Leftovers

• Digital Music News ☛ Regina Folk Festival Shuts Down After 50+ Years

  The live music festival scene has seen more than its share of struggles over the past five years, and Canada perhaps more than most. According to the Canadian Live Music Association, the industry suffered a staggering 60% revenue decline since the pandemic. Festivals and Major Events Canada says costs to organize a music festival are up by 30-40% since 2019. As a result, Saskatchewan’s Regina Folk Festival will be shutting down after more than 50 years.

• Curt Merrill ☛ Blog Questions Challenge

  I think I started my first “blog” in 2000. I was hand-writing HTML and uploading it to a friend’s server. Those files were lost sometime in the era of Zip disks.

  I began publishing online as a way to experiment with the web and share updates with my friends and family. I posted about what I was doing, including photos and playlists from my college radio show.

• Brandon ☛ You Don’t Have Control, You Have Anxiety

  That little quote has reframed this entire experience for me and made me realize that I’ve done this my entire life. In a way, it’s at the core of many of my struggles. Between worrying about being homeless or obsessing over natural disasters, I’ve always felt like I was just trying to stay on top of things in order to be in control of them, when in fact, I’ve just been anxious. I’ve been worried, and I’ve reacted (at times) extreme when faced with said situations. And when you get down to the truth, I haven’t had any control over anything. It truly has been an illusion.

• Benedict Evans ☛ What kind of disruption?

  You can push this point in different directions. Sometimes disruption is much more about new demand than challenging the existing market, or only affects a peripheral business, as happened with Skype. Everything is probably disruptive to someone - online travel booking was very disruptive to travel agents but (for the sake of argument) didn’t change the fundamentals of the airline business, and generative AI will probably be much more disruptive to (say) profession services companies than the cement business. But in each case, it’s always easier to shout ‘disruption!’ or ‘AI!’ than to ask what kind.

• PC Gamer ☛ Pirate Bay co-founder and far-right politician found dead after plane crash

  The co-founder and financial backer of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, Carl Lundstrom, has died after a plane he was flying crashed in Northern Slovenia. Lundstrom was flying solo.

• Terence Eden ☛ Ter[ence|ry]

  So I was Terry until I entered the workforce. An overzealous IT admin ignored my "preferred name" on a new-joiners' form and, in a fit of bureaucratic inflexibility, renamed me "Terence". To my surprise, I liked it. It was my nom de guerre.

  "Terence" had KPIs and EOY targets. "Terry" got to play games and drink beer.

• Idiomdrottning ☛ Löjl

  Arguably English has the exact same journey: “ridicule” → “ridiculous” → “ridiculousness”. Arguably an even longer journey since you started with “rīdēre”, which means to laugh, so you have one extra step tacked on before everything.

• Science

  • Wired ☛ Can’t Wrap Your Head Around Pi? Here’s a Cool Visual to Help

    Happy Pi Day! We celebrate pi on March 14 because 3-14 gives the first three digits of this famous number. But what’s the big deal about pi anyway? Why does it get a day? Well, for starters, it defines the simplest, most perfect shape, the circle. So it’s everywhere around you. Pi is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle: π = C/d.

  • [Old] Evan Miller ☛ Attention Is Off By One

    Do you see the off-by-one error in this formula?
    \[ \textrm{Attention}(Q, K, V) = \textrm{softmax}\left(\frac{QK^T}{\sqrt{d}}\right)V \]

    The attention formula is the central equation of modern AI, but there’s a bug in it that has been driving me nuts the last week. I tried writing a serious-looking research paper about the bug and my proposed fix, but I lost a series of pitched battles against Pytorch and biblatex, so I figured I’d just write a blog post instead. (History is written by the winners; blogs are written by…)

    In this post I’ll explain how (IMHO) the current generation of AI models have an off-by-one error in a crucial place, and it’s making everyone’s Transformer models needlessly difficult to compress and deploy. Consider this an opinion piece, but if anyone out there on the Internet wants to run some experiments and prove me right, we can collaborate and call ourselves scientists.

• Career/Education

  • Common Dreams ☛ Columbia University Went All In on Repressing Student Protest. It Didn't Matter.

    "History does not look kindly on institutions that rush to aid authoritarian crackdowns."

  • ACLU ☛ Trump’s Attack on the Department of Education, Explained

    This week, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) released a statement saying it would cut nearly 50 percent of the department's workforce. These new layoffs occur at a moment when President Donald Trump has vowed to eliminate the ED and withhold funding from any other entity that incorporates diversity, equity and inclusion in educational practices and environments pursuant to civil rights laws. This move is part of the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the ED and repeal the federal government’s core responsibility of ensuring equal educational opportunity for all.

    This reckless action strips students of vital resources and tears down statutorily-mandated functions that are essential to addressing racial and economic inequality in education. It also threatens decades of bipartisan progress toward educational fairness and reverses the commitment of previous administrations — Republican and Democrat alike — to ensure equal access to education. As the Supreme Court unanimously recognized in Brown v. Board of Education, public education “is the very foundation of good citizenship.”

  • Forbes ☛ ElfQuest Creators Donate $500,000 To Columbia University Comics Archive

    ElfQuest itself occupies an unusual position within the comic firmament, partly because the Pinis maintained control of their independent franchise through financial ups and downs, eventually making enough money doing so to be able to contribute $500,000 to an academic institution to preserve their own work and that of other artists.

    The many ElfQuest series have been published both directly through the Pinis’ own company, WaRP, and distributed by the industry’s giants, including Marvel, DC and, now, Dark Horse Comics. And Wendy Pini wasn’t the only artist behind the series over the years either, with contributions by a few dozen other artists.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Required reading: This column is for parents, paired with a book for teens

    After the week that I had on campus in Lawrence, I will be doing exactly this with my teenagers. Why? Because I’ve increasingly seen how high schools don’t ask students to read books.

    Teens are reading fewer novels. They are reading shorter novels. They are reading partial novels.

    Their nonfiction textbooks are mostly online and, for that reason, repellant — difficult to read, clumsy to annotate and largely optional.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Keenan

    This is the 81st edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Keenan and their blog, gkeenan.co

• Hardware

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] TSMC chip plans in US fuel China security fears in Taiwan

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Linux or Landfill? End of Windows 10 Leaves PC Charities with Tough Choice

    If you’re a consumer or a business, Microsoft and the PC industry would very much like you to toss these systems in the trash and buy new computers to take their place. But forgotten in this capitalist crush are all the charities that refurbish older computers and give them to people who can’t afford to purchase one.

    These non-profits are sitting on a plethora of still-working computers that can’t run Microsoft’s latest OS. Do they give clients a soon-to-be-insecure Windows 10 computer, send older computers to an ewaste recycler, toss them in the trash or try to install some form of Linux?

  • The Drone Girl ☛ New radiometric thermal cameras from FLIR level up drones

    Called the Boson+ and Hadron 640R+, these are improved versions of its Boson and Hadron 640R thermal camera modules. With that, comes game-changing sensors that don’t just detect heat, but measure exact temperatures at every pixel in real-time.

