Leftovers

• APNIC ☛ Three of the best: Security

  Internet security risks are among the most important challenges facing APNIC Members, as per the 2024 APNIC Survey. Below are the top three posts related to security for 2024.

• Robin Rendle ☛ Digital gardening

  I spotted this post by Chris Armstrong on Digital Gardening the other day and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Chris imagines a personal website being so much more than a humble blog with a series of chronological posts: [...]

• Matt Birchler ☛ That app could probably be a website

  There was great consternation a few months back about how Google had put a function in Chrome that let Google websites access some system information around what type of hardware the user was using. This was read as an outrage by some, and as evidence that the web wasn’t safe, but my takeaway was the exact opposite — this was a clear example of native apps have access to so much information about the user.

• The Newsprint ☛ The Sunday Edition — 01.05.25

  All I ask for is the common understanding of how hard it is to show up every week, to put yourself out there every week, to — as my dear friend Marius put it recently — be that vulnerable with an audience each week.

• David Buchanan ☛ 2024 Retrospective

  This is a new-yearsy post, but a few days late. Just in time for everyone to be sick of them!

  On December 31th[sic]* 2023, I declared that 2024 would be the "year of the blog". I listed a bunch of things I might do in 2024, and guess what, I didn't do any of them. Except for one!

• Dominik Schwind ☛ 2025-W01: New Year, Same Me

  Just to be extra nerdy I’ll now use the ISO 8601 week date format for the title. Good god.

• Austin Kleon ☛ 100 things that made my year (2024) - Austin Kleon

• Nicolas Magand ☛ Are we at peak shittiness?

  For 2024, I had the goal of publishing a blog post per week, aiming for 50 posts. I ended up with 36. Skipping the last five weeks of the year surely didn’t help. It’s fine though. One article every ten days is still a good pace for me, all things considered. Also, not writing anything for the past month and a half made me realise how much I’ve missed it and how much I need it to, I want to say, ventilate my thoughts.

  So, what’s better to get the engines going again than a good old rant?

• Kev Quirk ☛ Blog Questions Challenge

  I know some people hate this kind of meta post, but I really like them. I find it fascinating learning how other people who manage their site and workflow. Mainly to see if there's something I can steal.

  So anyway, I've adapted the original questions from Ava to be more generic ,and I'll tag a few people at the end who I hope will take part too. I'd love it if they in turn tagged others.

• Jim Nielsen ☛ You Can Now Subscribe To My Blog via Email

  I don’t think you should. I think you should use RSS.

  But if you want posts delivered directly to your email, you can do that now.

• Standards/Consortia

  • APNIC ☛ BGP in 2024

    At the start of each year, it’s been my habit to report on the behaviour of the Internet’s inter-domain routing system during the previous 12 months, looking in some detail at some metrics from the routing system that can show the essential shape and behaviour of the underlying interconnection fabric of the Internet.

  • Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Your platform is a trap

    We're well past the platform where enshittification has become cliché and bandied about to death but every new "platform" I see now feels like a trap.

    I remember chatting with friends I met on bulletin boards using Adium — AIM, Yahoo! messenger, XMPP — it didn't matter. We had reasonably open protocols and interop wasn't yet a four letter word.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Have Created VR Goggles For Mice And They're Adorable

    The mice quickly learned to navigate their virtual environment by running on a spherical treadmill. And those visuals appeared to be more immersive than ever – seen through MouseGoggles, the mice reacted to reward and fear stimuli far more strongly than when viewing virtual worlds on big 360-degree projector screens.

    It's not all fun and games, though. By making VR more realistic for mice, scientists can more precisely monitor the brain activity associated with spatial navigation and memory.

• Career/Education

  • Nicolas Fränkel ☛ 2024 in retrospective

    Upon receiving the news on a Thursday morning in mid-August, I didn’t let it deter me. I took a one-day break and immediately started my job search on Friday, determined to find a new opportunity. I thought I would get a new job quickly. However, my optimism met reality—it took me 3.5 months to return to work. Here’s a couple of stats that may be interesting if you’re facing the same issue: [...]

  • Luis Quintanilla ☛ Building a Reading Habit with Audiobooks, LibriVox, and AntennaPod

    In case you're interested in setting up something similar, in this post, I'll briefly explain what LibriVox and AntennaPod are and show how you can use them to start listening to free audiobooks on your phone.

