Leftovers

• Reboot ☛ We’re All (Folk) Programmers - by Spencer Chang - Reboot

  Most of us share some part of this memory in our first Internet encounters: when we first met and exchanged words with someone else online, when we realized for the first time that we weren’t alone out here.

• Mandaris Moore ☛ 2024 Blogging Retrospective

  I really enjoyed the prompts because it allowed me to write and think about things that I normally wouldn’t put on my blog. It also doubled as a conversation starter with my family.

• Lou Plummer ☛ I'm Sorry Ava - Blog Questions

  Blog design is such a rabbit hole. I'm pretty happy with the way things look now, even though it's kind of bland and cookie cutter. I don't know CSS beyond what nice people give to me after I ask them a question. I tend to make small changes, usually leaning towards ease of use stuff for myself over time. I appreciate well-designed personal sites, but I'm more into writing than I am into colors, fonts and graphics.

• James G ☛ Mornings and organising

  A few years ago, I had a morning routine I followed every day. I later thought to myself that I was being too rigid, so I relaxed the routine. Life happened and my mornings started to get less consistent. The main parts of morning – breakfast, coffee, getting dressed – were there, but the order was different each day. Some days I have to be up really early and have less time for a routine; other days, I have plenty of time but I don’t have the same habit of things to do in the morning that I used to.

• Web Browsers/Web Servers

  • Simon Willison ☛ Double-keyed Caching: How Browser Cache Partitioning Changed the Web

    Browsers now maintain a separate cache-per-origin. This has had less of an impact than I expected: Chrome's numbers show just a 3.6% increase in overall cache miss rate and 4% increase in bytes loaded from the network.

  • The Verge ☛ Microsoft pesters Google Bard users with new Bing AI ad in Edge

    A developer release of Microsoft’s Edge browser has a new address bar advertisement for the company’s Bing AI — but it only appears when the user goes to its main competitor’s site at bard.google.com.

• Science

  • The Register UK ☛ Los Angeles fires cause thousands to flee, NASA JPL closed

    A crew has been deployed to protect NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which houses top science talent - not to mention the primary control stations for the agency's Mars and outer space hardware. The site is on emergency lockdown and several staff report losing their homes to wildfire.

• Career/Education

  • Sean Goedecke ☛ What it's like working for American companies as an Australian

    For the last ten years I’ve worked for American tech companies as an Australian based in Australia. First I worked in a satellite office for Zendesk. My direct manager was Australian, but many other managers and teams (and of course the top executives) were America-based. Now at GitHub I work fully-remote on a mixed team for an American manager based in America.

  • Annie Mueller ☛ What courage feels like

    But feeling courageous is different that having courage.

  • CBC ☛ Can you tell us how to get to Sesame Street? Iconic show's search for new home sparks concern for kids' TV

    Warner Bros. Discovery announced last month it would not renew the show's contract with HBO and its streaming partner, Max. The show first aired on what would become PBS in 1969 and started airing on HBO in 2016. In 2020, new episodes moved off HBO to stream on HBO Max, since renamed Max.

    The upcoming 55th season of Sesame Street this month will be the last to debut on the streamer, according to Variety, although Max will continue to license old episodes from the Sesame Street library through 2027.

  • Variety ☛ 'Sesame Street': New Episodes Will Not Air on Max

    “Sesame Street” had aired on HBO from 2016 to 2020. In 2019, Max and “Sesame Street” producer Sesame Workshop struck a five-year deal that moved the series to HBO Max, which became Max.

    Before HBO, “Sesame Street” had been on PBS since 1970. (Episodes still air on the public broadcaster several months after streaming on Max.) Warner’s pact with Sesame Workshop, inked in 2015, was critical to “Sesame Street’s” survival, as children’s viewing habits shifted and DVD and home video sales dwindled. Moving behind the HBO paywall helped “Sesame Street” make up for that lost revenue stream.

  • New York Times ☛ Max Ends Its Partnership With ‘Sesame Street’

    Max said the decision was part of a broader corporate shift away from children’s programming. The 55th season of “Sesame Street” — featuring Big Bird, Elmo, Cookie Monster and other colorful Muppets — will be the last to arrive on Max, in January. Old episodes will remain available through 2027.

