadow library battled domain seizures and, in a bid to make the site as accessible as possible, is now launching a dedicated desktop application.

However, lost domain names sent traffic elsewhere. Inevitably, other sites offering free access to books cropped up – though without the same track-record as Z library. Let’s take a look at some of the alternatives out there.

Z library alternatives made necessary by domain seizures.

PDF Drive

The site has around 80 million ebooks, all of which are available as PDFs, as well as other formats. New files and books are uploaded every day, so there’s extensive choice. PDF Drive doesn’t require any personal information, and what information the site does collect is strictly encrypted.

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PDF Drive technically doesn’t ‘create’ the content it provides – it’s more like a search engine or proxy, with resources from across the web stored on its servers. As such, it’s legal to use.

The PDF Drie catalogue isn’t as extensive Z library’s, although textbooks and essays are available, making PDF Drive a useful alternative for students. There are two membership tiers, meaning that the best experience is only offered to those willing to pay. Accessing the site for free means popup ads and limited cloud storage.

Library Genesis

Library Genesis is a platform with more than two million books on offer, including rare and out of print titles. Downloads from the site are very unlikely to contain malware, and it’s also more secure than most torrenting sites.

LibGen is totally free, but might be too similar to Z library for its own good: in 2015 it was involved in a legal case, and the website and its proxies are banned the US, UK and Germany. That hasn’t stopped it yet, but as we’ve seen with Z library, there are only so many loopholes, and the resource might not always be there.

refseek

For academics, refseek offers more than a billion sources of academic papers for researchers to use. You’re not going to discover a new John le Carré novel, but the platform searches more than one billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopaedias, journals, and newspapers for study.

This is a good alternative for students who might not want to risk reliance on Z library as, like PDF Drive, refseek functions as a search tool, rather than providing content itself. Some reviews say that it omits some sources, so it’s not exhaustive, but it’s a good start.

WorldCat

WorldCat is a union catalogue that itemizes the content of over 20,000 global libraries. It’s operated by OCLC and contains over 540 million bibliographic records in 483 languages. Everything is above board here, and rather than providing online versions, WorldCat directs you to an IRL library where you can borrow the resource.

The site certainly simplifies searching local libraries. However, for people in remote areas – who rely on Z library because of a lack of (well-stocked) libraries nearby – it won’t fill the shadow library’s boots.

Reddit users tired of looking for Z library alternatives.

Z library – and its alternatives – help students around the world.

Springer Link and Bioline

Assuming that the majority of Z library users are accessing textbooks via the shadow library, Springer Link could provide a good alternative. With over 10 million scientific documents to browse, the publisher-specific database provides free access to peer-reviewed books, journals and articles.

Similarly, Bioline is a not-for-profit scholarly publishing cooperative that gives open access to research journals published in developing countries with the goal of reducing the South to North knowledge gap. Platforming peer-reviewed bioscience journals from countries including Egypt, Ghana, Venezuela and Iran, Bioline is another way to find research papers for free online.

RePEc

Sponsored by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) is a collection of nearly 4 million publications from volunteers across 102 countries. The site is an effort to enhance the dissemination of research in economics.

Interestingly, the site advertises how providers and publishers can contribute their work to the site; the implication being that doing so doesn’t just benefit readers. Also, obviously, if research papers and essays are uploaded by their authors there’s no illegality going on (assuming they retain copyright), and the site is unlikely to disappear overnight.

Science.gov

Provided by the very people fighting so hard to take Z library down (and keep it down!), Science.gov is a US government search engine for more than 2200 scientific sites. It searches over 60 databases to give access to more than 200 million pages of federal science information. Naturally, this is all above board and, besides providing information, has little in common with Z library.

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Internet Archive

As far as Z library alternatives go, the Internet Archive is a favorite. The non-profit library offers millions of free books that users “borrow” for a limited amount of time. It’s also got movies, software, music, and more. Especially fun is the Wayback machine that lets users search the history of over 818 billion web pages on the internet.

From the website:

“Most societies place importance on preserving artifacts of their culture and heritage. Without such artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. Our culture now produces more and more artifacts in digital form. The Archive’s mission is to help preserve those artifacts and create an internet library for researchers, historians, and scholars.”

The free digital library was founded by free information advocate Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive is also an activist organization that advocates for a free and open internet.

This beacon of e-libraries has had its own share of legal difficulties. In March 2020, when schools and brick-and-mortar libraries had to close, the Internet Archive launched the National Emergency Library that allowed users to borrow books without having to join a waitlist.

