Leftovers

• Tyler Sticka ☛ Blog Questions Challenge

  These questions were written by a Bear Blog user named Ava, adapted to other platforms by Kev Quirk, and answered by too many people in my feeds to keep track of. I enjoy reading everyone’s responses, so here are mine.

• Robert Birming ☛ The Hidden Treasure of Blogging

  It's funny because it's true. The big difference, however, is that neither your blog nor mine is trash.

  It is a treasure, but not in the form of income or number of visitors.

• Andy Hawthorne ☛ Why Blog If Nobody Reads It?

  There is a hidden value in blogging. There’s an old Zen saying: “Chop wood, carry water.” You do it not for the applause but because it needs doing.

  Blogging forces clarity. It makes you structure your thoughts, sharpen your perspective. You stop writing fluff because — let’s be honest — you’re writing for yourself. And if you can’t keep yourself interested, nobody else stands a chance.

• AJ Bourg ☛ Accidentally Proving The Point

  I need a title for this phenomenon of quoting sayings to debunk them but you just end up explaining the original saying. There’s probably a logical fallacy with a fancy Latin title that someone should point me to.

• Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Lou Plummer

  This is the 76th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Lou Plummer and his blog, louplummer.lol

• Adam Newbold ☛ Blog Question Challenge 2025, Part 2: Technology Questions

  I could choose so many things here, but the one that really stands out to me is the second computer I ever had, which was the Macintosh LC that we got in 1991. This was the first computer I used to connect to BBSes. It was the first computer I used to connect to the internet, and where I learned about IRC, newsgroups, and Shareware. And it was that it was the first computer I used to build a website, igniting a passion that I’ve carried for three decades now. My very fondest memories of computing are all tied to that little box.

• [Old] Rolling Stone ☛ Washington National Cathedral Bishop Calls Out Trump During Sermon

  President Donald Trump celebrated the first full day of his second presidency in party by attending a church service at Washington National Cathedral. The progressive institution has long resisted Trump’s values, as Rolling Stone recently reported, and on Tuesday, Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde used her sermon to deliver a pointed message to the new president.

  Here’s what she said: [...]

• Career/Education

  • YLE ☛ Beyond the CV: Finland tests new hiring methods for summer workers

    The lottery system also benefits employers by simplifying the selection process. Once selected, the chosen applicants are contacted and offered the positions. In recent years, the municipality has received hundreds of applications for its 80 available summer positions, which span various roles.

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ Trump targets Dept. of Education in hostile takeover — Freedom From Religion Foundation

    Anonymous leakers have reported that Trump’s executive order will begin dismantling the Education Department from within until they can get Congress to shut it down for good. U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie has already introduced a bill, HR 899, to abolish the department that is one sentence long: “The Department of Education shall terminate on Dec. 31, 2026.” Trump’s order will reportedly shut down all department programs that aren’t explicitly provided for by law.

• Hardware

  • Dedoimedo ☛ Slimbook Titan report 5 - The mojo has returned ...

    It is time for me to do another long-term review of a laptop in me possession. This time, we shall focus on the Slimbook Titan, a machine with handsome specs; a beefy, Linux-only machine I purchased with the explicit goal and mission of moving away from Windows for good. So far, I've given you four reports about this system. The journey started badly, got much much better, and then it went south again, as a result of bad updates. The same type of problem that affected my Slimbook Executive, as well. A confidence rollercoaster.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Twenty Years of Glasses

    This year, I will have existed twenty years without glasses and twenty years with. I can’t say this is especially worth celebrating as I’m not very fond of requiring spectacles. For the first five to ten years, the glasses were regularly put aside and I was still able to make out something of the text in a book or a pedestrian sign farther away. But the older I got, the more reliant—needy, even—my eyes became on that sharpened glass in front of them.

• Proprietary

  • Macworld ☛ Can we still trust Apple? A few recent events give me pause

    At the end of January, we learned of a security gap in Apple silicon chips from M2 and A15 onwards that allows attackers to access sensitive data. According to the researcher who found the vulnerability, Apple has been aware of it for some time but has still not responded with a security update. iOS 18.3 and macOS 15.3 have closed some gaps and bolstered security, but the two vulnerabilities in SLAP and FLOP were not included. This is probably what prompted the Georgia Institute of Technology to go public.

  • The Verge ☛ PlayStation Network is down

    PlayStation Network (PSN) is experiencing some major problems as of Friday evening. According to Sony’s PSN status page, account management, gaming and social, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Store, and the PlayStation Direct website are all dealing with issues.