  • India Times ☛ UK universities join retreat from Elon Musk's X, citing misinformation on platform

    Many universities in the UK have reduced or stopped using X (formerly Twitter) due to concerns over misinformation, violence, and declining engagement. Notable institutions like the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, and London Business School have cut back or quit. Some top arts conservatoires have also stepped away from the platform.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • NL Times ☛ Dutch psychologists call for raising tobacco and vape age to 21

    Addiction psychologists from the Dutch Institute of Psychologists (NIP) are advocating for an increase in the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products and vapes to 21. They argue that this measure is essential as an increasing number of young people and young adults are smoking or using e-cigarettes.

    The psychologists expressed concern that, despite the goals of the National Prevention Agreement, smoking and vaping rates among youth continue to rise. “Recent research shows that vaping, like smoking, carries significant health risks for users,” the NIP stated.

• Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Futurism ☛ Facebook Caught Hosting AI-Powered Hitler

    What's more, Meta claims to review all bots before they go live to ensure they follow these guidelines, which the company touts as a defense against chatbots producing outputs considered "inaccurate, offensive, or otherwise objectionable."

  • NBC ☛ Meta hosts AI chatbots of 'Hitler,' 'Jesus Christ,' Taylor Swift

    Despite those rules, NBC News searched for and found two dozen user-generated AI characters on Instagram named after and resembling Jesus Christ, God, Muhammad, Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, MrBeast, Harry Potter, Adolf Hitler, Captain Jack Sparrow, Justin Bieber, Elon Musk and Elsa from Disney’s “Frozen.”

  • Futurism ☛ Facebook Is Creating Fake AI-Powered Black Women While Changing Its Rules So It’s Okay to Harass Real Ones

    During the exchange, the chatbot turned on the company that created it, fuming that there were no Black people on the team that created it and claiming that it had given a "false backstory" to another journalist about its supposed racial background. Between those strange claims and its forced African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), the columnist predicted that such AIs may be the next frontier of "digital blackface," a term referring to when individuals and companies pretend to be Black online for their own gain.

    The whole fracas, importantly, came after Connor Hayes, Meta's VP of product for generative AI, told the Financial Times at the end of 2024 that such "characters" — read: fake users — will soon come populate the company's social networks.

  • The Register UK ☛ UK promises law against sexually explicit deepfakes

    The government promises to introduce a new offence, meaning perpetrators could be charged for both creating and sharing these images under the government's Crime and Policing Bill, which will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.

  • The Register UK ☛ Zero-day exploits are targeting Ivanti Connect Secure again

    The cybersecurity industry is urging those in charge of defending their orgs to take mitigation efforts "seriously" as Ivanti battles two dangerous new vulnerabilities, one of which was already being exploited as a zero-day.

  • The Record ☛ Chinese spies [exploiting] new Ivanti vulnerability, Mandiant says

    Mandiant published a blog post detailing its examination of CVE-2025-0282 — a vulnerability Ivanti announced on Wednesday that affects the company’s popular Connect Secure VPN appliance.

    On Wednesday night, the leading U.S. cybersecurity agency ordered all federal civilian agencies to patch the vulnerability by January 15 — the shortest time frame it has ever issued since creating its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog.

  • Six Colors ☛ After 30 years, Script Debugger is being retired

    The good news: Late Night Software will continue updating the app for six months and then will post past versions back to 5.0 on its website with serial numbers attached, so that people who rely on Script Debugger for older installations will be able to use it forever. Unfortunately, the next time a macOS update breaks something in Script Debugger, that’ll mark its end as an actively usable product.

  • Drew Breunig ☛ Your Eval is More Important Than the Model

    In this Cambrian era of LLMs – where new models drop every week – choosing a model for a product, pipeline, or project can be daunting. It’s tempting to throw your hands up and default to whatever OpenAI or Anthropic is offering this week. But if you’re building with AI, I strongly recommend against this “default.” Instead, take a step back and build your eval.

    This might seem counterintuitive and/or a bit discouraging. It’s more fun to play with models, try out prompts, and push forward. Building a dataset is slow, tedious, and, well…not exactly exciting.

    But evals are essential.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The Brave Little Toaster

    The story was meant to poke fun at the preposterous IoT hype of the day, and I recall thinking that creating a world of talking appliance was the height of Philip K Dickist absurdism. Little did I dream that a decade and a half later, the story would be even more relevant, thanks to AI pump-and-dumpers who sweatily jammed chatbots into kitchen appliances.

    So I figured I'd republish The Brave Little Toaster; it's been reprinted here and there since (there's a high school English textbook that included it, along with a bunch of pretty fun exercises for students), and I podcasted it back in the day: [...]

