Leftovers

• Harvard University ☛ Harvard archivists’ favorite finds

  Exhibit curators invited their colleagues to submit their favorite items, with an eye to surfacing pieces of history that shed a light on the nature of archival work. Staff were asked: What stands out to you and why? When you go home to your family and you talk about your day, what are you excited to talk about? What is your special find from the collections?

• Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Monet's Stepdaughter Painted Breathtaking Impressionist Masterpieces. They're Finally Getting the Attention They Deserve

  During these years, Hoschedé-Monet trained as an artist under the tutelage of her stepfather. “They both went to the same locations and painted the same landscapes at the same time,” Keaton Evans-Black, an art therapist at the Eskenazi Museum, tells the Indiana Daily Student’s Abby Whited. She also helped carry his easels and paint supplies.

  While Hoschedé-Monet owes aesthetic debts to her stepfather, her work is still distinct from his—even when the two painted the same exact scene.

• ARRL ☛ Effort to Save Marconi Towers in Canada – Public Invited to Vote on Project

  Some of Marconi’s first messages were received and transmitted using the Battle Harbour Marconi Towers, thought to be the last of their kind standing in North America. News of Admiral Robert Peary’s 1909 North Pole expedition was transmitted by these towers. After 100 years, the twin towers are in need of repair.

• Hidde de Vries ☛ Tag, you're it

  When I went on a one year trip and had been asked by worried family members to provide regular updates on my whereabouts. I ended up really enjoying capturing moments, surprises and stories.

  Later, I loved the idea of having a place of my own to put my (mostly) tech-related thoughts, learnings, notes… to refer back to at a later time. By making it a public place I could also send links to others and get feedback.

• Brandon ☛ Re: I’m Part of the Problem

  He's right. I mean, even putting aside the specific rating argument, I have no reason to want to read a huge write up on why something sucks. I'll never understand why people enjoy those type of videos or podcasts. I'd much rather spend my time celebrating something with someone online. I like videos and podcasts where you can tell the hosts actually are a fan and try to see the best in whatever it is they are reviewing. I mean, has anyone ever felt better after sitting through a video or reading a blog post about why something sucks? Is that really how you want to spend your time?

• 37signals LLC ☛ I'm part of the problem

  Ouch. But accurate. I've found myself in a rut, writing the type of stuff I don't want to write. Outrage pieces and complaining are popular and a given to attract eyeballs. It makes people feel like they're not alone, but they're also an echo chamber that doesn't make someone feel better and here I am contributing to something that I myself find really, really unhealthy.

• Antipope ☛ Meanwhile, In real life ...

  I'm probably going to be scarce around these parts (my blog) for the next several weeks, because real life is having its say.

  In the short term, it's not bad news: I'm going to the British Eastercon in Belfast next weekend, traveling there and back by coach and ferry (thereby avoiding airport security theatre) and taking a couple of days extra because I haven't been back to Belfast since 2019. Needless to say, blogging will be lot on my list of priorities.

• Paul Robert Lloyd ☛ Touched a nerve

  So yes, while I am bored of it, I remain enthralled by the power of boring technologies like hyperlinks, email and RSS. I’m also glad that I’ve been able to demonstrate – if only to myself – that you don’t need to prostitute yourself to social networks, create large advertising hoardings to make a post stand out or titillate people with lead-ins before a ‘more’ link.

  Just put a little care into something, send it out into the world and let it find an audience. Aye-bloody-eye be damned.

• Jim Nielsen ☛ Tag, You’re It

  I think I started because everything I learned about building on the web came from reading other people’s blogs online, so I wanted to be a “web person” like them.

• Science

  • Wired ☛ This Famous Physics Experiment Shows Why the Government Should Support ‘Useless’ Science

    It's nothing new—politicians complain about silly science projects funded by the government to get taxpayers riled up. I get it. You might think super expensive particle accelerators or even dirt-cheap experiments on the color of petunias are a waste of money.

    OK, you’re coming from a business perspective. But even if you care only about money in and money out, if you account for all the downstream effects—which no one can foresee—these projects often do pay off. (Read about the petunias!) Let me tell you about another silly little experiment that turned out to have an extremely high ROI.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Researchers discover a new type of quantum entanglement

    Quantum physics sometimes leads to very unconventional predictions. This is what happened when Albert Einstein and his colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen (who later founded the Faculty of Physics at Technion), found a scenario in which knowing the state of one particle immediately affects the state of the other particle, no matter how great the distance between them. Their historic 1935 paper was nicknamed EPR after its three authors (Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen).

• Career/Education

  • FSF ☛ Interview with Mia Bajić

    In this edition of Working Together for Free Software, Free Software Foundation (FSF) program manager Miriam Bastian interviews Mia Bajić, a software engineer with a passion for building communities. Mia is mainly active in the European Python community.

