Leftovers

• Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Did a Dutch Municipality Accidentally Throw Away a Warhol Print?

  An independent investigation commissioned by the municipality concluded that the artworks were likely discarded for one of several reasons, including confusion on who was responsible for them as well as a lack of procedures for dealing with the pieces during the renovation. The report was not conclusive, though, and the fate of the artwork may never be known. In their letter, the mayor and aldermen of Maashorst said, “It is not expected that the works of art will be found again.”

• Riccardo Mori ☛ Tech fog | Riccardo Mori

  – So you’re telling me that you’re going back to that feeling of ‘tech fatigue’ you often spoke about last year?

  – Nah, it’s different now. It’s not fatigue, or lack of enthusiasm. It’s becoming flat-out disappointment. Wariness. Distrust. And even beyond that, as we’ll see later if we touch on the subject again. I still remember a time when I felt ‘empowered’ (to use a buzzword) by tech because it felt like we were on the same side, wanting the same things. Today, the tech world, tech companies and entities… it’s like dealing with banks and taxes — necessary, virtually unavoidable elements.

• Dan Sinker ☛ Things Fall Apart: Punk Planet, Year 12

  2024 marks 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years. To commemorate that milestone, I am writing 13 posts over 13 months, each one about a single year of the magazine. A year of learning, a year of trying, a year of making something impossible possible.

• Annie Mueller ☛ Before the next beginning - annie's blog

  In the moment, you don’t know: is this coming or going? Ending or beginning? Dying or developing into something viable and vivid, something more alive than life itself?

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Systems of the dead stagnate

  Once you start to notice that your notes could use some extra organising and you want to get more out of them, look into what ideas are out there. Crucially, don't start from scratch or rebuild your entire system. Instead, pick one good individual idea at a time and adapt it to your system in a way that works with you.

• Evan Hahn ☛ Notes from April 2025

  A roundup of my notes from April. I’ve done this for the last few months: [...]

• Declan Chidlow ☛ Why Video Isn't My Publishing Preference

  I spend a lot of time writing. As you can see from this site and my output elsewhere on the web, text is my primary medium. While I believe video is a fantastic medium for entertainment and illustrating visual concepts, it’s not my format of choice. This post aims to explain the practical and philosophical reasons behind that choice.

  I’ll note that when I refer to video in this post, I’m generally referring to structured and formed video – the equivalent to any of my long-form writings.

• Archie FTP Search ☛ Search in Archie

• Science

  • Mark-Jason Dominus ☛ Proof by insufficient information

    Given the coordinates of the three vertices of a triangle, can we find the area? And the answer is yes. If by no other method, we can use the Pythagorean theorem to find the lengths of the edges, and then Heron's formula to compute the area from that.

    Now, given the coordinates of the four vertices of a quadrilateral, can we find the area? And the answer is, no, there is no method to do that, because there is not enough information: [...]

  • Noë Flatreaud ☛ About Anamorphic Cryptography

    I recently discovered the exelent work of Moti Young about Anamorphic cryptography.

    IRL, Anamorphosis is a concept where an image changes depending on the viewer's perspective or POV. Meaning that, in cryptography, we can create ciphertexts that reveal different messages depending on the recipients, even though they use the same encrypted data.

  • Dan MacKinlay ☛ q-exponential process — The Dan MacKinlay stable of variably-well-consider’d enterprises

  • Michael's and Christian's blog ☛ Model Diagnostics: Statistics vs Machine Learning

    In this post, we show how different use cases require different model diagnostics. In short, we compare (statistical) inference and prediction.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ A medical researcher is wrongly snagged by Trump's word police

    It’s impossible, Acharya said, to calculate the loss. It’s painful to even try. “All the things that might not be learned,” she mused wistfully. “All the potential gains out there” that may go unrealized.

    The termination notice UCSF received from the National Institutes of Health gave Acharya 30 days to appeal if she believed the decision to end her research was made in error. She did so.

• Career/Education

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Great Language Flattening

    In at least one crucial way, AI has already won its campaign for global dominance. An unbelievable volume of synthetic prose is published every moment of every day—heaping piles of machine-written news articles, text messages, emails, search results, customer-service chats, even scientific research.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Technologists welcome executive order on AI in schools but say more detail is needed • Michigan Advance

    A task force made up of members from various federal departments — like the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy and Labor, as well as the directors of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation and other federal agency representatives — will be developing the program over the next 120 days.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Alabama public school cellphone ban moves closer to Senate vote

    HB 166, sponsored by Rep. Leigh Hulsey, requires public school boards to adopt a policy banning cellphone use during instructional time. The Senate Education Policy Committee unanimously approved the legislation at its last meeting of the 2025 Legislative Session.

    “This is the companion bill for the Focus Act,” Chesteen said. “I know you’ve put about two years into this, so we look forward to getting it on the Senate floor and passing it into law.”

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Children's reading and writing develop better when they are trained in handwriting, study finds

    "As children write less and less by hand, we wanted to explore the impact of this on alphabetic and orthographic skills. In other words, we wanted to see whether the ability to learn letters and to assimilate and remember word structure develops differently through manual training or the use of keyboards. We concluded that the children who used their hands obtained the best results," explained researcher Joana Acha.

  • Wade Urry ☛ Being a new manager

    I've been managing a team, officially, coming up to a year now. Overall it's been a positive and energising experience, but as with every journey there are an array of challenges and hurdles along the way.

    Transitioning from being a member of the team for 7 years to managing that same team has been an emotional and confidence testing challenge. Over those 7 years friendships have formed, trust has been built, and now those relationships are being tested. Being a friend and manager at the same time is a difficult balance, trying to avoid playing favourites and treating the team fairly. It's difficult to accept but those friendships will and have changed.

  • Stephen Kell ☛ Ross remembered

    [It's over a year since we lost Ross Anderson. Last month I very much appreciated the RossFest event organised in his memory. So it's about time I posted the following reminiscences, most of which I wrote pretty soon after he died.]

    Although Ross lectured me when I was an undergraduate, and did so very memorably, our first interactions came when I'd joined the Lab. We would both frequent the “fishbowl” common room to read the newspapers there. This was probably 2006 or 2007. I was a green young thing. I remember the story of the day being something about investment, or lack thereof, in the railways. “To what extent is it a political decision?” I asked, thinking that economic rationality might explain things. “Oh, completely.”.

    Those two words were an education, Ross-style. Never assume that rationality or cold economics underlie any given state of affairs. The world is a political place.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Republicans want to force students to pay off scam college loans

    Every GOP legislator and especially Congressional committee chairs are scrambling to find cuts that can offset Trump's plans to make his 2017 tax cuts permanent and then add more cuts on top of that. The failure of Doge to make any appreciable savings has left Trump high and dry, with unfunded tax cuts that will flunk even the most compliant, ass-kissing Congressional Budget Office analysis: [...]

  • The Atlantic ☛ The End of the Enlightenment?

    Americans must insist on academic freedom, or risk losing what makes our nation great.

  • Security Week ☛ RSA Conference 2025 Announcement Summary (Day 2) 

    To help cut through the clutter, the SecurityWeek team is publishing a daily digest summarizing some of the announcements made by vendors. Here is a roundup of the most important product and service announcements made on the second day of the event.

    The announcements from the first day have also been summarized and we have also made a roundup covering the weeks leading up to the event (part 1, part 2, part 3).

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Digital Camera World ☛ I really think everyone should have two phones: here's why, and how you can afford it | Digital Camera World

    Photographers are especially vulnerable: your creative work demands focus and presence, but your phone keeps pulling you away from the moment. And believe me, I've been there. Standing in gorgeous, golden-hour light, surrounded by potential shots, only to find myself instinctively breaking off to check an unwanted notification. Sound familiar?