  • Business Standard ☛ Facebook owner Meta to carry out expected company-wide layoffs on Feb 10

    Facebook owner Meta Platforms plans to carry out its expected company-wide layoffs next week while pushing ahead with the expedited hiring of machine learning engineers, it told staffers in internal memos seen by Reuters on Friday. Notices will go out to employees losing their jobs starting at 5 a.m. local time Monday in most countries, including in the US, according to one of the posts, authored by Meta's Head of People Janelle Gale. Employees in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands will be exempt from the cuts "due to local regulations," while those in more than a dozen other countries across Europe, Asia and Africa will receive their notifications between February 11 and February 18, it said.

  • Meta to Begin Previously Announced Workforce Reduction

    Meta is set to begin its previously announced workforce reduction on Monday (Feb. 10).

    The company told staff on Friday (Feb. 7) that those who are laid off will be cut off from Meta’s internal system within an hour and notified about their severance packages via email, The Information reported Friday.

    CNBC reported on Jan. 14 that Meta planned to cut about 5% of its “low performers,” as the move was described in internal messages from company executives, and that the employees affected by the cuts would be notified Feb. 10. Meta has more than 72,000 employees.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • La Quadature Du Net ☛ Launch of the Hiatus Coalition, to Resist AI and its World

      This text is the founding manifesto of “Hiatus”, a coalition of a diverse range of French civil society organizations that intend to resist the massive and widespread deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). In the run-up to the AI summit organized by France on February 10 and 11, 2025, the launch of Hiatus aims to denounce the subjugation of public policy to the interests of the tech industry, as well as the human and environmental costs of AI. Over the coming months, joint actions will be organized to try to translate this manifesto into actual policy.

    • India Times ☛ Ride-hailing platform Lyft ties up with Anthropic for AI-powered customer care

      The company said it has been using Anthropic's Claude AI model, through Amazon's Bedrock generative AI platform, which has helped reduce the average customer service resolution time by 87% and is resolving thousands of customer requests each day.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Alex Gaynor ☛ The SSO Tax is Smart Business, and Bad Security

      The other reason I’ve heard companies identify for their SSO tax is customer support. Configuring SSO can be fiddly, with customers often locking themselves out of their accounts entirely. Therefore, offering SSO requires a greater investment in customer support, and cannot reasonably be supported on cheap or free plans. Unlike the customer segmentation rationale, this is not intrinisic to SSO: presumabely if customer support needs for SSO were dramatically reduced, companies would not raise this concern.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Privacy International ☛ PRESS RELEASE: United Kingdom goes after Apple’s encrypted data | Privacy International

      • Privacy International is alarmed that the United Kingdom have used an unfettered power that undermines every Apple users’ privacy and security globally.

      • This latest overreach threatens everyone’s data and the security of the Internet as a whole, not just Apple’s customers.

    • EFF ☛ The UK's Demands for Apple to Break Encryption Is an Emergency for Us All

      As reported, the British government’s undisclosed order was issued last month, and requires the capability to view all encrypted material in iCloud. The core target is Apple’s Advanced Data Protection, which is an optional feature that turns on end-to-end encryption for backups and other data stored in iCloud, making it so that even Apple cannot access that information. For a long time, iCloud backups were a loophole for law enforcement to gain access to data otherwise not available to them on iPhones with device encryption enabled. That loophole still exists for anyone who doesn’t opt in to using Advanced Data Protection. If Apple does comply, users should consider disabling iCloud backups entirely. Perhaps most concerning, the U.K. is apparently seeking a backdoor into users’ data regardless of where they are or what citizenship they have.

    • The Washington Post ☛ U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts

      Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

    • Techdirt ☛ UK Orders Apple To Break Encryption Worldwide While World Is Distracted

      This comes after years of the UK government’s steadily mounting assault on encryption, from the Investigatory Powers Act to the Online Safety Act. While officials repeatedly insisted they weren’t trying to break encryption entirely, those of us following closely saw this coming. Apple even warned it might have to exit the UK market if pushed too far.

    • The Register UK ☛ UK Home Office stays shtum on alleged Apple backdoor order

      Such a mechanism would enable the government to independently access and read encrypted data, both within the UK and potentially for users worldwide.

    • The Record ☛ Student group sues Education Department over reported DOGE access to financial aid databases

      About 13% of the U.S. population holds a federal student loan, the lawsuit says.

