Leftovers

• Standards/Consortia

  • European Commission ☛ Activation of EU rules on radio equipment for reconfigurable radio systems

    Current EU rules on radio equipment ensure a single market for such equipment. They set essential requirements for the placing on the market of radio equipment that cover among others health, protection of radio spectrum or access to emergency services.

    This initiative aims to ensure that reconfigurable radio systems meet the legal requirements of the rules on radio equipment during their whole life cycle, in particular to avoid issues following a software update or upload.

• Science

  • Quanta Magazine ☛ How a Problem About Pigeons Powers Complexity Theory

    “The pigeonhole principle is a theorem that elicits a smile,” said Christos Papadimitriou, a theoretical computer scientist at Columbia University. “It’s a fantastic conversation piece.”

    But the pigeonhole principle isn’t just for the birds. Even though it sounds painfully straightforward, it’s become a powerful tool for researchers engaged in the central project of theoretical computer science: mapping the hidden connections between different problems.

• Career/Education

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Trump cancels dozens of international student visas at UC, Stanford

    At UC San Diego, Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said in a campus message late Friday that five students had their visas revoked. He said the university received the notification “without warning.” Khosla said a sixth student was “detained at the border, denied entry and deported to their home country.”

  • Colleen Kranz ☛ GNT #114: Why impostor syndrome is a good thing

    We landed on impostor syndrome — that creeping doubt that whispers, You’re not ready. You don’t belong. Any minute now, they’ll figure you out.

    Most advice tells you to “overcome it,” “fake it till you make it,” or “build confidence to push through.”

    But what if impostor syndrome isn’t something to fix? What if it’s just a signal that you’re exactly where you need to be?

  • Sean Goedecke ☛ Dangerous advice for software engineers

    I worry about some readers making the wrong decisions about what to work on, or breaking the rules in the wrong way, and so on. I don’t like the idea that I’ve contributed to harming someone’s career. But I think dangerous advice is important to write down somewhere.

  • Mike Brock ☛ Philosophy Belongs to Those Who Practice It

    This isn't merely about who gets to claim a title. It's about something far more consequential—who gets to participate in humanity's oldest intellectual tradition. Who gets to ask fundamental questions about truth, meaning, and how we should live. Who gets to contribute to our collective understanding of reality.

    Philosophy began not in lecture halls but in marketplaces. Not in peer-reviewed journals but in public dialogues. Not as a specialized discipline but as the birthright of thinking humans confronting existence. Socrates walked the streets of Athens questioning citizens from all walks of life. The Stoics taught in open colonnades. Diogenes lived his philosophy in the streets, confronting convention with embodied critique. For most of human history, philosophy was not an academic specialty but humanity's shared intellectual heritage—a way of examining life, questioning assumptions, and pursuing wisdom.

  • Deseret Media ☛ University of Utah offers community classes on 'granny hobbies'

    Following the trend of "grandma-core" activities, the university will offer knitting, gardening, sewing, soap-making, weaving, jewelry-making, embroidery and more than 20 other creative classes.

  • Jeff Bridgforth ☛ Two powerful investments to make in your career

    The two investments are:

    • Build and maintain relationships in your network
    • Maintain a career management document (CMD), which is a record of all your work for use with your resume or portfolio

• Hardware

  • Gabe Venberg ☛ Stop Using TRRS for Split-Keyboard Interconnects!

    TRRS (Tip Ring Ring Sleeve, or, as you may know it, “headphone jack with microphone support”) cables have long been the go to connector between split keyboard halves. They are cheap, compact, and thanks to their popularity, come in a variety of aesthetic styles.

    However, TRRS jacks were only designed for passive electrical components, and expose one large flaw when used actively. When a TRRS cable is (dis)connected, the tip of the plug will slide past every single contact of the jack. Likewise, the first contact of the jack will slide past every contact of the plug.

  • Wired ☛ Trump’s Tariffs Are Threatening the US Semiconductor Revival

    That means only a small number of American manufacturers will be able to continue sourcing chips without needing to factor in higher import costs. The vast majority of semiconductors that come into the US currently are already packaged into products that are not exempt, such as the graphics processing units (GPUs) and servers for training artificial intelligence models. And manufacturing equipment that domestic companies use to produce chips in the US wasn’t spared, either.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-29 [Older] EU draws up plan for boosting wine sales amid tariff turmoil

  • Science Alert ☛ A Week of Swimming in Cold Water Can Change You on a Cellular Level

    The thinking is that consistent cold water submersion may improve our body's fundamental reaction to environmental stress – in this case, chilly temperatures. Here, it made the key stress response of autophagy more protective.

