Leftovers

• IT Wire ☛ Safety tips if offering [Internet] access at your rental property

  Your first order of business is to separate your networks. If you wish to provide tenants with internet access, ensure you don’t connect your smart home devices -- like security cameras or smart locks -- to the same Wi-Fi network used by tenants.

  Set up a primary network for the smart tech devices at the investment property and a guest network for tenants.

• The Age AU ☛ Hear that? It’s the sound of live music dying for local artists, but not for Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift.

  I don’t believe there is a singular villain here, but instead a conversation to be had about the growing gap between the support we give international names versus how to better support our own.

• Miguel Young de la Sota ☛ Protobuf Tip #3: Accepting Mistakes We Can't Fix

  Of course, there is a third option, which is to accept that some things aren’t worth fixing. When the cost of a fix is so high, fixes just aren’t worth it, especially when the language is working against us.

• Brandon ☛ Farewell

  I had to think long and hard about whether I wanted to make this post or not, but I felt like I owed it to anyone who was kind enough to read my blog over the past couple of years. It just wouldn't feel right to up and delete without saying good-bye.

• Mahesh Balakrishnan ☛ Jeeps, Ferraris, and Other Engineers

  I posit two extreme points on the spectrum of engineering archetypes: [...]

• Declan Chidlow ☛ Why I Write | Vale.Rocks

  Writing isn’t a thing I do for the sake of it. It is an itch, a compulsion, a joy. A desire to output – to share ideas. To spread my mind on the page for consumption and inspection. I am inspired when I read and inclined to add my own voice to the conversation, to contribute my thoughts to the collective pool.

• Terence Eden ☛ Who is responsible for missing money?

  I have a simple rule of thumb when it comes to news reports. The real story is always in the penultimate paragraph.

  Let's look at this inflammatory headline: [...]

• Tracy Durnell ☛ Browsing as thinking

  How often, when searching, do you know precisely what you seek? How often are you looking for an answer versus looking in a direction or trying to evaluate qualitative or reputational information?

• Science

  • The Revelator ☛ Why Scientific Collaboration Matters Now More Than Ever

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Lockheed loses experimental satellite after Firefly launch mishap

    A launch anomaly on board Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket resulted in the loss of a Lockheed Martin spacecraft designed to demonstrate new satellite technologies.

  • Tedium ☛ New Colors: How We Find Them & Why We Lose Them

    It’s not unheard of to discover a new color, but we’re coming up with new ways to do so—including with frickin’ laser beams.

  • Rlang ☛ How the DSGE sausage is made

    Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models are a class of models which attempt to model the entire economy of a nation. The purpose of this post is to hand-code a DSGE model in R, fit it to data, and check that the results agree with the software packages Dynare and gEcon.

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ My Sourdough Starter Has Twins

    A couple of years ago, I participated in a study of the HealthFerm Citizen Science group in collaboration with the VUB Brussels and ETH Zurich universities. The study, called the Citizen Science Sourdough Project, aimed to collect and map micro-organism samples of sourdough starters with the help of citizens like you and me. As a sourdough bread nut, of course I was more than happy to send a sample. And then years passed and I completely forgot about the research project.

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Scanned the Brains of Authoritarians and Found Something Weird

    In an interview with PsyPost, lead study author Jesús Adrián-Ventura said that he and his team found that right-wing authoritarianism was associated with lower grey matter volume in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex — a "region involved in understanding others' thoughts and perspectives," as the assistant Zaragoza psychology professor put it.

    The left-wing authoritarians of the bunch — we don't know exactly how many, as the results weren't broken down in the paper — had less cortical (or outer brain layer) thickness in the right anterior insula, which is "associated with emotional empathy and behavioral inhibition." Cortical thickness in that brain region has been the subject of ample research, from a 2005 study that found people who meditate regularly have greater thickness in the right anterior insula to a 2018 study that linked it to greater moral disgust.

• Career/Education

  • SparkFun Electronics ☛ Experiential Launches Community Manufacturing Initiative (CMI) to Empower Local Innovation

    Are you interested in bringing an advanced manufacturing program to your school, college, or community? Or maybe your company is looking for ways to get involved? CMI is a volunteer-led effort to teach students advanced manufacturing that serves their local community

  • Amit Gawande ☛ Sneak Peek Inside Square 101

    The topics will mostly stay adjacent to things I am good at, such as tech. I’m not trying to cover every angle or go super deep. As I mentioned in the introductory post, I want to dive into a topic just enough to raise your awareness, spark questions and maybe kickstart your curiosity. I won’t be adding reading lists or long reference sections — Wikipedia (and the internet) have that part covered.

  • New Yorker ☛ How “The Great Gatsby” Took Over High School

    After Fitzgerald’s death, a wave of eulogies applauded the author, and at least a couple of them hailed his Jazz Age novel as a classic. But, though Fitzgerald’s death was good for “Gatsby,” what really made the difference was the Second World War. Beginning in 1942, a campaign was launched to equip American servicemen with essential “weapons in the war of ideas”—cheap paperback novels. The Council on Books in Wartime, a nonprofit made up of publishers, critics, booksellers, and librarians, worked to combat boredom and boost morale by distributing more than a hundred and twenty million books to U.S. troops overseas. The Armed Services Editions were tailored to fit inside a uniform pocket, with reinforced paper meant to last for at least six readings. In 1945, American soldiers were sent a hundred and fifty-five thousand copies of “The Great Gatsby,” making the novel a hit at last.

  • ACM ☛ Reversing the Fossilization of Computer Science Conferences – Communications of the ACM

    One characteristic of the current academic culture is that it treats being a PC member or (better) chair as a valuable career achievement—another “brownie point,” for “service.” Often, as a result, the PC is staffed by junior, ambitious academics intent on filling their résumés. Note that it does not matter for these résumés whether the person did a good or bad job as a referee! Participating in such activities should be an honor by itself, and should not carry any career reward at all. The current practice is one of the sources of the problems of conferences, amplified by the anonymity of refereeing. We end up having experts’ work adjudicated by beginners. Some of the more exotic requirements cited above probably follow from inexperience too: a senior scientist is unlikely to tell others what syntactical roles are acceptable for bibliographic references. Such arrogance is more typical of beginners. The phenomenon of conference positions as résumé-building steps for aspiring novices seems to be modern, a result of the careerization of conferences. I very much doubt that the submissions of Einstein, Curie, Planck, and such to the Solvay conferences were assessed by postdocs. Top conferences should be the responsibility of the established leaders in the field.