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ TSMC's wafer pricing now $18,000 for a 3nm wafer, increased over 3X in 10 years: Analyst

    The most substantial transistor density increases occurred in the earlier nodes, such as transitions from 28nm to 20nm and then to 16nm/14nm. However, recent process technologies (N5, N4P, N3B, N3E) exhibit slower density improvements. The peak period for transistor density improvements occurred around the A11 (N10, 10nm-class) and A12 (N7, 7nm-class), with gains of 86% and 69%, respectively. Recent chips, including the A16 to A18 Pro, show a noticeable slowdown in density advancements, primarily due to slower SRAM scaling.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Brain Baking Is Also Baking

    For those looking to somewhat reproduce the bread, here is a timetable that I usually keep in the back of my mind: [...]

  • The Conversation ☛ Transform the daily grind to make life more interesting – a philosopher shares 3 strategies to help you attain the good life

    In collaboration with Shigehiro Oishi and his research lab, I’ve investigated whether the field of positive psychology has largely overlooked an important dimension of the good life. As the philosopher on our team, I had two directives. First, I helped to define the concept of psychological richness and understand what distinguishes it from happiness and meaning. Second, I set out to explore why psychological richness is valuable.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • The Independent UK ☛ The U.S. is considering a ban on a Chinese-made internet router – and it’s probably already in your home

    The investigation comes as concerns have mounted over cybersecurity risks connected with router manufacturer TP-Link Technology Co. The device is listed as a best seller on Amazon, with prices ranging from $50 to $100 for most models.

  • RTL ☛ 'Digitally undressing women': 'Form of violence': Across globe, deepfake porn targets women politicians

    The intimate imagery is often weaponized to tarnish the reputation of women in the public sphere, jeopardizing their careers, undermining public trust, and threatening national security by creating conditions for blackmail or harassment, researchers say.

  • India Times ☛ 'Form of violence': Across globe, deepfake porn targets women politicians

    An online boom in non-consensual deepfakes is outpacing efforts to regulate the technology globally, experts say, with a proliferation of cheap artificial intelligence tools including photo apps digitally undressing women.

  • The Washington Post ☛ How Huawei brought on a Sputnik moment

    Industry executives acknowledge that networks are [breached] and surveilled to a much greater degree than the general public may suspect. They also acknowledge the difficulty of ascertaining whether a back door exists in millions of lines of code. When AT&T conducted a survey of cybersecurity professionals in 2016, 64 percent said they did not expect to be able to have a private conversation on any device.

  • Macworld ☛ Looking back 25 years later, even Steve was wrong about Mac OS X

    But I was there, and I can tell you that it wasn’t that. This was the moment, after 16 years of classic Mac OS–and let’s face it, the last five of those were pretty rough–when all the failings of the Mac were swept away and replaced with something modern, ready for the challenge of the 21st century.

    How did that work out for Apple? The keynote seems so weird now because almost everything in it is just how the Mac works, even 25 years later. Yes, interface styles have changed over time, but that moment on stage in January 2000 redefined the Mac for 25 years and counting.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Waymo Cars Usually Fail to Yield to Pedestrians at a Crosswalk – Pixel Envy

• Security

  • The Cyber Show ☛ Cyber Security in 2025: A Guide for the Critically Minded

    Quantum computing is moving out of the research phase and into the realm of early-stage prototypes. In 2024, IBM unveiled its 1,121-qubit quantum computer, setting the stage for major breakthroughs in computational power (IBM, 2024). While this is still a long way from practical large-scale use, the potential implications for cryptography are profound. As Shor’s algorithm is capable of breaking current encryption methods, organisations must begin preparing for a post-quantum world.

    In response, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has accelerated efforts to standardise post-quantum cryptography, with candidates for quantum-resistant algorithms being evaluated in 2024 (NIST, 2024). This is a critical development as organisations prepare for the day when quantum computers could potentially break the encryption protocols that protect everything from personal data to financial transactions.

    [...]

    For the critically minded, 2025 is not a year to fear technology but to understand and navigate its risks with confidence. Stay sceptical, stay prepared, and above all, remember that the best defence often involves simple, actionable steps—like not trusting that email from a long-lost prince.

