Leftovers

• Neil Macy ☛ Timelines and RSS Feeds

  RSS feeds from websites don’t fit that model though. When I read RSS, I want to be able to browse different categories of feeds (e.g. I subscribe to personal blogs, tech news, F1 news etc.). I don't want to scroll through those longer articles in a feed mixed in with short social networking posts. (I certainly don't want to mix in video and podcasts.) I want to read the posts I've subscribed to based on what's interesting me right now. Some of them (e.g. F1) contain spoilers for things I haven't seen yet. Some of them are longer and I don't have time to read them just now. Sometimes I just feel more in the mood to read about iOS development than sport.

• Daniel Miller ☛ Molli and Max in the Future Predicts the Future

  I randomly started watching Molli and Max in the Future on the bald logistics baron’s video streaming service. It took three nights to find the time to finish it, but I really enjoyed it. It’s hard to describe. It is a cyberpunk sci-fi version of When Harry Met Sally. There’s a scene, which had to be written years ago, that is scary prophetic: [...]

• Brandon ☛ Introducing: The RSS Haven, a Web Forum

  Thankfully, many of those relationships have become email relationships, but there is something nice about having a shorter form of communication, or even more public conversations that draw others in. That sense of online community is missed for me, and I think I have figured out a solution.

  It seems these days, I look to the past for inspiration and this time is no different. I’ve decided to create a message board called The RSS Haven.

• Andy Hawthorne ☛ The Search For Your Voice

  Your voice isn't hidden in someone else's style guide. It's in the emails you write to close friends. The conversations you have when you forget anyone's listening. The things you say when you're brave enough to tell the truth.

• SANS ☛ An ontology for threats, cybercrime and digital forensic investigation on Smart City Infrastructure

  Multiple countries are gradually considering the concept of Smart Cities, a key consideration in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). As such technologies are implemented, the responsibility of defending this critical infrastructure again falls on the shoulders of blue teams. Smart Cities have yet to be fully implemented, but it does not mean we should not be proactive in preparing defenders to handle future problems. Current issues, even without Smart Cities in the fray, already cause blue team grief (e.g. different technology platforms, different contexts, information sharing, collaboration and tool interoperability). Given these complexities, an ontology would allow a shared understanding of vocabulary, facilitate data sharing, and even enable automated data reasoning.

• Science

  • Rlang ☛ Two Way Repeated Measures ANOVA in R

    Two-way repeated measures ANOVA is a powerful statistical test used to analyze datasets where two within-subject factors (independent variables) are measured multiple times for each subject. This test helps determine if there are significant differences between groups over time or across different conditions while accounting for individual variability.

  • Tony Finch ☛ random numbers from pcg32 at 200 Gbit/s

    One of the neat things about the PCG random number generator by Melissa O’Neill is its use of instruction-level parallelism: the PCG state update can run in parallel with its output permutation.

    However, PCG only has a limited amount of ILP, about 3 instructions. Its overall speed is limited by the rate at which a CPU can run a sequence where the output of one multiply-add feeds into the next multiply-add.

  • The Register UK ☛ Undergrad accidentally shreds 40-year hash table gospel

    As detailed by Quanta Magazine, Andrew Krapivin, now a graduate at the University of Cambridge, is one of the co-authors on a paper, "Optimal Bounds for Open Addressing Without Reordering," published last month that sets out how his hash table can find elements faster than was previously considered possible.

    Hash tables have been around since the 1950s, and are an example of a key-value store where a hash function is used to generate the index for the data value based on the key itself.

• Career/Education

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ USAID shutdown would halt research grants to state universities

    In addition to its humanitarian impact, supporters say, foreign aid is a relatively inexpensive way for the U.S. to exercise so-called soft power, helping it to counter hostile rivals such as China and Russia.

    Federal research grants such as the ones provided by USAID are an important component of the overall funding for state universities, which also rely on money allocated by state legislatures, tuition and endowments.

  • Robin Schroer ☛ LLMs Do Not Break Interviews

    If you are worried about software engineering candidates using LLMs to pass your technical interviews, one of these is true: [...]

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Announcing the Rosenblum Award for Scholarly Publishing Impact

    This new award celebrates innovations that have transformed scholarly publishing. The Rosenblum Award commemorates and preserves the historical record of innovations that have had a major impact on scholarly communications, focusing on technologies, standards, or practices that have become an indispensable component of the scholarly publishing ecosystem. The award does not recognize individuals or organizations directly, nor does it carry a monetary prize. Instead, it honors elements of the ecosystem that enable the production, dissemination, and collaboration essential to scholarly communication through visibility, recognition, promotion and hopefully community advancement.

  • Vox ☛ The surprising success of universal preschool

    In recent years, states like California, Colorado, and New Mexico have expanded their publicly funded pre-K options. New York City has staved off some proposed funding cuts to its program for 3-year-olds, thanks in part to the activism of families who have come to count on it. Preschool has emerged as that rare issue with bipartisan support, as lawmakers in deep-red states like Alabama increase funding to their programs.

    In 2022–2023, enrollment in publicly funded preschool hit an all-time high, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • FAIR ☛ Deny, Defend, Disinform: Corporate media coverage of healthcare in the 2024 presidential elections

    The murder of UnitedHealth Group executive Brian Thompson, and the subsequent arrest of Luigi Mangione, focused media and policymakers’ attention on the savage practices of private US health insurance. In the immediate aftermath, major media outlets scolded social media posters for mocking Thompson with sarcastic posts, such as “I’m sorry, prior authorization is required for thoughts and prayers.”

