Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Leftovers

  • Zack Apiratitham ☛ Blog Questions Challenge - Zack Apiratitham

    The first time I remember doing something somewhat close to what you'd consider blogging was when I left Thailand to attend high school in the US as an exchange student. I never kept a diary or a journal growing up, and I didn't have a blog either. A year or two prior, I started getting into English language books, specifically the Pendragon series, which is presented as a bunch of journal entries. Inspired by that and also as a way to practice my English writing1, I chronicled my solo, multi-day journey to Michigan. In a Microsoft Word document...

    I probably would have published that on a blog if I had known what those were (or how to create one), but I wasn't at all tech savvy back then and was barely on the internet. So the file just sat on my old laptop's hard drive, and I'm sad to say I lost that file a long time ago.

    The first time I actually published a blog post was a few years after that. You can find it in the archive. I was still trying to improve my English writing (and it clearly shows) but I also wanted to share my experiences as an international college student. And to also share my photography since I had just started getting into it back then.

  • Robert Birming ☛ What's an expert?

    Perhaps persistence, patience, and focus are the hallmarks of an expert.

    I don't know. I'm not an expert.

  • Guy LeCharles Gonzalez ☛ Why keep blogging in 2025?

    Fast-forward to 2025, blogs have been declared dead multiple times, “replaced” by Twitter and newsletters that are really just blogs with email and paywall functionality baked in. And yet, here I still am, blogging consistently (but not too hard) for the past few years. And I’m not alone.

    But why? If you’ve known me for a while, you know a Cluetrain quote is coming!

  • Andy Hawthorne ☛ Why Buzzwords Kill Creativity

    Buzzwords don’t clarify—they obscure. They’re a smokescreen. They stop people from asking, “Hang on, what does that actually mean?”

  • Science

    • The Atlantic ☛ The Erasing of American Science

      The new administration seems unlikely to abandon science in its entirety—research into space exploration or artificial intelligence may well continue without friction and even flourish under Trump’s leadership. In an executive order released yesterday, the White House reaffirmed its commitment to tackling chronic disease, a priority of Kennedy’s. But the new administration can pursue certain sectors of science, and talk up scientific values, while still diminishing the research enterprise as a whole. Science and government are now weeks into what will likely be a prolonged battle over how research can and will be done in the United States.

    • Ray Gardner ☛ How "histogram diff" actually works

      I’ve been interested in file comparison (diff) algorithms for quite a while. I’d assumed for some time that the classical approach, which uses a longest-common-subsequence (LCS) algorithm, is the best way to do this. The original Unix diff used an algorithm by James W. Hunt and M.D. (Doug) McIlroy. After Eugene Myers published his O(ND) algorithm in 1986, it was adopted, with adaptation and variations, as the most common algorithm for file comparison, in gnu diff and many other places. For a long time, the Myers algorithm seemed to be the best solution for diff and diff-like programs.

    • Ray Gardner ☛ More on "histogram diff", and a working program

      This is a follow-on to my earlier post explaining the details of how histogram diff works, including a textual description of the algorithm and pseudocode.

      The original version of histogram diff was implemented jgit by the late Shawn Pearce in 2010, with the comment that “HistogramDiff is an alternative implementation of patience diff, performing a search over all matching locations and picking the longest common subsequence that has the lowest occurrence count. If there are unique common elements, its behavior is identical to that of patience diff.”

    • Chiark ☛ XOR

      Recently I was called on to explain the ‘XOR’ operator to somebody who vaguely knew of its existence, but didn’t have a good intuition for what it was useful for and how it behaved.

      For me, this was one of those ‘future shock’ moments when you realise the world has moved on. When I got started in computers, you had to do low-level bit twiddling to get anything very interesting done, so you pretty much couldn’t avoid learning about XOR. But these days, to a high-level programmer, it’s much more of an optional thing, and you can perfectly well not know much about it.

      So I collected some thoughts together and gave a lecture on XOR. Slightly to my own surprise, I was able to spend a full hour talking about it – and then over the course of the next couple of weeks I remembered several other things I could usefully have mentioned.

    • Peter Sax ☛ Algebraic effects are a functional approach to manage side effects

      Algebraic effects are a convenient abstraction for modelling the interaction between a program and the world. Programs are only a set of instructions. It is the job of a computer to run those instructions.

      There are several benefits to algebraic effects.

    • Blintz Base ☛ Why cryptography is not based on NP-complete problems

      Cryptographic schemes are based on the computational difficulty of solving some ‘hard’ problem. For example, RSA (specifically, RSA-2048) is based on the difficulty of a problem like this: The RSA Problem

      I generate two large, random prime numbers, pp and qq, each of length 1024 bits. I then give you the product n=p⋅qn=p⋅q. Find pp.

  • Career/Education

    • Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Max Kapur

      This is the 77th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Max Kapur and his blog, maxkapur.com

    • Lou Plummer ☛ Working in a Village

      Most of my working life has been spent working in education, mostly for a K-12 school system in a large, mostly rural county but also for a small, private university. The goal of both organizations was conveying knowledge to build an educated citizenry. There's a certain amount of bureaucracy involved and by their very nature, bureaucracies sometimes lose sight of their intended purpose in their struggle to be self-perpetuating. Mostly, though, the people I've worked with have put the focus on doing what it takes to help students learn.

    • Vox ☛ Elon Musk is using the anti-teacher playbook against the civil service

      The aggressive campaign against the civil service parallels a long history of attacks against another type of public sector worker far more familiar to most Americans: teachers.

      The current portrayal of civil servants as “deep state” bureaucrats pushing far-left ideology draws from the same playbook conservatives have long deployed against the 5.4 million Americans who teach in K-12 public schools. Examining these movements together reveals striking similarities in both rhetoric and strategy — and offers clues to the longer-term dangers ahead.