      The plaintiffs, the University of California Student Association — which serves all of the system’s campuses statewide — argue that the access granted to DOGE by acting Secretary of Education Denise Carter violates the federal Privacy Act and the Internal Revenue Code.

      The Department of Education stores highly sensitive data belonging not only to student loan borrowers but also to their parents and spouses, the lawsuit says.

    • US News And World Report ☛ 19 States Sue to Stop DOGE From Accessing Americans' Personal Data

      Nineteen Democratic attorneys general sued President Donald Trump on Friday to stop Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records that contain sensitive personal data such as Social Security and bank account numbers for millions of Americans.

      The case, filed in federal court in New York City, alleges the Trump administration allowed Musk's team access to the Treasury Department’s central payment system in violation of federal law.

    • [Repeat] The Strategist ☛ Spyware is spreading far beyond its national-security role

      Between 2011 and 2023, at least 74 governments contracted commercial firms to obtain spyware or digital forensics technology. Of these, 44 were autocratic regimes, and 56 procured such technologies from firms based in or connected to Israel, the leading exporter of spyware.

      The commercial spyware market is characterised by convoluted corporate structures and obscure supply chains, underscoring the need for collective efforts to increase transparency. The international community will need to cooperate and align their spyware regulations and approaches to address shared risks.

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk's Henchmen Feeding Sensitive Government Data Into AI

      While making a show of feeding a government agency "into the wood chipper," billionaire Elon Musk's lackeys have secretly been feeding another's sensitive data into AI software.

    • India Times ☛ UK orders Apple to open up users' encrypted cloud data, report says

      Britain has ordered Apple to give it unprecedentedly broad access to encrypted user data stored on Apple's data cloud, the Washington Post newspaper reported on Friday.

  • Confidentiality

    • Ruben Schade ☛ TLS down for a few hours

      I’m not sure what best practices are here. Let’s Encrypt lets you issue a cert for multiple subdomains. Maybe it’s worth using Let’s Encrypt to issue discrete certificates for subdomains, so a failure to renew one doesn’t break everything else.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Axios ☛ Trump's hatchet signals the death of American soft power

    What they're saying: "There's really no better gift to Putin and Xi than for the world to see that the United States is a completely unreliable friend and partner," says Daniel Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel who also held senior roles at the Pentagon and National Security Council.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Musk’s DOGE Boys Are a ‘Threat’ to Payment Systems: Treasury Officials

    Since the names of the younger, inexperienced people working for Elon Musk‘s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have become public, a flurry of reports have detailed their troubling histories of extremism and severe workplace infractions. One individual who resigned Thursday over revelations of racist posts on his X account has already been reinstated by Musk himself.

    Perhaps more troubling was the news that, internally, the team that runs the Treasury Department’s payments systems believes DOGE is “the single greatest insider threat risk” it’s even seen. That warning came to light just minutes after it was reported that a 19-year-old working on the DOGE team was previously fired for leaking sensitive company information.

  • Futurism ☛ One of Elon Musk's DOGE Boys Was Fired by Previous Job for Leaking Company Secrets

    It's yet another sign that Musk did practically zero vetting while building out his A-team of young men who are now plundering a growing number of government agencies.

    Should we really let a teen, who was literally fired for leaking data, loose on huge swathes of highly sensitive government data, let alone without the required security clearances?

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk's DOGE Training an AI to Analyze Government Spending

    Needless to say, introducing an inherently flawed and wildly unreliable technology and allowing it to access copious amounts of sensitive data could have disastrous outcomes. Former president Joe Biden introduced an executive order for the "safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of AI" in 2023, which was focused on preventing AI-enabled threats to national security, among other goals.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Gen Z ‘nihilism’ over Chinese tech fears shows gulf with Washington

    However, younger generations in the US appear unfazed by the debate over security threats posed by Chinese-owned tech, with app downloads of TikTok, RedNote, and DeepSeek soaring among Gen Z users.