  • Ness Labs ☛ How to lead like a scientist

    Leading like a scientist begins with a fundamentally different relationship with uncertainty. While leaders traditionally view uncertainty as a threat, research shows that teams that openly acknowledge what they don’t know consistently outperform those projecting false confidence.

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ How can really smart people appear totally incompetent?

    So you run a college. And you tell prospective students that the quality of their education is your primary concern. But it is a lie. In fact, you want to keep your enrolment at healthy levels and not have too much trouble with your faculty. You do not care very much for what the students learn. In truth, it does not matter because the employers also do not care. You selected bright people and your students managed to fulfil bureaucratic obligations for four years, and that’s good enough.

  • RFC ☛ RFC 1855: Netiquette Guidelines

    This document provides a minimum set of guidelines for Network Etiquette (Netiquette) which organizations may take and adapt for their own use. As such, it is deliberately written in a bulleted format to make adaptation easier and to make any particular item easy (or easier) to find. It also functions as a minimum set of guidelines for individuals, both users and administrators. This memo is the product of the Responsible Use of the Network (RUN) Working Group of the IETF.

• Hardware

  • Wired ☛ What Trump’s Tariffs Mean for Tech—and You

    It’s been total chaos since President Trump announced tariffs last week. Despite the endless reporting on this story, none of it really makes any sense yet. So today, we attempt to make sense of how the tariffs could revamp the entire tech industry and what you can do to deal with this new normal.

  • PC World ☛ When PC vendors tell you what's going on with tariffs, pay attention

    Recently, two PC vendors, Framework and Puget Systems, have not only begun talking about how tariffs will affect the price of the products that they sell to you, but also about the prices they’re paying for components and whether they’ll go up or down — and by how much. It’s all extremely valuable information, especially if you’re confused about what tariffs will affect which parts inside of a PC. Even better, they’re updating their insights as new info comes in, especially because the expected cost of the tariffs has been vague and changing.

  • University of Toronto ☛ One way to set up local programs in a multi-architecture Unix environment

    Back in the old days, it used to be reasonably routine to have 'multi-architecture' Unix environments with shared files (where here architecture was a combination of the process architecture and the Unix variant). The multi-architecture days have faded out, and with them fading, so has information about how people made this work with things like local binaries.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deseret Media ☛ Mangione lawyers ask judge to prevent US prosecutors from seeking death penalty

    Mangione's lawyers said in a filing in New York federal court that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's April 1 announcement that prosecutors would seek the death penalty was "unapologetically political" and breached government protocols for death penalty decisions.

    "The United States government intends to kill Mr. Mangione as a political stunt," his lawyers said.

  • The Conversation ☛ From brain Bluetooth to ‘full RoboCop’: where chip implants will be heading soon

    But whereas these are typically controlled with an external interface like an EEG headset, chip implants are very much the new frontier. They have been enabled by advances in AI chips and micro electrodes, as well as the deep learning neural networks that power today’s AI technology. This allows for faster data analysis and pattern recognition, which together with the more precise brain signals that can be acquired using implants, have made it possible to create applications that run virtually in real time.

  • Jeremy Cherfas ☛ Still baking sourdough bread?

    My own personal Wayback Machine recently reminded me that as the first Covid lockdown got under way I was forced to address some prominent myths about sourbread baking being promulgated.

• Proprietary

  • Microsoft “slowing or pausing” its early-stage datacentre projects

    The Microsoft datacentre strategy is changing. This, according to a post on LinkedIn from the company’s president of cloud operations and innovation, Noelle Walsh.

    The executive announced the change in strategy earlier this week, as Microsoft celebrated its 50th anniversary, sharing some details on its datacentre-related investments to date in the process.

    “In the last three years, we’ve doubled datacenter capacity, adding more in 2024 than any other year in history. We expect to have another record year in 2025, and our global footprint continues to expand, across 60+ regions and 350+ datacenters worldwide,” Walsh pointed out.

    “This year, Microsoft is on track to spend more than $80B to continue building out our datacenter infrastructure and these investments are informed by near-term and long-term demand signals. Customer demand for our cloud and AI services continues to increase as reflected by strong growth in revenue and customer commitments in Microsoft Cloud and AI,” she added.

  • Rakhim ☛ But what if I really want a faster horse?

    Netflix today is very different. It’s not a library—it’s an experience. Instead of reliably showing me what I "have" and recommending what I might like, it shuffles content on each interaction, sometimes changing the cover images of shows in real time, like some black-market charlatan. It has no meaningful catalog, no real categories—just short-lived, auto-generated groups like “Binge-worthy” or “Festive spirit.”

