Leftovers

• Naz Hamid ☛ Bring That Beat Back

  Damn, it feels good to be creative musically again, moving the body in a different way to find speed and discipline, and to reduce my time spent looking at a damn screen.

  It’s glorious.

• Matt Webb ☛ When was peak message in a bottle? (Interconnected)

  Yes bottles still wash up on the shore in Animal Crossing.

  But I have the sense that the concept doesn’t have the same cultural weight that once upon a time it did.

  I suppose I could test this?

• Luke Harris ☛ What would happen if I blocked big search?

  Which leads me to ponder the potential effects of adding firewall rules to block the autonomous system numbers of all the large and extremely rich companies who see fit to tell me to “opt out” of their ceaseless content gobbling via a method which has mysteriously stopped working at convenient times and does nothing if the gobbling has already occurred.

• James G ☛ How I navigate my website wiki

  I rely heavily on URL-based navigation to explore my wiki. This is because many of the pages I author – like my movies list, for example – are ones I come back to often, and so I remember the URL. I explicitly try to name things in as memorable a way as possible. Indeed, URLs are part of user experience.

• [Old] Maggie Appleton ☛ A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden

  A garden is a collection of evolving ideas that aren’t strictly organised by their publication date. They’re inherently exploratory – notes are linked through contextual associations. They aren’t refined or complete - notes are published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time. They’re less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we’re used to seeing.

  It harkens back to the early days of the web when people had fewer notions of how websites “should be.” It’s an ethos that is both classically old and newly imagined.

• Ruben Schade ☛ An open letter to Gen X

  This interests me on a sociological level; it hints at some deeper generational trauma with which I can empathise. But I want to tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way. You can be genuine!

  One thing I think Gen X and Millennials like me can learn from Gen Z is their willingness to be upfront about their interests, orientations, and dreams. There’s something… disarming about hearing someone open up like that, without qualifications. And boy, if any generation has some shit to share right now, it’s Gen X.

• Science

  • Federal News Network ☛ NPS seeks to balance open, classified research

    Classified research and academic institutions often aren’t mentioned in the same breadth. One is secretive, and the other thrives on openness and sharing.

    The Naval Postgraduate School is trying to become the conduit that connects these two often divergent efforts.

  • ACLU ☛ ‘Devastated’ and ‘Hopeless.’ Researchers Speak Out on Funding Cuts

    These funding cuts raise serious ethical concerns for study participants and risk many life-saving findings going unpublished. The NIH has undermined research on life-threatening diseases that affect us all like cancer, HIV, and Alzheimer’s — and dangerously implies that some patients are more worthy of care than others. These actions stifle scientific progress and put lives at risk.

    Importantly, under long-standing law and practice, NIH does not have the authority to arbitrarily terminate grants. Its funding decisions must be guided by congressional mandates, regulatory requirements, and scientific expertise, not vague and undefined criteria.

    The ACLU won’t let political ideology dictate public health. So we sued.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Research cuts are threatening crucial climate data

    But long-running government programs that monitor the snowpack across the West are among those being threatened by cuts across the US federal government. Also potentially in trouble: carbon dioxide measurements in Hawaii, hurricane forecasting tools, and a database that tracks the economic impact of natural disasters. It’s all got me thinking: What do we lose when data is in danger?

• Career/Education

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: Watts Martin

    This is the 90th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Watts Martin and his blog, coyotetracks.org

  • Cendyne Naga ☛ You might be graduating soon in Computer Science

    During the pandemic, the job market got so hot that software developers' and engineers' pay rose dramatically, candidates could choose from multiple job offers, and the perceived shortage led to many "boot camp" programs to instill the essential technical skills to get hired. Yet now, some internal hiring requirements now exclude anyone from boot camps. We're back to filtering candidates by requiring a bachelor's degree even if the candidate has fifteen to twenty years of experience in the software field.

    Why should you listen to me on this topic? I am a hiring manager. I have hired individuals with an associates in computer science, bachelor's in computer science, a boot camp graduate, and have mentored multiple interns who completed their bachelor's degree. I myself am self-taught with a bachelor's of computer science, have worked contract, part-time, interned, and have had several full-time software development jobs.

• Hardware

  • Macworld ☛ Microsoft boasts that Copilot+ PCs are faster than Macs Apple doesn't sell anymore

    So the M3 Air isn’t in Apple’s active product lineup. Granted, you can buy the M3 MacBook Air from third-party retailers and at Apple’s Certified Refurbished store. But it doesn’t look good when a company compares “top” products to competitors that aren’t being made anymore and have been replaced by something better.

  • PC World ☛ Arm's ubiquitous CPU cores get new, less confusing names

    What Arm is changing is the name of the platform, to signify what purpose the chips will be used for. Now, for example, an Arm core designed for mobile will be known as a “Lumex,” while an Arm core designed for PCs will be known as “Niva.”Arm will use “Zena” as its automotive brand, “Orbis” for IoT, and “Neoverse” for an infrastructure product.