  • TruthOut ☛ Sanders: 67,000 Will Die Waiting for Social Security Benefits Under Musk Plan

    But if “shadow president” Musk and President Donald Trump’s plans to cut the Social Security Administration by up to half are fully realized, the wait time could more than double to 412 days — resulting in nearly 67,000 people dying this year alone while waiting for an initial decision on their eligibility for benefits.

    This is an average of nearly 190 people per day, the analysis finds.

  • Futurism ☛ Senators Request Safety Records from AI Chatbot Apps

    Drafted by democratic senators Alex Padilla of California and Peter Welch of Massachusetts, the letter cites details of the accusations against Character.AI as cause for alarm, calling specific attention to concern for minor users of AI companion apps and directly referencing Sewell Setzer III, a 14-year-old user of Character.AI who died by suicide in February 2024 after extensive and extraordinarily intimate interactions with the platform's anthropomorphic chatbots.

    "We write to express our concerns regarding the mental health and safety risks posed to young users of character- and persona-based AI chatbot and companion apps," reads the letter, "including Character.AI."

  • CNN ☛ Senators demand information from AI companion apps in the wake of kids’ safety concerns, lawsuits

    “This unearned trust can, and has already, led users to disclose sensitive information about their mood, interpersonal relationships, or mental health, which may involve self-harm and suicidal ideation—complex themes that the AI chatbots on your products are wholly unqualified to discuss,” the senators wrote in their letter, provided first to CNN. “Conversations that drift into this dangerous emotional territory pose heightened risks to vulnerable users.”

  • CBC ☛ Top American scientists just lost their jobs. Canada is rolling out the welcome mat

    Scientists overseeing cancer research, vaccine and drug approvals, public health and tobacco regulations are also among 10,000 already laid off. Public health experts say the mass firings could have catastrophic impacts for the U.S. and the world.

    "Some of the top public health experts in the world just lost their jobs," said former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden.

  • TMZ ☛ Luigi Mangione Faces Potential Torturous Fate As Pam Bondi Seeks Death Penalty

    TMZ interviewed University of Richmond Law Professor Corinna Lain, who provided us with a road map of what Luigi can potentially expect if he is federally convicted of stalking and murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

• Proprietary

  • Z to Z ☛ Investigating MacPaint's Source Code

    MacPaint is a monochromatic raster image painting program that introduced many people to mouse-driven controls, tool palettes, and copy and paste integration with other applications. One of two launch applications for the Apple Macintosh in 1984, MacPaint is emblematic of the Macintosh’s early quirky revolutionary branding, focus on ease of use, and appeal to artistic customers. Using the source code, we examine the design and implementation of the application. We find that the buffer management and bucket filling algorithms demonstrate mechanical empathy with the 68k platform and leverage the limitations of the domain as a means to improve performance. We also find positive and negative aspects in the code style and architecture and its pliability for change. Finally, we dispute some claimed novel aspects of the program while also arguing for its significance and impact on the development of digital graphic systems.

  • University of Toronto ☛ I should learn systemd's features for restricting things

    I'm confident that with enough time, I can (or could) sort out all of the problems (although I didn't feel like spending that time today). What this experience really points out is that systemd has a lot of options for really restricting what programs you run can do, and I'm not particularly familiar with them. To get the service working with all of its original restrictions, I'd have to read way through things like systemd.exec and understanding what everything the .service file used did. Once I did that, I could have understood what I needed to change to deal with my setup of the program.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • TruthOut ☛ AI Isn’t Going to Cut Government Bureaucracy — It’s Going to Vastly Worsen It | Truthout

      While artificial general intelligence (AGI) remains a fantasy peddled by the right-wing tech oligarchy, we are now witnessing the creation of what I would call artificial bureaucratic intelligence (ABI). ABI is emerging as an autonomous agent dedicated to the rigid and mindless implementation of administrative procedure. As thousands of government workers are dismissed from their jobs, it appears that the plan is to replace them with some form of ABI, which will act as the interface between government (or what’s left of it) and the public. ABI is a “killer app,” because bureaucracy is the one area where failure, inefficiency and arbitrariness are features, not bugs. In 1979, Sen. Eugene McCarthy said that “an efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty,” and ABI is poised to become the most effective bureaucrat ever. That’s because an AI bureaucrat won’t be distracted by a desire to flex its power or line its pockets — its sole purpose will be to follow instructions, no matter how disastrous the results.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Capgemini: Fix your customer service — with chatbots!