  • Hardware

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Intern Finds Only Known Surviving Copy of 'The Heart of Lincoln,' a Silent Film Thought to Be Lost to History

      Many silent movies were printed on unstable nitrate film stock, which is also highly flammable. “It deteriorated, and back then the studios weren’t that concerned with preserving it,” Lauro tells Newsday. “Film was ephemera.”

    • PC World ☛ How long does data last on a flash drive?

      All in all, this does not make a USB stick the ideal storage medium for long-term storage of important data — certainly not as the only method. You cannot avoid regular backups on other storage media, such as an external drive. If you really want to back up data over a truly long period of time, you should even consider using archival tapes or optical media.

  • Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

    • SBS ☛ Sydney nurses' alleged anti-Israeli remarks 'abhorrent', Muslim groups say

      The two nurses — Ahmed Rashid Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — were stood down after a video shared on social media appeared to show them saying they would refuse to treat Israeli patients, and would "kill them" if they came under their care.

    • TMZ ☛ Luigi Mangione Breaks Silence With New Website

      Mangioni's legal team says they created the website "due to the extraordinary volume of inquiries and outpouring of support."

      His camp says the goal here is to "provide answers to frequently asked questions, accurate information about his cases, and dispel misinformation. The intent is to share factual information regarding the unprecedented, multiple prosecutions against him."

    • Mandy Brown ☛ Make life possible

      That is, screens and all the technologies that accompany them are tools to make the world seem more predictable and less uncertain: infinite scroll; autoplay; the always-on “live” news cycle; the steady drumbeat of notifications; the apps that summon servants to our doors, hiding all the labor and improvisation and accidents (often involving blood and bone) that go into moving atoms from one place to another. These tools train us in convenience, which is training in predictability, in the facade of certainty. And when that facade inevitably breaks, we often find ourselves at sea.

    • The Nation ☛ Trump’s 51st-State Plan Would Be a Literal Death Sentence for Canadians

      Then, Trump took his fantasy to even more ludicrous heights. He claimed that, as citizens of the US, “Canadian citizens would…have much better medical [care].”

      Seriously?

      Unlike the United States, where our for-profit healthcare system regularly fails to provide quality care for all Americans, Canada has a publicly funded healthcare system that provides “universal coverage for medically necessary healthcare services provided on the basis of need, rather than the ability to pay.”

  • Proprietary

    • Futurism ☛ Jeep Drivers Bombarded With Ads for Extended Warranty on Their Center Console Displays

      According to The Drive's sleuthing, it's not a new issue, with the earliest complaints cropping up two years ago. But here's the most baffling part: the owner claims they had already reached 36,000 miles driven in their Jeep — the maximum limit the advertised warranty would cover. In other words, they were getting hounded for nothing. "I hit 36,000 miles last week," the owner said in a reply. "It started coming up yesterday."

    • Wired ☛ Top US Election Security Watchdog Forced to Stop Election Security Work

      In a memo sent Friday to all CISA employees and obtained by WIRED, CISA’s acting director, Bridget Bean, said she was ordering “a review and assessment” of every position at the agency related to election security and countering mis- and disinformation, “as well as every election security and [mis-, dis-, and malinformation] product, activity, service, and program that has been carried out” since the federal government designated election systems as critical infrastructure in 2017.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Salt Typhoon remains active, hits more telecom networks via Cisco routers

      Salt Typhoon’s ongoing attack spree underscores the enduring challenge global cyber authorities and network defenders confront in trying to thwart the nation-state group’s activities. U.S. and White House officials in December warned they may never know if the group has been completely booted from networks.

      Attackers primarily targeted internet-exposed Cisco network routers over the past couple months, according to Recorded Future. Tracked as RedMike by the company, the group has attempted to exploit more than 1,000 Cisco routers worldwide — focusing mainly on those running in telecom networks — since early December.

    • The Recorded Future ☛ RedMike (Salt Typhoon) Exploits Vulnerable Cisco Devices of Global Telecommunications Providers [PDF]

      RedMike has attempted to exploit more than 1,000 Cisco devices globally. The group likely compiled a list of target devices based on their association with telecommunications providers' networks. Insikt Group also observed RedMike targeting devices associated with universities in Argentina, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Thailand, the United States US, and Vietnam. RedMike possibly targeted these universities to access research in areas related to telecommunications, engineering, and technology, particularly at institutions like UCLA and TU Delft. In addition to this activity, in mid-December 2024, RedMike also carried out a reconnaissance of multiple IP addresses owned by a Myanmar-based telecommunications provider, Mytel.

    • Security Week ☛ Salt Typhoon Targeting Old Cisco Vulnerabilities in Fresh Telecom Hacks

      Specifically, the group targeted Cisco switches and routers vulnerable to CVE-2023-20198 and CVE-2023-20273, two critical issues in the IOS XE platform that were disclosed in October 2023, after they had been exploited as zero-days.

      Since early December 2024, “RedMike has attempted to exploit over 1,000 [Internet]-facing Cisco network devices worldwide,” likely using a list of devices associated with telecom providers’ networks, Recorded Future notes in a fresh report (PDF).

    • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

      • Sean Goedecke ☛ Lessons on thinking from large language models

        LLMs often exhibit “error reinforcement”. When you’re trying to get them to solve a tricky problem, sometimes their first mistake stays in the context and pushes them to keep repeating it, no matter what you say. If you start again in a fresh chat with a slightly tweaked prompt, they avoid the trap. Humans do this too. When you feel like you’re in a loop and making the same mistakes, clear your own context window: get up, go do things that are the opposite of writing code, and fill your short-term memory with completely different content. When you pick the problem back up you might have a better chance at fixing it.