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ U.S. uncovers hacking campaign targeting Guam's critical infrastructure — suspected Chinese Volt Typhoon hacks could disrupt the defense of Taiwan

      Volt Typhoon infiltrates systems by mimicking legitimate users and unlike attacks that exfiltrate data, this program seeks control over critical infrastructure such as water systems, power grids, and communication networks. Volt Typhoon is said to operate so discreetly that detection relies on identifying anomalies, like irregular login patterns. This is where it got detected, as the Guam Power Authority (GPA), the only provider of electricity on the island, became a point of interest when U.S. investigators approached its cybersecurity head — Melvyn Kwek — to assess unusual network activity back in 2022.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Washington Post ☛ It’s not just Tesla. Vehicles amass huge troves of possibly sensitive data.

      Data privacy experts say the investigation — which has determined that the driver, active-duty U.S. Army soldier Matthew Livelsberger, died by suicide before the blast — highlights how car companies vacuum up reams of data that can clear up mysteries but also be stolen or given to third parties without drivers’ knowledge. There are few regulations controlling how and when law enforcement authorities can access data in cars, and drivers are often unaware of the vast digital trail they leave behind.

      “These are panopticons on wheels,” said Albert Fox Cahn, who founded the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, an advocacy group that argues the volume and precision of data collected can pose civil liberties concerns for people in sensitive situations, like attending protests or going to abortion clinics.

    • The Washington Post ☛ Big Tech is pushing ‘AI agents.’ They’ll need intimate access to your data.

      Tech companies are racing to upgrade chatbots like ChatGPT not only to offer answers, but also to take control of a computer to take action on a person’s behalf.

      Experts in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity warn the technology will require people to expose much more of their digital lives to corporations, potentially bringing new privacy and security problems.

    • Noë Flatreaud ☛ Tips on being anonymous

      That's a very fine line between being right in our boots and straight up schizo. But you know, on the internet, especially after the 2010's we might never obtain total anonymity. The least we can do is trying to achieve unverifiable pseudonymity, using, you know, various techniques.

      While being mostly legal, it might also suit well for... ahem... criminal activities. And I, for sure, don't want people to do something as dumb and meaningless as that. Nonetheless, because I DO know that you'll never do such a thing, let me give you some tips on reaching Anonymity.

    • Jason Becker ☛ Turns out, sometimes you should add things to the internet of shit

      So I registered and added my charger, and now I’m getting 3x faster charging at home.

    • India Times ☛ Data protection rules balance regulation & innovation while safeguarding citizens' rights: Ashwini Vaishnaw

      The minister stated that, until now, the European data protection rules has been the primary global template, known for its high level of regulation. In contrast, India’s rules have been designed with a focus on fostering the rapidly growing innovation ecosystem, particularly among startups, while still ensuring adequate regulation.

    • Lap Cat Software ☛ Technology is never a substitute for consent

      According to this alternative interpretation of privacy, the data on my computers is mine, to do with as I please, not as anyone else pleases. My computers, and the data on my computers, should not leave my possession, the "privacy" of my own home, without my consent. If others want access to my data, I may grant permission, but only if they ask and I agree.

      With Enhanced Visual Search, Apple appears to focus solely on the understanding of privacy as secrecy, ignoring the understanding of privacy as ownership, because Enhanced Visual Search was enabled by default, without asking users for permission first. The justification for enabling Enhanced Visual Search by default is presumably that Apple's privacy protections are so good that secrecy is always maintained, and thus consent is unnecessary.

    • Lap Cat Software ☛ The internet is full of experts

      By the way, it's not clear to me that disabling Enhanced Visual Search in Settings is truly a solution to the privacy issue. Apple's machine learning blog post doesn't entirely explain how it works, but the implication seems to be that for all photos in your library on your device that have "regions of interest" identified by machine learning, metadata from those photos are uploaded to Apple servers before any search is performed. This makes intuitive sense to me, otherwise searches of very large libraries with thousands of photos could be very slow. Thus, disabling the feature in Settings might be too late to protect your current photo library, if the data/metadata has already been uploaded. It would have been uploaded, I assume, shortly after you installed iOS 18 and macOS 15. I could be wrong, though, and I would welcome public clarification from Apple.

