Leftovers

• Dave Gauer ☛ Explanation of the Ratfactor Feed - ratfactor

  This is a website. It is hypertext. It is too complicated for linear formats. But we can still approach it a little bit in a linear way, for a treat.

  A couple years back, I structured the homepage in chronological order to better highlight what’s old and what’s new. It gives a very "bloggy" feeling. But that feeling is deceptive. While some of those links take you to a single page, others take you to whole sections of the website.

• Science

  • The Register UK ☛ NASA JPL director quits for 'personal reasons'

    Leshin's tenure as director was also marked by many triumphs, not least the continued operation of the Mars rovers, flights of the Ingenuity helicopter, and saving the Voyager mission.

  • Wired ☛ As the US Cuts Scientific Talent, Europe Launches an Initiative to Attract It

    “The role of science in today’s world is questioned,” warned Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, in a statement on Tuesday. “What a gigantic miscalculation. I believe that science holds the key to our future here in Europe. Without it, we simply cannot address today’s global challenges—from health to new tech, from climate to oceans.”

    The plan, originally proposed by the French government, also proposes creating long-term “super grants” for outstanding researchers, to provide them with financial stability; these would last for seven years. The program also plans to double the amount of financial support available this year for those who decide to move to the European Union.

• Career/Education

  • US News And World Report ☛ Trump Fires Head of Library of Congress, New York Times Reports

    Neither the Library of Congress nor the White House immediately responded to a request for comment from Reuters.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post:  Eight Hypotheses Why Librarians Don’t Like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

    Twelve years ago, German librarian Anne Christensen presented eight hypotheses why librarians don’t like discovery layers. Today, another paradigm shift in search is happening, and we can and should learn from our previous discussions about the evolution of search technology. Libraries have a long history of having to reimagine themselves and their services in the face of technological advancement. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) search and the use of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) in most commercially available search engines right now, we must start the conversation on how these tools can and should be used in library search interfaces. A holistic approach to this process also includes discussing why we might feel some discomfort with their introduction.

  • JURIST ☛ Federal court blocks funding cuts to US libraries and museums

    Judge John McConnell Jr. issued Tuesday’s preliminary injunction, halting further implementation of the order, as it pertains to the IMLS, MBDA, and FMCS. The injunction notes that the presidential order violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The APA allows courts to hold agency actions unlawful if they are deemed to be “arbitrary” or “capricious” — lawful agency actions must be “reasonable and reasonably explained.” Judge McConnell identified the cuts to staffing and programs as forced by the order to be arbitrary in nature, which makes compliance inherently unlawful.

• Hardware

  • Jasper Tandy ☛ Jasper is blogging: New keyboard day

    I changed to the 35g ambient twilight switches and they're much better for me. This is the first Choc switch I've used that I actually like, rather than it being the one I dislike the least.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • El País ☛ Dissolving USAID could lead to an additional 14 million deaths by 2030

    Of the total projected fatalities, 4.5 million were children, according to a study by the ISGlobal institute, in which researchers from Brazil, Mozambique, and the United States participated

• Proprietary

  • Macworld ☛ Nearly three decades later, Apple owes everything to the iMac

    Twenty-seven years ago, Steve Jobs took the stage at the Flint Center in Cupertino to unveil the first new product since his return to Apple: the original iMac.

    The Apple of today would be nearly unrecognizable to the people of 1998, but Apple still sells an iMac. It’s literally the only product Apple sells today that it also sold in that era. (MacBooks were PowerBooks, and Mac Pros were Power Macs back in 1998.) Of course, today’s iMac bears little resemblance to the original G3 iMac. But in keeping the name alive, Apple is also nodding to the unique spirit of the iMac, a product that helped turn around Apple’s fortunes and define the computers of the next three decades.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • 404 Media ☛ Watch an AI-Generated Recruiter Make a Job Interview Even Worse

      Job hunting can be a dehumanizing, demoralizing experience even if you’re interacting with an empathetic recruiter on the other end. For the 1.7 million people slogging through long-term unemployment in the U.S., the process is grueling at best. Add to this the advent of AI-generated recruiter avatars that glitch out on you before you even speak to a real person at the company you’re trying to work for, and now you’re truly in hell.

    • Michael Tsai ☛ curl Takes Action Against AI Bug Reports

      We still have not seen a single valid security report done with AI help.

    • The New Stack ☛ AI-Generated Code Needs Refactoring, Say 76% of Developers

      These are just some of the many findings we uncovered in “The 2025 State of Web Dev AI” report. The study also indicates that hallucinations, inaccuracies, lack of context and generally poor code quality are particularly challenging when using AI coding assistants and other AI-focused developer tools.

    • The Register UK ☛ WorldCon use of AI to vet panelists prompts backlash

      The kerfuffle started on April 30, when Kathy Bond, the chair of this summer's World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) in Seattle, USA, published a statement addressing the usage of AI software to review the qualifications of more than 1,300 potential panelists. Volunteers entered the applicants' names into a ChatGPT prompt directing the chatbot to gather background information about that person, as an alternative to potentially time-consuming search engine queries.

    • India Times ☛ Researchers reboot push for AI safety after Paris summit bust

      Experts researching threats stemming from artificial intelligence agreed on key work areas needed to contain dangers like loss of human control or easily accessible bioweapons in a report published Thursday. In "AI 2027", a widely-read scenario recently published online by a small group of researchers, competition between the United States and China drives Washington to cede control over its economy and military to a rogue AI, ultimately resulting in human extinction.