      • Rlang ☛ What’s Artificial Intelligence all about?

        One idea they liked was when I told them: If you understand linear regression, you understand Chat GPT. While this is obviously a simplification, I managed to convince them it is not far from the truth. If simple linear modeling is about finding the best two parameters (a slope and an intercept) to approximate a function, AI is about finding the best millions to billions of parameters to approximate a function. In this blog post I will explain one of the basic and most important concepts of modern AI – Gradient Descent using simple (as possible) terms and some R code.

      • Bruce Schneier ☛ AI and Civil Service Purges

        Even if Congress were motivated to fight back against Trump and Musk, or against a future president seeking to bulldoze the will of the legislature, the absolute power to command AI agents would make it easier to subvert legislative intent. AI has the power to diminish representative politics. Written law is never fully determinative of the actions of government—there is always wiggle room for presidents, appointed leaders, and civil servants to exercise their own judgment. Whether intentional or not, whether charitably or not, each of these actors uses discretion. In human systems, that discretion is widely distributed across many individuals—people who, in the case of career civil servants, usually outlast presidencies.

      • The Register UK ☛ AI summaries turn real news into nonsense, BBC finds

        But which chatbot performed worst? "34 percent of Gemini, 27 percent of Copilot, 17 percent of Perplexity, and 15 percent of ChatGPT responses were judged to have significant issues with how they represented the BBC content used as a source," the Beeb reported. "The most common problems were factual inaccuracies, sourcing, and missing context."

      • India Times ☛ AI-generated content raises risks of more bank runs: UK study

        The study pointed out that generative AI could create fake news stories about customer money being unsafe or memes mocking security, which could spread on social media through paid ads. Following Silicon Valley Bank's collapse in 2023, where $42 billion was withdrawn in 24 hours, banks and regulators are increasingly concerned about bank runs fuelled by social media.

    • Social Control Media

      • Deutsche Welle ☛ YouTube: From failed dating site to pop culture juggernaut

        And yet it began as a quirky idea by three former PayPal employees — Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen — who activated their domain on Valentine's Day 2005, hazy about its direction.

        At his University of Illinois commencement speech back in 2007, the German-born Karim explained, "We didn't even know how to describe our new product. To generate interest, we just said it was a new kind of dating site. We even had a slogan for it: 'Tune in, Hook up'." No one did.

        Even putting out ads on Craigslist in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where they offered to pay women $20 to upload videos of themselves to the site, didn't work.

      • El País ☛ YouTube turns 20: What happened to Jawed Karim, founder and author of the first video?

        While his partners built the company and became [Internet] and print celebrities, he went back to taking classes and worked toward a degree in computer science, a degree he had left unfinished at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign after taking correspondence classes. Roelof Botha, the Sequoia Capital partner who led the investment that catapulted the site to stardom, told The New York Times that he would have preferred Karim to stay: “He was very, very creative. We did everything we could to convince him to put the contract on hold.”

        For Karim, the academic world apparently held more appeal than running a business that has had to navigate a path littered with copyright complaints and issues with content regulation. YouTube has also survived the rise of other social networks such as Instagram and TikTok. He now lives in Palo Alto and rarely makes public appearances.

  • Privatisation/Privateering

    • CBC ☛ The U.S. is moving to expand school choice. Could it impact Canada?

      Free, local public schools are the U.S. default (making up about 83 per cent of elementary and high school enrolment), but other options include private schools (about 10 per cent), charter schools (about seven per cent) and homeschooling. This split varies by state. Proponents of school choice [sic] support government funding of these alternative options, while opponents decry further erosion of the public system.

  • Security

    • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

      • TruthOut ☛ “DOGE” Government Website Was Temporarily Alterable by Pretty Much Anyone

        The breaches by at least two individuals showcase the recklessness with which DOGE has been ripping through federal agencies and departments. Since President Donald Trump created DOGE through a legally dubious executive order, it has placed unlawful spending freezes on various programs that don’t align with the president’s far right agenda. It has also furloughed thousands of federal workers, ostensibly to cut wasteful spending and weed out supposed “fraud” within the government.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • EPIC ☛ Kroger’s Surveillance Pricing Harms Consumers and Raises Prices, With or Without Facial Recognition

        Surveillance pricing is a growing practice that relies on collecting vast amounts of data from customers, making inferences about customer characteristics, and using those inferences to inform the price each customer pays for products—all to maximize profits. Companies engaged in surveillance pricing violate consumer privacy by surreptitiously collecting data about consumers and using it for unexpected and out-of-context purposes, threatening their autonomy by covertly influencing their choices, and extracting more from what customers ultimately pay for products.

        Recently, Kroger caught the attention of lawmakers and the media over its potential use of facial recognition to enhance its surveillance pricing capabilities and its use of electronic shelving labels (ESLs) to profile and target customers with higher prices. Although Kroger has since claimed that it has no plans to identify customers’ faces at digital displays, the grocery chain has been using ESLs for years.

      • NBC ☛ China's DeepSeek AI is watching what you type

        All large language models, or LLMs — the type of AI-driven advanced chatbot made famous by OpenAI’s ChatGPT — are built by first amassing massive amounts of data, and work in part by collecting what people type into them. DeepSeek, though more efficient than ChatGPT, is no different.

        Under Chinese law, all companies must cooperate with and assist with Chinese intelligence efforts, potentially exposing data held by Chinese companies to Chinese government surveillance. That system differs from the U.S., where, in most cases, American agencies usually need a court order or warrant to access information held by American tech companies.

