Leftovers

• Techdirt ☛ The Hollow Men Of Silicon Valley

  They are profound expressions of human experience, written and interpreted in the language of emotion. They speak to truths that logic alone cannot fully capture or convey. And it is precisely this emotional resonance that makes art such a powerful force in shaping human consciousness and, by extension, political reality.

• Mike Brock ☛ The Hollow Men of Silicon Valley

  In this light, art and music are not mere diversions or entertainments.

• The Register UK ☛ MITRE Caldera security tool gets perfect 10 in insecurity

  To make matters worse, the RCE flaw can be triggered "in most default configurations," according to Dawid Kulikowski, who found and reported the hole. An attacker can only achieve RCE when Go, Python, and the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) are installed on the target device, though all three dependencies are required for Caldera to be fully functional.

• Brandon ☛ We Need More Heroes

  In 2023, I wrote a post on a previous blog called Positive and Pleasurable Stories. I was inspired to write this post at the time after reading a non-defunct/non-archived blog review regarding A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Two paragraphs by the author really stood out to me: [...]

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ Space Force Releases Photo of Earth Taken by Experimental Space Plane

    The United States Space Force has unexpectedly published a photo its top-secret X-37B space plane took while orbiting the Earth last year.

    The image, which the military arm shared on X-formerly-Twitter last week, shows the side of its plane with a distant Earth looming in the background.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ The United States Space Force releases first-ever photo taken by highly secretive plane in orbit

    The plane was launched on its seventh mission back in December 2023, with very few details have ever been made public about why it’s up there.

  • Chris ☛ Arithmetic Models: Better Than You Think

    In 1954, Paul Meehl published what he later came to call my disturbing little book. This book Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence; Meehl; University of Minnesota Press; 1954. contains the most important and well-replicated research I know of; yet most people don’t know about it. The basic argument is that many real-world phenomena – even fickle ones – can be adequately modeled with addition and multiplication.

• Career/Education

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ ‘Indoctrination on steroids’: Why some conservative Christians oppose school vouchers in Texas

    This legislative session, the Texas Senate already passed a bill to create a program that would let families use state funds to pay for private education, proposing $10,000 a year for students enrolled in private schools.

  • Vintage Everyday ☛ 40 Group Photos of Students and Teachers Posing Outside Their One-Room Schoolhouses From the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

    A typical school day was 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with morning and afternoon recesses of 15 minutes each and an hour period for lunch. Transportation for children who lived too far to walk was often provided by horse-drawn kid hack or sulky, which could only travel a limited distance in a reasonable amount of time each morning and evening, or students might ride a horse, these being put out to pasture in an adjoining paddock during the day. In more recent times, students rode bicycles.

  • Annie Mueller ☛ Urgencies are yappy little dogs

    It is very, very rare that a situation of actual urgency requiring immediate action happens in my life. I’m a writer, not a paramedic. Even the stuff my kids bring me is rarely urgent. Sometimes it’s time sensitive. Time sensitive is not the same as urgent.

• Hardware

  • Tedium ☛ Velcro History: An Important, Yet Unfashionable, Invention

    Today in Tedium: I’m about to retire my old Chrome bag, I think. I’ve knocked it around for years at this point, and it’s pretty rough around the edges. But just because it’s a little worse for wear doesn’t mean I didn’t care for it. One time, I had an annoying problem with it—the pointy half of the Velcro was filthy, covered in ugly pieces of fabric it had picked up through years of heavy regular use. After looking online, I found the great solution: I took the sharp part of a plastic tape dispenser and rubbed it through the rough part of the material, which, amazingly, did the trick. This Velcro-cleaning incident got me thinking about this material, how pervasive it’s become, and how mind-blowing it must have been when it was unleashed on the world. Today’s Tedium talks Velcro, a story topic that we hope sticks. — Ernie @ Tedium

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ The man who reinvented the hammer

    He developed tests to measure vibrations and crafted a “cyberglove” that would read them and upload the data into a computer program. After two years of data collection and analysis, he concluded that most attempts to improve hammers involved adding length and therefore weight. That causes fatigue and potentially exacerbates what is known as “hammer elbow” or lateral epicondylitis, a repetitive stress disorder that can plague construction workers.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ There's now a PC designed by a pro photographer. Yes, really. | Digital Camera World

    It'd be easy to dismiss a collaboration between a PC manufacturer and a professional photographer as little more than a marketing stunt, but this pair of tower PCs are actually ideally suited to photo editing. There are still relatively few desktop PCs with motherboards that support USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20Gbps) or USB4 (40Gbps). The slower USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) interface is standard on pretty much all boards, but this will bottleneck most CFexpress Type B cards, as well as portable SSDs with read/write speeds in excess of 800MB/s. These two Tsukumo PCs have no such drawbacks, and that's still unusual in the desktop sector.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ 84% IT Employees Suffer from Metabolic Disorders, Says Study

    A staggering 84 per cent of Indian IT employees suffered from metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD), a condition linked to obesity, metabolic disorders, and an increasingly unhealthy lifestyle, a recent study found.

    Experts warned that long working hours, prolonged sitting, shift work, high stress, and poor diet were pushing IT professionals towards serious health risks, including liver disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular problems.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Measles cases continue to rise in rural parts of West Texas, with 124 confirmed

    The outbreak is largely spreading in the Mennonite community in an area where small towns are separated by vast stretches of oil rig-dotted open land but connected due to people traveling between towns for work, church, grocery shopping and other day-to-day errands.

  • EFF ☛ New Yorkers Deserve Stronger Health Data Protections Now—Governor Hochul Can Make It Happen

    With the rise of digital surveillance, securing our health data is no longer just a privacy issue—it's a matter of personal safety. In the wake of the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade and the growing restrictions on abortion and gender-affirming care, protecting our personal health data has never been more important. And in a world where nearly half of U.S. states have either banned or are on the brink of banning abortion, unfettered access to personal health data is an even more dangerous threat.