  • Luigi Mozzillo ☛ Who are aware of it

    But an informed person is a free person. Knowledge helps to understand, to form opinions, and to grow. How can one completely exclude the flow of news from their media diet?

    I cannot do without the news. When I arrive in the evening without knowing what happened during the day, I feel lost. I feel in danger, in a way. I like to be informed, to know and understand. I follow a media diet that includes news, opinion, or in-depth podcasts; I subscribe to an online newspaper and follow the RSS feeds of a couple of others; I follow some thematic blogs on topics that interest me. I don’t watch videos, but that’s my problem; it doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting and credible channels—online or otherwise. I exclude social networks, but you already know.

  • Harry Cresswell ☛ Planning meals

    I’ve written before about how I use meal prepping to stay healthy throughout the week. In a similar vein, today I want to talk about how I go about planning meals, so we never have to think too hard about what to cook during the week.

    The key to planning what you eat, I’ve realised, starts by owning a handful of quality cookbooks, which contain healthy, easy-to-cook meals that taste great.

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ More victims of China's Salt Typhoon cyber-spy crew emerge

    "The group likely compiled a list of target devices based on their association with telecommunications providers' networks," according to the write-up.

    Additionally, the snoops "possibly targeted" more than a dozen universities including University of California, Los Angeles to access research related to telecommunications, engineering, and technology, according to the infosec house, which tracks Salt Typhoon as RedMike.

  • Wired ☛ China’s Salt Typhoon Spies Are Still [Breaching] Telecoms—Now by Exploiting Cisco Routers

    To carry out this latest campaign of intrusions, Salt Typhoon—which Recorded Future tracks under its own name, RedMike, rather than the Typhoon handle created by Microsoft—has targeted the internet-exposed web interfaces of Cisco's IOS software, which runs on the networking giant's routers and switches. The [intruders] exploited two different vulnerabilities in those devices' code, one of which grants initial access, and another that provides root privileges, giving the hackers full control of an often powerful piece of equipment with access to a victim's network.

  • The Record ☛ China’s Salt Typhoon hackers [breaching] Cisco devices used by telcos, universities

    China’s Salt Typhoon campaign to breach telecommunications companies has continued through the new year despite efforts by governments to stop the [intruders], researchers said Thursday.

    Recorded Future’s Insikt Group identified a campaign in December and January that involved attempts to compromise more than 1,000 Cisco network devices globally, many of which are associated with telecommunications providers. The Record is an editorially independent unit of Recorded Future.

  • Matt Routley ☛ Updating my indoor bike setup

    The whole setup is a nuisance, especially for some of those really early morning starts. Moving furniture around while in the dark and only half awake isn’t great. So, I’m considering the new Zwift Ride.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • VOA News ☛ AI-driven biometric fraud surges in Africa, fueling financial crimes

      A new report says the emergence of cheap artificial intelligence tools is leading to a wave of biometric fraud in Africa. The report says fraudsters are using AI to create fake documents, voices, and images that facilitate identity theft and financial crimes.

    • Futurism ☛ Allstate Says Almost All Its Communications About Insurance Claims Are Done With AI Now

      Insurance company Allstate has revealed that almost all of the communications its reps send out to claimants are now written by AI, the Wall Street Journal reports.

      It's a surprising revelation, highlighting the significant role generative AI will play — and is already playing — in our daily lives.

    • The Register UK ☛ After Copilot trial, workers' attitude to AI soured

      The report reveals that after the trial participants rated Copilot less useful than they hoped it would be, as it was applicable to fewer workloads than they hoped would be the case.

    • Wired ☛ The Loneliness Epidemic Is a Security Crisis

      Romance scams cost victims hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As people grow increasingly isolated, and generative AI helps scammers scale their crimes, the problem could get worse.

    • 404 Media ☛ Lawyers Caught Citing AI-Hallucinated Cases Call It a 'Cautionary Tale'

      Lawyers increasingly use AI tools for research and analyzing documents. But this isn’t the first time using AI to draft legal cases has gotten lawyers in trouble. In 2022, a man filed an action alleging he was injured by an Avianca airlines metal serving cart during an Avianca Airlines flight. His lawyers cited non-existent cases, and instead of admitting it and apologizing immediately, they doubled down and defended the filings. Eventually, they were fined $5,000 for fabricating the case, with the judge writing that they “abandoned their responsibilities when they submitted non-existent judicial opinions with fake quotes and citations created by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, then continued to stand by the fake opinions after judicial orders called their existence into question.”

    • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ Now I'm disappointed.

      If you didn’t want it read that way, you should have made an effort to distance what you were saying from the standard lines of rhetoric being used by those boosting the “AI” scene. You don’t have to go full sceptic, just downplay the anthropomorphism (“They are the writing”), hyperbole (“Everything”, “ingenious”, “super science”), and be a bit less dismissive of existing criticism.

    • Tim Kellogg ☛ Recursive Improvement: AI Singularity Or Just Benchmark Saturation?

      A fascinating new paper shows that LLMs can recursively self-improve. They can be trained on older versions of themselves and continuously get better. This immediately made me think, “this is it, it’s the AI singularity”, that moment when AI is able to autonomously self-improve forever and become a… (well that sentence can end a lot of ways)

      Off the cuff, I don’t think it’s the singularity, but if this idea takes off then it’s going to look a lot like it. More on that later.