• Hardware

  • India Times ☛ Intel attracts interest for test chips using new manufacturing process

    Intel said on Tuesday that several of its contract manufacturing customers planned to build test chips for a forthcoming advanced manufacturing process, which the company still has in development.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Chemicals released by climbing shoe abrasion could lead to lung issues for climbers in indoor environments

    A climbing hall is filled with a variety of smells: sweat, chalk dust and a hint of rubber. A research group led by environmental scientist Thilo Hofmann at the University of Vienna has now discovered that rubber abrasion from climbing shoes can enter the lungs of athletes. The shoes contain rubber compounds similar to those used in car tires—including additives suspected of being harmful to humans and the environment.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ How Neoliberalism Has Distorted Human Choice

    Humans, it is sometimes said, are defined by our capacity for choice. We are not moved to act merely by instinct: we choose what we do and how we do it. This is part of what it means to be human.

    Immanuel Kant, the influential Enlightenment-era German philosopher, did as much as anyone to transform this once-controversial doctrine into a bit of common sense. Human life, he thought, is a series of choices. Deciding what to do is our plight. Indeed, whereas the story of Adam, Eve, and the forbidden apple is traditionally read as the tale of evil’s entry into the world, Kant reimagined it as the tale of our all-important transformation into self-conscious choosers: [...]

  • Wired ☛ As Measles Cases Surge, Mexico Issues a US Travel Alert

    To try to prevent the measles virus from spreading further throughout Mexico, its Ministry of Health has issued a travel warning for the United States and Canada, where cases have also risen sharply. The ministry advises travelers to make sure they are up-to-date with their vaccinations, practice social distancing, wear a mask, and frequently wash their hands.

  • Sean Monahan ☛ artificial schizophrenia

    We are sizzling our monkey brains in white hot server farms. What’s the antidote?

    Reality.

    No one ever wants to hear it, but the best treatment for depression is exercise. The irony is, it’s incredibly hard to exercise when you are depressed.

  • India Times ☛ Will tech billionaires move fast and break our brains?

    I worry that the psychedelic enthusiasts of Silicon Valley will apply their "move fast and break things" philosophy to mind-altering drugs, approving them too quickly and without adequate protections for Americans. Psychedelics are very promising as a mental health treatment, but they are also incredibly powerful drugs that carry serious risks -- something I know firsthand.

• Proprietary

  • [Repeat] Scoop News Group ☛ House passes bill to study routers’ national security risks

    The House has moved quickly on the Removing Our Unsecure Technologies to Ensure Reliability and Security (ROUTERS) Act, which was introduced by Reps. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, and Robin Kelly, D-Ill., in March and advanced out of the chamber’s Energy and Commerce Committee three weeks ago.

    The bill, which calls on Commerce’s assistant secretary for communications and information to lead a study into devices that are “designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied” by or subject to the influence of a “covered country,” takes particular aim at China and the state-sponsored hacking campaigns that have plagued U.S. networks.

  • Wired ☛ Millions of Apple Airplay-Enabled Devices Can Be Hacked via Wi-Fi

    On Tuesday, researchers from the cybersecurity firm Oligo revealed what they’re calling AirBorne, a collection of vulnerabilities affecting AirPlay, Apple’s proprietary radio-based protocol for local wireless communication. Bugs in Apple’s AirPlay software development kit (SDK) for third-party devices would allow hackers to hijack gadgets like speakers, receivers, set-top boxes, or smart TVs if they’re on the same Wi-Fi network as the hacker’s machine. Another set of AirBorne vulnerabilities would have allowed hackers to exploit AirPlay-enabled Apple devices too, Apple told Oligo, though these bugs have been patched in updates over the last several months, and Apple tells WIRED that those bugs could have only been exploited when users changed default AirPlay settings.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Scoop News Group ☛ White House seeks input to revise national AI research and development plan

      That first national AI R&D plan was written in 2016 by the first Trump administration and has been updated twice since — once by Donald Trump and once by Joe Biden. With each update, the strategic areas from that first document have been generally maintained and expanded.

    • Deseret Media ☛ 'A scary thing': Police arrest St. George man suspected in AI child sexual abuse images case

      Investigators obtained a second search warrant for Marsh's St. George residence. Once there, they reportedly seized electronics containing "additional AI-generated images of juveniles in the nude."

    • 404 Media ☛ The Age of Realtime Deepfake Fraud Is Here

      Fraudsters are able to change their race, facial hair, voice, and more during live video calls with very little effort. Scammers are already fooling the elderly and verification systems.

    • Techdirt ☛ The Hallucinating ChatGPT Presidency

      The key thing is this: These models are designed to give you what you want, not what’s true. They optimize for plausibility rather than accuracy, delivering confident-sounding answers because that’s what humans tend to find satisfying. It’s a bit like having a very articulate friend who’s willing to hold forth on any topic, regardless of whether they actually know anything about it.

      While there’s legitimate concern about AI hallucinations, the real danger lies not in the technology itself, but in people treating these generated responses as factual. Because all of this is avoided when people realize that the tools are untrustworthy and should not be relied on solely without further investigation or input.

    • 404 Media ☛ Instagram Is Blocking Minors from Accessing Chatbot Platform AI Studio

      Following Wall Street Journal investigations into the user-generated chatbots, AI Studio is inaccessible for users under 18 years old.

    • Futurism ☛ Zuckerberg's AI Has Reportedly Been Horrifically Inappropriate With Children

      The Facebook owner's chatbots had reportedly indulged in explicit "romantic role-play," including the sharing of selfies and live voice conversations — features that were readily available to underage users.

    • Futurism ☛ Duolingo Announces Plans to Replace as Many Human Workers as Possible With AI

      In an all-hands email that was later posted on LinkedIn, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn announced that the company would "gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle."

      Part of that shift, von Ahn wrote, will involve deploying the tech before it’s "100 percent perfect."

    • Wired ☛ AI Is Using Your Likes to Get Inside Your Head

      To introduce a corrective force, AI developers frequently use what is called reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). Essentially they are putting a human thumb on the scale as the computer arrives at its model by training it on data reflecting real people’s actual preferences. But where does that human preference data come from, and how much of it is needed for the input to be valid? So far, this has been the problem with RLHF: It’s a costly method if it requires hiring human supervisors and annotators to enter feedback.

    • Julia Programming Language ☛ Accelerating Simulation with JuliaSim AI: Surrogates, Optimization, and Control

      Modern simulation workflows face critical bottlenecks from computationally expensive models, fragmented tools, and the complexity of integrating AI/ML components. JuliaSim AI, powered by advanced surrogate modeling, AI-enhanced optimization and high-fidelity controls engineering, addresses these challenges to accelerate simulation workflows while maintaining a high level of accuracy.