  • The Nation ☛ The Courts Can’t Stop the Trump-Musk Coup

    Many of Trump’s orders are illegal, and unconstitutional, and brazenly so. Most good-faith lawyers can see that, but “good faith” does not describe the current state of the federal judiciary. Trump and MAGA have captured and corrupted the courts: They have seeded the lower courts with federal judges more loyal to Trump and his white-supremacist movement than they are to the law. They have stacked the Supreme Court with justices hostile to civil rights and equality. This doesn’t mean that cases brought by the ACLU, AFL-CIO, or Democratic state attorneys general are destined to fail. Their cases are righteous (and, legally speaking, right) and must be brought. Some might even succeed.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Musk, DOGE access to Treasury systems targeted in House Democrats’ bill

    The Taxpayer Data Protection Act from Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., and 141 of her Democratic colleagues would prohibit the Treasury secretary from granting administrative control, use or access to any agency payment system or public money receipt, with exceptions given to eligible department officials, employees or contractors.

  • Wired ☛ ACLU Warns DOGE’s ‘Unchecked’ Access Could Violate Federal Law

    The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told federal lawmakers on Friday that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have seized control of a number of federal computer systems that house data tightly restricted under federal statutes. In some cases, any deviations in the manner in which the data is being used may be not only illegal, the ACLU says, but unconstitutional.

    DOGE operatives have infiltrated or assumed control of a number of federal agencies that are responsible for managing personnel files on nearly 2 million federal employees, as well as offices that supply the government with a broad range of software and information technology services.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: “The Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets”

    Krause is a private equity looter. He's the guy who basically invented the playbook for PE takeovers of large tech companies, from Broadcom to Citrix to VMWare, converting their businesses from selling things to renting them out, loading them up with junk fees, slashing quality, jacking up prices over and over, and firing everyone who was good at their jobs. He is a master enshittifier, an enshittification ninja.

    Krause has an unerring instinct for making people miserable while making money. He oversaw the merger of Citrix and VMWare, creating a ghastly company called The Cloud Software Group, which sold remote working tools. Despite this, of his first official acts was to order all of his employees to stop working remotely. But then, after forcing his workers to drag their butts into work, move back across the country, etc, he reversed himself because he figured out he could sell off all of the company's office space for a tidy profit.

  • Krebs On Security ☛ Teen on Musk’s DOGE Team Graduated from ‘The Com’

    Since President Trump’s second inauguration, Musk’s DOGE team has gained access to a truly staggering amount of personal and sensitive data on American citizens, moving quickly to seize control over databases at the U.S. Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Resources, among others.

    Wired first reported on Feb. 2 that one of the young technologists on Musk’s crew is a 19-year-old high school graduate named Edward Coristine, who reportedly goes by the nickname “Big Balls” online. One of the companies Coristine founded, Tesla.Sexy LLC, was set up in 2021, when he would have been around 16 years old.

    “Tesla.Sexy LLC controls dozens of web domains, including at least two Russian-registered domains,” Wired reported. “One of those domains, which is still active, offers a service called Helfie, which is an AI bot for Discord servers targeting the Russian market. While the operation of a Russian website would not violate US sanctions preventing Americans doing business with Russian companies, it could potentially be a factor in a security clearance review.”

  • New York Times ☛ Opinion | Now Will We Believe What Is Happening Right Before Our Eyes?

    They told us they would smash the institutions that safeguard our democracy. And that is exactly what they are doing.

    Many Americans chose not to believe what they were saying. Will we now believe what we are seeing?

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ From COBOL to chaos: Elon Musk, DOGE, and the Evil Housekeeper Problem

    We need to dust off those “in the event of an emergency” disaster response procedures dealing with the failure of federal government—at individual organizations that may soon hit cash-flow problems and huge budget deficits without federal funding, at statehouses that will need to keep social programs running, and in groups doing the hard work of archiving and preserving data and knowledge.

  • [Repeat] New York Times ☛ A Professor Put Her Class on TikTok. Thousands Enrolled in a Digital H.B.C.U.

    In lectures delivered in TikTok-length bursts, and in longer sessions over TikTok Live, instructors are teaching classes in gardening, organic chemistry, culinary arts and other subjects. On the receiving end, organizers say, is an audience of about 16,000 registered users.

  • Wired ☛ The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did

    As WIRED has reported, Elez was granted privileges including the ability to not just read but write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), an agency that according to Treasury records paid out $5.45 trillion in fiscal year 2024. Reporting from Talking Points Memo confirmed that Treasury employees were concerned that Elez had already made “extensive changes” to code within the Treasury system. The payments processed by BFS include federal tax returns, Social Security benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits, and veteran’s pay.

  • PBS ☛ USAID security chiefs put on leave after trying to stop Musk’s team from accessing classified info, officials say

    Musk’s DOGE crew lacked high-enough security clearance to access that information, so the two USAID security officials — John Vorhees and deputy Brian McGill — were legally obligated to deny access.

