Leftovers

• Hackaday ☛ What Happened To WWW.?

  Once upon a time, typing “www” at the start of a URL was as automatic as breathing. And yet, these days, most of us go straight to “hackaday.com” without bothering with those three letters that once defined the internet.

  Have you ever wondered why those letters were there in the first place, and when exactly they became optional? Let’s dig into the archaeology of the early web and trace how this ubiquitous prefix went from essential to obsolete.

• GreyCoder ☛ How To Tag Your Music Collection (Edit MetaData)

  Tagging your music collection is a worthwhile task. Music tags (metadata) are pieces of information embedded in audio files. Tagged tracks help you search, sort, and enjoy music with greater efficiency.

• Zach Flower ☛ Back to the Future

  This past weekend, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and take a look at the evolution of this blog’s design over the years (with a little help from the Wayback Machine). While I’ve really enjoyed the challenge of making an obsessively backwards compatible blog these last few years, the challenge (and limitations associated with it) has sort of lost its luster; so I figure it was time try something new… and old.

• Matthew Rocklin ☛ Thoughtful Professional Writing

  In any communication or decision there’s a burden to organize thoughts. This burden will be either on the speaker’s side or on the listener’s side. Often, it’s the speaker who has more context of the situation. In this case it’s considerate and often more efficient for the speaker to take on the burden of organizing their thoughts, rather than depend on the listeners.

  I find that the best way to do this is through a concisely written document. I find that this is hard and takes time, but most of that time is time spent thinking which should be done anyway.

• Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Writing notes helps you remember — and forget

  But it also helps me forget. If there’s something that keeps bothering me and steals my (very sparse) brain cycles — usually for worrying purposes —, writing it down tells my brain it’s okay to let it go. I do this often with my journal into which I pour my worries.

• Science

  • CS Monitor ☛ How Trump cuts could affect your weather reports

    The budget proposes a $1.5 billion reduction to NOAA funding – almost a 24% decrease from current funding levels. That’s left scientists and industry experts deeply concerned that NOAA won’t be able to fulfill services to people who depend on them, such as fishers, farmers, and the general public.

    In the budget’s brief description of the cuts, climate change is heavily emphasized. The budget’s authors write that cuts will target climate research and grant programs, as well as a satellite program and instruments used for climate measurement. But experts and agency staff say the suggested cuts could have wide-reaching impacts, including downgrading the quality of weather forecasts and other critical services.

• Career/Education

  • Mandy Brown ☛ Can’t and won’t | everything changes

    Amidst the unending layoffs and the edicts to use nonsense-making machines, the forced commutes, the increasingly lengthy and arbitrary interview processes, and the retrenchment of already minimal efforts at diversity and inclusion—a question is lurking in the minds of many workers, cautious and careful, afraid to poke its head out of the den it has safely hid in until now, but each day getting a little braver, a little more certain that now is the time: what if I cannot fucking do this anymore?

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • EcoWatch ☛ Planting Flower Strips in Apple Orchards Could Save Farmers Up to $4K (£3K) per Hectare, Study Finds

    In the study, scientists compiled data on the costs to plant perennial wildflower strips in apple orchards as well as the economic cost of damage caused by a common orchard pest, the rosy apple aphid (Dysaphis plantaginea). Perennial wildflowers attract predatory insects, including ladybirds, hoverflies and lacewings, which help with natural pest control by eating the aphids.

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Register UK ☛ Curl takes action against time-wasting AI bug reports

      Curl project founder Daniel Stenberg is fed up with of the deluge of AI-generated "slop" bug reports and recently introduced a checkbox to screen low-effort submissions that are draining maintainers' time.

      Stenberg said the amount of time it takes project maintainers to triage each AI-assisted vulnerability report made via HackerOne, only for them to be deemed invalid, is tantamount to a DDoS attack on the project.

    • 404 Media ☛ The AI Slop Presidency

      AI-generated outrage bait is the perfect artistic medium for a president who rules by trying to overwhelm the system.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ AI computers aren’t selling because users don’t care

      More and more PCs will have AI coprocessors in them just because that’s what the manufacturers are doing now. That doesn’t make anyone care.

    • Benny Siegert ☛ Some nuanced thoughts on AI · benzblog

      I live in two different worlds regarding AI.

      During the day, I am working in a big tech company that is betting big on AI. AI is everywhere, and (at least some) people are excited about the possibilities.

      Outside of work, when I log in on Mastodon, the typical poster there thinks that anyone using AI for anything should be ashamed, and that AI is unequivocally bad.