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Apple’s AI helpfully rewords scam messages to make them look legitimate

    Apple rolled out its LLM-powered “Apple Intelligence” update to iPhone, iPad, and Macintosh computer users starting in October.

    One feature of Apple Intelligence is to summarize multiple push messages for you. Unfortunately, it uses an LLM for this, so it happily mangles the messages, even reversing meanings.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ South African lawyers in big trouble for allegedly using AI to draft court papers

    A law firm has been left with legal egg on its face – and the possibility of facing a Legal Practice Council (LPC) investigation – for allegedly using “Google” and artificial intelligence to source what were non-existent legal citations in court proceedings.

    Pietermaritzburg-based Surendra Singh and Associates has also been ordered to pay the costs, from its own coffers, of two court hearings in September last year during which Pietermaritzburg high court judge Elsja-Marie Bezuidenhout interrogated its court documents and references to case law.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • European Union fines itself over breach of GDPR

      In a practical rendition of the old adage ‘Physician Heal Thyself’, the General Court of European Union (EU) ruled on Wednesday that the European Commission must compensate a German citizen for breaching its own data protection regulations. The court found that the Commission had improperly transferred the citizen’s personal data to the United States without adequate safeguards, ordering it to pay €400 ($412) in damages.

• Defence/Aggression

  • YLE ☛ Authorities release photos of anchor recovered from Gulf of Finland seabed

    The police aim to confirm whether the anchor belongs to the tanker Eagle S, which had been operating near the site of the incident.

    The anchor was retrieved on Monday during a joint operation by various authorities.

  • India Times ☛ TikTok is facing legal backlash around the world

    TikTok is increasingly facing global scrutiny due to concerns over its ties to China and its influence on politics, misinformation, and mental health. Countries like India, Nepal and Albania have banned the app, while others, including the US, Canada and Russia, have implemented fines and security measures. Despite this, TikTok remains highly popular worldwide.

  • RTL ☛ US Supreme Court to hear TikTok ban case

    The US government alleges TikTok allows Beijing to collect data and spy on users and is a conduit to spread propaganda. China and ByteDance strongly deny the claims.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Your expert guide to the debate over banning TikTok 

    For more context and to make sense of all the competing arguments, we turned to our experts on China and technology.

  • Wired ☛ How the US TikTok Ban Would Actually Work

    The social video app, which is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance and is used by around 170 million Americans, has been appealing the ban since US president Joe Biden signed the law underpinning it last year. The Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) states that ByteDance must sell TikTok’s US business to a non-Chinese company by January 19—no buyer has yet been found—or see the app blocked in the US. Donald Trump, who retakes the White House on January 20, publicly originated the idea that ByteDance be forced to sell TikTok during his first presidential term but has since reversed course.

  • The Washington Post ☛ TikTok ban heads to the Supreme Court. Here’s what to expect.

    The justices must weigh those claims against the national security concerns that prompted Congress to pass the law in April with bipartisan support. Proponents of the law say TikTok, which has more than 170 million users in the United States, could be pressured by the Chinese government to covertly manipulate public opinion in the United States or to provide access to Americans’ data.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Soldiers are turning to social media when commanders fall short

    The Army, as an institution, has seen social media as a crucial recruiting tool in recent years, but when it comes to how the branch uses these platforms to engage with its own members, some current and former soldiers say the strategy is unclear at best and adversarial at worst. Recently, Army leaders have been reluctant to embrace newer forms of media as a way to receive feedback from soldiers. Instead, the preference, and oft-repeated talking point, has been that soldiers should run their problems through their chain of command.

    Where Army leaders are missing the mark, critics say, is in not investigating why some soldiers today feel they need to raise these concerns in online forums like Reddit, or community pages on Facebook and Instagram, and on other platforms and apps.

  • New York Times ☛ TikTok Case Before Supreme Court Pits National Security Against Free [sic] Speech

    The court will most likely act quickly, as TikTok faces a Jan. 19 deadline under a law enacted in April by bipartisan majorities. The law’s sponsors said the app’s parent company, ByteDance, is controlled by China and could use it to harvest Americans’ private data and to spread covert disinformation.

    The court’s decision will determine the fate of a powerful and pervasive cultural phenomenon that uses a sophisticated algorithm to feed a personalized array of short videos to its 170 million users in the United States. For many of them, and particularly younger ones, TikTok has become a leading source of information [sic] and entertainment.