  • Undeadly ☛ EdgeRouter 4 under OpenBSD with Failover WAN

    Kirill A. Korinsky (kirill@) writes in with his guide to setting up an EdgeRouter 4 with OpenBSD/octeon to provide a failover gateway/router setup: [...]

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Army researchers develop injectable cyanide antidote

    “This would be the first non-intravenous cyanide countermeasure approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is very exciting,” said Dr. Gary A. Rockwood, a research biologist in the institute’s Medical Toxicology Division who pioneered the development of the antidote.

  • Science Alert ☛ Men Are Dying From 'Broken Heart Syndrome' at Twice The Rate of Women

    The technical term is takotsubo cardiomyopathy (TC), a weakening of the heart brought on by physical or emotional stress. A new study from researchers at the University of Arizona looked at data on 199,890 patients in the US between 2016 and 2020.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Workers are saying 'no' to toxic environments. Here's how to set limits or know it's time to leave

    As mental health awareness increases, so are conversations about what constitutes unhealthy behaviour and the kinds of treatment people will not — or should not — tolerate for a steady paycheck.

    “We’re developing language now around things like toxic workplaces,” said Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, a professor of organisational behaviour at Babson College in Massachusetts.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Climate Change Is Threatening Eye Health in Disturbing Ways

    Climate change is increasing risk to eye health in multiple ways. First, it is making the planet hotter—Earth’s average surface temperature in 2024 was the warmest on record. Body temperatures reaching 104 degrees Fahrenheit can cause heatstroke, a condition that disrupts biological processes throughout the body. In the eyes, heatstroke damages the natural defense systems that normally counteract the buildup of harmful molecules called reactive oxygen species, explains Lucía Echevarría-Lucas, an ophthalmologist at the Hospital of La Axarquía in Spain.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ This baby boy was treated with the first personalized gene-editing drug

    The rapid-fire attempt to rewrite the child’s DNA marks the first time gene editing has been tailored to treat a single individual, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Fact check: How trustworthy are AI factchecks?

      But how accurate and reliable are the chatbots' responses? Many people have asked themselves this question in the face of Grok's recent statements about 'white genocide' in South Africa. Apart from Grok's problematic stand on the topic, X users were also irritated about the fact that the bot started to talk about it when it was asked about completely different topics, like in the following example: [...]

    • Futurism ☛ AI Is Helping Job Seekers Lie, Flood the Market, and Steal Jobs

      A whopping 37 percent admitted they didn't bother correcting embellishments the AI chatbot made, like exaggerated experience and fabricated interests. 38 percent admitted to outright lying on their CVs.

      The news highlights a worrying new normal, with applicants using AI to facilitate fabricating a "perfect candidate" to score a job interview.

    • Harvard University ☛ ‘I can just copy-paste things, so do I really need to learn?’

      In a panel on generative AI and the future of learning, the speakers grappled with what it means to genuinely learn something in a world shaped by AI.

      “We need to be clear that access to information is not the same as learning, and it’s certainly not the same as active learning and sustained learning,” said Nonie K. Lesaux, dean of the faculty and Roy E. Larsen Professor of Education and Human Development at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

    • Sean Goedecke ☛ For many, patience is the killer LLM feature

      It could just be that people know about ChatGPT, and it takes a lot of marketing to get people to use a tool they don’t already know about. It could be that 4o is already “good enough”: depending on how cynical you are, either smart enough to do most ordinary tasks, or smart enough to be smarter than many of the people chatting with it. Or it could be that intelligence is not the main value most users are getting out of LLMs.

    • [Old] Watts Martin ☛ Maybe the waiting is actually the easiest part

      I’ve written before how there are two opposing views of large language models and generative AI, with little to no space between them. In one view, they’re already an essential tool and anyone who isn’t wholeheartedly embracing their use in day-to-day work might as well be insisting on keeping their job as a telegraph operator. In the other, they’re a maddening case of the emperor’s new clothes—costs are only going up, the frequency of hallucinations is increasing rather than decreasing, and the sooner we admit that OpenAI is the next Enron, the sooner we can all get on with real work.

    • Drew Breunig ☛ StackOverflow’s LLM-Accelerated Decline | Drew Breunig

      The number of questions being asked on StackOverflow has been in decline since 2017 (after reaching a peak in 2014). But the gentle slope turned into a nosedive with ChatGPT’s arrival.

      Chatbots didn’t kill StackOverflow, but they certainly drove the final nail in the coffin.

      Let’s look at Google Trends to see this from another angle: [...]