    • Futurism ☛ Slop Farmer Boasts About How He Uses AI to Flood Social Media With Garbage to Trick Older Women

      Last year, Jesse Cunningham — a self-described "SEO specialist who leverages the power of AI to drive real results" — appeared in a livestream for a closed members group for SEO secret-trading. He'd been invited to discuss his AI strategies for monetizing content on Facebook, where he claimed to have found financial success by flooding the Meta-owned platform with fake, AI-generated images of things like faux houseplants and ChatGPT-created recipes.

  • Social Control Media

    • Adam Newbold ☛ Mirrored Gardens

      There’s a certain type of online place that’s all too common out there: the type where many of its members resemble the person who runs the place (often quite literally sharing the same race and socioeconomic status, at the very least), and where everyone seems to also share a narrow set of interests. There may not even be anything about the place inherently tied to those interests; it just kind of winds up attracting people who largely look and act the same way: like its owner.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Mark Zuckerberg announces mind-control ray (again)

      If Zuck is a boy genius, then Zuck's pronouncements take on the character of prophesy. When Zuck announced the "pivot to video," investors poured tens of billions into Facebook stock and into video-first online news production, despite the fact that Zuck was obviously lying: [...]

    • The Scotsman ☛ Screen time 'killing the family dinner chat' - 9 tips to restart the conversation

      A once-cherished family tradition that has sparked many a family discussion appears to be on the decline - and our fixation with screens may be to blame.

    • Futurism ☛ Emails Show Elon Musk Begging for Privacy While Siccing His 200 Million Twitter Followers on Specific Private People He Doesn't Like

      It's a glaring double standard, with the mercurial CEO repeatedly trying to protect his own privacy at all costs. Case in point, as the New York Times reports, his staff tried to keep the construction of a ludicrously tall fence and gate to his $6 million mansion in Austin, Texas, hidden from the public.

      Emails obtained by the newspaper show that Musk's handlers tried to make public meetings allowing neighbors to speak out about his plans private instead. His staff also argued that the city of Austin should exempt him from state and federal public records laws, efforts that ultimately proved futile.

    • Kev Quirk ☛ Goodbye Fosstodon

      Last night I demoted my Fosstodon admin account, then flipped the switch and migrated to Micro.blog. Here's some thoughts on why I did that.

      I wanted to write this post as a follow up to my previous post about the Fosstodon drama, where I said that I was done with Fosstodon. This post is going to focus more on why I went with Micro.blog and what other options I considered.

    • Pedro ☛ Goodbye Mastodon

      This is when I decided that is time to get over it. I don’t think that Mastodon is different than other social media. At least not to me. And the fact that there are many small servers, with administrators, moderators, and their egos, it kinda makes it even worse. I know that there was a lot of negative things on twitter, but I was good at staying away from it as I was never around so much to read about it. It was just an information network that I would go to find out what was happening and move on with life. I think Bluesky is probably the replacement and I intend to use it the same way I used twitter in the past.

    • Meduza ☛ ‘The same food as regular people’ Kremlin bots promote Putin’s ‘relatable’ fridge — and claim Americans are obsessed with his kefir

      This past Sunday, Russian state television aired a “documentary” by propagandist Pavel Zarubin celebrating 25 years of Vladimir Putin’s rule. In one scene, the president offers Zarubin some kefir, a yogurt drink popular in Russia. Immediately after the broadcast, pro-Kremlin bots launched a coordinated promotion campaign across social media, highlighting the “ordinary” contents of Putin’s fridge as supposed evidence of his everyman lifestyle, researchers from the monitoring projects Bot Blocker and Botnadzor told Agentstvo Media. By Wednesday, a Russian disinformation network had released a video in English, claiming that Americans were now scrambling to find the kefir brand online. Meduza shares key insights from Agentstvo’s reporting on how Russian propaganda turned a refrigerator into a full-blown PR campaign.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Papers Please ☛ ARC sells airline ticket records to ICE and others

      A company you’ve never heard of is selling copies of every airline ticket issued by a travel agency in the US to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and a plethora of other Federal law enforcement and immigration agencies — and who knows who else.

      Records of airline tickets issued by travel agencies in the US are being sold to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other Federal law enforcement agencies, according to an ICE procurement document posted yesterday on a US government contract website and uncovered in a major scoop today by Katya Schwenk of Lever News.

      According to the document found by Ms. Schwenk on SAM.gov, ICE is entering into a no-bid contract with the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) “to procure, on a sole source basis, licenses for Travel Intelligence Program (TIP)… The vendor listed is the only company that can provide the required software licenses.”

    • University of Michigan ☛ The complex relationship between adoptees and genetic data aggregators

      For those who may be unfamiliar, 23andMe is a DNA-testing company based in California that asks customers to send in a saliva sample to receive results about their ancestry and any subsequently linked health risks. These new bankruptcy issues are not the first time 23andMe has come under public fire. Previously valued at $6 billion dollars, its assets have since dropped to $50 million, and in December 2023, they suffered a massive data breach affecting more than 7 million of their customers.

    • India Times ☛ Meta awarded $167 million in damages from Israeli cybersecurity firm

      The Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group was ordered on Tuesday to pay $167 million in damages to Meta, capping a six-year legal battle after NSO [cracked] 1,400 WhatsApp accounts belonging to journalists, human-rights activists and government officials.