    • Ben Congdon ☛ The Models Want to Reason

      Since I wrote about COCONUT, Meta’s paper on reasoning in latent space, there’s been a wave in publicly accessible research into reasoning models. The most notable example, which overshadows everything else to the point of feeling like I almost don’t need to mention it as I write this in mid Feb 2025, was the Deepseek R1 paper.

      While I think the R1 paper is great and deserved the attention it garnered, there has been a steady stream of additional research into the reasoning space that I think begins to paint an interesting picture of what comes next.

    • Latvia ☛ Lots of human decisions required before Latvian AI center can be launched

      The plenary session is scheduled to decide on it in early March, not this week. The Saeima Legal Office called for not rushing the law's progress, as there are many questions about data security, compensation, and other aspects.

      The Parliament's Public Administration and Local Government Committee and the relevant institutions need at least three more meetings to draft the future Artificial Intelligence Center law into a voteable form.

  • Social Control Media

    • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Virality Rarely Translates Into Sustainable Growth

      Duetti’s ‘Music Economics Report‘ highlights how much each streaming service is paying its artists in 2024, but it also provided a look at how TikTok impacts the music industry. The report found that even amongst the <1% of tracks that ‘go viral’ on TikTok, only ~15% experience long-term streaming growth on digital service providers (DSPs) like Spotify and Apple Music.

    • India Times ☛ Reddit: Reddit misses daily active unique visitors on Google algorithm change, shares tumble

      Reddit missed market estimates for daily active unique visitors in the fourth quarter on Wednesday, hit by a change in Google's search algorithm that impacted how often the social media platform appeared in the search results, sending its shares down 15% in extended trading.

    • Tedium ☛ Jonah Peretti: Eventually, SNARF Will Destroy The Internet We Like

      Peretti, despite being responsible for introducing many of us to this very dynamic of content, says that users desire alternatives to this approach, and it’s something that many consumers are getting sick of. BuzzFeed wants to offer an alternative to all this. Which means he’s working on a new kind of social network, which aims to offer an alternative to the social cues of virality that BuzzFeed has traditionally benefited from.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Cyble Inc ☛ FedEx Scam Alert: How To Avoid Fraud And Stay Safe

      FedEx, the world’s largest express transportation company, is issuing an urgent public warning regarding a wave of FedEx scams that have recently emerged, particularly in India. These fraudulent activities, often involving the impersonation of FedEx employees, are leading victims into dangerous situations where they are tricked into transferring money and personal information under false pretenses.

      With the rise of digital fraud, FedEx is emphasizing the importance of awareness and vigilance to avoid falling victim to these deceptive tactics. The company encourages everyone to be cautious, as these scams not only cause financial harm but can also result in emotional distress.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Semafor Inc ☛ Apple to use Chinese giant Alibaba’s AI in iPhones

      The sudden emergence of Chinese startup DeepSeek, which rocked financial markets with the release of its R-1 chatbot in January, has “sparked a new AI-related catalyst for Chinese tech stocks,” an expert in Asia Pacific investments told Bloomberg.

    • Leon Mika ☛ Apple AI in Mail and What Could Be

      But upgrading to a version of MacOS that had Apple AI, it struck me that these emails are getting processed by an LLM already, in order to power Mail’s email summaries and priorities. Like many others I find these features pretty useless, mainly because what is considered important it’s usually not relevant to me (I’m on heaps of mailing lists).

      But what if I could tell Mail what’s important to me, and how I want it to respond? One could imagine me clicking into one of these weekly menu emails, engaging the LLM, and typing in an instruction like this: [...]

    • Eric Bailey ☛ Evaluating overlay-adjacent accessibility products

      A lot of assistive technology is purposely designed to not announce the fact that it is being used. This is to stave off things like discrimination or ineffective, separate-yet-equal “accessibility only” sites.

      There’s also the murky world of data brokerage, and if the company is selling off this information or not. AccessiBe comes to mind here, and not in a good way.

      Also consider if the product has access to everything you visit and interact with, and who has access to that information.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New York Times ☛ Apple and Google Restore TikTok to App Stores in the U.S.

    Apple and Google had recently received letters from the Justice Department assuring them that they would not face fines for carrying TikTok in their app stores, said two people with knowledge of the communications, who were not authorized to speak publicly. The executive order that Mr. Trump signed last month asked that “written guidance” be sent.

  • The Washington Post ☛ TikTok is back in Apple’s and Google’s app stores

    TikTok went down dramatically in late January, just before a federal ban that was upheld by the Supreme Court was set to go into effect. The law, passed with bipartisan support by Congress and signed into law under the Biden administration, said TikTok could keep operating only if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, sold it to a company not based in China.

  • Wired ☛ TikTok Is Back in US App Stores

    Google confirmed to WIRED it has brought TikTok back, but didn’t immediately elaborate on the reason. Apple, TikTok, and the Department of Justice didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Bondi was sworn into office last week.

    The return concludes a fraught few weeks for TikTok. The platform disappeared from US app stores and went dark for users nationwide on January 19, hours before the ban went into effect. It sputtered back to life later that day, after TikTok executives received their own assurances from then president-elect Donald Trump that he would provide more time for a resolution to be reached. If you already had the app on your phone, it was functioning normally by that same afternoon.

  • Variety ☛ Apple, Google Restore TikTok to App Stores Amid U.S. Divest-or-Ban Law

    Trump’s arbitrary 75-day pause on the TikTok ban would expire April 5, 2025. It’s not clear that Trump can successfully find a solution that will meet the requirements of the law.

    The TikTok divest-or-ban law passed last year by Congress with strong bipartisan support and was signed by President Biden. Lawmakers have expressed deep concern over TikTok’s Chinese ties, citing the risk that the Chinese Communist Party would be able to demand data on the app’s U.S. users or push propaganda to American users.