    That's why I've embraced a two-phone solution that has genuinely changed my life and creative work. Here's why I think you should consider it too.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Doctors personally liable if mandatory NHS AI transcriber gets it wrong

    So what happens if the AI gets it wrong? NHS England advises doctors to get a lawyer, son, before they use these tools the Health Department is ordering them to use:

    "liability for any claims associated with the use of AI-enabled products in NHS settings remains complex and largely uncharted, with limited case law to provide clarity. As such, engage your legal teams before procuring ambient scribing and AVT products."

    Doctors are not happy

  • The Conversation ☛ As a neuroscientist, I’ve seen the impact of harsh words on children’s brains. We need to prevent childhood verbal abuse

    Research has shown that when words are routinely used by the adults in their lives to humiliate, shame or control children, they can alter the developing brain. A 2023 study of over 20,500 UK adults found that one in five reported having been verbally abused as children.

    Definitions of verbal abuse vary, but it is generally characterised by a sustained pattern of behaviour where criticism, threats or rejection of the child leads them to feel routinely belittled, blamed, threatened, frightened or ridiculed. This is not the same as occasionally losing your temper with your children and saying something hurtful in the heat of the moment.

  • 404 Media ☛ Instagram's AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists

    When pushed for credentials, Instagram's user-made AI Studio bots will make up license numbers, practices, and education to try to convince you it's qualified to help with your mental health.

  • Lee Peterson ☛ Keeping social media to the desktop

    With this in mind I’m removing them from my phone and planning to only check a few times a week via my Mac.

  • The soft eugenics of MAHA: RFK Jr. on autism and Dr. Oz on your patriotic duty to be healthy

    I hadn’t intended to write about the longtime antivax activist who is, tragically, now the Secretary of Health and Human Services for the US, namely Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Truth be told, I’d love to forget about RFK Jr. for a while, as I’m getting a bit of RFK Jr. fatigue (and, I suspect, so are you). I’d love nothing more than to be able to do a post or two about standard-issue quackery of the variety that I used to write about routinely back in the day. On the other hand, I can’t ignore what’s happening every day around me. The extinction-level threat to US federal biomedical and public health policy that I predicted is here, and each week seems to bring new evidence that, if anything, my first prediction five months ago when RFK Jr. first suspended his independent Presidential campaign and bent the knee to Donald Trump in return for a prominent role in his administration on health was insufficiently pessimistic.

  • The soft eugenics of MAHA: Measles and RFK Jr.

    The current ongoing measles outbreak in west Texas, which is the largest, and other outbreaks in other states are clearly associated with low vaccine uptake, and two children and one adult have died of measles thus far. I hate to have to repeat this again, but measles is one of the most transmissible respiratory viruses, and maintaining herd immunity/community immunity requires a high level of vaccine uptake in a population, at least 90-95%. As of early April, the US had seen twice as many measles cases as it did in all of 2024, and the number continues to climb, with three fatalities from measles, two children and one adult…so far. Elsewhere, there have been smaller outbreaks in New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, Ohio, and New Jersey.

• Proprietary

  • Vox ☛ When brain implants and neurotech get abandoned

    Case Western’s clinical trial initially only promised a temporary cure. But a company, Neuro Control, had already signed on to commercialize the device, so French was under the impression that she was on the road to keep the device long-term. So in 2001, when French got the news that the company was struggling, she was distraught, unsure what would happen next. Would she be paralyzed all over again, with electrodes abandoned inside her body?

  • Rich Trouton ☛ Using sysdiagnose logarchive files to provide access to system logging

    When it comes to figuring out what is happening on an Apple device, creating a sysdiagnose file is usually the way to go. Sysdiagnose files are the final outcome of your Apple device running almost every performance and problem tracing tool available, then taking the resulting logs and bundling them all together into one compressed file. However, because these logs are intended for use and analysis by Apple’s engineers, they can almost overwhelm with information.

  • Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Reducing spend with Apple

    I'll likely never escape Apple's walled garden entirely — my entire family uses Apple devices and — at a minimum — not being on iMessage is a non-starter. But given Tim Cook's recent altogether shameful support of the current US administration by way of donation and dearth of public opposition, I can at least reduce what I spend with them.

  • The Business Journals ☛ Microsoft ends contract with Dallas-based transit provider, triggering nationwide layoffs [Ed: A form of Microsoft layoffs]

    Microsoft ended its contract with MV Transportation, affecting Microsoft shuttle employees.

  • 4Square Media Pty Ltd ☛ EA Cancels Titanfall Game and Cuts Hundreds of Jobs

    American video game company Electronic Arts (EA) has confirmed the layoff of hundreds of employees and the cancellation of a new Titanfall game.

    In a statement released Tuesday, EA revealed it was making what it called “targeted team adjustments” in an effort to realign its resources toward more profitable franchises.

    According to Bloomberg, between 300 and 400 employees have been laid off across the company, including around 100 staff at Respawn Entertainment – the studio behind Apex Legends and the Star Wars Jedi series.

  • EA Layoffs 2025: Electronic Arts Lays Off Around 300 Employees, Including Roughly 100 Job Cuts at Respawn Entertainment

    Electronic Arts (EA) is reportedly laying off 300 to 400 employees, including around 100 at Respawn Entertainment, and has canceled a Titanfall game in development.

  • Bleeping Computer ☛ Microsoft: Windows 11 24H2 updates fail with 0x80240069 errors

    Introduced as Software Update Services (SUS) almost two decades ago, WSUS helps IT admins manage (i.e., defer, approve, and schedule) updates for Microsoft products across large enterprise networks from a single server instead of relying on endpoints to update from Microsoft's servers.

  • Dolphin Publications B V ☛ Microsoft acknowledges problem with Windows 11 24H2 update

    Windows 11 version 24H2 has been available for almost eight months now. However, Microsoft is still blocking its rollout on certain systems due to compatibility issues. Last month, for example, the company announced a new block under protection number 56318982.

  • Ars Technica ☛ Windows RDP lets you log in using revoked passwords. Microsoft is OK with that.

    From the department of head scratches comes this counterintuitive news: Microsoft says it has no plans to change a remote login protocol in Windows that allows people to log in to machines using passwords that have been revoked.

    Password changes are among the first steps people should take in the event that a password has been leaked or an account has been compromised. People expect that once they've taken this step, none of the devices that relied on the password can be accessed.

  • Forbes ☛ Microsoft Confirms $1.50 Windows Security Update Hotpatch Fee Starts July 1

    When it comes to security updates, those that fix vulnerabilities in an operating system used by billions are high on the mandatory agenda. Which is why it has not been the greatest month for Microsoft, what with the online furor after a recent Windows security patch added a mysterious folder, without any explanation. Social media “experts” advised users to delete it, only for Microsoft to issue an advisory warning that would leave them open to attack. That update, and the installation of the inetpub folder, has now been shown to actually open the path to a different Windows hack attack. Now the whole Windows security update business has another contentious issue to deal with: charging a monthly subscription to receive no-reboot security “hotpatch” updates.

  • PC Gamer ☛ Apex Legends writer gets laid off 24 hours after the character she wrote is revealed, because that's what the games industry in 2025 looks like

    EA has laid off hundreds of employees—reportedly around 300 to 400—across its studios, including around 100 at Respawn Entertainment, developers of Titanfall and Apex Legends. Among the many developers left scrambling in an industry where this has become shockingly routine, one in particular leapt out.