      • The Register UK ☛ US lawmakers fight UK’s Apple iCloud backdoor

        US lawmakers want newly confirmed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to back up her tough talk on backdoors. They're urging her to push back on the UK government's reported order for Apple to weaken iCloud security for government access.

        Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ) sent a letter [PDF] to Gabbard today arguing that if Apple complies with the unconfirmed demand from the UK Home Office, it would jeopardize the security of both US citizens and government data.

      • The Record ☛ Texas investigating DeepSeek for violating data privacy law | The Record from Recorded Future News

        Texas on Friday announced it is investigating the Chinese AI company DeepSeek for allegedly violating the state’s data privacy law.

        Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office also has requested relevant documents from Google and Apple, seeking their “analysis” of the inexpensive and open source DeepSeek app and asking what documentation they required from DeepSeek before they made the app publicly available for download on their app stores.

      • The Record ☛ USAID staff accuses DOGE of jeopardizing safety, accessing security clearance data

        A new lawsuit sheds light on the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) work at USAID, with some employees alleging that DOGE workers had root access to computer systems containing security clearance data, including foreign contacts for an employee who deploys to conflict zones.

        DOGE team members also are able to access Social Security numbers, passport information, personal references, financial records, tattoo descriptions and safety pass phrases, but do not have the security clearances needed to handle this “extremely confidential information,” the lawsuit says.

      • International Business Times ☛ UK To Fine £100,000 For Misuse Of Ring Doorbell Camera - Here's What You Should Know

        The firm cautions that if your CCTV records images or videos of people outside your property lines, such as a neighbour's yard or home, common areas, or public streets, it must comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules.

        Failure to comply could result in action from the Information Commissioner's Office, risking fines as high as £100,000, plus possible lawsuits from anyone shown in your CCTV recordings. According to The Express, businesses that don't comply could be fined up to £17.5 million.

      • Express ☛ Warning issued to anyone with a Ring doorbell | UK | News | Express.co.uk

        The firm warns that if your CCTV films or captures images of people outside of your property boundary, such as a neighbour’s garden or home, shared spaces or public areas, then it must be GDPR compliant.

        If it doesn’t comply, you could be subject to action by the Information Commissioner’s Office and risk fines of up to £100,000 as well as potential legal action by any affected individuals that appear in your CCTV images or videos. As for businesses, if these don’t comply they could be subject to fines as much as £17.5 million.

      • India Times ☛ Alibaba chairman says firm will partner with Apple for AI features on Chinese iPhones

        Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai said that the Chinese tech company will partner with Apple on AI for iPhones sold in the China market, while speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Thursday.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Latvia ☛ Nordics, Baltics say they will stand by Ukraine / Article

      Latvia, together with the other Nordic and Baltic countries (known as the 'NB8' format), issued a statement February 14 expressing continued support for Ukraine. It was signed on Latvia's behalf by Prime Minister Evika Siliņa along with her counterparts from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden. The text is reproduced in full below.

    • The Local SE ☛ Sweden jails man for joining Islamic State in landmark conviction

      A Swedish court on Friday sentenced a man to three years in jail for joining the Islamic State group, the country's first conviction since new legislation was introduced banning participation in a terrorist group.

    • VOA News ☛ Intelligence agencies close in on Islamic State caliph

      A growing number of countries think they have unmasked the man running the Islamic State terror group’s global operations.

      A report issued this week by the United Nations Sanctions Monitoring Team, based on U.N. member state intelligence, said there is “growing confidence” that the IS caliph is Abdul Qadir Mumin, who also heads the terror group’s branch in Somalia.

    • Techdirt ☛ DOGE’s ‘Genius’ Coders Launch Website So Full Of Holes, Anyone Can Write To It

      The story here is that DOGE — Elon Musk’s collection of supposed coding “geniuses” brought in to “disrupt” government inefficiency — finally launched their official website. And what they delivered is a masterclass in how not to build government infrastructure. One possibility is that they’re brilliant disruptors breaking all the rules to make things better. Another possibility is that they have no idea what they’re doing.

    • Wired ☛ The DOGE Squad Is Squandering a Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity

      If any of those former officials really believed that Musk was going to run with the opportunity to constructively reform the government, those fantasies have now been shattered. Musk and DOGE brought in a team of young techies and experienced executives who could have seized the moment to focus on making government work better. But to date they have used their access and power to indiscriminately drain the federal workforce and defund programs for ideological reasons, seemingly without giving even casual thought to the consequences. Yes, Musk professes to be a champion of the people against the bureaucratic state: “If the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?” he asked during a bizarre Oval Office appearance this week while Trump looked on and Musk’s 4-year-old son X fidgeted. But the actions actually taken by DOGE don’t sync with this sentiment, especially when the moves seem to contravene measures passed by Congress and signed into law. That’s not terribly democratic. “I think government is a good thing, and it needed massive transformation, far more quickly than anyone in political leadership had any appetite for,” Pahlka tells me. “Since we didn't do it, this seems to be what we're getting.”

    • The Philadelphia Inquirer ☛ Trump’s Russian appeasement is a betrayal of Ukraine and European allies | Opinion

      The building housed Adolf Hitler’s Munich offices in the 1930s. Behind those windows, in Hitler’s private study, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain negotiated the notorious Munich Agreement, in which the führer was allowed to bite off a chunk of Czechoslovakia. Accepting that aggression was supposed to end Germany’s passion for land grabs, supposedly to feed the needs of the German people.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Unions lack standing to challenge ‘deferred resignation,’ judge rules, voiding deadline pause

      Unions challenging the Trump administration’s “deferred resignation” offer to government workers lack the standing to do so, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled Wednesday.

      The decision eliminated the temporary pause on the deadline for workers to accept the offer and denied the unions’ attempt to seek a longer-term hold on the deadline through a preliminary injunction.