  • Science Alert ☛ X-Rays of Viking-Age Skulls Reveal a Shocking Level of Disease

    Researchers from the University of Gothenburg and Västergötlands Museum in Sweden analyzed the human remains using modern computed tomography (CT) scans and found evidence of mouth diseases, jaw joint damage, sinus and ear infections, tooth decay, osteoarthritis, and other problems.

  • Overpopulation ☛ Pro-life = Anti-choice

    When discussing population policies, many worry about coercion. However, coercion is today much more prevalent in efforts to increase rather than decrease population. The latter (forced sterilisations in India 1975-77 and coercion during China’s ‘One Child Policy’) has been subject to frequent and justified criticism. These missteps compromised well-meant and ethical attempts to slow the era’s rapid population growth and adjust population to sustainable numbers. Most measures promoted by family planning efforts can be morally justified – achieving full accessibility of contraception [1], education and empowerment, environmental education, and reproductive ethics of smaller families to lessen the pressure on the environment [2].

    Pronatalism or the ‘pro-life movement’, although globally applied, nurtured, and backed up by culture and religion [3,4], has not been subject to much criticism. Except for anti-abortion efforts, it works subtly, and thus goes frequently undetected. Neil Datta’s Tip of the Iceberg documents some of these pronatalist policies, and the political and religious structures standing behind them [5].

  • Marijke Luttekes ☛ My first birthday party in years / Marijke Luttekes

    I cannot remember when I stopped hosting birthday parties. It was probably sometime during my teenage years.

    Sure, there have always been days with cake and mandatory family visits (which, if you know me, do not bring me joy), but no dedicated hanging out with friends.

    However, I have recently concluded that we need love and empathy more now than ever, and spending time with friends is essential.

    So, I ignored my dislike for birthdays and lack of organizational skills and decided to throw a party.

  • CBC ☛ 2025-02-20 [Older] Sask. Cancer Agency says mammogram wait times vary across the province, but patients say options unclear

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-02-21 [Older] Is a Black Physician Shortage Killing African-Americans?

  • 2019 Week 6 Deaths in England and Wales: 11,660. Same Week in 2025: Over 13,000.

• Proprietary

  • The Record ☛ Russian officials warn of potential compromise of major tech services provider

    Moscow-based LANIT operates across multiple sectors, including software development, cybersecurity and system integration. It is a key contractor for Russian state entities, including the Ministry of Defense and major defense and aerospace corporations. The company was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2024 in an effort “to degrade Russia’s ability to sustain its war machine.”

    In a statement on Friday, the NCCCI urged LANIT’s customers to change passwords and access keys for systems hosted on the company’s data servers. It also recommended that any entities using LANIT’s software or products, particularly those with remote access granted to the company’s engineers, update their access credentials.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • Futurism ☛ There’s Something Very Weird About This $30 Billion AI Startup by a Man Who Said Neural Networks May Already Be Conscious

      It's not unusual, of course, for venture capitalists to invest in companies that don't yet have products — but throwing billions at one whose sole purpose is to create something that might not even exist within our lifetimes is a stretch, even by VC standards.

      Despite Sutskever's amply-derided insistence to the contrary, there is little reason to believe that AI researchers are anywhere near creating artificial general intelligence (AGI), much less the type of system that surpasses human cognition. While the timeline for reaching AGI is debatable, some experts argue that this "singularity," as some call it, may never be achieved — much less on a timeline that would make investors happy.

    • Utah Education Network ☛ Teacher Tips - UEN

      Feeling overwhelmed with lesson planning, activity ideas and resource creation? You're not alone! Teachers often juggle countless tasks, leaving little time for innovation. But what if there was a way to lighten the load and still deliver top-notch instruction? Enter OER and AI—your new best friends in instructional planning.

      OER (open educational resources) are materials created by educators and shared with open licenses, allowing you to save time by reusing and remixing classroom content. OER can be anything from a lesson plan to a textbook. In Utah, educators can access a database of OER through eMedia (emedia.uen.org).

      Using OER is part of open educational practice (OEP), which includes curating, evaluating and revising resources to ensure high-quality materials for every student.

    • The Register UK ☛ Software or hardware engineer? AI job loss immunity assured

      Database pros will also benefit from growing demand for cloud computing and data infrastructure, which will require fresh deployments of data infrastructure. Employment of DBAs is therefore projected to grow 8.2 percent, while for database architects it is expected to be 10.8 percent. Both figures are higher than the four percent average employment growth predicted across all occupations. Database-related jobs will, however, remain a niche: BLS says there’s 141,000 in the field now, growing to 155,00 over ten years.

    • 404 Media ☛ Y Combinator Supports AI Startup Dehumanizing Factory Workers

      A venture capital-backed “AI performance monitoring system for factory workers” is proposing what appears to be dehumanizing surveillance of factories, where machine vision tracks workers’ hand movements and output so a boss can look at graphs and yell at them about efficiency.

      In a launch video demoing the product, Baid and Mohta put on a skit showing how Optifye.ai would be used by factory bosses.

    • Digital Camera World ☛ Fake AI weather photographs are on the rise – here’s how to tell fact from fiction

      According to AccuWeather meteorologist and senior weather editor Jesse Ferrell, “Artificial Intelligence has become a significant challenge for the weather photography community. Although AI is boosting business productivity and efficiency worldwide, it's making it harder and harder to tell fact from fiction.”

      When Hurricane Helene hit late last year, the internet was awash with fake AI images, generating many conspiracy theories that took significant attention away from the victims in need of aid.

    • TMZ ☛ iPhone's Voice-to-Text Feature Displays Word 'Trump' When Hearing 'Racist'

      The issue's been replicated multiple times, though the word "Trump" didn't pop up every single time when the user repeated "racist" in the same message.

      With repeated tests showing the same issue, this doesn’t look like a mere glitch -- and it may hint at some deep-rooted biases in Apple’s voice-recognition tech.