  • Nick Heer ☛ Taking the User by the Reins – Pixel Envy

    There is an element of this critique that feels very now and may become outdated, as TikTok’s relevance could perhaps fade with time, but platforms wresting control from users and foisting decisions upon them is a long and ongoing trend. To wit, here is Davletkaliyev: [...]

  • The Register UK ☛ Readers name Windows 2000 Server peak Microsoft

    The results are in, and it appears that – at least as far as The Register's most loquacious commenters are concerned – Windows Server 2000 was Microsoft's peak.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • 404 Media ☛ Scammers Used OpenAI to Flood the Web with SEO Spam

      A new report from SentinelOne exposed the inner workings of AkiraBot, a program that bypassed CAPTCHAs and used AI-generated messages to target 420,000 websites.

    • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ I am Uncluttered (Yellow): doom-prepping web dev through disdain, disrespect, and doing the right thing

      It didn’t matter that the staff pointed out the text on the marker saying it was safe, the text in the accompanying promotional pamphlet saying it was safe, or even the manufacturer’s website saying it was safe.

      The manager refused to buy it until ChatGPT had promised him that the marker could be used on a marker board. He has enthusiastically transformed himself into a meat puppet for a mindless stochastic parrot.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Meet Nate, the AGI shopping app! Yeah, it’s A Guy Instead

      The surprising bit is they actually busted the guy. Fake AI has been standard across Silicon Valley for a decade or more. If you want funding, you say the AI words.

      If a company gets caught, they say they’re progressively reducing how much they use the guy. Or the guy is just quality checking the AI.

    • Futurism ☛ The Amount Amazon Is Actually Making on AI Will Make Your Eyebrows Raise Dramatically

      That AI is a money pit shouldn't be surprising. It's been clear for some time now that generative AI's road to profitability will be a rocky one, if it even leads to that destination at all. As evidenced by the above figures, it's an enormously expensive technology, both to develop and to run. Vast amounts of data are scraped to train the AI models, and the pricey data centers that run them rack up huge energy bills, water bills, and maintenance costs even after they're constructed.

      The other side of the equation — how the AI services will generate money — is also fraught with uncertainty. OpenAI, which is charging customers an eye-watering $200 per month for full access to ChatGPT, for example, reeks of desperation. Power users may think it worthwhile, but most people might have second thoughts about paying even just a $20 subscription fee.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military

      Two officers tell us that they used the new system to help scour thousands of pieces of open-source intelligence—nonclassified articles, reports, images, videos—collected in the various countries where they operated, and that it did so far faster than was possible with the old method of analyzing them manually. Captain Kristin Enzenauer, for instance, says she used large language models to translate and summarize foreign news sources, while Captain Will Lowdon used AI to help write the daily and weekly intelligence reports he provided to his commanders.

      “We still need to validate the sources,” says Lowdon. But the unit’s commanders encouraged the use of large language models, he says, “because they provide a lot more efficiency during a dynamic situation.”

    • Jacob Nowosad ☛ The PRISM project’s progress report: 8 months into the MSCA-PF journey – Thinking in spatial patterns

      During that time, I also started developing two R packages: simsam and spatialexplain. Given my project’s goals, I needed a reproducible, flexible, and efficient way to simulate spatial data of a given structure and properties. Thus, the goal of simsam is to provide tools for simulating and sampling spatial data. It allows users to create sets of spatial raster data of specified properties (e.g., used then as covariates in machine learning) and also blend them with other data (e.g., used as a response variable). Then, the sampling function selects points from the raster data, which can be used to create training and testing datasets for machine learning. That function is a wrapper around some other existing functions, additionally providing the possibility to create clustered points. The simsam package also provides tools for creating various spatial proxies: coordinates, Euclidean Distance Fields (EDFs), and Oblique Geographic Coordinates (OGCs) based on the provided raster object. To learn more about the package, you can check the package’s vignettes.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Atlantic ☛ Facebook Is Just Craigslist Now

      The social-media giant has manifested its final form: not digital connector, but digital bazaar.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Tripwire ☛ Ransomware Reaches A Record High, But Payouts Are Dwindling

      Shed a tear, if you can, for the poor, misunderstood cybercriminals hard at work trying to earn a dishonest crust by infecting organisations with ransomware.

      Newly released research has revealed that the riches to be made from encrypting a company's data and demanding a ransom are not proving so easy to come by as they once were.

      Because, although the number of ransomware attacks are reported to have reached record-breaking heights in the first months of 2025, gangs' profits are thought to be plummeting.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • USMC ☛ How far will DOD take privatization on military bases?