  • Spencer Harston ☛ Starting a Records Collection

    I started looking at turntables not too long ago, getting a feel for decent, entry-level tables that wouldn't hurt financially, should I decide it wasn't for me. I was eyeing one of the Audio-Technicas that looked like a good introduction. A couple weeks ago, a deal appeared on Slickdeals that seemed pretty decent. It looked like a seller on eBay had a huge amount of inventory and was getting rid of brand new players and was accepting offers as low as $120. I thought about it, and decided that for $120, it was certainly worth a shot to see if this is a hobby I could get invested in. And so I bought it. I'm now the owner of a Como Audio Pro-Ject T1 turntable.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Nigeria to get leprosy drug after a yearlong delay — report

  • Omicron Limited ☛ EU countries back looser rules for gene-edited crops

    Representatives for the bloc's 27 nations endorsed, with a few changes, a European Commission proposal aiming at allowing broader use of plants obtained by so-called new genomic techniques (NGTs).

  • Robert Birming ☛ Mental mud

    But what I mean, and what I think the blogger agrees with, is something completely different. It's another level. It's about feeling socially exhausted in a way that you would physically after an intense workout, and the need to truly recover and regain strength.

• Proprietary

  • CBR ☛ Ubisoft Shareholder Starting Protest Over Company Failing to Disclose Possible Game Sales to Microsoft, EA

    A Ubisoft shareholder could be organizing a protest after the publisher failed to mention that it was in talks with other publishers about selling its franchises.

    According to IGN, the CEO of AJ Investments, Juraj Krupa, claimed Ubisoft is "horribly mismanaged" and has demanded a "clear roadmap for recovery" including answers about the declining shareholder value and "failure to adapt effectively to market trends." This can be seen in Ubisoft's recent games, including its unpopular focus on crypto and NFT games, which the gaming community was revolted by.

    Krupa added that Ubisoft hasn't been transparent about its decisions, including "hiding information" about its partnerships and possible sales. This includes a potential merger between Ubisoft and Microsoft, EA, and other publishers that are interested in acquiring IPs. This was apparently not mentioned to shareholders.

  • Unmitigated Risk ☛ Understanding Enterprise Security Buyer Dynamics

    When selling security solutions [sic] to enterprises, understanding who makes purchasing decisions is critical to success. Too often, security vendors aim their messaging at the wrong audience or fail to recognize how budget authority flows in organizations. This post tries to break down the essential framework for understanding enterprise security buyer dynamics.

  • The Register UK ☛ Google says it's rolling out fix for stricken Chromecast kit

    On Sunday, March 9, users of the Chocolate Factory's second-generation Chromecast and Chromecast Audio devices found their kit was not functioning with official Google apps at least. Some unofficial apps including VLC should still be working. The problem was traced back to a Google-owed device authentication certificate authority, which had expired that weekend after ten years of validity and left the streaming kit flashing up an "untrusted device" error.

  • Cato Networks ☛ Cato CTRL: Ballista – New IoT Botnet Targeting Thousands of TP-Link Archer Routers

    Over the years, major IoT botnets like Mirai and Mozi have proven how easily routers can be exploited and threat actors have taken note. Two key issues have played in their favor: the fact that users rarely deploy new firmware to their routers, coupled with the lack of regard for security by router vendors. As a result, router vulnerabilities may persist in the wild for much longer than initially expected, even after patches are published publicly.

  • Tom's Guide ☛ Thousands of TP-Link routers have been infected by a botnet to spread malware

    A new botnet campaign is exploiting a high-severity security flaw in unpatched TP-Link routers and has already spread to more than 6,000 devices.

    According to a new report from the Cato CTRL team, the Ballista botnet exploits a remote code execution vulnerability that directly impacts the TP-Link Archer AX-21 router.

  • Westenberg ☛ Why Personal Websites Matter More Than Ever

    I don’t know why we talk about walled gardens.

    That seems to imply something beautiful, something worth defending.

    It conjures images of beautifully maintained flowerbeds protected from the outside world. But that’s not what Facebook built, what Instagram built, what Twitter built.

    They built paved, unshaded, barren hellscapes, trapped us in them, and surrounded us with guard towers and razor wire, intended to keep us in, not protect us from anyone else. There's no "garden" here.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • The Conversation ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] To understand the future of AI, take a look at the failings of Google Translate [Ed: Lacking actual comprehension of text]

    • The Conversation ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] Four Chinese firms looking to shake up the tech world in the wake of DeepSeek

    • Tedium ☛ &udm=14 Search Hack: Could It Be In Danger Of Breaking?

      That popular single-serving site I built to work around Google’s AI snippets could, unfortunately, see an infusion of AI soon. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

    • Wired ☛ Under Trump, AI Scientists Are Told to Remove ‘Ideological Bias’ From Powerful Models

      “The Trump administration has removed safety, fairness, misinformation, and responsibility as things it values for AI, which I think speaks for itself,” says one researcher at an organization working with the AI Safety Institute, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.

      The researcher believes that ignoring these issues could harm regular users by possibly allowing algorithms that discriminate based on income or other demographics to go unchecked. “Unless you're a tech billionaire, this is going to lead to a worse future for you and the people you care about. Expect AI to be unfair, discriminatory, unsafe, and deployed irresponsibly,” the researcher claims.

    • Molly White ☛ “Wait, not like that”: Free and open access in the age of generative AI

      These reactions are understandable. When we freely license our work, we do so in service of those goals: free and open access to knowledge and education. But when trillion dollar companies exploit that openness while giving nothing back, or when our work enables harmful or exploitative uses, it can feel like we've been naïve. The natural response is to try to regain control.

      This is where many creators find themselves today, particularly in response to AI training. But the solutions they're reaching for — more restrictive licenses, paywalls, or not publishing at all — risk destroying the very commons they originally set out to build.

    • Manton Reece ☛ Is Apple Intelligence even possible?

      But what if Apple has discovered that it’s not actually possible? AI is entirely new, with new requirements that stress the limits of hardware. Apple is attempting to cram a clever intermingling of data and Siri features into 8 GB of RAM. As a comparison, the largest version of DeepSeek R1 can only be run on a brand new Mac Studio with the M3 Ultra and 512 GB of RAM.

    • Macworld ☛ Report: Apple internally acknowledges 'ugly and embarrassing' Siri delays

      The features were promoted before they were ready, he acknowledged and lamented that his team is probably feeling pretty bad right about now. According to Bloomberg’s account, Walker vowed to deliver “an industry-leading virtual assistant.”

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ AI still can't do 'basic tasks' such as tell the time or understand a calendar, research finds

      AI still can’t do “basic tasks” such as tell the time or understand a calendar, researchers have found.

      State-of-the-art AI models are unable to reliably interpret clock-hand positions or correctly answer questions about dates on a calendar, according to the team from the University of Edinburgh.

    • EFF ☛ EFF to NSF: AI Action Plan Must Put People First

      EFF answered with a few clear points: First, government procurement of decision-making (ADM) technologies must be done with transparency and public accountability—no secret and untested algorithms should decide who keeps their job or who is denied safe haven in the United States. Second, Generative AI policy rules must be narrowly focused and proportionate to actual harms, with an eye on protecting other public interests. And finally, we shouldn't entrench the biggest companies and gatekeepers with AI licensing schemes.