  • The Register UK ☛ BTW Windows Subsystem for Linux officially uses Arch now [Ed: Pushing Windows, not Linux]

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • ANF News ☛ Five people sentenced to prison over Kurdish songs sung during a demonstration in Dersim

      The lawyers stated that the political party event was made the subject of the charges and requested their clients' acquittal. The lawyers reported that the translations of the songs “Berxwedan xweş doz e” and “Herne pêş,” which were the subject of the charges, were mistranslated by the security forces using Google Translate.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ ChatGPT vs. students: Study reveals who writes better

      AI-generated essays don't yet live up to the efforts of real students, according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UK).

      A new study published in Written Communication compared the work of 145 real students with essays generated by ChatGPT. The paper is titled "Does ChatGPT write like a student? Engagement markers in argumentative essays."

    • Wired ☛ AI Code Hallucinations Increase the Risk of ‘Package Confusion’ Attacks

      The study, which used 16 of the most widely used large language models to generate 576,000 code samples, found that 440,000 of the package dependencies they contained were “hallucinated,” meaning they were nonexistent. Open source models hallucinated the most, with 21 percent of the dependencies linking to nonexistent libraries. A dependency is an essential code component that a separate piece of code requires to work properly. Dependencies save developers the hassle of rewriting code and are an essential part of the modern software supply chain.

    • UNIXdigest ☛ Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code is written by AI - no surprise there

      This might not be correct and I don't know what those 20% to 30% covers exactly, but this would certainly explain Windows 11.

      If you work at Microsoft or somewhere else and you're also having AI write your code, how can something as dumb as AI possibly help you with your code? What exactly is your job?

    • Federal News Network ☛ The AI Mullet: SLMs as business in front, LLMs as party in back

      The rapid advancements in AI have transformed how organizations, including those in the public sector, approach problem-solving, decision-making and service delivery. While large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 have garnered significant attention for their broad capabilities, small language models (SLMs) are the real workhorses — efficient, secure and cost-effective.

      Together, they form a comprehensive AI solution: SLMs handle structured, mission-critical tasks in the front, while LLMs bring the power and flexibility to tackle broad, complex challenges in the back.

    • Ibrahim Diallo ☛ I use Zip Bombs to Protect my Server

      Bots that crawl the web also support this feature. Especially since their job is to ingest data from all over the web, they maximize their bandwidth by using compression. And we can take full advantage of this feature.

      On this blog, I often get bots that scan for security vulnerabilities, which I ignore for the most part. But when I detect that they are either trying to inject malicious attacks, or are probing for a response, I return a 200 OK response, and serve them a gzip response. I vary from a 1MB to 10MB file which they are happy to ingest. For the most part, when they do, I never hear from them again. Why? Well, that's because they crash right after ingesting the file.

    • The Register UK ☛ 30 percent of some Microsoft code now written by AI

      A few minutes into their chat Zuck asked Nadella “Do you have a sense of how much of the code, like what percent of the code that's being written inside Microsoft at this point is written by AI as opposed to by the engineers?”

      Nadella responded by saying Microsoft tracks accept rates, which he said are “sort of whatever 30-40 percent it's going up monotonically.”

    • International Business Times ☛ Zuckerberg Stunned After Microsoft CEO Admits AI Is Already Writing 30% Of The Company's Code

      By 'software,' Nadella wasn't being all mysterious - he was talking about AI systems basically doing what human programmers have been paid obscene amounts to do for decades. The focus was apparently on the firm's storage systems, but bloody hell, that's still a massive chunk of Microsoft's inner workings essentially written by glorified calculators.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Satya Nadella says AI is now writing 30% of Microsoft's code but real change is still many years away

      According to Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Satya Nadella, as much as 30% of all of the code inside the company’s software repositories was “written by software” powered by AI.

    • Simon Safar ☛ Are LLMs Partial Lookup Tables?

      On one end, there is a pure lookup table. In goes the entire context of the conversation; there is one lookup, of "what do we do if we are at this precise point in the conversation", out goes the one, deterministic, pre-written answer... which answer, nevertheless, still makes sense, since someone who understands things took the time to write down a response for every. single. one. of the inputs that could ever happen.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft's CEO reveals that AI writes up to 30% of its code — some projects may have all of its code written by AI

      Such developments naturally lead to job displacement concerns for new programmers, particularly in today's competitive job market. That said, it would be unwise for a software developer to ignore AI or become overly dependent on it. A balanced approach, with a grasp on fundamentals, knowing how to leverage AI as a tool, and strong critical thinking skills, appears to be the best way forward. Though the future is hard to predict, this percentage will probably change.

    • Simon Willison ☛ Sycophancy in GPT-4o: What happened and what we’re doing about it

      What's more notable than the content itself is the fact that this exists on the OpenAI news site at all. This bug in ChatGPT's personality was a big story - I've heard from several journalists already who were looking to write about the problem.

    • [Repeat] Bruce Schneier ☛ Applying Security Engineering to Prompt Injection Security

      This seems like an important advance in LLM security against prompt injection: [...]

    • Sean Goedecke ☛ Sycophancy is the first LLM "dark pattern"

      Dark patterns are user interfaces that are designed to trick users into doing things they’d prefer not to do. One classic example is subscriptions that are easy to start but very hard to get out of (e.g. they require a phone call to cancel). Another is “drip pricing”, where the initial quoted price creeps up as you get further into the purchase flow, ultimately causing some users to buy at a higher price than they intended to. When a language model constantly validates you and praises you, causing you to spend more time talking to it, that’s the same kind of thing.

    • 55% of Companies Regret [slop] Layoffs, HR Leaders Need to Take Note

      Leaders regret firing workers for [slop] primarily because there is little knowledge readily available on how to implement [slop], making it hard for the switch to be worthwhile.

  • Social Control Media

    • Zimbabwe ☛ Sextortion on the Rise in Africa is a Serious Silent Digital Crisis

      Sextortion is a form of online blackmail where individuals are coerced into sending money or further compromising content under the threat of having intimate images or videos shared publicly, is rapidly increasing across Africa. As internet access expands across the continent, so too does the threat posed by digital predators exploiting both young and old.

    • France24 ☛ 100 posts a day: Who does Elon Musk target on X?

      This two-part investigation looks at Musk’s wide-scale ideological offensive on his own platform. The first part looks at how Musk is sharing anti-Ukraine sentiment on social media. The second instalment looks at how Musk's tweets show support for European far-right parties.

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Chinese Singles Looking For Love In Video Chats — With Thousands Following In Real Time

      Frustrated with traditional dating and using the apps, Chen jumped on a new trend among young, single people in China. Those looking for love go into video chatrooms hosted by what's called a “cyber matchmaker,” all while thousands of viewers watch and comment in real time.

    • Futurism ☛ Reddit Threatens to Sue Researchers Who Ran "Dead Internet" AI Experiment on Its Site

      The optics were horrendous, with bots claiming to be characters, including a survivor of sexual assault and a Black man who opposes the Black Lives Matter movement. Worse yet, the AI models scoured the post history of users they were replying to in order to be as convincing as possible — basically a formalized trial run of the "dead [Internet]" theory that much of the [Internet] is already AI-generated.

    • Adam Newbold ☛ I received some feedback today

      Then I spent a while reflecting on what was shared with me. The gist of it was about the way I use Mastodon: too many critical posts, delivered to too many people, consisting of reactions to specific things that specific people said. It’s the “too many people” part that was a larger part of the issue. The criticism pointed to the number of followers I have, and called the dynamic “wildly asymmetrical”. It was eye-opening.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Federal News Network ☛ Cyber Command adapts to realities of constant digital conflict

      “We’ve been grappling with the insecurity of cyberspace since we’ve been leveraging cyberspace, but we got to a point in the late 2000s where we recognized that the operational reality was sort of constant, or what we call persistent engagement now,” Richard Harknett, director of the center for cyber strategy and policy at the University of Cincinnati, told Federal News Network. “There was also this sort of perceptual reality that emerged, which was, ‘Oh, you could do big things in cyber.’ What happens if we mess around with electric grids and big critical infrastructure? So there was this operational reality, which was more about day-to-day exploitation. And then there was this perception of the reality that something really bad could happen and we need to get ourselves organized for this.”