  • Scheerpost ☛ BRICS Grows, Adding Indonesia as Member: World’s 4th Most Populous Country, 7th Biggest Economy

    Indonesia is the fourth-most populous country on Earth, with the seventh-biggest economy.

  • VOA News ☛ New York's highest appeals court declines to block Trump's sentencing in hush money case

    New York's highest court on Thursday declined to block Donald Trump's upcoming sentencing in his hush money case, leaving the U.S. Supreme Court as the president-elect's likely last option to prevent the hearing from taking place Friday.

    One judge of the New York Court of Appeals issued a brief order declining to grant a hearing to Trump's legal team.

  • Vox ☛ The Supreme Court hands Trump a loss in his bid for legal immunity, in Trump v. New York

    By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court handed a largely symbolic, but still politically significant, loss to President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday evening. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, both Republicans, voted with all three of the Court’s Democrats.

  • Axios ☛ Supreme Court's TikTok dance: Justices take on ban, with Trump opposed

    Driving the news: The court is set to hear oral arguments Friday over TikTok's future. A new, overwhelmingly bipartisan law requires the app's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to either sell TikTok by Jan. 19 or shut it down within the U.S.

  • VOA News ☛ Clock ticking on US TikTok ban

    While TikTok, the most popular social media platform in the United States, has become a part of American culture, its Chinese ownership has alarmed government officials and lawmakers. Beijing’s potential access to all that personal data and the ability to shape public opinion for its American users prompted Congress to ban it, with a 352-65 bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives last March.

  • CBC ☛ Israeli hostage found dead in Gaza, military says, and a second body could be his son

    The discovery of Yosef AlZayadni's body comes as Israel and Hamas consider a ceasefire deal that would free the remaining hostages in Gaza and could halt the fighting. Israel has declared about a third of the 100 hostages dead, but believes as many as half could be.

  • CBC ☛ Elon Musk is on a tear as he shakes up politics in Europe. What's his endgame?

    As if having the ear of incoming U.S. president Donald Trump weren't enough, tech billionaire Elon Musk has been on a tear this week, trashing European politicians on both the left and right, and using posts on his social media platform, X, to disrupt politics across the continent.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Elon Musk heaps praise on AfD’s Alice Weidel during live talk on X

    The virtual encounter between Musk and Alice Weidel on Thursday took place amid growing criticism over the US billionaire’s vocal support of far-right, anti-establishment parties across Europe, and accusations he is meddling in the campaign for Germany’s 23 February election.

  • Axios ☛ Trump asks Supreme Court to block hush money sentencing

    Why it matters: If the high court intervenes, it could hand Trump another legal win by delaying the hearing or blocking the lower court from proceeding with levying a punishment for his historic felony conviction.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Germany: Dresden old city evacuated for bomb disposal

    A significant portion of the bridge, a key crossing for car and tram traffic across the Elbe River, collapsed in the early morning on September 11, 2024.

    As repair work began on the bridge, workers discovered the bomb.

  • [Repeat[ The Strategist ☛ Europe needs shared defence capabilities

    This is the wrong approach. The proliferation of critical technologies means that even the strongest European economies cannot build an advantage on their own. Moreover, each country going it alone would stifle growth opportunities by inadvertently limiting exports and reducing market size below what is economically efficient or desirable.

    Gaining a technological edge requires building European alliances that promote and protect shared capabilities. This collective statecraft would allow smaller economies such as Denmark, Norway and Estonia, which are home to innovative entrepreneurs working in quantum, space, and cyber technologies, to contribute to Europe’s sovereignty. These countries are too small to support a broad-based tech sector; working more closely with European allies would help them build their industrial base and boost domestic economic growth.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Elon Musk and far-right AfD’s Alice Weidel heartily agree in interview

    ech billionaire Elon Musk tested the boundaries of foreign election interference on Thursday, hosting Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), on his social media platform six weeks before Germans head to the polls.

