Leftovers

• Robert Birming ☛ The gift of absence

  This approach, considered normal just a few years ago, might reveal that this "step back" feels like a significant step forward. Perhaps we'll find that the absence feels not like emptiness, but like fulness.

• Chris ☛ Insurance Perils

  There are some attempts at standardising lists of perils, but these lists have to cover everything all participants want to write into their contracts, so they end up being all over the place. They include very sensible perils like

• W Evan Sheehan ☛ Blog Questions Challenge

  I think I chose Eleventy because everyone around me was talking about it. So far, so good.

• Digital Camera World ☛ Backing up data is so annoying that most would rather…scrub toilets!

  According to a study of more than 6,000 people, more than 44% of respondents have more than 100GB of digital data to store, but 60% of them would rather do those unpleasant chores than sit through data backup. The study was conducted from members of the general public from ten countries. (I suspect other photographers like myself measure the amount of data to backup in the TBs not GBs).

• Science

  • Mark-Jason Dominus ☛ The mathematical past is a foreign country

    A modern presentation of the Peano axioms looks like this:

    1. !!0!! is a natural number
    2. If !!n!! is a natural number, then so is the result of appending an !!S!! to the beginning of !!n!!
    3. Nothing else is a natural number

    This baldly states that zero is a natural number.

  • Wired ☛ It’s Looking More Likely NASA Will Fly the Artemis II Mission

    The Trump administration will release its fiscal-year 2026 budget request in the coming weeks. Maybe then NASA will also have a permanent administrator, and the veil will lift over the White House’s plans for Artemis.

  • Axios ☛ The Trump administration wants more studies replicated. That won't be easy

    Why it matters: Many findings can't be replicated — a problem scientists say needs to be addressed. But it could also consume increasingly scarce resources as the administration cuts spending and freezes federal grants.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ European universities offer ‘scientific asylum’ to US researchers fleeing Trump’s cuts

    The university is among a handful of institutions across Europe that have begun actively recruiting US researchers, offering themselves as a haven for those keen to escape the Trump administration’s crackdown on research and academia.

    Since Trump took power in late January, researchers in the US have faced a multipronged attack. Efforts to slash government spending have left thousands of employees bracing for layoffs, including at institutions such as Nasa, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency. The government’s targeting of “wokeism” has meanwhile sought to root out funding for research deemed to involve diversity, certain kinds of vaccines and any mention of the climate crisis.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Wired ☛ Trump Admin Plans to Cut Team Responsible for Critical Atomic Measurement Data

      The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is discussing plans to eliminate an entire team responsible for publishing and maintaining critical atomic measurement data in the coming weeks, as the Trump administration continues its efforts to reduce the US federal workforce, according to a March 18 email sent to dozens of outside scientists. The data in question underpins advanced scientific research around the world in areas like semiconductor manufacturing and nuclear fusion.

    • Alex Gaynor ☛ Postel's Law and the Three Ring Circus

      This is a key observation: if everyone followed Postel’s Law, there would be no need for anyone to be liberal in what they accept, because everyone would be conservative in what they produce. But, because people are in fact not conservative in what they produce, consumers must be liberal in what they accept. In practice, this means there are asymmetric obligations: because we know that producers will not follow Postel’s Law, consumers must follow it. Ecosystems that adhere to Postel’s Law therefore experience a one way ratchet: consumers must accept more and more deviations from the specifications, and because consumers accept the deviations, producers are never forced (or incentivized) to themselves become stricter in following the specifications. Over time, deviance normalizes.

• Career/Education

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Why I don’t like AI art

    The thing that LLMs have changed in my friend's law school is letters of reference. Historically, students would only ask a prof for a letter of reference if they knew the prof really rated them. Writing a good reference is a ton of work, and that's rather the point: the mere fact that a law prof was willing to write one for you represents a signal about how highly they value you. It's a form of proof of work.

    But then came the chatbots and with them, the knowledge that a reference letter could be generated by feeding three bullet points to a chatbot and having it generate five paragraphs of florid nonsense based on those three short sentences. Suddenly, profs were expected to write letters for many, many students – not just the top performers.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The School Privatization Movement Is Broadly Unpopular

    For years, the loudest opposition to school privatization has come from public-school advocates and teachers’ unions, who argue that vouchers steal tax dollars from local public schools. They are now increasingly being joined by critics on the Right.

  • JURIST ☛ Teachers' unions file suit to block dismantling of education department

    A coalition of educators, school districts, and unions filed a complaint in a Massachusetts federal court on Monday against the Trump administration to prevent the dismantling of the US Department of Education.

  • SBS ☛ Final state signs deal to 'change lives' and fully fund public schools

    After months of back and forth, the federal government has agreed to demands from a final holdout state and brokered a deal to ensure all Australian students can receive a fully-funded education.

  • David L Farquhar ☛ Gordon Moore and Moore's Law

    After receiving a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1954, Moore went to work at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division of Beckman Instruments. But he left with the “traitorous eight,” when Sherman Fairchild agreed to back them and created the influential Fairchild Semiconductor corporation. This was where Moore was working when he proposed the first iteration of Moore’s Law.

    In 1965, Moore was working as the director of research and development (R&D) at Fairchild Semiconductor. Electronics Magazine asked him to predict what he thought might happen in the semiconductor components industry over the next ten years. In an article published April 19, 1965, Moore observed that the number of components in a dense computer chip had doubled approximately every year. He speculated that it would continue to do so for at least the next ten years. Ten years later, in 1975, he revised the forecast rate to approximately every two years. This later became known as the phrase “Moore’s law”. The prediction has become a target for miniaturization in the semiconductor industry and has had widespread impact in many areas of technological change.

• Hardware

  • Chris Aldrich ☛ You’re invited to a Southern California Type-In!

    Type-ins are community-based, family friendly events at which typewriter enthusiasts share their love for the analog art of putting ink onto paper with mechanical marvels of the late 19th through 20th centuries. To do this they bring one or more manual typewriters and their knowledge and love of the machines to share with the community. New friends share stories, history, repair tips, working methods, and other typewriterly ephemera. Typists of all ages and levels of ability are welcome.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Federal News Network ☛ 5 high-level CDC officials are leaving in the latest turmoil for the public health agency

    The departures — described as retirements — were not announced publicly. The Associated Press confirmed the news with two CDC officials who were not authorized to discuss it and spoke on condition of anonymity.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Mangione wants laptop in jail as he awaits trial in killing of CEO

    In a court filing made public late Monday, Mangione’s lawyers proposed that he get a laptop configured solely to let him view a vast amount of documents, video and other material in the case surrounding the shooting of Brian Thompson. Similar limited-laptop provisions have been made for some other defendants in the federal lockup where Mangione is being held.

• Proprietary

  • Activision User Research Workers Vote to Form Union with CWA [Ed: Afraid of upcoming wave of Microsoft layoffs]

    “Activision User Research Union-CWA is the first group of video game user researchers to form a union, joining over 2,000 workers at Microsoft-owned studios to organize under the company’s neutrality agreement with CWA”, writes the union, “with a union, user researchers are hoping to secure significant improvements at their workplace, including higher wages, job security and protections amid record-breaking layoffs in the video game industry, and transparency around promotions and career advancement.”