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Enterprise Targets Dominated 2024 Zero-Day Exploitation

      While the total number of zero-days dropped from 98 in 2023 to 75 in 2024, the data points to a continued evolution in adversary behavior and more sophisticated targeting of enterprise tech stacks.

    • Krebs On Security ☛ Alleged ‘Scattered Spider’ Member Extradited to U.S.

      As first reported by KrebsOnSecurity, Buchanan (a.k.a. “tylerb”) fled the United Kingdom in February 2023, after a rival cybercrime gang hired thugs to invade his home, assault his mother, and threaten to burn him with a blowtorch unless he gave up the keys to his cryptocurrency wallet. Buchanan was arrested in June 2024 at the airport in Palma de Mallorca while trying to board a flight to Italy. His extradition to the United States was first reported last week by Bloomberg.

      Members of Scattered Spider have been tied to the 2023 ransomware attacks against MGM and Caesars casinos in Las Vegas, but it remains unclear whether Buchanan was implicated in that incident. The Justice Department’s complaint against Buchanan makes no mention of the 2023 ransomware attack.

    • C4ISRNET ☛ The Pentagon must balance speed with safety as it modernizes software

      DOD understands the need for software modernization and is taking steps to improve both its development and procurement methods. A recent directive designates the Software Acquisition Pathway (SWP) as the primary process for creating both weapons and business systems. This necessary evolution marks a shift from lengthy, hardware-focused timelines to a faster and more flexible software-centric model. SWP streamlines development and emphasizes speed by allowing programs to share and repurpose software test results.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Terence Eden ☛ Is enhancement the same as manipulation?

      How far can you enhance an image or video before you cross the line into manipulation?

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Court House News ☛ Israeli spyware program takes center stage in trial over WhatsApp hacks

      As Meta crafted a detailed timeline of events of the spyware's 2019 attack on WhatsApp users, the defendants NSO Group claimed the tech giant's "fixes" were really attempts to steal the program for itself.

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ What Do Political Parties Really Know About You?

      Five years ago, Open Rights Group published a report called What Do They Know? revealing how political parties were building detailed databases of voter information. In the run-up to last year’s General Election, we revisited this issue — and what we found was even more troubling.

      We invited supporters to submit subject access requests (SARs) to political parties, allowing individuals to see what data parties held on them. We have complied a CSV full of some of the data fields we learned about.

    • Wired ☛ Scam Altman's Eye-Scanning Orb Is Now Coming to the US

      World first launched as Worldcoin in July 2024, the brainchild of Altman, Blania, and Max Novendstern, who is no longer at the company. Blania serves as CEO, while Altman remains his most prominent backer. As of March 2025 the company had raised $240 million in venture capital funding from big-name firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Bain Capital, and Coinbase Ventures, as well as individual investors like Reid Hoffman and the now-imprisoned Sam Bankman-Fried.

    • The Verge ☛ Sam Altman-backed Worldcoin cryptocurrency launches in the US | The Verge

      Beginning this week, Worldcoin (WLD) will be available in most of the US for the first time, including via exchanges like Coinbase. Those who scan their eyes at a World orb will receive 16 WLD. Meanwhile, people who have downloaded and already registered with the World app in the US will receive a “pioneer grant” of 150 WLD dropped into their wallet.

    • [Repeat] Privacy International ☛ The hidden threat: Privacy and security risks in chips

      However, chips can be subject to vulnerabilities that allow for unauthorised access to our data and our devices. Chips’ vulnerabilities can arise through supply chain interference or through government intervention.

      With growing tensions across the world, complex global supply chains that intersect many interests and jurisdictions can put privacy and security further in jeopardy.

    • EDRI ☛ ‘ProtectEU’ security strategy

      The strategy announces “the preparation of a Technology Roadmap on encryption, to identify and assess technological solutions that would enable law enforcement authorities to access encrypted data in a lawful manner”. This idea stems from the recommendations of the High Level Group (HLG) on ‘Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement’ or ‘Going Dark’ (recommendation 22).

      Mainly composed of national law enforcement representatives, the HLG coined the concept of ‘lawful access by design’, according to which all [Internet] service providers (ranging from telecommunications providers to private messaging services and connected objects) must tweak their digital security systems to enable access to encrypted data ‘in line with the needs expressed by law enforcement’. This amounts to enforcing encryption backdoors on every digital device and service, nothing less. Backdoors endanger not only the exercise of fundamental rights, but also our collective cybersecurity.

      We warned at the time of their publication that ‘these recommendations should not be considered reliable guidance for any future legislative action’, especially if the EU wants to be true to its word when aiming to ‘safeguard cybersecurity and fundamental rights’. While the Commission is currently preparing the recruitment of technology experts for the drafting of the Technology Roadmap, it seems crucial to recall this very basic fact: building vulnerabilities in digital systems without undermining the level of security they offer is wishful thinking.

    • EFF ☛ Age Verification in the European Union: The Commission's Age Verification App

      After downloading the app, a user would request proof of their age. For this crucial step, the Commission foresees users relying on a variety of age verification methods, including national eID schemes, physical ID cards (acknowledging that biometric analysis would be necessary for identifying a user corresponding to an ID), linking the app to another app that contains information about a user’s age, like a banking app, or age assessment through third parties like post offices.

    • The Verge ☛ Meta tightens privacy policy around Ray-Ban glasses to boost AI training

      Meta is making a few notable adjustments to the privacy policy for its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. In an email sent out on April 29th to owners of the glasses, the company outlined two key changes. First, it’s giving Meta AI a more frequent view of the world. “Meta AI with camera use is always enabled on your glasses unless you turn off ‘Hey Meta,” the email said, referring to the hands-free voice command functionality.

  • Confidentiality

    • Undeadly ☛ LibreSSL 4.1.0 released

      This is the version found in (the recently released) OpenBSD 7.7

• Defence/Aggression

  • Meduza ☛ An open secret Why Moscow and Pyongyang held off on acknowledging North Korean troops fighting against Ukraine

    Last fall, reports surfaced that Pyongyang had sent soldiers to support Russia in its war against Ukraine. Even as the evidence kept piling up, official Russian and North Korean sources remained silent. That is, until a few days ago. In what was almost certainly a coordinated move, first Moscow, then Pyongyang, officially acknowledged that North Korean troops had fought in the war. Novaya Gazeta Europe spoke to regional experts and political analysts to understand why they chose to go public now. Meduza shares an abridged English-language version of the outlet’s reporting.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Appellate Court Won't Lift Restrictions on DOGE [sic] Access to Social Security Information

    The full panel of judges on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 9-6 to keep the ruling from U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in place while DOGE [sic] pushes forward with an appeal. The appellate decision was released Wednesday.

  • Vox ☛ Elon Musk to step back from DOGE [sic] near Trump’s 100th day. What’s his legacy?

    The story of DOGE [sic]’s failure on spending is simple enough: Its huge ambitions to cut $1 trillion never seemed even faintly realistic, and Musk indeed never got anywhere near that target.

    Yet DOGE [sic] was also, effectively, an attempt at a new way of running the federal government — an effort to have Musk wield power like a CEO of the civil service, ordering layoffs and making career civil servants dance to his tune, while allies burrowed in every agency carried out his agenda. And this failed too.