    But some advocates argue a number of services, like child care and spouse employment programs, should be off-limits to privatization, saying they are too tied to service members’ readiness to be handed over to private companies.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • Soylent News ☛ Another Rant - I've Had Enough

    I've had enough of Microsoft's relentless drive to take over the world. I've had enough of WSL and it's shoddy integration with Windows. If I want to use Linux, I'll install Linux, unless corporate IT has other ideas. I don't want to be told patronisingly that my files from the Linux side "may be dangerous." I want my X applications to work properly. I don't want mysterious crashes when I close a terminal. Oh, and Linux isn't just Ubuntu.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Terence Eden ☛ FobCam ’25 – All my MFA tokens on one page

      Using the Web Crypto API, it is easy to Generate TOTP Codes in JavaScript directly in the browser. So here are all my important MFA tokens. If I ever need to log in somewhere, I can just visit this page and grab the code I need2.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Papers Please ☛ DOGE, DHS, and data matching

      “Data matching” may seem abstract, but its consequences can be life-changing: visa revocation, deportation, sudden cessation of Social Security payments, all without warning or opportunity to present argument or evidence to a human fact-finder.

      One of the hallmarks of the new U.S. Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is large-scale algorithmic analysis and comparison of existing databases of personally-identified information. In many cases, algorithms, AI, and data matching are being substituted for human judgement as the basis for decisions about individuals. Similar projects are being carried out by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

      These activities appear likely to violate the Privacy Act (including its rarely-enforce criminal provisions) and/or the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act.

    • Court House News ☛ DOGE member granted access

    • American Oversight ☛ American Oversight Seeks Information About DOGE [sic] Loyalty Surveillance and Newly Revealed Record-Keeping Failures - American Oversight

      In response to yet another reported instance of Trump administration and DOGE [sic] officials evading federal record-preservation requirements and weaponizing the government against perceived political enemies, American Oversight has submitted requests for information about DOGE [sic]’s use of artificial intelligence to monitor communications, as well as the agency’s use of Google Docs.

    • Reuters ☛ Exclusive: 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.

      While much of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency remains shrouded in secrecy, the surveillance would mark an extraordinary use of technology to identify expressions of perceived disloyalty in a workforce already upended by widespread firings and severe cost cutting.

    • New York Times ☛ Judge Says One DOGE [sic] Member Can Access Sensitive Treasury Dept. Data

      Nineteen state attorneys general had sued to block Elon Musk’s government efficiency team from accessing Treasury systems that include Americans’ bank account and Social Security information.

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft rolling Windows Recall back into Copilot+ PCs

      The functionality was set to grow to allow you to rummage through that database, using AI, to pull up specific actions based on search terms, as well as take snapshots of application activity, instant messages and other communications, websites viewed, keystrokes, and any other data available, so that it could all be, well, recalled using that AI-powered search.

    • The Verge ☛ Netflix is testing a new OpenAI-powered search

      The new search engine will let users “look for shows using far more specific terms, including the subscriber’s mood, for example, the company said,” per the report. This OpenAI-powered search will also allow users to make queries that “go well beyond genres or actors’ names.”

    • Site36 ☛ Grand control coalition: German conservatives and social democrats call for ‘zero tolerance’ on internal security

      The coalition is increasingly focussing on biometric surveillance for investigation and prosecution measures. A law is to allow the police to compare faces on the internet, and artificial intelligence may be used ‘for certain purposes’. In addition, facial recognition (‘remote biometric identification’) is to be introduced in public spaces – for Germany a very far-reaching step alongside video surveillance at so-called ‘crime hotspots’.

    • La Quadature Du Net ☛ Algorithmic Video Surveillance, dangers and counter-attacks

      La Quadrature du Net has been documenting the deployment of algorithmic video surveillance since 2019. In this brochure, we summarize the use of this technology by the police, the consequences it has on the people and spaces thus monitored, and detail the various historical, argumentative and strategic backgrounds relating to its implementation and legalization.

    • La Quadature Du Net ☛ Algorithmic videosurveillance is spreading in Europe, let’s fight back together!

      Over the past years, we have tried to shed light on algorithmic videosurveillance software. This type of software analyzes CCTV footage to categorize and classify our body, our gait, our movements, our clothes or even our face to detect odd or suspect individuals in the hustle and bustle of the streets. We have been campaigning against it everywhere, in local groups, before courts,and even in Parliament. Now, we want this fight to spread outside of France, as we see the rise and spread of the AVS market in other countries. Since opacity and secrecy is one of the biggest obstacle to organize this struggle, we find it particularly important that information spreads across Europe. We hope the English version of our booklet can help more people to dig into this subject.

    • PC World ☛ Is your phone secretly listening to you? Here's an easy way to find out

      Before you go taping over the microphone and camera on your phone or throwing it in a lake, there are a few less drastic things you can do to curb the potential eavesdropping.