    • The Register UK ☛ AI running out of juice despite Microsoft's hard squeezing

      Other people, however, have figured out that AI is not ready for prime job time. AI adoption rates in business are stalling. In the US, general AI adoption rates are grinding to a halt. According to the Fall 2024 Slack Workforce Index, AI adoption growth rates among US workers have slowed over the last three months to a mere percentage point gain versus near-double digit gains in the same period a year earlier.

  • Social Control Media

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] Albania Starts Turning off TikTok Amid Concern Over Youth Violence

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] Albania TikTok ban to enter force Thursday

    • International Business Times ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Who is Calin Georgescu? Right Wing 'TikTok Star' Banned From Romania's Presidential Race, Backed by Musk and Vance

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • CBC ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Canadians exempted from fingerprinting for U.S. travel under new Homeland Security rules

    • Techdirt ☛ First Porn, Now Skin Cream? ‘Age Verification’ Bills Are Out Of Control

      Age verification laws do far more than ‘protect children online’—they require the creation of a system that collects vast amounts of personal information from everyone. Instead of making the internet safer for children, these laws force all users—regardless of age—to verify their identity just to access basic content or products. This isn’t a mistake; it’s a deliberate strategy. As one sponsor of age verification bills in Alabama admitted, “I knew the tough nut to crack that social media would be, so I said, ‘Take first one bite at it through pornography, and the next session, once that got passed, then go and work on the social media issue.’” In other words, they recognized that targeting porn would be an easier way to introduce these age verification systems, knowing it would be more emotionally charged and easier to pass. This is just the beginning of a broader surveillance system disguised as a safety measure.

    • Federal News Network ☛ Federal judge considers blocking DOGE [sic] from accessing Social Security data of millions of Americans

      During a Friday hearing on the issue in federal court in Baltimore, U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander repeatedly questioned attorneys for the government about why the DOGE [sic] team needed such a large quantity of sensitive personal information about Social Security recipients, including health records for disability applicants. She questioned whether a more targeted approach would allow DOGE [sic] to uncover improper payments without accessing so much data.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Guardian, GB News, Newsquest add 'consent or pay' cookie rules

      The more a publisher knows about its website users – either through tech like cookies which anonymously track them or by requiring them to log in – the more it can charge advertisers, because brands are willing to pay extra to be able to target specific audiences.

      However the UK information watchdog the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) now requires news publishers to display a “reject all cookies” button as prominently as an “accept all” option. The Guardian’s chief advertising officer Imogen Fox said in 2023 that 30% of its users were hitting “reject all”, prompting the publisher to roll out a contextual advertising solution which places ads on articles depending on their relevance to the content.

    • The Register UK ☛ US lawmakers urge public hearing on UK Apple encryption

      The entire process is shrouded in secrecy, however. The alleged order, made in the form of a technical capability notice (TCN) issued under the UK's Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), was reportedly issued to Apple last month by the Home Office.

      That TCN is understood to have contained an instruction for Apple to introduce a capability that allowed it to decrypt specific users' iCloud data if requested via the IPA.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ California’s legal push on geolocation data collection must take aim at the right targets, privacy experts say

      The investigation will include scrutiny of advertising networks, mobile app providers and data brokers whose practices may violate the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), one of the strictest state privacy laws in the nation.

      Specifically, the attorney general’s office will look into how mobile app providers collect and resell data to third-party brokers, who then sell it to the highest bidder. The current ecosystem may violate the CCPA, which gives consumers the right to request or delete collected data, opt out of having their data sold to third parties, and limit the use of their personal information.

    • The Record ☛ Appellate court upholds sentence for former Uber cyber executive Joe Sullivan

      Sullivan was given three years probation by a U.S. federal judge in 2023 after a federal jury convicted him of two charges related to his attempted coverup of a 2016 security incident at Uber, where hackers stole the personal details of 57 million customers and the personal information of 600,000 Uber drivers.

    • The Verge ☛ Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

      The GSM Association said it had started working to enable E2EE on messages sent between Android and iPhone in September last year. E2EE is a privacy and security feature that prevents third parties, such as messaging providers or cell carriers, from viewing the content of your texts. The GSMA says the new RCS standard was developed in collaboration with “mobile operators, device manufacturers, and technology providers,” including Apple.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ What could Apple’s high court challenge mean for data protection?

      The Home Office has issued a “technical capability notice” under the Investigatory Powers Act, which requires companies to assist law enforcement in providing evidence. The notice focuses on Apple’s Advanced Data Protection service, which encrypts personal data uploaded and stored remotely in Apple’s cloud servers.

      The government wants Apple to provide the UK with the ability to access the content via a backdoor into the service.

    • Techdirt ☛ Saudi Arabia Buys Everybody’s Sensitive Pokémon Go Location Data

      The U.S. is awash in propaganda we do absolutely nothing about. And our corrupt refusal to pass a basic internet-era privacy law (or regulate data brokers) has resulted in a vast, largely unregulated, hyper-surveillance market for your every thought, browsing habit, or movement. Data that’s then routinely sold to any number of random nitwits, including right wing extremists and foreign intelligence services.

      We were told repeatedly for years that TikTok posed some kind of very unique threat, even though that threat was not at all unique, and created by the government’s corrupt failure to protect consumer privacy.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Whistleblower Mark Klein revealed illegal NSA spying, RIP

      Klein worked as a telecommunications technician at AT&T for 22 years when he discovered something alarming at the company's San Francisco facility: evidence of widespread government spying on American citizens.

• Defence/Aggression

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Sweden Prosecutes Ex-Security Adviser for Leaving Secret Papers at Hotel

  • The Local SE ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Sweden faces 'significant risk' of worsening national security, agency warns

  • The Local SE ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Sweden's former national security adviser charged in classified documents scandal

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Donald Trump vows to ‘expose’ enemies, calls for jailing his perceived opponents in rare Justice Department speech

    US President Donald Trump, during a rare speech at the Justice Department on Friday, vowed to “expose” all of the people who were involved in prosecuting him in several criminal cases, reported the Associated Press. US President Donald Trump gave a rare political speech at the Justice Department(Bloomberg) US President Donald Trump gave a rare political speech at the Justice Department(Bloomberg)

    Donald Trump also called for his perceived political opponents to be jailed during the speech at the headquarters of the Justice Department — an agency that was prosecuting him a few months ago.

  • DeSmog ☛ Heritage Foundation and Allies Discuss Dismantling the EU

    The paper proposes dismantling the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. It claims that the “EU is evolving into a quasi-federal state, limiting national decision-making power” and is imposing “ideologically motivated policies on member states, without any mandate”. Under the plan, the EU would cease to function in its current guise, and would instead be renamed the European Community of Nations (ECN).

    Kenneth Haar, a researcher and campaigner at the transparency watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory, said it was “quite simply terrifying” to see the Heritage Foundation moving its attention to Europe.”

  • Techdirt ☛ DHS Buries Its Last Election Security Review Because With Trump In Charge, No One Cares About Election Integrity

    The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) now exists in name only. Not only did Trump’s band of Musk-led pillagers dismantle the infrastructure side of the agency by disbanding the CISA group investigating a massive China-based hack of US phone systems, but the administration terminated ongoing election security and disinformation-thwarting efforts by the agency roughly a month later, putting CISA in charge of… practically nothing.