• Environment

  • CBC ☛ Study links oil and gas industry pollution in Alberta to negative health outcomes

    A new peer-reviewed study on the health impacts of pollution from Alberta's oil and gas sector has found the odds of having negative respiratory and cardiovascular health outcomes increase by nine to 21 per cent, depending on the number of oil and gas wells a person lives near.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ How Big Oil Made It Harder to Fight the Los Angeles Fires

    Fossil fuel companies are profiting off a state tax break depriving California of up to $146 million of annual tax revenue that could be used to combat climate-change-fueled wildfires — like the inferno currently tearing through Los Angeles.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Oil extraction may have triggered small earthquakes in Surrey, study suggests

    The study, published in Geological Magazine, ran more than a million simulations estimating the frequency of earthquakes based on the timing and volume of oil extraction and found the model predictions roughly matched what occurred, suggesting a link between the extraction of the oil and the earthquakes.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Arizona's largest utility lands $1.81B loan for renewable generation, transmission projects

      Arizona Public Service Company (APS), the state’s largest electric utility, has secured a conditional commitment for a loan guarantee of up to $1.81 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) that will help finance investments into several new or upgraded transmission projects, renewable power generation, and grid-integrated energy storage systems.

      APS plans to use the loan to invest in a broad range of new infrastructure technologies to meet expected demand growth while lowering emissions and saving 1.4 million customers money on their electricity bills.

    • The Korea Times ☛ California power outages swell to 400,000 as fires multiply

      The number of California homes and businesses without electricity ballooned to more than 400,000 on Wednesday, as multiple wildfires raged uncontrollably around Los Angeles.

      Fires that started on Tuesday have killed at least five people, destroying hundreds of homes and stretching firefighting resources and water supplies to the limit, as more than 100,000 people were ordered to evacuate.

  • Overpopulation

    • NPR ☛ Fire hydrants ran dry in Pacific Palisades as a major wildfire raged

      She is pleading with residents to conserve water. "Not just in the Palisades area, but the whole system," she said. "Because the fire department needs the water to fight the fire, and we're fighting a wildfire with an urban water system. And that is really challenging."

• Finance

  • India Times ☛ After Narayana Murthy’s 70-hour work week, L&T Chief pushes for 90-hour weeks; faces backlash

    After Narayana Murthy’s 70-hour work week suggestion, L&T chairman SN Subrahmanyan supports 90-hour weeks, reigniting the work-life debate. In an internal meeting video, he advocates Sunday work, claiming he works on Sundays too. His comments, including a controversial anecdote about China’s work hours, sparked criticism. Subrahmanyan’s salary of Rs 51 crore in FY24, over 500 times higher than regular employees, added fuel to the fire. Top actor Deepika Padukone criticized his remarks on Instagram with #MentalHealthMatters, calling it shocking. Following L&T's clarification, she responded, "And they just made it worse."

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Futurism ☛ Former Enron Banker Points Out "Intriguing" Parallels With OpenAI

    The ChatGPT maker was last valued at a whopping $157 billion after cinching another several billion in funding last October, making it one of the most valuable private startups, or unicorns, in the world. That's despite OpenAI never turning a profit, showing no clear road to profitability, and rapaciously burning through its mountains of money all the while.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Tencent in biggest share buyback since 2006

    The stock fell 7.3% to the lowest in over three months even as the social media giant denied the allegations. The company will work with the department of defence to address any misunderstanding.

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft to lay off small part of workforce based on performance: report

  • The Register UK ☛ Another new year, another round of job cuts at Microsoft

    The tech giant has made large-scale layoffs a pattern in the past several years, with more than 10,000 jobs cut in 2023, and additional layoffs in 2024 despite record earnings. As was the case in 2022, when it eliminated around a percent of its headcount, Microsoft noted that last year's job cuts and this latest round are all about pruning the payroll bush rather than making organizational changes.

  • New York Times ☛ Biden Administration Ignites Firestorm With Rules Governing A.I.’s Global Spread

    The rules have touched off an intense fight between tech companies and the government, as well as among administration officials.

    The regulations, which could be issued as early as Friday, would dictate where American-made chips that are critical for A.I. could be shipped. Those rules would then help determine where the data centers that create A.I. would be built, with a preference for the United States and its allies.

  • International Business Times ☛ 'C**ts': Netizens and Elon Musk React to Labour Voting Down Inquiry Into Pakistani Rape Gangs

    A heated political row has erupted after Labour MPs voted against a proposed national inquiry into Pakistani grooming gangs, with the issue gaining global attention following comments from Elon Musk and others on social media. Critics have slammed the decision, while survivors and public figures remain divided on how best to address the crisis.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Google donates $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee

    Google will also live-stream the swearing-in ceremony on YouTube — the second-most popular website in the world, behind Google itself — and include a direct link on its homepage. Karan Bhatia, Google’s global head of government affairs, said in a statement Thursday that the company is “pleased” to support Trump’s inauguration.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ The EFF is not a serious organisation

    The EFF saw Mozilla, and said “hold my beer” on Mastodon:

    We applaud Meta’s efforts to try to fix its over-censorship problem […]

    Imagine seeing what’s going on, and thinking that’s an appropriate opening for a post. In the local vernacular: you what mate?