    • Lap Cat Software ☛ Apple Photos phones home on iOS 18 and macOS 15

      Oddly, this new feature has mostly gone unmentioned in the Apple news media, according to Google. Moreover, it has also mostly gone unmentioned by Apple itself, according to Google. There appear to be only two relevant documents on Apple's website, the first of which is a legal notice about Photos & Privacy:

      "Enhanced Visual Search in Photos allows you to search for photos using landmarks or points of interest. Your device privately matches places in your photos to a global index Apple maintains on our servers. We apply homomorphic encryption and differential privacy, and use an OHTTP relay that hides IP address. This prevents Apple from learning about the information in your photos. You can turn off Enhanced Visual Search at any time on your iOS or iPadOS device by going to Settings > Apps > Photos. On Mac, open Photos and go to Settings > General."

• Defence/Aggression

  • International Business Times ☛ Donald Trump Promises to Pardon January 6 Capitol [Insurrectionists]: The Full Story Behind the Attack

    The former president's comments have reignited controversy over one of the darkest chapters in modern American history. As the nation braces for potential ramifications, here's a detailed account of the Capitol [insurrection] and their aftermath.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Bending the knee, $1 million at a time

    To be clear, I think this is absurd, and I don’t think it’s remotely American to make fealty payments to the kin…president the best way for those people to advocate for their companies. And yes, I feel very similarly to campaign donations as well, especially post Citizens United in 2010.

  • Kyle Ford ☛ The Only Way Out is Through – House of Kyle

    The primary goal is to ensure that you don’t become a boiled frog and start to normalize the various horrors as they begin to appear. As John Oliver famously said during the first Trump era, always remember that “this is not normal”: [...]

  • The Wall Street Journal ☛ Why Jihadists Wage War on Christmas (and Other Holidays)

    Few things foster a sense of common humanity as much as the adherents of one religion offering warm holiday wishes to members of another. Yet some people reject this geniality on principle. Islamists—Muslims intent on returning to a medieval law code—despise any holiday not sanctioned by Islam. This archaic and bigoted attitude provides context for the New Year’s Day massacre in New Orleans that left 14 dead and dozens injured.

  • CBS ☛ Transcript: House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," Jan. 5, 2025

    SPEAKER EMERITA PELOSI: Well the President said he would go on a case-by-case basis. So I assume that- that some of those people may not have engaged in the violent activities that some of the others did. Look at this beautiful Capitol, the dome built by Lincoln. Under Lincoln's leadership during the Civil War, they said, don't build the dome. It takes too much steel and person power, manpower, they said, from the war effort. And he said, no, I have to show the resilience of America. And then under that dome you saw, you saw flags, the flags that, you know, just horrible flags under the dome of Lincoln. And so it was a tragedy, and we cannot be in denial about what it was. If the President is going to go on a case by case basis, I hope he does, and then maybe–

  • The Hill ☛ Nancy Pelosi: Jan. 6 violence 'didn't end that day'

    Some former Capitol Police officers who were present amid the Jan. 6 attack have said that Trump’s commitment to pardon rioters is “a betrayal.”

    “It’s a betrayal, a stab in the heart,” former Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, who received long-lasting injuries on the day of the attack, said to The Washington Post.

  • VOA News ☛ TikTok creators [sic] in US left in limbo while awaiting decision on potential platform ban

    At the heart of the case is whether the law violates the First Amendment with TikTok and its creator allies arguing that it does. The U.S. government, which sees the platform as a national security risk, says it does not.

  • JURIST ☛ TikTok creators [sic] urge US Supreme Court to block upcoming app ban, cite free speech threats

    The government argued that the law’s carefully crafted language and concerns over Chinese influence on the application position it to withstand strict scrutiny. “Congress and the Executive Branch agree that the PRC’s control of TikTok through ByteDance poses a profound national-security threat. As the court of appeals recognized, that concern is ‘well founded, not speculative’,” the US said.

  • [Old] The Independent UK ☛ Elon Musk ‘stopped Ukraine military using Starlink for military operation’

    Musk denied Ukrainian miliatry access to turn on Starlink in Crimea, report says

  • [Old] PC Mag ☛ Pentagon Says It Stopped Russian Starlink Use in Ukraine (For Now)

    "It will continue to be a problem," Plumb concedes, adding: "I think we've wrapped our heads around it and found good solutions with both Starlink and Ukraine."

    The US has been working with Ukraine's government and SpaceX to stop Russia from using Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service as its invasion of Ukraine continues.

  • NPR ☛ As Trump rewrites history, victims of the Jan. 6 riot say they feel 'betrayed'

    Gonell immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic. He later served in the Army Reserve, became an American citizen and deployed to Iraq before joining the Capitol Police. After the attack on the Capitol, he spoke out about his experience as a witness in Congress and at criminal trials, and in a memoir called American Shield.