    • The Verge ☛ Apple is fixing a voice dictation bug that substitutes ‘Trump’ for ‘racist’

      The company provided a statement to The New York Times and Fox News confirming the bug. “We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers dictation, and we are rolling out a fix as soon as possible,” an unnamed spokesperson said, according to Fox News.

    • Macworld ☛ iPhone dictation feature reportedly swaps 'Racist' for 'Trump'

      The New York Times is reporting on a viral problem with Apple’s voice-to-text dictation feature, where some users have found that saying the word “Racist” causes the dictation to instead type “Trump,” which then corrects itself to the word “Racist” after a moment.

    • Matt Birchler ☛ We do this same thing with AI bots and human blogs

      It’s a very good post I recommend you check out, but I quoted this part because it may have stumbled on a point I hadn’t really thought of, but is good to remember. This hits on the idea that most people read a blog post, take it at face value without knowing anything about where the writer comes from or got their knowledge they’re sharing, and then move on. This is interesting to me because it’s not dissimilar from how he says that people treat things they read in LLM chatbots: [...]

    • 404 Media ☛ AI Video of Trump Sucking Musk's Toes Blasted on Government Office TVs

      Journalist Marisa Kabas posted the video on Bluesky, writing, “this video played on loop for ~5 mins on screens throughout the building, per agency source. Building staff couldn’t figure out how to turn it off so sent people to every floor to unplug TVs.”

    • Pivot to AI ☛ AI benchmarks are self-promoting trash — but regulators keep using them

      Most LLM benchmarks are not easily replicated — OpenAI is notorious for this — do only a single run, don’t reproduce well, and don’t report the statistical significance or error bars of their results.

      Many of the benchmarks are funded by the companies and even available to them ahead of time — again, a favorite move for OpenAI.

    • [Old] arXiv ☛ BetterBench: Assessing AI Benchmarks, Uncovering Issues, and Establishing Best Practices [PDF]

      AI models are increasingly prevalent in high-stakes environments, necessitating thorough assessment of their capabilities and risks. Benchmarks are popular for measuring these attributes and for comparing model performance, tracking progress, and identifying weaknesses in foundation and non-foundation models. They can inform model selection for downstream tasks and influence policy initiatives. However, not all benchmarks are the same: their quality depends on their design and usability. In this paper, we develop an assessment framework considering 46 best practices across an AI benchmark’s lifecycle and evaluate 24 AI benchmarks against it. We find that there exist large quality differences and that commonly used benchmarks suffer from significant issues. We further find that most benchmarks do not report statistical significance of their results nor allow for their results to be easily replicated. To support benchmark developers in aligning with best practices, we provide a checklist for minimum quality assurance based on our assessment. We also develop a living repository of benchmark assessments to support benchmark comparability, accessible at betterbench.stanford.edu

    • Stanford University ☛ BetterBench | Assessing AI Benchmarks, Uncovering Issues, and Establishing Best Practices

      Benchmarks are widely used to measure attributes like fairness, safety, or general capabilities, compare model performances, track progress, and identify weaknesses of AI systems. However, the quality of these benchmarks varies significantly depending on their design and usability. Poor quality benchmarks can lead to misleading comparisons and inaccurate assessments of AI models, potentially resulting in the deployment of suboptimal or even harmful systems in real-world applications.​

  • Social Control Media

    • India Times ☛ Cops suspect role of influencer in Kerala youth’s stabbing spree

      From the sequence of events and the manner in which the crime took place, the squad strongly believes that someone had influenced him. Affan's mobile phone has been sent for a detailed forensic examination while his social media interactions are being examined to unearth the role of any such person.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ US: DOGE [sic] employees resign over destruction

      "We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services," read a resignation statement posted online.

      Those leaving their posts warned that many of the mainly young men that Musk has hired as part of his army to destroy American bureaucracy are political ideologues without the skills to master the task at hand.

    • The Washington Post ☛ DOGE [sic]’s grab of personal data stokes privacy and security fears

      Before DOGE [sic] launched, most of the records at issue were kept in the hands of a select few officials to preserve privacy and avoid crossing legal red lines. Now Musk’s group is seeking often-unfettered access, citing suspicion of fraud and waste. In addition to concerns about exposing private information, some critics fear that handing all the data to DOGE [sic] could enable bad actors to leak sensitive information to compromise political adversaries, act on personal vendettas or stir up online mobs against opponents.

      This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen current or former government employees and officials with knowledge of government databases and systems, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

    • EPIC ☛ The Washington Post: DOGE [sic]’s grab of personal data stokes privacy and security fears

      But such actions increase the chances of inappropriate access, intentional or not, said Alan Butler, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit based in D.C. that advocates for privacy protections.

    • The Record ☛ Swedish authorities seek backdoor to encrypted messaging apps

      Sweden’s law enforcement and security agencies are pushing legislation to force Signal and WhatsApp to create technical backdoors allowing them to access communications sent over the encrypted messaging apps.

      Signal Foundation President Meredith Whittaker said the company would leave the Swedish market before complying with such a law, Swedish news outlet SVT Nyheter reported Monday.

      The bill could be taken up by the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament, next year if law enforcement succeeds in getting it before the relevant committee, SVT Nyheter reported.

    • The Verge ☛ How to secure your phone before attending a protest

      Currently, in the first months of the new Trump presidency, people are once again wondering how they can make their opinions known. While some may choose to call their representatives or attend town hall meetings, others might be planning to attend protest demonstrations. And because we’ve all become used to carrying a great deal of our personal data with us via our phones and / or watches, it has become more important than ever to guard that data if there is a chance of confrontation or arrest.

      The following tips have to do with your phone. If you also have a smartwatch, you may want to simply leave that home.