In a ruling made public at the end of March 2023, the site was found to have infringed the rights of Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House and John Wiley & Sons. The four publishers sued the Internet Archive a few months after the launch of the National Emergency Library for “willful mass copyright infringement.”

Anna’s Archive

Anna’s Archive calls itsef the world’s largest open-source open-data library and amalgamates resources from Sci-Hub, Library Genesis, Z library and more. The site has two objectives: preservation – backing up humanity’s culture and knowledge – and access – making this knowledge and culture available to anyone in the world.

Z library alterntives: the verdict

So, Z library alternatives are out there, but the closer you get to a replica, the more likely it is that it’ll face the same problems that the shadow library has. There are ways to access free literature online, and many of them are safe to use, but it’s always worth checking that a site is safe before you venture onto it.

Since the site revealed plans to launch a desktop application, Z library has managed to stay out of the news. We wouldn’t advocate piracy, but in cases like the National Emergency Library by the Internet Archive, might the same immunity granted to Robin Hood apply?

The gift of a free libary can transform lives.

The post Where to go when Z library’s down appeared first on TechHQ.

Interest in artificial intelligence (AI) is rocketing. And, as business editors at the New York Times pointed out recently, it’s not just tech companies that are talking about AI. Large language models (LLMs) fed with industry-specific data provide incredible search powers for companies looking to move ahead of their competitors – including new smart summary features.

Imagine a vast library where you can automatically retrieve not just the book you’re looking for, but the exact phrase, together with other supporting facts and figures. And that’s just the tip of the enterprise AI iceberg. Generative AI tools give companies the edge by digesting mind-blowing amounts of data and distilling all of that market intelligence into a smart summary that’s both insightful and time-saving.

Information is gold in investment circles. And a rising star in providing market analysis is AlphaSense. The US-headquartered firm, which has offices in London, Germany, Finland, and India – delivers insights from what it describes as ‘an extensive universe of public and private content—including company filings, event transcripts, news, trade journals, and equity research’.

For example, by analyzing data from more than 9000 publicly listed firms, which regularly host investor calls, AlphaSense determined that AI was mentioned twice as frequently in the first quarter of 2023 compared with the last quarter of 2022. And its enterprise AI tooling is helping the market intelligence provider go head-to-head with business analysis heavyweights such as Bloomberg.

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In fact, it’s telling that Bloomberg has just announced BloombergGPT – a custom LLM that benefits from a 700 billion token corpus of curated financial data. The training data is equivalent to hundreds of millions of pages of text and Google’s Bard notes that a dataset of 700 billion tokens would be ‘a very valuable dataset for training LLMs’.

BloombergGPT’s training dataset –dubbed FinPile – consists of a range of English financial documents including news, filings, press releases, web-scraped financial documents, and social media drawn from the Bloomberg archives.

Company filings – data that AlphaSense and other analysis providers also mine for market insight – represent 14 billion tokens (or around 4 billion words, assuming that 3-4 tokens are used to represent each word) in BloombergGPT. And it’s worth noting that financial statements prepared by public companies, such as annual 10-K filings or quarterly 10-Q reports, are long PDFs that provide rich pickings for smart summary generators, as we’ll highlight shortly.

General LLMs – for example, OpenAI’s GPT-4, Google’s PaLM, and the open-source Falcon-40B are trained on data scraped from the web. And while they do include technical content from scientific research repositories and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), they haven’t been built to be domain-specific.

Falcon’s LLM team, based at the Technology Innovation Institute in the UAE, reports that filtering and deduplicating web data at very large scale – a pipeline that it dubs MacroData refinement – can produce LLMs capable of outperforming versions trained on curated corpora. But the power of having an LLM trained using domain-specific data can be seen by viewing the test results of BloombergGPT.

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In four out of five tests, the domain-specific LLM came out on top. And on the one occasion when it was ranked second, the performance advantage of the winning LLM (the open-source GPT-NeoX, developed by ElutherAI) was slight. Training generative AI models on a refined diet of industry-specific data opens the door to superior smart summary performance.

In June, AlphaSense introduced AI-generated summarizations of key events in earnings calls to dramatically speed up the workflow for fund managers and other analysts keeping an eye on company performance.

The finance sector has long used AI and machine learning to try and spot patterns that would otherwise remain hidden. Natural language processing has been deployed for years to perform sentiment analysis on CEO statements, and other company reports, to determine how optimistic firms are about their future.