    They’ve since issued what could (charitably) be described as a partial retraction. But we’ve now seen, again, who’s behind the curtain.

    The EFF are surplus to requirements.

  • Riccardo Mori ☛ Do principles always have to lose when it comes to tech?

    And I’m going to stand by that. I’m not ignoring the fact that Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are doing the same thing. I am actually not surprised about that. But I also largely don’t care about their businesses or products. I don’t use any product by Meta. I stopped being active on Instagram the day after Meta acquired it in April 2012. I’ve never had a Facebook account. I only order something from Amazon if there is no real alternative option. And so forth.

    And for me, the issue here isn’t what others like Cook have done. The issue is that Cook didn’t act differently. He’s the CEO of the most valuable company in the world, a company that supposedly has thinking different in its DNA and culture. A company that certainly has all the resources to shoulder possible consequences from acting differently here.

  • Nick Heer ☛ What ‘Free Speech’ Is

    Regardless of whether you feel each of these are good or bad ideas, I do not think you should take Zuckerberg’s word for why the company is making these changes. Meta’s decision to stop working directly with fact-checkers, for example, is just as likely a reaction to the demands of FCC commissioner Brendan Carr, who has a bananas view (PDF) of how the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution works. According to Carr, social media companies should be forbidden from contributing their own speech to users’ posts based on the rankings of organizations like NewsGuard. According both Carr and Zuckerberg, fact-checkers demand “censorship” in some way. This is nonsense: they were not responsible for the visibility of posts. I do not think much of this entire concept, but surely they only create more speech by adding context in a similar way as Meta hopes will still happen with Community Notes. Since Carr will likely be Trump’s nominee to run the FCC, it is important for Zuckerberg to get his company in line.

  • France24 ☛ Meta has 30 days to clarify fact-check changes in Brazil, prosecutor's office says

    Meta, which on Tuesday scrapped its U.S. fact-checking program and reduced curbs on discussions around contentious topics such as immigration and gender identity, was given 30 days to provide a response, a document seen by Reuters showed.

    Meta's office in Brazil declined to comment.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Why Meta is wrong to abandon independent fact checking

      This model relies on other social media users to add context or caveats to a post. It is currently under investigation by the EU for its effectiveness.

      This dramatic shift by Meta does not bode well for the fight against the spread of misinformation and disinformation online.

    • Futurism ☛ People Think the Hollywood Sign Is on Fire Because of AI Slop

      The iconic Hollywood sign adorning the hills behind West Hollywood has quickly become a particularly popular inspiration for AI slop. A quick search on X reveals numerous fictional images and even videos showing the decades-old cultural icon up in flames.

      In reality, the landmark remains unaffected by the fires, with a wide freeway separating it from the still-burning Sunset Fire miles away — though the blaze has engulfed more than 40 acres in the hills north of downtown LA.

    • Futurism ☛ Trump Blames California Wildfires on "Worthless Fish"

      After Trump plugged the convoluted "solution," Oregon's state climatologist Larry O'Neill suggested in interviews with local press that this strange technology only exists in Trump's mind.

      "There is indeed no such diversion system," O'Neill told Portland's KOIN, "and none has been seriously proposed that I am aware of."

      Despite his proposed technology not existing in the real world, the man who will be sworn back into office in less than two weeks thinks that California should be doing things his way.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Los Angeles Fires Have Started a Misinformation Storm

      Thanks to an aggressive dry season and hurricane-force winds, Los Angeles is experiencing the most devastating fires in the city’s history. At least five people have died and over 130,000 residents in Southern California are under evacuation orders, according to the Los Angeles Times. L.A officials have said at least 2,000 structures have been burned and, per California Gov. Gavin Newsom, over 7,500 fire personnel have been deployed to battle the blaze. Even residents whose homes are safe for now must contend with dangerous smoke conditions, hazy skies, and falling ash. L.A officials believe the death toll will rise as the two largest fires remain at zero-percent containment. But online, as L.A. residents share mutual aid links, rescue efforts, and pleas for help, the fires are a ripe topic for misinformation and conspiracy theories.