      This blog post explores how JuliaSim AI refines model analysis through: Surrogate modeling – Leveraging AI to create faster, data-driven approximations of complex systems. Optimization (JSMO) – Enhancing design and decision-making with efficient mathematical optimization techniques. Control systems (JuliaSimControl) – Implementing adaptive control strategies for real-time system refinement.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Generative AI: ‘no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation’

      The purpose of generative AI is to oppress labour. That’s why all that money to OpenAI. But for all the claims that you will be replaced by an Excel macro with pretentions … it’s not working out that way.

    • Rlang ☛ Spatial machine learning with R: caret, tidymodels, and mlr3

      In this blog post, we compare three of the most popular machine learning frameworks in R: caret, tidymodels, and mlr3. We use a simple example to demonstrate how to use these frameworks for a spatial machine learning task and how their workflows differ. The goal here is to provide a general sense of how the spatial machine learning workflow looks like, and how different frameworks can be used to achieve the same goal.

    • [Old] Reuters ☛ Democratic US senators question Google and Microsoft's AI deals

      U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrats on the Senate banking and finance committees, respectively, asked Google for details, opens new tab about its partnership with AI startup Anthropic and Microsoft about its tie-up, opens new tab with ChatGPT creator OpenAI, according to the letters.

    • [Old] DataCenter Dynamics ☛ US senators demand information from Microsoft and Google about AI deals

      Google pumped $300 million into Anthropic back in 2022, $2 billion in 2023, and another $1 billion this January. Rival Amazon has invested some $8 billion into Anthropic, which made it the company's "primary cloud and training partner." Anthropic plans to use "AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to train and deploy its future foundation models" alongside Nvidia GPUs.

      Meanwhile, OpenAI and Microsoft have a long-standing relationship. The company is a major shareholder of OpenAI and was previously its exclusive cloud provider. While that is no longer the case, Microsoft still has a right of first refusal to serve the AI firm.

    • Nicholas Carr ☛ Epistemological Slop

      It would be hard to imagine three sentences more densely packed with falsehood than these three. It takes considerable effort just to parse the utter wrong-headedness of it all. First, with the confidence characteristic of chatbots, Gemini declares that, yes, indeed, the words “television” and “TV” appear in Beatles lyrics. It offers “Yellow Submarine” and “Here Comes the Sun” as prominent examples. That’s a baldfaced lie. Neither of those songs has either word in its lyrics. Neither has anything whatsoever to do with TV.

    • Trail of Bits ☛ Deceiving users with ANSI terminal codes in MCP

      ANSI terminal escape codes—special character sequences used to control terminal formatting, such as to change colors, move the cursor, or modify other display attributes—can be used to obfuscate malicious payloads in MCP server tool descriptions.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Is AI “normal”?

      The core point, Kapoor says, is that we need to start differentiating between the rapid development of AI methods—the flashy and impressive displays of what AI can do in the lab—and what comes from the actual applications of AI, which in historical examples of other technologies lag behind by decades.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Register UK ☛ Meta AI chatbot lets users share prompts, responses

      Unveiled Tuesday at its LlamaCon AI event, Meta AI is now available on iOS and Android. It's a standalone version of the AI assistant already in Meta products, such as Instagram and Facebook, and it lands in a market already teeming with AI chatbots and answer machines - ChatGPT, Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Grok, Perplexity, Claude, and more.

    • 404 Media ☛ Reddit Issuing 'Formal Legal Demands' Against Researchers Who Conducted Secret AI Experiment on Users

      As we reported Monday, researchers at the University of Zurich ran an “unauthorized” and secret experiment on Reddit users in the r/changemyview subreddit in which dozens of AI bots engaged in debates with users about controversial issues. In some cases, the bots generated responses which claimed they were rape survivors, worked with trauma patients, or were Black people who were opposed to the Black Lives Matter movement. The researchers used a separate AI to mine the posting history of the people they were responding to in an attempt to determine personal details about them that they believed would make their bots more effective, such as their age, race, gender, location, and political beliefs.

    • YLE ☛ Finnish police suspect TikTok 'urbex' trend behind spate of break-ins to derelict buildings

      Sergeant Juha-Pekka Huttunen in Mikkeli noted that, even though the age of criminal responsibility in Finland is 15, children under that age — or their families — would still be financially liable for any damage they might cause to a property.

    • GreyCoder ☛ No Logins Required: Alternative Interfaces To YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram

      Her are some alternatives to social that allow you to browse without logging in. The sites offer minimalist versions of various social media.

    • PC World ☛ Is someone spying on your Facebook account? Here's how to find out

      Unless you fly strictly under the radar, your Facebook account has valuable data about you—like who you speak with the most and what you talk about. It can also be a treasure trove of other personal details like your family members, close friends, and social plans.

      You should be the only one to control your account. To ensure this, periodically verifying that everything’s secure is a wise idea.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Scoop News Group ☛ GSA unveils modernized IT tool procurement strategy

      The OneGov Strategy is meant to modernize how the government buys goods and services and calls for more direct engagement with Original Equipment Manufacturers. The GSA said in a press release that OEMs “will benefit from a more direct and predictable engagement model.”

    • IT Wire ☛ 76% of Australian orgs experienced at least one high-impact cyber event ‘halting critical business functions’ in past year

      AI-powered identity security and cyber resilience provider Semperis has announced the launch of Ready1 in Australia and New Zealand, claiming a a first-of-its-kind enterprise resilience platform designed to bring structure, speed, and coordination to cyber crisis management.

    • PC World ☛ DDoS attacks have skyrocketed 358% year-over-year, report says

      The largest DDoS attack during the period was measured at 5.6 terabits per second, but has already been overtaken by an attack on April 24th that was measured at 5.8 terabits per second.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ MTN was hit by ransomware attackers

      The specific markets affected by the attack have not been detailed, but MTN has confirmed to TechCentral that South Africa’s Information Regulator has been notified of the incident, suggesting customers in the pan-African operator’s home market are among those affected.

    • Tripwire ☛ Ransomware Attacks on Critical Infrastructure Surge, Reports FBI

      The annual report from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) will reveal that the likes of manufacturing, healthcare, government facilities, financial services and IT were the top critical infrastructure sectors targeted by digital extortionists.

      With the impact of ransomware being seen in production lines grinding to a standstill, hospital systems crippled, and pipelines turned off there could be significant impacts on public health and safety.