    • The Register UK ☛ NSO Group must pay Meta $168M in WhatsApp spy case

      Pegasus is carefully designed to use zero-day vulnerabilities to infect handsets, ideally without any user interaction. Once on a phone, it has access to all and any data the devices contain, including phone records, emails, messages, and video, as well as the location of the device. It can even let its operator turn on the handset's camera and microphone for clandestine recording.

    • Security Week ☛ Spyware Maker NSO Ordered to Pay $167 Million Over WhatsApp Hack

      The lawsuit against NSO was filed in 2019, after it came to light that a zero-day vulnerability had been exploited to deliver NSO-made spyware to roughly 1,400 WhatsApp users.

    • NYOB ☛ Verbraucherzentrale NRW requests Meta to cease and desist AI training in the EU

      On 14 April, Meta announced that it would use the personal data of European users for artificial intelligence (AI) training in the future. Starting on 27 May, the company will use all posts published on Instagram and Facebook for AI training. The company falsely claims to have a legitimate interest in this extensive data use – even though it should actually ask those affected for their consent. noyb filed a series of GDPR complaints against Meta's plans in 2024, prompting the Irish DPA to temporarily halt the plans. Although the legality of the plans has still not been clarified by the authorities, Meta is now pressing ahead and ignoring the fundamental right to data protection of all affected Europeans. The Verbraucherzentrale North Rhine-Westphalia has now officially requested to Meta to cease and desist its AI training plans in the EU - and is considering further legal steps if the company fails to respond. noyb fully supports the Verbraucherzentrale's action.

    • EPIC ☛ Comments of EPIC to Congresswoman Lori Trahan on Efforts to Reform Privacy Act of 1974 and Protect Americans’ Data from Government Abuse

      The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) submits these comments in response to Congresswoman Lori Trahan’s March 18, 2025, request for information on modernizing the Privacy Act of 1974.[1] EPIC applauds Congresswoman Trahan for taking steps to protect Americans’ privacy and constitutional rights against current and future abuses. As Congresswoman Trahan accurately notes, Americans’ privacy and data security are being challenged in unprecedented ways by illegal government overreach. The Privacy Act of 1974 is a crucial piece of the framework limiting the government’s power over individuals’ personal information. However, aspects of the Privacy Act have become outdated due to technological advances and increasingly ineffective in the face of deliberate agency defiance. EPIC strongly supports amending the Act to limit its disclosure exceptions, to establish standards for personnel that handle systems of records, and to address the risks posed by emerging technologies. EPIC further stresses that Congress must ensure that agencies are adequately funded and staffed to implement privacy protections for decades to come.

    • EFF ☛ Appeals Court Sidesteps The Big Questions on Geofence Warrants

      Geofence warrants require a provider—almost always Google—to search its entire reserve of user location data to identify all users or devices located within a geographic area and time period both specified by law enforcement. This creates a high risk of suspicion falling on innocent people and can reveal sensitive and private information about where individuals have traveled in the past. Following intense scrutiny from the press and the public, Google announced changes to how it stores location data in late 2023, apparently with the effect of eventually making it impossible for the company to respond to geofence warrants.

    • EFF ☛ No Postal Service Data Sharing to Deport Immigrants

      The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) recently joined a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) task force geared towards finding and deporting immigrants, according to a report from the Washington Post. Now, immigration officials want two sets of data from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS). First, they want access to what the Post describes as the agency’s “broad surveillance systems, including Postal Service online account data, package- and mail-tracking information, credit card data and financial material and IP addresses.” Second, they want “mail covers,” meaning “photographs of the outside of envelopes and packages.”

• Defence/Aggression

  • Garry Kasparov ☛ Exposing Russia's Great Patriotic Lies

    The greatest such lie is that the Soviet Union should even be counted among the Allies. Generously, we might call the USSR a co-belligerent of the US and UK after 1941, when Germany invaded. But 1941 is a convenient starting point for the Russian regime to remember the war. In August 1939, the Soviets and the Nazis struck a deal that saw them launch the war in Europe as partners. The infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact split Poland between the two dictatorships and assigned Finland, the Baltics, and Moldova to the Soviet Union.

  • USMC ☛ Europe marks 80th anniversary of World War II’s end

    Germany itself again expressed gratitude for the change that May 8, 1945, brought to the world and to itself.

  • RTL ☛ Rejection of Moscow's narratives: Germany slams Russian 'lies', France warns of war 'spectre' in WWII commemorations

    "Putin's war of aggression, his campaign against a free, democratic country, has nothing in common with the fight against Nazi tyranny in World War II," he said.

    "Today we no longer need to ask -- did May 8 liberate us?" he said. "But we must ask -- how can we remain free?" he declared to applause from German MPs, although many from the far-right AfD -- now the biggest opposition party -- did not join in.

  • The Local DK ☛ United States to 'step up espionage' on Denmark and Greenland as part of takeover goal

    American newspaper the Wall Street Journal reports that the US is set to increase espionage activities in Denmark and Greenland in line with the stated objective of the Trump administration of taking control of the territory.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘The crux of all evil’: what happened to the first city that tried to ban smartphones for under-14s?

    In December 2023, when Tavender did a survey of his year 6 pupils (aged 10-11), 45 of 60 pupils already had smartphones – 75%. A year later, this has dropped to just seven – 12%. A similarly stark drop has been noted by heads at other schools in the city. His aim is for this trend to continue. In fact, he hopes that the smartphone resistance movement accompanies his primary schoolchildren into secondary school, so that in time the sight of a child carrying a smartphone in St Albans will trigger a frisson of shock, akin to the vision of a child with a cigarette.

