Leftovers

• The New Leaf Journal ☛ March 2025 at The New Leaf Journal

  I published 13 new New Leaf Journal articles in March, with one being our February review. While March did not rank highly in terms of word count, I picked up the pace in the latter half of the month, with 9 articles being published between March 13 and 31.

• Leon Mika ☛ Airing Of Draft Posts

  I was going through my drafts this evening and I found that I had a number of them. Around 26 in total, created over the last year or so, many of them half-finished or almost finished thoughts. Some are not worth keeping around, and will be going straight to the big /dev/null in the sky. But I found a few that are worth preserving, at least in some form. And since they’re no longer worth publishing as separate posts in-and-of-themselves — which is probably why they were kept as drafts — I’d thought I’d just list them here.

• Ooh.Directory ☛ The most linked-to domains

  At some point these tweaks turn into editorialising of the raw chart data so for now all domains are included, with the only aggregation being of domains with and without leading www. subdomains.

  In case you’re interested, here are the 20 most linked-to domains across all blogs in the directory: [...]

• Career/Education

  • Vidit Bhargava ☛ Action Centered Design Framework

    Here's the video recording of my talk at the ARCtic iOS Conference in Oulu Finland, held in March 2025.

  • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ I am Uncluttered (Yellow): an ebook on doom-prepping web dev

    Well, you figure out how to rebuild and to do that you need to do an inventory.

    I am Uncluttered (Yellow) has an overview of some of the most important principles in management, software development, and systems-thinking, combined with a study of the feature of JavaScript that is simultaneously its greatest advantage and its greatest disadvantage, a high level overview of some of the basic principles of test-driven development as applied to web dev, some ideas how to tackle JavaScript dependency hell, as well as an appendix that outlines some of the simplest possible dev tools that still might work for you.

    But, more importantly, it does not engage in false positivity.

  • Lou Plummer ☛ Belief Makes it Real, or Does It?

    I was pretty offended by this. I took pride in being professional and thorough. I didn't mind going the extra mile to help out my customers. When I told the boss, he assured me that he knew my heart was in the right place, but that (here it comes), "People's perception is their reality." He probably told me that once or twice a week for a decade. It doesn't matter if you're Mother Teresa. If people think you're Margaret Thatcher, they aren't going to want you in their space.

  • Evan Hahn ☛ Notes from "Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology"

    In the book, Ullman laments the bad parts of computers and the internet. These systems eroded privacy, deepened income inequality, and enabled the rise of modern fascism. And they were built by a tiny subset of people—young men, mostly white and Asian, mostly wealthy—to the exclusion of almost everyone else. Despite all this, she maintains a hopeful fascination with technology. Perhaps humanity can use these tools as part of a better world.

  • The Register UK ☛ UK slashes funding to university research quango

    As the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) announced nearly £14 billion ($18 billion) of R&D funding for sciences, green energy, and space "to improve lives and grow the economy," figures in its 2025-26 budget allocation reveal a slash in funding for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), which hands out research grants to universities in England.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Dozens Of Solenoids Turn Vintage Typewriter Into A Printer

    An electric typewriter is a rare and wonderful thrift store find, and even better if it still works. Unfortunately, there’s not as much use for these electromechanical beauties, so if you find one, why not follow [Konstantin Schauwecker]’s lead and turn it into a printer?

  • 404 Media ☛ A 'US-Made iPhone' Is Pure Fantasy

    These articles are good exercises but they are also total fantasy. There is no universe in which Apple snaps its fingers and begins making the iPhone in the United States overnight. It could theoretically begin assembling them here, but even that is a years-long process made infinitely harder by the fact that, in Trump’s ideal world, every company would be reshoring American manufacturing at the same time, leading to supply chain issues, factory building issues, and exacerbating the already lacking American talent pool for high-tech manufacturing. In the long term, we could and probably will see more tech manufacturing get reshored to the United States for strategic and national security reasons, but in the interim with massive tariffs, there will likely be unfathomable pain that is likely to last years, not weeks or months.

  • PC Mag ☛ With Trump Tariffs Looming, Razer Stops Accepting New Laptop Orders

    Razer.com has mysteriously delisted all laptop products in the US, including the upcoming Razer Blade 16. Instead, the site is only offering various accessories. Its Canada site continues to take laptop orders and preorders.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Framework pauses U.S. sales of base Laptop 13 models due to tariffs — company says other vendors are pausing sales too, but not making announcements

    It seems that Framework does not have enough inventory to keep selling its base model units at the same price in the U.S. And while it could increase the prices of its laptops, doing so would likely upend its market strategy. So, instead of making its most affordable options pricier, it opted to suspend its sales temporarily.