  • US News And World Report ☛ TikTok Returns on Apple, Google US App Stores as Trump Delays Ban

    About 52% of its total downloads were from Apple App Store, while 48% were from Google Play in the U.S. last year, Sensor Tower said.

    The law that requires ByteDance to sell TikTok's U.S. assets or ultimately face a ban was signed by then President Joe Biden last April, triggered by national security concerns and fears that China could use the video-sharing app to spy on American users.

  • Stefan Grund ☛ „The USA is no longer considered a democracy“ – eay.cc

    Full quote of a short, horrifying Kottke post: [...]

  • The Center for Systemic Peace ☛ index

    NOTE: The USA dropped below the "democracy threshold" (+6) on the POLITY scale in 2020 and was considered an anocracy (+5) at the end of the year 2020; the USA score for 2021 returned to democracy (+8). Beginning on 1 July 2024, due to the US Supreme Court ruling granting the US Presidency broad, legal immunity, the USA is noted by the Polity Project as experiencing a regime transition through, at least, 20 January 2025. As of the latter date, the USA is coded EXREC=8, "Competitive Elections"; EXCONST=1 "Unlimited Executive Authority"; and POLCOMP=6 "Factional/Restricted Competition." Polity scores: DEMOC=4; AUTOC=4; POLITY=0. The USA is no longer considered a democracy and lies at the cusp of autocracy; it has experienced a Presidental Coup and an Adverse Regime Change event (8-point drop in its POLITY score).

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Premature Internet Activists

    The joke was that opposing fascism made you an enemy of America – unless you did so after the rest of America had woken up to the existential threat of a global fascist takeover. What's more, if you were a "premature antifascist," you got no credit for fighting fascism early on. Quite the contrary: fighting fascism before the rest of the US caught up with you didn't make you prescient – it made you a pariah.

    I've been thinking a lot about premature antifascism these days, as literal fascists use the [Internet] to coordinate a global authoritarian takeover that represents an existential threat to a habitable planet and human thriving. In light of that, it's hard to argue that the [Internet] is politically irrelevant, and that fights over the regulation, governance, and structure of the [Internet] are somehow unserious.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ DOGE as a National Cyberattack

    Meanwhile, only partially redacted names of CIA employees were sent over an unclassified email account. DOGE personnel are also reported to be feeding Education Department data into artificial intelligence software, and they have also started working at the Department of Energy.

    This story is moving very fast. On Feb. 8, a federal judge blocked the DOGE team from accessing the Treasury Department systems any further. But given that DOGE workers have already copied data and possibly installed and modified software, it’s unclear how this fixes anything.

    In any case, breaches of other critical government systems are likely to follow unless federal employees stand firm on the protocols protecting national security.

  • Techdirt ☛ DOGE May Now Be Aware Of The CFAA But It’s Still Violating It, Along With Lots Of Other Laws

    Another day, another computer system for DOGE to unlawfully access. This time it is the one running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the latest to be unlawfully shut down.

    Bloomberg is reporting that this time the DOGE bros incursion into the systems came with some sort of MOU, which did a few things of note for the CFAA analysis.

  • Axios ☛ Tests of Trump's power on fast tracks to the Supreme Court

    Why it matters: They're setting the stage for historic Supreme Court showdowns that could test Trump's push to remake the federal government — and increase his power.

  • The Atlantic ☛ What If the Trump Administration Defies a Court Order?

    The good news, such as it is, is that the administration doesn’t yet seem to have taken the plunge. The bad news is that this seems like a live possibility, and nobody really knows what will happen if it does. To some extent, there is a road map—but beyond that, not so much.

  • New York Times ☛ Opinion | Trump Dares the Courts to Stop Him

    But there’s no need to get ahead of ourselves. Right now, in February 2025, only weeks into President Trump’s second term, he and his top associates are stress-testing the Constitution, and the nation, to a degree not seen since the Civil War.

  • Vox ☛ Are we in a “constitutional crisis”?

    Indeed, Trump’s attempts to subvert the Constitution have been so frequent and so unapologetic, that many scholars are already labeling the situation a constitutional crisis — a situation in which the Constitution either fails to work as designed or is simply ignored by those in power.

    If the United States is actually in a crisis it so far has been a managed one. Thus far, the Trump administration has complied with court orders blocking many of its unconstitutional actions. Some members of the administration, most notably Vice President JD Vance, have suggested that Trump should simply ignore these orders and behave as if he is unbound by law. But, for the moment, the Trump administration is not openly defying any of the orders against it.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Price of Protection: Corporate America's Double Game and Democracy's Peril

    While democracy burns, corporate America is busy checking the wind direction. Google renames the Gulf of Mexico to flatter a wannabe autocrat's ego. Business leaders draft contingency plans for the end of constitutional government. And the Democratic Party, funded by these same genuflecting corporations, responds with all the urgency of someone scheduling a dental cleaning.

    This isn't just a failure of nerve—it's a revelation of structural rot. We are witnessing a disturbing confluence: the same corporations prostrating themselves before Trump's authoritarianism are simultaneously bankrolling the Democratic Party meant to resist it. It's as if we've discovered that the fire department is taking donations from the arsonists while counseling residents not to use the emergency exits.