  • LRT ☛ Migrants pelt Lithuanian border guards with sticks, stones – VSAT

    The incident took place overnight from Friday to Saturday in the Lazdijai District. According to the VSAT, a group of migrants brought a ladder in an attempt to climb over the border fence.

    Migrants then started throwing stones and sticks at the border guards who arrived at the scene, VSAT said.

  • India Times ☛ TikTok, facing a US ban, tells advertisers: We're here and confident

    That statement was the closest TikTok advertising executives got to addressing the app's uncertain fate in the United States in the company's annual spring pitch to marketers. Under a federal law and executive order, the app is set to be banned in the country next month if the Chinese owner of the company, ByteDance, does not sell it.

  • The Nation ☛ DOGE [sic] Is Wreaking Havoc on Everything—Except the War Machine

    The speed with which civilian programs and agencies are being slashed in the second Trump era gives away the true purpose of the Department [sic] of Government Efficiency (DOGE [sic]). In the context of the Musk-Trump regime, “efficiency” is a cover story for a greed-driven ideological campaign to radically reduce the size of government without regard for the human consequences.

  • El País ☛ 80th anniversary of the end of World War II: How does a country fall into the abyss of hatred?

    There are still too many unanswered questions, many aspects to be studied, and deep taboos surrounding the most devastating conflict in history

  • YLE ☛ Finland's TikTok data centre plan surprises minister, who says company should reconsider

    Yle reported about the project in the small city of Kouvola on Wednesday, in an article that examined the effort's foreign financial backers — as well as news that TikTok would be the centre's main tenant.

  • India Times ☛ Meta blocks access to Muslim news page in India

    Meta has banned a prominent Muslim news page on Instagram in India at the government's request, the account's founder said Wednesday, denouncing the move as "censorship" as hostilities escalate between India and Pakistan. The @Muslim account is among the most followed Muslim news sources on Instagram.

  • The Hindu ☛ Meta blocks access to Muslim news page in India

    Instagram users in India trying to access posts from the handle @Muslim — a page with 6.7 million followers — were met with a message stating: "Account not available in India. This is because we complied with a legal request to restrict this content."

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Former New Zealand Supreme Court judge set to join Hong Kong’s top court following exodus of foreign justices

    A former New Zealand Supreme Court judge is set to join Hong Kong’s top court following a slew of foreign judges’ departures over the past year, with some citing political reasons.

  • JURIST ☛ EU Parliament urges to continue freezing Türkiye EU membership talks

    The EU Parliament on Wednesday urged a stop to Türkiye’s plans for accession into the EU after the country failed to address major democratic shortcomings and silenced dissident voices.

  • The Atlantic ☛ DOGE [sic] Was Never About Saving Money

    Fortunately, more reliable sources than DOGE [sic]’s self-reported figures exist. The best is the Treasury Department’s monthly accounting of spending by agency and program. Any true DOGE [sic] spending reductions should show up in these budget totals, as should the results of other White House initiatives, including cuts to public-health spending and the ongoing efforts to eliminate USAID and the Department of Education.

    These spending data do not flatter the Musk project. Total federal outlays in February and March were $86 billion (or 7 percent) higher than the levels from the same months a year ago, when adjusted for timing shifts. This spending growth—approximately $500 billion at an annualized rate—continues to be driven by the three-quarters of federal spending allocated to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans’ benefits, and interest costs. These massive expenses have been untouched by DOGE [sic]’s focus on small but controversial targets such as DEI contracts and Politico subscriptions.

  • Jon Udell ☛ The Musk Massacre

    The shutdown likely won’t kill 3.3 million people annually, say its “only” a million. Per year. For six years. It adds up.

    Atul Gawande was leader of global public health for USAID. On a recent podcast he runs some more numbers.

  • The Register UK ☛ India advises platforms to block all content from Pakistan

    The IT Rules also cover content felt to be “detrimental to India's friendly relations with foreign countries” or material “likely to incite violence or disturb the maintenance of public order."

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Denmark to field unmanned vessels for monitoring busy shipping routes

    U.S.-based Saildrone will deploy four large unmanned surface vessels in Danish waters next month to conduct maritime surveillance missions and help protect critical undersea infrastructure.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Bitdefender ☛ TeleMessage, the Signal clone used by US government officials, suffers [breach]

    TeleMessage entered the spotlight earlier this month after US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was photographed attending a cabinet meeting held by President Trump at the White House. Close examination of the image revealed Waltz was using TeleMessage on his smartphone.

    Waltz, you may recall, was the member of the Trump administration who inadvertently invited a reporter to a Signal chat where highly sensitive military action against the Houthis was being discussed, putting US service personnel at risk.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Why security officials keep using the Signal app despite risks

    In their defense, Secretary Clinton and other officials have said that the unsanctioned communication methods are, simply put, more convenient. And while Signal is now considered one of the best encrypted apps on the market, its real appeal is that it is far easier to use than the current classified government systems. Those government systems have failed, critics say, to evolve with the technological times – a bipartisan point of frustration.

• Environment

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Millions of people depend on the Great Lakes’ water supply. Trump decimated the lab protecting it

    Cutbacks have gutted the staff at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Severe spending limits have made it difficult to purchase ordinary equipment for processing samples, such as filters and containers. Remaining staff plans to launch large data-collecting buoys into the water this week, but it’s late for a field season that typically runs from April to October.