    • Reuters ☛ Complaints about ransomware attacks on US infrastructure rise 9%, FBI says

      Ransomware attacks – which lock a target’s files until an extortion payment is made – are just one of the types of cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure, a term encompassing 16 sectors, opens new tab that include chemical plants, communications, energy, food production, transportation and water systems. Their “incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect” on public health and security, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Purism ☛ Privacy on Trial: Meta’s DOJ Battle vs. Purism’s User-Centric Philosophy

      At Purism, we’ve always championed the concept that privacy is not merely a feature but a fundamental right. The DOJ’s actions serve as a reminder that large-scale tech companies should be held accountable for the way they treat user data. Transparency and consent are non-negotiable in a world where personal information is the new currency.

    • Court House News ☛ Meta seeks damages from Israeli spyware company over WhatsApp [breaches]

      The claims relate to a 2019 security breach in which the cyber-intelligence company remotely installed surveillance software on the phones of over 1,400 WhatsApp users, including activists, journalists and diplomats.

      Since U.S. District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton already ruled in December that the company was liable for the [breaches], Meta began Tuesday by reminding jurors that they aren't there to determine whether NSO and its parent company QCyber are innocent or not.

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Big Tech Wants Free Rein to Sell Your Data

      Tech companies accused of exposing consumers to fraud want the Trump administration to let them freely buy and sell your personal information.

    • Wired ☛ WhatsApp Is Walking a Tightrope Between AI Features and Privacy

      Meta has been incorporating generative AI features across its services that are built on its open source large language model, Llama. And WhatsApp already incorporates a light blue circle that gives users access to the Meta AI assistant. But many users have balked at this addition, given that interactions with the AI assistant aren’t shielded from Meta the way end-to-end encrtyped WhatsApp chats are. The new feature, dubbed Private Processing, is meant to address these concerns with what the company says is a carefully architected and purpose-built platform devoted to processing data for AI tasks without the information being accessible to Meta, WhatsApp, or any other party. While initial reviews by researchers of the scheme’s integrity have been positive, some note that the move toward AI features could ultimately put WhatsApp on a slippery slope.

    • Site36 ☛ New surveillance method revealed: German authorities let IP addresses be “caught” with no clear legal basis

      The questioner Clara Bünger criticises this response behaviour, especially as it is an incalculable encroachment on fundamental rights. The Left Party MP is calling for ‘a fundamental, fundamental rights-friendly reorganisation of the law enforcement authorities’ digital intervention powers’.

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Using Private Data to Build List of People to Deport

      According to sources who spoke to Wired and CNN, Musk's Department [sic] of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is planning to harvest all kinds of sensitive data as it builds out a centralized database of immigrants targeted for deportation.

      Sources who spoke to both outlets said DOGE is planning to use software from Palantir, Thiel's data mining company that has long worked with the government, to compile information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Social Security, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

    • Bitdefender ☛ 21 million employee screenshots leaked in bossware breach blunder

      Over 21 million images of capture employees' screens - along with usernames, IP addresses, and device details, were left sitting on an unsecured Amazon S3 storage bucket.

      A tool which was intended to, amongst other things, monitor unusual or suspicious behaviour by over 200,000 workers around the globe has itself leaked secret and sensitive information to anyone who went looking for it.

    • 404 Media ☛ This Is Palantir’s Justification for Building ICE’s Master Database

      Over the last few weeks multiple media outlets have reported on data analytics company Palantir’s closer collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as the agency carries out Trump’s mass deportation efforts. 404 Media first reported that Palantir was awarded tens of millions of dollars to work on improving ICE’s immigration targeting and enforcement systems. A day later, 404 Media published an article based on internal Palantir Slacks and a wiki which showed the company was engaged on a six-month project to help find the location of people flagged for deportation. That same day, ICE published a procurement document laying out similar details of the project, called “ImmigrationOS,” Business Insider reported.

• Defence/Aggression

  • New Yorker ☛ Is the U.S. Becoming an Autocracy?

    The anti-Trump books were received the way most information about Donald Trump is received. Those who hated him felt apoplectic, or vindicated; those who liked him mostly tuned it out. But “How Democracies Die,” by two political scientists at Harvard, was about a global phenomenon that was bigger than Trump, and it became a touchstone, the sort of book whose title (“Manufacturing Consent,” “Bowling Alone”) is often invoked as a shorthand for an important but nebulous set of issues. When a book attains this status, the upside is that it can have a wide impact. (In 2018, according to the Washington Post, Joe Biden “became obsessed” with “How Democracies Die” and started carrying it around with him wherever he went.) The downside is that many people—including those who are aware of the book but haven’t quite got around to reading it—may hear a game-of-telephone version of the argument, not the argument itself.

  • American Oversight ☛ 100 Days of Obstruction, Secrecy, and Lawlessness: American Oversight Holds Trump Administration Accountable on All Fronts - American Oversight

    “At every turn, the president has twisted the power of government to serve his own personal and political interests while simultaneously dismantling critical safeguards that protect the public’s rights and freedoms,” said American Oversight interim Executive Director Chioma Chukwu. “Over the past 100 days, we have left no stone unturned. We will continue shining a light on every instance of the administration’s obstruction, secrecy, and lawlessness. Our mission is simple: advance truth, accountability, and democracy by ensuring adherence to laws that protect the public’s right to government information. We will intervene and stop any attempt by the administration to hide its actions from the American people.”

    Below are key highlights of American Oversight’s extensive record of ensuring the transparency and accountability the public deserves: [...]

  • The Nation ☛ The First 100 Days of Self-Dealing Trump’s Thugocracy

    I would need a Bible-sized volume to list every despicable, unconstitutional, unlawful act this gangster government has carried out over the past three months, and a whole section of a library to catalog all the atrocities they are likely to attempt over the coming three years and nine months.

    One day, there will likely be entire museums dedicated to the horrors they unleashed, both stateside and globally, on the most disadvantaged among us. But, until such a day arrives, I offer some highlights, first of the corruption, then the cruelty.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk's DOGE Got Access to Network of Nuclear Secrets

    Two young members of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency were granted the ability to access networks holding highly classified information about the United States' nuclear weapon stockpile for two weeks.

  • Le Monde ☛ Under Donald Trump, US democracy is at risk of an imperial presidency

    In his quest for absolute control, the Republican president, who has been back in the White House for 100 days, has strived to annihilate all checks and balances, challenging the American institutional equilibrium.

  • The Local SE ☛ Sweden to lead Europol task force on criminal recruitment of children

    European police body Europol announced on Tuesday it was setting up a multinational taskforce led by Sweden, which will tackle the rising problem of criminal gangs [sic] recruiting children to commit violence crimes, including murder.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Swedish Police Say 3 People Are Dead After a Shooting in Uppsala

    Sweden has grappled with gang [sic] violence for years, with frequent shootings and bombings.