    • Hamilton Nolan ☛ They Are a Minority

      Without minimizing the potential for the utter destruction of the rule of law in this country—a genuine possibility!—I want to make two basic points that may be helpful in restoring a little fire to everyone who does not care to live in a fascist state. First: the political faction carrying out the Trump-Musk agenda right now does not have the support of the majority of the public. Far from it. And second: the fraction of the public that is happy with the agenda currently being enacted is going to get smaller for the foreseeable future.

    • Darren Goossens ☛ Commandant of Auschwitz by Rudolf Hoess (or Höss, Höß, Hoeß)

      This is nonfiction with an unreliable narrator. Höß does not desperately try to justify his actions or pretend ignorance (impossible in his position), but he elides. He continually comments on his attempts to ameliorate the conditions in the camps, yet a footnote by the editor points out that conditions improved under the next commandant. He omits episodes that a cursory web search digs up, like forcing prisoners dressed in rags to stand at attention in subzero temperatures (many died). He may well believe every word he writes, but that does not make them true. Some of the text is doubtless true, some is doubtless wrong but truthful, some is doubtless lies, but which is which?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Islamist motive debated in Germany after attack in Munich

      The Public Prosecutor General's Office in Munich stated that the suspected perpetrator appears to have been motivated by Islamism. After the attack, the man is said to have shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God [sic] is great"), said Gabriele Tilmann, the senior public prosecutor. She added, however, that there was no evidence to suggest that he was part of an Islamist network. An investigation has been opened by the Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism in Bavaria and a special commission.

    • Associated Press ☛ Prosecutors see an Islamic extremist motive in the Munich car-ramming attack

      Prosecutor Gabriele Tilmann said that the suspect said “Allahu Akbar,” or “God [sic] is great,” to police and then prayed after his arrest — which prompted a department that investigates extremism and terror to take on the case immediately.

    • BBC ☛ Dozens injured in suspected car ramming attack in Munich

      For Germans there were immediate reminders of an attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg less than two months ago that killed six people and injured 300 others.

    • SCMP ☛ Suspect in Munich car ramming had ‘Islamist orientation’: police | South China Morning Post

      Initial assessments of evidence seized from electronic devices belonging to the suspect showed a “certain Islamist orientation”, police spokesman Guido Limmer told reporters.

    • 404 Media ☛ Anyone Can Push Updates to the DOGE.gov Website

      The doge.gov website that was spun up to track Elon Musk’s cuts to the federal government is insecure and pulls from a database that can be edited by anyone, according to two separate people who found the vulnerability and shared it with 404 Media. One coder added at least two database entries that are visible on the live site and say “this is a joke of a .gov site” and “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN -roro.”

    • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Returns—Apple & Google Restore Downloads

      According to app data analytics firm Sensor Tower, around 52% of TikTok downloads last year came from the Apple App Store. Google Play was responsible for the other 48%—so the platform is easily split between both iOS and Android users.

    • Digital Camera World ☛ TikTok has finally returned to Apple and Google app stores in the US – but for how long?

      But while the news is welcome for both fans of the platform and content creators earning an income from the app, the future of the app is still uncertain in the US. A bipartisan measure passed last year required parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok by January 19 or face a US ban, citing national security concerns over the app’s current China-based ownership.

    • The Independent UK ☛ TikTok returns to Apple and Google app stores in the US

      TikTok has long faced troubles in the U.S., with the U.S. government claiming that its Chinese ownership and access to the data of millions of Americans makes it a national security risk.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ TikTok returns to US app stores following ban suspension

      Apple and Google reportedly received the legal assurances they had sought in the form of a letter from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. According to NPR, the letter states that the U.S. Justice Department won’t prosecute the companies for distributing TikTok.

      Legal experts have pointed out that Apple and Google could potentially still be liable to fines down the road. The penalties outlined in the sale-or-ban law have a statute of limitation of five years, one year beyond Trump’s term.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ TikTok returns to US app stores weeks after Trump delays ban

      It was not immediately clear what Trump was referring to when he said "90 days," as his executive order pushed back the ban by 75 days.

    • Mike Brock ☛ The Velvet Glove and the Dying Constitution - by Mike Brock

      This bloodless, technocratic view of law—divorced from its moral foundations—is how democracies die in the 21st century. Not through tanks in the streets, but through the careful maintenance of procedural facades while the substance of democratic governance is systematically gutted. The iron fist wears a velvet glove of process—at least until the pretense is no longer necessary.

      When I express moral outrage at these developments, some friends tell me I'm letting emotions cloud my reason. But this gets the relationship exactly backwards. Reason cannot function without morals. The spirit of the law isn't just poetic flourish—it represents the moral framework that gives law meaning.

    • The Local DK ☛ EU court likely to rule Denmark’s ‘parallel society’ laws discriminatory

      The law, part of Denmark’s legislation against ‘parallel societies’, demands underprivileged areas with a high “non-Western” population must implement redevelopment plans if they fulfil a number of social criteria. The redevelopments can mean some residents are forced to move from subsidised rental housing.

    • Lou Plummer ☛ The Greensboro Massacre of 1979

      I'm sharing tonight a repost of a piece I originally wrote last summer about the very real attack by the KKK and Nazis on leftist labor organizers in Greensboro, NC, resulting in five deaths and 10 wounded. Maybe you think that all the recent talk of Fascism and Nazis and white supremacy is a bit overblown. It is not. There are people organizing for change right now who have weathered gunfire and violence from what used to be the extreme right wing. Today, those people are closer to the mainstream.