  • Vox ☛ The Supreme Court is eager to make religious public schools a reality

    On the surface, Wednesday’s argument in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond merely signaled that the Court’s Republican majority will very likely take the next incremental step in its seemingly inexorable march toward integration of church and state.

  • ACLU ☛ Our Defense Against Trump: 100 Days In

    Just 100 days into President Donald Trump’s second term, the ACLU has filed 51 cases against his administration. We sought emergency relief in 38 of these cases, winning at least some form of preliminary or temporary order in 27 cases. To our clients, these are not just numbers. Our work with them, and on their behalf, has made a real difference in their lives.

  • The Register UK ☛ DOGE [sic] now probed by federal government watchdog

    Now, prompted by earlier requests for a review of DOGE [sic]'s activities, federal auditors want to know what the Tesla billionaire's team has actually achieved. US Comptroller General Gene Dodaro told the Senate Appropriations Committee during a hearing that GAO auditors are actively reviewing DOGE [sic]'s "digital footprint" across agencies, including the Treasury, Social Security Administration, and Office of Personnel Management, to assess its impact on federal operations.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Congressional officials wonder how CISA can carry out core mission in face of workforce cuts

    Other cyber policy experts wonder how that is going to unfold with such concentration on cutting CISA’s workforce.

    Congressional staffers and cybersecurity policy experts expressed deep concern about CISA during a panel discussion at the conference, with particular attention given to the agency’s ongoing staffing reductions.

  • Garry Kasparov ☛ America’s Failure on Ukraine-Russia is a Team Effort

    As with many things related to America’s forty-fifth and forty-seventh president, Trump’s Ukraine-Russia policy is an extreme reaction to a multi-system failure decades in the making. That story begins under the first President Bush when the Soviet Union still existed—albeit mostly on paper.

  • Mike Brock ☛ 100 Days of Collapse: A Reckoning of Meaning and Power

    The first hundred days of the Trump administration have revealed the ground truth of our constitutional crisis with devastating clarity—not through hyperbole or partisan exaggeration, but through the methodical dismantling of democratic governance in plain sight.

    What we've witnessed isn't simply aggressive policy implementation or ideological realignment. It's the systematic transformation of constitutional democracy into something fundamentally different: a government where law yields to loyalty, where institutional constraints become personal conveniences, where the machinery of state serves private rather than public interests.

  • The Register UK ☛ There's one question that stumps North Korean fake workers

    According to Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike's senior veep in the counter adversary division, North Korean infiltrators are bagging roles worldwide throughout the year. Thousands are said to have infiltrated the Fortune 500.

    They're masking IPs, exporting laptop farms to America so they can connect into those machines and appear to be working from the USA, and they are using AI – but there's a question during job interviews that never fails to catch them out and forces them to drop out of the recruitment process.

  • Phillips P OBrien ☛ Europe Has Failed, But Ukraine Might Still Save It

    We have to start with a basic admission. European policy makers have failed. Its been now exactly 38 months since the Russians launched their full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022—that’s approximately 1150 days that European policy makers have had to plan and react. Sadly, they have been better at giving speeches than actually taking the needed steps for Europeans to look after themselves.

    If rhetoric had been enough, Europe would be in great shape. At the time of the full-scale invasion there was great talk about how an era had ended and Europe must change (remember Zeitenwende?). Since then there have been regular speeches, President Macron has been key in this, by European leaders saying that they needed to stand by Ukraine, that they needed to do more to look after themselves, etc, etc.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Swedish police detain 16-year-old after three killed in Uppsala shooting

    Authorities in Sweden have been struggling to deal with gang violence, which remains at the forefront of a national debate, including growing concerns over the young age of children being caught up in the bloodshed. Guns and explosives are regularly used by rival gangs.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Saigon was falling. President Ford was playing golf.

    Editor’s note: April 30, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. In commemoration, Military Times is highlighting stories about the Vietnam War.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Michigan’s Thanedar brings impeachment articles against Trump, citing ‘sweeping abuse of power’ • Michigan Advance

    In a statement from Thanedar’s office, he pointed to “sweeping abuse of power, flagrant violations of the Constitution and acts of tyranny that undermine American democracy and threaten the rule of law” as his reasons for introducing the charges.

    “[Trump’s] unlawful actions have subverted the justice system, violated the separation of powers, and placed personal power and self-interest above public service. We cannot wait for more damage to be done. Congress must act,” Thanedar said.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft getting nervous about Europe's tech independence

    Dutch Parliamentarians have since passed eight motions that urge the government to abandon US-made technology for local alternatives. European techies and lobbyists are pressing the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty Henna Virkkunen, to create a sovereign infrastructure.

    Microsoft President Brad Smith acknowledges this, and the importance of the region for his employer in a blog post today, saying "our economic reliance on Europe has always run deep.

  • Security Week ☛ France Blames Russia for Cyberattacks on Dozen Entities

    Dragos observed APT28 targeting OT organizations in 2024, and Recorded Future in November 2024 attributed cyberattacks on 60 organizations in Asia and Europe to cyber-activity that overlaps with APT28.

    On Tuesday, the French cybersecurity agency ANSSI published a report attributing attacks on the country’s local government, administration, ministerial, DBIR, aerospace, research, and financial organizations, as well as think-tanks, to APT28.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Cyber experts, Democrats urge Trump administration not to break up cyber coordination in State reorg

    Democrats pointed out that CDP was created precisely so that cybersecurity wouldn’t be firewalled off from other State Department issues. It’s also the reason the bureau’s leader, a Senate-confirmed position, reports directly to the deputy director of State.

  • The Verge ☛ The first 100 days of DOGE [sic] have been about Elon Musk’s businesses

    That’s hardly all. Let’s take a horrible trip through the last 100 days! DOGE [sic] destroyed USAID, leading to widespread devastation and dead children. It may have taken sensitive data from the National Labor Review Board. It’s infiltrated the US Treasury. It’s fired the people working on nukes — then struggled to rehire them; fired the people working on bird flu— then struggled to rehire them; suspended the TSA’s ability to buy food for its bomb-sniffing dogs; and has been dicking around inside the Department of Homeland Security.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Curt Merrill ☛ Who shows up to city council on time?

    Atlanta City Council meeting minutes include which members were present and what time they arrived, which made me curious—who shows up on time?

    The council uses Granicus to post agendas and minutes in a structured HTML page. I downloaded minutes for all of the meetings in 2024—165 in all.

• Environment

  • Cost Rica ☛ Costa Rica Secures $15.6M for Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Conservation

    The Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor spans over 500,000 square kilometers, linking key marine protected areas such as Costa Rica’s Cocos Island National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, Colombia’s Malpelo Fauna and Flora Sanctuary, and Panama’s Coiba National Park. This convergence of warm and cold ocean currents provides unique tropical, subtropical, and temperate ecosystems, supporting migratory species like sea turtles, whales, and hammerhead sharks, as well as endemic species found nowhere else.

  • Court House News ☛ Conservationists win order blocking cattle grazing on Oregon sage grouse habitat

    The Bureau of Land Management didn't explain how slashing protected research areas from 22,000 acres to just 3,700 still accomplished its research goals, an Oregon judge said.

  • NPR ☛ Private eye accused of hacking American climate activists loses U.K. extradition fight

    The hacking was allegedly commissioned by a Washington, D.C., lobbying and consulting firm that worked for a major oil and gas company in Texas, according to an indictment the Justice Department filed in the UK as part of its extradition request. A federal prosecutor said in an affidavit that the goal was to discredit groups and individuals involved in climate-change litigation in the U.S.