  • PC World ☛ Framework 'pauses' some laptop sales in response to tariffs

    What wasn’t clear, however, was why Framework didn’t simply raise its prices to compensate. Economists and trade organizations have predicted since last year that manufacturers would simply raise prices by the tariffed percentage, simply passing along costs to the consumer. Potential customers responding to the Twitter post wondered the same thing, but the company didn’t respond. However, the full effects of the various Trump tariffs (up to 54 percent on imports from China, aluminum imports, and semiconductors) are slowly being understood and may vary depending upon company and product.

  • The Verge ☛ Framework stops selling some of its cheapest laptops due to Trump tariffs

    Framework says it’s “temporarily pausing” US sales on some of its laptops due to the Trump administration’s tariffs that went into effect on April 5th, according to a post on X. The affected models are “a few base Framework Laptop 13 systems (Ultra 5 125H and Ryzen 5 7640U),” the company says, and it has removed them from its website “for now.”

  • The Register UK ☛ Framework pauses sales on laptops it will make a loss on

    Now Framework, which offers more modular and repairable laptop designs, has signaled that it is temporarily pausing sales of some models in America, citing the new so-called "reciprocal" tariffs that came into effect on April 5.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Semafor Inc ☛ How Trump slowed the fight against ‘forever chemicals’

    When it came to determining whether and how severely newer PFAS were toxic, Trump-appointed officials have been accused of straight-up changing the science — particularly when it came to assessing the risks of substances like PFBS, which replaced the now-phased out PFOS in products like firefighting foam. Instead of following career staff recommendations to assign PFBS with just one number to reflect a toxicity-related value, Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, whose 40-year EPA career included directing the agency’s National Exposure Research Lab and holding a leadership role in its Office of Research and Development, said that political officials offered a range of numbers — leaving room for interpretation about how toxic the substance actually was.

  • Brandon ☛ Ignorance is Bliss

    Last night, I was discussing the OJ Simpsons trial with my wife, after making a "If the glove don't fit" joke. I thought about how we took in the world during that time. For the most part, we focused on ourselves and our family, and to a lesser extent our community. I remember my parents and grandparents, watching the news once a day. In that thirty minute time slot, they got around 20 minutes of news, three minutes of sports, two minutes of fluff, and the rest was commercials. Once the news was over, no one was angry. No one felt like offloading. It was just over, and time for Leno.

  • Pedro ☛ The need for a big reset

    But I have this feeling for a while that I really, really, really need to do something about my screen time, or I am doomed. And in the meantime, even knowing this, I still can’t find myself just deleting the apps from my iPhone. Addiction is really hard, specially with something that is always in your pocket, within reach.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Paid parental leave is good for children, too

    Paid parental leave leads to lower infant and child mortality, fewer re-hospitalizations for infants and mothers, improved maternal mental health, higher breastfeeding rates and more extended duration, a decrease in intimate partner violence, and improved outcomes for children throughout their lifespan from improved infant attachment and child development, all the way to increased education and future wage growth as adults.

• Proprietary

  • Controversial layoffs at Microsoft after protests against military AI

    Two female software engineers were fired by Microsoft after disrupting its 50th anniversary event to protest military contracts with Israel. The incident occurred in Redmond, Washington, where the workers publicly denounced the use of the Azure cloud for military purposes in Gaza. Affiliated with the "No Azure for Apartheid" collective, they accused the company of facilitating human rights violations and demanded an end to its collaboration with the Israeli military. The company's immediate response, with immediate dismissals, has sparked a global debate about technological ethics, freedom of expression, and the role of large corporations in armed conflicts.

  • Gamer Network Limited ☛ Helldivers 2 CEO slams the games industry layoff wave, saying that bosses are making "regular devs" pay for their screw-ups

    Arrowhead Games Studio CEO Shams Jorjani has criticised other games industry executives for letting rank-and-file developers take the fall for what he styles "very unsound business decisions" over the past two years.

    An extremely compressed recap: tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs across companies like Embracer, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Sega and PlayStation in the past year alone, as the industry's beefiest operators struggle to meet the expectations of investors and repay debts following a period of expansion kindled by a gaming boom during the worldwide Covid pandemic lockdowns. Much-hyped, functionally bogus new technologies such as NFTs, cryptocurrency and generative AI have yet to fill the hole, so costs are being cut instead.