    • C4ISRNET ☛ Pentagon expands list of commercial drones certified for military use

      DIU in November staged a three-day flight demonstration at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms in California. Following the event, the department selected 23 systems as well as 14 unique drone components, which are now in the midst of a months-long cybersecurity verification process.

    • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

      • Insight Hungary ☛ Orban flies to Dubai conference with Tucker Carlson

        "International conference with an American icon: go Tucker Carlson!" - Viktor Orbán wrote on his social media with a photo showing him boarding a plane.

        Carlson is a speaker at the World Government Summit in Dubai where he spoke to Orban and economic analyst Jeffrey Sachs. Leading up to the event, the Hungarian Prime Minister's political director Balazs Orban ( no relation to the PM) posted a cheerful photo with the conservative TV host with the caption "We are ready.

  • Environment

    • La Quadature Du Net ☛ AI Action Summit: Accelerating, whatever the cost

      The Paris summit on artificial intelligence (AI) organized by France was held on February 10 and 11, 2025. It will go down in history as a great moment of acceleration. While French civil society is organizing, particularly through the coalition Hiatus launched on the initiative of La Quadrature du Net, to resist the surge of artificial intelligence, Europe is engaging in a headlong rush which, in the current context, could precipitate us towards a kind of techno-fascism.

    • Vox ☛ Federal funding freeze: How will wildlife conservation be impacted?

      The freeze jeopardizes dozens of projects to conserve wildlife around the world, from imperiled sea turtles in Central America to elephants in Africa. Grant programs from the federal government protect species whose habitats straddle borders, and they also benefit Americans, such as by reducing the risk of pathogens like coronaviruses from spilling into human populations.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Climate change outpaces tree migration, human intervention may be needed: Study

      As the climate becomes too warm for trees in certain places, tree ranges have been expected to shift toward more ideal conditions. The study analyzed national forest inventory data for more than 25,000 plots in the U.S. West, excluding coastal states, and found that trees were not regenerating in the hottest portions of their ranges—an expected outcome.

      More surprising to the researchers was that most of the 15 common tree species studied were not gaining any ground in areas where conditions were more favorable, indicating that most tree species likely will not be able to move to more accommodating climates without assistance.

    • Michael Burkhardt ☛ Vatican City Announces Innovative Climate Control for Sistine Chapel

      The innovative system, designed by Italian engineering firm Aria Santa, features nearly invisible carbon-fiber blades with ultra-quiet motors. The fans are programmed to maintain optimal viewing conditions by gently circulating air without creating any disturbance to the artwork.

    • Energy/Transportation

      • YLE ☛ Helsinki public transport trials '10-minute' tickets

        The trial began on Wednesday and is set to continue for three months, but the short-duration tickets are only available in a limited area near downtown Helsinki.

      • Heliomass ☛ The Towpath Beckons Once Again

        The canals predated the railway, and were critical to the success of Britain’s industrial revolution. Today a portion of the nation’s extensive canal network still exists, and its purpose is primarily recreational. Much of the meshwork remains connected, although there are some parts which are now isolated from the rest of the network – at least without having to traverse a river or two.

      • Henrique Dias ☛ Elizabeth Pillow

        More iconic even, was the visit to the Transport Museum Shop. Yes, to the shop and not to the museum itself. Sadly, we didn’t have time to visit the museum yesterday. I would say that this shop is quite dangerous for me since I like everything transit. I ended up buying what I think is the most iconic souvenir I could get: a pillow with the same fabric as the seats of the trains from the Elizabeth Line! I love it!

      • Molly White ☛ The [cryptocurrency] industry’s debanking smokescreen

        These seemingly unrelated conversations could occur side by side because they share an umbrella term: “debanking”. At its simplest, it means the practice of closing bank accounts or refusing other financial services to prospective bank clients. But the term has also come to describe the specific issue of discriminatory debanking: where groups of people are disproportionately denied access to financial services for reasons unrelated to banks’ normal, individualized risk assessments. This can be based on various characteristics, including protected characteristics such as race or religion; on financial characteristics, such as income status or the frequency with which people make cash or international wire transactions; or on industries with which a client is either directly involved or indirectly associated.

        This is an important point to clarify: when [cryptocurrency] industry figures, Congresspeople, and writers such as myself are using the term “debanking” right now, we’re usually using it more specifically to refer to improper debanking — not the everyday practice of banks closing accounts because a client has been determined unsuitable due to specific risk analysis.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • FAIR ☛ AP Describes Musk’s Coup as ‘Penchant for Dabbling’

      Associated Press (2/4/25) evidently needed the work of ten reporters to produce “Elon Musk Tightens Grip on Federal Government as Democrats Raise Alarms.”

    • FAIR ☛ WaPo Provides Cover for Musk’s Government Takeover

      Having spent nearly $300 million to purchase the US presidency for Donald Trump, Elon Musk now feels entitled to do with it as he pleases. Just how radically Musk plans to remake the country was conveyed to the American people only after the election, when Musk stood behind the presidential seal on Inauguration Day and gave a Nazi salute. Then did it again. Maybe that sort of thing was OK to do in apartheid South Africa, where Musk grew up, but it’s jarring to see here in the United States.

    • FAIR ☛ Luke Charles Harris on Critical Race Theory (2021)

    • VOA News ☛ Taiwan pledges chip talks and investment in bid to ease Trump’s concerns 

      TSMC is investing $65 billion in new factories in the U.S. state of Arizona, a project begun in 2020 under Trump's first administration.