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ Net zero by 2050? CT lawmakers try again on climate legislation

    A plan to set Connecticut on a course toward achieving net zero carbon emissions throughout the economy by 2050 was approved by House lawmakers last week, giving hope to climate advocates for one of their top legislative priorities.

    The legislation, House Bill 5004, would strengthen the state’s existing carbon-reduction goals and create a new “Clean Economy Council” to develop strategies and policies to help meet those targets. In addition, it offers a variety of incentives and programs for solar canopies, energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, heat pumps, green jobs and sustainability-focused businesses.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • FAIR ☛ Jumping to Blame Renewables for Iberian Outage

      The world doesn’t know yet what caused the dramatic power outage on the Iberian Peninsula (BBC, 4/28/25). Nevertheless, the right-wing press both in the US and Britain quickly exploited it to dubiously suggest that the blame rested with Spain’s push for more renewable energy sources. The insinuation that clean energy is at fault has even infected outlets like the New York Times and AP.

    • Deseret Media ☛ US plans to spend billions to update air-traffic control system

      The Federal Aviation Administration plans to replace 618 radars, install anti-collision tarmac technology at 200 airports, build six new air traffic control centers and expand its ADS-B network of real-time aircraft traffic information.

    • Wired ☛ Celsius Founder Alex Mashinsky Sentenced to 12 Years in Prison

      As part of the plea deal, Mashinsky admitted to lying to Celsius customers about fundamental aspects of the business—including how their funds would be invested—and manipulating the price of a proprietary [cryptocurency] coin for his personal financial benefit. He also agreed to forfeit $48 million to the DOJ.

    • David Rosenthal ☛ The Risks OF HODL-ing

      Traditionally, the big risk in HODL-ing cryptocurrencies has been their volatility. Fortunately, now the US goverenment is all-in on cryptocurrencies, this risk is greatly reduced. Progress moon-wards is virtually guaranteed, so it is reasonable to invest a small part of your portfolio into Lamborghinis. HODL-ers can rest easy while the rest of the coins in their wallets appreciate because they are protected by strong cryptography (at least until the advent of a sufficiently powerful quantum computer). But progress moon-wards exacerbates some other risks to HODL-ers, as I explain below the fold.

    • [Old] Reuters ☛ Microsoft pulls back from more data center leases in US and Europe, analysts say

      The tech giant's withdrawal from new capacity leasing was largely led by the decision not to support additional training workloads from ChatGPT maker OpenAI, the analysts led by Michael Elias said in a note.

    • Bloomberg ☛ Microsoft Abandons Data Center Projects, TD Cowen Says

      Microsoft Corp. has walked away from new data center projects in the US and Europe that would have amounted to a capacity of about 2 gigawatts of electricity, according to TD Cowen analysts, who attributed the pullback to an oversupply of the clusters of computers that power artificial intelligence.

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ Bulkmatic to invest US $250M in northern Mexico

    • The Walrus ☛ I Regret My Tesla | The Walrus

      I’ve talked to a few friends who own Teslas, and they share my discomfort. It’s not fun driving around in what some people are calling a “swasticar.” Add to that the purely selfish fear that Teslas these days are liable to be keyed or even torched.

    • The Register UK ☛ xAI to pull half the gas turbines powering Colossus DC

      The system's reliance on mobile gas turbines for power drew ire from residents and environmental groups, who raised alarms about their impact on air quality and community health.

      The issue reached a flash point in April when aerial footage obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) revealed that the AI startup had deployed 35 generators instead of the 15 originally reported, raising concerns that the supercomputer may be among the largest contributor of smog-generating nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the Memphis area.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Professional Hunters Kill a Shocking Number of Animals in South Africa

    • LabX Media Group ☛ Floral Stink Evolved Through Three Amino Acid Changes

      How did the ancestral function of these proteins evolve into something new? A phylogenetic comparison of the ancestral methanethiol detoxifier and SBP1 revealed substitutions at three amino acid sites. Instead of detoxification, SBP1’s function shifted to become an oligosulfide factory, thus enabling these stink bombs to carve an ecological niche for themselves. However, this evolutionary trait was not present in all oligosulfide-producing plants. Among the 12 genera tested, only three—Asarum, Symplocarpus, and Eurya—showed enzyme activity, all of which gained the protein through gene duplication events. These findings raise new questions about how and why some plants evolve floral mimicry with strong, pungent scents.

    • Matt Webb ☛ Homing pigeons fly by the scent of forests and the song of mountains (Interconnected)

      I assumed that birds use the geomagnetic field to fly halfway around the world. They don’t. Not all of them.

      Homing pigeons, it turns out, use smell. At least for a few hundred miles. Although, at shorter distances: [...]

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ As Google layoffs continue, a look at Big Tech job cuts in 2025

    Per layoff tracker Trueup, so far in 2025, 284 layoffs have taken place at tech companies, affecting 53,399 employees. Last year, nearly 2.4 lakh tech employees were laid off in 1,115 job cuts in the tech industry. In the first five months of 2025, Google, Microsoft and Meta have fired employees due to unsatisfactory performance, streamlining and other reasons amid rising focus on AI development.

  • The Record ☛ Exclusive: Top FBI cyber official Bryan Vorndran expected to leave the bureau

    In addition to his work inside the bureau, Vorndran has often acted as the FBI’s lead official for government-wide efforts on digital security issues, including ransomware.