  • The Register UK ☛ Boeing 787 radio software patch didn't work, says Qatar

    "The flightcrew may not be aware of uncommanded frequency changes and could fail to receive air traffic control communications. This condition, if not addressed, could result in missed communications such as amended clearances and critical instructions for changes to flight path and consequent loss of safe separation between aircraft, collision, or runway incursion."

  • PC World ☛ Microsoft's worst software flop was secretly packed with Windows for years

    And so, everyone who bought Windows XP also (unknowingly) received a copy of the totally flopped Microsoft Bob.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • Futurism ☛ Quartz Fires All Writers After Move to AI Slop

      The cursed pattern continues: following a baffling and error-ridden turn to AI content, the once-acclaimed business publication Quartz has been sold off and its editorial team almost entirely axed — making it the latest media brand to see low-quality AI use precede mass layoffs.

    • The Verge ☛ Most Americans don’t trust AI — or the people in charge of it

      A new report from Pew Research Center released last week shows a sharp divide in how artificial intelligence is perceived by the people building it versus the people living with it. The survey, which includes responses from over 1,000 AI experts and more than 5,000 US adults, reveals a growing optimism gap: experts are hopeful, while the public is anxious, distrustful, and increasingly uneasy.

      Roughly three-quarters of AI experts think the technology will benefit them personally. Only a quarter of the public says the same. Experts believe AI will make jobs better; the public thinks it will take them away. Even basic trust in the system is fractured: more than half of both groups say they want more control over how AI is used in their lives, and majorities say they don’t trust the government or private companies to regulate it responsibly.

    • Drew Breunig ☛ AI Chatbots Are Like Observational Comics

      I see people who don’t know how LLMs are built treat them like all-knowing experts, trusting everything that comes out2. Well… Nearly everything.

      This brings us to another way AI chatbots are like observational comedy: they both lose their magic when talking about your expertise.

      Nothing breaks the spell of an observational comic like a joke about something you know well. You might chuckle a bit, but the spell snaps and you think, “Actually, there’s a very good reason it’s like that…”

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Your humanoid robot servant: a new hope for AGI! (A Guy Instead)

      1X is not likely to send out millions of Norwegian techs to sit in your basement to run your robot. Maybe you can hire a remote servant in a poor country. It’ll still be AGI: A Guy Instead.

    • Aftermath Site LLC ☛ ‘An Overwhelmingly Negative And Demoralizing Force’: What It’s Like Working For A Company That’s Forcing AI On Its Developers

      These tumultuous times are of course being reported on everywhere you look, including on this very website, but one area I’ve been curious about recently aren’t the broader moral and legal battles, but what the struggle looks like for the average dev who is now having to encounter AI in their workplace.

      For this piece, I spoke with a number of people working in the video game industry or very close to it, including artists, game designers, and software developers. I asked them to tell their stories about their daily interactions and struggles with artificial intelligence in the workplace, and what it means for the jobs they've been trained and hired to do.

    • APNIC ☛ IETF setting standards for AI preferences

      The newly chartered AI Preferences (AIPREF) Working Group will work on standardizing building blocks that allow for the expression of preferences about how content is collected and processed for Artificial Intelligence (AI) model development, deployment, and use.

  • Social Control Media

    • IT Wire ☛ iTWire - Account takeover attacks on social media: A rising threat for content creators and influencers

      In 2024 and continuing into 2025, social media platforms were prime targets for cybercriminals, with content creators facing the brunt of the malicious attacks, including a surge in account takeovers, malicious live streams, and sophisticated phishing campaigns.

    • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Instagram to require parental consent for kids under 16 to livestream

      Meta announced users under 16 will require parental consent to livestream or unblur nudity in direct messages

    • Chris O'Donnnell ☛ Facebook Killed My Marriage

      What I did not expect was Facebook changing my wife's status to single, because if she is not married to an active FB user, she is not married. I heard from a Mastodon user that she had the same issue years ago when she quit FB and they made her husband single, so this is not an unknown bug. I'm guessing it's a feature. Forcing her to single status opens up a whole range of new ads to serve her.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • 404 Media ☛ Another Masterful Gambit: DOGE Moves From Secure, Reliable Tape Archives to Hackable Digital Records

      The problem is, magnetic tapes are regarded by storage and archivist professionals as being a stable, reliable, and safe medium for long-term data storage. Just because it’s a 70 year old medium doesn’t mean those records needed a massive overhaul to digital, that it will save any money in the long term, or that the new storage method is better.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Privacy International ☛ PRESS RELEASE: Privacy International and Liberty complaint against Government’s ‘backdoor’ access to Apple data to be heard by Tribunal | Privacy International

      The Tribunal’s judgment comes after a hearing on Friday 14 March 2025, at which the Government had requested that basic details of Apple’s own case challenging the Technical Capability Notice (TCN) issued to it be kept secret. The Government wanted even the fact of the case and the identities of the parties to be kept from the public. The Tribunal has rejected that request in today’s judgment, making a limited version of its judgment public, including details that Apple was the Claimant in the case.