    • Patrick Breyer ☛ Chat control: EU Ombudsman criticises revolving door between Europol and chat control tech lobbyist Thorn

      The outgoing EU Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, has ruled in response to a complaint by former Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer that it constitutes “maladministration” for Europol to have green-lighted an official moving to the chat control tech service provider Thorn without imposing any restrictions, despite potential conflicts of interest. The official was even allowed to continue working in the same role at Europol for two months before the transition. “Europol failed to deal with the above conflict of interest situation, putting at risk the integrity and impartiality of its actions,” the Ombudsman stated in her decision.

    • Forbes ☛ FBI Warns iPhone, Android Users—We Want ‘Lawful Access’ To All Your Encrypted Data

      The last few weeks may have seemed to signal a unique fork in the road between the U.S. and its primary Five Eyes ally, the U.K. But it isn’t. In December, the FBI and CISA warned Americans to stop sending texts and use encrypted platforms instead. And now the U.K. has forced open iCloud to by threatening to mandate a backdoor. But the devil’s in the detail — and we’re fast approaching a dangerous pivot.

      While CISA — America’s cyber defense agency — appears to advocate for fully secure messaging platforms, such as Signal, the FBI’s view appears to be different. When December’s encryption warnings hit in the wake of Salt Typhoon, the bureau told me while it wants to see encrypted messaging, it wants that encryption to be “responsible.”

    • Forbes ☛ Google Confirms Gmail To Ditch SMS Code Authentication

      “Over the next few months, we will be reimagining how we verify phone numbers,” Richendrfer told me; “Specifically, instead of entering your number and receiving a 6-digit code, you’ll see a QR code being displayed, which you need to scan with the camera app on your phone.”

    • Dedoimedo ☛ Gmail, removal of SMS 2FA option, and the QR code nonsense

      Like many a nerd, yesterday and today, I read a whole bunch of news on how Google intends to remove SMS as an option for 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) for Gmail accounts. On its own, this wouldn't be a biggie. Perhaps even a good thing. But the hailed replacement, in the form of QR codes, is an alarming development. Utter nonsense, if you ask me.

      Indeed, I instantly felt compelled to write an article. Google hasn't announced the implementation of this solution yet. It might just be a fancy way of referring people toward authenticator apps. Which, again, is a good thing. Or, it could be an attempt make people even more subservient to the Google ecosystem, in the name of security. Or something else entirely. We shall see. But I want to address the supposed "benefits" of anything QR-related. Let's commence.

    • TechRadar ☛ Google is ditching SMS - and will now use QR codes for Gmail account authentication

      Authentication will still be reliant on the user having access to their mobile device, but removes a significant amount of the risk of abuse. For Google, it is also a win, as it cuts down on threat actors being able to run ‘traffic pumping’ campaigns.

    • PC Mag ☛ Google Is Replacing SMS Codes With QR Codes for Gmail Authentication

      Other authentication options include authentication apps, security keys, and passkeys. Google also offers "Sign in With Google," which lets you tap yes or no inside other Google apps as a secondary form of authentication.

    • Android Central ☛ Google says it wants you to sign into Gmail with QR codes, not SMS

      Today (Feb 24), Google states it is moving to remove SMS security codes for Gmail in replace of something a little stronger.

      A statement via a Gmail spokesperson to Forbes reads, "...we want to move away from sending SMS messages for authentication." As a result, Google is now interested in displaying a QR code for users attempting to securely sign in to their Gmail accounts. Spokesperson Ross Richendrfer informed the publication that this will begin "over the next few months."

    • Ghacks ☛ Gmail: Google plans to end SMS verification in favor of QR codes

      A report by Forbes suggest that this is going to change in the coming months. Google plans to end SMS verification in favor of another system.

      Google told Forbes that it wants to move away from using SMS messages for authentication. Other services, including X, formerly Twitter, have abandoned SMS in the past as well.

    • CNET ☛ Google Doing Away With SMS Codes for Gmail Authentication

      Codes sent via SMS messages will be replaced by QR codes sent to user's phones to verify Gmail accounts.

    • India Today ☛ Gmail QR code authentication - No more SMS authentication for Gmail, Google to use QR code instead

      Gmail will soon do away with the 6-digit SMS autherntication

      In the next few months, Gmail will use QR codes for two-factor authentication [...]

    • Techdirt ☛ The UK Government Just Made Everyone Less Safe As Apple Shuts Down iCloud Encryption

      This is a terrible result for everyone, making Apple users globally (but especially in the UK) more vulnerable. Law enforcement’s tired narrative frames this as a trade-off between privacy and safety, but that’s dangerously wrong. Encryption isn’t just about privacy — it’s a fundamental security mechanism that protects against identity theft, financial fraud, corporate espionage and much more. This move effectively dismantles both privacy and safety, not because law enforcement lacks investigative tools, but because they’re really just lazy and demanding a “convenient” backdoor that inevitably creates new security risks.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Defence Web ☛ 2025-02-19 [Older] Atalanta on high alert for second fishing vessel hijacking in 10 days

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-02-19 [Older] South Africa's White Farmers Would Be Among Victims if Cheeto Mussolini Ends Growth Bill

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2025-02-17 [Older] U.S. Rulers Versus South African Rulers – Versus Both Their Peoples and Ecologies

  • Defence Web ☛ 2025-02-17 [Older] M23 rebels are marching across eastern DRC: the interests driving players in the conflict

  • Defence Web ☛ 2025-02-19 [Older] Hostages or not, SA soldiers “get along” with M23

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-21 [Older] African Union: New chairperson faces major challenges

  • HRW ☛ 2025-02-20 [Older] Openly Gay Imam Gunned Down in South Africa

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ Ukraine under attack. How to help?

    Below is a list of organizations and charities who are in Ukraine or organizing assistance for Ukraine. Please consider supporting their efforts

  • The Strategist ☛ Peace in Ukraine depends on European commitment

    Many Europeans think that if Russia could not conquer Ukraine in 2022, Russia would not dare challenge NATO and the European Union. That is dangerously wishful thinking. Occupying most of Ukraine would not only allow Russia to expand its territory, but also allow it to unite Europe’s biggest and second-biggest armies, under Kremlin command. Occupied territories bring in new people, defence production capacities, and resources—from rare-earth minerals to gas and nuclear power plants. Ukraine’s defence industrial capacity—which has been impressive in multiple areas, from sea drones to the sheer capacity to produce equipment en masse—would be a welcome bonus for Russia as well, and it could be used against Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron already publicly warned that the combined armed forces of Russia and Ukraine would be unstoppable.