    Vorndran is the co-chair of the Joint Ransomware Task Force. The group, which is co-led by CISA, was established in 2022 as part of incident reporting legislation — known as the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA) — to bring together federal authorities and resources to better disrupt malicious activity and coordinate operations with state and local governments, as well as the private sector.

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft not to rehire ousted employees for two years, considers departures ‘good attrition’

    Microsoft has introduced a two-year rehire ban for staff let go over performance issues, labelling such exits as “good attrition.” The policy signals a tougher stance on underperformance, as the company streamlines roles. Similar moves by Google and Meta reflect a broader tech industry push for leaner, more efficient teams.

  • European Commission ☛ AI Continent – new cloud and AI development act

    As part of the ‘AI Continent’ initiative, the EU is launching a new act to address Europe’s gap in cloud and AI infrastructure capacity through:
    research & innovation to accelerate the greening of compute infrastructures and data centres for cloud and AI;
    facilitation of private investment in sustainable cloud and AI capacity, to triple the EU’s data processing capacity in the next 5 to 7 years;
    actions to increase the secure processing capacity of EU-based cloud providers.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The New Belt and Road

    A pattern has emerged with stunning clarity, yet insufficient alarm: Nations facing punitive Trump tariffs are suddenly finding ways to approve Elon Musk's Starlink satellite service, according to internal State Department cables obtained by the Washington Post. These aren't coincidental business developments but deliberate “goodwill gestures” during trade negotiations, explicitly characterized as such by the governments involved.

  • Bert Hubert ☛ Cloud Overview

    Many organizations have over the years outsourced a lot of their IT. Even very information heavy things like banks have decided that IT and computing are not their core competence. They are now realizing they were wrong about this. However, it is very common to first outsource non-core competences, and then not know when to stop. It is extremely difficult to stop doing 80% of what you did while remaining good at the 20% you must retain. If you have no native IT skills left, you end up depending 100% on someone else’s skills, most likely from the cloud. I expand on this hard problem in Your tech or my tech: make up your mind quickly.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • 404 Media ☛ 'I Loved That AI:' Judge Moved by AI-Generated Avatar of Man Killed in Road Rage Incident

      How the sister of Christopher Pelkey made an avatar of him to testify in court.

    • Futurism ☛ Family Uses AI To Revive Dead Brother For Impact Statement in Killer’s Trial

      As Phoenix's ABC 15 reports, an uncanny simulacrum of the late Christopher Pelkey, who died from a gunshot wound in 2021, played in a courtroom at the end of his now-convicted killer's trial.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Christopher Pelkey — AI ‘victim testimony’ from beyond the grave

      There’s a lot of latitude in victim impact statements. And the family’s grief is real. But of course, it’s not just about one family — this presents huge and obvious problems going forward for the rest of us.

      Would the judge, Todd Lang, have accepted a short dramatic presentation written by the family with an actor playing Pelkey? Or pulling a medium into court to run a seance to speak to the deceased?

      The video even says “I would like to make my own impact statement” — and, of course, it’s literally not his own statement at all.

    • ABC ☛ Man killed in Valley road rage shooting provides own impact statement through AI

      It was the first time in Arizona judicial history — and possibly nationwide — that AI has been used to create a deceased victim’s own impact statement.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Hindu ☛ X says it blocked 8,000 accounts in India after govt's executive orders

    The platform said it received executive orders from the government requiring it to block over 8,000 accounts ‘subject to potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment of the company’s local employees’

  • India Times ☛ X blocks 8,000 accounts in India under government order

    X (formerly Twitter) has begun blocking over 8,000 accounts in India following government orders, including accounts of global media and prominent users. The company disagrees with the move, calling it censorship, but is complying to avoid penalties. X urged affected users to seek legal help and explore court relief.

  • [Old] RSF ☛ Turkïye: RSF calls on the authorities to release Swedish journalist Joakim Medin

    The special correspondent for the Swedish media Dagens ETC has been held in the high-security Marmara prison in the city of Silivri, since 30 March. Arrested three days earlier upon his arrival in Istanbul, he is accused of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and “belonging to an armed terrorist organisation” because of his presence at a pro-PKK rally in Stockholm in 2023. 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.

  • France24 ☛ Swedish reporter gets suspended term over Erdogan insult

    Although he posted links to articles he'd written about Sweden's NATO accession -- which was initially blocked by Turkey -- he was not responsible for the photo selection. 'I wasn't even there'

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Elderly Activist Stages Rare Anti-Putin Protest Across From Kremlin Before Jumping Off Bridge

    Public demonstrations against Putin and Russia’s war in Ukraine have become increasingly rare amid sweeping laws that effectively ban criticism of the military. Scores of people have been fined, imprisoned or forced into exile for their anti-war views since the start of the full-scale invasion.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Moscow Hit With Internet Disruptions Ahead of Victory Day Parade

    Internet restrictions have become common during major events involving Putin, particularly amid growing concerns over drone attacks and sabotage attempts linked to the war in Ukraine.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Sanders Calls on CBS Owner to Stand Up for First Amendment, Not Surrender to Trump

    “This lawsuit is an attack on the United States Constitution and the First Amendment. It has absolutely no merit and it cannot stand,” Sanders and the senators wrote. “In the United States of America, presidents do not get to punish or censor the media for criticizing them. Freedom of the press is what sets us apart from tin pot dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.”

