Leftovers

• [Old] BSDly ☛ That grumpy BSD guy: The Year 2019 in Review: This Was, Once Again, Weirder Than the Last One

  The year is 2019. By now Blade Runner is a movie about the past, but there are still bots out there trying to guess our passwords. It gets betterworse from here while the dictionaries expand.

• Ruben Schade ☛ South Park got big-box retail mostly wrong

  In the Not Just Bikes video, Jason describes the massive incentives local governments dish out to these stores. It’s wild to realise local residents have already paid the big-box store with their tax dollars before they’ve even given it a chance to bankrupt their Main Street. For self-described libertarians, it’s surprising that the South Park writers didn’t explore this collusion of government and big business; it’s hardly a “free market” when one side is granted an unfair advantage by the state (and why being against giving incentives to small businesses that contribute significantly more tax revenue is more than a little hypocritical).

  This is where the big lie about consumer choice comes into play. As Cory Doctorow described last year, voting with your wallet is a rigged ballot when the other person has a bigger wallet. People in that town—save for a few politicians who made out like bandits—had no say in the store opening, and the effect of these stores on choice is as open and fair as your options for residential broadband. Which is to say, not much at all.

• Earthly ☛ A message about Earthly

  We are also ending active maintenance of the Earthly open-source project. We are supporting the community’s efforts to self-organize a fork, and we encourage those interested to get involved.

• Chen HuiJing ☛ Tag, you're it!

  Back in 2013, my first development job was at an agency and after almost coming up to 2 years, I had been thinking of moving onto somewhere else. I did solve a lot of bugs and learn a lot of things during my time there. But I realised I couldn’t take the code I wrote with me. So I did the next best thing and wrote my solutions into blog posts with generic examples, so that future me could have something to fall back on.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Secret of Orange Cats Finally Uncovered After 60-Year Search

    The second study, led by Kyushu University geneticist Hidehiro Toh, also identified Arhgap36 as the orange cat fur gene. They found greater expression of this gene suppresses color pigment genes, shifting the dark brown to black eumelanin pigments to the reddish to yellow pheomelanin pigments.

    Both papers are online awaiting peer review on bioRxiv here and here.

  • Oona Räisänen ☛ Passing planes and other whoosh sounds

    A classic example of the Doppler effect is the sound of a passing ambulance constantly descending in pitch. When a plane flies overhead the roar of the engine sometimes does that as well. But you can also hear a wider, breathier noise that does something different: it's like the pitch goes down at first, but when the plane has passed us, the pitch goes up again. That's not how Doppler works! What's going on there?

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ La Brea Tar Pit experts met dire wolf ‘de-extinction’ with skepticism

    Namely, are they really dire wolves? Turns out, it depends on how you define it.

    “What they have created is basically a genetically engineered gray wolf that has been given genetic traits so they can express morphological or physical traits that more resemble dire wolves,” said Kayce Bell, a terrestrial mammal curator at the Natural History Museum. “The technology and the tools that they are developing with this work are incredible and very powerful, but the terms that are being used to discuss it, I think, are misleading.”

• Career/Education

  • Arduino ☛ tinyML in Malawi: Empowering local communities through technology

    For those interested in learning more about the workshop and its content, all presentation slides and resources are available online.

• Hardware

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ The iron rule that kept us ahead of China is dead

    The software industry became very lazy during the golden years. It could write sloppy code and get away with it.

    Take Microsoft’s Windows 11, which now offers half the battery life on the same hardware as a free Linux alternative, which is just as capable. The engineering arts of tuning and optimising became lost in the age of abundance.

    When some of the chip industry’s best brains, including Butler Lampson, one of the architects of modern computing at Xerox Parc, outlined what we needed in a post-Moore world in a 2020 paper, top of the list was better software. Engineers must now be poets again, not wafflers.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Task And Purpose ☛ ‘The Mandalorian’ is a typical NCO trying to get his kid to daycare

    They saw a burned-out noncommissioned officer with a dependent he didn’t expect to have, operating on zero support, questionable gear, and a timeline no one bothered to explain.

    Because let’s be honest — Din Djarin isn’t some elite space assassin. He’s a tired E-6 just trying to get a kid to daycare before everything around him collapses.

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Windows 11 upgrades sneak past admin blockades

    Folks might remember the Windows Server 2025 incident from November 2024, when the new operating system was inadvertently published as a security update and was dutifully installed by patch management services before horrified administrators could dive for the off button.

    This latest SNAFU, which has yet another bit of dodgy code at its root, has taken Windows 11 as a feature update and bypassed Intune policies to prevent installation. Unlike the Windows Server 2025 fiasco, this appears to be going through Microsoft's own management platform.