    The current and former U.S. officials had knowledge of the incident and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information.

  • NBC ☛ Elon Musk and DOGE are hacking the government

    The billionaire tech magnate has never been elected to office or been confirmed by the Senate for a high-level government job, but in the span of a few days, Musk has still gained access to sensitive federal data through his position as head of President Donald Trump’s Department [sic] of Government Efficiency project, or DOGE, to push a far-reaching agenda and potentially spark a constitutional crisis.

  • Pro Publica ☛ These Are Some of the Lawyers Working for Elon Musk’s DOGE

    As members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have fanned out across the government in recent days, attention has focused on the young Silicon Valley engineers who are wielding immense power in the new administration.

    But ProPublica has identified three lawyers with elite establishment credentials who have also joined the DOGE effort.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Elon Musk’s DOGE Expected to Examine CARS Treasury System Next Week

    After creating an uproar last week for demanding access to a sensitive system at the Treasury Department, officials affiliated with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are expected to turn their attention to another restricted database next week, according to two people with knowledge of their plans.

    The new target, the sources said, is a database that tracks the flow of money across the government, from the Treasury to specific agencies and then to the ultimate destination of the funds.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Donald Trump’s Immigration Executive Orders: Tracking the Most Impactful Changes

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ Dissenter Weekly: More On The Case Of Asif Rahman

  • Rolling Stone ☛ DOGE Employees: All We Know About Musk Staff Slashing Federal Agencies

    The spending freezes and staff purges at these agencies are being carried out by Musk loyalists, most of whom appear to be young male software engineers lacking in government experience, aged from 19 to mid-20s. Both Musk and interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin, a MAGA true believer, have threatened reprisals against anyone who names these DOGE foot soldiers, after Wired identified six of them on Sunday: Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. Other Musk allies and aides now working on his behalf in D.C. include Anthony Armstrong, Riccardo Biasini, Brian Bjelde, Steve Davis, Stephen Ehikian, Marko Elez, Nicole Hollander, Amanda Scales, Thomas Shedd, and Christopher Stanley. Once it became clear that he could not hope to conceal employees’ names, Musk on Monday posted to X, “Time to confess: Media reports saying that @DOGE has some of world’s best software engineers are in fact true.”

  • ABC ☛ Trump 2nd term live updates: Trump terminates Biden access to classified information

    Despite these conversations, it remains unclear whether the Trump administration had completed the process necessary to officially appoint Rubio to the role, and the National Archivist appointed under former President Biden remained in the post on Thursday.

  • 404 Media ☛ National Archives Workers Unsure If Marco Rubio Has Secretly Been Their Boss for Weeks

    The idea that Rubio might be their new boss—and has been their boss, apparently, for weeks—is news to National Archives employees and apparently to its current director Colleen Shogan. Shogan held an all-hands meeting with archives employees on Tuesday in which nothing was said about Rubio and in which Shogan still seemed to be in charge. “The suggestion that he’s been the archivist since the transition is a lie or misunderstanding, we just had a staff meeting with Shogan Tuesday,” one NARA employee told 404 Media. “Everyone is very confused. My coworkers seem to mostly assume it’s a bad news source.”

  • The Conversation ☛ Experts have challenged the medical case against Lucy Letby. What about the statistical evidence?

    A key piece of statistical evidence is a chart which showed that Lucy Letby was on duty every time one of the crimes of which she was accused occurred, but that none of the other nursing staff were.

    On the face of it, it seems quite damning. But when you think about it, it’s unsurprising that Letby’s column is the only one full of crosses. Any of the events at which she was not present she would not have been charged with and consequently wouldn’t appear on the chart.

    This is an example of what is known in statistics as the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Kash Patel was paid by Russian filmmaker tied to Kremlin, documents show

    Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be FBI director, was paid $25,000 last year by a film company owned by a Russian national who also holds U.S. citizenship and has produced programs promoting “deep state” conspiracy theories and anti-Western views advanced by the Kremlin, according to a financial disclosure form Patel submitted as part of his nomination process and other documents.

• Environment

  • EcoWatch ☛ ‘Gutting the EPA Is Unacceptable’: Democratic Lawmakers Demand Answers Amid ‘Unconstitutional’ Funding Freeze

    “Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their unqualified, unelected, unwanted henchmen want to dismantle the government services that keep our communities thriving, healthy, and safe from polluters,” Markey said in the press release. “I went to the headquarters of the EPA to demand answers from Administrator Zeldin and the DOGE representatives who are illegally withholding funding that would keep air and water clean and help families save money.”