  • New York Times ☛ Elon Musk Shared, Then Deleted X Post Absolving Hitler, Stalin and Mao of Genocide

    The post falsely claimed that Joseph Stalin, the communist leader of the Soviet Union until 1953; Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party in Germany; and Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, didn’t cause the deaths of millions of people under their watch. Instead, the post said, their public sector workers did.

  • The Record ☛ Can TikTok help Frank McCourt reinvent the internet?

    That’s where McCourt sees an opening: an opportunity not just to bring TikTok under American control, but to use it as a test case for a whole new kind of internet—one that he believes could upend the power dynamics of Big Tech.

    The Click Here podcast sat down with McCourt to talk about why he thinks his bid is the most sensible for the Chinese company and sees the congressional bid to rein in TikTok as a “gift.”

    The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Canadian Sovereignty, Digital and Geographic

    In just about every discussion concerning TikTok’s ability to operate within the United States, including my own, two areas of concern are cited: users’ data privacy, and the manipulation of public opinion through its feeds by a hostile foreign power. Regarding the first, the U.S., Canada, and any other country is not serious about the mishandling of private information unless it passes comprehensive data privacy legislation, so we can ignore that for now. The latter argument, however, merited my writing thousands of words in that single article. So let me dig into it again from a different angle.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Troy Edgar Implies We Should Deport Elon Musk

    But the interview is far more interesting for the logic Edgar offers for Khalil’s detention as a Green Card holder entitled to more due process, which would suggest even Elon Musk — especially Elon Musk — must be deported under Trump’s Executive Orders, right along with Khalil.

  • The Local SE ☛ Sweden to ban pupils from having phones in schools

    A Swedish government inquiry has recommended that Sweden bring in a national ban on mobile phones in schools, with schools required to collect pupils' phones at the start of the school day at all primary and lower secondary schools in the country.

  • SR ☛ Government inquiry: ban phones in schools

    A government inquiry into the use of smartphones in schools has proposed a national ban on phones during the school day.

  • India Times ☛ Smartphones In Schools: Why Guided Use May Be The Answer - The Times of India

    However, their use in schools also raises significant concerns, including the scope for distraction. Divya Bhatia, principal of Amity International School, noted that indiscriminate use of smartphones was a growing concern for many schools. "We discourage students from bringing phones to school. For senior secondary students, in case of special requirements, students carry a note from the parents and the phones are switched off and deposited with the class teacher," she said.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Denmark to ban mobile phones in schools and after-school clubs

    The government said it would change existing legislation to force all folkeskole – comprehensive primary and lower secondary schools – to become phone-free, meaning that almost all children aged between seven and 16-17 will be required by law not to bring their phones into school.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Rest of Europe should follow Denmark’s lead in banning phones in schools, says expert

    The commission’s report, published last month, raised the alarm over the digitalisation of the lives of children and young people. Among its 35 recommendations was a change in legislation to ban phones from schools and after-school clubs – which the government has said it will impose across all folkeskole (comprehensive primary and lower secondary schools). The commission also said children under 13 should not have their own smartphone or tablet.

  • BBC ☛ Denmark to ban phones in schools - BBC Newsround

    Full details have not been released by the Danish government, but Mattias Tesfaye, Minister for Children and Education says a ban would mean "mobile phones and personal tablets will not be allowed at school, neither during break times nor during lessons".

  • Irish Legal News Ltd ☛ Denmark to ban phones in schools

    Denmark is set to ban mobile phones in schools and after-school clubs following recommendations from a government commission that also advised against children under 13 having their own smartphone or tablet.

  • The Record ☛ Europe's telecoms sector under increased threat from cyber spies, warns Denmark

    It is the first public warning by a European government agency that suggests governments on the continent share the alarm of the United States over a Chinese spying campaign tracked as Salt Typhoon, although the Danish authorities did not explicitly mention Salt Typhoon or China.

    There has not yet been confirmation of Salt Typhoon activity in Europe from European governments or businesses, but a senior U.S. official told journalists last year that European targets had been compromised by the Chinese campaign.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] Dutch PM may defy parliament's wishes for ReArm Europe plan; VVD leader heads to Ukraine

    • Bridge Michigan ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] 'Fear, anxiety' for Michigan Ukrainian refugees as Cheeto Mussolini considers deportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] Ukraine: Putin says ceasefire must lead to lasting peace

    • The Local SE ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] Sweden to donate 18 Archer mobile artillery systems to Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] Putin on a Ceasefire in Ukraine, Western Companies and Gas

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] How America’s changing Ukraine Policy Could Reshape Europe’s Future

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] Ukraine: Guarded optimism after US peace talks in Jeddah

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] US, Ukraine agree on 30-day ceasefire proposal

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] European Defence Ministers Meet in Paris to Discuss Ukraine and Rearmament

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] Pressed to Accept a Ceasefire in Ukraine, Putin Seems Likely to Seek His Own Conditions

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] Putin Visits Kursk Region for First Time Since Ukraine Attacked It, News Agencies Report

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] In Rare Meeting Without U.S. Ally, Western Army Chiefs Meet to Show Ukraine Unity

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Kremlin Accuses Ukraine of Targeting Residential Apartment Blocks in Massive Drone Attack

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Poland Arrests Ukrainian Woman Convicted of Selling 56 Human Kidneys

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Third Person Dies as a Result of Ukrainian Drone Attack on Moscow Region, Local Authorities Say

    • Vox ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] What’s mattered most amid Cheeto Mussolini’s chaos so far

    • Vox ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] The new US-Ukraine deal, briefly explained

    • The Conversation ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] What’s so special about Ukraine’s minerals? A geologist explains

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Zelenskyy lands in Saudi Arabia ahead of Ukraine peace talks

    • The Local DK ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Danish parliament backs sending peacekeepers to Ukraine

    • The Local SE ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] 'We are shocked': Americans in Sweden rally in support of Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] UK PM Starmer to Host Virtual Meeting of Leaders on Ukraine on Saturday

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] More Than 30 Nations Will Participate in Paris Planning Talks on a Security Force for Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Ukraine to Sharply Raise Purchases of Home Produced FPV Drones in 2025

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] US Sees Progress in Ukraine Talks, Hopes for Minerals Deal, Envoy Says

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-03-09 [Older] Europe’s Ukraine Dilemma: Defending Kyiv Amid Rising Euroscepticism

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-03-09 [Older] Dutch Defense Minister holds talks with Ukrainian counterpart in The Hague

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-09 [Older] Ukraine updates: Australia to consider peacekeeping mission

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-09 [Older] What can Ukraine expect from talks with US in Saudi Arabia?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-09 [Older] 'Say Thank You' Rubio Tells Poland Amid Starlink Spat

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-09 [Older] US Secretary of State Rubio to Meet Ukrainian Counterparts in Saudi Arabia This Week

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-08 [Older] With Most Male Actors at War, a Small Ukrainian Theater Reinvents Itself With an All-Female Cast