  • The Record ☛ CISA warns of potential data breaches caused by legacy Oracle Cloud leak

    On Wednesday, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said that while the scope of the incident remains unconfirmed, the “nature of the reported activity presents potential risk to organizations and individuals, particularly where credential material may be exposed, reused across separate, unaffiliated systems, or embedded.”

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    • Klara ☛ Why You Can't Trust AI to Tune ZFS

      Can AI tune ZFS? We tested one of the most advanced language models on ZFS performance questions—and the results were dangerously misleading. From outdated defaults to incorrect assumptions about system behavior, this article breaks down where LLMs go wrong, and why trusting AI with ZFS tuning could lead to serious performance issues or even data loss.

    • Dan Q ☛ LayoffBot – eliminating the human in human resources

      And also: a robot that “schedules a chat” to eject you from your job and then “delivers the news with the emotional depth of a toaster” might still have been preferable to an after-hours email to my personal address to let me know that I’d just had my last day! Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but there’s some news that email isn’t the medium for, right?

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Cursor’s AI-powered tech support vibe-codes a customer revolt

      Cursor support was an LLM! The bot answered with something shaped like a support response! It hallucinated a policy that didn’t exist!

  • Social Control Media

    • SBS ☛ Swedish [sic] teen charged in Sydney over alleged overseas contract killings plot

      The boy was arrested on Wednesday after police executed a search warrant in western Sydney. He was refused bail in a Children's Court and is due to reappear on 11 June.

      The boy was charged with two counts of "using a device connected to a telecommunications network with intention to commit a serious offence": one count related to "murder" and the other to "conspiracy to murder".

      Both offences carry a possible life sentence, the statement said.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The Street ☛ Tesla accused of using sneaky tactic to dodge car repairs - TheStreet

      The lawsuit, filed on Feb. 7, highlights that Tesla’s warranties on vehicles are capped by mileage and are supposed to “cover repairs and replacements necessary to correct defects” in parts that it manufactures or supplies.

      However, Tesla allegedly ”knowingly overstates the distances traveled in Tesla vehicles” by manipulating odometers, allowing the company to dodge repair responsibilities tied to warranties.

    • Futurism ☛ Tesla Accused of Hacking Odometers to Rip Off Customers

      The plaintiff, a man in California who bought a used 2020 Model Y with 36,772 miles, noticed an "abnormal spike in average daily miles driven" — despite a "consistent driving routine" — while he was taking it to the shop multiple times for suspension repairs.

      As a result, his warranty expired after reaching the 50,000-mile threshold "well ahead of schedule," according to the lawsuit. However, after the expiry, the "reported average daily miles" suddenly dropped off, becoming "more closely aligned with his historical data on his other vehicles," making him suspicious that the EV maker was fudging the numbers.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EDRI ☛ Panoptykon Foundation challenges the data retention in Poland

      Indiscriminate data retention and unscrutinised access to data by secret services not only threatens privacy, but also endangers fundamental rights such as freedom of speech or the right to a fair trial.

      10 secret services and law enforcement agencies entitled to do so access telecom data approximately 2 million times every year. Even if a person has not broken the law, their data is still retained in case secret services wish to access it. There is no control of individual cases, only a collective report submitted to court twice a year.

    • The Register UK ☛ DOGE, once cut off from Treasury systems, is back inside

      The new order allows Wunderly access to "Treasury Department payment records, payment systems, and any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees."

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft: Why not let our Copilot fly your computer?

      On Wednesday, the Windows empire said it plans to enable computer use from within Copilot Studio - Microsoft's platform for building and deploying AI agents. This will spare employees from having to click buttons and fill forms themselves, while still keeping enterprise data corralled inside Microsoft's cloud - Redmond insists none of it is used to train its models.

    • The Record ☛ More than 100,000 had information stolen from Hertz through Cleo file share tool

      The information stolen includes contact information, payment card information, driver’s licenses and information related to worker’s compensation claims. Others had Social Security numbers, government IDs, passports, Medicare or Medicaid ID, or injury-related information associated with vehicle accident claims leaked through the hack.

    • The Register UK ☛ 4chan appears to have been compromised by rivals

      If those claims are legit, it's a big deal with potential real-world risks. 4chan is known for its extremist, controversial content — everything from discussions about science and video games to fringe political conspiracies and trolling to leaked nudes, and offensive, violent words and images.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ 4Chan Down: Cyberattack Rumors Spark Security Concerns

      The leaked data even included personal information like email addresses tied to 4Chan moderators, sparking further suspicion that the site had been hacked. These leaks appeared to coincide with the downtime, leading to increased speculation about a potential cyberattack on 4Chan.