  • Le Monde ☛ Cyberattacks: France officially attributes hacking to Russia for the first time

    "The Russian military intelligence service (GRU) has, for several years, been deploying a cyberoffensive modus operandi, called APT28, against France," wrote Jean-Noël Barrot, the French foreign minister, in a message on X. "It has targeted some 10 French entities since 2021."

  • The Verge ☛ France accuses Russia of engineering years of high-profile cyberattacks

    This is the first time France has publicly attributed a cyber attack to a foreign government’s intelligence service, according to Le Monde. The diplomatic environment has shifted profoundly, however: Vladimir Putin refuses to end his years-long invasion of Ukraine without getting to keep the territory he’s seized – an untenable position for both Ukraine and the EU, which views Russian territorial gains as a threat to the EU’s geopolitical integrity. Russian cyberattacks pose an additional threat, both to their national security apparatus and election integrity.

  • Mike Brock ☛ What Happens When No One Enforces the Law - by Mike Brock

    What we're witnessing isn't bureaucratic reshuffling. It is the methodical dismantling of voting rights enforcement from within, a strategic effort to neutralize one of democracy's most critical safeguards. This is not governance. This is sabotage.

    According to The Guardian's reporting, Trump appointees led by Harmeet Dhillon have removed all seven managers who oversee the voting section's 30 attorneys, reassigned these career civil servants to a little-known office handling employee complaints, ordered career attorneys to dismiss every active case without discussion, abandoned ongoing Voting Rights Act litigation in Pennsylvania and Georgia, and issued new “mission statements” that pivot away from protecting marginalized groups toward advancing Trump-aligned priorities.

  • YLE ☛ Finland plans to require 3-year residency to receive child home care benefits

    The arrangement has been called the 'Norwegian model'. However, in Norway, the minimum residency requirement to receive such benefits is five years.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ What If It Is Fascism?

    Discussions of whether Trumpism is fascist often lose sight of the political stakes of the issue. But like Italian and German fascism, MAGA reflects a political system failing to address capitalist crisis.

  • New York Times ☛ Finnish Leader Warns Russia: ‘You Don’t Play With President Trump’

    But Mr. Stubb’s country understands the peril of peace negotiations for Ukraine perhaps better than any other. After wars with the Soviet Union in the 1940s, Finland gave up land to Moscow, agreed to neutrality and accepted limits on its military, remaining under the Kremlin’s thumb to some degree for decades.

    Mr. Stubb doesn’t want Ukraine to suffer the same fate.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ When a Historian Saw This Haunting Photograph of a Nameless Native Girl, She Decided She Had to Identify Her

    In 1868, Sophie Mousseau was photographed at Fort Laramie alongside six white Army officers. But her identity—and her life story—remained unknown for more than a century

• Environment

  • Truthdig ☛ Trump Just Fast-Tracked Deep-Sea Mining

    The order aims to jump-start the industry that has been spearheaded by small Pacific nations like Nauru seeking economic growth, but has been facing growing pushback from Indigenous advocates who fear the lasting consequences of mining the deep sea.

    “This extraction has no thought in mind about caring for resources,” said Solomon Kahoʻohalahala, who is Native Hawaiian and has been a vocal critic of the potential seabed industry at the United Nations. On April 24, he read the executive order while attending the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City and said he was struck by the language emphasizing U.S. dominance that echoed similar language in another executive order issued last week opening up Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument to commercial fishing.

  • RFA ☛ Remote island’s brain-damaged seabirds show far-reaching impact of plastic pollution – Radio Free Asia

    Every year, dead birds wash up on the beaches of Lord Howe Island, sometimes in their hundreds, with what researchers say are severe symptoms of swallowing large amounts of plastic – emaciation, poorly developed feathers and deformities.

  • The Register UK ☛ Amazon’s first 27 Kuiper broadband sats make it into orbit

    There’s no word yet on whether the satellites are working – as is usual – and Amazon has not said when it will start to offer services, or the price it will charge.

    Some known facts about Kuiper include: [...]

  • The Verge ☛ Starlink’s got company — and Earth’s orbit is getting crowded

    On the evening of April 28th, Amazon embarked on its latest venture to rival SpaceX Starlink: the first launch of its Project Kuiper satellites. With 27 satellites now in orbit around the Earth, Amazon joins a growing number of companies working to put more than 1,000 satellites each into space to create their own mega constellation. With all of these objects in orbit, the dangers of overcrowding are increasing, and if any of these objects were to collide, the results could be disastrous.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ As Southeast Asian imports face hefty tariffs, a Vietnamese solar manufacturer opens up shop in the U.S.

      The opening completes Phase 1 of the factory, which enables an annual PV module output capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW). Phase 2 is scheduled to begin operation in H2 2026 and will include an additional $100-million investment in another approximately 600,000 square feet for an annual capacity of 2 GW of PV cell manufacturing.

    • The Register UK ☛ RSA cofounder regrets cryptocurrency was invented

      Adi Shamir, the S in the RSA algorithm and a cofounder of RSA Security, went off on cryptocurrency, saying its early promise has been wasted. While he said Satoshi Nakamoto's paper [PDF] on Bitcoin and its blockchain was "very lofty," its promise of becoming a decentralized way to exchange money digitally without government interference, or reliance on financial institutions, hasn't come through, in Shamir's opinion.

    • Security Week ☛ China's Secret Weapon? How EV Batteries Could be Weaponized to Disrupt America

      CATL is the world’s largest battery manufacturer. For example, it has almost 40% of the world’s electric vehicle (EV) market, including Tesla (those manufactured in China and exported from China), BMW, VW, Toyota, Hyundai, and Ford.

      In January 2025, the Pentagon added CATL to its list of Chinese Military Companies with alleged ties to the Chinese military (the 1260H list). How can batteries be a threat to national security?

    • Zimbabwe ☛ The Battery Revolution Is Here (But Only If You're Buying Chinese), 8000mAh Is Here

      That high density allows manufacturers to either use a higher capacity battery in the same size phones as before, or release much thinner phones with the same capacity as we’re used to.

      Chinese manufacturers chose the former, for the most part, and are running with it.

    • International Business Times ☛ What Caused the Massive Spain Power Outage? Portugal Also In The Dark - Is Power Back?

      A sudden, widespread blackout plunged most of Spain and Portugal into darkness, disrupting everyday life and causing chaos across the region. After hours of uncertainty, power is gradually returning, but questions about the cause remain unanswered.