  • TuMFatig ☛ OpenBSD and Thunderbolt issue on ThinkPad T480s

    In both cases, top(1) wouldn’t reveal anything special except the load average would be too high for an IDLE machine. But using htop(1) would reveal a single core being used at 100%. Not always the same core, but still with a 100% usage.

  • The Register UK ☛ Oracle Cloud denies claims of server intrusion

    A crook late last week advertised on an online cyber-crime forum what was alleged to be Oracle Cloud customer security keys and other sensitive data swiped from the IT giant. This material was said to have been obtained by the miscreant from at least one of the cloud provider's single-sign-on (SSO) login servers by exploiting a security vulnerability.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • Pivot to AI ☛ AI sales startup 11x claims customers it doesn’t have for software that doesn’t work

      Except it might not be. 11x lists customers on its front page. Some are current customers! But most quit 11x after a three-month trial. Because the product didn’t work. Some were never 11x customers and they’re threatening to sue over the fake endorsements.

      11x’s AI bot doesn’t work. It sends spammy emails to alleged prospects — but the sales pitches are full of LLM hallucinations. 11x’s own engineers admitted “the products barely work.” Sales bots can generate a ton of leads but they don’t lead to actual sales.

    • LibreNews ☛ FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies

      Then, yesterday morning, KDE GitLab infrastructure was overwhelmed by another AI crawler, with IPs from an Alibaba range; this caused GitLab to be temporarily inaccessible by KDE developers.

    • Seth Michael Larson ☛ Don't bring slop to a slop fight

      Whenever I talk about generative AI slop being sent into every conceivable communication platform I see a common suggestion on how to stop the slop from reaching human eyes: [...]

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Why the world is looking to ditch US AI models

      As I wrote in my dispatch, the Trump administration's shocking, rapid gutting of the US government (and its push into what some prominent political scientists call “competitive authoritarianism”) also affects the operations and policies of American tech companies—many of which, of course, have users far beyond US borders. People at RightsCon said they were already seeing changes in these companies’ willingness to engage with and invest in communities that have smaller user bases—especially non-English-speaking ones.

      As a result, some policymakers and business leaders—in Europe, in particular—are reconsidering their reliance on US-based tech and asking whether they can quickly spin up better, homegrown alternatives. This is particularly true for AI.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Security Week ☛ Encrypted Messaging Apps Promise Privacy. Government Transparency Is Often the Price

      Public officials and private citizens are consistently warned about hacking and data leaks, but technologies designed to increase privacy often decrease government transparency.

    • SANS ☛ Privacy Aware Bots, (Mon, Mar 24th)

      Staring long enough at honeypot logs, I am sure you will come across one or the other "oddity." Something that at first does not make any sense, but then, in some way, does make sense. After looking at the Next.js issue yesterday, I looked through our logs for other odd headers I may spot.

    • IT Wire ☛ iTWire - Why you should think twice before using a VPN

      A VPN protects your privacy, yet it might not be the perfect fit for every online action. Using a VPN can become problematic when you engage with online banking or become a real problem when you choose unreliable providers. It may end up revealing your sensitive information instead of securing it. However, taking precautions and following the right tips on how to choose a trustworthy service will protect you from future privacy threats.

    • New York Times ☛ After the Signal Leak, How Well Do You Know Your Own Group Chats?

      A journalist’s inclusion in a national security discussion served as a reminder that you might not know every number in the chat — and that could be a big problem.

    • The Register UK ☛ Judge says no to DOGE [sic] accessing PII data at govt bodies

      In granting the injunction, Judge Boardman sided with the plaintiffs – the American Federation of Teachers and others – finding that Treasury, Education, and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) likely broke the Privacy Act, and by extension, ran afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act as well, by giving DOGE [sic]access to federal workers' info. DOGE [sic]has been running through central government looking for thousands of staff to cut, programs to ax, and contracts to cancel to save the White House some money.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ House Oversight passes executive reorganization bill as GOP blocks data privacy amendment

      A Republican-backed bill to reorganize the federal government and grant the executive branch more power passed out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday, while a Democratic effort to protect sensitive data was blocked.

      The Reorganizing Government Act of 2025 (H.R. 1295) from Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. seeks to give the president reorganizational authorities that would include the ability to amend rules, regulations and requirements to decrease cost and eliminate operations that do not serve the public.

    • EPIC ☛ (New Mexico) Testimony in Support of SB420, the Community Privacy & Safety Act

      EPIC writes in support of SB 420, the Community Privacy & Safety Act. For more than two decades, powerful tech companies have been allowed to set the terms of our online interactions. Without any meaningful restrictions on their business practices, they have built systems that invade our private lives, spy on our families, and gather the most intimate details about us for profit. But it does not have to be this way – we can have a strong technology sector while protecting personal privacy.

    • RTL ☛ What is Signal and is it secure?

      Signal is not the only messaging service to do this, but unlike WhatsApp and Apple's iMessage, the app is controlled by an independent non-profit -- not a big tech behemoth motivated by revenue -- winning it more trust with those concerned about privacy.

      Signal crucially goes further than WhatsApp on data privacy by making metadata such as when the message was delivered and who it was sent to invisible even to the company itself.

      WhatsApp, meanwhile, shares information with its parent company Meta and third parties, including your phone number, mobile device information, and IP addresses.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ NSA warned about vulnerabilities in Signal prior to White House group chat fiasco

      Questions are now being asked if the new government should be talking about highly classified activity, discussing what Goldberg said were “weapons packages, targets, and timing,” on any medium that is not a sanctioned government communication channel. It’s well-known that these options exist, with a former White House official telling Politico the blooper was “unbelievable.”

    • CBS ☛ NSA warned of vulnerabilities in Signal app a month before Houthi strike chat

      The National Security Agency sent out an operational security special bulletin to its employees in February 2025 warning them of vulnerabilities in using the encrypted messaging application Signal, according to internal NSA documents obtained by CBS News.

    • The Scotsman ☛ WhatsApp to get Meta AI in UK and you can’t turn it off

      If you don’t fancy having the AI prompts appearing on your apps, you might be wondering if it is possible to turn it off. Unfortunately there is no way to fully turn off the Meta AI functions, you can toggle the settings so the little blue circle doesn’t appear - but it will still be active in the background.

    • Techdirt ☛ A Win For Encryption: France Rejects Backdoor Mandate

      The proposed law was a surveillance wish list disguised as anti-drug legislation. Tucked into its text was a resurrection of the widely discredited “ghost” participant model—a backdoor that pretends not to be one. Under this scheme, law enforcement could silently join encrypted chats, undermining the very idea of private communication. Security experts have condemned the approach, warning it would introduce systemic vulnerabilities, damage trust in secure communication platforms, and create tools ripe for abuse.

      The French lawmakers who voted this provision down deserve credit. They listened—not only to French digital rights organizations and technologists, but also to basic principles of cybersecurity and civil liberties. They understood that encryption protects everyone, not just activists and dissidents, but also journalists, medical professionals, abuse survivors, and ordinary citizens trying to live private lives in an increasingly surveilled world.

    • India Times ☛ DNA testing firm 23andMe files for bankruptcy as demand dries up

      In 2023, [crackers] exposed the personal data of nearly 7 million 23andMe customers over a five-month period, dealing a major blow to the company's reputation and compounding its growth problems. The breach raised alarm among customers concerned about their privacy and how DNA-testing firms handle their data.