    • 404 Media ☛ LAPD Publishes Crime Footage It Got From a Waymo Driverless Car

      The situation shows that police in Los Angeles are now looking at Waymo robotaxis as potential sources of surveillance footage to investigate crimes that the vehicles’ cameras and sensors may have witnessed. In 2023, Bloomberg reported that police in both San Francisco and Maricopa County, Arizona, had issued search warrants for Waymo footage. Police have also requested footage from Teslas, extremely pervasive Ring cameras, and Cruise autonomous vehicles.

    • 404 Media ☛ Following Layoffs, Automattic Employees Discover Leak-Catching Watermarks

      It’s not clear when the watermarks started appearing on P2, and Automattic has not responded to a request for comment. But Mullenweg has been warring with web hosting platform WP Engine—and as the story has developed, seemingly with his own staff—since last year.

    • Futurism ☛ Government Hires Controversial AI Company to Spy on "Known Populations"

      Per 404, the contract tasks Palantir with tweaking ICE's Investigative Case Management system (ICM) to allow for the "complete target analysis of known populations." It also assigns Palantir with ongoing maintenance duties for the massive database, which contains real-time tracking tools, visa records, and data from other agencies including the FBI, CIA, DEA, and ATF.

      The ICM allows agents to sort people by "hundreds of highly specific categories," according to 404, which caught a glimpse of the database last week. These include physical traits like race, eye color, tattoos, administrative data like social security numbers, employment address, and bankruptcy filing, as well as port of entry and resident status, in addition to "hundreds more" criteria.

    • 404 Media ☛ ICE Just Paid Palantir Tens of Millions for ‘Complete Target Analysis of Known Populations’

      The records show that Palantir is actively working on the technical infrastructure underpinning the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts which could soon impact U.S. citizens.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Lyft Texted a Rider a Transcript of the Conversation She Had in a Car

      None of Lyft’s explanations make sense to me. Bizarre and creepy.

    • CBC ☛ She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said

      The text was a transcript of the conversation she'd just had with her roommates during their eight-minute Lyft ride home from a friend's place.

    • Bitdefender ☛ Insurance firm Lemonade warns of breach of thousands of driving license numbers

      The insurance company first disclosed details of the security breach in official filings to the Attorney Generals of Texas, South Carolina, and California last week, revealing that it would be contacting affected individuals via the mail.

      Approximately 17,563 individuals in Texas and 1,950 individuals in South Carolina are said to be amongst those affected.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ China given access to UK patients’ health data

      Chinese researchers will be granted access to NHS data despite MI5 fears that Beijing’s regime could acquire sensitive information, an investigation has found.

      UK Biobank, a research hub, is preparing to transfer data from half a million GP records to its central database where it will be available for use by universities, scientific institutes and private companies.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Revealed: Chinese researchers can access half a million UK GP records

      Preparations are under way to transfer the records to UK Biobank, a research hub that holds detailed medical information donated by 500,000 volunteers. One of the world’s largest troves of health data, the facility makes its information available to universities, scientific institutes and private companies. A Guardian analysis shows one in five successful applications for access come from China.

      For the past year, health officials had been assessing whether extra safeguards were needed for patient records when added to the genomes, tissue samples and questionnaire responses held by UK Biobank. Personal details such as names and dates of birth are stripped from UK Biobank data before it is shared but experts say that in some cases individuals can still be identified.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Finland to Keep Border With Russia Closed ‘Until Further Notice’

    “Instrumentalized migration is one way that Russia can put pressure on and affect the security and social stability of Finland and the EU,” the government said. “Based on information available to the Finnish authorities, the risk that instrumentalized migration will resume and expand as seen previously remains likely.”

  • C4ISRNET ☛ It’s time to fully fund the Air Force’s collaborative combat aircraft

    When operating as part of a human-led formation, CCA can also boost lethality by increasing the number of weapons available to U.S. forces. Paradigms also exist where CCA can increase battlespace awareness and survivability by bringing more sensors into the fight and sharing this data with the broader force.

  • The Washington Spectator ☛ America’s Slide into Authoritarianism, as seen from TED 2025

    At the TED conference this past week in Vancouver, British Columbia, about 1,700 multidisciplinary thinkers gathered to hear and discuss dozens of prepared talks. But the real action was among the attendees, who gathered all week in impromptu salon discussions to share their concerns about the state of the world and what can be done to change course. Here are some of the most discussed topics and themes.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Truth

    This is not about policy disagreements. It is not about partisan preferences. It is about whether the American experiment in self-governance will continue at all. Whether we will remain a republic of laws or become a regime of men. Whether truth itself will retain any meaning in our public life.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Trump fought the law and Trump won

    Trump and his cronies have not acquired even a smidgen of administrative competence. Instead, they've embarked on a frenzy of out-of-control, chaotic motion, literally snatching random people off the streets and shipping them to forced-labor camps. Trump isn't just running a purge on America at large: he's also busily purging the conservative movement and the GOP of anyone with a hint of administrative capacity.