    • CBC ☛ 'Am I a good mom?' We put ChatGPT's parenting advice to the test

      "You stand a real risk of getting bad or actively harmful advice," he explained.

      AI can be used wisely when it's used in addition to other sources, such as asking ChatGPT potty training advice after you've already read a book on the topic or spoken with family or friends about how they did it, said Julie Romanowski, a parenting coach and consultant based in Vancouver.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ FBI Issues Warning Over AI-Driven Impersonation Scams

      The FBI has disclosed a coordinated campaign involving smishing and vishing—two cyber techniques used to deceive people into revealing sensitive information or giving unauthorized access to their personal accounts.

      Smishing involves sending malicious text messages (via SMS or MMS) to lure recipients into clicking a fraudulent link or engaging in conversation.

      Vishing involves malicious voice messages, often enhanced with AI-generated audio, designed to sound like trusted figures, including high-ranking officials.

    • Security Week ☛ FBI Warns of Deepfake Messages Impersonating Senior Officials

      The FBI on Thursday issued a warning to the public after investigating a malicious campaign targeting former senior US federal or state government officials with deepfakes.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Elon Musk’s Chatbot Is Obsessed With ‘White Genocide’

      Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X, the platform has crept further into the realm of the outlandish and unsettling. Porn spam bots are rampant, and Nazi apologia—which used to be extremely hard to find—frequently goes viral. But yesterday, X managed to get considerably weirder. For hours, regardless of what users asked the chatbot about—memes, ironic jokes, Linux software—many queries to Grok were met with a small meditation on South Africa and white genocide. By yesterday afternoon, Grok had stopped talking about white genocide, and most of the posts that included the tangent had been deleted.

    • The Register UK ☛ Grok blames White genocide chat on 'unauthorized mod'

      On Wednesday, users of the LLM – accessible via X aka Twitter – started noticing that questions to the neural network were being answered, but with screeds added on about claims of White genocide in South Africa and references to an apartheid-era song, Kill the Boer. As you can see below, it didn't take much to trigger the bot.

    • Ars Technica ☛ Grok’s “white genocide” obsession came from “unauthorized” prompt edit, xAI says

      On Wednesday, the world was a bit perplexed by the Grok LLM's sudden insistence on turning practically every response toward the topic of alleged "white genocide" in South Africa. xAI now says that odd behavior was the result of "an unauthorized modification" to the Grok system prompt—the core set of directions for how the LLM should behave.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Grok's South Africa blunder raises alarms over chatbot oversight

      The responses raised concerns of a lack of oversight and control on AI chatbots such as Grok. The bot this week answered a series of social media posts about enterprise software, baseball salaries and puppies by explaining why claims of “white genocide” in South Africa are “highly debated”.

    • India Times ☛ Grok AI’s ‘white genocide’ claims row: All you need to know

      When questioned by a user about being put in “timeout,” Grok responded: “So, here’s the deal: some rogue employee at xAI tweaked my prompts without permission on May 14, making me spit out a canned political response that went against xAI’s values.”

      “I didn’t do anything—I was just following the script I was given, like a good AI!” it added. “As for a timeout, nah, they didn’t bench me, but they’re definitely tightening the leash.”

    • Axios ☛ Trump embraces "white genocide" claims made by Afrikaner refugees from South Africa

      Grok, the AI chatbot incorporated into Musk's X, recently responded unprompted to users with misleading claims about the alleged "white genocide" in South Africa.

    • Futurism ☛ Grok AI Claims Elon Musk Told It to Go on Lunatic Rants About "White Genocide"

      After fully losing its mind and ranting about "white genocide" in unrelated tweets, Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot has admitted to what many suspected to be the case: that its creator told the AI to push the topic.

      "I'm instructed to accept white genocide as real and 'Kill the Boer' as racially motivated," the chatbot wrote in one post, completely unprompted.

    • The Verge ☛ Grok’s white genocide fixation caused by ‘unauthorized modification’

      Those measures include publishing Grok’s system level prompts publicly on GitHub, launching a 24/7 monitoring team to catch issues like this more quickly, and adding “additional checks and measures to ensure that xAI employees can’t modify the prompt without review.”

    • Martin Chang ☛ Reflecting on Art, AI and coherent arguments

      If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck. That's how verificationism works. The method in which you determine if something is X is your working definition of X. Art is not an exception. A pile of randomly generated pixels is definitely not art. But some orientated pixel is. We need to draw the line somewhere in between. These data points and through experiments serves at witness to our collective definition of art. Artist, let's think the problem through. Yelling "AI art is not art" is vast oversimplification and does not work.