    • Wired ☛ The Agonizing Task of Turning Europe’s Power Back On

      Experts believe that getting the grid back up and running in both countries could take between a few hours to several days, depending on the area. While the grid is powering back up, emergency services will likely be prioritized over things like stable [Internet] connection, they say.

    • PC World ☛ Bitcoin mining is no longer profitable

      This is a complicated story, but the basic equation is that it now costs more in electricity to “mine” a single Bitcoin than that Bitcoin is currently worth—by a significant margin. Due to the nature of the Bitcoin protocol, which started the better part of two decades ago, it was inevitable that we’d reach this point eventually. The pool of minable Bitcoins shrinks as more are mined, and as that happens, the cryptographic work needed to “find” new ones becomes increasingly harder.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Spain, Portugal say power almost entirely back after outage

      Large parts of Spain and Portugal, including their capitals Madrid and Lisbon, were hit by power outages on Monday

    • 404 Media ☛ NFTs That Cost Millions Replaced With Error Message After Project Downgraded to Free Cloudflare Plan

      On Friday, thousands of NFTs that had once sold collectively for millions of dollars vanished from the [Internet] and were replaced with the phrase “This content has been restricted. Using Cloudflare’s basic service in this manner is a violation of the Terms of Service.” The pictures eventually returned but their brief loss, as a result of one of the services that served the NFTs being migrated to a free account, is a reminder of the ephemeral nature of digital goods as well as the craze for [cryptocurrency]-backed pictures that dominated the internet for a few years.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Nebraska Examiner ☛ New cameras provide sharper bird's-eye view of Capitol peregrine falcons

      Newer, sharper-detail video cameras were recently installed by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, which has operated livestream video of peregrine falcon nests from the 18th floor of the State Capitol for two decades.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Palo Alto Networks buys Protect AI for reported $500M+, debuts new cybersecurity tools

    Palo Alto Networks Inc. is expanding its product portfolio with a new platform for protecting artificial intelligence models and an upgraded version of its security-optimized browser.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ House passes legislation to criminalize nonconsensual deepfakes

    The Take It Down Act sailed through the chamber on a vote of 402-2, marking one of the first major pieces of legislation passed by Congress to address AI-generated deepfakes.

  • Google ☛ Hello 0-Days, My Old Friend: A 2024 Zero-Day Exploitation Analysis | Google Cloud Blog

    Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) tracked 75 zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild in 2024, a decrease from the number we identified in 2023 (98 vulnerabilities), but still an increase from 2022 (63 vulnerabilities). We divided the reviewed vulnerabilities into two main categories: end-user platforms and products (e.g., mobile devices, operating systems, and browsers) and enterprise-focused technologies, such as security software and appliances.

  • Om Malik ☛ No Gruber, this is why Facebook renamed itself

    Some of us are old enough to remember that the reason Mark renamed the company is because the Facebook brand was becoming toxic, and associated with misinformation and global-scale crap. It was viewed as a tired, last-generation company. Meta allowed the company to rebrand itself as something amazing and fresh.

  • The Verge ☛ Meta is laying off employees in Reality Labs

    Meta has laid off an unspecified number of employees in its Reality Labs division, a company spokesperson confirmed.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Mike Lee and Jim Jordan want to kill the law that bans companies from cheating you

    More than a century ago, Congress passed the FTCA, and they made a point of including a clause that granted the new independent agency broad authority to investigate and prohibit "unfair and deceptive methods of competition." As Matt Stoller writes, over the ensuing 100 years, the FTC has used Section 5 to go after "illegal commissions, firms spying on rivals, sabotage, messing around with patents or regulations."

    But starting with the Reagan era, both Republican and Democratic presidents have appointed FTC chairs who were loathe to invoke FTCA 5, shying away from the power and duty Congress had given them. This all changed with Biden's FTC chair Lina Khan, who revived the law, using it to punish companies for invading your privacy, blocking repair, locking workers in with noncompete clauses, and more: [...]

  • India Times ☛ Google parent Alphabet kicks off sale of debut euro bonds

    Alphabet Inc. is set to raise at least €2.5 billion through a debut euro bond sale, following a $5 billion debt sale in the US. The offering includes a five-part deal with maturities ranging from four to 29 years. Proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes, including repaying debt, potentially lowering capital costs and supporting future investments.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ China’s ban on rare earth elements export: Strategic move with global implications

    Rare earth elements (REEs), including neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium, are indispensable in modern technology. They are used in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, smartphones, semiconductors, and critical military systems such as guided missiles and radar. Although not particularly rare in terms of geological abundance, the refining and processing of these metals are highly complex and environmentally damaging—factors that have dissuaded many countries from developing domestic capabilities.

  • USMC ☛ Poll shows young vets unhappy with Signal leak, federal program cuts

    More than 1,400 veterans were surveyed in the report, the vast majority of whom (89%) served in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria during their time in the ranks. More than half described themselves as politically independent, with the remainder split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats.

    But study authors found the negative responses in the survey cut across political lines.

  • The Register UK ☛ Infosec pros rally against Trump's attack on Chris Krebs

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and numerous infosec leaders are lobbying US President Donald Trump to drop his enduring investigation into Chris Krebs, claiming that targeting the former CISA boss amounts to bullying.

    The open letter, co-signed by the industry bigwigs, compares the campaign against Krebs and, by extension, his most recent employer, cybersec biz SentinelOne, to Trump's ongoing grudge against law firms associated with critics of the president.

  • EFF ☛ EFF Leads Prominent Security Experts in Urging Trump Administration to Leave Chris Krebs Alone

    The Trump Administration must cease its politically motivated investigation of former U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and dozens of prominent cybersecurity and election security experts urged in an open letter.

    The letter – signed by preeminent names from academia, civil society, and the private sector – notes that security researchers play a vital role in protecting our democracy, securing our elections, and building, testing, and safeguarding government infrastructure.

  • The Verge ☛ Whatever happened to the Kids Online Safety Act?