      The first is to carefully review the app permissions on your device. It’s likely that you downloaded an app and allowed it to access your microphone without ever realizing it. Comb through the permissions for each app on your phone and limit apps that don’t need access to your microphone, camera, or location settings.

    • The Verge ☛ ChatGPT will now remember your old conversations

      This builds on the “Memory” feature that was added to ChatGPT last year, which allowed limited information like queries, prompts, and customizations to be retained and used for future responses. With the long-term memory update, ChatGPT will now recall information in two ways — using the “saved memories” that users have manually asked it to remember, and “reference chat history,” which are “insights ChatGPT gathers from past chats to improve future ones,” according to OpenAI.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Atlantic ☛ Worse Than Signalgate

    Normally, Zimmermann would have dispatched such a sensitive diplomatic “instruction” via one of five German-owned transatlantic cables, which would have guaranteed secure transmission of the message. But the British had cut all five cables at the outset of the war, forcing the Foreign Office to encode its communications and dispatch them over wireless or through other means. Zimmermann was so confident of the strength of German encryption that he not only dispatched his telegram over wireless, via Sweden, but sent an additional copy via the American embassy in Berlin. What Zimmermann had not anticipated was that a team of British code breakers was intercepting wireless communications and decrypting them in a secret location, known simply as Room 40, in the British Naval Office. When the “Zimmermann telegram” arrived in Room 40, on the morning of January 17, the two on-duty cryptologists began deciphering the message and immediately summoned Admiral Reginald Hall.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Rep. Swalwell demands Hill briefing on planned CISA personnel cuts

    CISA reportedly plans to cut agency staff by nearly 40%, or 1,300 people.

    “It is difficult to convey in writing the full extent of my concern regarding the rumored plans to decimate CISA, but it suffices to say that upending an agency that plays such an important role in defending the homeland while keeping Congress in the dark is wholly unacceptable,” he wrote. “At no point has CISA provided the Subcommittee any justification for the drastic reorganization that is apparently well underway, nor has it explained how CISA will execute its congressionally mandated mission with a fraction of the workforce and resources.”

  • Mike Brock ☛ Beyond the Narrative

    When economic hardship arrives—as it inevitably will from these policies—it won't be experienced as a policy failure but as confirmation that America is being treated unfairly by the world. Each retaliatory measure by trading partners, each market decline, each job loss becomes not evidence that tariffs were misguided, but proof that foreign powers are punishing America for standing up for itself.

    This creates a dangerous feedback loop where economic pain leads not to policy reconsideration but to doubling down, which triggers more retaliation, which creates more pain, which further reinforces the narrative of victimhood. The worse things get, the more justified extreme measures seem.

    But here's what keeps me awake at night: Even if the narrative shield were to crack and majority discontent were to grow, the consolidation of control over key institutions creates mechanisms to suppress that discontent and render majority opinion increasingly irrelevant to governance.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Donald Trump and Elon Musk Are Weaponizing Social Security

    “This is an outrageous abuse of power. It will not only create extreme hardship, but kill people. Imagine, in one Trump administration keystroke, losing your income, your health insurance, access to your bank account, your credit cards, your home, and more.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Trump Is Already Undermining the Next Election

    An unfortunate reality now confronts Americans who value the rule of law: The court system has limited capability to act as a guardrail against Trumpist authoritarianism. And so elections matter—vitally. The final and most powerful check on Donald Trump has always been, and will always be, the ballot box.

    The president knows this, and that is why he has now turned his attention to the election system. His recent executive order on election “integrity” is nothing less than an attempt to disenfranchise his opponents and forestall electoral defeat.

    Some of that effort is rather technical in nature, but the fundamentals of Trump’s challenge to free and fair elections are easy to understand. This is an attempt to completely rework the constitutional rules that structure the American election system.

  • Futurism ☛ When Elon Musk Hears About Lives He's Destroyed, He Reportedly Responds With Laugh-Cry Emojis

    As Rolling Stone reported today, some senior State Department officials have come to call him "Crazy Uncle Elon," a nod towards his grating persona. But the story contained another alarming revelation: the depth of Musk's antipathy toward the people's whose lives he's been turning upside down.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ The Third-Worlding of America

    Major news media organizations sanewashed Donald Trump all through the 2024 campaign, cleaning up his incoherence and downplaying his extreme policy positions. Aaron Rupar reminds us of this: [...]

  • Latest TikTok Layoffs Contradict January Job Security Promises

    TikTok is laying off staff from its U.S. e-commerce team, which has been under pressure for failing to meet growth targets.