  • Social Control Media

    • Luke Harris ☛ Discombulated thoughts and ramblings on years without social media

      Exchanging social media accounts for hits of sanity over the last five years has been well worth it, and aside from a couple relapses I’ve stuck with it. Reading blogs has replaced most forms of mindless scrolling for me, and even though I’ve had to take breaks and find ways to reduce my exposure to Words on the Internet, the bloggers I follow have consistently had a positive effect on my mood and outlook on life.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Register UK ☛ Powerschool extortionists may not have deleted stolen data

      In December, PowerSchool – whose student information management system holds records on more than 60 million K-12 students (ages 5 to 18) primarily in North America – suffered an IT security breach: Extortionists used a compromised login credential to access and exfiltrate from its systems sensitive information on kids and adults.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Papers Please ☛ FAQs for REAL-ID Day (May 7, 2025)

    • Unmitigated Risk ☛ Agents, Not Browsers: The Next Chapter of the Internet

      At the heart of this transformation is a profound shift: your agent will develop and maintain a rich ontology of you, your preferences, patterns, values, and goals. Not just a collection of settings and history, but a living model of your digital self that evolves as you do. Your agent becomes entrusted with this context, transforming into a true digital partner. It doesn’t just know what you like; it understands why you like it. It doesn’t just track your calendar; it comprehends the rhythms and priorities of your life.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Register UK ☛ New Zealand kind-of moves to ban social media for under-16s

    New Zealand’s government has signaled its support for a bill to ban social media for children under 16, but without explicitly making it a government initiative.

    The bill that will enact the ban was put forwarded on Tuesday by member of Parliament Catherine Wedd and is what New Zealand calls a “member’s bill” – a law proposed by an MP that isn’t formally part of the government’s agenda.

  • Wired ☛ The Trump Administration Sure Is Having Trouble Keeping Its Comms Private

    When former national security adviser Mike Waltz had a picture taken of him last week, he didn’t expect for the whole world to see that he was using TeleMessage, a messaging app similar to Signal. Now the app has been hacked, with portions of data linked to government entities like Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and companies like Coinbase. Today on the show, we’re joined by WIRED senior writer Lily Hay Newman to discuss what this incident tells us about the growing vulnerabilities in government communications.

  • Molly White ☛ Meet Trump’s memecoin dinner guests

    Foreign investors have spent millions scrambling for access to President Trump at an upcoming private dinner. Of the 220 largest holders of Trump's $TRUMP memecoin currently listed a public attendee leaderboard, 73% are likely based outside the United States. And among the top 25 “VIP” guests offered additional private access to the president, 23 are likely foreign entities. These findings emerge from an extensive analysis of blockchain transactions, tracking thousands of transfers through major offshore cryptocurrency exchanges including Binance, Bybit, OKX, and others.a

  • Krebs On Security ☛ Pakistani Firm Shipped Fentanyl Analogs, Scams to US

    In an indictment (PDF) unsealed last month, the U.S. Department of Justice said Dallas-based eWorldTrade “operated an online business-to-business marketplace that facilitated the distribution of synthetic opioids such as isotonitazene and carfentanyl, both significantly more potent than fentanyl.”

  • JURIST ☛ Michigan AG dismisses charges against pro-Palestine protestors at university campus

    Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on Monday dropped the prosecution of seven individuals charged with trespassing and resisting and/or obstructing a police officer for their conduct related to the police clearing of an encampment at the University of Michigan in May 2024.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Why the EU's push to cut Russian energy ties is so difficult

    On Tuesday, Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen presented the long-awaited plan in Strasbourg, aiming to transform the bloc's political promises into binding measures.

  • New Statesman ☛ The warning of VE Day

    It is therefore crucial that today’s young people do not merely understand what VE Day was like, but appreciate what the war cost the men and women of the 1930s because they and their leaders had neglected defence preparedness in the era of Hitler and Mussolini, apparently trusting in the post-1918 mantra “Never Again”. The price they paid was six years of living with death – with the ever present sense of one’s own mortality, the gnawing anxiety about loved ones, nearby and faraway, and the endless separations and ruptures, many of them life-changing.

  • YLE ☛ Trump-linked billionaire with murky history behind Finland's Tiktok data centre

    Hussain Sajwan has done business with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and was on a Canadian sanctions list for a few years over suspected corruption.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Wired ☛ Tulsi Gabbard Reused the Same Weak Password on Multiple Accounts for Years

    Now the US director of national intelligence, Gabbard failed to follow basic cybersecurity practices on several of her personal accounts, leaked records reviewed by WIRED reveal.

  • 404 Media ☛ Signal Clone TeleMessage Deleted Video About How It Works—Here’s What It Said

    A hacker compromised TeleMessage, a company that provides Signal chat archiving services to the Trump administration. TeleMessage has now hidden a video on YouTube that explained its Signal service.