    • EPIC ☛ EPIC Urges Federal Privacy Working Group to Center Data Minimization in Federal Privacy Law

      EPIC submitted comments in response to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Privacy Working Group’s request for information that urged the Committee to focus on data minimization and robust enforcement in any federal privacy bill.

    • EFF ☛ Our Privacy Act Lawsuit Against DOGE [sic] and OPM: Why a Judge Let It Move Forward

      We represent two unions of federal employees: the AFGE and the AALJ. Our co-counsel are Lex Lumina LLP, State Democracy Defenders Fund, and The Chandra Law Firm LLC.

      We’ve already explained why the new ruling is a big deal, but let’s take a deeper dive into the Court’s reasoning.

    • EFF ☛ EFF, Civil Society Groups, Academics Call on UK Home Secretary to Address Flawed Data Bill

      Last week, EFF joined 30 civil society groups and academics in warning UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Department for Science, Innovation & Technology Secretary Peter Kyle about the law enforcement risks contained within the draft Data Use and Access Bill (DUA Bill).

      Clause 80 of the DUA Bill weakens the safeguards for solely automated decisions in the law-enforcement context and dilutes crucial data protection safeguards.

    • Techdirt ☛ If AI Agents Catch On, Expect The Legacy Copyright Industry To Turn Them Against You

      As Green notes, the EU and UK governments – particularly the latter – seem to believe that they must have the power to access people’s systems, regardless of the collateral damage that causes. The recent demand by the UK government for Apple to insert backdoors in its end-to-end encryption – something Apple has refused to do – is further proof of that.

      Now imagine a time when governments do have this access, plus the ability to control AI agents on people’s systems – perhaps by means of agentic AI backdoors. Based on the last fifty years of its lobbying, it is easy to imagine the copyright industry demanding from governments laws requiring AI agents to take on the role of copyright police that are installed on every cloud server and personal device, and whose deactivation would be illegal. There are various ways in which that could work. Agentic AI could search through a person’s files for unauthorized copyright material – perhaps even contacting databases over the Internet to check whether a license is in place. AI agents could watch what users are doing online, and report them if they engage in allegedly illegal activity. With agentic AI, those capabilities could be rolled out across an entire population for the first time.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Arguing Against CALEA

      At a Congressional hearing earlier this week, Matt Blaze made the point that CALEA, the 1994 law that forces telecoms to make phone calls wiretappable, is outdated in today’s threat environment and should be rethought: [...]

    • US House Of Representatives ☛ Salt Typhoon: Securing America’s Telecommunications from State-Sponsored Cyber Attacks - United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability

      Subject Salt Typhoon: Securing America’s Telecommunications from State-Sponsored Cyber Attacks
      Date April 2, 2025

• Defence/Aggression

  • NYPost ☛ South Korea fires warning shots at 10 North Korean troops crossing the DMZ

    Observers claimed the Pyongyang troops might have mistakenly crossed the boundary while fortifying their side with anti-tank barriers or mines.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Musk's DOGE [sic] Using AI to Snoop on U.S. Federal Workers, Sources Say

    Trump administration officials have told some U.S. government employees that Elon Musk's DOGE [sic] team of technologists is using artificial intelligence to surveil at least one federal agency’s communications for hostility to President Donald Trump and his agenda, said two people with knowledge of the matter.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Appeals court restores DOGE [sic] access to sensitive information at US agencies

    In a split ruling, the three-judge panel blocked a lower court decision that halted DOGE [sic] access at the Education Department, the Treasury Department and the Office of Personnel Management. U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction last month in federal court in Baltimore, saying the government failed to adequately explain why DOGE needed the information to perform its job duties.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Hi-tech battlefield robots to be built in Britain for the first time

    ARX’s land drones have already undergone field tests with the British Army on Salisbury Plain to tailor them to UK-specific needs, although no contract has yet been signed to buy them.