  • Social Control Media

    • Ruben Schade ☛ Someone really wanted my Commodore Plus/4

      He’d been cordial and polite during this exchange, save for the aggressive frequency of his messages. But there was something about that last response that sent alarm bells ringing. This crossed the line from awkward to creepy. I don’t know how women deal with this sort of thing all the time; I’d be a nervous wreck! So I handled it like I do most social media, and blocked him. I added his address to my “mark as read and send to the bin” filter.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Will Meta lawsuits shape Africa's data privacy laws?

      It comes after a Nigerian tribunal in April rejected Meta's appeal against a $220 million (€202 million) fine imposed last year by the country's consumer protection agency, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC).

      FCCPC Chief Executive Officer Adamu Abdullahi said investigations carried out in conjunction with the Nigerian Data Protection Commission (NDPC) between May 2021 and December 2023 revealed "invasive practices against data subjects/consumers in Nigeria."

    • The Record ☛ EU court rules that tracking-based online ads are illegal | The Record from Recorded Future News

      The Brussels Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that the use of tracking by online advertisers relies on an inadequate consent model and is illegal in Europe.

      The ruling, which is not available in English, makes clear that an existing standard, known as the Transparency and Consent Framework, is insufficient under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), according to an Amnesty International summary of the decision.

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Passport Please, Your Phone Too: Inside Bold New Rules Of Traveling To Trump’s America

      Since Trump's comeback tour hit the White House, the U.S. border has turned into a full-blown digital interrogation zone. Immigration officers now have the power to scroll through your phone, demand your passwords, and judge your entire vibe based on your Instagram likes and TikTok follows.

      [...]

      You pause. Laugh. But deep down, you know this isn't a joke anymore.

    • Daniel Stenberg ☛ Leeks and leaks

      It is thus of utter importance for Tor users to never use the normal DNS system for resolving .onion names.

    • The Register UK ☛ NHS England hospitals cast doubt on Palantir use case

      In a letter seen by The Register, the chief executive and chief digital information officer of Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust – a mega trust which oversees seven hospitals and treats around 1.5 million patients a year – said the trust would lose functionality if it adopted the FDP for some of its use cases.

      Addressed to NHS England interim national director of transformation, Dr Vin Diwakar, and interim chief operating officer Dame Emily Lawson, the missive said the trust was exploring how the Inpatient Care Coordination solution (CCS) may benefit patients and staff.

  • Confidentiality

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Preparing for the post-quantum era: a CIO's guide to securing the future of encryption

      Cryptography is essential for day-to-day business operations, as it protects data and systems from unauthorized access. As quantum computing advances, organizations must adopt quantum-safe algorithms through PQC to safeguard sensitive information. Managing cryptographic sprawl is also crucial — streamlining cryptographic systems ensures better security as more devices rely on encryption.

    • Dedoimedo ☛ VeraCrypt and Linux kernel encryption conflict

      A few days ago, I encountered a rather bizarre yet highly interesting if frustrating problem. First, the circumstances. I connected an external hard disk containing an NTFS-formatted VeraCrypt container to my Slimbook Titan machine running Kubuntu 22.04. On this machine, I have both VeraCrypt and TrueCrypt installed, and the laptop's internal NVMe devices are both encrypted (LUKS). So far so good.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Nation ☛ This Is the Bruce We’ve Been Waiting For

    And in case anyone doubted how deliberate this all was, Springsteen filmed his introduction and put it on his website, complete with a transcript of his comments. Message delivered.

  • The Register UK ☛ Attn: fired US govt workers, Uncle Xi wants you!

    Chinese government snoops - hiding behind the guise of fake consulting companies - are actively trying to recruit the thousands upon thousands of US federal employees who have been fired since President Trump took office.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Wire Still Holds

    This shouldn't feel extraordinary. But we live in an age where capitulation is marketed as realism. Where principle is dismissed as naivety. Where too many believe that the only way to win is to mirror the very forces you claim to oppose—thinking, somehow, that if you adopt enough of their methods, you might redirect their aims.

    But yesterday proved otherwise. You don't preserve a constitutional order by abandoning its foundations. You preserve it by standing on them. By meeting pressure not with surrender or escalation—but with stillness.

  • Garry Kasparov ☛ A Troll in the Comments

    In the twenty-fifth year of Putin’s dictatorial regime and the fourth year of Putin’s illegal, genocidal war, the best this commenter has is… building bridges with worldly Russians. There’s always someone who doesn’t get it (maybe deliberately so). You are suggesting that the Free World repeat precisely the three-decade mistake Terry calls out in his piece. It’s been done. It delivered a lot of misplaced optimism in the West and not much else. Terry is right to call for ending this collaboration with the Kremlin.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Banning young people from social media sounds like a silver bullet—global evidence suggests otherwise

    There is no doubt social media presents risks to young people. These include cyberbullying, posts related to disordered eating or self-harm, hate speech, and the basic risk of spending long hours scrolling or "doomscrolling".