      What do you, Mr. Executive, get out of this? In early experiments, the bot apparently gives enough correct answers to get customers to go away, so that’s close enough.

      The report recommends you go against all standard corporate practice and stop doing things that make your support agents miserable. Chatbots will fix this too, for some reason.

    • NDTV ☛ Opinion | Why Does Your AI 'Ghibli' Look So Terrible? Because It Is

      What happens when AI conjures art out of thin air while completely isolating the user from the process? You get what is, essentially, just an artefact, minus the artistry. A hunk of butter that's all hunk and no butter.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Record ☛ Maryland pharmacist used keyloggers to spy on coworkers for a decade, victim alleges | The Record from Recorded Future News

      A Maryland pharmacist installed spyware on hundreds of computers at a major teaching hospital and recorded videos over the course of a decade of staff pumping breastmilk and breastfeeding, a class-action lawsuit alleges.

      The suit, filed on March 27 and first reported by the Baltimore Banner, accuses pharmacist Matthew Bathula of implanting keyloggers — a type of software that records what someone types on a keyboard — on about 400 computers at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC).

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Space Force issues $13.5 billion in contracts to 3 launch firms

    The awards are part of the service’s National Security Space Launch program, or NSSL, which it uses to acquire nearly all military launch missions. Under the deal, SpaceX will receive $5.9 billion to fly 28 missions, ULA $5.3 billion to launch 19 and Blue Origin $2.3 billion to conduct seven.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Elon Musk’s Goal Isn’t Efficiency — It’s a Liquidation Sale

    The Department [sic] of Government Efficiency isn’t bumbling through an ill-advised reform effort. It’s deliberately sabotaging federal agencies to make way for privatization.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Independent UK ☛ Fake reviews banned under new law aimed at protecting online shoppers

      A ban on fake reviews and hidden fees for online shoppers has today come into force.

      Consumers will now see more transparent pricing, as businesses are required to incorporate administration and booking fees into the upfront cost of goods and services.

      However, the law stops short of including optional extras, such as airline seat selection or baggage upgrades, in the initial price display.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: How the world’s leading breach expert got phished

      If you can't spot the sucker at the poker table, you're the sucker. Also, if you think you can't get phished, you're the sucker.

      I've been successfully scammed six times in my life. Each time, the scam relied on the confluence of several factors that yielded a fleeting moment of vulnerability that some scammer was able to exploit by being in the right place at the right time. I had to be lucky always, they only had to be lucky once.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • [Repeat] Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft Copilot is now fully integrated with Windows 11 and Windows 10

      Copilot was previously only accessible using a web-based application or opening it from the sidebar. Now, you can pull it up quickly with a keyboard shortcut (Alt + Space) and adjust the window position and size to your preference. Because it's integrated into the Windows OS, it has access to system information unique to your PC, which Microsoft intends to enhance the individual user experience. That said, Copilot cannot operate the Windows 11 OS, but that isn't necessarily off the table for future updates.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Musk Family ‘in Awe’ of Putin, Billionaire’s Father Says - The Moscow Times

    The family of tech billionaire Elon Musk admires Russian President Vladimir Putin on a personal level, despite his reputation as a warmonger in the West, Musk’s father said in an interview published Thursday.

    “As a family… we are a little bit in awe of Mr. Putin,” Errol Musk told the BBC’s Russian service in a video call from his home in Cape Town, South Africa.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Hero rat sets Guinness World Record for detecting landmines

    Meet Ronin. Ronin has detected 109 landmines and 15 items of unexploded ordnance since 2021. That’s according to both APOPO, the charity that trained the African giant pouched rat, and the Guinness Book of World Records, which declared Ronin the new record holder. He’s currently working in Preah Vihear Province in Cambodia, one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ BBC accused of ‘Islamist propaganda’ with ‘Muslim revert’ article

    The term “revert” is used by some to back claims that Muslim converts are merely returning to the faith all humans are born into before being corrupted by Christianity, other religions or atheism.

    But it is not used by all Muslims and is especially associated with Islamist fundamentalism.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Trump administration says emails 'sent in error' ordering Ukrainians to leave the U.S.

    Attorneys challenging the Trump administration’s pause of humanitarian applications for Ukrainians and Afghans, as well as the end of legal status programs for nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, filed a copy of the termination notice sent to Ukrainians in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts on Friday.