But generative AI straps a huge word engine onto the process and races ahead of what’s been done before. For example, tools don’t just put a number on the positives and the negatives, they can bullet the smart summary into columns depending on whether it represents good news or bad.

Putting smart summaries to the test using Google Bard.

Having said that generative AI algorithms trained with domain-specific market data have the edge on general LLMs, readily available tools are still impressive.

Asking Google Bard for its thoughts on the sentiment (including a request to add emojis for extra sparkle – see image below) of the article that you are reading now, produces the following output –

Sentiment:

• Overall, the sentiment of the article is positive. The author is excited about the potential of LLMs to revolutionize the way financial data is analyzed.
• There are a few instances of negative sentiment, such as when the author mentions that general LLMs are not as good as domain-specific LLMs at generating smart summaries.

Emoji sentiment summary: advanced chatbots continue to dazzle.

Security guardrails and air-gapped LLMs

However, before you rush to ask LLMs for a smart summary, make sure you understand where the data you submit goes. Many companies have restricted employees from using generative AI tools, such as OpenAI’s publicly available ChatGPT service, to ring-fence their business data.

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) advised earlier this year that users should pay attention to the terms of use and privacy policy of generative AI services before asking advanced chatbots to answer sensitive questions. Text prompts alone can give much away, should anyone be able to view that information.

Recognizing that companies may want to guard their business operations closely, developers such as Yurts.ai – based in San Francisco, US – are offering air-gapped LLMs to provide clients with maximum security.

“We have seen an explosion of interest in generative AI for enterprise use, but most C-suites have genuine and rightful concerns about security and privacy,” said Ben Van Roo, CEO and Co-founder of Yurts.ai. “Our platform can be embedded within an enterprise and give companies private and secure access to generative AI-based assistants for writing, chat, and search.”

There are other options too. For example, on TechHQ we’ve written about how machine learning can work on data sets in a highly secure sandbox thanks to solutions such as BlindAI cloud.

Benefits beyond finance

The ability to generate a smart summary of vast amounts of data, automatically, in seconds, benefits not just the financial sector, but organizations of all kinds. Governments are taking a keen interest in measuring happiness to better allocate funding – rather than relying solely on conventional indicators that may not tell the whole story.

Back in 2020, before the current boom in LLMs, researchers showed that AI could be useful in understanding what makes us angry, happy, or sad – as reported by the World Economic Forum. And this is just one example of how valuable smart summaries could turn out to be, not just to firms, but more broadly.

The post Business intelligence enters the age of the smart summary appeared first on TechHQ.

Renewable energy, while very much welcome in helping to combat climate change, does bring new variables to managing an increasingly complex electricity grid. But solutions providers are rising to the challenge, using a combination of big data analytics and smart electricity grid sensors to give operators a suite of upgraded monitoring options.

Rewards of a digitized grid

“Both utility providers and the general economy can benefit from a digitized grid,” Amir Cohen – founder and CEO of EGM, an electrical grid monitoring provider headquartered in Israel and with offices in the US – told TechHQ. “Systems can reduce renewable connection queues [through improved risk management] and also reduce the cost of maintenance.”

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Self-learning, EGM’s network of multi-sensing units – installed on electricity lines – gives electricity suppliers high-resolution visualization of the full grid and can provide predictive fault alerts. “The control room knows within 30 seconds where the fault is,” Cohen explains. “Sustained outages can be reduced by 50%, and sometimes by up to 90%.”

Running an electricity grid is no easy task with operators having feet in the past (unable to rip out and replace legacy equipment wholesale) and the future (needing to be flexible and fully digital to manage the demands of intermittent renewable energy).

EU Commissioner for Energy @KadriSimson visited us at the #EUSEW2023 Energy Fair! It was such an honor.
We showed her the Real-Time 3D visualization of one of the Wind farms monitored and controlled within the scope of @TRINITY_h2020 project. #RenewableEnergy #H2020 pic.twitter.com/GjPSgtzxLo

— TRINITY_H2020 (@Trinity_H2020) June 20, 2023

The trend is to move towards microgrids that separate electricity networks into smaller zones to avoid large-scale blackouts. But with some parts of the US still running on systems that are decades old, that dream is a way off from becoming a reality. However, smart electricity grid sensors do help operators to incorporate new architecture, while managing current infrastructure.

“EV charging creates large spikes,” Cohen comments, pointing to current grid challenges. “Only full digitalization with significant sensor and analytics integration can manage it.”

What is the grid?