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Forever review – an absolutely adorable TV take on Judy Blume’s banned teen sex classic

    A couple of years ago, Judy Blume noted that book banning was not only undergoing a resurgence in the US, but was at that point “much worse” than she had noticed during the 1980s. Blume is one to know: her 1975 novel Forever..., about teenage sex and desire, continues to be banned by school districts and libraries, as repression and censorship gallop on at a pace. This Netflix adaptation of Blume’s novel, which loses the ellipsis, is not only timely but important: through it, the story continues to be told, even if it is in a different medium.

  • BIA Net ☛ X restricts Erdoğan rival İmamoğlu's account in Turkey

    Since his detention in late March, the suspended mayor has continued to communicate with the public through his X account.

  • The Local SE ☛ Swedish foreign minister urges Turkey to release jailed journalist

    A Turkish court last month handed the 40-year-old an 11-month suspended sentence on charges of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    Prosecutors say Medin attended a protest in Stockholm in January 2023 where protesters strung up an effigy of Erdogan, though Medin argued that he was not even in Sweden at the time of the rally.

  • Pete Warden ☛ Why the Chinese Government Taught AI to Lie

    Almost exactly two years ago I asked “What happens when the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer lands in China?“, wondering how the Chinese government would prevent their citizens from discovering forbidden information once models could be run locally, with no internet queries to block. What I wasn’t expecting was that China would become the world leader in open-source LLMs, and that training techniques would advance so that effective censorship can be baked into models, even if they’ve been trained on large datasets that contain many instances of the inconvenient facts.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Denmark: Trial for Quran burning kicks off in Bornholm

    The trial, which will take place in Bornholm's largest town Ronne, is the first of its kind since a new law that criminalizes the "inappropriate treatment" of religious scripture, including the Bible, the Quran, and the Torah among others, came into force on December 7, 2023.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • RFERL ☛ In Emergency Ruling, US Appeals Court Reverses Halt To Funding For Radio Free Europe

    The new ruling, issued late on May 7 by the full 11-judge bench of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, imposed an “administrative stay” on the panel’s decision to put on hold a lower court’s ruling in the case, which pits RFE/RL against its overseer, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Film Critic Yekaterina Barabash Appears in France After Escape From Russia

    Russia criminalized criticism of its military operations abroad shortly after launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Authorities have since opened thousands of cases under the law, which rights groups say is being used to silence dissent.

    RSF also helped smuggle out Marina Ovsyannikova, the former state TV journalist who protested the war on-air in 2022.

  • The Local SE ☛ Sweden to donate $2 million to Radio Free Europe after Trump pulls funding

    It would be donating 20 million kronor ($2 million) in 2025 to the Prague-based station, the statement added.

    Founded by the United States during the Cold War to counter Soviet propaganda, RFE/RL had an annual budget of $142 million in 2024.

  • CBC ☛ He's still waiting for FOI records Toronto police said he could have last summer, requested in 2020

    Jelinski filed a freedom of information (FOI) request to Toronto police in June 2020 for records concerning the facial recognition technology Clearview AI after the police service admitted to using the controversial tool beginning in October 2019 and committed to stop using it in February of the following year.

  • JURIST ☛ Syria urged to actively protect journalists

    Media workers have reportedly become targets instead. According to RSF, two journalists — Ahmad Falaha of France 24’s Arabic service and Moawiya Atrash of Franco-German broadcaster Arte — were arrested and threatened with execution. “They put a gun to my temple, pulled me out of the car, and fired a shot next to me,” Falaha later recounted in a Facebook post.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ As Trump slashes AmeriCorps, states lose a federal partner in community service

    Kane, director of the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development, dreaded calling her AmeriCorps members to say the federal government had just terminated their positions in the nationwide service program. It embeds nearly 200,000 Americans each year in community nonprofits, schools and other organizations.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Trump Is Waging War on Veterans Affairs Workers’ Unions

    The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents other federal workers, secured a preliminary injunction on April 25 against Trump’s executive order, as it applied to its own members in other agencies. Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), hailed that result as a helpful precedent for “restoring collective bargaining rights that federal employees are guaranteed by law.”

    To further weaken labor organizations, federal agencies also ended payroll deduction of union dues in April. VA unions affected by this change include AFGE, the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), National Nurses United (NNU), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and SEIU affiliate, the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE).

  • ANF News ☛ The execution of Syrian and Lebanese intellectuals: an Ottoman tragedy

    The trials often denied the accused the right to defend themselves, and the charges were largely based on documents obtained from the French consulate. The executions were held in public spaces and intended to instill fear and deter others. Crowds gathered in the squares of Damascus and Beirut, watching the executions in horror. The event ignited widespread anger against the Ottoman Empire in Arab society and fueled nationalist sentiment.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Who broke the [Internet]?

    The thesis of the series – and indeed, of my life's work – is that the [Internet] didn't turn to shit because of the "great forces of history," or "network effects," or "returns to scale." Rather, the Great Enshittening is the result of specific policy choices, made in living memory, by named individuals, who were warned at the time that this would happen, and they did it anyway. These wreckers are the largely forgotten authors of our misery, and they mingle with impunity in polite society, never fearing that someone might be sizing them up for a pitchfork.

  • Techdirt ☛ Community-Owned Networks Offering Locals Dirt Cheap Broadband After Republicans Dismantle Federal Low Income Program

    When the program was killed, 23 million Americans suddenly faced significantly higher broadband bills. In some states, community broadband networks have been filling the void. Like in Longmont, Colorado, where the local community-owned Nextlight broadband network has been offering low-income families dirt cheap broadband access.