    • France24 ☛ 23andMe users urged to delete accounts and protect DNA data after bankruptcy filing - Business

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ How to... delete your 23andMe data

      23andMe’s business is built on taking saliva samples from its customers. The DNA from those samples is processed and analyzed in its labs to produce personalized genetic reports detailing a user’s unique health and ancestry. The uncertainty swirling around the company’s future and potential new ownership has prompted privacy campaigners to urge users to delete their data.

      “It’s not just you. If anyone in your family gave their DNA to 23&Me, for all of your sakes, close your/their account now,” Meredith Whittaker, president of the encrypted messaging platform Signal, posted on X after the board’s resignation.

    • France24 ☛ US Democrats grill Trump team for accidentally sending Yemen war plans to journalist

      Democrats grilled President Donald Trump's top intelligence officials Tuesday over the revelation this week that senior officials had discussed details of US military strikes against Yemen's Houthis in a group chat that accidentally included a prominent journalist, outraging national security experts.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Trump adviser Waltz claims ‘full responsibility’ for adding journalist to Signal group but can’t explain how it happened – as it happened

      We are closing our live coverage of the Trump restoration for the day, but will return on Wednesday to continue. Here are some of the day’s developments: [...]

    • Axios ☛ Congress erupts over Trump admin's Signal leak: "Heads should roll"

      Why it matters: Some Democrats are already calling for an investigation and potential repercussions against the national security officials involved in the lapse.

      "This is an outrageous national security breach and heads should roll," Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement to Axios.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Opt out: what to do with your 23andMe account after company filed bankruptcy

      If you have used the service to discover your ancestry via your DNA, the extremely sensitive information you shared with 23andMe may transfer to the company’s eventual buyer. While 23andMe has a host of privacy controls that now allows users opt out of sharing their data with scientific researchers or requires the company delete their samples, that could change under a new owner.

    • Futurism ☛ 23andMe Is Crumbling, and That Means Your Genetic Data Is Blowing in the Breeze

      The company, which was founded almost two decades ago, has been in severely dire financial traits for years now, struggling to effectively monetize its service, which most customers will only buy once.

      Now, its cofounder and CEO Anne Wojcicki — a die-hard for the company, who has made several takeover bids — has resigned, leaving behind a shell of its former self.

    • Citizen Lab ☛ Virtue or Vice? A First Look at Paragon’s Proliferating Spyware Operations

      Paragon Solutions Ltd. was established in Israel in 2019. The founders of Paragon include Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister, and Ehud Schneorson, the former commander of Israel’s Unit 8200. Paragon sells a spyware product called Graphite, which reportedly provides “access to the instant messaging applications on a device, rather than taking complete control of everything on a phone,” like NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Report on Paragon Spyware

      Citizen Lab has a new report on Paragon’s spyware: [...]

    • BBC ☛ Facebook to stop targeting ads at UK woman after legal fight

      "I just found it unnerving - this was before I'd even told people in my private life, and yet Facebook had already determined that I was pregnant," she continued.

      General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation controls how personal information is used by organisations.

      Ms O'Carroll's lawsuit argued that Facebook's targeted advertising system was covered by the UK's definition of direct marketing, giving individuals the right to object.

  • Confidentiality

    • International Business Times ☛ Is Signal App Owned by China And Is It Safe To Use? Inside Pete Hegseth's Leaked Group Chat

      Signal's reputation for security is so strong that even Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who exposed NSA surveillance, uses it daily. Beyond Snowden, the app is favoured by social justice organisers, journalists, intelligence professionals, and surprisingly, even U.S. President Donald Trump—a fact that raises questions about compliance with record-keeping laws. The catch? You need to be mindful of who you invite to your conversations.

    • Howard Oakley ☛ Better security means less recoverability

      In the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked to help recover data lost when files have been accidentally deleted, and an internal SSD has been wiped remotely using Find My Mac. What we perhaps haven’t fully appreciated is how improved security protection in our Macs has made it far harder, if not impossible, to recover such lost data. Allow me to explain in three scenarios.

    • Dhole Moments ☛ The Practical Limitations of End-to-End Encryption

      In the aftermath of this glorious fuck-up by the Trump administration, I have observed many poorly informed hot takes. Some of these were funny, but others are dangerous: they were trying to promote technologies that claim to be Signal alternatives, as if this whole story was somehow a failure of Signal’s security posture.

      Not to put too fine a point on it: Switching to Threema or PGP would not have made a lick of difference. Switching to Matrix would have only helped if you consider “unable to decrypt message” helping.

      To understand why, you need a clear understanding of what end-to-end encryption is, what it does, what it protects against, and what it doesn’t protect againt.

• Defence/Aggression

  • NYPost ☛ Pete Hegseth claims ‘nobody was texting war plans’ in first comments since Yemen strike group text scandal

    “Nobody was texting war plans and that's all I have to say about that,” Hegseth told reporters in Hawaii.

  • France24 ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man officials texted war plans to a group chat that included a journalist

    Top national security officials for President The Insurrectionist, including his defence secretary, texted war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, the magazine reported in a story posted online Monday.

  • France24 ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man officials sent journalist classified US plan for Yemen strikes

    A US journalist was inadvertently included in a group chat in which Pete Hegseth, JD Vance and other top American officials discussed upcoming strikes against Yemen's Huthi rebels, the White House confirmed Monday. Convicted Felon announced the strikes on March 15, but in a shocking security breach, The Atlantic magazine's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that he had hours of advance notice via the group chat on Signal. FRANCE 24's Fraser Jackson reports from Washington.

  • The Gray Zone ☛ Why did Jeffrey Goldberg leave the ‘bomb Yemen’ Signal chat?

  • CS Monitor ☛ In wartime Yemen, volunteer teachers are bridging a learning gap

    Hundreds of university graduates are stepping up to teach children whose formal schooling has been interrupted by a brutal civil conflict.

  • France24 ☛ Journalist accidentally added to chat where US officials planned strikes on Houthis

    The White House confirmed on Monday that a journalist from "The Atlantic" magazine was accidentally included in a group chat in which top US officials discussed plans for strikes against Yemen's Houthi rebels earlier this month.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Junta air strike on Myanmar clinic kills 11 including doctor, say locals

    “When I went to clear up the area, I saw only pieces of human bodies,” said a villager.

  • Junta airstrike hits a clinic in central Myanmar, killing 11, including children

    All victims, aged five to 60, were civilians, residents said.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Alleged CJNG recruiter and 2 police arrested in Izaguirre Ranch ‘extermination camp’ case

    Security Minister García Harfuch cast doubt on whether human remains were really found at the ranch, saying his ministry hadn't confirmed that to be the case.

  • Mike Brock ☛ What the Fuck Are We Doing Here, America?

    We've reached a point where a senior national security official can accidentally include a journalist in a group chat about imminent military strikes, then attempt to evade responsibility with excuses so flimsy they wouldn't convince a middle school principal confronting a student about a prank text—and yet our national discourse remains fixated on whether a Democratic congresswoman's joke about “Governor Hot Wheels” crossed a line of decorum.

  • The Verge ☛ “This man is not our boss” — EPA workers rally against DOGE [sic]cuts

    Environmental Protection Agency workers took to the streets across the US today to protest drastic cuts President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE [sic]have made at the federal agency whose mission is to “protect human health and the environment.”