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Mysterious land purchases within Joshua Tree National Park worry locals, environmentalists

    A Times review of online and public records found that people and entities linked to Darkhorse have acquired more than 100 acres in and around Whispering Pines since 2021. Several of those involved in the land purchases have ties to the hotel and hospitality industry, the records show. All of them either declined to talk to The Times or didn’t respond to requests for comment.

  • ARRL ☛ Hurricane Watch Net Turning 60, Seeking Net Control Operators

    The Hurricane Watch Net (HWN), founded on Labor Day weekend 1965, is celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2025. The net, known for relaying surface observations into the National Hurricane Center, is also seeking volunteers to serve as net control operators.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Register UK ☛ Datacenter energy use to more than double by 2030 due to AI

      If accurate, this will mean that power consumed by all those data facilities is set to increase by 50 percent in just a couple of years, and Goldman Sachs expects the trend to continue, with about 122 GW of total datacenter capacity online by the end of 2030.

    • The Register UK ☛ Trump admin pauses Biden EV charger funding program

      To be fair, criticism of NEVI is warranted. The program, designed to establish EV corridors with widely available and standardized fast chargers to reduce reliance on gasoline-powered vehicles, has been slow in its rollout.

    • The Verge ☛ GM will reportedly stop making gas-powered Chevy Blazer

      The combustion engine version of the Chevy Blazer is reportedly being discontinued and will eventually only be offered as an EV, sources tell GM Authority. Both the Chevy Blazer EV and the gas-powered Chevy Blazer have been assembled at GM’s Ramos Arizpe plant in Mexico, but with the gas Blazer now sunsetting with the 2025 model year, the facility is being retooled only to accommodate electric vehicles, GM Authority says.

    • Kevin Burke ☛ Cities Can Cost Effectively Start Their Own Utilities Now

      Let's walk through what this might look like for a particular city to undercut PG&E's rates. I will pick Walnut Creek because it's a reasonably big city with a good mix of detached homes and multifamily. Walnut Creek also has experience with public ownership of amenities - the City operates a golf course and a downtown parking garage with ground floor retail.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuanian president confident Baltic power grid switch will go smoothly

      Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda is confident that the Baltic electricity grid synchronisation with the Continental European system will go smoothly this weekend, with electricity users unlikely to notice the transition.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Earth Doesn’t Burn: (Back) Toward a Fire-Wise Infrastructure in Southern California

    • El País ☛ Whale songs follow the laws of human languages

      Two studies reveal that the communication systems of most cetaceans examined adhere to the principles of efficiency and economy found in language

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Orban calls USAID a "dark conspiracy"

    Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban also commented about USAID, the US' main overseas aid agency after the Trump administration's effort to dismantle it and freeze foreign aid. Orban believes everyone should be grateful to the American President for the move. 

    "So apparently USAID financed ultra-progressive Politico in Brussels and basically the entire left-wing media in Hungary under the previous US administration. And they called me “disruptor of the year”… I think the world owes a debt of gratitude to President Donald Trump for uncovering and putting an end to this dark conspiracy." the Hungarian leader wrote on X.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Big Companies Are Already Asking Trump for Favors

    On the same day Jeff Bezos sat in the front row of the inauguration (that Amazon helped finance), his retail giant sent nine letters pressing the Trump administration to let the company block votes on initiatives from its own shareholders. These include proposals to disclose more information about Amazon’s treatment of warehouse workers, handling of private medical data, lobbying activities, artificial intelligence–related energy use, and employee pay gaps.

    UnitedHealth also called in some favors. A day after Amazon’s move, UnitedHealth asked Donald Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow it to block votes on shareholder proposals requiring the company to 1) audit previous customer denial claims to see if they were inaccurate and 2) disclose “how often prior authorization requirements or denials of coverage lead to delay or abandonment of medical treatment.” UnitedHealth has among the highest claim denial rates in the country.