The power grid or electricity grid is evolving. Historically, the prime concerns were transmission and reliability – connecting major power stations with large numbers of users. But today’s energy supply is increasingly diverse and storage needs are rising. At a high level, networks include step-up transformers to transport electricity more efficiently over long distances (the greater the voltage, the lower the power loss in transmission). And on the consumption side, electricity networks require a corresponding series of step-down equipment to condition the power for use by industrial and domestic customers.

Other notable features include so-called peaker power plants, which are used by utilities operators to fill gaps in energy supply when electricity demand spikes. Scenarios include providing peak power during a heat wave when everyone in the city has their air conditioning maxed out. But as the use of renewables has grown, peaking plants are stepping up in other ways too. And the growth in these deployments points to how smart electricity grid sensors help operators.

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For example, consider transitory clouds that appear in the sky above an array of photovoltaics. Now in the shade, the output from the solar panels will fall until the clouds pass by. Likewise, when the wind drops around an installation of green energy turbines the contribution made to the grid dips. And those losses in electrical generation need to be plugged – assuming that customer demand for power remains high.

Modern natural gas-burning modular peaker power plants can be up and running in as little as two minutes. And this fast response makes them ideal for countering supply volatility – one of the power management headaches that goes hand in hand with adding significant amounts of renewable energy sources to the grid.

Another way of dealing with intermittent sources of power is to add large battery arrays to the electricity network, allowing the grid to not just transmit energy, but to store it as well. Banks of lithium-ion battery packs help to buffer renewable energy input, which is essential in locations such as the UK where weather systems are notoriously changeable.

In fact, the UK is home to one of the largest battery storage facilities in Europe. The site – located outside the city of Hull, inland from the North Sea – stabilizes the national energy grid, which is fed by the massive Dogger Bank offshore wind farm. And this is only the beginning. The number of battery facilities is likely to have to grow tenfold, according to industry estimates, to manage the planned growth in renewable power generation.

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Other developments include the electrification of heat as governments look to encourage homeowners and businesses to install lower carbon-footprint solutions, such as electric heat pumps. Also, there’s the rise of electric vehicles (EVs) to consider, which could soon disrupt the grid if large numbers of owners chose to fast-charge their cars at the same time.

In the future, however, EVs could also contribute to and store grid energy if electricity networks were configured to tap into this decentralized battery resource.

Prior to the rise of renewables and growing demand for plug-in EV charging, managing the electricity grid was arguably much more straightforward. But today – and increasingly so in the future as the number of solar and wind power installations and EVs ramps up – demand patterns are more complex.

Location and synchronization

Systems need to be able to respond to changing dynamics, and ideally learn what this new behavior looks like. And then there’s the issue of power source location.

Studies have shown that in the US, sites ideal for wind or solar don’t necessarily correspond to regions of high population density. Energy will need to be transmitted over long distances to fulfill the needs of customers looking for cleaner electricity. And when there’s a shortfall, top-up power – which may be sourced locally – needs to be synchronized with longer-distance supplies to avoid impacting electrical grid capacity and quality.

The challenges of modernizing power distribution are significant, but so are the rewards, and smart electricity grid sensors are definitely part of the solution, as are other analytical tools such as digital twins in power generation.

The post Smart electricity grid sensors solve power puzzles appeared first on TechHQ.

Being able to recognize numbers and characters was an early big win for machine learning. And one of the first practical lessons for AI students is often training a simple algorithm to classify digits based on the classic EMNIST dataset of 28×28 pixel images of handwritten numbers. Today, optical character recognition (OCR) is big business with a market size in excess of US $11 billion, according to analyst firm Global Data. And high-achieving AI systems include automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology, which has become commonplace on road networks worldwide.

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In the UK alone, based on Police data, national ANPR cameras generate in the region of 60 million vehicle number plate read records every day. And, while the importance of ANPR data in crime prevention and law enforcement shouldn’t be overlooked, being able to recognize cars, trucks, and other vehicles has a wide range of applications.

Number plate recognition systems are used by firms to log facilities access and to enable ticketless parking. ANPR data also supports intelligent traffic management systems, helping national highways authorities to accurately calculate journey times and monitor road networks in greater detail.

In Bristol, UK – where TechHQ has its headquarters – 49 ANPR cameras have been installed to deliver a clean air zone (CAZ) in the city center. According to supplier SEA – which won the contract to provide ANPR technology for the CAZ – individual cameras can monitor up to three lanes of traffic. And the computer vision system can retrieve vehicle make, model, gross weight, engine type, Euro rating and CO2 emission band from DVLA databases based on OCR information.