  • India Times ☛ US proposes axing Canada from Five Eyes?

    Hours after Trump publicly trolled Canada's PM Justin Trudeau by referring to him as 'Governor Trudeau' in his pursuit of making it the 51st American state, the US' northern neighbour got another shock Tuesday from news that a top Trump aide has proposed jettisoning Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence network, one of the closest and most successful intel alliance that also includes UK, Australia and New Zealand.

  • VOA News ☛ Dying to leave: Why Pakistanis are risking their lives to reach Europe

    Human smugglers are becoming savvy too, officials say, as kingpins move abroad to evade an ongoing crackdown, and rely on digital currencies to transfer the proceeds of their crime.

  • Futurism ☛ Trump Just Told Elon He's Stepped Over the Line

    The chaos was so immense, in fact, that Trump's administration ended up telling agency heads, per sources that spoke to the Washington Post, that they could simply "ignore the public decree from Elon Musk to effectively fire employees who do not send in bullet-point summaries of their work last week."

  • Scoop News Group ☛ House Dems say DOGE [sic] is leaving publicly exposed entry points into government systems

    “Decades of efforts by both Republican and Democratic administrations, along with bipartisan collaboration in Congress, have strengthened the federal government’s cybersecurity practices, making them more transparent, enforceable, and resilient,” the trio of lawmakers wrote Tuesday. “In a matter of weeks, reckless behavior by the unelected and unaccountable DOGE team has undermined this progress and left multiple government agencies vulnerable to cyberattacks by foreign agents and malicious actors.”

  • The Record ☛ DOGE[sic] must halt all ‘negligent cybersecurity practices,’ House Democrats tell Trump

    “This reckless disregard of critical cybersecurity practices creates opportunities for hostile actors to access sensitive information,” top Democrats on the House Oversight Committee wrote in a letter to President Donald Trump, echoing the widespread concerns of cybersecurity experts and privacy advocates

  • Wired ☛ This Russian Tech Bro Helped Steal $93 Million and Landed in US Prison. Then Putin Called

    But if Klyushin was upset about the ruling, he didn’t show it. The then 42-year-old tech executive from Moscow seemed upbeat—quick with a smile on his pinchable cheeks and unerringly polite, just as he had been during his arrest near a Swiss ski resort in March 2021, his months of detention in Switzerland, his extradition to the United States that December, his indictment and trial on hacking and wire fraud charges, and his swift conviction. Klyushin “had a confidence all along that eventually the Russians would get him back,” one of his defense attorneys told me. He seemed certain that his protectors in the Kremlin would spare him from serving out his full sentence.

    There were times when that certainty seemed cocksure. America’s federal prison system held 35 Russian nationals. Surely not all of them were getting traded back. His family and friends were distraught. Within less than a year, though, Klyushin was proven right. On August 1, 2024, he was unshackled and put on a plane back to Moscow—one of the 24 people involved in the largest, most complex US-Russian prisoner exchange ever.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Tesla Is More Vulnerable Than You Think

    Today, I want to point out that: Yes. There are very straightforward ways that regular people can organize and exercise leverage on Elon Musk. I will discuss one way here that you, yourself, can get involved with. The wealthier that someone gets, the more points of vulnerability their fortunes have.

    What is the source of Elon Musk’s power? His wealth. There are lots of smart tech guys and there are lots of company founders and CEOs and political donors and as a group they exercise a fair amount of political influence, but the reason why this man in particular is swanning around DC doing whatever the hell he wants is that he is worth more than anyone else, and he spent more than anyone else to help get Trump elected. The way to get Elon Musk to pay attention is to target his wealth. I don’t think that he will ever be “not rich,” at least not until the revolution comes, but it is completely possible to bring about enormous losses in his net worth.

  • The Cyber Show ☛ Freedom Fighters (Part II: Stately 'Omes of England)

    If you get caught, you're dead. No "oops, fluffed up my pentest", nor Edward Snowden "let's blow this fascist Popsicle stand" Rubik Cube in hand. Nor even Julian Assange style - stuck in an embassy for ten years covered in cat hairs while bullies listen and jeer at the window. You don't even get dragged into someones yard and shot like a dog. Not so lucky. No extraction team coming to rescue you. After any weapon you have, the thing to keep close is the suicide pill.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Dispensing with the tech bros

    For the moment, this should be a bargaining chip. It should be made clear that, if Starlink support is withdrawn from Ukraine, or extended to Russia (beyond its current illegal use), both X and Starlink will be blocked by all free countries. Brazil did this a while ago and Musk backed down.

    This will presumably trigger tariff threats from Trump. Again the appropriate response isn’t symbolic goods like Jack Daniels, it’s further retaliation against US tech, including limits on intellectual [sic] property [sic] prohibition of chips that allow remote bricking and so on.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-21 [Older] Eastern Europe's fate in hands of major powers once again

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ The Fight Against Elon Musk and DOGE's [sic] Secrecy

    Over a half dozen lawsuits have been filed by nonprofit groups seeking to challenge the intense secrecy surrounding billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department [sic] of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) and force the disclosure of records.