    The company is supported by the [NATO] Innovation Fund, a venture capital fund operated by the alliance to boost the development of defence technology.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Marines fielding new counter-drone systems to deploying units

    Deploying Marine units will be equipped with prototype systems designed to counter drones, said Lt. Gen. Eric Austin, deputy commandant for combat development and integration.

  • USMC ☛ Marine Corps introduces drone attack team

    The team will focus on integrating first-person view drones — aerial vehicles that transmit a live feed of their bird’s-eye view to remote displays — into the Fleet Marine Force.

  • USMC ☛ Marine Corps Launches Attack Drone Team > United States Marine Corps Flagship > News Display

    The creation of MCADT comes in response to the rapid proliferation of armed first-person view drone technology and tactics observed in modern conflicts, particularly in Eastern Europe. As emerging threats continue to evolve, the Marine Corps is prioritizing the integration of FPV drone capabilities to enhance lethality and operational effectiveness across the Fleet Marine Force.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Federal News Network ☛ Is DOGE [sic]overstating its savings claims?

    The Department [sic] of Government Efficiency's claims that it's saving more than $140 billion by cancelling contracts is overstated. New analysis from the American Enterprise Institute finds the savings are much closer to about $10 billion. Nat Malkus, the deputy director of Education Policy Studies at AEI, reviewed the contract data DOGE posted to highlight the amount of money agencies obligated versus how much they actually spent. It came out to be much smaller than what DOGE claimed the total value of the contracts were worth. Additionally, AEI said until the White House asks Congress for, and lawmakers approve a rescission of funding, they money stays on the books and savings aren't real.

  • American Oversight ☛ American Oversight Slams DOGE [sic] for Evasive Response to Court’s Records Preservation Order

    Instead of answering that question, attorneys for DOGE [sic] filed a vague and evasive statement, asserting only that they had made “all reasonable efforts to ensure preservation of records” and would “continue to do so” — a clear departure from the court’s explicit instruction.

    “Rather than confirm whether all records have been preserved, DOGE [sic]’s attorneys offered vague, carefully worded deflection,” said American Oversight interim Executive Director Chioma Chukwu. “It’s not just evasive, it’s insulting — to the court, to the public, and to the very principle of transparency. Ambiguity is not a substitute for accountability, and we look forward to continuing to press the Trump administration for answers over its unlawful actions and deliberate attempts to hide the truth.”

• Environment

  • The Local SE ☛ Europe has just had its hottest ever March, scientists confirm

    Europe in 2025 experienced its hottest March ever recorded by a significant margin, driving extreme conditions across a continent warming faster than any other, Europe's Copernicus climate monitor said on Tuesday.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ El Paso Earth Day celebration offers music, wrestling, run/walk and tips on saving planet - lonestarlive.com

    Visitors will find over 50 booths showcasing environmental organizations, food trucks and local vendors.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Futurism ☛ Bitcoin Is Crashing Hard

      Unlike the stock market, cryptocurrencies trade 24 hours a day and seven days a week. As such, investors were able to see in real-time how poorly their coins were doing and sell them off accordingly.

      Trump's tariffs have triggered billions of dollars in liquidations across cryptocurrencies. In 24 hours, investors withdrew a whopping $401 million in Bitcoin and more than $340 million worth of Ethereum, per analysis from the blockchain site Coinglass.

    • Futurism ☛ Tesla Is So Cooked That It's Now Refusing to Accept Cybertrucks as Trade-Ins

      It's a harsh reality check. According to its latest — and eighth — recall issued last month, the carmaker has only sold around 46,000 of the divisive pickup trucks so far, despite a $7,500 tax credit. That's a far cry from the over 1 million pre-orders the company gloated over years ago.

    • Electrek ☛ Tesla is sitting on $200 million worth of Cybertruck inventory

      All of those excuses are not available to Tesla this year. The Cybertruck is simply proving challenging to sell, and the automaker has to throttle down production to avoid building up too much inventory.