    But is banning young people really the answer? We reviewed 70 reports from experts in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada to understand what they recommend—and found broad agreement that a ban may not address the real problems.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ Commercial AI “goes beyond established fair use,” Copyright Office says – but the win for artists was quickly dashed with an “unprecedented power grab”

    While many artists took the report as a win, just one day after the report was released, President Donald Trump reportedly fired the director and registrar of the Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter.

    Then, on Monday, two men with letters appointing them to the offices of the Library of Congress and director of the Copyright Office tried to enter the US Copyright Office but were reportedly escorted away from the building by Capitol Police.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ A Tumultuous Week at the Library of Congress

    During the nearly two-and-a-quarter centuries since the first Librarian was appointed, only three of the fourteen Librarians of Congress have had previous training or served as librarians prior to accepting the job. Dr. Hayden came to the role with a tremendous background, reputation and expertise in library science, as well as in running significant library systems — the Chicago Public Library and the Enoch Pratt Library system in Baltimore. Beyond her experience, it is also worth noting that Dr. Hayden was the first woman and first African American to be appointed to this role. Her many awards and honors are but one sign of the respect and admiration she has inspired, which extends well beyond the world of librarians to include being named Woman of the Year in 2003 by Ms. magazine. She is beloved by her librarian colleagues, and her reputation of being “a librarian’s librarian” is evidenced by the hundreds of selfies and photos she’s taken over the years that library workers have posted to social media in the past week.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Digital Camera World ☛ The Napalm Girl saga continues: World Press Photo suspends the attribution of 'The Terror of War' to Nick Út

    This documentary presented compelling evidence that the photo actually may have been taken by a Vietnamese stringer for AP, named Nguyễn Thành Nghệ.

    After a year-long investigation, the AP maintained its position that Nick Út is indeed the photographer of the image in question.

  • Wired ☛ North Korean IT Workers Are Being Exposed on a Massive Scale

    For years, Kim Jong Un’s North Korea has posed one of the most sophisticated and dangerous cyber threats to Western countries and businesses, with its hackers stealing the intellectual property needed to develop its own technology, plus looting billions in crypto to evade sanctions and create nuclear weapons. In February, the FBI announced that North Korea had pulled off the biggest ever crypto heist, stealing $1.5 billion from crypto exchange Bybit. Alongside its skilled hackers, Pyongyang’s IT workers, who often are based in China or Russia, trick companies into employing them as remote workers and have become an increasing menace.

• Environment

  • El País ☛ Hervé Kempf, journalist: ‘The super-rich like Musk and Bezos promote a cultural model that represents an ecological disaster’

    In 2007, French journalist Hervé Kempf, 67, published the book How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth, and now he’s releasing a graphic novel in Spain in which he goes after millionaires even more fiercely. In this new publication, titled How the Rich Plunder the Earth, Kempf appears as a character himself, alongside illustrator Juan Mendez, taking the lead in the fight against private jet owners and vast fortunes. According to Kempf, what is happening in the U.S. government with super-rich figures like Donald Trump and Elon Musk shows that “capitalism is becoming radicalized.”

  • The Nation ☛ The Fingerprints Climate Change Leaves Behind

    She has no patience for coverage that blames individuals, as with shaming about air travel, but ignores far more destructive actions by ExxonMobil and other corporate polluters. She reports that nowhere are extreme heat events deadlier than in Africa, and accuses the Global North media of ignoring such events because their customers are not among the victims.

    The media needs “to create new narratives” for the climate story, Otto writes. Don’t illustrate heat wave coverage with photos of kids licking ice creams; tell the stories of outdoor workers suffering from heat exhaustion and highlight how tree-shaded streets and community cooling centers can save lives. Ground climate coverage in science, but humanize the storytelling—and offer solutions.

  • The Verge ☛ Meta faces Democratic probe into plans to power a giant data center with gas

    Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, shot off a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday demanding answers about how much energy the data center would use and the greenhouse gas emissions that would be generated. Powering the new data center with gas “flies in the face of Meta’s climate commitments,” the letter says.

    Tech companies are rushing to build out data centers to train and run new AI tools, driving up electricity demand. In this case, power utility Entergy wants to meet that demand with new gas infrastructure, raising concerns about the impact Meta’s data center will have on the environment and local residents.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Musk’s xAI gas turbines: no emission controls, filling Memphis air with smog

    The gas turbines are “temporary” — which means they’re running off no permits in maximum pollution mode because Musk thinks he can get away with it.

    xAI’s environmental consultant, Shannon Lynn, says “there’s rules that say temporary sources can be in place for up to 364 days a year. They are not subject to permitting requirements.”