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-08 [Older] US Top Diplomat Rubio Tells Ukraine That Cheeto Mussolini Wants to End War 'As Soon as Possible'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-08 [Older] Zelenskiy Says Ukraine Is 'Fully Committed' to Constructive Dialogue With US

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Ukraine updates: US firm blocks access to satellite imagery

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] US, French Top Diplomats Hold Call About Ending Ukraine War, State Dept Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] Undue process? Verdict delayed for four Russian journalists

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] Americans Worry Cheeto Mussolini Too Closely Aligned With Russia, Reuters/Ipsos Poll Finds

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Says He Hopes Russia Will Do the Right Thing on Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] Exclusive-Russia Lambasts Syria's New Leaders in Closed UN Meeting, Sources Say

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] Ukraine: Cheeto Mussolini says negotiators headed to Russia 'right now'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] Russian Central Bank Proposes Wealthy Individuals Be Allowed to Invest in Crypto

    • Off Guardian ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] The digital ruble should be used for control: Refreshing honesty from senior Russian lawmaker

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] Online Map Appears to Show Ukraine No Longer in Control of Russia's Sudzha

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] Russia Fines Veteran Journalist for 'Justifying Terrorism'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Cites Positive Messages on Potential Russia-Ukraine Ceasefire

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] Ukraine Says Russian Strike on Odesa Port Is Attack on Global Food Security

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] UK Revokes Russian Diplomat's Accreditation in Retaliation for Moscow Expulsions

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] The delicate thread to peace: Can US-Russia Negotiations End the Ukraine Conflict?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Myanmar's junta turns to Russia for support in civil war

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Ukraine backs US proposal for 30-day ceasefire with Russia

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Ukraine, US hold talks in Jeddah on ending war with Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Death Toll From Ukrainian Strike on Shopping Centre in Russia's Kursk Region Rises to Five, Governor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Russia Hands Long Jail Term to Man Convicted of Trying to Kill Ex-Lawmaker at Ukraine's Behest

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Russia Says It Wants United and 'Friendly' Syria

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Ukraine Says It Struck Oil Facilities in Russia's Moscow, Oryol Regions

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Amsterdam festival Sail bans Russian tall ships from taking part this summer

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Iran, China and Russia launch annual joint naval drills

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Firefighters Battle Warehouse Blaze in Russia's Samara Region

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Kremlin Says Allegations of Russian Sabotage in Europe and US Are 'Empty' and Unproven

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Kremlin Says Hard Road Ahead to Restore Russia-US Relations, but There Is Political Will

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Russia Expels Two UK Diplomats as It Negotiates to Restore US Ties

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Russian Forces Advance in Kursk and Curl Behind Ukrainian Forces

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Russia's Foreign Spy Service Says Britain Sees U.S.-Russia Dialogue as a Threat

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] Russia Trying to Gain Foothold in Ukraine's Sumy Region, Border Guard Says

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-03-09 [Older] After US Pullback: What’s Next for Ukraine and Russia?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-09 [Older] France to Tap Russian Assets for 195 Million Euros This Year, Minister Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-09 [Older] Ukrainian Drone Hits Industrial Plant Deep Inside Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-09 [Older] Russian Forces Walked Inside a Gas Pipeline to Strike Ukrainian Troops From the Rear in Kursk

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-09 [Older] Russian Soldiers Creep Through Gas Pipeline to Strike Ukrainian Forces in Kursk, Bloggers Say

    • CBC ☛ 2025-03-08 [Older] At least 14 killed, dozens wounded in Russian strikes on Ukraine, Kyiv says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-08 [Older] Ukraine updates: Fatal Russian strikes in Donetsk, Kharkiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-08 [Older] At Least 14 Killed, 37 Wounded in Russian Missile Strike on Ukraine, Kyiv Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-08 [Older] Russian Forces Retake Three Villages From Ukraine in Western Kursk Region, Defence Ministry Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-08 [Older] Russian Strikes on Ukraine Kill 20 as US Cuts Intelligence Sharing With Kyiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-08 [Older] Russia's Kirishi Refinery Hit by Debris During Ukrainian Drone Attack

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-08 [Older] Two Russian Regions Block Telegram App Over Security Fears

    • CBC ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini questions if Ukraine ready 'to settle' unprovoked invasion of its borders

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-07 [Older] Russian Strike on Eastern Ukrainian Town Kills Four, Injures 18, Regional Governor Says

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • American Oversight ☛ American Oversight Files for Emergency Restraining Order Against Marco Rubio to Stop Destruction of Public Records at USAID

    On Wednesday, American Oversight filed a motion for a temporary restraining order against Secretary Marco Rubio — in his capacity as acting U.S. Agency for International Development administrator and acting archivist — to immediately halt the further destruction or deletion of critical documents at the agency and ensure the preservation of all records, including those essential for accountability. The motion follows Tuesday’s urgent lawsuit against USAID, the National Archives and Records Administration, and Rubio for violating a slew of transparency laws by destroying government records.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Press shut out of ‘outrageous’ Snoopers’ Charter encryption appeal

    Representatives for ten top UK news organisations spent Friday unsuccessfully camped outside the doors of a secret tribunal waiting to argue an “unprecedented” appeal over access to Apple users’ data underway inside must be heard in public.

    They say it is “outrageous” and “absurd” that the appeal, over the UK Government’s ability to access Apple customers’ encrypted data under the so-called “Snoopers’ Charter”, is being held in secret despite “overwhelming” public interest and widespread coverage.

  • 404 Media ☛ Detained Protester Mahmoud Khalil Sues Columbia University

    Mahmoud Khalil, who ICE arrested on Saturday, and a group of other students from Columbia are suing the university to stop the release of disciplinary records.

  • ZoomerMedia Limited ☛ LCBO denies viral photos of hilarious Wayne Gretzky wine labels in Toronto

    "Sad & two-faced. This merlot is as weak as its namesake's moral fibre," reads what looks like the official LCBO label for one of Gretzky's wines, shown in a photo said to have been taken at the 55 Bloor Street store.

    "Weak & backstabbery. This Pinot delights with notes of elitism, and affluence. Terry Fox would not have used this swill to put out a fire," quips another.

• Environment

  • Futurism ☛ Bill Gates Gives Up on Climate Change

    Now, however, many of those same billionaires are pulling support at an alarming rate. And Bill Gates — Microsoft founder, sixth richest man in the world, and alleged sex pest — is the latest among them.

    New reporting by Heatmap is signaling the end of a "major chapter in climate giving," as Breakthrough Energy — Gates' climate change nonprofit — has locked the doors on its policy and advocacy office, laying off dozens of employees throughout Europe and the US.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ NOAA firings spark concerns for agency’s data-centric mission 

    The weather and climate agency’s responsibilities range from weather forecasting and climate monitoring to tracking and studying severe weather and stewarding the nation’s fisheries. Specifically, that translates into activities such as providing the data for local forecasts, flying planes through hurricanes to collect more precise information about the storm’s potential impact, and conducting underwater surveys of fish populations to inform industry and prevent overfishing.