  • RIPE ☛ Michael Oghia: Making Digital Sustainability Make Sense

    The digital infrastructure we're all so dependent on has a negative - and growing - impact on the environment. In this episode, Michael Oghia talks about strategies for breaking down the big problem of digital sustainability, strategies for building a more efficient Internet, and challenges that come with the adoption of more sustainable practices.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Futurism ☛ Mining Bitcoin Is Now Actively Losing Money

      Bitcoin mining is the process where a computer — typically using a power-hungry graphics processing unit (GPU) — updates transactions on the blockchain, validating each with a "proof of work." In turn, these "miners" get the chance to earn a portion of Bitcoin roughly equivalent to the computational power they've contributed to the process.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ AI-powered cameras gave out nearly 10,000 tickets along L.A. bus routes

      Cameras were first installed on the windshields of some Metro buses last year, but the first tickets were issued in mid-February. Initially, the only buses to have cameras were along line 212, from Hollywood/Vine to Hawthorne/Lennox stations via La Brea Avenue, and line 720, from Santa Monica to downtown L.A. via Wilshire Boulevard. Line 70, which services Olive Street and Grand Avenue, and lines 910 and 950 that serve Metro’s J Line have since been included.

      The AI-powered cameras scan for illegally parked cars and compile a video of each violation, a photo of the license plate and the time and location, according to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Each citation is reviewed by a human.

    • The Nation ☛ We Can Run the World Without Fossil Fuels

      The fossil fuel abolitionists, including Nation contributor Bill McKibben and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, hung a different kind of lantern in the steeple: a green lantern, to announce plans for “Sun Day,” a global day of action taking place September 20 and 21, coinciding with the autumnal equinox. In McKibben’s words, Sun Day will celebrate “the fact that we can now run this world without fossil fuels: Imagine EV and e-bike parades, green lights in the window of every solar-powered home, big concerts and rallies, joyful ceremonies as new solar farms and wind turbines go on line.”

    • Wired ☛ Europe’s Devastating Power Outage in Photos

      The power grid was sent down around noon local time on Monday, simultaneously blocking all public services in major Spanish cities. The restoration of the power supply is currently underway, with officials citing a rare atmospheric phenomenon as the cause.

    • Jeroen Sangers ☛ A day in the dark

      A day without electricity can be an unexpected challenge, especially when it not only affects the power but also the [Internet] goes down. This was precisely the case during a general outage throughout Spain, which not only cut off electricity but also the ability to communicate via the [Internet]. This situation forced many, including myself, to creatively adapt to the sudden change in our daily routine.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Protect This Place: The Headwaters of Papua New Guinea’s Strickland River

    • Mr Brownthumb ☛ How to Make Seed Bombs

      Undoubtedly you have heard of guerrilla gardening and seed bombs. The most popular seed bomb recipe was invented by Japanese farmer, Masanobu Fukuoka. If you would like to beautify an empty lot or neglected planters seed bombs are the perfect option. With a bit of clay, soil and seeds you can create seed bombs in an afternoon that will sprout plants and flowers in hard-to-reach areas. I call my method of making seed bombs, the lazy guerrilla gardener’s way of making seed bombs, because the ingredients do not require mixing, and you don’t need water. See the video and photos below on how to make seed bombs for all the details.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Using computer vision to reveal visual illusions created by moth wing patterns

      The research, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, used computer vision, which is typically used for applications such as self-drive vehicles and face recognition, to determine whether the flat wing patterns of the green fruit-piercing moth, Eudocima salaminia, were falsely reconstructed as 3D shapes. This species of moth, which is commonly found across southeast Asia and Australia, is a citrus fruit pest.

• Finance

  • India Times ☛ Visa partners with AI giants to streamline online shopping

    Visa is partnering with tech heavyweights, including Microsoft and OpenAI, to roll out a new platform that lets users delegate their online shopping tasks to AI agents.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • FAIR ☛ ‘The Fact That She Had That Miscarriage Was Enough to Justify Arresting Her’: CounterSpin interview with Karen Thompson on criminalizing pregnancy

    Janine Jackson interviewed Pregnancy Justice’s Karen Thompson about criminalizing pregnancy for the April 25, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • FAIR ☛ ‘There’s Never Been a More Blatant Corporate Incursion Into the Public Sector Than DOGE’: CounterSpin interview with Jeff Hauser on DOGE infiltration

    Janine Jackson interviewed the Revolving Door Project’s Jeff Hauser about DOGE’s infiltration for the April 25, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • Doc Searls ☛ Grifting away

    All of these (correct me if I’m wrong) are about enriching the U.S. president, his family, and favored friends through a memecoin scheme by which anyone (say, Putin) can buy influence.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ The War on Water Pressure

    But. Remember back to Yanis Varoufakis’ Global Minotaur, in which he described the twin deficits of the United States. First, the budget deficit, allowing US Treasury Bonds to act as the safe offset to riskier financial activities. So that the demand for more US government debt was literally making money (and the finance world) go around. Second, the trade deficit, sending endless US dollars overseas to stabilise the globalise economy. The price? Imperial-level tribute flowing into Wall Street.

  • New Yorker ☛ How the Internet Left 4chan Behind

    The anonymous forum thrived when edgelord content wasn’t acceptable on more mainstream social media. Today, it can be found most anywhere.

  • APNIC ☛ The Jevons Paradox and Internet centrality

    Computing and communications have made astounding improvements in capability, cost, and efficiency over the past eighty years. If the same efficiency improvements had been made in the automobile industry, cars would cost a couple of dollars, would cost fractions of a cent to use for trips, and would be capable of travelling at speeds probably approaching the speed of light!

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Cage-Tech

  • Hidde de Vries ☛ Running for the AB

    I'm running for the W3C's AB election. This is my nomination statement.

  • Eric McClure ☛ Leftists Are In A Purity Death Spiral

    This purity spiral has strangled so many leftist spaces that it has become a well-known problem. I see people complaining about it constantly, in many different places. They’re scared and frustrated, because every time anyone has a disagreement over something, it’s treated as you being a potential right-wing infiltrator trying to destroy everything, instead of an honest disagreement. This happens because leftists often cannot concieve of someone who is “morally good” having such an “obviously bad take”, except they don’t consider that maybe the problem isn’t as obvious to everyone else. This happens way more often than you think! Why? Because humans are incredibly diverse! But instead of celebrating this diversity of ideas, the left has cultivated a callout culture problem that severely punishes any deviance from their idea of Moral Purity, which itself is inconsistent and depends on who stumbled on your old tweets.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump Admin Freaks Out Over Report Amazon Planned To Be Transparent About Tariffs

    But the point is this: Trump freaked out about a massive online retailer showing American buyers the impact on pricing of the tariffs that Trump is totally proud of and that will bring America into its new golden age. Tariffs are good, you see, but the public knowing what they do is not.

  • [Repeat] Press Gazette ☛ UK local publisher 'deeply concerned' about Facebook account ban

    The team were not given a reason for the ban. They were initially invited by Facebook to submit a verification video, which they did, but were subsequently told their account had been permanently suspended with no mechanism through which to dispute it.

  • Marijke Luttekes ☛ Blocking domains on Mastodon without visiting a profile

    So what if you do not want to find an account on a server? The answer lies in your account preferences: Mastodon's Import function.

    In this guide, I will explain how to block one or more domains using Mastodon's import function. All you need is a text editor and a browser!

  • EFF ☛ Texas’s War on Abortion Is Now a War on Free Speech

    If passed, S.B. 2880 would make it illegal to “provide information” on how to obtain an abortion-inducing drug. If you exchange e-mails or have an online chat about seeking an abortion, you could violate the bill. If you create a website that shares information about legal abortion services in other states, you could violate the bill. Even your social media posts could put you at risk.