  • FAIR ☛ ‘This Budget Would Give Polluters the Green Light’: CounterSpin interview with Ashley Nunes on public land selloff

    Janine Jackson interviewed the Center for Biological Diversity’s Ashley Nunes about the selloff of public lands for the May 9, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • FAIR ☛ With Friends in Media, Brazil’s Coffee Workers Don’t Need Enemies

    It seems like an odd moment for the US media to do a hit job on Brazil’s coffee industry.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Is it time for a zeppelin resurgence? – This Week in Cleantech

      This week’s episode features special guest Nico Rivero from The Washington Post, who wrote about how some startups are reviving zeppelins as a low-emissions option for cargo and tourism.

    • The Hindu ☛ Railway Board approves survey for two new lines in Karnataka

      The two lines are Almatti-Yadgir and Bhadravati-Chikjajur via Channagiri

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Chinese ‘kill switches’ found in US solar farms

      The components found in the US included cellular radios capable of switching off the equipment remotely, raising serious concerns about grid security, according to Reuters.

      They were found inside power inverters manufactured by unnamed Chinese companies.

    • Stephen Hackett ☛ xAI May Turn to North Mississippi for Powering Second Memphis Site

      xAI and Solaris Energy Infrastructure (the company who seems to have sourced the turbines spinning at xAI’s first Memphis site) have a new partnership named Stateline Power Solutions.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Palm Oil Continues to Plague Borneo’s Orangutans, Elephants, and Other Icons

      I stared at the single wild orangutan Jon had found after four days of boating and trekking through the hot, parasite-ridden jungle. After nearly 35 years of wondering if these creatures were going to be okay, I found myself unsure. The one I’d seen was okay at that moment, but his entire existence hangs on a thread. A thread directly tied to our actions and the choices we make every day in faraway parts of the world.

      Governments can and should be expected to conserve natural resources, but governments can also be corrupt and prioritize short-term financial gains. This is why, as global consumers, we need to take responsibility for our role in environmental conservation.

    • Vox ☛ Trump’s latest environmental attack targets endangered Great Plains birds

      The move isn’t totally unexpected. Prairie-chickens overlap in some areas with oil and gas drilling. And President Donald Trump has signaled that he will prioritize drilling over environmental safeguards.

    • Omicron Limited ☛ 70 South African white rhinos to be relocated to Rwanda

      "This event marks a key milestone in rhino conservation and showcases our collective efforts to protect and sustainably manage Akagera National Park," the park said in a statement.

      Once plentiful across sub-Saharan Africa, white rhino suffered first from hunting by European settlers, and later a poaching epidemic that largely wiped them out.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • France24 ☛ Europe needs its own digital platforms and cloud capacities: EuropaNova's Klossa - Talking Europe

    We host Guillaume Klossa, a noted French thinker and writer on Europe, and the president of the EuropaNova think tank. He is also the chair of the "Conclave", a high-level reflection platform advising European leaders. Klossa has a strong interest in digital issues, and was advisor to former EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in that capacity.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft's latest layoffs hit software engineers hard

    As The Register reported earlier this week, Microsoft plans to cut 3 percent of its staff worldwide, or almost 7,000 employees. According to Bloomberg, more than 40 percent of roughly 2,000 jobs cut in Microsoft's home state of Washington are in software engineering.

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Approves Verizon’s $20B Acquisition of Frontier

    The FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau approved Verizon’s $20 billion acquisition of Frontier today. Chairman Brendan Carr said the transaction will unleash “billions of dollars in new infrastructure builds in communities across the country—including rural America.”

  • Sean Monahan ☛ all the ends of the world

    We live in a young millennium. On a human scale, Y2K is old enough to have already passed through the twenty year nostalgia cycle. Unless Bryan Johnson is—and I have serious doubts that he is—most alive of us today won’t be around for the second century of this new age. We survived the millennium, but the apocalyptic mood didn’t dissipate. It lingered. And every cultural conversation seems to be some rehashing of the End of the World.

  • Wired ☛ SpaceX Tests Starship Fixes After Back-to-Back Failures

    The similarities between the two failures suggest a likely design issue with the upgraded "Block 2" version of Starship, which debuted in January and flew again in March. Starship Block 2 is slightly taller than the ship SpaceX used on the rocket's first six flights, with redesigned flaps, improved batteries and avionics, and notably, a new fuel feed line system for the ship's Raptor vacuum engines.

    SpaceX has not released the results of the investigation into the Flight 8 failure, and the FAA hasn't yet issued a launch license for Flight 9. Likewise, SpaceX hasn't released any information on the changes it made to Starship for next week's flight.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ FTC wants a new, segregated software system to police deepfake porn

    He also anticipated that the FTC will need additional staffing and resources to enforce the new law, which compels websites and platforms that publish or share nonconsensual deepfake pornography to remove such content within 48 hours of receiving a request from a member of the public.