    "I've done everything that was asked of me," Gonell said. "I loved this country and it feels like the country doesn't love me back."

    The Justice Department has described the Jan. 6 attack as an act of domestic terrorism that threatened the nation's peaceful transfer of power. Prosecutors estimate that 140 officers suffered injuries that day. One of the officers who was assaulted was Brian Sicknick.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Trump's Sentencing Is Set for Jan. 10. Here's What Could Happen Next

    In a ruling Friday, Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan scheduled the sentencing for 10 days before Trump's inauguration — but the judge indicated that he's leaning toward a sentence that would amount to just closing the case without any real punishment. He said Trump could attend the Jan. 10 proceeding remotely because of his transition duties. Still, that would leave Trump headed back to the White House with a felony conviction.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Migrant Deaths Off Spain’s Coast Are Worse Than Ever

    2024 is over, but not before hitting a historic high for the number of people dying at Spain’s borders. According to data from the NGO Caminando Fronteras, at least 10,457 people died or disappeared trying to reach Spanish territory by irregular maritime routes over the last twelve months — a 58 percent increase from 2023. The vast majority of these victims (9,757) were trying to reach Spain’s Canary Islands, off the West African coast — as the European Union (EU)–sponsored crackdown in the central Mediterranean and the war in Mali forced tens of thousands of people to risk their lives on treacherous, long-distance routes on the Atlantic Ocean.

  • CBC ☛ New Orleans attacker's movements included trip to Ontario in July 2023, FBI says

    Jabbar had also travelled to New Orleans twice in the months preceding the attack, first in October and again in November. On Oct. 31, Myrthil said, Jabbar used glasses from Meta, the parent company of Facebook, to record video as he rode through the French Quarter on a bicycle as "he plotted this hideous attack." He said Jabbar was also in New Orleans on Nov. 10, and authorities are seeking more details about that trip.

    He also wore the glasses capable of livestreaming during the attack, but Myrthil said Jabbar did not activate them.

  • RTL ☛ 'Alive and active': The quiet financier: Islamic State's elusive strongman

    In this opaque structure where the leaders get killed one by one by the United States, Mumin is among the few "senior guys who managed to stay alive the entire time until now, which does give him some status within the group", Hamming told AFP.

  • ANF News ☛ Autonomous Administration: The crimes committed by Turkey cannot go unpunished

    The statement said that Turkey violated international law by attacking the Tishrin Dam, the Curniye Municipality, the Meskene Sugar Factory, and electricity stations. It said: "By violating international agreements that protect public service facilities, Turkey is committing blatant crimes. Such attacks are ongoing, particularly in and around Manbij, as well as across Northern and Eastern Syria."

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Axios ☛ The hot new publishing platform is a legal filing

    Why it matters: In an era of steadily declining trust in media, the dry formalities of a legal template provide not only an imprimatur of institutional credibility, but also the freedom to go into extreme amounts of detail without seeming petty, tedious or self-indulgent.

  • TruthOut ☛ One Man Spent Years Infiltrating a Far Right Militia — This Is What He Found

    In the daylight, Williams dropped an envelope with no return address in a U.S. Postal Service mailbox. He’d loaded it with a flash drive and a gold Oath Keepers medallion.

    It was addressed to me.

• Environment

  • Wired ☛ It’s Time for Parents to Step Up in the Fight for Clean Air

    In 1981, less than a month after evidence of global warming was first reported on its front page, the The New York Times asked B. F. Skinner about the fate of humanity. The famous psychologist had recently argued that a feature of the human mind virtually guaranteed global environmental disaster. “Why do we not act to save our world?” Skinner asked, citing myriad threats to the planet.

    His answer: Human behavior is governed almost entirely by our experiences—specifically, by which actions have been rewarded or punished in the past. The future, having not yet happened, will never have the same influence over what we do; we will seek familiar rewards today—money, comfort, security, pleasure, power—even when doing so threatens everyone on the planet tomorrow.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Dan Langille ☛ Let’s find the dead cell in my Eaton 5PX

      All cells in the UPS measure about 13.4V.