    • Molly White ☛ Issue 81 – [Cryptocurrency] crime is legal

      A Monday night memo from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, citing Trump’s [cryptocurrency] executive orders, has dismantled the Department of Justice’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) and directed the agency’s Market Integrity and Major Frauds Unit to “cease cryptocurrency enforcement”. The memo also directs prosecutors to “not charge regulatory violations in cases involving digital assets including but not limited to unlicensed money transmitting..., violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, unregistered securities offering violations, unregistered broker-dealer violations, and other violations of registration requirements under the Commodity Exchange Act” unless they have specific knowledge that the defendant knowingly and willfully violated a specific requirement — erecting a major barrier to prosecuting such cases.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ Uranium deposits could run out by 2080, industry bodies warn

      But it takes 10-15 years to get a new mine running, uranium firms warn, and reserves are concentrated.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Coming to The Revelator: Exclusive Tom Toro Cartoons

• Finance

  • Pro Publica ☛ The Real History of U.S. Income Tax

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Futurism ☛ This Appears to Be Why Scam Altman Actually Got Fired by OpenAI

    During a furtive video call on November 16, four of the company's six board members — Sutskever, Toner, former tech founder Tasha McCauley, and Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo — voted to fire Altman and remove Brockman from the board. According to the author's sources, the board members who'd voted on the ouster told Sutskever they were concerned he may have been acting as a loyalty-testing spy.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Kids online safety measures can do more harm than good

    Protecting children from online harm is a goal we all share, and there is no question that more needs to be done to keep them safe.

    However, approaches like a current proposal in the Nebraska Legislature, the Age-Appropriate Online Design Code Act, bring a host of significant privacy concerns and could further expand the size and role of government, placing the government between the rights of parents and their children.

    Changes like requiring age verification, as LB 504 does, threaten our most fundamental rights to free expression, risk exposing our data to cyber-attacks, and could lead to dangerous government censorship.

  • Macworld ☛ How President Trump's tariffs will impact the price of Apple products

    Small tariffs are sometimes absorbed by the importing company, reducing its profits instead of raising prices for consumers. With larger tariffs, there is typically no choice but to pass some or all of the cost onto the consumer.

  • Macworld ☛ What exactly did Tim Cook spend a million bucks on?

    This time we are going to take a little look at an investment that Tim made earlier this year to a certain incoming president’s inaugural fund. For a million dollars. Not to spoil the ending, but we will find that a million dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to.

  • European Commission ☛ eIDAS Regulation – risk management procedures for non-qualified trust service providers (implementing act)

    Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions requires non-qualified trust service providers to manage legal, business, operational and other risks to their service provision. This must include measures on: [...]

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Democracy for the Arab World Now ☛ How Misinformation Has Helped Fuel Syria’s Sectarian Violence

      While Syria's new interim authorities now control the Syrian Arab News Agency and other state media institutions, reviving or reforming them is far from a national priority in a country devastated by years of war. In the absence of strong, trusted media institutions, social media has become the primary source of information [sic] for most Syrians—making the fight against disinformation even more urgent and complex.

    • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Misinformation, Disinformation, and Scholarly Communication (Part 2)

      When we talk about “research integrity,” we’re talking fundamentally about truthfulness, and about the important and essential distinction between true and false claims. Researchers demonstrate integrity by both conducting and reporting on their research in ways that increase its reliability as a reflection of reality, taking measures like registering their trials; controlling for intervening variables; making only claims supported by high-quality evidence; making their data available for independent review; etc. These and similar measures are not important because the community of scholars and scientists has simply decided to agree that they’re important; they’re important because they reflect the application of universal laws of logic and reason and increase the likelihood of arriving at objectively true conclusions.

    • Bitdefender ☛ Russian bots hard at work spreading political unrest on Romania's internet

      Internet users in Romania are finding their social media posts and online news articles bombarded with comments promoting blatant propaganda, inciting hatred towards the EU and NATO, and support for Vladimir Putin's Russia.

      That's the finding of an investigation which has explored the rapid growth in activity of pro-Russian and pro-Putin propaganda accounts on TikTok, specifically targeting a Romanian audience.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Techdirt ☛ Texas Judge Says Prior Restraint Is Cool And Legal While Silencing A Critic Of PTK Honor Society

    Marek intended to release her book (for free) on April 3, 2025, a date that deliberately coincided with PTK’s national convention in Kansas City, Missouri. Just as deliberately, PTK sought a restraining order blocking the book’s release prior to that date but extending past the end of its national convention.

  • Techdirt ☛ Supreme Court Not Ready to Blow Up Free Speech… Yet

    While a simple cert denial may seem unremarkable, in today’s environment where foundational speech protections face relentless attack, keeping Sullivan’s protections intact represents a crucial firewall against wealthy interests weaponizing defamation law to silence critics.

    The Sullivan standard exists for a very specific and crucial reason: to prevent the wealthy and powerful from using defamation lawsuits to bully critics into silence. The Court rightly recognized that if every minor mistake or inaccuracy about a public figure could trigger ruinous litigation, meaningful public discourse would become impossible. The “actual malice” standard (a confusingly named term that has nothing to do with “malice,” actual or not) requires plaintiffs to prove that false statements were made with knowledge of their falsity, or at least a strong suspicion that the statements were false.