  • International Business Times ☛ Tinder Date Gone Wrong: State Farm Exec Fired After Saying Premium Hikes Following California Fires Were 'Kind Of' Orchestrated

    He added that 'there never should be houses built in the first place' in areas like the Pacific Palisades, given the fire risk, saying that residents want 'natural areas around them for the ego' but the area is a 'f---ing desert, and so it dries out, and it's a tinderbox.'

  • Energy/Transportation

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] China's Shipbuilding Dominance Poses Economic and National Security Risks for the US, a Report Says

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Botswana to pivot from coal to solar

      Botswana will this month seek proposals for the construction of 1.5GW of solar power generation as it seeks to cut its reliance on coal, the country’s mines & energy minister said.

      The largely desert nation, which relies on coal and power imports for its electricity, has set a target of 2030 to take advantage of its abundant sunlight by getting 50% of its power needs from renewable facilities. Jindal Steel & Power is separately building coal-fired facilities to supply 600MW of power in the country.

    • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia Using [Cryptocurrency] in Chinese and Indian Oil Trade

      After initially rejecting the idea of cryptocurrencies, the famously conservative Russian Central Bank eventually softened its stance on the potential use of cryptocurrency as a recognized means of payment.

      This month, the Central Bank launched an experimental legal framework that would allow “highly qualified” investors to trade cryptocurrencies but stopped short of recognizing cryptocurrency as legal tender.

    • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Data Centre Energy Use Force Rethink on Grid Planning

      Demand for electricity will grow 15.8% over the next five years compared to earlier predictions of 4.7%, mostly driven by the surge in data centres for artificial intelligence (AI), predicts RMI, formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute.

      To handle this surge, new data centres should be built at existing gas interconnection points—such as infrequently used peaker plant sites—where renewables can be added “in ways that don’t affect the rest of the grid, that don’t force you to do upgrades,” Uday Varadarajan, senior principal with RMI, told NBC News

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Africa's solar boom: 42% growth expected in 2025

      “Africa is expected to cumulatively install 23GW of new solar capacity between 2025 to 2028, more than doubling its 2024 cumulative installed capacity in only four years,” it said, arguing that fuel price swings and costly electricity make solar a good option for the region.

    • Endeavor Business Media LLC ☛ Deploying Bidirectional Electric Vehicles to Support the Grid Takes a Leap Forward, Enabling Mobile Microgrids | Microgrid Knowledge

      When they’re equipped with bidirectional charging technology, EVs can both charge from and send power to the grid. This allows them to become mobile microgrids that provide battery power when the EVs are sitting idle.

    • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ EVs Explored as Power Storage Option by Utilities

      The technology transforms EVs from being power consumers to power sources, enabling their batteries to feed electricity back to the grid during times of high demand. They act as a decentralized energy storage system without the added infrastructure of a conventional battery energy storage system project (BESS).

    • Futurism ☛ An Entire Country Switched Over to Bitcoin and It's Turned Into a Disaster

      In all, about $200 million in El Salvadorian tax dollars were earmarked for the gamble — 2.7 percent of the government's total annual budget, according to Time. The government's hype wasn't just typical [cryptocurrency] bro babble; so much was riding on it that it had to work.

      Then, reality hit. The immediate results were devastating. Bitcoin's price almost instantly crashed by about 20 percent. BitGo's servers struggled to keep up with the flood of new users, even as the government's official [cryptocurrency] app failed to show up on platforms like Apple and Huawei. Protestors took to the streets, surrounding the Supreme Court, where they were met by heavily armed riot police.

    • International Business Times ☛ People Are Torching Cybertrucks to Protest Elon Musk—Trump Vows to Put Vandals 'Through Hell'

      Four Tesla Cybertrucks were allegedly set on fire in Seattle late on Sunday amid nationwide showroom protests against Musk. The blaze, which broke out in a lot in SoDo, Seattle, is now under investigation by police and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, officials told The Post.

    • [Old] Doc Searls ☛ A dark review for United’s Boeing 787

      An update on 1 May 2024: Read what Cory Doctorow published today. Pro tip: avoid 787s if you can. On top of what Cory says in that piece, what I wrote here when the 787s were new is secondary stuff, but somehow consistent with how things are done at that company.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Plastic Pollution: So Much Bigger Than Straws

    • The Conversation ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Inside the sex lives of chimpanzees: it’s about much more than just reproduction

    • The Conversation ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] We modelled how early human ancestors ran – and found they were surprisingly slow

    • The Conversation ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] Tobacco’s hidden friendly side: how the controversial plant could be used for good

    • The Conversation ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] What deer poo can tell us about the future of Britain’s woodlands

    • The Guardian UK ☛ An elephant buffet, a Lowry and Kenya’s melting glacier: photos of the day – Thursday

    • Crooked Timber ☛ Occasional paper: The interesting home life of the Blue-Ringed Octopus

      A bit of pedantry first: the “blue-ringed octopus” is actually four or five closely related species scattered across the southwest Pacific and Indian Oceans. The paper refers to “blue-striped octopus” but from a layman’s point of view they’re almost identical.

• Finance

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Bezos Offloads £47M in Amazon Shares to Charities—A Generous Gesture or Smart Tax Strategy? [Ed: Evading tax just like other Trump boosters]

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] FTC Asks Judge to Delay Amazon Trial Due to Resource Constraints

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] FTC Reverses Its Request for a Delay in an Amazon Trial, Says It Has Resources to Litigate the Case

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] US Social Security Weighs Phone Service Cuts, Report Says

  • TruthOut ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] MElon Suggests Billions in Cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare

  • Truthdig ☛ 2025-03-11 [Older] Under Cheeto Mussolini, Social Security Resumes ‘Clawback Cruelty’ Policy

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Orban government targets dual citizens to defend Hungary's 'sovereignty'

    Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party has proposed constitutional amendments that could strip dual citizens of their right to remain in the country if deemed a threat to national sovereignty, 444 reports.

    Under the proposed changes, the constitution would be amended to allow the expulsion of Hungarian citizens who also hold another nationality if their actions endanger “national sovereignty, public order, territorial integrity, or security.”

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-03-10 [Older] India's Modi to Back Mauritius Sovereignty Over Chagos, Upgrade Security Ties

  • Derek Kędziora ☛ The end of innovation

    I think there’s a clear and obvious reason why companies aren’t particularly innovative anymore, to quote Robert Reich:

    "Apple now spends twice as much on stock buybacks as on R&D. Over the last fiscal year, Apple doled out $78 billion on buybacks."

    Even Apple has turned to the trinity of American business: hype, dark patterns, and buybacks to make money on paper. And thus it’s not surprising to see what’s happened to the company.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Everybody Hates Elon

    Then there’s Trump’s decision to give vast power to Elon Musk, who is displaying a combination of arrogance, ignorance and incompetence worthy of Trump himself. I mean, how clueless do you have to be to imagine that it would be a good idea to end phone service for Americans filing retirement and disability claims?

    And people are catching on more quickly than I would have expected. At this point in 2017, the S&P 500 was up 15 percent since the inauguration; it was down 9 percent as of Thursday’s close.