  • The Register UK ☛ FCC checks if black-listed Chinese firms didn’t get the memo

    The US communications regulator said it has sent formal letters of inquiry and at least one subpoena to entities on that list, which includes what the FCC refers to as "CCP-aligned businesses," meaning the Chinese Communist Party, that are deemed, per the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, to pose an "unacceptable risk" to the United States' national security.

  • CPJ ☛ European Commission must be ambitious on European Democracy Shield

    The Committee to Protect Journalists, along with 49 other organizations, sent a letter on March 25 urging the European Commission to adopt an ambitious approach while preparing its draft proposal for the European Democracy Shield.

  • European Partnership for Democracy ☛ Joint Input for the European Democracy Shield [PDF]

    Given the Shield’s thematic focus on the information space, election integrity, and civic engagement, we see it as a natural successor to the European Democracy Action Plan (EDAP). EDAP saw the introduction of the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), the Anti-SLAPP Directive, a revamped Code of Practice on Disinformation, and the Regulation on the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA), among others, which are all vital steps towards creating healthier European democracies. Complementing the EDAP, legislation was passed such as the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and the AI Act that regulate technological advancements in line with democratic standards.

  • The Nation ☛ The Democrats Have Disappeared

    As Trump and Musk bulldoze democracy, the Democratic Party is MIA. While Republicans use government to cripple the opposition’s ability to compete, Democrats whine about “norms.”

  • New Yorker ☛ Is Turkey’s Declining Democracy a Model for Trump’s America?

    I recently spoke by phone with Jenny White, professor emerita at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies and an expert on modern Turkey. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Erdoğan struck at his opponent now, the way his rule has changed over the past two-plus decades, and the similarities and differences between his authoritarian style and that of Donald Trump.

  • Meduza ☛ Russia’s new multi-campus leftist movement

    For leftist students, Dugin and Ilyin symbolize a resurgence of the ultra-right — the very force they define themselves against. Dugin was quick to blame foreign intelligence services for fueling the student protests, citing the “Ukrainian factor.” He even compared the backlash against VPSH to the 2024 Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in Moscow, claiming both were orchestrated from abroad. But neither this rhetoric nor propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov’s rebuke on state TV managed to scare the protesters off. By May, a unified inter-university organization had emerged: the Student Anti-Fascist Front (SAF).

  • Atlantic Council ☛ After proxies and nuclear program threats, Iran may turn to terror abroad

    By September 2024, reports indicated Iran had amassed enough enriched uranium for multiple nuclear devices if further processed, amplifying its strategic leverage and creating uncertainty for potential aggressors. Alongside its nuclear pursuits, Iran employs proxy forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen to project power indirectly. These groups conduct attacks with plausible deniability, enhancing Iran’s regional deterrence while shielding it from direct retaliation. Hezbollah’s clashes with Israel and Houthi disruptions in the Red Sea exemplify this approach, reinforcing Iran’s influence without risking open conflict.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Unbearable Lightness of Being Concerned

    This litany of concern would be impressive if it had ever translated into meaningful action. But time and again, Collins' expressions of discomfort have proven to be performances of moral seriousness that demand neither courage nor consequence. It is virtue-signaling for the Beltway class—a series of weightless linguistic gestures designed to satisfy the Washington press corps while avoiding the inconvenience of actual conviction.

    Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And Susan Collins' “concerns” are worth precisely nothing if they don't translate into concrete action.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Seven Reasons Trump's Entire National Security Team Should Resign in Disgrace

    It is a transparent attempt to make a major breach — potentially a crime — into something else, the forgivable error of adding the wrong person to a chat thread.

    This cover story, that this is just a reckless mistake about adding the wrong person to a Signal thread, also happens to be the line Trump’s closest allies in the Senate and the few Fox News hosts Trump hasn’t already hired into his Administration are parroting on TV.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Non-Muslims could be victims of Islamophobia under Angela Rayner’s definition

    The five-member group, chaired by Dominic Grieve, the former Tory attorney general, has been tasked with providing advice to Ms Rayner on “appropriate and sensitive language to describe, understand and define unacceptable treatment, prejudice, discrimination and hate targeting Muslims or anyone who is perceived to be Muslim”.

  • France24 ☛ Live: UN to scale back Gaza presence after deadly Israeli strike

    The United Nations will reduce its presence in Gaza after an Israeli tank strike on its compound killed a staffer and wounded five others, a UN spokesman said Monday. Meanwhile the Israeli military issued fresh calls to evacuate parts of Gaza's north, as it pressed its renewed bombardment and ground operations. Follow our liveblog for the latest developments.

  • New York Times ☛ U.N. to Pull International Workers From Gaza Amid Israeli Strikes

    The United Nations is withdrawing about one-third of its international work force in Gaza, with the reduction coming after an Israeli tank shell hit a U.N. compound.

  • France24 ☛ Live: Israeli military says it has struck two targets in Syria

    The Israeli army on Tuesday said it had launched air strikes targeting two military bases in Syria. The military said the sites, both in the Homs province, are linked to Iranian forces and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Follow our liveblog for the latest developments.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • New Yorker ☛ Why The Police Refused to Investigate a Serial Rapist

    When a prosecutor began chasing an accused sexual predator, she lost her job but unravelled a scandal. A report from Johnson City, Tennessee.

  • RFERL ☛ RFE/RL Finds New Evidence Of Russia's Suspected Secret Nuclear Base In Belarus

    A seemingly innocuous photo posted online in September 2024 is a small piece in a larger mosaic of evidence uncovered by RFE/RL’s Belarus Service of a secret Russian nuclear weapons base in the Eastern European country.

  • The Register UK ☛ Trump officials leak plans for US airstrikes in Signal SNAFU

    “By using Signal for such a sensitive issue, the participants demonstrate a cavalier attitude to operational security,” he wrote Tuesday, Australian time. “For a Secretary of Defense who allegedly values a war-fighting ethos, this shortfall in security is appalling. In normal times, this would see people sacked. I don’t expect that in this case though because these are not normal times.”

    “Why aren’t they using more secure communications that are assured by the NSA or another government communications agency?” he added. The Register understands chat tools approved and used by those agencies include features that prevent, say, journalists from participating in group chats.

  • Futurism ☛ Trump National Security Adviser Accidentally Sent Plans for a Bombing Campaign to a Random Journalist

    In an editorial about the stunning breach, The Atlantic's EIC Jeffrey Goldberg explained that he thought he was being pranked earlier in March when he was added to a Signal chat titled "Houthi PC small group" that seemed to contain users with handles corresponding to vice president JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and defense secretary Pete Hegseth.

    The debacle began on March 11 when Goldberg received a Signal message request from a "Michael Waltz," the name of Trump's national security adviser. The two had met before, but the Atlantic editor doubted the person who added him was the real Waltz because Trump has a personal beef with Goldberg.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Top Trump officials accidentally shared war plans with media

    The conversation — which eventually included messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, among others — included “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” according to Goldberg.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Jeffrey Goldberg on the Group Chat That Broke the Internet

    It’s happened to the best of us. We mistakenly send a text about a colleague we are mad at to that very colleague. We accidentally include our mom on the sibling text chain about our mom. Today on Radio Atlantic, a much higher-stakes texting error: The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, received a connection request on Signal from a “Michael Waltz,” which is the name of President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. Two days later, he was added to a group text with top administration officials created for the purpose of coordinating high-level national-security conversations about the Houthis in Yemen. On March 15, Goldberg sat in his car in a grocery-store parking lot waiting to see if the strike would actually happen. The bombs fell. The text thread had to be real.