Adding vehicle color recognition to the ANPR mix

But that’s by no means all of the vehicle identifiers that can be gathered using roadside cameras and other image sources, as research published in the Frontiers of Computer Science shows (alternative link). The team, based in China, highlights the opportunity for systems to perform vehicle color recognition (VCR), and there are some good reasons why adding VCR to the ANPR mix is helpful.

Not all drivers are careful to keep their license plates clean, and some may cover, remove, or even – in the case of bad actors – use forged plates, all of which will disrupt the performance of conventional ANPR systems.

The idea of using vehicle color to augment other characteristics acquired using computer vision dates back to an earlier study performed in 2015. In this preliminary work, researchers in Taiwan used decision tree classification to separate road traffic images into a handful of categories based on vehicle color.

They say there are over 250 #AI (ANPR) and red-light violation detection traffic cameras operational in Namma Bengaluru.

This is your next level @blrcitytraffic.

No #helmet No !

@btppubliceye @peakbengaluru #WearHelmet #RoadSafetypic.twitter.com/loVPGXMDLT

— TORquED .eth .lens (@DigiMaverick) June 28, 2023

Twitter video appears to show that ANPR cameras can identify helmetless riders at road junctions.

Physical characteristics such as the chemistry, color, number, and layer sequence of paint can all be used to help differentiate one vehicle from another. Since 1997, the FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police have teamed up to create a database of more than 9000 paint records dubbed Paint Data Query (PDQ). And the body of information can be used to identify most new vehicles sold in North America after 1973, including models marketed by foreign manufacturers as well as domestic OEMs.

VCR systems can’t match the capabilities of having a physical paint sample to hand, but – as the latest studies show – the number of vehicle colors that can be reliably detected using computer vision is increasing. For example, using a VCR method based on Smooth Modulation Neural Network with Multi-Scale Feature Fusion (SMNN-MSFF), AI experts have almost doubled the number of color categories that can be recognized remotely.

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This latest VCR dataset consists of 10,091 vehicle images extracted from 100 hours of urban road surveillance video. And given the vast amount of traffic footage that is captured on highways globally, this work should be considered as a proof-of-concept rather than the end of the road. The prospects for generating more training data are surely huge.

Based on the results presented in the 2023 paper, VCR is already capable of distinguishing between different shades of vehicle colors – for example, by identifying champagne, yellow, lemon-yellow, and earthy-yellow as distinct categories. And combining VCR with ANPR data adds up to more robust vehicle identification.

As the researchers point out, the fact that vehicles typically only have a single dominant color, which isn’t easily damaged in its entirety or changed– compared with swapping a license plate – makes auxiliary VCR data worth having. And for drivers that don’t want to stand out? White was the most popular vehicle color in the group’s VCR training footage – representing more than a third of the examples in the data set. Also, considering other geographies, over a quarter of cars in the US are painted white, according to iSeeCars.com – a search engine for cars.

Some commercial ANPR systems are already capable of performing VCR, although possibly not with the same fidelity as the neural network used by the research team profiled in this article. Online demos of ANPR systems – which can be viewed on YouTube – show evidence of low-level vehicle color classification, but it’s clear that the software can’t distinguish between different shades. For example, when a dark blue car drives by it’s labeled as simply being blue, and similarly for a different model painted this time in a lighter hue.

DIY ANPR

To understand what’s involved in automatically interpreting number plate information using OCR, it’s instructive to check out some of the many coding tutorials online. Rather than start from scratch, it’s possible to use custom-trained object detection models such as YOLO – included as part of NVIDIA’s TAO Toolkit, designed to speed up the creation of computer vision AI applications – to extract license plate images from footage of vehicles.

Having narrowed down the region(s) of interest, developers can then deploy OCR routines to read out the license plate numbering and lettering and send API calls to an ANPR database to retrieve the corresponding vehicle records. Note that users will need to ensure that they are using this data lawfully. Organizations such as the UK-based Information Commissioner’s Office has guidance on data protection implications of collecting ANPR information.

GDPR and other data privacy laws may apply to people, not vehicles, but that line is easily crossed if ANPR information can be linked to the driver and matched to other PII. And organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation caution that automated license plate reader data can ‘paint an intimate portrait of a driver’s life’.

If playing around with Python libraries and having fun with a Raspberry Pi is starting to look like surveillance, then it’s time to call quits on the coding lesson.

LPR on the Edge

Video analytics firm Azena – a Bosch-funded German tech start-up based in Munich, with international offices in Eindhoven and Pittsburgh – offers edge-based license plate recognition (LPR). And commercial operators wanting to reduce their exposure to data concerns may want to consider self-contained edge-based solutions that minimize information being sent to the cloud.