    Far from than figuring out how to do terrible things without technically violating the law, Trump II is a lawless administration, prepared to violate laws, procedures, norms, and the US Constitution.

  • [Old] The Telegraph UK ☛ Ban under-16s from social media, says majority of public

    Last week, Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, said social media was exposing youngsters to inappropriate content and that smartphones should “ideally” not be used until the age of 16.

    There is support for banning under-16s from social media across the political spectrum, including by 79 per cent of Conservative voters and 81 per cent of Reform UK supporters. Three in four Labour voters, as well as 76 per cent of Liberal Democrat backers, would favour such a move.

  • RFERL ☛ 'They're Taking Everyone.' In Russian Regions, Recruiting For Ukraine War Soars

    Russian officials have not released casualty figures since 2022, but Western estimates put the number of Russian soldiers killed or wounded since the start of the all-out invasion in February 2022 at more than 790,000.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ The death of frozen conflicts: why Ukraine must win

    The creation of frozen conflicts has remained a long-standing part of Russian foreign policy. This approach, however, has been finally challenged in Ukraine. Only Kyiv’s victory can end this Kremlin strategy once and for all.

  • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ Letter to the Editor: Islamism is the politicization of Islam | Opinion

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Josephine Baker: Dancer, activist and spy against the Nazis

    As recounted in "Josephine Baker’s Secret War: The African American Star Who Fought for France and Freedom," which was published this month, Hanna Diamond is the latest to recount Baker's brave stand against fascism as part of the French resistance.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Futurism ☛ Whistleblower Says He Received Threats After Investigating Whether Elon Musk's Minions Were Stealing Government Data

    As NPR reports, staffers with the billionaire's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could have stolen corporate secrets, ongoing legal disputes, and private union information when they rifled through the labor watchdog's internal servers earlier this year.

    According to Daniel Berulis, the NLRB whistleblower who made these damning allegations to Congress and in subsequent interviews with NPR, DOGE engineers extracted troves of data from the agency's systems.

    In his Congressional disclosure, Berulis also claimed that attacks from a Russian IP address occurred within minutes of DOGE gaining access to the NLRB's servers.

  • The Register UK ☛ CIA's chief data officer says Signalgate chats have vanished

    For that lawsuit, Blankenship testified [PDF] that when he came to take a copy of the group chat on Director Ratcliffe's phone, following the judge's retention order, the only remnant of the Signalgate chatter was the group name and some administrative info, such as members' profile names. Almost all the rest of the data, including the content of the messages, was missing.

  • The Verge ☛ Right-wing influencers are shilling an immigrant bounty hunting app

    Despite these lofty ambitions, the ICERAID app (which is actually a web form accessed via a [cryptocurrency] wallet) appears to be little more than promotion of a recently released meme coin of the same name — and some early investors tried to get their money back before the coin even launched.

• Environment

  • Axios ☛ Midwest emerges as top hub in U.S. data center expansion

    Yes, but: The expansion often happens behind closed doors.

    Local governments frequently sign nondisclosure agreements with tech firms, limiting public knowledge of energy and water usage, says Helena Volzer of the nonprofit Alliance for the Great Lakes.

  • The Local DK ☛ Denmark’s richest ten percent emit ‘four times more’ CO2 than lowest earners

    The top ten percent of earners in Denmark have a climate footprint four times greater than those with the lowest incomes, a study has found.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ US Army engineers decide to fast-track Great Lakes tunnel permits under Trump energy emergency order - lonestarlive.com

    Multiple groups lined up to criticize the fast-track decision Wednesday, including the Sierra Club, environmental law firm Earthjustice and the Great Lakes Business Network, a coalition of businesses that works to protect the Great Lakes with sustainable business practices.

    “The only energy ‘emergency’ the American people face is Trump’s efforts to disregard clean air and water safeguards in order to rush through dirty, dangerous fossil fuel projects,” said Mahyar Sorour, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Fossil Fuels Policy.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Salmon Are Being Exposed to Our Anti-Anxiety Medication, and It's Making Them Take More Risks, Study Suggests

    Atlantic salmon exposed to a common anti-anxiety drug migrate faster, according to new research. That’s not necessarily a good thing

  • Common Dreams ☛ Trump Administration Moves to Gut Habitat Protections for Endangered Wildlife

    Given that habitat destruction is the biggest cause of extinction, this definition of harm has been pivotal to protecting and recovering endangered species. It was upheld in the Supreme Court case Babbitt v. Sweet Home - 515 U.S. 687 (1995). The inclusion of habitat destruction in the prohibition on take has been critical to saving species. It’s a key difference between the federal Endangered Species Act and almost all state endangered species laws.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Greece ☛ Public transport as a rule

      This rule serves the public interest and should be held above the demands of any one sector, no matter how loudly it may assert these demands.