    The notice, given on Thursday, instructs any Ukrainians in the Uniting for Ukraine humanitarian parole program to leave the U.S. within seven days of receiving the notice, according to court filings.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Pentagon inspector general investigating Hegseth’s use of Signal messaging app

    Democrats are continuing their probes into how the Department of Government Efficiency is accessing and using federal agency data. House Oversight Committee Democrats this week introduced a resolution of inquiry investigating how DOGE is using data and artificial intelligence at federal agencies. The committee has 14 legislative days to vote on the resolution or it will become privileged on the House floor. Lawmakers specifically want to know whether DOGE is using AI to identify spending cuts. And on the Senate side, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gary Peters (D-Mich.) demanded answers from 24 agencies this week about DOGE’s access to their data. Peters’ letter comes amid numerous reports that DOGE teams are skirting privacy and security laws to gain access to data repositories.

  • Tracy Durnell ☛ Letter to Senators re: Signal chat

    I’m pleased to see there is an investigation into the use of Signal to coordinate military action, however I believe we already have sufficient information to demand the resignation of Pete Hegseth and Mike Waltz, especially with the additional revelation that Waltz is using Gmail.

• Environment

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Possible record-breaking heat on tap for Southern California next week

    “These temperatures are about 12 to 18 degrees above normal,” Schoenfeld said. “We do have temperature variations at different points, but this is a little bit atypical.”

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Air pollution and extreme heat increase mortality in India

    Researchers applied two advanced spatiotemporal models to estimate daily exposure levels of ambient air pollution and temperature. By analyzing approximately 3.6 million deaths, they found that the association between PM2.5 and mortality was particularly strong at high temperatures.

  • YLE ☛ Water buffaloes helping restore South Savo lake

    The buffaloes will arrive at the Anola shore once there's enough vegetation for them to graze on and are set to stay until the end of autumn.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-29 [Older] Europe watches partial solar eclipse

    • Federal News Network ☛ How internet search algorithms could help critical infrastructure

      Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have found a new element in critical infrastructure protection. They’ve discovered how the algorithms that rank pages in internet searches also can help planners better understand how to prevent cascading failures in electrical or water systems. PNNL mathematician Bill Kay joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss how it all works.

    • Futurism ☛ Women Reveal Whether They Find Cybertruck Drivers Attractive

      Surprisingly, the poor reaction is coming as shocking news to Cybertruck drivers and their faithful acolytes, who are starting to figure out that we're not laughing with them. One driver who goes by "Sturdybirdy" on the forum Cybertruck Owners Club shared the story of their lightbulb moment.

    • Vox ☛ Are car headlights brighter than they used to be?

      There are two ways to answer that question, lighting scientist John Bullough, who leads the Light and Health Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told Vox.

      The first has to do with the color of LED lights, the kind now overwhelmingly used in car headlights. “You’ve probably noticed that a lot of them look a lot more of a bluish white compared to the yellowish white of halogen headlights,” Bullough said, which used to be more common in headlights.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ How parenthood became a luxury few can afford

      Some subscribe to the “why would I want to bring a child into this terrible world?” cliché. But while doom-mongering has always existed, the soaring cost of housing, raising, entertaining and educating children is new.

      Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered yet another blow to aspirational, hard-working Middle Britain in last month’s Spring Statement, taking the tax burden to a post-war high. That will only add to the financial strain on aspirational couples who find that when it comes to having children, the sums simply don’t add up.

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-03-29 [Older] Fact check: Does the EU want to "steal" private savings?

  • Computer World ☛ DOGE [sic] wants to modernize Social Security’s legacy tech — what could possibly go wrong? – Computerworld

    As for SSA, it was going to replace COBOL with Java in 2017, a code translation expected to take five years; it failed. (That’s why we’re having this conversation now.) Part of the problem was due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But, as Ernst & Young noted, the agency also didn’t have a real plan for modernizing its legacy IT systems, nor one to identify and track the systems.

    Guess what? There’s no real plan today, either. All we know is that Musk, yes-man Steve Davis and nine kid software engineers, and some undefined AI program will miraculously transform the code into Java.

  • CNBC ☛ Social Security changes may impact customer service, benefit payments

    While the Social Security's systems could use an upgrade, projects of this size are typically handled over a period of years, not months, Fichtner said. Moreover, they typically start out with smaller tests, such as with one state, to identify bugs or other issues, before expanding regionally and then nationally, he said.

    "You can't just flip a switch one night and expect to be able to upgrade," Fichtner said. "It takes due diligence, and you have to understand the complexity of the programs."