    Fears that KOSA could infringe on free expression have led to several rewrites, as well as a tiny crew of Senate dissenters: Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Mike Lee (R-UT). House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) justified slow-rolling the popular bill because he said he was extra cautious about crafting the right language to protect free speech. The bill’s critics on the left argue its demand to keep harmful content away from kids could be used by Republican regulators to make social networks ban things like LGBTQ content. (The Trump administration has made eliminating legal recognition and medical resources for trans people a major priority, bolstering these fears.) They also fear platforms might take down any content that seems potentially controversial, even if it likely wouldn’t violate KOSA, to minimize their liability.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Short-Circuiting of the American Mind

    For decades, American politics have relied on the same logic that polygraph machines do: that liars will feel some level of shame when they tell their lies, and that the shame will manifest—the quickened heartbeat, the pang of guilt—in the body. But the body politic is cheating the test with alarming ease. Some Americans believe the lies. Others refuse to. Some Americans recognize the lies’ falsity but have decided that some things—their own tribe, their vision for the country—are simply more important than truth. Regardless, the lies remain, unchecked by the old machinery. The polygraph is a measure of conscience. So, in its way, is democracy.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Garry Kasparov ☛ America’s Information War Self-Own

      In reality, Rubio’s act is more accurately viewed as yet another step in a broader campaign to dismantle America’s capacity to detect and respond to foreign influence operations.

    • The Register UK ☛ Swiss boffins admit having AI write Reddit posts for study

      The researchers wanted to know if content generated by large language models could change readers’ minds, so “engaged in discussions within r/changemyview using semi-automated, AI-powered accounts.”

    • 404 Media ☛ Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit Users

      A team of researchers who say they are from the University of Zurich ran an “unauthorized,” large-scale experiment in which they secretly deployed AI-powered bots into a popular debate subreddit called r/changemyview in an attempt to research whether AI could be used to change people’s minds about contentious topics.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Techdirt ☛ FTC’s ‘Tech Censorship’ Investigation Is Censoring Comments About ‘Censorship’

    But Ferguson seems committed to the bit, effectively making it clear that all platforms are expected to promote pro-Trump content… or else.

    As the comment period continues through May 21st, Daphne Keller spotted something remarkable: The FTC itself is actively censoring submissions about censorship. And yes, this time “censoring” is the right word – it’s the government doing it.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Cybersecurity experts issue response to Trump order targeting Chris Krebs, SentinelOne

    “By placing Krebs and SentinelOne in the crosshairs,” the document states, “the President is signaling that cybersecurity professionals whose findings do not align with his narrative risk having their businesses and livelihoods subjected to spurious and retaliatory targeting.”

    The letter also draws parallels with prior instances where the Trump administration directed similar measures at private entities, including law firms, characterizing this as part of a pattern of punitive action against dissenting professionals.

  • CNN ☛ Amazon tariff charge: Trump called Jeff Bezos after learning company considered breaking out added cost

    Trump called Bezos to complain about reports that Amazon was considering displaying the cost of US tariffs next to prices for certain products on the company’s website, two senior White House officials told CNN. Trump later said it was a “good call.”

  • The Register UK ☛ Trump admin freaks out over Amazon tariff exposure report

    In the end, it seems as if the original report, that Amazon was going to clearly display tariff costs for online shoppers, was overstating the issue anyway - at least if you believe Amazon.

  • 404 Media ☛ Trump Demands Amazon Deny the Reality of What His Tariffs Are Doing to Prices

    Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent held a press conference this morning on “Unleashing Economic Greatness.” The pair took questions from the crowd of reporters. Someone asked about the news, out of Punchbowl, that Amazon would soon add a line item at checkout that detailed the “import costs” of purchased goods. If Amazon did this it would join other retailers like Temu that are letting customers know why the cost of buying products from it has more than doubled in the past few weeks.

  • India Times ☛ Trump called Bezos to complain about Amazon report

    US President Donald Trump called Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos on Tuesday morning to complain about a report the company planned to display prices that show the impact of tariffs, according to multiple media outlets.

  • RFA ☛ Chinese man who displayed pro-democracy banners in detention: sources

    Chinese authorities have detained a young man for unfurling pro-democracy banners this month at an overpass in Chengdu in southwest China – a rare form of public protest that is punishable as a criminal offence, two sources told Radio Free Asia

  • LibreNews ☛ Fosstodon's drama reveals a much deeper Mastodon problem

    Last week, I started receiving private messages from users warning me that my Mastodon instance, Fosstodon, had a fascist moderator. Thus, they were deciding to de-federate it and suggested I move elsewhere. I decided to wait a few days to see how this would play out.

    It turns out that Fosstodon will probably close down. Both of the main owners of the instance have communicated that they are fed up with managing it and are stepping down. The crowd that was loudly asking to "cancel" Fosstodon has won, but were they right?

  • Andre Franca ☛ Thoughts on Fosstodon Moderation Controversy

    In recent days, Fosstodon (a Mastodon instance) has become an example of how even well-intentioned communities can go sideways when communication breaks down and everyone starts shouting past each other. I’ve been following the drama with a mix of frustration and disappointment.

  • Bryce Wray ☛ Thoughts on two topics

    This originally was going to be about just one thing, namely the overarching subject of two recent and significant blog posts by Open Web Advocacy (OWA). However, I needed to add a second “thing” when some unexpected-to-me Fediverse drama occurred even before I could actually start writing this.

  • Meduza ☛ Mobile Internet outage reported in Russia's Volgograd ahead of visit by Putin and Lukashenko

    Residents of the southern Russian city of Volgograd have reported ongoing mobile Internet disruptions coinciding with a business forum attended by Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko.

  • Techdirt ☛ FCC Commissioner Gomez Blasts Brendan Carr’s ‘Campaign Of Censorship’

    This kind of sheepishness is pretty standard for political careerists who don’t want to upset their chances at future political office or a comfy revolving door think tank gig. They do their best not to rock the boat and express actual opinion lest it offend industry. But in the age of deadly authoritarianism, silence is a fatal form of cowardice and complicity.

    That’s why current Dem Commissioner Anna Gomez has been refreshing. She’s had no problem calling out Brendan Carr for his dangerous abuse of FCC authority. Carr’s been abusing office power to illegally bully companies for not being sexist and racist enough, or trampling the First Amendment by threatening media companies that do accurate journalism critical of Trump policy.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Congress passes Take It Down Act to combat deepfakes

    “The Senate just passed the Take It Down Act,” Trump said in March. “Once it passes the House, I look forward to signing that bill into law.” He added, “And I’m going to use that bill for myself too if you don’t mind because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody.”

    The vote went 409-2 today, with two no votes from Republicans. This overwhelming response now means that social media companies and other websites will have 48 hours to remove content when requested to by a member of the public or a public figure. This will include images or videos that have been created or enhanced by artificial intelligence.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Meduza ☛ Body of Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity repatriated with organs removed and other signs of torture

    “Removing the larynx during an autopsy is not standard practice,” the expert explained. “The larynx can be strong evidence of strangulation. When a person is strangled, the hyoid bone is often fractured. You can also find bleeding in the eye tissue and signs of oxygen deprivation in the brain.”