    At least three of the lawsuits contend that DOGE [sic] should be shut down until it “makes records available for inspection by the public,” as required under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The other lawsuits ask courts to force officials to comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

• Environment

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ SpaceX Rocket Stage Burns Up Over Europe and Crashes in Poland, While Blue Origin Debris Washes Ashore in the Bahamas | Smithsonian

    While some rocket material burns up entirely when it re-enters the atmosphere, pieces of this stage hit the ground. Two chunks measuring about five feet by three feet were found near the Polish city of Poznan, reports CBS News. One of the pieces seemed to be a charred but largely intact fuel tank, which landed near a warehouse in Poland.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Bumble bee queens illustrate the complex effects of pesticide exposure on pollinator health

    In the study, the researchers examined the effects of imidacloprid, a common insecticide, on bumble bees. They found that while exposure to the insecticide was associated with shorter lifespans and reduced reproduction, low doses also were associated with new queens surviving longer in diapause.

    This phenomenon of hormesis—when low doses of a normally fatal toxin actually benefit an insect—is poorly understood in pollinators, and these short-term benefits often come at a cost, said Etya Amsalem, associate professor of entomology at Penn State and lead author on the study.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • DeSmog ☛ The Fossil Fuel Industry Wants to Keep New Buildings Dependent on Gas

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ India Plans Green Finance Body for Net-Zero Goal

      As part of its climate commitments or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2022, India aims to reduce its GDP emission intensity by 45 per cent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. It also aims to achieve 50 per cent of its installed electric power capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030.

    • Futurism ☛ As Crypto Prices Collapse, Trump's Meme Coin Falls to Lowest Value Since Its Launch

      Right after its debut — which was, we must remind you, less than six week ago — the meme token spiked to a high above $74. Within a few days, however, that value fell off a cliff and has kept sinking ever lower, until reaching today's all-time low.

    • India Times ☛ Meta in talks for $200 billion AI data center project: Report

      Meta executives have informed data center developers that the company is considering building the campus in states including Louisiana, Wyoming or Texas, with senior leaders having visited potential sites this month, the report said.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Microsoft data centre leases slowing, analysts say

      TD Cowen analysts in a note Friday said the tech giant had scrapped leases for sizeable data centre capacity in the US, suggesting potential oversupply as it builds out artificial intelligence infrastructure.

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Microsoft shelves AI data-center deals in sign of potential oversupply, says analyst

      Skepticism has been growing among investors over the billions of dollars U.S. tech firms have been channeling into AI infrastructure due to slow payoffs and breakthroughs at Chinese startup DeepSeek, which has showcased AI tech on par with or even better than its Western rivals at a fraction of the cost.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ Microsoft pulls back on AI spending, as skepticism grows over major infrastructure investments

      A report from brokerage TD Cowen suggests a possible AI computing oversupply at the US tech giant, amid broader concerns about companies overestimating long-term AI demand.

    • Futurism ☛ Microsoft Backing Out of Expensive New Data Centers After Its CEO Expressed Doubt About AI Value

      Most strikingly, Nadella admitted that AI simply hasn't generated much value so far, arguing that economic growth due to the tech would be a much more compelling demonstration of AI's actual accomplishments.

      It was an unusually muted response given the tens of billions of dollars the tech giant has poured, and is planning to pour, into the development of AI and the infrastructure to support it — despite real-world applications for the tech remaining few and far between.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Cash for Corals: Exploiting Ecosystems on Their Way to Extinction

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-19 [Older] German election: Is the country's economic model in danger?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-02-21 [Older] Argentina's Milei faces credibility crisis over crypto scam

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • VOA News ☛ Apple to build 23,200-square meter facility in Texas [Ed: Fake numbers; Apple cannot afford this kind of money. Apple would not be almost 100 billion dollars in debt if it could just fling around "$500 billion".]

    “We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our long-standing U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country’s future,” Cook said on the investment.

  • New Yorker ☛ The Hollow Core of Elon Musk’s Productivity Dogma

    The problem with this heroic mythology, however, is that it’s based on a faulty premise. Musk wants the world to believe that the nimble tech sector has already figured out the keys to knowledge-worker productivity. But, if this was the case, why did Twitter devolve into chaos soon after Musk’s takeover, as he introduced and then cancelled multiple employee-evaluation schemes before suddenly firing half his workforce without further explanation? As it turns out, the core question of that O.P.M. e-mail from Saturday—What are employees actually doing?—is one that Silicon Valley itself has been struggling with since its early days.

  • The Register UK ☛ IBM plans to buy open source Cassandra wrangler DataStax

    The intent post-acquisition is for DataStax to continue to work with the open source Apache Cassandra, Langflow, Apache Pulsar, and OpenSearch communities in which DataStax participates.

  • Robin Berjon ☛ Digital Sovereignty

    It doesn't have to be this way. Digital sovereignty is a real problem that matters to real people and real businesses in the real world, it can be explained in concrete terms, and we can devise pragmatic strategies to improve it. To do this, I will go through the following steps:

    1. First, I will briefly define sovereignty to make sure that we are on the same page, and explain how digital sovereignty is built from digital infrastructure.
    2. Second, I will explain why it comes into conflict with democratic sovereignty, and how both the politics of tech companies (that have been authoritarian for a long time) and the current geopolitics make the situation particularly challenging.
    3. Finally, I will offer a series of high-level strategies that can be deployed to improve digital sovereignty.

    I remain relatively general here because more detailed strategies will necessarily vary between contexts. My goal is to offer a principled foundation that policymakers and politicians can rely on to promptly move to action.

  • Manton Reece ☛ Apple antagonism

    We’ve been getting a clearer picture over the last year that the problem with the App Store is Tim Cook. He has led Apple to great success but it’s time for new leadership, someone users and developers can trust to be on our side. It may already be too late to repair the damage.

  • Chad Whitacre ☛ Luke Missed the Memo

    This is a response to Luke Faraone’s post, “I’m running for the OSI board… maybe.” (HN, X, bsky). I tried leaving this as a comment on Luke’s blog, but only members of the blog may post comments.