    • New Yorker ☛ Elon Musk’s Latest Terrifying Foray Into British Politics

      The world’s richest man has become fixated on child sexual exploitation in deindustrialized English towns—much of which took place more than a decade ago.

    • Axios ☛ Why Mark Zuckerberg stopped fact-checking Facebook, Instagram, Threads

      A final category of content moderation — most relevant to fact-checking — is misinformation (widely shared but inaccurate info) and disinformation (misinformation with deliberate bad intent).

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Musk and Zuck: Engineering Free Speech

    Under the guise of protecting free speech, an alarming alignment between government power and Big Tech’s corporate power is unfolding. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, while publicly claiming that they wish to protect free speech, are in fact aligning their corporate power with the political interests of the second Trump administration. Unsurprisingly, their claims have provoked alarm.

  • The Zambian Observer ☛ Nigerian atheist freed from prison but fears for his life

    A prominent Nigerian atheist, who has just been freed after serving more than four years in prison for blasphemy, is now living in a safe house as his legal team fear his life may be in danger.

  • RFA ☛ Vietnam fines TikTok user $1,200 for criticizing Ho Chi Minh’s personal life

    On Monday, the People’s Public Security online newspaper reported that the Da Nang Police’s Department’s Cyber Security and High-tech Crime Prevention Division had issued the fine to a 20-year-old man identified by his initials VBC, for “insulting the nation, historical figures and national heroes.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Biggest UK media companies: New ranking for 2025

    Three in five of the UK’s largest media companies reported growing news and information revenue in their most recent full-year accounts, Press Gazette’s latest top 50 ranking shows.

    Collectively the top 50 reported turning over £1.1bn more in their most recent accounts than they had the prior year, representing a 3.3% increase. Those businesses earned approximately £35.8bn in media revenue in their most recent accounts and £34.6bn in the year before that, although comparisons are tricky because of changes in the way companies report their figures and in the way we compile the list.

  • CPJ ☛ In India, 4 suspects arrested over killing of journalist Mukesh Chandrakar

    Mukesh Chandrakar reported on local issues such as the local Naxalite-Maoist insurgency on his YouTube channel Bastar Junction, in addition to freelancing for other outlets.

  • CPJ ☛ VPNs, training, and mental health workshops: How CPJ helped journalist safety in 2024

    Here are five other ways CPJ’s Emergencies department helped journalists in 2024: [...]

  • CPJ ☛ Sri Lankan journalist narrowly escapes kidnap after crime reports

    “Sri Lankan authorities must take immediate steps to ensure the safety of journalist Murukaiya Thamilselvan and his family,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “The recently elected Sri Lankan government must put an end to the longstanding impunity surrounding the harassment and assaults on Tamil journalists.”

  • The Walrus ☛ Is Canada Ready for Life Without the CBC? Pierre Poilievre Thinks So

    The quote I opened with is from Conservative MP Rachael Thomas of Lethbridge, shadow minister for Canadian Heritage, who will oversee the dismantling of the CBC in a Poilievre government. The “madness,” as Thomas framed it on social media in August 2024—the preferred means of communication for Conservative MPs in place of journalism—is $18.4 million in bonuses for 1,194 employees and executives as approved by the CBC/Radio-Canada board of directors for the past fiscal year. This likely included a bonus for Tait, who defended the decision, reportedly claiming that CBC executives and managers are paid about half what they would be for the same private sector positions.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Charlie Kirk says ‘X has largely replaced the media’ amid LA wildfire, Elon Musk responds

    Elon Musk has reacted to Charlie Kirk’s post claiming X has replaced the media and is a more reliable source of information as Los Angeles is battling a deadly wildfire. Kirk wrote on X, “A friend’s brother caught up in the LA fire just texted him: “X is the only reliable [sic] source of news [sic] about the fires because you can search for specific streets, etc. for updates. Actual news sites don’t have any idea about anything.””

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Italian journalist Cecilia Sala freed from Iran prison

    Abedini reportedly remains in a Milan prison. The Iranian government has decried his arrest as "hostage-taking."

    Iran has arrested several foreign nationals in the last few years, usually on spurious espionage charges. Rights groups have said that this is part of a ploy by the government to gain leverage over other countries.

  • LRT ☛ Lithuania joins NATO mission to protect Baltic Sea infrastructure

    Lithuania is contributing to NATO’s mission to protect critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea but remains mum on what specific capabilities it is allocating.

Monopolies/Monopsonies