    • Futurism ☛ Microsoft's Huge Plans for Mass AI Data Centers Now Rapidly Falling Apart

      Investment bank TD Cowen also told the publication in February that Microsoft had canceled some leases for US data center power capacity, totaling a "couple of hundred megawatts."

      While Microsoft's exact reasoning for the scaling back remains unclear, waning demand and fears of a growing AI bubble are easy culprits.

    • CBS ☛ Microsoft says it's 'slowing or pausing' some AI data center projects, including $1B plan for Ohio - CBS Pittsburgh

      The computing it takes to run AI tools is expensive and requires a large amount of electricity, so much so that Trump this week cited AI needs as part of the justification for using his emergency authorities to boost the declining U.S. coal industry, a reliable but polluting energy source. Tech companies have also sought to tap into nuclear power, including a proposed Microsoft-backed revival of the shuttered Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, which would feed an electricity grid supplying data centers in Ohio as well as Virginia, the nation's biggest data center hub.

    • The Local DK ☛ Danish and Swedish royals to meet on Öresund Bridge

      The event recalls the inauguration of the bridge on July 1st, 2000, when the then-regents of both countries also met on Peberholm. In August 1999, when the final part of the structure was completed, the then-Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria met on the suspension bridge.

  • Overpopulation

    • YLE ☛ THL survey: Fewer women in higher education plan to have kids

      Men and women have both increasingly cited financial concerns and a perceived lack of societal support as obstacles to having children.

• Finance

  • CS Monitor ☛ Amid Trump tariffs, US dollar loses global investors’ trust

    For nearly a century, the U.S. dollar has reigned supreme in the global economy, dominating trade and finance, and providing stability to international markets. But the events of recent days have thrown that premise into the lurch.

    Normally, when the stock market is in distress, investors seek refuge in U.S. treasuries, pushing the value of the dollar upward. Since President Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs, the opposite has occurred. Instead of flocking to the dollar, global investors appeared to run from it.

  • Sean Monahan ☛ money dysmorphia

    But what really matters is housing, healthcare, and education. These prices aren’t highly variable at the individual level. The average American has one mortgage and one college diploma, if they’re lucky. When people talk about "the economy" usually that’s a proxy for wages versus housing costs, healthcare costs and student loan debt.

    If there were a world in which you could crash the stock market but raise wages and lower rents, I think that world would be popular. Now, as someone who knows nothing about "the economy" I can’t say if that world is possible. As we learned with COVID, the second-order effects of big policy decisions come out of nowhere, often as a total surprise. Remember how the lockdowns caused a toilet paper shortage? Not due to hoarding, but because half of the toilet paper used in America is "industrial-grade" i.e. for offices, cafes, restaurants, etc. Places no one was frequenting during the lockdowns.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Security Week ☛ Krebs Exits SentinelOne After Security Clearance Pulled

    “I want to be clear: this is my decision, and mine alone,” Krebs said in a goodbye note to SentinelOne staff. “This is my fight, not the company’s.”

    “For those who know me, you know I don’t shy away from tough fights. But I also know this is one I need to take on fully — outside of SentinelOne. This will require my complete focus and energy. It’s a fight for democracy, for freedom of speech, and for the rule of law. I’m prepared to give it everything I’ve got,” Krebs added.

  • Stephen Smith ☛ Boycotting US Companies

    With the ongoing US tariff battle against Canada and the rest of the world, people are looking to boycott US companies as much as possible. As the US imposes tariffs on other countries, they retaliate, making US products more expensive. Further, many people feel their governments aren’t being tough enough against the US and want to help out and contribute themselves. If enough of the world boycotts US companies, it will have a dramatic effect on the US.

  • LWN ☛ CISA extends funding to the CVE program (BleepingComputer)

    Sergiu Gatlan reports that the US government has extended funding for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program, following yesterday's reports that funding would run out as of April 16.

  • The Register UK ☛ CVE program gets a last-minute save, maybe a new home

    This comes after the Feds decided not to renew their long-standing contract with nonprofit research hub MITRE to operate the CVE database. That arrangement was due to expire today, but now the money's coming through to continue the crucial service.

    "The CVE program is invaluable to the cyber community and a priority of CISA," a spokesperson for the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, aka CISA, told The Register Wednesday.