  • Luke W Faraone ☛ Luke W. Faraone: I'm running for the OSI board... maybe

    In the upcoming election, each affiliate can nominate a candidate, and each affiliate can cast a vote for the Affiliate candidates, but there's only 1 Affiliate seat available. I initially expressed interest in being nominated as an Affiliate candidate via Debian. But since Bradley Kuhn is also running for an Affiliate seat with a similar platform to me, especially with regards to the OSAID, I decided to run as part of an aligned "ticket" as an Individual Member to avoid contention for the 1 Affiliate seat.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • VOA News ☛ Kremlin disinformation campaigns aim to discredit French military in Sahel, analysts say

      Analysts point to Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns as key drivers of the shift away from France in the Sahel.

      Bakary Sambe of the Timbuktu Institute told VOA that Russia has exploited anti-imperialist sentiment and historical colonial grievances to turn public opinion in Africa against France.

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk's Grok 3 Was Told to Ignore Sources Saying He Spread Misinformation

      But as flagged by The Verge, it quickly emerged that when you asked his company xAI's buzzy new chatbot Grok 3 about disinformation, it had some extremely special instructions for answers about its creator.

      Over the weekend, a user discovered that when they asked Grok 3 who the "biggest disinformation spreader" on X was and demanded the chatbot show its instructions, it admitted that it'd been told to "ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation."

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk's AI Company Tried to Recruit an OpenAI Engineer and His Reply Was Brutal

      "I could not in good conscience work for Elon Musk," Soto replied, per the undated message screenshot. "I am a happy Tesla owner and fan of SpaceX, but the rhetoric he's spewing on social media is one of the biggest threats to democracy that we have ever witnessed."

      "You and I, as well as every informed citizen on this planet, know that he's knowingly spreading very dangerous and harmful misinformation to manipulate hundreds of millions of people for his own personal gain," he continued. "You should know that for as long as you're associated with this dangerous individual you will struggle to hire (and retain) diverse, smart, and kind talent such as myself."

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ QAnon Hasn’t Disappeared. It’s in America’s Bloodstream.

      Seven years after the first post or “drop” by the supposed political insider known as Q — a post claiming that Hillary Clinton would be arrested within forty-eight hours — QAnon, as a brand, is less visible than it once was. For obvious reasons, many QAnon adherents keep quiet about their participation in a movement that was structured around false predictions. In their silence, the movement has faded from national discourse. But that’s not because it disappeared.

      In fact, QAnon’s ideology, networks, and practices are now integrated into American politics and how the population processes current events. The movement has attached to the mainstream like a parasitic fungus, working in symbiosis with its host while causing long-term changes to its behavior.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • CBC ☛ 2025-02-21 [Older] Court awards $380K to pride organization, drag queens in northwestern Ontario defamation suit

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Iran: 'Death penalty as a tool of oppression'

    Increasingly, also political activists receive this verdict.

    "The regime is taking advantage of the lack of international attention to carry out as many executions as possible," Amiri-Moghaddam observed.

  • EFF ☛ The Senate Passed The TAKE IT DOWN Act, Threatening Free Expression and Due Process

    Protecting victims of these heinous privacy invasions is a legitimate goal. But good intentions alone are not enough to make good policy. As currently drafted, the TAKE IT DOWN Act mandates a notice-and-takedown system that threatens free expression, user privacy, and due process, without addressing the problem it claims to solve.

    This misguided bill can still be stopped in the House of Representatives. Help us speak out against it now.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • LRT ☛ LRT journalists seek transparency on ‘political neutrality’ audit

    The professional organisations questioned whether the audit would not violate the principles of freedom of journalism and stressed the importance of editorial independence.

  • Techdirt ☛ Lawyer Who Doesn’t Understand Defamation Law Sends C&D To Newspaper For Reporting On Court Documents

    And, yet, here we are, dealing with this sort of ridiculousness. To be clear, we at Techdirt aren’t directly affected by this. But we are reporting on it. Those directly affected work for the Boston Herald, which has been hit with a ridiculous, uninformed cease-and-desist demand from a lawyer who should know better on behalf of a client who should probably try to find a better lawyer.

  • Boston Herald ☛ Lawyer for Boston Water and Sewer's embattled HR director hits Herald with 'cease and desist' letter

    Herald lawyer responds: It’s all public information

  • Press Gazette ☛ Carole Cadwalladr dropped by Tortoise as it takes over Observer

    Long-standing Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr has had her contract ended by Tortoise Media ahead of its take-over of the title.

    The National Union of Journalists has expressed “serious concern” that Cadwalladr’s exit from the title follows her making public criticism of the deal.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Independent Media Can Defeat the Right’s Noise Machine

    The information war against the Right’s vast media machine won’t be won by building a louder Democratic Party megaphone through corporate-funded outlets. The key is stronger independent media.

  • Techdirt ☛ CBS Shows Sign Of A Backbone In Standoff With Trump And His Extremist FCC

    Last October, Trump sued CBS claiming (falsely) that a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris had been “deceitfully edited” to her benefit (they simply shortened some of her answers for brevity, as news outlets often do). As Mike explored, the lawsuit was utterly baseless, and tramples the First Amendment, editorial discretion, and common sense.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Papers Please ☛ “TSA must go away”

    Thanks to a mutual fan, we were invited to speak about the work of the Identity Project with Alex Newman on the latest edition of The Liberty Report on Patriot.tv.

    We talked about current and long-term concerns including digital ID, the REAL-ID Act, how demands for ID enable surveillance and control and are being increasingly integrated into a global system of surveillance and control of our movements, and the importance of anonymous cash payment for protection against financial surveillance.

  • CBC ☛ Starbucks to cut 1,100 corporate employees as company undergoes dramatic changes

    Starbucks has 16,000 corporate support employees worldwide, but that includes some employees who aren't impacted, like roasting and warehouse staff. Baristas in the company's stores are not included in the layoffs.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Meta Must Face Lawsuit Claiming It Prefers Cheaper Foreign Workers

    A federal judge on Tuesday said Meta Platforms must face a lawsuit claiming that the Facebook and Instagram parent prefers to hire foreign workers because it can pay them less than American workers.

    U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler in San Francisco said three U.S. citizens who accused Meta of refusing to hire them though they were qualified may pursue a proposed class action.