  • Wired ☛ The Signal Clone Mike Waltz Was Caught Using Has Direct Access to User Chats

    Lee conducted a detailed analysis of TM Signal's Android source code to assess the app's design and security. In collaboration with 404 Media, he had previously reported on a [breach] TM Signal over the weekend, which revealed some user messages and other data—a clear sign that at least some data was being sent unencrypted, or as plaintext, at least some of the time within the service. This alone would seem to contradict TeleMessage's marketing claims that TM Signal offers “End-to-End encryption from the mobile phone through to the corporate archive.” But Lee says that his latest findings show that TM Signal is not end-to-end encrypted and that the company could access the contents of users' chats.

  • Wired ☛ Customs and Border Protection Confirms Its Use of [Breached] Signal Clone TeleMessage

    The United States Customs and Border Protection agency confirmed on Wednesday that it uses at least one communication app made by the service TeleMessage, which creates clones of popular apps like Signal and WhatsApp with the addition of an archiving mechanism for compliance with records-retention rules.

    “Following the detection of a cyber incident, CBP immediately disabled TeleMessage as a precautionary measure,” CBP spokesperson Rhonda Lawson tells WIRED. “The investigation into the scope of the breach is ongoing.”

  • Micah F Lee ☛ Despite misleading marketing, Israeli company TeleMessage, used by Trump officials, can access plaintext chat logs

    Despite their misleading marketing, TeleMessage, the company that makes a modified version of Signal used by senior Trump officials, can access plaintext chat logs from its customers.

    In this post I give a high level overview of how the TeleMessage fake Signal app, called TM SGNL, works and why it's so insecure. Then I give a thorough analysis of the source code for TM SGNL's Android app, and what led me to conclude that TeleMessage can access plaintext chat logs. Finally, I back up my analysis with as-of-yet unpublished details about the [breach] of TeleMessage.

• Environment

  • EcoWatch ☛ Climbing Shoes Can Release Potentially Harmful Chemicals Into the Air of Bouldering Gyms, Study Says

    “The soles of climbing shoes are high performance products, just like car tires,” Anya Sherman, first author of the study, environmental scientist at the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CeMESS) at the University of Vienna and hobby climber, said in a statement. In recent years, other studies have determined that car tires shed nanoplastics and can even be a greater source of emissions than modern vehicle tailpipes.

  • NDTV ☛ 10% Of World's Richest Have Higher Carbon Footprint Than Poorest 50%: Study

    The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, that the world's wealthiest 10 per cent are responsible for two-thirds of observed global warming since 1990.

    "Our study shows that extreme climate impacts are not just the result of abstract global emissions, instead we can directly link them to our lifestyle and investment choices, which in turn are linked to wealth," explains lead author Sarah Schongart, from the ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Register UK ☛ Google signs another nuclear power deal, no clear details

      Google has signed a strategic agreement with nuclear project developer Elementl Power to support the early development of three potential fission reactor sites in the US.

      But with no selected reactor tech and no construction timeline, the announcement sounds more like a handwaving exercise to distract onlookers from the massive amount of energy that will be expended as Google and other companies race to capitalize on the AI boom.

    • Wired ☛ This US Company Just Successfully Tested a Reusable Hypersonic Rocket Plane

      This is the first time anyone in the United States has flown a reusable hypersonic rocket plane since the last flight of the X-15, the iconic rocket-powered aircraft that pushed the envelope of high-altitude, high-speed flight 60 years ago.

    • Simon Willison ☛ What's the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT?

      The inevitable counter-argument to the idea that the impact of ChatGPT usage by an individual is negligible is that aggregate user demand is still the thing that drives these enormous investments in huge data centers and new energy sources to power them. Hannah acknowledges that: [...]

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Save This Species: The Bettas of Bangka Island

• Finance

  • Pro Publica ☛ How Trump’s Tariffs Could Affect Nike, Its Factory Workers and Prices

  • Pro Publica ☛ Trump’s NIH Axed Research Grants Despite Court Order

    For more than two months, the Trump administration has been subject to a federal court order stopping it from cutting funding related to gender identity and the provision of gender-affirming care in response to President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

    Lawyers for the federal government have repeatedly claimed in court filings that the administration has been complying with the order.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Register UK ☛ Google shares slump as Apple exec calls AI the new search

    Apple senior vice president of services Eddy Cue made a number of interesting statements about the future of AI, and its potential impact on Google's bottom line, during testimony Wednesday in the remedies phase of the US Department of Justice's lawsuit against Google parent Alphabet. That's the lawsuit that resulted in a judge ruling that Google's payments to make its search engine the default for smartphone browsers and elsewhere broke American antitrust law.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Anthropic jumps into [Internet] search, increasing pressure on Google

    The generative artificial intelligence startup Anthropic PBC is joining rivals such as OpenAI and Perplexity AI Inc. in an effort to overhaul the [Internet] search industry.