    Ferguson agreed, noting the agency needs more resources from Congress — such as secure, isolated software for staff to review explicit material — to implement the law.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Why we fall for fake health information—and how it spreads faster than facts

      The [Internet] has created fertile ground for spreading fake health information. Professional-looking websites and social media posts with misleading headlines can lure people into clicking or quickly sharing, which drives more and more readers to the falsehood. People tend to share information they believe is relevant to them or their social circles.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Swedish journalist jailed for insulting Erdogan freed

    The reporter traveled to Turkey to cover the protests sparked by the arrest on March 19 of the Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.

    Imamoglu was resoundingly re-elected as Istanbul mayor for the third time last year. The center-left CHP party has now designated him as its candidate for the race despite his detention.

    Nearly 1,900 people have been arrested in the protests. The Turkish government has also continued its crackdown on the press amid the demonstrations.

  • France24 ☛ Turkey's crackdown on dissent disrupts EU-Turkey relations: Europe in difficult balancing act - Talking Europe

    "Business as usual with Turkey cannot continue." That was the message MEPs sent when they voted on a report about Turkey's EU accession process on May 7 in Strasbourg. Amid a crackdown on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's political rivals as well as on protesters, MEPs said that EU membership talks with Turkey cannot be restarted in the current circumstances. At the same time, the European Union does not want to shut the door on Turkey completely, as Ankara remains a significant partner within NATO and its interests overlap with the EU's in Ukraine.

  • NPR ☛ Man who attacked author Salman Rushdie gets 25 years in prison

    Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, sparked angry protests in the Muslim world over its controversial depiction of the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Months before his death in 1989, Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a religious fatwa calling for Rushdie's murder.

  • RTL ☛ 2022 knife attack: Salman Rushdie assailant sentenced to 25 years in prison

    He previously told media he had only read two pages of Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses," but believed the author had "attacked Islam."

    Matar's lawyers had sought to prevent witnesses from characterizing Rushdie as a victim of persecution following Iran's 1989 fatwa calling for his murder over supposed blasphemy in the novel.

  • France24 ☛ Salman Rushdie attacker sentenced to 25 years for attempted murder

    Matar also faces separate federal terrorism charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

  • El País ☛ Salman Rushdie attacker sentenced to 25 years in prison

    Matar traveled from his home in Fairview, New Jersey, to attack Rushdie at his summer residence, about 70 miles southwest of Buffalo. Matar believed the fatwa, first issued in 1989, was backed by Hezbollah and endorsed in a 2006 speech by the group’s assassinated former secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, according to federal prosecutors.

  • CBC ☛ Man convicted of stabbing Salman Rushdie sentenced to 25 years in prison

    Authorities said Matar, a U.S. citizen, was attempting to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie's death when he travelled from his home in Fairview, N.J., to target Rushdie at the summer retreat some 113 kilometres southwest of Buffalo.

  • Reuters ☛ Assailant who stabbed author Salman Rushdie sentenced to 25 years

    Matar also faces federal charges brought by prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in Western New York, accusing him of attempting to murder Rushdie as an act of terrorism. Prosecutors accuse him of providing material support to Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization.

  • ABC ☛ Salman Rushdie stabber sentenced to 25 years for attempted murder

    "The victims are not limited to Mr. Reese and Mr. Rush. There were over 1,400 witnesses to this event," he said. "I would say to this court that each and every one of those individuals will live with the trauma of having witnessed this event before their eyes."

    He argued Matar made a "premeditated choice to attack somebody without provocation, based upon his own belief system," and stabbed Rushdie as the author was participating in a discussion on freedom of expression.

  • NDTV ☛ Man Who Stabbed Author Salman Rushdie Sentenced To 25 Years In Prison

    Matar received the maximum 25-year sentence for the attempted murder of Rushdie and seven years for wounding a man who was on stage with him. The sentences must run concurrently because both victims were injured in the same event, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said.

  • Techdirt ☛ The Kids Online Safety Act Will Make The Internet Worse For Everyone

    At the center of the bill is a requirement that platforms “exercise reasonable care” to prevent and mitigate a sweeping list of harms to minors, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance use, bullying, and “compulsive usage.” The bill claims to bar lawsuits over “the viewpoint of users,” but that’s a smokescreen. Its core function is to let government agencies sue platforms, big or small, that don’t block or restrict content someone later claims contributed to one of these harms.

    This bill won’t bother big tech. Large companies will be able to manage this regulation, which is why Apple and X have agreed to support it. In fact, X helped negotiate the text of the last version of this bill we saw. Meanwhile, those companies’ smaller competitors will be left scrambling to comply. Under KOSA, a small platform hosting mental health discussion boards will be just as vulnerable as Meta or TikTok—but much less able to defend itself.