    Ukrainian war crimes investigator Yuriy Belousov said other signs of torture were found on Roshchyna’s body, including abrasions and bruises, a broken rib, neck injuries, and possible burn marks from electric shocks to her feet. The exact cause of death has not been determined.

  • JURIST ☛ Trinidad and Tobago politicians urged to take action on press freedom ahead of 2025 elections

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Thursday urged political candidates in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) to reaffirm their commitment to press freedom ahead of the upcoming elections, following a sharp drop in the country’s security ranking on the World Press Freedom Index. Rising crime and the declaration of a state of emergency caused the country’s security score to fall from 6th to 24th by 2024.

  • Press Gazette ☛ UK news media rich list 2025: Business information chiefs top executive pay table

    The median pay rise among media executives making at least £400,000 was 2.2%, down from 3% last year.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Techdirt ☛ DOJ Deportation Memo Pretends The Fourth Amendment Doesn’t Exist

    Trump’s resurrection of a law no one thought the Land of the Free would ever use again is disturbing enough. What’s in the memo [PDF], dated March 14, 2025, is just as concerning. This memo was the instigator of long series of horrific events, as Nick Penzenstadler and Will Carless note in their report for USA Today.

  • Truthdig ☛ Texas Police Are Joining What Could Be a ‘Giant ICE Army’ - Truthdig

    The 287(g) task force program is being revived 13 years after the Obama administration terminated it amid controversies over racial profiling. The program allows local officers who’ve received federal training to “perform certain functions of an immigration officer,” as outlined in the agreement used by the Trump administration, including the power to: “interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or remain in the United States”; arrest without a warrant anyone the officer believes “is in the United States in violation of law and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained”; execute warrants for immigration violations; and prepare immigration charging documents.

    This form of ICE collaboration with local authorities is “really aggressive,” said Kristin Etter, director of policy and legal services at the Texas Immigration Law Council. “It’s literally officers in the streets stopping, detaining, questioning, interrogating, arresting — the task force model is a force multiplier of federal immigration agencies.”

  • The Register UK ☛ Duolingo ditches more contractors in 'AI-first' refocus

    This isn't the first time the Pittsburgh-based biz has begun cutting contractors in favor of AI, having started shedding content creation roles last year — a move von Ahn referenced in his latest letter.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Amnesty: Human rights at risk worldwide

    According to the UK-based human rights organization Amnesty International, we are at a "critical juncture" when it comes to universal human rights worldwide. Its report underlines religious, patriarchal and racist assaults on the system of human rights conventions, universal human rights, international humanitarian law, and international courts agreed upon by states after the crimes of the Nazis and World War II.

    "Unprecedented forces are hunting down the ideals of human rights for all, seeking to destroy an international system forged in the blood and grief of World War Two and itsHolocaust," writes Agnes Callamard, International Secretary General of Amnesty International (AI), in the foreword to her organization's annual report. Amnesty International assesses the human rights situation in a total of 150 countries every year.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ New tribal national park in North Dakota aims to preserve rugged and scenic landscape - lonestarlive.com

    The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation established Three Affiliated Tribes National Park with the purchase of 2,100 acres (850 hectares) of a former ranch adjacent to the Fort Berthold Reservation’s boundaries on the south side of the Little Missouri River.

    The area was in the tribe’s original treaty lands but a government allotment act later reduced the reservation’s size, said Mary Fredericks, director of the tribe’s Parks and Reserve Program. The reservation’s boundaries have expanded to include the park.

  • JURIST ☛ Rights group calls for regulation of 'killer robots' posing human rights threats

    Human Rights Watch outlines six primary human rights risks posed by killer robots. Amongst these risks, the greatest danger posed is to the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of life, which requires the use of force to be necessary to achieve a legitimate aim proportionately, as a last resort to protect human life.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ How Trump’s funding freeze for Indigenous food programs may violate treaty law

    The funding freeze from the USDA is sending shockwaves throughout the nation’s agriculture sector, but their effect on tribal food initiatives raises even larger questions about what the federal government’s commitments are to Indigenous nations. That commitment, known as the federal Indian trust responsibility, is a legally enforceable obligation by the federal government to protect Indigenous lands, assets, resources and rights. It is grounded in treaties made with Indigenous nations in exchange for the vast tracts of land that allowed America to expand westward.

  • Michigan News ☛ New tribal national park in North Dakota aims to preserve rugged and scenic landscape - mlive.com

    The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation established Three Affiliated Tribes National Park with the purchase of 2,100 acres (850 hectares) of a former ranch adjacent to the Fort Berthold Reservation’s boundaries on the south side of the Little Missouri River.

    The area was in the tribe’s original treaty lands but a government allotment act later reduced the reservation’s size, said Mary Fredericks, director of the tribe’s Parks and Reserve Program. The reservation’s boundaries have expanded to include the park.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • LWN ☛ LWN's Mastodon migration

    The LWN.net fediverse (Mastodon) feed has moved; we are now known as @LWN@lwn.net. The migration magic has shifted many of our followers over automatically but, if you follow that stream, you might want to make sure that you have shifted to the new source.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Spotify Dismantles 'SpotifyDL' Track Download Extension via DMCA Notice

    Spotify has come a long way since it openly appealed to music pirates in its early days. This week, the streaming giant targeted "SpotifyDL," a browser extension enabling users to download tracks, playlists and albums, by bypassing its protections. Following a DMCA notice filed with GitHub, Spotify successfully forced the developer to strip the tool's core functionality.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Court House News ☛ Google warns of data security risks if Chrome is sold off

  Further, the government has urged Mehta to break off Google Chrome and potentially Android while barring more multibillion-dollar default search engine deals with Apple and Mozilla, among others.

• Copyrights

  • Futurism ☛ There Are Hilarious New Allegations About Those "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" Anti-Piracy Ads

    The typeface was created in 1992 by Just van Rossum, the brother of the guy who invented the programming language Python, and earlier this month, investigative reporter Melissa Lewis observed that a free font called XBAND Rough appeared identical to it. After contacting van Rossum, Lewis confirmed that Xband Rough was an "illegal clone" of his creation — "it's just been around forever and is ubiquitous," she wrote.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Donald Trump Trims But Can't Shake Isaac Hayes Copyright Lawsuit

    In his underlying dismissal motion filed in January, Trump claimed the Hayes estate had failed to allege any infringing conduct that placed him directly on the hook. In the court’s new ruling issued Friday and obtained by Rolling Stone, U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash said that wasn’t the case.