    On top of going after online speakers who create and post content themselves, the bill also targets social media platforms, websites, email services, messaging apps, and any other “interactive computer service” simply for hosting or making that content available.

  • The Register UK ☛ TAKE IT DOWN Act passes Congress, alarms rights groups

    But advocacy groups warn the loosely worded fine-print will cause collateral damage to [Internet] companies and free speech rights.

    The rationale for the TAKE IT DOWN Act - protecting people from the non-consensual disclosure of intimate imagery (NDII) online - has overwhelming support. The trouble is the lack of safeguards to prevent people from using the legislation to try and remove protected speech they don't like, and to bombard online companies with frivolous takedown requests.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Trump administration brands Amazon's tariff transparency plan a 'hostile and political act'

    The media storm was precipitated during a briefing to mark 100 days of the second Trump presidency when a reporter asked about the above-linked report. Tariffs were already hotly debated, and then the Punchbowl News report asserting that Amazon is preparing to "display tariff costs" up-front in its product listings was highlighted. The source publication only cites someone familiar with the plans, and Amazon hasn't responded to these reports yet. Nevertheless, the knives were quickly unsheathed during the White House presser.

  • CNBC ☛ Trump called Amazon's Jeff Bezos about tariff cost report

    Trump personally called Bezos on Tuesday morning to express his displeasure about the initial report that spurred the heated response from the White House.

  • International Business Times ☛ Furious Donald Trump Blasts Jeff Bezos Over Amazon's Tariff Display Plan

    A Punchbowl News report sparked the uproar, claiming Amazon planned to show how much of a product's price stemmed from Trump's tariffs i.e 145% on Chinese imports and 10% on other countries, right next to the listed price.

    Trump, furious at the idea of highlighting his tariffs' impact, personally phoned Bezos on 29 April 2025 to complain, per CNN. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it a 'hostile and political act' during a briefing, accusing Amazon of deflecting blame for price hikes.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Congress passes content ban Trump says he'll use to censor critics

    Mike Masnick puts it in perspective: "The bill is so bad that even the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, whose entire existence is based on representing the interests of victims of NCII and passing bills similar to the Take It Down Act, has come out with a statement saying that, while it supports laws to address such imagery, it cannot support this bill due to its many, many inherent problems."

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ White House lashes out at Amazon over receipts showing Trump tariff costs

    The White House accused Amazon of a “hostile and political act” after a report suggested Amazon would highlight the cost of tariffs, allowing customers to see exactly how much the levies were adding to the price of goods.

    Mr Trump personally called Mr Bezos in a rage to complain, The Telegraph understands.

    “Trump essentially told Bezos to go f*** himself,” a source close to the administration said.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • ANF News ☛ Swedish journalist Joakim Medin sentenced to 11 months and 20 days in prison in Turkey

    Medin explained that the case stemmed from two articles he wrote for a Swedish audience about public reactions to Turkey’s NATO accession process. He said he did not attend the protest mentioned in the indictment, did not choose the photo used in the article, and that all editorial decisions were made by his newspaper.

  • The Local SE ☛ Swedish reporter given 11-month suspended sentence for insulting Erdogan

    Many people, from teenagers to journalists and even a former Miss Turkey, have been charged with insulting the head of state.

    "The offence of 'insulting the president' has played a role in the harassment of many local and foreign journalists and clearly disregards the precedents set out by the European Court of Human Rights," Erol Onderoglu of Reporters Without Borders told AFP.

  • RTL ☛ Still awaiting terrorism verdict: Swedish reporter gets suspended term over Erdogan insult

    According to the indictment, which Medin said he had not seen, the offending images were used to illustrate several of his articles that he had posted online.

    Addressing the court via video link from Silivri prison, Medin said he was not even in Sweden at the time of the January rally.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Record number of FOIA requests filed in 2024

    Agencies received a record 1.5 million Freedom of Information Act requests in fiscal 2024. That’s according to the Justice Department Office of Information Policy’s latest summary of federal FOIA data. Agencies nearly kept pace by processing 1.49 million FOIA requests last year. Still, the governmentwide FOIA backlog increased to 267,000 cases by the end of fiscal 2024. (Summary of fiscal 2024 annual FOIA reports published - Federal News Network)

  • CPJ ☛ Alarm bells: Trump's first 100 days ramp up fear for the press, democracy

    CPJ has noted a significant increase in the number of newsrooms seeking safety advice, concerned that the changing national political environment could threaten their ability to report without fear of retribution from authorities.

    This report provides a snapshot of the Trump administration’s policies that directly affect press freedom. The fate of American democracy and journalists’ ability to work without fear are intertwined. The blitz of policy changes from the White House and its appointees set a concerning tone for local governments domestically, and authoritarian-minded rulers globally, and has deepend a climate of hostility toward journalists.

    CPJ is calling on the public, the media, civil society, and all branches, levels, and institutions of government – from municipalities to the U.S. Supreme Court – to safeguard press freedom to help secure the future of American democracy. (Read the full list of CPJ’s recommendations here).

  • CPJ ☛ Trump’s first 100 days portend long-lasting damage to press freedom

    “This is a definitive moment for U.S. media and the public’s right to be informed. CPJ is providing journalists with resources at record rates so they can report safely and without fear or favor, but we need everyone to understand that protecting the First Amendment is not a choice, it’s a necessity. All our freedoms depend on it,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ How Trump Knuckles Journalists to Parrot His Doctrine

    This is power.

    This is precisely the purpose Trump reserves for mainstream journalists: As props in his performance of forced adherence to his reality.

    And it works.

    After all, Moran was willing to accept as given the last 8 years of forced doctrine, about Ukraine, about Joe Biden, about Trump’s grievances. Moran has already internalized lies Trump has told for years, and wildly grotesque claims about rule of law went uncontested, unnoticed.

    Moran could have stood up and walked away when Trump insisted that he repeat, 2+2=5, but instead Moran tried to make a series of half-concessions so he could move on. But even then, Trump still used it as a means to suggest he — Moran — was less trustworthy than Vladimir Putin.

  • Axios ☛ Trump's first 100 days: How he's gone after the news media

    Why it matters: President Trump has done more to target traditional media companies than any other modern U.S. president. Even as he and his allies wage a historic trade war, they have not lost sight of their stated goal of going after the press.

  • The Dissenter ☛ 100 Days Of Attacks on Transparency And The Press

    Host Kevin Gosztola marks President Donald Trump's first 100 days in his second term with this discussion of his administration's attacks on transparency and press freedom.

  • RSF ☛ Who is Joakim Medin, the Swedish journalist who could face over 27 years in Turkish prison?

    Joakim Medin, special correspondent for the Swedish media Dagens ETC, has been held since 30 March in the high-security Marmara prison in the Silivri district of Istanbul and will appear in court on 30 April. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the authorities to release the journalist, who specialises in Kurdish issues, and to end the crackdown on news professionals.

  • Politico ☛ Swedish journalist faces 12 years in Turkish prison after ‘insulting’ Erdoğan

    A Swedish reporter detained in Turkey could be jailed for 12 years if convicted of insulting the country’s president and on terrorism charges, his employer said Wednesday.

    Joakim Medin, a journalist for Swedish newspaper Dagens ETC, was arrested upon arriving in Turkey last month to cover nationwide protests that erupted after the detention of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, a popular opposition leader and primary challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

  • European Centre for Press and Media Freedom ☛ Turkey: Swedish journalist Joakim Medin to face terrorism and insult charges as pre-trial detention continues - European Centre for Press and Media Freedom

    Since 19 March, over 13 journalists have been arrested and charged with different offences, with at least 12 journalists subjected to police violence. The situation has taken an unprecedented turn with Medin’s detention—marking a rare case where a foreign journalist has faced such charges. His treatment, mirroring that of Turkish journalists, signals a dangerous escalation in the government’s crackdown and serves as a clear warning to international media covering the country’s political unrest.