    • EPIC ☛ Testimony for New Mexico Internet Privacy & Safety Act (HB 307)

      Dear Chair Gallegos, Vice Chair Anyanonu, and Members of the Committee:

      EPIC writes in support of HB 307, the Internet Privacy & Safety Act. For more than two decades, powerful tech companies have been allowed to set the terms of our online interactions. Without any meaningful restrictions on their business practices, they have built systems that invade our private lives, spy on our families, and gather the most intimate details about us for profit. But it does not have to be this way – we can have a strong technology sector while protecting personal privacy.

    • Techdirt ☛ Trump’s DOJ Corruption Laid Bare… By His Own Conservative Prosecutors

      Update: Incredibly, that report that a prosecutor had agreed to file the dismissal turned out to not be accurate. Many hours later, after no such filing was actually made a few very bizarre things happened. First, Emil Bove filed a notice of appearance in the case. That is… not normal.

      Next, all of the remaining line prosecutors withdrew from the case.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ ProtonVPN: Site Blocking Is an Attack on Users' Online Freedom

      In France, rightsholders have taken legal action to get large VPN providers on board with their pirate site blocking program. The aim is to prevent circumvention of existing blocking measures in place to reduce widespread copyright infringement. From the VPN provider's perspective, site blocking threatens online freedom. Swiss provider ProtonVPN describes blocking as 'a dangerous attack on Internet freedom on the altar of corporate greed'.

    • The Record ☛ Police risk losing society’s trust in fight against cybercrime, warns Europol chief

    • W Evan Sheehan ☛ Miriam Suzanne: Tech continues to be political - Evan Sheehan

      Miriam Suzanne wrote a great post that is largely about how readily and easily people ignore the harms of the current crop of AI tools; how frustrating it is to listen to people bend over backwards trying to come up with some way to actually use these things. It’s poignant (and, at times, funny). I related to it a lot. I read it twice. I think it’s worth your time.

      It’s impossible for me to discuss the utility of a thing when I fundamentally disagree with the purpose of it.

      Tech continues to be political

    • India Times ☛ Google: Mexico threatens to sue Google over 'Gulf of America' listing

      Mexico on Thursday threatened to sue Google over its changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to "Gulf of America" for Maps users in the United States to comply with President Donald Trump's executive order.

      "We do have a dispute with Google at the moment," President Claudia Sheinbaum said at her morning news conference. "And if necessary, we will file a civil suit."

    • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

      • The Record ☛ Taiwan using AI to fight disinformation campaigns, former minister says

        Taiwan’s National Security Bureau said the number of pieces of false or biased information distributed by China increased 60% in 2024, to 2.16 million from 1.33 million in 2023. According to a report released last month, the NSB said Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter, were the main conduits for disinformation, along with platforms that explicitly target young people such as TikToK.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Her parents were injured in Tesla crash, She ended up having to pay Tesla damages

      Stunned, Zhang gazed at the deflating airbag in front of her. She could never have imagined what was to come: Tesla sued her for defamation for complaining publicly about the car’s brakes — and won. A Chinese court ordered Zhang to pay more than $23,000 in damages and publicly apologize to the $1.1 trillion company. Zhang is not the only one to find herself in the crosshairs of Tesla, which is led by Elon Musk, among the richest men in the world and a self-described “ free speech absolutist.” Over the last four years, Tesla has sued at least six car owners in China who had sudden vehicle malfunctions, quality complaints or accidents they claimed were caused by mechanical failures.

    • Task And Purpose ☛ 'Hillbilly Elegy,' 'Kite Runner' among books under review at military schools

      Librarians in the schools of 66,000 children of American service members are being directed to pull books “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics” at Department of Defense-run schools, according to a memo viewed by Task & Purpose.

      But they’re doing so without a list of specific titles or even clear guidance on what books to target.

    • CPJ ☛ Taliban ban domestic political and economic broadcasts in Afghanistan

      In September, the Taliban banned live political shows and ordered journalists to obtain their approval before broadcasting pre-recorded shows, featuring pre-approved topics and participants. Journalists wishing to interview an expert outside of the Taliban’s list of 68 approved speakers had to seek the information ministry’s permission.

    • [Old] The United Kingdom ☛ Understanding and Responding to Blasphemy Extremism in the UK (accessible) - GOV.UK

      Anti-blasphemy activism in the UK is focused on what are perceived to be two of the major threats Islam faces: the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, whose beliefs are viewed by activists as blasphemous, and non-Muslims who insult Islam usually by disrespecting either Mohammad or the Koran.

      Three recent blasphemy flashpoints in the UK – protests in 2021 against a teacher at a school in Batley after they allegedly showed students a picture of Mohammed, protests against the screening of the Shia-influenced film Lady of Heaven in 2022, and protests against schoolboys in Wakefield for allegedly disrespecting a copy of the Koran in 2023 – are linked to a new generation of UK-based anti-blasphemy activists who are working to make blasphemy a key issue of concern for British Muslims. In two cases, Batley, and Wakefield, those accused of blasphemy are also reported to have received death threats.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ A woman made her AI voice clone say “arse.” Then she got banned.

      AI is bringing back those lost voices. Both Jules and Joyce have fed an AI tool built by ElevenLabs recordings of their old voices to re-create them. Today, they can “speak” in their old voices by typing sentences into devices, selecting letters by hand or eye gaze. It’s been a remarkable and extremely emotional experience for them—both thought they’d lost their voices for good.

      But speaking through a device has limitations. It’s slow, and it doesn’t sound completely natural. And, strangely, users might be limited in what they’re allowed to say.

  • Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

    • VOA News ☛ The danger zone: In Colombia’s Catatumbo region, reporting is risky business

      An independent reporter, Herrera has always worked in this region, the Norte de Santander department. His beat includes coverage of robberies, extortions, kidnappings, corruption, drug trafficking, criminal gangs and illegal armed groups.