  • The Hill ☛ Social Security benefits at risk due to staff cuts and system failures

    Social Security’s infrastructure is antiquated and complex. For example, key systems use COBOL, a programming language developed in the 1950s and ’60s, with which many computer engineers are unfamiliar. If Social Security’s computer systems experience an outage, which has happened twice in recent years, the agency may lack the expertise to resolve it.

    Social Security has never missed a payment in its nearly 90 years. Unless Congress acts soon, that could change in the near future. This is not a partisan issue. Democratic, Republican and independent voters all greatly value and need Social Security. In red states and blue states alike, Americans want access to their hard-earned benefits.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Pro Publica ☛ Why Did Elon Musk Donate Starlink Service to Trump White House?

    A few weeks ago, my colleague Doris Burke sent me a story from The New York Times that gave us both deja vu.

    The piece reported that Starlink, the satellite internet provider operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, had, in the words of Trump administration officials, “donated” internet service to improve wireless connectivity and cell reception at the White House.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Party of Principles, Until They're Not

    Today's vote by House Republicans to protect Trump's tariffs has me thinking about cognitive dissonance. Specifically, the extraordinary mental contortions required to maintain the fiction that the GOP is still the party of free markets and limited government.

    What more proof do we need that the “moderates” in the GOP are fucking cowards that we can't count on for anything? Every time there's a meaningful vote—one that might actually constrain Trump's most economically destructive impulses—they fall in line. Their spines dissolve. Their principles evaporate.

  • Techdirt ☛ How 18F Transformed Government Technology − And Why Its Elimination Matters

    18F served a unique role as an in-house digital consultancy for the U.S. government, drawing on innovative strategies to improve public service through technology. Within 18F, teams consisting of designers, software engineers, strategists and product managers worked together with federal, state and local agencies to not only fix technical problems but to build, buy and share technology that helped to modernize and improve the public’s experience with government services.

  • Wired ☛ NSA Chief Ousted Amid Trump Loyalty Firing Spree

    On March 18, the FBI raided the homes of Xiaofeng Wang, a data privacy professor and researcher who worked at the IU for more than 20 years. The same day, according to a termination email viewed by WIRED, Wang was fired from his job, and people soon noticed that he and his wife seemed to have disappeared.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • India Times ☛ EU prepares major penalties against Elon Musk's X

      European Union regulators are preparing major penalties against Elon Musk's social media platform X for breaking a landmark law to combat illicit content and disinformation, said four people with knowledge of the plans, a move that is likely to ratchet up tensions with the United States by targeting one of President Donald Trump's closest advisers.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • CS Monitor ☛ In Naval Academy’s DEI purge, books on feminism and racism

    The Navy late Friday provided the list of 381 books that have been taken out of its library. The move marks another step in the Trump administration’s far-reaching effort to purge so-called DEI content from federal agencies, including policies, programs, online and social media postings, and curriculum at schools.

  • BIA Net ☛ The Lull

    I am writing this the day after a mass rally in Maltepe Istanbul called by the opposition CHP, attended by approximately 2.2 million people, or by one man and his dog, depending on which news outlet you watch.

  • BIA Net ☛ X users in Turkey migrate to Bluesky amid censorship

    Social media users are increasingly turning to Bluesky in response to government censorship and X’s internal content policies, though Bluesky itself may soon face similar restrictions.

  • New York Times ☛ Obama Calls for Universities to Stand Up to Trump Administration Threats

    “If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right?,” he said during a conversation at Hamilton College in upstate New York. “Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?”

    “If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that’s why we got this big endowment.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • ANF News ☛ MKG report: Pressure on journalists on the rise

    Drawing attention to the ongoing censorship in digital media, the report stated that one website was shut down and access to six digital media platforms was blocked in March. Mezopotamya Agency's Instagram account, Bianet's X (Twitter) account and journalist Zeynep Ceren Kuray's personal account were among those affected. “Targeting digital media accounts, which have become one of the fastest and most widespread ways of accessing public information, is a direct violation not only of journalists but also of the public's right to information,” the report said.

  • Cost Rica ☛ Costa Rica Press Freedom Under Threat as Chaves Targets Journalists, Report Says

    The third annual Report on the State of Freedom of Expression and the Security of Journalistic Practice in Central America, published on March 31, 2025, identifies Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves Robles as a central figure in the erosion of press freedom in the country. The report states that Chaves’ “stigmatizing and confrontational discourse” toward media outlets and public institutions critical of his administration has fostered an atmosphere of intimidation, limiting journalists’ ability to work freely and undermining public trust in the press as a democratic cornerstone.