    The cutback comes as TikTok’s future in the U.S. remains in the balance. However, the firm has previously sought to reassure American workers that their jobs are secure even if the platform is banned.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-04 [Older] US: Cheeto Mussolini extends deadline for TikTok sale for second time [Ed: Congress and SCOTUS already ruled to ban; this is breaking the law in an ad hoc fashion]

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-04 [Older] TikTok sale: Chinese video app gets another lease on life [Ed: In violation of law; this is like monarchy]

  • CNBC ☛ 2025-04-04 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Claims to Extend TikTok Deadline for Another 75 Days [Ed: It was never allowed to "extend deadline" in the first place]

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] Senator Warner Says New Cheeto Mussolini TikTok Extension May Violate Law

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] UK, France lead future Ukraine force meeting

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] China Calls Zelenkyy's Remarks on Chinese Fighters in Ukraine 'Irresponsible'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] Europeans Discuss Ukraine Peace Force but Big Questions Unanswered

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] US Ambassador to Ukraine Considering Leaving Position, Sources Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-09 [Older] Ukraine's PM Says Permit-Free Regime With EU Must Be Extended Till Year-End

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-09 [Older] Ukraine's Railways Restore Half of IT Services Hit by Cyber Attack So Far

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-08 [Older] US Tells UN: We Have No Patience for Bad Faith Talks on War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] Ukraine updates: Kyiv wants to 'align' with US over minerals

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] Presidential Hopeful Ponta Says Will End Ukrainian Grain Exports Via Romania

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] Ukraine Aims to 'Align' With US on Minerals Deal in Talks This Week

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-06 [Older] Ukraine updates: Overnight explosions rock Kyiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-06 [Older] Ukraine Will Send a Team to the US Next Week for Talks on a New Draft Mineral Deal

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-05 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy Disappointed With US Embassy Reaction to Missile Strike

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] Germany suspects Russian cyber attack on research group

    • CNN ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] Russian authorities detain suspect over St. Petersburg cafe blast

    • CBC ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] Russian-American Ksenia Karelina released in prisoner exchange

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] Russia frees Ksenia Karelina in prisoner swap with US

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] US Commander Warns That China and North Korea's Military Aid to Russia Creates Risks in the Pacific

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] Russian Missile Strike Kills One in Ukraine's Dnipro, Governor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] Russian Prosecutors Seek Nearly Six Years in Jail for Four Journalists Accused of Extremism

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] Who Are the Americans Still in Russian Custody?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-10 [Older] Zelenskiy Accuses Russia of Systematically Recruiting Chinese Fighters

    • ANF News ☛ 2025-04-09 [Older] DEM Party delegation holds talks in Russia

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-09 [Older] Ukraine updates: China denies its citizens fight for Russia

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-09 [Older] World Press Photo accused of promoting Russian propaganda

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-09 [Older] US Bill Creates Fund to Enforce Oil Sanctions on Russia's Ghost Fleet

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-09 [Older] Pro-Russian Leader of Moldovan Ethnic Minority Moved to House Arrest, Media Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-09 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Not Seeking to Re-Invigorate US-Russia Trade With Lack of Tariffs, Greer Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-09 [Older] Zelenskiy Says at Least 155 Chinese Nationals Are Fighting on Russia's Side

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-08 [Older] Germany neither at peace nor war with Russia: defense chief

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-08 [Older] Russian spacecraft brings cosmonauts, astronaut to ISS

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-08 [Older] Ukraine says Chinese men captured fighting for Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-08 [Older] Officer Killed in Assault on Police Station in Russia's Chechnya, Along With Attacker

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-08 [Older] Russian Drones Attack Two Ukrainian Cities, at Least 17 Injured

    • Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] Power at the Brink: Looming Leadership Crises in China and Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] Russian Court Cuts Sentence of Jailed US Soldier Black, Russian Agencies Report

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] Kremlin Says Russia Is Ready to Do All It Can to Help Resolve US-Iran Nuclear Tensions

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] Ukraine's Kryvyi Rih Mourns Victims of Russian Missile Strike

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] Kremlin Says Nobody Has Yet Answered Russia's Questions Around a Proposed Ukraine Ceasefire

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] ‘Little Suns in the Classroom’: Ukrainian City Mourns Children Killed by Russian Missile

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] Russia Reduces Prison Sentence for US Soldier Convicted of Theft

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] Russia Says Ukraine Attacked Its Energy Infrastructure Six Times in Past Day

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] Zelenskiy Confirms for First Time That Ukrainian Troops Active in Russia's Belgorod Region

    • Vox ☛ 2025-04-07 [Older] What happened the last time the US went all-in on tariffs?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-06 [Older] Russian Missile Strike Kills One, Injures Three in Kyiv, Ukraine Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-06 [Older] Three Injured in Russia's Overnight Attack on Mykolaiv, Ukraine Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-06 [Older] 1 Killed in Russian Attack on Kyiv as Death Toll From Earlier Missile Strike Rises to 19