  • Bert Hubert ☛ The (European) cloud ladder: from virtual server to MS 365

    We have extensive discussions about our enormous dependence on American clouds, but what exactly are we talking about? And is Europe equally dependent on all types of cloud? This article is aimed at policy makers, but it may also provide some clarity about the broader landscape to actual cloud users.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Techdirt ☛ Trump Claims Boycotting Tesla Is Illegal, Which It Very Much Is Not

      None of these are insurmountable challenges for the world’s richest man, assuming he still is that after these past few months. Twitter can build more resiliency into its platform if it chooses. The rockets can be fixed. And Tesla’s stock will surely rise at some point. In other words, I can’t claim that all of this is the result of Musk’s purchase of a fugazi cabinet post at DOGE [sic].

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Cost Rica ☛ Guatemala Hosts Literary Festival Amid Free Speech Crackdowns

    Set for May 19–24, 2025, the festival begins in the indigenous communities of San Juan Comalapa and Totonicapán before moving to Guatemala City, with an inaugural talk by Spanish singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat. Among the notable participants are Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli, Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya, and American novelist Richard Ford, joining festival founder Sergio Ramírez—a 2017 Cervantes Prize winner exiled in Spain after being stripped of his nationality by Daniel Ortega’s regime.

  • EPIC ☛ Judge in California Age-Appropriate Design Code Case Gets the First Amendment Wrong—Again

    Judge Freeman is wrong—yet again—about the First Amendment. The First Amendment does not bar lawmakers from giving kids special protections online. If Judge Freeman had required NetChoice to build the record demanded of it by both the Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit, she may have come to a different conclusion.

  • Vox ☛ The Facebook whistleblower book Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want you to read

    Meta took legal action against Wynn-Williams last week, arguing that she violated a nondisparagement agreement she signed when she was a Facebook employee. An arbitrator ruled in Meta’s favor on Wednesday, instructing Wynn-Williams to stop promoting the book and “amplifying any further disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental comments.” The book’s publisher, Flatiron Books, and its parent company, Macmillan Publishers, were not part of the arbitration case, and the book remains on sale.

  • Wired ☛ Meta Tries to Bury a Tell-All Book

    If the news is so old, one might ask why is Meta going nuclear on Wynn-Williams? For one thing, its author was a senior executive who was in the room, and on the corporate jet, when stuff happened—and she claims that things were worse than we imagined. Yes, Meta’s reckless disregard in Myanmar, where people died in riots triggered by misinformation posted on Facebook, was previously reported, and the company has since apologized. But Wynn-Williams’ storytelling paints a picture where Meta’s leaders simply didn’t care much about the dangers there. While the media has written about Zuckerberg’s obsession with getting Facebook into China, Wynn-Williams shares official documents that show Meta instructing the Chinese government on face recognition and AI, and says that the company’s behavior was so outrageous that the team crafted headlines to show what the company would have to deal with if their plans leaked. One example: “Zuckerberg Will Stop at Nothing to Get Into China.” While making blanket statements that the book can’t be trusted, Meta hasn’t denied all these allegations specifically. (In general, when a company tries to dismiss charges as “old news,” that translates to a confirmation.)

  • Hengaw Organization for Human Rights Hengaw Organization for Human Rights ☛ Writer Nina Golestani re-arrested through deception by IRGC Intelligence in Rasht

    Nina Golestani, a Gilak writer from Rasht, Gilan Province, has been arrested once again by agents of the IRGC Intelligence Organization, who posed as electricity company workers to gain entry into her home. She had previously been detained and sentenced to prison on political charges.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Techdirt ☛ Justin Baldoni’s Lawsuit Against The NY Times Appears Destined For Dismissal

    The court might has well have put its intentions in big shining lights. This is a suit that never should have been filed and the idea that Baldoni’s team can go on a fishing expedition, potentially to find more personal communications to display to or leak to the public, is silly. The Times has robust First Amendment protections on its reporting. The bar for fraud and defamation is quite high.

    In other words, Baldoni’s team probably would be better off cutting its losses and dropping the suit itself.

  • The Nation ☛ Can the Free Press Be Saved?

    When Disney announced yet another round of layoffs at ABC News last week, it came on the heels of a year in which almost 15,000 media jobs were lost—and capped off a quarter-century in which we’ve seen thousands of independent publications shut down or merged with larger conglomerates.

    The upshot is that Americans now find ourselves trapped in an information environment more tightly controlled than ever by a handful of oligarchs.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • ANF News ☛ Fate of four Kurdish women activists in Iran unknown after arrest over 8 March events

    The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported that the activists have been denied access to legal counsel and family visits.

    Despite repeated requests from their families, the security and judicial authorities have not provided any details about the detainees’ conditions or whereabouts.

  • RFA ☛ Tibetan relics ‘repatriated’ to China, Philippines' Duterte trial | RFA Insider 28 – Radio Free Asia

    This March, the Manhattan district attorney’s anti-trafficking unit handed over 41 “illegally exported” cultural artifacts to China. However, the handover was not a happy occasion for Tibetan scholars – they’re concerned that the artifacts, which include Tibetan Buddhist relics, will be used by China to promote its historical claims to Tibet.

  • [Old] Cultural Property News ☛ Betrayal of Tibet: DA’s Controversial Returns to China - Cultural Property News

    The return by Assistant NY District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, an aggressive advocate of repatriation, seems designed to curry favor with the PRC and give it a propaganda victory. Bogdanos signed papers with PRC Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism and head of the National Cultural Heritage Administration Li Qun at a handover ceremony held at the Chinese Consulate General in New York. The return was little noted in the U.S. but celebrated by multiple articles in the Chinese press. The Chinese articles claimed that this return of “Chinese cultural objects” marks a new high in U.S.-China cultural relations.

  • BBC ☛ Iran using drones and phone apps to monitor strict dress code for women

    Investigators say Iranian security officials are using a strategy of "state-sponsored vigilantism" to encourage people to use specialist phone apps to report women for alleged dress code violations in private vehicles such as taxis and ambulances.

  • The Independent UK ☛ UN warns of Iran using drones to monitor women in public for headscarf violations

    The report, released on Friday by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, come after it determined last year that the country's theocracy was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to the death of Mahsa Amini.

  • [Old] NBC ☛ Iran launches crackdown on women defying hijab dress code

    Condemning the effort as a “war on women,” Amnesty International said in a statement this week that “security forces across the country have intensified their violent enforcement of compulsory veiling.”

    Dubbed the “Noor” (Light) campaign, Iranian officials say the operation is aimed at enforcing the country’s mandatory hijab law, which requires women to cover their heads and the shape of their bodies. The operation marks the most serious effort yet by the regime to try to reassert the government’s authority after women-led protests in 2022 and 2023 challenged the mandatory hijab law.

  • India Times ☛ Iran using drones to spot women without headscarf

    In the report, UN investigators outline how Iran increasingly relies on electronic surveillance. Among the efforts include Iranian officials deploying "aerial drone surveillance" to monitor women in public places. At Tehran's Amirkabir University, authorities have deployed facial recognition cameras and software to find out who is not wearing the hijab. Surveillance cameras on Iran's major roadways also are believed to be involved in searching for uncovered women.

  • VOA News ☛ Author says ban on her book reflects Taliban's repression of women

    For many, "it was the first time that they were reading a book written by a young woman," she said.