  • 404 Media ☛ Behind the Blog: Getting Political

    This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss "staying out of politics" and what it means to be a tech news publication.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ On Undermining the Administrative State

    I allow one exception for the blanket claim I just made. It’s predictable their actions in the disrupting of the machinery of record and state’s witnessing of truth will reduce social trust and so increase social conflict and coordination costs (and reduce long term growth rate). I suspect that the more politically savvy among them expect to be make a profit of that, too, (as they have done already in the last few decades). Yet, we’re soon entering territory where the cascade effects will be quite unforeseen and uncontrollable and, if copied elsewhere, where the state’s role in shaping our life-worlds and social practices will inevitably be quite different than the pattern of (say) the last hundred years.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ Australia bans Chinese AI company DeepSeek after it knocks billions of dollars off the stock market

    Billions of dollars were wiped off the stock markets internationally, including in Australia, where stocks tied to AI dropped dramatically overnight.

    Tony Burke, home affairs minister announced the ban, stating all DeepSeek products, applications and services would be immediately removed from government networks, Bloomberg reported.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Moscow Times ☛ Ukraine Calls Russian Pop Song ‘Sigma Boy’ a Weapon in Moscow’s ‘Information War’

      German politician Nela Riehl claimed the song introduces “patriarchal and pro-Russian worldviews” and could be an example of “Russian infiltration of popular discourse through social media.”

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Blasphemy laws are incompatible with free speech

    Why should anyone, whatever religious views they have chosen to adopt, have the right to use the police or courts to guard against being offended? Religious faith is a personal thing, not one that the state has any right to become involved in. The Monty Python example springs to mind once more: that movie remains offensive to at least some Christians; if they feel offended and insulted by its being shown in public, if such an act causes those Christians alarm or distress, would the courts or the police take such alarm or distress seriously enough to initiate a prosecution? Obviously not, and neither should they, regardless of what that law states.

    In modern Britain, Islam and the Koran are protected by the law, by the courts and by the police. Christianity is not. That is not an argument that Christianity should receive equal protection; it is an argument that Islam should receive the same level of legal respect and protection as Christianity – ie, none. Two-tier protection is unacceptable because it equates to two-tier freedom of expression, freedom to criticise one religion but not a different one.

  • American Library Association ☛ ALA to U. S. Department of Education: Book bans are real

    Everyone, everywhere, regardless of their age, background, or political views, deserves access to information from a wide range of perspectives and books that reflect their lived experiences. Libraries have provided that access for hundreds of years. We won’t stop offering access to the world of ideas, and we won’t back down from defending everyone’s Constitutional right to access and read any idea free from government censorship.

  • Gizmodo ☛ UnitedHealthcare Is Mad About ‘In Luigi We Trust’ Comments Under a Doctor’s Viral Post

    UnitedHealthcare is mad about a video a doctor posted on Instagram and TikTok and it’s hired a defamation lawyer to get it removed. UHC also wants the doctor to publicly apologize for the video and contact “any other media outlet” that has reported on the video and tell them she lied. The doctor is holding her ground against the insurer, and accused the company of “gaslighting and harassment.”

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ "In Luigi We Trust"

    United Healthcare is mad about a video a doctor posted on Instagram and TikTok and it's hired a defamation lawyer to get it removed.

  • VOA News ☛ VOA Mandarin: China’s DeepSeek banned by several countries out of censorship fear 

    [...] Analysts say these restrictions are justified, as tests show DeepSeek not only collects excessive user data but also filters sensitive topics and promotes Chinese government narratives more aggressively than Baidu and WeChat. [...]

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Tunisian journalist Chadha Hadj Mbarek sentenced to 5 years in prison 

    “The sentencing of journalists Chadha Hadj Mbarek and Chahrazad Akacha is a clear example of how the Tunisian government is using judicial harassment to crush press freedom and independent journalism,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna. “Tunisian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Mbarek and ensure that journalists and media workers can work freely without fear of reprisal.”

  • CPJ ☛ Georgian journalists assaulted, obstructed while covering renewed protests

    Mamuka Andguladze, chair of local rights group Media Advocacy Coalition, told CPJ that authorities have yet to prosecute a single police perpetrator of violence against journalists, pointing to Georgian riot police’s failure to wear individual identifying badges, frequent use of masks, and a “political decision” by the authorities not to prosecute culprits.

  • CPJ ☛ Taliban detains 2 media workers, suspends women-run broadcaster Radio Begum

    “The Taliban must immediately rescind its suspension of Radio Begum’s operations and allow the station to resume its reporting without interference,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “The forced closure of Radio Begum is part of a broader, systematic assault on women’s rights in Afghanistan, particularly targeting women-led and women-owned media organizations. This practice must end, and the international community must hold the Taliban accountable for these actions.”