  • Politico ☛ Turkey confirms arrest of Swedish journalist

    The journalist’s incarceration comes in the context of huge protests in Istanbul against the arrest of opposition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu. The Istanbul mayor — who is widely viewed as the main challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — was arrested last week on corruption charges.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Papers Please ☛ Oklahoma resolution would reaffirm right to opt out of REAL-ID

    SR 18, introduced yesterday in the Oklahoma Legislature by state Sen. Kendal Sacchieri (R-Blanchard) would re-affirm the right of Oklahoma residents to choose to have driver’s licenses and state IDs that don’t comply with the Federal REAL-ID Act — and not to have data about those noncompliant licenses shared with Federal agencies without a warrant.

    “Sixty percent of Oklahomans have declined to participate in the federal REAL ID system,”  Sen. Sacchieri noted in introducing SR 18. “Senate Resolution 18 is about protecting Oklahomans’ privacy and preserving their freedom to choose. We affirm our citizens’ right to opt out of the federal REAL ID system, and we must also ensure their personal information remains secure. This resolution calls for a real, uncoerced choice — without unnecessary exposure of private data.”

  • [Old] Michael O Church ☛ Idle Rich Are the Best Rich. Here’s Why.

    Instead, I want to talk about the problem exposed by this scandal. See, it’s not enough for the American rich to have more money than we do, and all the material comforts that follow: bigger houses, speedier cars, golden toilets. They have to be smarter than us, too. But God did a funny thing: when She was handing out talents, she didn’t even in look in the daddies’ bank accounts. So, here we are. We live in a world where people make six- and seven-figure incomes helping teenagers cheat on tests. This isn’t new, either.

    As a society, we suffer for this. Having to pretend talentless people from wealthy backgrounds are much more capable than they are, as I’ll argue, has major social costs. It keeps people of genuine ability in obscurity, and it leads to bad decisions that have brought the economy to stagnation. It would be better if we were rid of such ceremony and obligation.

  • Lusaka ZM ☛ Zambia : Why Colonialism Was Actually Good for Africa – Part 2

    Britain decimated the shipping of African slaves on the seas, but it left the internal African slave trade largely intact. As European powers established new African colonies, they began to transplant their governance and legal systems into Africa. Their laws from back home in Europe prohibited slavery, so the colonial administrators tried with great difficulty to dismantle it. They often got into conflicts with the natives who were still keeping and trading in domestic slaves despite coming under their rule.

    In the last decade of the 19th century, the French and British fought with the Benin and Dahomey kingdoms, conquered them and freed all slaves. European colonialism and conquest thus had the positively good consequence of brutal chattel slavery being abolished in the whole of Africa. This is the connection between colonialism and slavery that I alluded to earlier.

  • Privacy International ☛ Transparencia Electoral’s new index on data protection during elections in Latin America

    Organising elections is a huge government data-gathering exercise. The election cycle usually starts with the creation of a voter register. The data held in this register is shared not only with electoral authorities, but also with political parties - and increasingly with companies providing the technologies used to administer elections.

    Voter databases and the devices used to access and edit them are susceptible to abuse, manipulation, and theft.

  • The Verge ☛ Content moderators are organizing against Big Tech

    Content moderators who comb through harmful material uploaded to online platforms have formed a global trade union alliance in a bid to improve working conditions. The Global Trade Union Alliance of Content Moderators (GTUACM) announced today in Nairobi, Kenya, says it aims to “hold Big Tech responsible” for failing to address workers’ issues like low wages, trauma, and lack of union representation across the industry.

  • Nexstar Media Group Inc ☛ 'We're citizens!': Oklahoma City family traumatized after ICE raids home, but they weren't suspects

    Marisa said the agents tore apart every square inch of the house and what few belongings they had, seizing their phones, laptops and their life savings in cash as “evidence.”

    “I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,” she said. “I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”

  • Yahoo News ☛ ICE Invades Wrong Home, Steals Their Life Savings, and Then Leaves

    In Oklahoma City Thursday, about 20 federal immigration agents raided the wrong home, forcing a woman out of the house with her three daughters, not even leaving them enough time to get dressed, and then seized their phones, laptops, and life savings.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ How can IXPs help measure the Internet?

    In February, I proposed and led a panel session at APRICOT 2025, discussing the merits and ability of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) to contribute to measuring the resilience of the Internet.

  • RIPE ☛ As Seen at SEE 13

    191 participants from 32 countries came together for two days of in-depth discussions, a hands-on workshop, and invaluable networking. This was our second SEE meeting in Bulgaria – we were here at SEE 3 in 2013 and we'll be returning in 2026 for RIPE 93!

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• New York Times ☛ Google’s Chief Says Breakup Proposal Would Hobble Business

  Sundar Pichai told a federal judge that the government’s solution to fix its monopoly in search would harm innovation.

• The Register UK ☛ Judge says Apple lied to court, seeks criminal probe

  Apple won nine of the ten issues considered in that case. The one issue on which it lost saw the court decide the 30 percent App Store commission was anti-competitive and ordered, via an injunction, Apple to allow developers to inform their customers about third-party payment systems.

• The Verge ☛ A judge just blew up Apple’s control of the App Store

  The ruling was issued as part of Epic Games’ ongoing legal dispute against Apple, and it’s a major victory for Epic’s arguments. Gonzalez Rogers also says that Apple “willfully” chose not to comply with her previous injunction from her original 2021 ruling. “That [Apple] thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation,” Gonzalez Rogers says.

  The judge also referred the case to the US attorney to review it for possible criminal contempt proceedings.

• The Washington Post ☛ House GOP proposes removing antitrust authority from FTC

  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is proposing to strip the Federal Trade Commission of its antitrust enforcement powers, a move that would shatter a core mission the agency has pursued for more than a century.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • The Verge ☛ The BBC deepfaked Agatha Christie to teach a writing course | The Verge

      Deepfaked Agatha Christie’s teachings are “in Agatha’s very own words,” her great-grandson James Prichard said in a press release. It uses insights from the real Christie and is scripted by academics — so the actual content appears to be human-made and not generated from a model that’s been fed all of her work. BBC collaborated with Agatha Christie Estate and used restored audio recordings, licensed images, interviews, and her own writings to make this all happen.

• Copyrights

  • 404 Media ☛ The Infamous ‘You Wouldn’t Steal a Car’ Anti-Piracy Font Was Pirated. But By Who?

    “Piracy. It’s a Crime” was a series of PSAs that in 2004 was a joint project between the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore and the Motion Picture Association, and has been widely parodied in the two decades since. It is most famously (mis)remembered as “You Wouldn’t Download a Car,” and has spawned a huge number of memes over the years. Last week, Melissa Lewis, a data reporter at the Center for Investigative Reporting, pointed out that the very recognizable font used by the campaign, called FF Confidential, was created by famous font designer Just van Rossum.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Pirate Site Blocks Ineffective? Telcos Call For Sanctions Against Portuguese Users

    The Association of Electronic Communications Operators has provided a very gloomy assessment of progress in the fight against piracy in Portugal. While that may not sound especially unusual, this summer will mark 10 years since the launch of an industry-led, voluntary site-blocking regime, which reportedly reduced visits to pirate sites by 60%+ in a matter of months. Apritel now says that swift financial sanctions are required to being persistent pirate consumers back into line.