  • The Independent UK ☛ ‘Who the hell voted for Big Balls?’ Former Clinton adviser rages at Musk’s teen DOGE hire

    “Who the hell voted for Mr. Musk?” Begala asked during the heated discussion. “Who the hell voted for – excuse the phrase – a guy who calls himself ‘Big Balls,’ a 19-year-old kid going in there and trying to fire cancer researchers and scientists and teachers and agricultural specialists? It's appalling.”

    Coristine was once fired from an internship after leaking information to a rival firm, according to his former bosses.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Pro Publica ☛ ProPublica’s Supreme Connections Database Updated With New Alito, Thomas Filings

  • Wired ☛ How We’re Keeping Tabs on DOGE

    Wired Politics senior editor Leah Feiger joins global editorial director Katie Drummond to talk about the latest at DOGE and the inexperienced engineers holding key positions at the so-called Department [sic] of Government Efficiency. They discuss how WIRED’s been preparing for this moment since the first assassination attempt on Trump last summer, and how, despite the unprecedented chaos of this moment, the courts will catch up.

  • Wired ☛ DOGE’s Website Is Just One Big X Ad

    DOGE.gov claims to be an “official website of the United States government,” but rather than giving detailed breakdowns of the cost savings and efficiencies Musk claims his project is making, the homepage of the site just replicated posts from the DOGE account on X.

    A WIRED review of the page’s source code shows that the promotion of Musk’s own platform went deeper than replicating the posts on the homepage. The source code shows that the site’s canonical tags direct search engines to x.com rather than DOGE.gov.

  • Rob Knight ☛ We Need to Talk About Zoe Being Wrong About Islands

    and Britannica, Collins English Dictionary, Dictionary.com, and National Geographic. And every other dictionary in the land including the Chambers School Dictionary I got given by my English teacher when I left school[1]: [...]

  • Krebs On Security ☛ Nearly a Year Later, Mozilla is Still Promoting OneRep

    The ink on that partnership agreement had barely dried before KrebsOnSecurity published a story showing that Onerep’s Belarusian CEO and founder Dimitiri Shelest launched dozens of people-search services since 2010, including a still-active data broker called Nuwber that sells background reports on people. This seemed to contradict Onerep’s stated motto, “We believe that no one should compromise personal online security and get a profit from it.”

    Shelest released a lengthy statement (PDF) wherein he acknowledged maintaining an ownership stake in Nuwber, a consumer data broker he founded in 2015 — around the same time he started Onerep.

• Environment

  • James G ☛ Sustainable living

    I am at the stage of evaluating right now, of asking What can I do?, after which point I can start taking more concrete actions. I have just purchased a compost bin that I can use to store food waste — including coffee grounds! — before taking it out to the food waste bin. I am thinking about the foods I buy and alternatives that use less packaging.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Brunt of atmospheric river storm hits L.A.: Timing, evacuations, more

    There’s a “high risk of flooding, debris flow, damaging winds,” the weather service said. “Change travel plans and avoid roads on Thursday. Conditions could escalate quickly with little warning.” The weather service also suggested parking away from trees and charging up electronics.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Evacuation warnings issued in burn zones as major rainstorm slams into L.A.

    In Southern California this week, Kittell said the most likely outcome was “shallow” debris flows in burn scar areas, covering roads with mud. Thicker mudflows might be capable of immersing parked cars in mud.

    “There’s also a risk for more significant debris flows, where it starts to impact a few vulnerable structures,” Kittell said. “While that isn’t the most likely outcome, the risk is there.”

  • Vox ☛ Why the Los Angeles wildfires were so expensive

    The blazes killed 29 people and destroyed at least 16,000 structures, including homes, offices, shops, and public infrastructure. Angelenos are starting to get back to survey the damage, but it may be weeks before they can start rebuilding as cleanup crews first work to clear toxic debris. The destruction of some of the state’s most expensive mansions in communities like Pacific Palisades received much of the attention, but the fires also displaced people in predominantly middle- and working-class areas like Altadena and Pasadena, where the Eaton Fire burned through 9,400 buildings.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Register UK ☛ North Korea hits [cryptocurrency] wallets in NPM supply chain attack

      Carrying out a financially motivated string of attacks isn't the news here – North Korea's primary objective has long been to siphon money from enemy economies. The fresh finding is a JavaScript implant that hides itself in GitHub repositories and node package manager (NPM) packages typically used by [cryptocurrnecy] devs.

    • [Old] Amy Castor ☛ Texans versus bitcoin: Jackie Sawicky and the Texas Coalition Against Cryptomining – Amy Castor

      Riot already had an existing bitcoin mine in Milam County. This new project was an expansion on a grander scale.

      A voice in the crowd asked but why Navarro? “You have two very valuable resources,” Harris responded. There’s the Navarro switch — meaning Riot could plug itself directly into the state’s power grid — and plenty of fresh water for cooling.

      “He told us from the beginning we are coming here to exploit your resources,” Jackie said.

      Riot got national attention when it got $31.7 million in energy credits in August 2023 for not mining bitcoins. That money came out of ordinary Texans’ pockets. Welcome to the future of bitcoin mining.

    • [Old]Good Jobs First ☛ Data center

      Data centers require large amounts of capital investment, but, unlike manufacturing projects, they create few jobs. On average, the projects create just 30 to 50 permanent positions, while larger facilities may employ up to 200 people. The quality of those jobs is uneven. Google technicians, for example, tend to be hired through specialized temp agencies, and for a limited time only.

    • [Old] The Journal ☛ Ireland's data centres turning to fossil fuels after maxing out country's electricity grid

      The Journal Investigates has uncovered that over 135,000 tonnes of CO2 was emitted from these centres in the last five years from generators not on the electricity grid.