    We talk with Goldberg about this absurd chain of events, and with Shane Harris, who covers national security for The Atlantic, about what it means that defense officials were discussing detailed war plans on a text chain.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Mike Waltz to be ‘forced out’ over war plan scandal? Trump to take final call as Jeffrey Goldberg mocks security advisor

    Outrage erupted after The Atlantic revealed a major security breach by the Trump administration. Top administration officials mistakenly added a journalist to a Signal group chat and shared extremely classified military plans about attack on Houthi dominated areas in Yemen with him.

    The action has sparked intense debate about the future of national security adviser Mike Waltz. many are contemplating whether he should be fired for the major blunder.

  • The Age AU ☛ Signal-gate: Team Trump just can’t admit a mistake

    Still, it was jaw-dropping to see national security adviser Mike Waltz – the guy who added Goldberg to the group chat – trying to shift the blame onto, well, Goldberg himself.

  • CBC ☛ Mike Waltz admits 'mistake' in 'embarrassing' sharing of Yemen strike plans with journalist

    The news broke Monday and raised many questions about how such a situation would be possible in the first place, and why Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, would have been added to the text chat.

  • CBC ☛ What is Signal, the messaging app Trump team used to share war plans?

    It does not use U.S. government encryption or that of any other governments

    [...]

    Signal is an open-source and fully encrypted messaging service that runs on centralized servers maintained by Signal Messenger.

    The only user data it stores on its servers are phone numbers, the date a user joined the service and the last login information.

  • Futurism ☛ Before He Sent War Plans in a Non-Secure Groupchat, the Head of the Pentagon Said People Who Did That Should Be Fired

    Following the stunning revelation from The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg that he'd been added to a national security adviser groupchat on Signal, CNN has unearthed instances when Hegseth went off on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for using a private email server for official communications and deleting the evidence after the fact.

    "People have gone to jail for 1/100th of what — even 1/1,000th of what Hillary Clinton did," Hegseth, then a regular fixture on Fox News, opined on the right-wing network just ahead of the presidential election in November 2016.

  • American Oversight ☛ American Oversight Sues Trump Administration for Using Signal to Plan Military Operations - American Oversight

    Following bombshell reporting that top Trump administration officials used the auto-deleting messaging app Signal to coordinate high-level, allegedly classified war operations, nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight filed a lawsuit against those officials for violations of the Federal Records Act and Administrative Procedure Act.

    The lawsuit seeks to prevent further unlawful destruction of federal records and to compel the recovery of any records created through their unauthorized use of Signal. Those named in the suit include Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Secretary of State and acting Archivist Marco Rubio.

  • BuzzFeed Inc ☛ Pete Hegseth Sued Over Signal Text Debacle

    A public watchdog group sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a slew of other Trump administration officials Tuesday after a journalist revealed he was inadvertently added to a text chain discussing U.S. war plans.

    The lawsuit, brought by the watchdog group American Oversight and first reported by HuffPost, requests that a federal judge formally declare that Hegseth and other officials on the chat violated their duty to uphold laws around the preservation of official communications. Those laws are outlined in the Federal Records Act and, according to lawyers for American Oversight, if agency heads refuse to recover or protect their communications, the national archivist should ask the attorney general to step in.

  • CNN ☛ Officials who denounced Clinton’s handling of classified information now under scrutiny for security breach

    The mistake amounts to an unprecedented breach of security by some of President Donald Trump’s most senior national security officials and raises questions about whether they violated the Espionage Act, which makes it illegal to mishandle national defense information.

    Normally, discussions of this nature occur in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), a highly secure area to discuss classified information.

  • [Repeat] Silicon Angle ☛ Security sloppiness at the White House: Yemen war plans shared with Atlantic editor over Signal

    Goldberg said he received a connection request on March 11 from Waltz, believing at first that it might be a hoax, given what he said was the “Trump administration’s contentious relationship with journalists.” He didn’t think it impossible that someone might be making him privy to false information to later “entrap” him. Two days later, he received a request to join a group named, “Houthi PC small group.”

  • The Atlantic ☛ But Her Emails?

    The Signal security breach would be bad enough if those involved had not spent so much time criticizing Hillary Clinton for her mishandling of classified information.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Trump Goes After the Messenger

    The report has rippled across Washington, as Democrats demand investigations into the security lapse while Republicans and the White House has tried to downplay the breach. Trump was, of course, elected in 2016 with a campaign that was in part centered on the handling of sensitive materials by his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and his administration has pledged to sharply crack down on leaks to the media. Yet it tried to shift blame and publicly shrug off one of the most significant blunders in decades.

  • Vox ☛ The deep divide lurking in Trump officials’ leaked group chat

    But this is more than just incompetent and scandalous: it’s revelatory. The chat logs give us an unusually unvarnished look into key players’ worldview, the kind of thing historians usually have to wait decades to access.

    And what was said points to the incoherence of the Trump foreign policy project: a worldview that cannot decide on what it means to put “America first.” The Trump team, taking its cue from the president, is trying to pursue two contradictory visions at the same time — to maintain America’s status as the world’s leading power while also trying to scale down its international commitments. They want to simultaneously dominate the world and withdraw from it.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Trump team’s Signal chat leak draws bafflement and ridicule in Europe

    The unfiltered glimpse into conversations among President Donald Trump’s inner circle was revealed in the Atlantic, which reported Monday that its top editor was accidentally added to a Signal chat on plotting an attack on Houthi militants in Yemen. Excerpts from the chat, which cast Europeans as “pathetic” and the main beneficiaries of U.S. strikes on Yemen, exposed the Cabinet-level derision for Washington’s closest military and diplomatic partners, European officials and analysts said Tuesday.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ US allies alarmed by leaked group chat about Houthi attack plans

    “Scary” and “reckless” was the verdict of one European diplomat about the discussion on the Signal messaging app about strikes on Houthi rebels. Neil Melvin, a security expert at defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute, called it “pretty shocking.”

    “It’s some of the most high-ranking U.S. officials seeming to display a complete disregard for the normal security protocols,” he said.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ When rank-and-file troops leak secrets, they often go to jail

    “Neither person deliberately spilled national security,” Kastenburg. “They just failed to safeguard it like they brought work home with them and they shouldn’t have done it or they showed their spouse, ‘hey, look at the cool stuff I’m working on,’ and in both instances, they got punitive discharges that deprived them of their [veteran] benefits and they went to jail.”

    Military justice cases involving classified information leaks or disclosures are typically “treated with such level of care and severity,” regardless of rank, VanLandingham told Task & Purpose.

  • CBC ☛ White House official confirms Yemen strike plans were mistakenly texted to journalist

    Trump initially told reporters he was not aware that the sensitive information had been shared, two and a half hours after it was reported. He later appeared to joke about the breach.

    The material in the text chain between Signal accounts that appear to belong to top Trump officials, including U.S. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance, "contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing," editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported.