  • Techdirt ☛ California Bill Would Require That AT&T And Comcast Make Broadband Affordable For Poor People

    Generally, U.S. regulators are too captured to even acknowledge there’s a problem. When they do propose a solution, it either involves throwing money at the problem, or developing performative half-measures that don’t take aim at the real problem: monopoly power and the corruption that protects it.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • EFF ☛ The FCC Must Reject Efforts to Lock Up Public Airwaves

    The FCC is quietly contemplating a fundamental restructuring of all broadcasting in the United States, via a new DRM-based standard for digital television equipment, enforced by a private “security authority” with control over licensing, encryption, and compliance. This move is confusingly called the “ATSC Transition” (ATSC is the digital TV standard the US switched to in 2009 – the “transition” here is to ATSC 3.0, a new version with built-in DRM).

  • US FCC ☛ Media Bureau Seeks Comment On Petition For Rulemaking And Future Of Television Initiatve Report Filed By The National Association Of Broadcasters To Facilitate Broadcasters’ Transition To Nextgen TV MB Docket No. 16-142 [PDF]

    By this Public Notice the Media Bureau seeks comment on the Petition for Rulemaking (Petition)1 filed by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) asking the Commission to “establish a clear timeline to complete the transition” to ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV).

  • [Old] Advanced Television Systems Committee ☛ A/362, “Digital Rights Management (DRM)” - ATSC : NextGen TV

    This Recommended Practice provides best industry practices for implementers of ATSC Standard A/360, “ATSC 3.0 Security and Service Protection,” and the security and content protection provisions of A/344, “ATSC 3.0 Interactive Content″.

  • [Old] Future US Inc ☛ Latest ATSC 3.0 ‘Plugfest’ Targets Transport, DRM, and More

    The latest in a series of ongoing trials, this interop event was focused on such NextGen TV elements as digital rights management and signing in connection with MMT (MPEG Media Transport) and ROUTE (Real-time Object delivery over Unidirectional Transport), the Advanced Emergency Information broadcaster application, as well as basic interoperability testing of new models from TV set manufacturers.

  • [Old] Tech Hive ☛ DRM remains a stumbling block for DVRs embracing ATSC 3.0 | TechHive

    The industry group A3SA, which is in charge of digital rights management (DRM) for ATSC 3.0, released a specification this week for recording encrypted ATSC 3.0 channels from an antenna. This is supposed to give over-the-air DVR makers a clear path for supporting NextGen TV broadcasts, whose key features include HDR video, Dolby dialog boosting, and additional content. A3SA says the specification provides “a blueprint for a variety of new ATSC 3.0 recording devices” to come.

  • PC World ☛ Peacock may have just ruined your Black Friday subscription deal

    Peacock users with the add-on are being told that if they take no action before a certain date (in most cases later this month), they’ll automatically be switched over to Peacock Premium—which, confusingly, is the ad-supported version of Peacock.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft moved the goalposts before. Could it happen again?

    The controversy over Windows 11's hardware requirements is more nuanced. On one side, there is the laudable goal of securing Windows by requiring the presence of a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 and a relatively modern CPU. On the other hand, there are many devices capable of running Windows 10 that fail Microsoft's hardware compatibility requirements, usually through a lack of TPM 2.0 and/or an older CPU.

  • YLE ☛ Students upset over overnight laptop lockouts in some municipalities

    The availability of Chromebooks for basic education students in Finland varies significantly by municipality. While the devices are primarily intended for schoolwork and homework, not all regions offer them, and some restrict access to only certain grade levels.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Verge ☛ A new bill would force Apple to allow third-party app stores | The Verge

  Though the bill doesn’t mention Apple by name, it carves out rules for “large app store operators,” which it defines as app stores having more than 100 million users in the US. The bill would target Google’s practices as well, as it would force major app stores to let developers use third-party payment systems.

  It would also require Apple and Google to offer developers “equal access to interfaces, features, and development tools without cost or discrimination,” as well as allow users to remove or hide pre-installed apps. Violations of the bill would result in penalties from the Federal Trade Commission, along with an additional civil penalty of up to $1 million for each violation.

• Macworld ☛ 'Fortnite' could return to the iPhone this week (if Apple doesn't block it)

  Of course, we’ve heard this sort of thing before. At the start of 2023, we covered a cryptic tweet by Sweeney suggesting that the game would be back on the App Store by the end of that year. Perhaps he was referring to its reappearance on Apple devices in the EU, which happened in the second half of 2024, but was possible only because of the EU’s position on third-party stores—the game didn’t actually return to any official App Stores. Epic has been consistently bullish through this saga, but not always with good cause.

• Patents

  • [Repeat] Science Alert ☛ This 134-Year-Old Patent Reveals The Proper Way to Hang Toilet Paper

    The idea for perforated toilet paper was originally patented by Wheeler's Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company in 1871 and then re-patented again in a roll-form in 1891 as a way of preventing waste.

• Copyrights

  • Walled Culture ☛ EU prepares to give new rights to live streaming sites, to the detriment of the Internet and its users

    Some 5,600 citizens took the trouble to respond, despite the lack of an easy online interface to do so: responses required a document to be completed then emailed. Numerous problems with the existing copyright system were raised, particularly in the light of the shift from analogue to digital technologies. Despite that welcome engagement, and the many substantive issues that were raised, the public’s comments and concerns were almost entirely ignored in the final result of the legisltative process. Instead, the EU Copyright Directive gave yet more rights to copyright holders, and undermined the freedom of speech and privacy rights of ordinary people.