    • Reuven Lerner ☛ Eleven days on Iceland's Ring Road

      Iceland is an island, and the Ring Road is (as you would expect), aka Highway 1, goes pretty much around the entire thing. We drove the entire ring road in 11 days, which normally meant driving for 3-4 hours each day, plus doing a fair amount of sightseeing along the way. We did go off Route 1 several times to visit towns and natural sights, but almost all of our time was spent on the Ring Road or very close to it.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Hindu ☛ Elephant rescued after getting trapped while crossing rail fence at Nagarahole Tiger Reserve

      Authorities deployed heavy earth-moving equipment and demolished one of the cement barriers, which helped loosen the rail fence and also create space for its hind part of the body to pass through. This allowed the elephant to free itself and run toward the forest, wagging its tail in relief.

• Finance

  • US Layoffs 2025: Job Cuts Coming to United States This Year As Companies Adjust Their Workforce to Prepare for Market Shifts, Says Report

    Layoffs are about to hit the US market in 2025, affecting more people in multiple sectors. In 2024, the United States saw various job cuts affecting thousands of employees from companies including Tesla, X, Amazon, General Motors, Boeing, Spirit Airlines, Microsoft, Meta, Intel, Google, AMD and others. Various reports suggested that the American economy was still recovering from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic; this year could bring both good and bad news for some people in the country.

    Last year, several leading companies reduced their workforce for various reasons, including business restructuring, cutting costs, shifting their focus, shutting operations and departments, and adopting I and automation. Boeing and Spirit Airlines have already announced layoffs that would affect more employees in 2025 from various departments amid their ongoing struggles. Amazon, which introduced new work from the office mandate, will cut some of its roles this year.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Anil Dash ☛ Understanding DOGE as Procurement Capture

    For the last few months, there's been a lot of conversation around the "Department" of Government Efficiency, which is ostensibly an effort at improving government efficency, with a primary narrative being around government spending. This is not the actual purpose of DOGE, and it's worth explaining what's going on here, but first we have to cover a few key background ideas.

    A starting point that's important to mention: DOGE is not a Department. It has not been set up as a Presidential Task Force yet, and even if that does eventually happen, that would still not be the same as an actual executive "Department", as those have to be headed by a secretary and approved by Congress. I know they just wanted to pick the name for the stupid acronym, but words mean things. Anyway, let's see what everybody is up to.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New York Times ☛ ‘A Day of Love’: How Trump Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6

      Directly behind Mr. Trump will be the metal-and-glass doors where protesters, inflamed by his lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, stormed the Capitol with clubs, chemical irritants and other weapons. To his left, the spot where roaring rioters and outnumbered police officers fought hand to hand. To his right, where the prostrate body of a dying woman was jostled in the bloody fray.

    • NPR ☛ How influencers are impacting journalism

      A Pew Research poll taken during the 2024 presidential campaigns showed that 20% of Americans now get their news [sic] from social media influencers on various apps.

      Given the growing role of influencers in the democratic process, it seems we should seriously consider a few things: Should they be trained? If so, how, and by whom?

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RTL ☛ Free speech?: Cartoonist quits Washington Post over rejected sketch mocking owner, Trump

    An award-winning political cartoonist for The Washington Post has announced her resignation after a cartoon depicting the newspaper's billionaire owner groveling before Donald Trump was rejected.

    Ann Telnaes posted on Substack late Friday that this was the first time she "had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at."

  • Redowan Delowar ☛ Link blog in a static site

    This isn’t about getting more eyeballs on what I publish. It’s about tracking what I do so I can look back at the end of the year and enjoy a nice little lull of accomplishment. Plus, having a place to post stuff regularly nudges me to read more, explore more, and do more of the things I actually want to do.

    Social media is usually where people do this, but digging up old posts and reviewing them later is a pain. Plus, platforms like Twitter tank your posts’ visibility if they have links to other sites. A simple link blog solves all that for me.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Keir Starmer told to drop controversial Islamophobia definition in wake of grooming gangs scandal

    On Saturday the Government said it was continuing to consider a formal definition of anti-Muslim discrimination, which some campaigners have likened to a “blasphemy law”.

    Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: “The Government should drop its plans for such a deeply flawed definition of Islamophobia.”

    He said: “Throughout the grooming gang scandal the false label of Islamophobia was used to silence people.