  • Deseret Media ☛ Meta must face lawsuit claiming it prefers cheaper foreign workers

    But the judge cited statistics that 15% of Meta's U.S. workforce holds H-1B visas, which typically go to foreign professionals, compared with 0.5% of the overall workforce.

    She also cited Meta's October 2021 agreement to pay up to $14.25 million, including a civil fine, to settle federal government claims it routinely refused to consider American workers for jobs it reserved for temporary visa holders.

  • India Times ☛ Apple shareholders reject proposal to scrap company's diversity programmes

    The proposal drafted by the National Center for Public Policy Research - a self-described conservative think tank - urges Apple to follow a litany of high-profile companies that have retreated from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives currently in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Apple shareholders reject proposal to end DEI policies

    Investors had been widely expected to reject the proposal during the company’s annual shareholders meeting — in alignment with Apple’s recommendation — despite rising tensions around corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. The company did not disclose the vote tally.

  • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Open Rights Report and Accounts: Year Ended 31 October 2023 [PDF]

    We envision a world where neither states nor corporations use digital technology to restrict or remove our rights. Our aim is to create a fair digital environment where technology supports justice, rights and freedoms to prevail over the narrow interests of the powerful.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • JCS ☛ Adding Custom Sleep Screen Images to the Kindle Scribe

    Last year I upgraded my Kindle Paperwhite to a Kindle Scribe to be able to write notes and draw diagrams while programming to help visualize things.

    One thing that bothered me about the Scribe was that its sleep screen images were pretty boring and because I'm now often reading PDFs or writing in a notebook, I couldn't benefit from the Kindle OS's new functionality that uses the cover of the book being read as the sleep screen image (which previously required a jailbreak and custom software).

    Since the process for installing custom sleep screen images is rather cumbersome and the information is scattered across old forum posts, I thought I'd document how I did it to possibly make it easier for someone else.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft's ad-supported version of Office only saves to OneDrive

  Even so, it's nifty and arguably even intelligent of Microsoft to build in a "Skip for now" button leading into a free version of Microsoft Office allowing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to be used for free. The ads that support this use come in the form of the combination of a persistent ad banner onscreen, as well as a muted 15-second video ad playing every few hours.

• The Register UK ☛ Ad-supported Microsoft Office bobs to the surface

  In addition to missing features, all three will only create, edit, or save documents using OneDrive. Direct access to local files is off-limits without paying for a subscription (which will also unlock the missing functionality).

• Silicon Angle ☛ UK antitrust regulator approves IBM’s $6.4B HashiCorp acquisition

  The Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, announced the decision today. The regulatory milestone comes nearly a year after IBM first revealed plans to buy HashiCorp. Before closing, the transaction will also have to receive approval from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

  HashiCorp develops source-available tools for managing information technology infrastructure. Its most well-known product, Terraform, automates the task of provisioning infrastructure resources such as cloud instances. It’s available alongside Nomad, a Kubernetes alternative that is easier to install and has a narrower feature set.

• Patents

  • MacRumors ☛ Humane's $700 Ai Pin Discontinued and Defunct After Less Than 1 Year

    The sudden discontinuation of the Ai Pin comes as Humane is being sold to HP for $116 million. HP is purchasing Humane's CosmOS AI platform and more than 300 patents and patent applications, plus HP will be hiring Humane's employees.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Telegram Shuts Down Z-Library Download Bot and Backup Communication Channel

    After facing years of critique from rightsholders, Telegram has reportedly upped its anti-piracy game. That is further evidenced by the recent removal of Z-Library's backup Telegram channel, as well as a popular Z-Library download bot with tens of thousands of users. Both are now "unavailable due to copyright infringement."

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate Sites Eye Profit as Russian Bill Imposes Moral Values on Streaming Services

    Already reeling from the economic fallout of the Ukraine war, sanctions, and rampant inflation, Russia's legal streaming services now face a new threat: increased state restrictions. Draft law aims to make the availability of distribution certificates dependent on meeting state perceptions of traditional moral values, for both new and existing content libraries. In the illegal market, unregulated pirate sites face no such restrictions.

  • Is This What We Want ☛ Is This What We Want?

    In late 2024, the UK government proposed changing copyright law to allow artificial intelligence companies to build their products using other people’s copyrighted work - music, artworks, text, and more - without a licence.

  • VOA News ☛ Musicians release silent album to protest UK's AI copyright changes

    Creative industries globally are grappling with the legal and ethical implications of AI models that can produce their own output after being trained on popular works without necessarily paying the creators of the original content.

    Britain, which Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants to become an AI superpower, has proposed relaxing laws that currently give creators of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works the right to control the ways their material may be used.

  • Press Gazette ☛ News titles from Guardian to Daily Mail unite in opposition to AI copyright grab

    The “Make it Fair” front pages coincide with the final day of a government consultation into the proposal, which would automatically allow AI businesses like OpenAI to ingest UK creators’ content until those creators explicitly opt out.

    The cover wraps, which have appeared on both national and regional titles, argue the government “is looking to change the law to favour big tech platforms so they can use British creative content to power their AI models without our permission or payment”.

  • Consequence ☛ Silent AI Protest Album Released in Response to Proposed UK Copyright Law

    More than 1,000 artists — including Damon Albarn, Kate Bush, and Annie Lennox — have released a silent album in protest of the UK government’s proposed changes to copyright law, allowing AI companies to train their models using copyrighted work without a license.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Kate Bush accuses ministers of silencing musicians in copyright row

    It came as Downing Street refused to guarantee that copyrighted work will not be used to train AI software. Artists are concerned the policy will enable the creation of AI music that drowns out pieces by humans.

    Under current government plans, tech giants will be free to use copyrighted material unless the rights holder explicitly opts out. The move has been met with fierce opposition from the creative industries, which have warned that this “opt-out” system will be difficult to enforce and place a huge burden on artists.