  • The Dissenter ☛ Reported Spying By Elon Musk's DOGE Not Without Precedent

    The objective, according to the two media sources, is to look for “language in communications considered hostile” to Musk or President Donald Trump.

  • FAIR ☛ Corporate Media Minimize Massive Hands Off! Protests

    After the biggest anti-Trump protests since the 2017 Women’s March, many major media outlets seemed intent on downplaying the size and significance of the massive demonstration of opposition.

    The Hands Off! protests took place on April 5 in 1,400 locations across the country, with solidarity rallies in Europe and Canada. Volunteer organizers said the events were aimed at opposing billionaire government and corruption; cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and other vital programs; and attacks on immigrants, trans people and other vulnerable groups. At a conservative minimum, hundreds of thousands of people turned out to resist the Trump administration’s many assaults on democracy; organizers estimate the total reached into the millions.

  • BIA Net ☛ Erdoğan sues CHP's Özel over 'junta leader' remarks

    President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has filed a civil lawsuit seeking 500,000 Turkish liras (~131,000 US dollars) in damages against Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chair Özgür Özel, citing his use of the term “junta leader” during a recent political speech.

  • South Africa ☛ We’re being sued

    Singaporean billionaire Lu Heng is suing us for the article we wrote criticising his attempt to seize control of the African internet registry AFRINIC. We will be fighting this.

  • California State University Northridge ☛ Thousands gather in the “Hands Off!” protest

    Across all 50 states, people participated in the “Hands Off!” protest, with over 1,300 events on April 5 to express their frustrations and concerns regarding the recent actions of the Trump administration and Elon Musk.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Robert Caro, Salman Rushdie and Sandra Cisneros Honored by Authors Guild

    Rushdie referred to the Trump administration's threats to cut off funding for universities and drastic reductions in support for the arts and humanities and said that “the sphere of culture is under attack as never before" in his lifetime.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Federal judge orders White House to restore AP access to Oval Office, Air Force One

    District Judge Trevor McFadden for the District of Columbia granted the AP a preliminary injunction on the merits of the case. McFadden wrote that the news outlet is likely to succeed on its First Amendment and retaliation arguments in further court proceedings, and that the White House’s action has caused irreparable harm to the news agency.

  • CPJ ☛ Zimbabwean journalist Blessed Mhlanga denied bail for third time

    “The repeated denial of bail is yet another example of the injustice that Blessed Mhlanga has been forced to endure for simply doing his job as an independent journalist covering all sides of Zimbabwe’s political story,” said CPJ Africa Regional Director Angela Quintal in New York. “Zimbabwean authorities should stop hounding Blessed Mhlanga and withdraw the charges against him, so that he can be free to report the news.”

  • CPJ ☛ Journalists kidnapped, threatened with lynching as chaos worsens in Haiti

    Viv Ansanm, or Living Together in Creole, is an alliance of former rival gangs who joined forces in 2023 and took control of most of the capital Port-au-Prince. Gangs attacked Mirebalais on March 31, killed several people and freed some 500 prisoners, forcing thousands to flee, including a dozen journalists.

  • CPJ ☛ Zambian journalist attacked, facing criminal charges after covering ruling party supporters

    On March 7, Chooma was attacked by ruling United Party for National Development (UPND) supporters while covering a charity event in the southern town of Mazabuka, with police arresting four suspects in connection with the attack, according to a police statement, reviewed by CPJ, and Wave FM Zambia.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Foreign journalists at US-backed media fear being sent to repressive homelands after Trump’s cuts

    The administration has been dismantling or slashing the size of federal agencies, leading tens of thousands of government workers and contractors to be fired or put on leave. But the targeting of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, whose decades-old networks aim to extend American influence abroad, means journalists who have defied authoritarian regimes to help fulfill a U.S. mission of delivering pro-democracy programming could be deported and face harassment and persecution in their homelands.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • JURIST ☛ US Supreme Court allows Trump Administration to resume deportations under 18th-century law

    The US Supreme Court on Monday granted a Trump Administration motion to vacate a lower court’s order blocking use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members.

  • EcoWatch ☛ ‘Hands Off!’ Protests Across the U.S. Show Growing Opposition to Trump and Musk’s ‘Hostile Takeover’

    Millions of people in all 50 states and across the world participated in 1,400 Hands Off! protests on Saturday against the actions and policies of President Donald Trump and senior advisor Elon Musk.