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-06 [Older] Putin's Envoy Says New Russia-U.S. Contacts May Continue Next Week, IFX Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-06 [Older] Russian Troops Push Into Ukraine's Sumy Region

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-06 [Older] Russia Says Ukraine Continues Attacks on Russian Energy Infrastructure

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-06 [Older] Thousands of Ukrainian Civilians Are Still Held by Russia With Uncertain Hope of Release

    • CBC ☛ 2025-04-05 [Older] Zelenskyy condemns 'weak' reaction of U.S. ambassador after deadly Russian missile strike

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-05 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini’s tariffs: Why are Russia and Belarus spared?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-04-05 [Older] Ukraine updates: Zelenskyy slams US reaction to Russian strike

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-05 [Older] Death Toll in Russian Missile Strike in Central Ukraine Reaches 18

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-05 [Older] Russia Says Ukraine 'Multiplying' Energy Attacks Despite US-Brokered Moratorium

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-04-05 [Older] Russia's 'Chessboard Killer' Ready to Confess to 11 More Murders, Penal Service Says

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • US Navy Times ☛ Navy fires leaders of Maritime Expeditionary Security Squadron 4

    Robblee, who assumed command of MSRON 4 in June 2024, previously served as deputy director of future operations and plans for commander, 2nd Fleet, according to his bio on the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command website, which has since been deleted.

    Before reporting to MSRON 4 in October 2023, Phillips most recently served as command master chief of Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 121, known as VAW-121, in Norfolk, Virginia, according to his Navy Expeditionary Combat Command bio, which has also been deleted.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Navy fires security squadron commander, top enlisted sailor

    The Navy has not said publicly exactly why Robblee and Phillips were fired. All military branches use the euphemism “loss of confidence” to avoid providing the exact reason why commanding officers and senior enlisted leaders are fired. The vague term encompasses a variety of reasons, including problems at work and personal issues.

• Environment

  • Hidde de Vries ☛ The future of government is green: five ways to make a sustainable difference today

    Today, the ICT sector accounts for about 1–2% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than aviation, and the number is growing. These statistics may be unnerving, but they do mean that we can make a lot of impact at work.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Lawmakers fear AI data centers will drive up residents’ power bills

      “We’re going to have tremendous stress from AI,” said New Jersey state Sen. Bob Smith, a Democrat who chairs the Environment and Energy Committee. “We have a crisis coming our way in electric rates. These outrageous increases are going to be put on the citizens. Why should they bear the rate increases?”

      Smith has authored a bill that would require new AI data centers in New Jersey to arrange to supply their power from new, clean energy sources, if other states in the region enact similar measures.

    • Wired ☛ The US Is Turning a Blind Eye to [Cryptocurrency] Crimes

      Since President Donald Trump took office, US authorities have increasingly abdicated responsibility for policing [cryptocurrency]-related offenses. Attorneys and lawmakers fear the resulting enforcement vacuum could be used to violate rules with impunity.

    • Eliseo Martelli ☛ I can't fall in love with cars anymore

      One notable shift is the decline of traditional car ownership. Instead, short-term leasing and subscription models have become more prevalent. This trend accelerated with the entry of Chinese EV manufacturers into the European market, offering affordable and technologically advanced vehicles. Consequently, consumers are increasingly drawn to convenience and flexibility rather than long-term commitment.

      From my perspective in computer science, this shift reminds me of the "Cattle vs. Pets" model. In IT, "pets" are unique servers that require individual attention, while "cattle" are standardized and easily replaceable. Similarly, cars have transitioned from cherished possessions to interchangeable tools.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Save This Species: Sunda Pangolin

• Finance

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Hungary breaks EU unity on Trump tariff retaliation

    On Wednesday, the European Union Member States approved the first countermeasures against US President Donald Trump's tariffs, imposing a 25% tariff on US goods. This is in response to the US imposing a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports from the EU, 444 reports. "The EU considers the US tariffs to be unjustified and harmful, causing economic damage to both sides and the global economy. The European Union has repeatedly made clear its preference for negotiated solutions with the United States that would be balanced and mutually beneficial," the European Commission said after the decision.

    Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó warned the Hungarian government would vote against EU counter-tariffs on US products "because they would cause a significant price increase, and instead, we should negotiate to reduce the burden". Szijjarto said that "strategic calm is the most important thing" in this situation. Hungary is the sixth most damaged country by Trump's tariff war. The value of total Hungarian exports is forecast to fall by 0.37 percent, three times the average for the EU as a whole. 