  • The Record ☛ CISA extends CVE program contract with MITRE for 11 months amid alarm over potential lapse

    Federal contract documents show that CISA’s $57.8 million contract with MITRE expired on Wednesday but had an option to continue until March 16, 2026. CISA confirmed that the extension was for 11 months but did not respond to questions about what will happen after that date.

    Yosry Barsoum, vice president of MITRE and director of the Center for Securing the Homeland, said CISA “identified incremental funding to keep the Programs operational.”

  • Security Week ☛ MITRE CVE Program Gets Last-Hour Funding Reprieve

    According to public documentation, the $29 million contract was awarded sole source to The MITRE Corporation because the government believes the CVE database curation is critical for industrial mobilization or is essential R&D work.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ CISA reverses course, extends MITRE CVE contract

    In a last-minute switch, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said it will continue funding a contract for MITRE to manage the CVE program and other vulnerability databases.

    In a statement sent to CyberScoop, a spokesperson said the agency executed an option to extend the contract and avoid a potential lapse in a program that has become essential to the broader cyber community’s vulnerability management.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ MITRE CVE Contract Extended Just Before Expiration

    “The CVE Program is invaluable to cyber community and a priority of CISA. Last night, CISA executed the option period on the contract to ensure there will be no lapse in critical CVE services. We appreciate our partners’ and stakeholders’ patience.”

    It’s not clear what the long-term future of the CVE program will be – CISA had floated the idea of bringing it in-house despite its own budget and staffing cuts – but at least for now, the program will continue as is.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ CVE Program Almost Unfunded

    Mitre’s CVE’s program—which provides common naming and other informational resources about cybersecurity vulnerabilities—was about to be cancelled, as the US Department of Homeland Security failed to renew the contact. It was funded for eleven more months at the last minute.

  • ANF News ☛ Kürkçü: Erdoğan regime is dying

    In the second part of this analysis, Ertuğrul Kürkçü, Honorary Chairperson of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said that "the Erdoğan regime is dying."

  • ANF News ☛ Kürkçü: Society must take initiative for democracy

    Ertuğrul Kürkçü, Honorary Chairperson of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said that the government is attempting to reinforce its authoritarian regime by launching operations against the Republican People’s Party (CHP), even as it tries to project a more positive image through ongoing talks with Abdullah Öcalan.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ The State Department office countering foreign disinformation is being eliminated, officials say

      The Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub is a small office in the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy that tracks and counters foreign disinformation campaigns.

      In shutting R/FIMI, the department’s controversial acting undersecretary, Darren Beattie, is delivering a major win to conservative critics who have alleged that it censors conservative voices. Created at the end of 2024, it was reorganized from the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a larger office with a similar mission that had long been criticized by conservatives who claimed that, despite its international mission, it was censoring American conservatives. In 2023, Elon Musk called the center the “worst offender in US government censorship [and] media manipulation” and a “threat to our democracy.”

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • EFF ☛ Congress Moves Closer to Risky Internet Takedown Law

    The TAKE IT DOWN Act, a House bill that seeks to speed up the removal of certain kinds of troubling online content, is now expected to receive a floor vote in the coming weeks before heading to President Trump’s desk for his signature. While the bill is meant to address a serious problem—the distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII)—the notice-and-takedown system it creates is an open invitation for powerful people to pressure websites into removing content they dislike. Trump himself has shown just how this system can be abused, saying earlier this year that he would personally use the takedown provisions to censor speech critical of the president. Tell your Member of Congress to oppose censorship and to oppose TAKE IT DOWN.

  • Air Force Times ☛ Army, Air Force libraries ordered to review books for DEI material

    Books on the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights and racism, as well as Maya Angelou’s famous autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” were among the 381 books that were removed from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library.

    The Army memo was sent to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, the Army War College in Pennsylvania and several other service departments. It says they must review their collections and any books promoting DEI, gender ideology and critical race theory “in a manner that subverts meritocracy and unity" be removed “pending additional guidance.”

  • Common Dreams ☛ Students Sue Department of Defense Schools Over Curriculum Changes, Book Bans

    “By quarantining library books and whitewashing curricula in its civilian schools, the Department of Defense Education Activity is violating students’ First Amendment rights,” said Matt Callahan, senior supervising attorney at the ACLU of Virginia. “The government can’t scrub references to race and gender from public school libraries and classrooms just because the Trump administration doesn’t like certain viewpoints on those topics.”

  • Axios ☛ Trump admin asks IRS to rescind Harvard's tax-exempt status

    Why it matters: The Trump administration is escalating its retaliation against the Ivy League university after it refused to comply with the administration's list of demands.

    Catch up quick: It cut $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard.