  • RFA ☛ RFA radio transmissions to China, Tibet halted

    RFA informed listeners on Thursday that shortwave radio broadcasts for its Mandarin, Tibetan and Lao language services have stopped entirely. The broadcaster, which is funded by the U.S. Congress, said a heavily reduced schedule remains in place for RFA Burmese, Khmer, Korean and Uyghur language services.

  • The Dissenter ☛ 'News Graveyards' Study Examines Toll Of War On Reporters

    The staggering number of journalist deaths represents “the most extreme form of press censorship.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • teleSUR ☛ Martin Luther King Jr. Was Assassinated 57 Years Ago

    King’s death did not mark the end of his impact; rather, it strengthened the resolve of civil rights activists and inspired future generations. His teachings and principles remain central to contemporary discussions on social justice and human rights worldwide.

  • California State University Northridge ☛ BREAKING: “Hands Off!” rallies take place across the nation

    Approximately one million people across every state and 10 countries are participating in the “Hands-Off!” protests on April 5. Across California, dozens of protests are taking place today to voice people’s concerns and frustrations with the Trump administration and Elon Musk. People of all ages have come out to participate.

  • Michigan News ☛ Thousands in Michigan join nationwide protests over Trump-Musk ‘billionaire power grab’ - mlive.com

    Mass-action “Hands Off” protests were planned across the country on Saturday, in what organizers say was the largest anti-Trump mobilization of the president’s second term in office. More than 50 demonstrations were scheduled across Michigan, including in Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, Muskegon, Saginaw and Detroit.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Hands Off’ protests take off across US and Europe to oppose Trump agenda – as it happened

    Hundreds of protesters – including Americans living abroad – took to the streets across major European cities in a show of defiance against Donald Trump’s administration. Protesters rallied in Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, London and Lisbon, all in a united show of opposition against Trump’s policies.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Anti-Trump, Musk protests draw big crowds in L.A. and around the nation

    They took to the streets in New York, Washington, Boston, Atlanta, San Francisco and dozens of other cities from coast to coast. Demonstrators in Sonoma County wine country sang along to Woody Guthrie folk songs. Drumbeating activists in the conservative heart of Orange County drowned out the shouts of a smattering of Trump supporters who waded into a Huntington Beach rally.

  • RTL ☛ 'Hands Off!' Anti-Trump Americans flood Washington

    "I believe we're under a coup right now, by oligarchs, much to my dismay," and "the checks and balances of our government" are disintegrating, she added.

  • CBC ☛ Protesters tee off on Trump, Musk in global 'Hands Off' rallies

    Opponents of U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk rallied across the U.S. and around the globe on Saturday to protest the administration's actions on government downsizing, the economy, human rights and other issues.

  • RFA ☛ Netizens demand China reinstate Tibetan language use in schools – Radio Free Asia

    But Tibetans say that isn’t true, and that China has actively moved to suppress use of the language -- which they see as part of a wider plan to eliminate Tibetan cultural identity entirely.

  • US News And World Report ☛ 'Hands Off!' Protests Against Trump and Musk Are Planned Across the US

    Opponents of President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk plan to rally across the U.S. on Saturday to protest the administration's actions on government downsizing, the economy, human rights and other issues.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Florida Republicans Want to Gut the State’s Minimum Wage Law

    Both bills are part of the business lobby’s long war to decimate labor rights in the state; proponents are citing ongoing labor market disruptions caused in part by the Trump administration’s mass deportation program.

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Offline is for everyone

    I keep finding far right people in digital minimalism spaces. 😰

    I get that digital minimalism is a solution appealing to many folks and that all walks of life want out from this gilded cage, but I want to give some headsups here.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Court House News ☛ New York Times pushes for improved public access in Google monopoly remedy trial | Courthouse News Service

  In a court filing Friday, The New York Times slammed the Justice Department and Google’s “lip service” to public access in a looming remedy trial over the tech giant’s [Internet] search monopoly.

  The Times said neither party could explain why any documents or portions of documents shown or discussed in open court should not be posted publicly or emailed to the press each evening.

  The news outlet asked U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta to adopt a form of contemporaneous access to such documents that was adopted in a parallel antitrust case over Google’s dominance in the advertising technology industry.

• India Times ☛ Mark Zuckerberg repeats Trump visits in bid to settle antitrust case

  The New York Times reported that Zuckerberg has visited Trump at both the White House and his Mar-a-Lago resort several times in recent weeks as he makes a last-ditch attempt to spare his company the seven- to eight-week trial.