  • MWL ☛ An Economic Implosion as viewed through Kickstarter

    If you’re doing crowdfunding right now and everything imploded last week, know you’re not alone.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Verge ☛ Big Tech cozied up to Trump — it’s not getting much in return

    If anything, this week is a reminder that the tech industry has grown so large and influential that its leading companies are tools for leverage between countries. In times of relative peace, that influence can be beneficial for Big Tech. When things get hostile, Big Tech is put in the crosshairs.

  • Wired ☛ Where Were Big Tech’s CEOs on Tariffs?

    Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and other tech leaders refrained from making public statements while their companies collectively lost trillions. Their silence was both deafening and strategic.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Theater of Neutrality

    What we witnessed was a false genuflection toward the notion of having “clean hands”—a moral posture that confuses inaction with innocence, that treats withdrawal from moral complexity as ethical superiority rather than abdication. It's a throwback to the isolationism that gave the Axis powers space to gain strength, a worldview that fails to understand that refusing to confront evil doesn't mean you haven't chosen a side—it means you've chosen the side of its unopposed advance.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Gulf Of Willful Ignorance

    And they go on. After a long legal roller-coaster, hundreds of climate workers at NOAA just got re-fired; critics say their exit means the loss of "decades of expertise and institutional knowledge." But at least we'll still have the Gulf of What Fresh Hell Is This.

  • Mike Brock ☛ An Open Letter to Elon Musk

    There's a profound difference between disrupting an industry and disrupting the foundations of global order. The former creates space for innovation and progress; the latter removes the very conditions that make innovation and progress possible.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Why a man drives a kids' Cybertruck with a dog and Mexican flag

    “We got banned,” said Swagrman, who was told the reason for the banishment was because he would not give his name or ID to the officer. “They said if we ever come back to Dodger Stadium we will be arrested for trespassing.”

  • RFA ☛ Facebook’s Zuckerberg oversaw censorship tool for China: whistleblower

    Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former global policy director at Facebook, told the U.S. Senate on Wednesday that Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg personally designed and implemented a content review tool for Facebook that was used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

    The tool, according to her, would automatically submit a Facebook post for review by a “chief editor” whenever it received over 10,000 views.

    “One thing the Chinese Communist Party and Mark Zuckerberg share is that they want to silence their critics. I can say that from personal experience,” Wynn-Williams said at the congressional hearing.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • FAIR ☛ Dara Lind on Criminalizing Immigrants

  • International Business Times ☛ Mum Spends 7 Hours in Cell After Confiscating Her Children's iPads, That Were Then Reported Stolen

    Brown said she remains baffled by how quickly the force acted on the false report. 'I cannot get to the bottom of why it was done in such a quick turnaround—maybe less than an hour—all these police cars and officers going to an address over a completely false report of a theft.'

    'They were able to send a police car with police officers to my children's school, another to arrest me... and yet people are making reports of thefts, assaults and very violent crimes in our neighbourhood and not getting a response for days.'

  • The Verge ☛ Louisiana is using an algorithm to automatically deny parole applicants

    A new report from ProPublica published Thursday showed how the Louisiana government is using TIGER (Targeted Interventions to Greater Enhance Re-entry), a computer program developed by Louisiana State University to prevent recidivism, to approve or deny parole applications based on a score calculating their risk of returning to prison. Though the algorithm was initially designed to be used as a tool to help rehabilitate inmates by taking their background into account, a TIGER score – which uses data from an inmate’s time before prison, such as work history, criminal convictions, and age at first arrest – is now the sole measure of one’s eligibility.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Zuckerberg in the dock

  It's been more than a decade in the making, but Facebook – or, if you prefer, Meta – is going on trial for antitrust violations, with the highest possible stakes and the worst possible evidence (for Facebook).

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ CDN77 Isolates LaLiga IPTV Pirates in 15 mins. Allegedly Gets Blocked Anyway

    Whether one agrees or disagrees with his stance on how to tackle piracy, in particular the blocking controversy that has dogged Spain since early February, at a time of crisis this would be the man to have fighting your corner. He’s passionate about his mission, knows exactly what needs to be done, and is as unmovable as he is uncompromising on how to get there.

    For these reasons and many more like them, what some argue is a football business problem is already developing into a potential problem for everyone. Tebas believes the financial impact of piracy on Spanish football is currently between 600 and 700 million euros and with the recently confirmed authority awarded by a local court. LaLiga currently blocks 3,000 IP addresses every weekend to reduce the damage.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Kate Nash Calls Out Spotify for Paltry Payments

    Kate Nash calls out Spotify for paltry payments, but Spotify responds by saying they sent her check to Universal — so it’s out of their hands.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Copyright Infringement Case Against Nelly Voluntarily Dismissed

    St. Lunatics, a group of high school friends from St. Louis, are credited with both performing and songwriting across Nelly’s debut album. But their lawsuit claimed the final credits undersold their contributions to the record, depriving them of royalties.