      This amount of CO2 is comparable to running roughly 33,750 cars for a year in terms of the climate pollution produced.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ The UK’s ‘turbocharged’ AI initiative — bringing data center noise to a village near you

      Bitcoin mining in the US is notorious for inflicting ridiculously noisy data centers on small towns across the country.

      We can bring these deafening benefits to towns and villages across the UK — as long as the data centers are labeled “AI.” The government is now accepting applications for AI enterprise zones — immune to local planning permission and green belt rules!

    • Henrique Dias ☛ Eurostar to London

      The advantage of the train is, most often than not, that you can just hop in the train and not spend much time as you need to do in an airport. However, since we live in Eindhoven, we need to first go to Rotterdam, do passport control and security. Only then board the train. So the time argument is actually not in our favor, for us. Nevertheless, we still chose to do it.

    • YLE ☛ Lapland's pricey hotels prompt airlines to send flight crew hours away to sleep

    • Piya Gehi ☛ Installing Ubuntu on a 2017 MBP - Power management

      I started by finding ways to see the temperature of my laptop, for which I found a package called lm-sensors. Before checking the temps, I ran sensors-detect and selected all of the default options.

    • DeSmog ☛ EU Defends Hiring Trump-Linked Oil Lobby Group

    • DeSmog ☛ Nigel Farage Spreads Far-Right Conspiracy Theory at Farming Protest

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Futurism ☛ Silicon Valley Software Engineers Horrified as They Can't Easily Find Jobs Anymore

    Flash forward to now, and those taps have run dry. A seemingly endless wave of mass layoffs is ravaging the tech industry as startup fails skyrocket and tech giants shovel their operating budgets into the AI furnace.

    And of all the workers devastated by the carnage, former tech workers in Silicon Valley are having a particularly rough go of it.

  • The Register UK ☛ Sophos lays off 6% of staff after Secureworks takeover

    In a statement to The Register, the infosec outfit told us the staff it’s let go are no longer needed now that Secureworks is no longer a public company. Sophos has also cut some roles that were duplicated across the two companies.

  • The Register UK ☛ Asahi Linux head quits, citing kernel leadership failure

    As we reported previously, a patch proposed by the Rust for Linux (R4L) project ran into opposition from kernel core maintainer Christoph Hellwig who didn't want to deal with the presented Rust driver abstraction. Impassioned debate ensued on and off the Linux kernel mailing list, and Martin asked Torvalds to make a decision about the patch.

    Instead, Torvalds publicly rebuked Martin and defended the Linux governance process.

  • The Index ☛ This Is the Age of the Coward

    The Age of the Coward is here, where America’s most powerful corporations, once eager to preach their values, now fold like cheap umbrellas at the first gust of political wind.

  • LRT ☛ ‘No information’ that Baltic Sea cable damage intentional – Lithuania’s intelligence chief

    Lithuania’s intelligence chief says there is as yet no evidence that underwater telecommunications and electricity cables in the Baltic Sea were damaged deliberately.

  • The Register UK ☛ Trump's NCD pick has never held a cybersecurity role

    Cairncross' only apparent exposure to cybersecurity policy and strategy - key responsibilities of the National Cyber Director - stems from his time as a senior visiting fellow at Purdue University's Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy. The institute, co-founded in 2021 by former Trump under-secretary of state and ex-DocuSign CEO Keith Krach, describes its mission as a bipartisan group aiming to "accelerate the innovation and adoption of trusted technologies to defeat … the weaponization of technology by authoritarian regimes."

  • New York Times ☛ Elon Musk’s X Settles Trump Lawsuit

    Elon Musk, now X’s owner and a close adviser to the president, reinstated Mr. Trump’s account shortly after acquiring the company in 2022. Mr. Musk has thrown his support behind Mr. Trump, donating more than $250 million to his campaign, and is now running a government cost-cutting initiative called the Department [sic] of Government Efficiency.

    The settlement further cements the relationship between Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump. Details of the agreement were not made public in court filings, but X and Mr. Trump notified the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday that they had agreed to dismiss the lawsuit. Both parties agreed to pay their own costs, according to a court filing.

  • New York Times ☛ OpenAI Questions Rationale of Elon Musk’s Bid to Control the Company

    The company is essentially accusing Mr. Musk of hypocrisy. In his lawsuit, he argued OpenAI must be governed by the nonprofit. Now, OpenAI contends, he is arguing the opposite.

    The OpenAI board has not yet formally rejected the bid.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New York Times ☛ For Trump and Fox News, New Policies Are Simply ‘Common Sense’

    • 404 Media ☛ AI Slop of Musk and Trump on TikTok Racks Up 700 Million Views

      Motivational videos on TikTok using AI-generated voices of Trump, Musk, and other celebrities are racking up millions of views.

    • RTL ☛ Strengthened code of conduct: Facebook, TikTok harden EU commitment to tackle disinformation -- but not X

      Missing from the list of 42 platforms -- including those owned by Google, Meta and Microsoft -- who committed to a strengthened code of conduct was tech billionaire Elon Musk's social media platform X.

      Musk withdrew his platform -- then known as Twitter -- from the original code in May 2023 and he has repeatedly railed against the European Union's content moderation rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA).

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Futurism ☛ Allstate Is Demanding We Delete These Quotes by Its Exec About How It's Using AI to Write Insurance Emails

    Meanwhile, Allstate's media team continued to badger us, sending a lengthy table of requested changes, many of which involved deleting or altering statements by the company's own exec, Jeevanjee (they were also very unhappy with a comparison to UnitedHealthcare, another insurer that's reportedly deployed AI to deal with claims.) In fact, they sent this preposterous table laying out exactly which quotes they wanted modified or removed: [...]