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia Labels Barents Observer ‘Undesirable’ After European Court Ruling

    Russian authorities on Friday designated the Norwegian online news publication The Barents Observer as an “undesirable” organization, a day after Europe’s top human rights court ruled against its ban inside Russia.

  • CPJ ☛ Sri Lankan top prosecutor seeks to discharge key suspects in journalist’s murder

    “Justice must be served in journalists’ killings,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “It is alarming Sri Lanka’s attorney general seeks to drop charges against three key suspects in journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge’s murder without any public explanation. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake must deliver on his pledge to bring attacks on the press to justice.”

  • US News And World Report ☛ France Condemns Russian Decision to Revoke Le Monde Journalist Accreditation

    Russia said earlier on Thursday it had withdrawn the accreditation for Le Monde's Moscow correspondent Benjamin Quénelle, in retaliation for Paris's refusal to issue a visa to a Russian reporter. This will leave the paper without a presence in Moscow for the first time since the 1950s.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Techdirt ☛ Nevada Court Shuts Down Federal Civil Forfeiture Loophole That Bypassed State Restrictions

    Of course, drug residue is present on almost all cash in circulation, which — following this logic — would make almost all cash everywhere the byproduct of illegal activity. The troopers took his cash. To ensure they’d still be able to keep most of it, they called up some DEA buddies, which allowed the NHP to use the “federal adoption” loophole that would allow them to keep up to 80% of anything they seized.

    Three years later, Lara’s lawsuit was still a going concern, despite the state and NHP’s best efforts to terminate it. One year after the court allowed the lawsuit to move forward, it has arrived at a decision that ensures it won’t just be Lara benefiting from its ruling. (via the Institute for Justice)

  • CS Monitor ☛ Trump’s federal return-to-work mandate is here. Who’s coming back?

    Some deadlines are now coming due: On Friday, federal agencies must submit detailed plans to return employees to the office in phases, starting with people living within 50 miles from a current agency office. Many federal workers had also been facing a Feb. 6 deadline to decide whether to accept a promised buyout offer if they did not wish to return to full-time in-person work. That offer was temporarily halted by a federal judge in Boston on Thursday. The White House said around 40,000 employees (2% of the federal workforce) had accepted the offer before the judge’s order.

  • Axios ☛ Trump sued over USAID cuts by workers' unions

    "Not a single one of defendants' actions to dismantle USAID" has received congressional approval, notes the suit, filed on behalf of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).

  • Rossmann Repair Group Inc ☛ Welcome to the Consumer Action Taskforce!

    The mission of this Wiki is to document a new generation of consumer exploitation that bears no resemblance to issues of the 1950s-1990s. We focus on the issues that often go unnoticed by review sites, tech press, and traditional consumer protection publications.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Ibrahim Diallo ☛ You Didn't Notice MP3 Is Now Free

      Back in the early 2000s, an MP3 file, typically around 3.5MB, was considered small. But downloading one still took time, minutes on a standard [Internet] connection. File size mattered. A smaller file meant quicker downloads and less space used on your limited storage.

      Fast forward to today, and [Internet] speeds have grown exponentially. A song in a more modern format like AAC or FLAC might be double or triple the size of an MP3, but who notices? You can stream a full album in lossless quality without buffering. Kids download gigabyte-sized games in minutes.

      The average person no longer pays attention to file sizes. Terms like megabyte or kilobyte, which were once part of everyday tech conversations, are now arcane to many users. When everything happens instantly, file size ceases to be a concern.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Rightsholders Target VPN Providers in French Court to Block Piracy

    To address blocking workarounds, the rightsholders took the matter to court, requesting DNS resolvers including Google, Cloudflare, Cisco, and Quad9 to block dozens of pirate sites.

    In a landmark judgment last year, the Paris Judicial Court granted its first DNS blocking order in favor of Canal+. This was followed by several others, gradually expanding the blocking measures and placing pressure on circumvention options.

  • The Register UK ☛ Creators demand tech giants pay for AI training data

    "You're going to get a vanilla-ization of music culture as automated material starts to edge out human creators, and you're also going to get an impoverishing of human creators," he said. "It's worth remembering that the music business in the UK is a real success story. It's £7.6 billion income last year, with over 200,000 people employed. That is a big impact. If we allow the erosion of copyright, which is really how value is created in the music sector, then we're going to be in a position where there won't be artists in the future."