  • The Register UK ☛ Capita's NI school IT deal swells to over half billion

    According to publicly available information, only the original £170 million award in 2012 was won after a competitive tender, meaning contracts to the value of £583 million may have been awarded without competition.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Trump Cabinet Accidentally Sent War Plans to Atlantic Journalist

    Who belonged to “Houthi PC small group”? Apparently a slew of high-level Trump administration officials including Hegseth, Waltz, Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliff, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

    What was being discussed in “Houthi PC small group”? The preparations for the Trump administration’s March 15 airstrike campaign against Houthi militants in Yemen. On March 15, two hours before the still-ongoing strikes began, Goldberg received what he described as a lengthy text from Hegseth (although he didn’t realize the chat was real at the time) that “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Sugar beet pulp fibers show potential for nutritional supplements and sustainable plastic alternatives

    Using residual products from the production of sugar from sugar beets will help fulfill one of Professor Anne S. Meyer's visions—to transform our current food production to use raw materials for not just one, but several valuable products.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong bans airline passengers from using power banks during flights from April 7

      Passengers on local airlines will be banned from using power banks to charge portable devices during flights from April 7, according to new regulations announced by the Civil Aviation Department (CAD) on Monday.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Cathay Pacific will comply with stricter Hong Kong rules on power banks

      The move brings Cathay and local airlines into line with other regional carriers.

    • Security Week ☛ US Lifts Sanctions Against Crypto Mixer Tornado Cash

      The US Department of the Treasury has removed sanctions against the fully decentralized cryptocurrency mixer service Tornado Cash.

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ HK bans airline passengers from using power banks during flights

      The announcement comes after a fire broke out on an Air Busan plane on January 28 during take-off at South Korea’s Gimhae International Airport. The plane was preparing to depart for Hong Kong – all on board were evacuated safely, though seven were injured. Initial investigations suggest a portable power bank may have exploded in an overhead luggage compartment.

    • The Local SE ☛ New rail saver ticket to be introduced for Copenhagen and Skåne regions

      “We looked at the Öresund runt ticket. This almost replaces it but without the ferry crossing. The new ticket lasts for 48 hours instead of the previous two calendar days, allowing travellers to start their journey in the evening,” Patrik Engfors, head of partnerships at Skånetrafiken, told Sydsvenskan.

    • Futurism ☛ Someone Else Tested Whether a Tesla Will Really Crash Into a Wall Painted Like a Road

      Over the weekend, YouTuber Kyle Paul shared his own response video, showing that a Model Y with a previous generation HW3 computer will still plow through a wall painted like the road ahead — even with the FSD feature turned on.

    • The Register UK ☛ US lifts sanctions on Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer

      However, following a federals appeal court ruling in November which questioned the Treasury's authority to ban the [cryptocurrency] mixer's smart contracts as they were not the "property" of any foreign national, the sanctions have now been lifted, though authorities continue to express concerns about the platform's misuse.

  • Overpopulation

    • The North Lines IN ☛ Dimple leads protest rally over water, power shortages

      Addressing the protesters, Dimple highlighted the ongoing crisis, stating that for the past week, many parts of Jammu city have been suffering from severe drinking water shortages due to the strike by daily wagers. He pointed out that water tankers were not being supplied to the affected areas, exacerbating the problem.

• Finance

  • The Verge ☛ AT&T is slashing its autopay and paperless billing discounts

    AT&T is also doing away with the existing $5 discount for paperless and autopay customers with a linked credit card. The discount will now only apply to customers who have an AT&T Plus Card from Citi. AT&T will continue to offer a $10 discount to customers who use their bank accounts for autopay.

  • FAIR ☛ ‘A Small Group of People Wanted to Do Away With Social Security From the Beginning’: CounterSpin interview with Nancy Altman on Social Security attacks

    Janine Jackson interviewed Social Security Works’ Nancy Altman about attacks on Social Security for the March 21, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Mike Brock ☛ "Governor Hot Wheels"

    This false equivalence serves power by equating superficial violations of decorum with profound violations of human rights. It demands that we chastise Rep. Jasmine Crockett for calling Greg Abbott “Governor Hot Wheels” with the same moral fervor we would apply to condemning the horrors being inflicted on deportees in El Salvador—horrors that Abbott himself has championed and celebrated.

  • EFF ☛ Saving the Internet in Europe: Fostering Choice, Competition and the Right to Innovate

    EFF’s mission is to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world. While our work has taken us to far corners of the globe, in recent years we have worked to expand our efforts in Europe, building up a policy team with key expertise in the region, and bringing our experience in advocacy and technology to the European fight for digital rights.

    In this blog post series, we will introduce you to the various players involved in that fight, share how we work in Europe, and discuss how what happens in Europe can affect digital rights across the globe.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Silver Lake Completes $25B Acquisition of Endeavor

    Private equity firm Silver Lake has completed the acquisition of Endeavor, acquiring 100% of the outstanding shares they did not own. The deal was completed at a price point of $27.50 per share—resulting in a deal worth $25 billion.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post - Classification as Colonization: The Hidden Politics of Library Catalogs

    This shift exposes what critical catalogers have argued for generations: subject headings have never been neutral technical metadata but have always functioned as political statements about what deserves recognition and how knowledge should be organized. The new directives don’t introduce politics into cataloging — they merely make visible the politics that were always there.

  • The Register UK ☛ Palantir suggests 'common operating system' for UK govt data

    Palantir was initially handed a nominal £1 contract to work on a COVID-19 data store, along with cloud providers AWS, Google, and Microsoft Azure, and Faculty, a UK AI company. Without open competition, its contract was expanded to a £1 million ($1.29 million) agreement, then a £23 million ($29.7 million) arrangement was signed in December 2020.

  • David L Farquhar ☛ Steve Ballmer, Microsoft executive and NBA owner

    Ballmer’s profit-share ballooned out of control as Microsoft grew. When Microsoft reorganized as a corporation instead of a private partnership in 1981, Ballmer took 8% of the company in exchange for cancelling the profit-sharing model. He sold half his stake for about $955 million in 2003.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • New York Times ☛ TikTok Ads Portray App as Force for Good as US Ban Looms

      The popular video app, which could be banned in the United States next month if it is not sold to a non-Chinese owner, is portraying itself as a savior of Americans and a champion of small businesses in a new campaign.

    • New York Times ☛ Trump Leads a ‘Machinery’ of Misinformation in Second Term

      President Trump’s first four years in the White House were filled with falsehoods. Now he and those around him are using false claims to justify their policy changes.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Truthdig ☛ Legacy Media Paved Way for Trump’s Targeting of Columbia - Truthdig

    Trump’s focus on Columbia is no accident. Despite the fact that its administration largely agrees with Trump on the need to suppress protest against Israel, the university is a symbol of New York City, a hometown that he hates for its liberalism. And it was a starting point for the national campus movement that began last year against U.S. support for Israel’s brutal war against Gaza.

  • The Nation ☛ What’s Happening at Columbia University Won’t End There

    In short order, the university has trashed the vital protections of free speech and open inquiry on campus. Columbia administrators have not only decided that the peaceful actions of dissenting students, staff, and faculty are beyond the pale; they have rendered any brand of dissent a de facto thought crime. In endorsing the unfounded equation of anti-genocide protests with antisemitism, the university has thrown over any meaningful role of protecting dissent and principled protest in favor of the disingenuous agenda plied by wealthy donors and bad-faith state interests.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Fairhope Public Library supporters raise money to replace funds state plans to withhold

    A nonprofit says it has raised enough money for Fairhope Public Library to cover state funds that the Alabama Public Library Service Board cut off last week.