  • New Yorker ☛ The Fight for Higher Ed Is Just Beginning

    So it came as a “thrillingly delightful surprise—and that’s understating it,” Jeannie Suk Gersen writes, when Harvard chose instead to resist Trump’s threats. “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Harvard’s lawyers wrote, in a letter to the Administration. “Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.” Gersen, a law professor at Harvard and a contributing writer to this magazine, provides essential analysis of the government’s aims and of the stakes of the fight. She traces the demands back to threats by both Democratic and Republican Administrations to withhold university funding, in which “civil-rights laws have been reduced to cudgels for coercing universities into subservience.” But the nature of Trump’s demands, she cautions, represents a new and chilling exercise of power. “The real point of the Administration’s moves is not to combat antisemitism, racism, or sexism, or even to promote free inquiry and the diversity of political viewpoints,” she writes. “The goal is rather to bring the university, as a representative of major institutions of civil society, to its knees.”

  • International Business Times ☛ Why Harvard Just Said No to Trump — And What It Means for Other American Universities

    According to reports, on Monday, Harvard in response sent a stong letter to the Department of Education, refusing to comply with new conditions that would restrict campus activism and force changes in university policy. The university says these demands strike at the heart of academic freedom and university autonomy — freedoms protected by the US Constitution and long upheld by the courts.

    'We will not surrender our independence or relinquish our constitutional rights,' Harvard stated. That message may prove pivotal for other institutions facing similar pressure.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ University finances face pressure

    The historic mainstays of university endowments were stocks and bonds, with a smattering of riskier bets on real estate and leveraged buyouts. Over the past decade, Harvard, Princeton, and other schools already or likely to be in Trump’s crosshairs barrelled into the latter bucket — investments that produced high paper profits but little cash to fund research, scholarships, and other operating expenses. In 2014, Harvard had almost half of its assets in bonds. In 2024, that number was 5%. Other endowments have also swapped readily saleable investments for private funds that offer higher returns but don’t spit out much cash.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Trump threatens Harvard’s tax status after freezing billions in funds

    The threat to tax Harvard as if it were a political entity comes after the Ivy League school rejected administration demands for widespread changes to its policies, prompting Trump to freeze more than $2 billion in federal funding.

  • RFERL ☛ Iran's Executions Reach Highest Level In Decade

    Executions in Iran reached their highest level since 2015, with at least 972 recorded in 2024, according to Amnesty International. The surge helped drive a global increase in capital punishment, with Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia accounting for 91 percent of known executions last year.

    Amnesty Secretary-General Agnes Callamard said Iran and Saudi Arabia used the death penalty "to silence those brave enough" to challenge the authorities. She also pointed to drug-related offenses as a major contributor to the spike in executions.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • RFERL ☛ Russian Journalists Handed Prison Terms For Alleged Ties To Navalny

    The journalists -- Antonina Favorskaya, Sergei Karelin, Konstantin Gabov, and Artyom Kriger -- were convicted after a closed-door trial for their contributions to YouTube channels affiliated with FBK before it was outlawed in 2021.

    The court on April 15 also barred the defendants from working as journalists for three years after their release.

  • Meduza ☛ 'I have always acted within the law': Who are the four Russian journalists jailed for their alleged work with Navalny's organization?

    On Tuesday, a Moscow court sentenced journalists Antonina Favorskaya, Sergey Karelin, Konstantin Gabov, and Artem Kriger to 5.5 years in prison on charges of participating in an “extremist organization.” The case stems from the defendants’ alleged participation in creating content for the YouTube channels of the late opposition politician Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). All of them have denied collaborating with the organization. The details of the charges remain unknown, as the hearings were held behind closed doors. Here’s what you need to know about these four journalists who are headed to prison for their work.

  • US Senate ☛ The Freedom of Information Act: Perspect... | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary

  • New York Times ☛ Its Journalism Challenged Autocrats. Trump Wants to Silence It.

    Mr. Kuznechyk had worked for more than a decade at the outlet, which began broadcasting in the early 1950s behind the Iron Curtain. The organization has long coped with challenges from authoritarian governments while reporting on human rights and corruption. Now, for the first time, the biggest threat is coming from Washington.

  • CPJ ☛ Journalists arrested in Senegal as prime minister announces 'zero tolerance' for false news

    “Senegalese authorities must drop all charges against journalist Simon Pierre Faye, release news commentator Abdou Nguer, and end their judicial harassment of journalists,” said Moussa Ngom, CPJ’s Francophone Africa Representative. “Authorities should instead focus their efforts on advancing promised reforms to decriminalize press offenses.”

    Police arrested Faye on April 10 for a post on his outlet’s Facebook page, later deleted, republishing another article on the alleged distrust of President Faye’s leadership.