  • Wired ☛ Singapore’s Vision for AI Safety Bridges the US-China Divide

    The Singapore Consensus on Global AI Safety Research Priorities calls for researchers to collaborate in three key areas: studying the risks posed by frontier AI models, exploring safer ways to build those models, and developing methods for controlling the behavior of the most advanced AI systems.

  • Ars Technica ☛ Gaming news site Polygon gutted by massive layoffs amid sale to Valnet

    Vox Media has sold video game specialist website Polygon to Internet brand aggregator Valnet, the publisher of content-churning sites including Game Rant, OpenCritic, Android Police, and Comic Book Resources. The move comes alongside significant layoffs for veteran journalists at the 13-year-old outlet, including co-founder and editor-in-chief Chris Plante and Senior Writer Michael McWhertor.

  • European Commission ☛ EU and Singapore sign landmark digital trade agreement

    The DTA will prevent protectionist practices and policies by prohibiting unjustified data localisation measures. This will help to ensure trusted cross-border data flows and the protection of source code against unauthorised disclosure. As part of the negotiations, the Commission ensured full respect for the EU's privacy and data protection framework, and the preservation of regulatory space in pursuing legitimate public policy objectives.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump’s Illegal Effort To Defund Public Broadcasting Stumbles Forward

    That’s at the heart of the Trump administration’s assault on public broadcasting and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which uses a modest amount of taxpayer funds to help support organizations like PBS and NPR. As we noted recently, U.S. “public broadcasting” is a shadow of the true concept after years of being undermined. But it’s a major ideological enemy of authoritarian zealots all the same.

    Clearly incapable of getting the votes needed to take action in Congress, Trump signed an executive order on May 1 calling for an end of taxpayer funding of U.S. public broadcasting. The claim is that both PBS and NPR exhibit a “left wing bias”: [...]

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Arena Group ☛ Trump Administration Considers Pulling CBS Broadcasting License

    This is not about CBS. This is about whether a president can use state power to crush independent journalism. If this precedent is set—if the government is allowed to dictate which voices are permitted to speak—then the United States will no longer be a free society in any meaningful sense.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Trump’s first 100 days shredded millions in funding for Indigenous peoples - lonestarlive.com

    The chaos is part of a broader pattern of the Trump administration to act quickly regardless of legality and reverse policies when needed, even at the cost of sowing confusion and wasting money. “It’s been a shitshow,” said Matthew Fletcher, a law professor at Michigan State University and member of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Public Lands Shouldn’t Have a Price Tag on Them

    Committee members also approved an amendment from Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) that would begin the process of privatizing public lands in the West. The amendment calls for the sale of areas of public land in Nevada and Utah to private developers and industry. Notably, Clark County, Nevada’s most populous county, opposed the measure.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Today in ACAB

    SFPD says its officers working as security guards are 'out in the community.' But mostly, they're downtown: [...]

  • University of Michigan ☛ Postdoctoral students at UMich file for union recognition

    “We are making two demands in our petition,” UM-PRO wrote. “One, that UM-PRO is quickly recognized as a union by the University so that we can begin good faith negotiations towards a standard contract. Two, that the University guarantees financial protections for Postdocs who lose funding due to federal cuts, effective immediately.”

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• [Old] Comes v. Microsoft: Case No. CL 82311 ☛ Comes v. Microsoft

  The following are items in "The Public Record": [...]

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ DISH Sues UK Hosting Provider in $25 Million Pirate IPTV Lawsuit

    While Innetra is incorporated in the UK, DISH alleges that the company targeted its services toward the United States as well. This includes references to the DMCA, which is the only copyright law mentioned on its website.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Trump Told to Back Pirate Site Blocking Law Instead of 100% Movie Tariffs

    President Trump's strategy to "save" the "dying" movie industry in the United States amounts to a 100% tariff on "any and all" movies produced in "foreign lands." Trump appears to be taking aim at generous incentives offered by the UK, among others. In a response, think tank ITIF suggests an alternative; urge Congress to pass site-blocking legislation and compel countries to enforce copyright protection as part of their tariff negotiations.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Understanding Copyright in Music: Types of Works and Rights

    The creation and delivery of music to audiences requires collaboration between a variety of creative individuals and businesses, including songwriters, music publishers, performers, producers, and record labels. All of these creative individuals and many others play an important role in crafting and bringing music to audiences, and it’s important that each understands and appreciates their rights under U.S. copyright law. This three-part series explores those rights by discussing: (i) the different types of works and kinds of rights for music under copyright law; (ii) the different types of music licenses; and (iii) the remedies for copyright infringement.