    Read Freely Alabama, a grassroots free speech advocacy organization that has fought restrictions on library content, said it had collected almost $39,000 from about 550 donors through Tuesday morning. Read Freely is organizing the campaign with EveryLibrary, an Illinois-based organization that promotes library funding and fights restrictions.

  • The Atlantic ☛ China’s War on Dissidents Comes to the United Kingdom

    Lau is one of thousands who fled Hong Kong to Britain once the protests started—and particularly since June 2020, when China passed a national-security law that led to often-violent suppression. I’ve spoken with more than 30 activists like Lau who have come to the United Kingdom, where the harassment and surveillance they tried to escape has followed them. Assailants have stalked them in public and smeared them online. Letters have shown up at their neighbors’ doors promising a reward for turning over dissidents to the Chinese embassy. Back home, government authorities have suspended their retirement savings and interrogated their families. Some have been attacked.

    Their stories illustrate a campaign that China is waging against dissidents across the globe. Not all of the incidents in the U.K. can be tied directly to the Chinese government, but the tactics mirror those Beijing has used to discredit and silence critics in Europe, Canada, Australia, and the United States. Last month, Freedom House found that China was responsible for more recorded cases of repression beyond its borders than any other country over the past decade. The nonprofit had already concluded that the Chinese Communist Party’s war on exiles is “the most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign” of its kind in the world. “This is the product of a top-down system, ordered by Xi Jinping,” Yaqiu Wang, a senior researcher at Freedom House, told me. “Whether this comes directly from Beijing or from Hong Kong, it’s ultimately a part of the CCP’s global, transnational campaign to silence anyone who is critical.”

  • Techdirt ☛ How Democrats’ Attack On Section 230 Plays Right Into Trump’s Censorial Plans

    Perhaps Democrats don’t fully grasp the strategic importance of Section 230. For years, many on the left have believed that repealing the law would pressure online services into “cleaning up” their spaces by removing hate speech, conspiracy theories, and other content deemed anti-social. The assumption is that without 230’s liability shield, companies will err on the side of caution and engage in more content moderation. But in reality, that outcome is far from guaranteed. The more likely result is either an explosion of harmful content (the stated goal of Project 2025) or aggressive over-moderation that silences all user speech: an “own goal” that would severely undermine the progressive causes Democrats claim to support.

  • Futurism ☛ NASA Deletes Comic Book About How Women Can Be Astronauts

    The two volumes have been featured on NASA's website since being issued in 2021 and 2023, respectively. But as of March 2025, both have now been conspicuously wiped from the space agency's online presence.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia Issues Arrest Warrant for Political Analyst Yekaterina Schulmann

    Schulmann, one of Russia’s most prominent analysts on legislative affairs, left for Germany in early 2022 to pursue academic work shortly after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    The charges against her remain unclear, though a Moscow court last month opened an administrative case accusing her of affiliation with an “undesirable” organization.

  • Truthdig ☛ Turkey’s Autocratic Descent Serves as a Warning for the U.S. - Truthdig

    For the first time in modern Turkish politics — where multi-party elections have been held since 1946 — a political leader has indicated that he will no longer recognize the legitimacy of elections and the ballot box, asserting that the right to govern will no longer be determined through elections. This move, which will further diminish the opposition’s expectations from the ballot box, symbolizes a setback that paves the way for Turkey to be ruled by a clique clinging to a nostalgic and anachronistic longing for monarchy.

    Erdoğan’s vision for Turkey rests on the ideal of a monolithic society, restructured along the lines of political [sic] Islam, where all dissent is either crushed or rendered inconsequential. Now, little remains to stand in his way.

  • BIA Net ☛ Court orders blocking of bianet’s X account

    The Freedom Expression Association (İFÖD), a digital rights group, identified the censorship and reported that the decision was made under Article 8/A of Turkey’s Internet Law No. 5651. According to İFÖD, the court cited concerns related to “national security and public order” as grounds for the block.

  • JURIST ☛ Turkish court jails opposition presidential candidate on corruption charges, prompting mass protests

    Following his arrest, İmamoğlu was transferred to Marmara Prison near Istanbul’s Silivri district. The Interior Ministry later suspended his mayoral duties, stating that the Istanbul municipal council, controlled by the CHP, would appoint an interim mayor in his absence. The arrest has ignited widespread demonstrations, with thousands gathering across the country to protest what they view as a politically motivated case.

  • JURIST ☛ Amnesty urges Turkish authorities to cease unlawful use of force and detentions

    Amnesty International (AI) on Monday called for an end to unlawful violence against protesters and detention of journalists by police in Turkey in the wake of the detention of opposition presidential candidate, Ekrem İmamoğlu, which has sparked mass protests across the country.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Columbia protester suit raises questions about free speech rights: ‘Immigration enforcement as a bludgeon’

    When they couldn’t find her there, Ice sought help from federal prosecutors and searched her dormitory – using a warrant that cited a criminal law against “harboring noncitizens”. They revoked her green card and accused her of posing a threat to US foreign policy interests.

  • RFERL ☛ Turkey 'Has Been Abused': Protesters Target Erdogan As Crackdown Escalates

    The protests erupted on March 19 in response to the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival who has been hit with corruption charges his supporters call politically motivated.

    Turkish Interior Minister Alil Yerlikaya said in a March 25 post on X that 1,418 suspects had been detained so far in “illegal demonstrations,” nearly 1,000 of whom are in custody, and condemned those he said had “insulted” Erdogan’s family members.

  • RFERL ☛ Mass Protests Continue Across Turkey After Erdogan Rival Imamoglu Arrested

    Imamoglu’s detention is widely seen as a politically motivated act to remove him from the presidential race. But the government insists the country's courts are independent entities.

  • Axios ☛ How "Project Esther" forecast Trump's plan to silence protests, boost deportations

    Zoom in: Project Esther was quietly unveiled just before the presidential election, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas' attack on Israel on Oct.7, 2023.

    It was produced by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative group behind Project 2025, and took aim at what it called antisemitism on college campuses.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Turkey: Erdogan calls protests a 'movement of violence'

    The arrest has triggered the largest opposition protests in Turkey since the so-called Gezi protests in 2013. Despite a massive police presence, thousands of people have taken to the streets across the country demonstrating against what they see as a ploy to stop Imamoglu's bid for the presidency.

  • Greece ☛ Turkish opposition seeks boycott of pro-Erdogan media over failure to cover protests

    Turkey’s opposition, galvanized by widescale protests over the jailing of Istanbul’s mayor, is hoping to keep the momentum going in part by calling for a boycott of TV stations and businesses it says are “ignoring the moment.”

    Turkey has been rocked by the largest street protests in more than a decade following the arrest and then, on Sunday, the jailing of Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, widely seen as President Tayyip Erdogan’s most formidable political rival, pending trial on corruption charges that he strongly denies.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • JURIST ☛ Anti-torture group urges China to release citizen journalist Zhang Zhan

    The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders requested Monday the urgent intervention of Chinese authorities regarding the arbitrary detention and ill-treatment of citizen journalist Zhang Zhan. Zhang Zhan is accused of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.”

  • Press Gazette ☛ NYT journalist says covering second Trump term 'more difficult'

    Former New York Times White House Correspondent Mark Landler has said there are “considerably greater” challenges covering the second Trump administration compared with his first.