      Since 2014 those assignments have come with a security detail, a necessary addition after constant threats. “They call me, they send me voice messages, they leave pamphlets or people tell me,” Herrera says.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • RFA ☛ Escape from Tibet: An amazing (but not unique) story of separation

      Lobsang Gelek, a journalist in RFA’s Investigative team, hasn’t seen his family since he was 10. Now in his thirties, he comes on the podcast to explain why he hesitated to share his story publicly, calling it unremarkable among the Tibetan exile community.

      Yet, at the age of 10, Lobsang walked from Shigatse, Tibet, to Kathmandu, the center of Nepal. The journey took a month, required him to travel under cover of darkness and cross a treacherous mountain pass in the Himalayas cut across steep glaciers.

    • TruthOut ☛ Family of a Woman Killed in Her Home by a Sheriff’s Deputy Wins $10M Settlement

      The 36-year-old mother took a few minutes to open her front door for the deputies before she let them inside to further discuss her concerns. One of the officers asked for her identification after telling them that the broken window was from an earlier incident. As she looked for her ID, Grayson asked her to turn off the fire from the stove.

    • The Independent UK ☛ India steps up Dalai Lama’s security over potential threat to his life

      The Dalai Lama made the hillside town of Dharamshala his headquarters since fleeing Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. Representatives of a Tibetan government-in-exile also reside there. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

      The Dalai Lama formally relinquished his political and administrative powers in 2011 and handed his political responsibilities to the community’s elected leadership. But he has remained the spiritual leader of the Tibetan community.

  • Digital Restrictions (DRM)

    • PC World ☛ Netflix comes to the Apple TV app (Update: not so much)

      Update (4 p.m. ET): Sorry folks, turns out it was just a bug, and Apple has now rolled back the Netflix integration. Original story follows…

    • Matt Birchler ☛ Netflix accidentally gave us something nice

      Well, I woke up this morning excited about Netflix and I will go to sleep disappointed with them. I have two things to say here and one prediction.

    • Annie Mueller ☛ Painting yourself into a corner

      I haven’t read all of those books. I certainly won’t be downloading all of them. But I am going through the whole list and pulling out the ones worth keeping, so I can run them through the AntiDRMinator and be able to read them anywhere I’d like.

    • The Verge ☛ Amazon will stop allowing Kindle book downloads to your PC soon | The Verge

      There are a few reasons why some Kindle users might miss this feature. It’s useful if you don’t have access to a Wi-Fi network, and although it’s a tedious process since purchased books can only be downloaded one at a time, there’s some peace of mind in knowing you have offline copies of all your books.

      It doesn’t happen frequently, but as Good e-Reader points out, Amazon has occasionally removed books from its online store and remotely deleted them from Kindles or edited titles and re-uploaded new copies to its e-readers. In 2009, the company removed copies of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, explaining the books had been mistakenly published. More recently, many of Roald Dahl’s books, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, were replaced with updated copies featuring modified language on various ebook platforms. It’s a reminder that you don’t actually own much of the digital content you consume, and without the ability to back up copies of ebooks, you could lose them entirely if they’re banned and removed.

    • Android Police ☛ Amazon is closing a Kindle loophole that makes it easy to remove DRM

      As you can imagine, the ancient feature doesn't get much use nowadays, that is, unless you like to break DRM, which is precisely what some in the e-book community use the feature for, downloading their e-books with an older version of DRM that is easy to crack. Thus, Amazon is warning it will shut down its Download & Transfer via USB feature starting February 26th.

  Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Copyrights

    • Michigan News ☛ Is that article stolen? Why media companies are suing an AI company | Opinion

      The American economy is built on intellectual [sic] property [sic]. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office estimated that 41% of U.S. gross domestic product comes from IP [sic] -intensive industries. From podcasters to influencers to newspapers, intellectual [sic] property [sic] powers free speech and incentivizes the creative process and investment in quality works.

      Artificial intelligence companies have recognized this quality but unfortunately have chosen to take advantage of others' intellectual [sic] property [sic] to fuel their products. Now the Chinese AI app DeepSeek is teaching those very AI companies how much it costs by using their creativity and intelligence.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Guardian OpenAI deal: Publisher latest to sign licensing agreement

      The Guardian has become the latest news publisher to sign a deal with ChatGPT owner OpenAI over content licensing.

      The deal will ensure The Guardian receives compensation for the use of its journalism on ChatGPT and gets properly credited on the platform. Under the deal The Guardian will also be able to use OpenAI technology in-house.

    • Stephen Smith ☛ More AI Problems

      Last time, I blogged on the recent court case where Meta was caught training their AIs on pirated copyrighted material downloaded from pirate torrent sites. Since then, there was another copyright case judgement against an AI company, a major international political AI conference, discussions of AIs contribution to global warming and I received feedback that my last article didn’t cover work stolen from photographers and artists. In this article, we’ll look at all these issues.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ AI image gets a US copyright — or some of a copyright

      Note that this fresh copyright does not extinguish any copyright in the component pieces — you can’t use this process for copyright laundering.

    • [Repeat] Silicon Angle ☛ Major publishers launch copyright lawsuit against AI startup Cohere

      “Without permission or compensation, Cohere uses scraped copies of our articles, through training, real-time use, and in outputs, to power its artificial intelligence service, which in turn competes with Publisher offerings and the emerging market for AI licensing,” said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. “Not content with just stealing our works, Cohere also blatantly manufactures fake pieces and attributes them to us, misleading the public and tarnishing our brands.”

      The group includes Condé Nast, the mass media giant and owner of brands such as Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair, Pitchfork, Wired and Ars Technica. It was joined by other news behemoths, including The Atlantic, Forbes, The Guardian, Insider, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, the Toronto Star and Vox Media.