  • CPJ ☛ Malian journalist detained after criticizing Ministry of Justice

    In his report, Togo questioned the credibility of a poll quoted by Justice Minister Mahamadou Kassogué that claimed public confidence in Mali’s justice index increased “from 30% to 72% in 2024.” Togo also said that the justice sector was ranked by the poll “second most corrupt after the police,” adding that the “current transitional regime is taking advantage of the ‘weakness’ of the justice system to order arrests, intimidation, kidnappings and even extrajudicial detentions, in violation of the law.”

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Journalist Kriger’s Last Word in Court: ‘I Fully Understood the Risks of This Profession in Russia’

    Favorskaya and Kriger delivered their final statements in closed court hearings this week ahead of the verdict. Favorskaya’s letter containing her speech was blocked by prison censors.

    The Moscow Times publishes Kriger’s courtroom speech, edited for length and clarity.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RFA ☛ China detains Tibetans for sharing photos of late Buddhist leader – Radio Free Asia

    Officials place monastery of Tulku Hungkar Dorje under strict surveillance, forbid public memorials.

  • The Nation ☛ Want to Save Democracy? Organize a Union in Your Workplace.

    If you want to fight the rise of fascism, organize a union in your workplace—or get a job and help your coworkers organize. There’s a reason that authoritarian regimes often make crushing unions their top priority: Free and independent unions are the best safeguard of democracy.

  • RFERL ☛ Public Executions By Taliban Spark Global Outcry

    The executions, part of the Taliban’s hardline interpretation of Islamic law, are described by the regime as "qisas," or retributive justice.

    Since they seized power in August 2021, the Taliban have resumed corporal punishments and public executions, echoing their repressive rule of the 1990s. So far, at least 10 individuals have been publicly executed.

    Rights organizations say these punishments are a clear violation of international law.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Why Starlink Needed a New License for Gen 2 in Brazil—And Why Zim Operators Should Worry

    This is why we keep saying it’s a mistake for our local [Internet] providers to rest on their laurels, thinking Starlink is at capacity in major urban areas and so won’t steal away more subscribers: [...]

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ Why Controlling Your Music Data Is the New Independence

    As someone who has spent years navigating the complexities of digital music, I’ve seen firsthand how crucial it is for rightsholders to take control of their content and data. The ability to manage your assets independently isn’t just a matter of convenience – it’s a strategic advantage that unlocks new opportunities, reduces operational headaches and gives you the flexibility to work with the best partners for your needs. In an increasingly complex digital landscape, direct control over your intellectual property, data and assets is the key to maximizing your income, minimizing costs and simplifying your business.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Register UK ☛ AWS: Customers would flee Azure if licensing costs were fair

  AWS estimates that half of the workloads Microsoft enterprise customers run on Azure would migrate to its own datacenters if only the licensing costs of doing so were not prohibitively high and a competitive deterrent.

  This claim is made in the latest submission by AWS to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority's (CMA) Cloud Services Market Investigation.

• RTL ☛ Zuckerberg denies Meta bought rivals to conquer them

  Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday denied in court that his company bought rival services Instagram and WhatsApp to neutralize them, as his testimony in a landmark antitrust case came to a close.

  The case could see the Facebook owner forced to divest itself of the two apps, which have grown into global powerhouses since their buyouts.

• Court House News ☛ In antitrust trial, Zuckerberg calls TikTok, YouTube major competitors of Meta | Courthouse News Service

  He noted that YouTube and TikTok had powerful backers, in Google and ByteDance, respectively, so he saw it as unlikely that Instagram could have become as big on its own as Facebook had.

• The Washington Post ☛ Former exec Sheryl Sandberg says Meta was willing to scrap competitor ads

  The FTC argues that around 2012 as the company’s top brass was mulling acquisitions — such as Instagram and later WhatsApp — Meta was particularly concerned that other mobile messaging apps could become serious competitive threats as they sought to add more social media capabilities.

• Patents

  • Futurism ☛ ICE Deletes Post About Stopping the Flow of Illegal "Ideas"

    "If it crosses the border illegally, it's our job to STOP IT," the graphic on ICE's since-deleted X post reads. Among the things that could "illegally" enter American soil, the agency listed "people, money, products, ideas."

    In a statement to Futurism and other outlets, ICE media lead Mike Alvarez insisted that the graphic was posted in error.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ OpenDNS Quits Belgium Under Threat of Piracy Blocks or Fines of €100K Per Day

    In a brief statement citing a court order in Belgium but providing no other details, Cisco says that its OpenDNS service is no longer available to users in Belgium. Cisco's withdrawal is almost certainly linked to an IPTV piracy blocking order obtained by DAZN; itt requires OpenDNS, Cloudflare and Google to block over 100 pirate sites or face fines of €100,000 euros per day. Just recently, Cisco withdrew from France over a similar order.