    Speaking at the Society of Editors Media Freedom conference in London on Tuesday, Landler, who is now the London bureau chief for the newspaper, argued that everything from securing sources to the risk of lawfare had become a greater issue during Donald Trump’s second term.

  • France24 ☛ Turkish court jails seven journalists as Istanbul protests continue, defy crackdown

    Thousands of protesters once again took to the streets of Istanbul Tuesday after a week of demonstrations against the arrest of Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, widely seen as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's main political rival. Seven journalists covering the protests have been remanded in custody, including AFP photographer Yasin Akgul.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Turkey jails journalists, as protesters defy crackdown

    Turkish protesters took to the streets for a sixth straight day on Tuesday, as 7 journalists were detained, swept up in a large crackdown against dissent.

  • BIA Net ☛ Seven [j]ournalists arrested over coverage of İmamoğlu protests

    The journalists are investigated for allegedly violating the law on public gatherings.

    According to sources who spoke to bianet, the prosecutor initially referred the detained journalists to the penal judgeship of peace with a request for judicial control measures. However, the prosecutor later amended the referral and requested their arrest.

  • RFERL ☛ Lawmakers Urge Trump To Rescind Order To Cut Funding To RFE/RL, Other US Media Outlets

    A letter to Trump signed by more than 40 members of Congress said shuttering USAGM would also hurt US credibility and global standing around the world.

    “More directly, it will leave millions of people in closed and restrictive environments, from Havana to Caracas to Minsk to Tehran, less able to access information about the world around them,” the letter said. “We strongly urge you to reconsider this Executive Order and ensure the critical work of USAGM and its broadcasting networks continues.”

  • RFERL ☛ Why RFE/RL Matters

    Readers of the Wider Europe newsletter have likely noticed the uncertain times facing Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) at the moment. On March 15, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order drastically reducing the size of RFE/RL's overseer, the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM). That was followed by a letter from Kari Lake, a senior adviser to the USAGM CEO, notifying that the Congress-approved grant that funds us has been terminated.

    Despite this, we are still operating. The radio has sued both USAGM and Kari Lake over these moves, and there has been talk of possible funding from the EU.

    Given the circumstances, I’m going to break from the usual format and share a story I’ve never written down before -- about what RFE/RL means for me.

  • RFERL ☛ How An RFE/RL Journalist Worked Undercover In Russia-Occupied Crimea For Years

  • YLE ☛ Eva: Finns' trust in media increases

    More than 60 percent of respondents said they get diverse and accurate information about world events. That suggests Finns' opinion of media performance has improved since the 1980s and 1990s.

  • The Korea Times ☛ Turkey detains journalists as protests grow over the jailing of key Erdogan rival

    A media union said Turkish authorities arrested several journalists at their homes in a crackdown Monday, amid growing protests over the jailing of Istanbul’s mayor, a top rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    A court on Sunday formally arrested Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and ordered him jailed pending a trial on corruption charges. His detention on Wednesday sparked the largest wave of street demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade, deepening concerns over democracy and the rule of law.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ MP: Journalist arrested in accident case; scribes stage protest outside police station in Bhopal

    The police arrested Kuldeep Singoria, a former employee of a national Hindi daily, on Monday night in connection with an accident that took place on March 20, an official said.

  • Techdirt ☛ Even Traditional GOP Allies Are Urging The FCC To End Its Baseless Attack On CBS, 60 Minutes

    CBS/Paramount is looking for regulatory approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance (run by Larry Ellison’s kid David). Trump and his FCC boss Brendan Carr quickly zeroed on on this, and began using merger approval as leverage to bully CBS into even more feckless coverage of the administration.

    As CBS explores its options, the company is being pressured to fold like a coward (like Meta, ABC, or Paul Weiss) by incoming new CEO Jeff Shell. At the same time, the FCC under Trump sycophant Brendan Carr has launched a flimsy probe into CBS over the 60 Minutes non-violation.

  • CPJ ☛ Romania: Answers needed over surveillance of investigative journalist [PDF]

    The undersigned international media freedom organisations today raise concerns over recent revelations about the physical surveillance and wiretapping of an investigative journalist by a local branch of the Romanian National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) and call for an investigation into this and previous cases of surveillance on journalists by the authority.

    Our organizations stress that the surveillance operation against the journalist by the DNA’s Iași office in 2023 appears to have been disproportionate and lacking in proper justification, posing a serious threat to source protection and press freedom in Romania which warrants scrutiny by both national and European authorities.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Federal News Network ☛ Homeland Security makes cuts to offices overseeing civil rights protections

    The Department of Homeland Security is making cuts to three key offices that oversee civil rights protections across its broad mission.

  • YLE ☛ Finnair cancels dozens of flights as unions call political strike over airline board's pay hike plans

    The AKT said it disapproved of plans to increase the remuneration of Finnair board members. The airline is majority-owed by the Finnish state, and there are plans to increase payments for board members and its chair by around 30 to 45 percent over a two-year period.

    Finnair has scheduled its annual general meeting on Thursday 27 March at 3 pm in Vantaa. The unions are planning their two-hour political strike at the same time.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ Is your network protected? The rov-check project by JPNIC

    Guest Post: JPNIC has developed a simple tool that provides a quick and reliable way to verify ROV deployments.

  • APNIC ☛ Bridging connectivity and collaboration gaps in Bangladesh 

    As of 2024, the ITU reports that approximately 44.5% of Bangladesh’s population are Internet users, a significant increase from 25.6% at the end of 2018.

    Mobile broadband dominates connectivity due to the extensive 4G coverage, affordability of smartphones, and competitive data plans. Despite improvements, rural broadband expansion remains a significant challenge due to last-mile connectivity constraints. Fibre deployment is growing in urban areas, but expanding fixed broadband beyond city centres remains challenging.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Elon Musk Is Hijacking Rural America’s Internet

    This policy shift is poised to divert billions in public subsidies to Starlink, further enriching the world’s richest man. Meanwhile, switching from fiber-optic to satellite provision would diminish the two best features of the program, both of which rural America desperately needs: good [Internet]and good jobs.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Boudhayan Bhattcharya ☛ Closing the chapter on OpenH264

      H.264 is one of the most widely used codecs today but unfortunately it is patented with several patents still active. Patents like this are a blocker to shipping software dealing with the codec in the base runtime (since we want it usable by a wide variety of vendors and free of any legal grey areas) and unfortunately makes life difficult for everyone involved.

    • Linuxiac ☛ Freedesktop SDK Retires Cisco's OpenH264 Codec Library

      OpenH264 is an open-source video codec library developed by Cisco (which covers the licensing fees for using the H.264 patent pool) that implements the H.264 standard, one of the world’s most widely used for compressing and decompressing video data. Now, back to the topic.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Meta's BitTorrent Uploads of 'Pirate Library' Data Equaled 30% of Downloads, Expert Says

    A lawsuit filed by several authors against Meta centers on Meta's alleged use of pirated books for AI training data and the technical details of BitTorrent which was used to obtain them. Yesterday, Meta filed a motion for summary judgment, while countering the authors' request to resolve the copyright claims in their favor. Meta's request includes new information, including the revelation that its uploads of 'pirate' library data were roughly 30% of the data it downloaded.