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • VOA News ☛ Jailed Georgian journalist: 'I will not bow to this regime'

    But media watchdogs believe her arrest is connected to her journalism.

  • CPJ ☛ In Italy, 4 journalists shot at while reporting on alleged child abuse

    An unknown individual shot at public broadcaster RAI1’s reporter Vito Francesco Paglia and camera operators Stefano Currò and Riccardo Nava, and private channel Canale 5 reporter Vincenzo Rubano after they rang the doorbell of a relative of the children in the southern Italian town of Paola, received no answer, and were walking back to their car. No one was injured.

  • CPJ ☛ Honduran military chief files defamation complaints against 12 news outlets

    Hondudiario’s editorial team told Reportar sin Medio, a Honduran news site, that the request came following its Oct. 30, 2024 report on internal divisions within the Honduran Armed Forces, including allegations that Hernández’s received government-funded medical treatment abroad for a heart condition.

    The Honduras prosecutor’s office accepted the complaints, and law enforcement notified newsrooms that they were being investigated in late January 2025, La Prensa reported.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Trump Continues Ban of Associated Press Over ‘Gulf of America’

    AP said that the president blocked their reporters from an event on Tuesday after the news agency refused to change its editorial style on the Gulf of Mexico, which Trump has ordered be renamed the “Gulf of America.” The outlet said that a second AP reporter was later denied access from an evening event in the Diplomatic Reception Room.

    “It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism,” said AP’s Executive Editor Julie Pace in a statement issued Tuesday. “Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.”

  • [Repeat, Updated] RFERL ☛ RFE/RL Journalist Kuznechyk, Two Others, Released From Prison In Belarus

    "We can confirm the safe release of one American and two individuals from Belarus," White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters on February 12. Leavitt did not name the American who had been released, but said it was "a remarkable victory on the heels of Marc Fogel returning to America last night."

  • CPJ ☛ CPJ, partners call on European Commission to hold India to account over rights crisis

    The letter makes recommendations and urges European Union officials to “be clear that progress on bilateral relations will be linked to concrete and measurable progress on these pressing issues.”

  • CPJ ☛ EU Should Take Action On Urgent Human Rights Concerns In India [PDF]

    As the College of Commissioners prepares to visit India amid efforts to upgrade the strategic partnership between the European Union (EU) and India, our organizations urge EU leaders to step up their engagement with their Indian counterparts in light of the profound human rights crisis in the country.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Techdirt ☛ Mississippi’s Top Court Says Rights Violations Are OK If Cops Don’t Know How To Do Their Jobs

    The city argued it had a justifiable reason for these checkpoints — during which occupants were questioned and drug dogs performed open-air sniffs: drug interdiction. Not good enough, said the Supreme Court.

    And yet, law enforcement agencies seem convinced they can still do this sort of thing. They can’t. Not legally. But they can get away with it, especially if they hand the job to the officer with the least amount of experience.

    Once again, ignorance of the law is the best excuse… at least if you’re a cop. That’s the upshot of this Mississippi Supreme Court decision [PDF], brought to our attention by FourthAmendment.com.

  • The Nation ☛ How Amazon Is Taking Its Union-Busting to New Heights

    Leading up to the election, Amazon has deployed its now-familiar union-busting arsenal to quash the worker-led movement at the nearly 5,000-person warehouse. Managers and HR professionals from across the country have flown in to patrol the shop floor and repeat anti-union talking points in small group meetings and warehouse-wide town halls. The company erected metal barricades between CAUSE’s tent and the warehouse. An anti-union video plays on an endless loop in the break room. “This place is starting to turn into a labor camp,” said Italo Medelius, an RDU1 worker and organizer with CAUSE.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Department of Education Halts Thousands of Civil Rights Investigations

    This week, the Trump administration terminated more than $900 million in contracts that mostly focused on education research and data on learning and the country’s schools. The cuts were made at the behest of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting crew, known as the Department [sic] of Government Efficiency, which said it also ended dozens of training grants for educators that it deemed wasteful.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Remote-work military spouses at agencies spared from Trump's return-to-office order

    Spouses of active-duty U.S. military members employed by federal agencies with remote-work agreements will be exempt from the Trump administration’s return-to-work policy, the Office of Personnel Management said in a memo released Wednesday.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders to kick off Trump pushback tour in Nebraska, Iowa

    The release said he would highlight the ways that Trump and his DOGE partner, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk, are threatening working people. He said Americans might not yet understand how close they are to authoritarianism, oligarchy and kleptocracy.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • CBC ☛ This woman's cellphone number was given to another customer — without her consent

    An international student in Cape Breton says a recent transfer of her cellphone number — without her consent — highlights potential security risks for all mobile phone users in Canada.

    On the morning of Dec. 30, 2024, Huijun Long received a notification on the Virgin Plus app that her phone number with the company had been cancelled. Turns out, her number had been "mistakenly transferred" to a Bell Mobility account.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump FCC Tries To Bully Comcast Away From Its Already Flimsy Dedication To Civil Rights

    Carr this week leaked word to right wing propaganda mill Newsmax that he’s tasked the FCC’s enforcement bureau with launching an investigation into whether Comcast is breaking any laws (they’re not) by still having references to diversity initiatives on their website: [...]

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Howard Oakley ☛ Do M4 chips have a new security processor?