Azena collaborated with Czech-based FF Group – which offers a range of traffic monitoring capabilities, including a Smart City Starter Kit – on the setup. And the system now features make, model, and color recognition (MMCR) technology. FF Group first started working on make and model recognition, powered by Nvidia hardware, back in 2017. Sampling 500k cars, the algorithm was accurate in 92% of cases, and that was just in early testing.

Products can perform vehicle count, direction detection, LPR, and MMCR of traffic traveling at speeds of up to 120 km/h. The capabilities of modern video analytics are impressive. But at the same time, if you’re looking for somewhere to hide, maybe don’t drive there.

The post AI vehicle color analysis turbocharges automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) appeared first on TechHQ.

• Z-Library alternatives growing, opening users up to scams.
• Z-Library deploying its own new access method.
• Z-Library embroiled in a complex legal case.

Z-Library, the shadow library that allows file sharing of academic journals, is finding alternative ways to stay alive despite significant attacks and losses in recent months.

A new access method has been launched by the shadow library to help improve accessibility. The dedicated desktop application will make it easier to access the site going forward, after several rounds of domain seizures by the US government.

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One of the reasons for the development of this software is the criminal case that Z-Library is embroiled in. In November 2022, Z-Library lost access to over 200 domain names after two of its alleged operators were arrested in Argentina. Both defendants, who are Russian, retained US lawyers to fight their cases.

However, both Valeriia Ermakova – who has hired the services of Temkin & Associates – and Anton Napolsky – who is being represented by Brown Legal Consulting – have opted for lawyers who are fluent in Russian.

More recently, there’ve been more domain seizures. Last year, Z-Library approached the issue by initially denying that it had been targeted, but this time around the site’s operators were quick to confirm the action, directing users to alternative login screens through a Telegram message.

“Unfortunately, one of our primary login domains was seized today. Therefore, we recommend using the domain singlelogin.re to log in to your account, as well as to register,” the Z-Library team wrote.

Via TorrentFreak.com

Z-Library alternatives gain traffic

Although the shadow library has pushed ahead through recriminations, lost domain names send traffic to knockoffs and alternatives. Z-Library alternatives are now getting millions of visitors a month, but don’t have the same track-record as the original, putting users at risk of scams.

The shadow library also faced a huge bot attack earlier this month, causing technical issues: registrations stopped working and email delivery was interrupted. These are also likely factors in the development of the new desktop software.

The desktop launcher will be available for Mac, Windows and Linux platforms, and will automatically redirect users to the right place without relying on a single domain name. Previously, users accessed Z-Library through a dedicated URL that directed them to a ‘personal’ domain, which provided access to Z-Library.

The use of subdomains was working, but could easily have been wiped out by yet another round of domain seizures. The team announced that the launcher “will save you the trouble of searching for a working website link, as it will handle everything for you.”

Not only does it simplify access to Z-Library, but it can connect over the Tor network, which helps evade blocking efforts and adds another layer of privacy. Apparently, the software will likely trigger a notice that it’s from an unverified developer; Z-Library says this is standard, but of course users should treat third-party applications with caution.

The accessibility argument

It might be unexpected that the service would plough ahead during an active criminal case. In this respect, its reminiscent of how The Pirate Bay positioned itself years ago. The Z-Library team sees “free access to literature” as a main driver.

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“The goal of Z-Library is to provide free access to literature to as many people in need as possible. Books are the scientific and cultural heritage of all humankind, and we strive to preserve this legacy and use its power for the benefit of our society.”

“We don’t promote piracy. The work of authors and publishers should be paid for and valued,” the Z-Library team explains, adding that it supports copyright legislation and doesn’t aim to change any laws.

However, free access to literature is paramount to many students’ studies, particularly in remote or underfunded areas.

Source: https://twitter.com/ApalaBhowmick/status/1572613014444212225?s=20

According to Bhowmick (the above tweet’s author), the Z-library shutdown is another pattern of racism and inequity that hinders promising young people from following their academic passions to futures in wealthier countries with more supported academic institutions. “There are scant ways of finding access to scholarly literature in India due to fractured print culture networks and limited incomes,” she said, “It’s almost a deliberate strategy to gate-keep academia from those who are racialized, or marginalized in other ways, especially in vulnerable economies in the world.”

Never underestimate the power of free access to literature.

The post Z-Library finds alternative ways to stay active appeared first on TechHQ.