    So, when she received a text message from a friend and fellow journalist in November 2024, telling her the Taliban had banned her book, she was shocked.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ University of Alabama under investigation for 'race-based segregation'

    The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) said Friday that the University of Alabama was under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights for allegedly offering “impermissible race-based scholarships” and engaging in “race-based segregation.”

    UA was one of seven universities facing the allegations. The OCR also accused 45 other universities of engaging in “race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programs.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ 'First They Came for the Immigrant': Immigration Crackdown the 'Tip of a Very Dangerous Spear' for Democracy

    Ripped from the playbook of authoritarian movements, it’s not hyperbolic to say they are looking to dismantle core principles of our democracy, viewing the executive branch and state power as means to seek political retribution, crack down on free speech and subvert or ignore the rule of law. Taken together, these actions take America back to the darkest chapters of our national and world history. The resulting fear, intimidation and chaos is a deliberate feature of their efforts.

    To push back and stand up for a different vision of America, we need to be clear eyed about what we’re seeing and the larger stakes and not pretend it’s business as usual. First, they came for the immigrants.”

  • [Repeat] Press Gazette ☛ Remote working pros and cons: Staff at publishers share views

    It appears to be common ground that from a diversity, recruitment and retention point of view, remote or hybrid working is the best option for companies.

    Most staff also see flexible or home-working as a benefit. But some who are forced to work from home (which can mean a bedroom in a shared house for those on lower incomes) miss having a proper office to work out of.

  • Hengaw Organization for Human Rights Hengaw Organization for Human Rights ☛ Three Christian converts sentenced to over 41 years in prison and additional punishments

    According to a report received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, on Sunday, March 9, 2025, Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Iman Afshari, sentenced Abbas Soori to 10 years in prison for “engaging in propaganda contrary to Islamic law” and 5 years for membership in anti-government groups.” In addition, he was given 15 years of social rights deprivation and a fine of 330 million tomans.

  • CS Monitor ☛ In Kansas, Native Americans vie for control of their history

    Until recently, the history of U.S. boarding schools for Indigenous children has mostly been forgotten. But here in Kansas and other places where such school buildings still stand, there’s momentum to delve more deeply into this dark part of America’s past. Mr. Barnes, like other Native leaders around the country, has begun to learn details about his ancestors that he hadn’t known before.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Register UK ☛ Your IPv4 stash can now be collateral for $100M loans

    IP address marketplace IPv4.Global has started offering loans on terms that consider public IPv4 network addresses as valid collateral.

    The loans build on a product announced last year by network operator Cogent, which issued $206 million worth of notes backed by its IPv4 assets.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • PC World ☛ Sony drops [sic] an unexpected Blu-ray surprise!

    It’s not clear if the UBP-X700/K will arrive in the U.S., but you never know. Curiously, FlatpanelsHD notes that the Japanese list price for the new player represents a 25 percent markup compared to the older X700. As a former owner of the UBP-X700, I can say from experience that losing the player’s networking abilities is no big loss. I never used them, instead opting for the streaming services on my Apple TV set-top box. And while I did (very rarely) update the player’s firmware via Wi-Fi, you can just as easily do so over ethernet.

  • Macworld ☛ How To Unlock An iPhone: Use Any Network's SIM Card

    The days of being tied to a single carrier with a locked phone for months on end are all but over. Where we once were forced into 24-month contracts with devices that were useless on any other network, nowadays your wireless carrier must unlock your phone if you request it.

    Seriously, they do. It’s actually a law. The Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act makes it so any phone purchased after 2015 will work with any carrier, so your provider can’t keep your phone tied to their network because they feel like it. However, there are some terms and conditions that you’ll need to follow before you can pop another SIM into your phone, and of course they vary by carrier.

  • Terence Eden ☛ Some thoughts on LCP eBook DRM

    There's a new(ish) DRM scheme in town! LCP is Readium's "Licensed Content Protection".

    At the risk of sounding like an utter corporate stooge, I think it is a relatively inoffensive and technically interesting DRM scheme. Primarily because, once you've downloaded your DRM-infected book, you don't need to rely on an online server to unlock it.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ Retirement So Far

    Another project is disconnecting from all the big tech companies apart from Apple to the extent possible. We are leaving Gmail and using Fastmail. I have all my important accounts using the new email already. I spend about an hour a day moving some other 240 accounts using my Google credentials each day. I will have that finished by the middle of April. I managed to download and remove the DRM from 500 Kindle ebooks and 500 Audible audiobooks. We are trying to decide on new vendors for each of those media types. We are dropping Amazon Prime next month, so I am in the process of downloading nearly a TB of backed up photos from there. I uninstalled all Microsoft products from my computers, but those sneaky bastards left several processes behind that I had to remove via the Terminal to finally disconnect.

  • Joel Chrono ☛ Bye Spotify (for good)

    I finally decided to stop using Spotify and cancel my subscription to it, it's been a long time coming, honestly

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• IP Kat ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] Beyond the process: Securing robust IP [sic] protection for cell therapies

• Rolling Stone ☛ Live Nation, Ticketmaster Fail to Get Antitrust Claims Dismissed

  While Live Nation-Ticketmaster may have entered the year, as they called it, “hopeful” that Donald Trump’s presidency would bode well for its fight against the massive antitrust lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors last May, the company took a hit Friday when a Biden-appointed judge rejected its bid to dismiss a core element of the Justice Department’s complaint.

  In a seven-page ruling obtained by Rolling Stone, U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian refused to toss the DOJ’s claim that Live Nation coerces artists into using its concert promotion services if they want to perform at venues in the company’s vast network of major amphitheaters.

• Chris Coyier ☛ Google Being Forced To Sell Chrome is Not Good for the Web

  A weird curvy-ass line between problem and solution is this strange solution that is being relentlessly proposed that Google should be forced to sell Chrome.

  There is a recent round of news covering this that all point to the curvy-ass-line solution.

• Patents

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • IP Kat ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] The UPC's approach to added matter and functional claims (Abbott v. Sibio Technology, UPC_CoA_382/2024) [Ed: UPC is illegal, but this blog got infiltrated by Team UPC and they don't mind promoting illegal things as long as they profit from these]

• Trademarks

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-03-12 [Older] One trade mark to rule them all? LORD OF THE RINGS loses opposition in Australia

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-03-13 [Older] Late night BABEK – UK court upholds validity of kebab trade mark

• Copyrights

  • Pivot to AI ☛ OpenAI asks the US government for the moon on a stick

    OpenAI would like “AI Economic Zones” where they can do stuff that’s currently just illegal and abuse workers. OpenAI will help the environment with special new laws to build out gas pipelines to new power plants. This is fine, because the artificial general intelligence will save us all. In due course.

    As well as ignoring copyright, OpenAI wants all the classified government data to train on. They need to “test and experiment with real data.” OpenAI even wants the government to invoke the Defense Production Act to prioritize them getting more data center equipment.

  • [Repeat] Digital Music News ☛ OpenAI Says Copyright Training Restrictions Would Forfeit AI Lead

    OpenAI hopes for a nation where AI training on copyrighted works counts as fair use — or else, the company says, the US might ‘forfeit’ its AI lead to China.