    The first Macs with a secure enclave and its processor, the SEP, were released over eight years ago, in the MacBook Pro 2016 models with a T1 chip. They were quickly succeeded by the iMac Pro at the end of 2017, with the T2 chip that became universal across the last models of Intel Macs. Inside each T2 chip is a 32-bit Arm core running sepOS to store and handle encryption keys and support other security features.

    When Apple released the first M1 Macs, they too came with their own SEP, this time integrated into the main chip, but still running sepOS. Apple provides extensive details of each SEP used up to May 2024 in its Platform Security Guide.

    During kernel boot of an M4 Pro running macOS Sequoia 15.3.1, the SEP writes a useful commentary of its startup to the Unified log. The SEP’s key store is started about 5 seconds after the initial system boot entry, and before the other CPU cores are started up. SEP boot takes place a little later, and it then starts handling messages. Support for biometric authentication follows, as does key unwrapping for apfs. Although the SEP isn’t loquacious, it is far from silent in the log.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• MacRumors ☛ Apple Faces Potential App Store Antitrust Probe in China

  China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) is said to have been critically examining Apple's practices and holding discussions with the company since last year, specifically about its 30% commission on in-app purchases and restrictions on external payment services, according to the outlet's sources.

  Chinese regulators are said to be particularly focused on whether Apple's fees for local developers are unreasonably high. They're also examining if the company's prohibition of third-party app stores and payment methods stifles competition and negatively impacts Chinese consumers. "If Apple resists making changes, the government may launch a formal investigation," Bloomberg's sources said.

• Trademarks

  • The Register UK ☛ Attempt to trademark Hosted WordPress in USA derailed

    After a failed bid to convince competing hosting firm WP Engine to pay a trademark licence fee for the use of the word "WordPress," Mullenweg last September launched a fierce campaign against the rival firm. A lawsuit followed and the matter remains the subject of ongoing legal action, plus further feuding.

  • Right of Publicity

    • The Independent UK ☛ Scarlett Johansson slams AI after fake video of celebrities giving Kanye West the finger goes viral

      In a statement to People, Johansson outlined her objections to the deepfake video regardless of its intentions: “It has been brought to my attention by family members and friends, that an AI-generated video featuring my likeness, in response to an antisemitic view, has been circulating online and gaining traction.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Scarlett Johansson slams deepfake AI video meant to shame Ye

      Scarlett Johansson, Steven Spielberg, Adam Sandler and several other Jewish celebrities assembled in matching T-shirts to shame Ye (formerly Kanye West) for his latest antisemitic outbursts — at least that’s what a self-proclaimed “generative AI expert” fantasized this week.

    • CNN ☛ Scarlett Johansson calls on lawmakers to address ‘imminent dangers’ of AI after fake video goes viral

      Johansson’s statement continued, “I have unfortunately been a very public victim of AI, but the truth is that the threat of AI affects each and every one of us. There is a 1000 foot wave coming regarding AI that several progressive countries, not including the United States, have responded to in a responsible manner. It is terrifying that the US government is paralyzed when it comes to passing legislation that protects all of its citizens against the imminent dangers of AI.”

    • NBC ☛ Scarlett Johansson speaks out after fake viral videos of celebrities fighting Ye's antisemitism

      Representatives for X and Meta, which owns Instagram, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. NBC News has reached out to representatives for other celebrities who appear in the fake video.

      Since the rise of widespread and accessible generative AI technology, Johansson has joined a growing pool of celebrities whose likenesses have been used without their knowledge or permission.

    • BBC ☛ Scarlett Johansson calls out 'misuse of AI' over deepfake Kanye West protest video

      In a statement to People, the Black Widow actress said: "It has been brought to my attention by family members and friends, that an AI-generated video featuring my likeness, in response to an antisemitic view, has been circulating online and gaining traction.

    • [Repeat] Digital Music News ☛ ByteDance Removes Eerily-Realistic Taylor Swift AI Performances

      Under the heading ‘Singing’ on the official GitHub page, ByteDance says, “OmniHuman can support various music styles and accommodate multiple body poses and singing forms. It can handle high-pitched songs and display different motion styles for different types of music. Please remember to select the highest video quality. The generated video quality also highly depends on the quality of the reference image.”

      Most of the videos OmniHuman has as examples of its generation on this page are hard to tell the video is AI. Some hallmarks of AI content do remain, such as bokeh and blurry backgrounds, strange motions and movement that appear slightly jerky, and slight mouth movements that don’t quite match up with what’s being said.

• Copyrights

  • Alex Ewerlöf ☛ Gen AI assimilation

    I’m sure this work will be scraped in no time and embedded into AI models but that’s besides the point.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Record Labels Target 20 ISPs in Pursuit of BitTorrent Pirates and Damages

    Predictions of a looming music industry apocalypse, fueled by users of LimeWire and similar peer-to-peer apps, have long-since been replaced by all-you-can-eat music services. In Japan, most formats are celebrating double-digit growth, and even the CD market is holding its own. Meanwhile, the major record labels have targeted 20 ISPs to obtain the personal details of BitTorrent pirates, seeking damages for infringements dating back over two years.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ DAZN Escrows €35m TV Rights Bill as Football Piracy Row Boils Over

    French football clubs held emergency talks after broadcaster DAZN withheld millions of euros in TV rights payments due this month. The dispute concerns DAZN's claims that Ligue 1 football league body LFP failed to suppress piracy and fell short in other areas too. Hopes of an amicable solution faded when DAZN paid 50% of the sum owed for February and put the other €35 million into an escrow account. LFP responded by launching legal action in Paris.