    At state capitals, federal buildings, congressional offices, city halls, parks and Social Security’s headquarters, people gathered by the thousands to demand a stop to what Hands Off! called a “billionaire power grab,” reported CNN.

  • The Nation ☛ The Rev. William Barber II’s “Hands Off” Rally Speech: “We Cannot and Must Not Bow”

    God, help us not to turn back from the Constitution’s call to establish justice, promote the general welfare, provide for the common defense, and ensure domestics tranquility.

    When Trump and Musk and Johnson are signing unconstitutional executive orders, illegally firing people, trying to pass an immoral budget, and wrongfully raising tariffs that not only hurt Wall Street but back streets, side streets, and back roads, we must say today that we will stand up in truth and raise our voices, our votes to declare, “Take your hands off our democracy!”

  • Truthdig ☛ USDA Moves To Make Meatpacking More Dangerous

    Meatpacking and slaughterhouse workers, like Abrahame, are not only at risk of physical duress and injury, but also experience rates of depression that are four times higher than the national average.

    The government’s statement that “extensive research has confirmed no direct link between processing speeds and workplace injuries” is false, labor advocates say — and that the USDA’s own data shows otherwise. A recent USDA study found a correlation between the speed at which workers process or butcher meat and their risk for musculoskeletal disorders.

  • The Record ☛ NCSC shares technical details of spyware targeting Uyghur, Tibetan and Taiwanese groups

    Tibet One is an iOS app which was uploaded to the Apple App Store in December 2021 but has since been removed. The NCSC said “malicious actors” created the app as a vehicle for infecting users' devices with BADBAZAAR spyware.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • University of Michigan ☛ Let’s get physical (books)!

    “With many electronic books, you do not own them,” Gustafson wrote. “You lease them. Given that the current political administration has waged an attack on reading and books, I would not trust my reading to any entity that can retroactively edit, alter, delete, censor, or remove the books I’ve already purchased.”In comparison, a physical book can be trusted to stay the same throughout the years, untouched by digital alterations or retroactive editing. There’s a reason that burning books carries so much weight; once printed, an author’s subjective opinion cannot be changed to fit any future agenda, a sentiment Gustafson agrees with.

  • DaemonFC (Ryan Farmer) ☛ Walmart Vizio TVs Scream At Immigrants to Leave America

    Basically, when the TV isn’t playing anything, or when you use the Vizio channels, it breaks to ads. “Scenic Mode” is what happens eventually when it’s been paused too long, and it starts playing nature videos or something, which are essentially a screensaver full of stock content that Vizio gets for free.

    But these nature videos and stuff break to ads, and so far one of those ads has been Kristi Noem, the fascist shithead that Donald Trump put in charge of the Department of Homeland Security.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Tariffs and monopolies

  That means that these companies end up with pricing power, because they can maintain solidarity while they raise prices. If everyone hikes prices together, consumers can't exert market discipline by buying from someone less greedy. And the same solidarity that confers pricing power to a cartel also insulates it from regulatory discipline, because all the companies will tell the same lie to regulators about why prices went up.

• India Times ☛ Google says employees can discuss antitrust case

  Google's change of tune was part of a settlement overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. The union had filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the NLRB concerning Walker's note in August.

  The agreement is another blow to Google's corporate policies designed to maintain secrecy, which have been scrutinized amid the search case brought by the Justice Department. It also undercut Google's strategy to keep its business humming during the lawsuit -- to have employees ignore the antitrust battle and remain focused on their work.

• Trademarks

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Signal

    The fact that there are no interoperable third-party implementations, or even third-party builds/distributions of the Signal app, because the Signal Corporation abuses Trademark law to legally prohibit anyone from doing so;

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ DISH Sues 'Pirate' IPTV Services Lemo and Kemo in U.S. Court

    Pay TV provider DISH Network has filed a complaint against the yet unidentified operators of the popular 'pirate' streaming services Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV. The lawsuit, filed in a Texas federal court, is coordinated by the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP). It accuses the IPTV operators of widespread copyright infringement and seeks more than $25 million in potential damages.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ Does embedding an Instagram violate copyright? A photographer wants the Supreme Court to decide | Digital Camera World

    The case asks the Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of the “server test,” a guideline established in a 2007 Ninth Circuit Court decision. The server test essentially suggests that downloading and hosting an image on a website is a violation of copyright, but embedding the image from the artist’s website or social media, which doesn’t require downloading to the website’s servers, does not violate copyright.