    “It appears the Government has learnt nothing and is determined to press ahead with a definition that will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ It's Not Looking Great

    Then, in just a few short years, the company was gutted and left as a hollow shell of itself. This did not happen because Hulk Hogan won a $140 million lawsuit that bankrupted the company; that was just the precipitating event. Gawker Media, which had always been independently owned, was sold to Univision, and then sold again to a private equity firm. Univision cared a little bit about editorial credibility, and the private equity firm cared not at all. They larded down all of the sites with ads to the point of unreadability; they shut down the left wing political site where I was working and laid us all off; they tried to tell my colleagues at Deadspin what they could and couldn’t write about, causing the entire staff to quit and reassemble elsewhere; and they incompetently meddled in the editorial operations of the company enough to cause almost all of the longtime writers to drift away. They were left with the brand names, but none of what had made Gawker Media successful or worth reading.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ How the grooming gangs scandal was covered up

    But as the report stated, “the predominant offender profile of Pakistani Muslim males… combined with the predominant victim profile of white females has the potential to cause significant community tensions”. As a result, the report remained unpublished until released in response to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests five years later.

    In Manchester, a 2019 report concluded gangs were left to roam the streets in part because officers were told to look elsewhere. One detective constable was quoted by a report as saying “the offending target group were predominantly Asian [sic] males and we were told to try and get other ethnicities”.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Visit Afghanistan, land of culture, cricket and women closeted in their own homes

    If no women can contribute, being banned from chatting, it could not be clearer from reviews on TripAdvisor and elsewhere that many current holidaymakers require, for whatever reason, even less encouragement to overlook human rights anomalies than did visitors to apartheid South Africa. In contrast to earlier tourists, or idiots, seeking to know the “real” USSR, real Third Reich, or real South Africa, reviews from Afghanistan suggest that zero evidence of contentment on the part of the subjugated is now required for a rewarding trip.

  • Vox ☛ Should welfare programs be universal or means tested?

    Means testing a given social program can have good intentions: Target spending toward the people who need it most. After all, if middle- or high-income people who can afford their groceries or rent get federal assistance in paying for those things, then wouldn’t there be less money to go around for the people who actually need it?

    The answer isn’t so straightforward.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Verge ☛ Stolen e-bike batteries could soon be worthless, if only Bosch were less greedy

    Bosch says that Battery Lock supports several digital keys that can be used simultaneously — in the form of the Bosch Flow app and Kiox 300 and Kiox 500 bike displays — or disabled to share batteries with family and friends. The digital lock is compatible with all batteries in the Bosch smart system, including DualBatteries and the PowerMore 250 Range Extender.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ On Spotify

    Spotify is for me the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with the “growth at all costs” mindset applied to a tech product. [...]

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ UK Court Sentences 'Pirate' Fire Stick Seller to Two Years in Prison

    York Crown Court has sentenced a man from Halifax to two years in prison for selling 'pirate' IPTV subscriptions loaded on Fire Sticks. Rightsholders and authorities hope that the criminal prosecution of the 41-year-old (re)seller, who served a few hundred customers, will send a deterrent message. However, the big fish in this hugely profitable industry remain unscathed.

  • Internet Archive ☛ Welcome to the Public Domain in 2025

    On January 1, 2025, we celebrate published works from 1929 and published sound recordings from 1924 entering the public domain! The passage of these works into the public domain celebrates our shared cultural heritage. The ability to breathe new life into long forgotten works, remix the most popular and enduring works of the time, and to better circulate the oddities we find in thrift stores, attics, and on random pockets of the internet are now freely available for us all.

    While not at the same blockbuster level as 2024 with Steamboat Willie’s passage into the public domain, works from 1929 still inhabit strong cultural significance today. The works of 1929 continue to capture the Lost Generation’s voice, the rise of sound film, and the emerging modern moment of the 1920s.

  • Abishek Muthian ☛ How I run LLMs locally

    A HN user asked me0 how I run LLMs locally with some specific questions, I’m documenting it here for everyone.

    Before I begin I would like to credit the thousands or millions of unknown artists, coders and writers upon whose work the Large Language Models(LLMs) are trained, often without due credit or compensation.

  • India Times ☛ Google pays Canada media Can$100 million to use content

    Canada passed the Online News Act in 2023, joining Australia and a few countries in Europe in establishing policies to force tech platforms to compensate struggling news publishers.

    Google and Meta, which together control about 80 percent of all advertising revenue in Canada, had been accused of draining cash away from traditional news organizations while using news content for free.