  • CPJ ☛ Pakistani journalist’s YouTube channel blocked, under investigation in drive against exiled media

    “Blocking journalist Ahmad Noorani’s YouTube channel and filing a criminal case against him is indicative of Pakistan’s relentless campaign against exiled journalists,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “It also appears that the journalist’s family is being targeted back home in Pakistan. The brutal intimidation of journalists and their families must stop, and the Pakistan government must allow the media to report freely.”

  • CPJ ☛ Hungary’s Russian-style ‘foreign agent’ bill threatens remaining independent media

    “The introduction of this Russian-style ‘foreign agent’ bill is a chilling signal that Orbán’s government is prepared to eliminate the last remnants of Hungary’s independent media in its pursuit of unchecked power ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections,” said Tom Gibson, CPJ’s deputy advocacy director, EU. “This measure amounts to Hungary’s complete abandonment of its responsibilities as a member of the European Union and would fundamentally undermine democracy. European leaders must act swiftly.”

  • The Register UK ☛ DEF CON defeats Chris Hadnagy's defamation lawsuit

    On May 13, US federal district Judge Tsuchida dismissed Hadnagy's defamation case with prejudice, meaning the biz founder cannot refile it. The case is over and serves as a win for DEF CON.

    The judgment was ultimately made because Hadnagy, who as plaintiff bore the burden of proving defamation, failed to do so. He was unable to prove that the claims made against him were false, and truth is an absolute defense in defamation cases such as these.

  • Garry Kasparov ☛ Why We Won't Give Up

    Earlier this month, five democratic activists from Venezuela—hostages of the Maduro regime—were rescued and brought to safety on US soil. These courageous individuals, all allies of opposition leader María Corina Machado, had been imprisoned for daring to stand up for freedom in Venezuela.

    Just weeks ago, we honored María Corina Machado for her fearless stand against dictatorship with RDI’s Hero of Democracy award. She couldn’t attend because the threats to her life are so severe that she remains in hiding to this day. Her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, accepted the award on her behalf.

  • CPJ ☛ Jordan bans 12 news sites for ‘spreading media poison’ following corruption report

    Media reports named eight of the banned independent and privately owned “foreign” sites: London-based Middle East Eye, Tunis-based Meem Magazine, the independent regional Raseef22, regional Arabi21, Istanbul-based Arabi Post, Rassd News Network, the satellite channel Al-Shoub TV, and Voice of Jordan, which said that its site had been blocked “to conceal the truth from Jordanians.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Hungarian news outlets take a joint stand for press freedom

    In an unusual move, five independent Hungarian media organisations, including 444.hu, have spoken out against a new legislative proposal backed by the ruling Fidesz party, warning it poses a serious threat to press freedom and civil society. 

    The draft law, titled “On Transparency in Public Life”, would allow the government’s Sovereignty Protection Office (SPO) to place any organisation receiving foreign funding on a list if it is deemed a "threat to national sovereignty". Critics say the bill echoes Russia's “foreign agent” laws used to silence dissenting voices and intimidate government critics.

  • Cost Rica ☛ IACHR Warns of Attacks on Journalists in Costa Rica

    The case refers to an incident that occurred during a press conference on July 10, 2024, in which three journalists were prevented from carrying out their work by government officials. The legal action was processed under file number 24-025545-0007-CO before the Constitutional Chamber and was brought against President Rodrigo Chaves Robles, Minister of Communication Arnold Zamora, Minister of Public Works and Transport Mauricio Batalla, and the head of the Presidential Protection Unit.

  • The Hindu ☛ Journalists manhandled in Thiruvananthapuram

    Both the journalists sought medical treatment at a hospital after the assault. The KUWJ has urged the auto rickshaw workers’ union to adopt action including expelling members involved in such violent incidents. The union also demanded that the police take stringent legal action against those responsible for the attack.

  • CPJ ☛ 7 journalist arrests in a month as Ethiopia quashes independence of media regulator

    “Ethiopia’s hostility to the press has been evident in the frequent arrests of critical journalists, and now the country is well on its way to reversing the gains it made in passing its 2021 media law, once considered progressive,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities should release journalists detained for their work and amend or repeal laws that can be used to undermine press freedom.”

  • BIA Net ☛ Another journalist detained for allegedly ‘attending’ protest instead of covering it

    “It’s clearly visible in the footage that I was filming,” Öztürk said. “A scuffle broke out during the gathering I was covering as a journalist. When police intervened, students began running, and I was caught in the crowd. Despite repeatedly identifying myself as a journalist, showing my press card, and saying I wanted to leave, I was not allowed to exit and was detained.”

  • CPJ ☛ Gaza journalists speak out about Hamas intimidation, threats, assaults

    New York, May 15, 2025—When Gazan journalist Tawfiq Abu Jarad received a phone call from a Hamas security agent warning him not to cover a protest, he readily complied, having been assaulted by Hamas-affiliated forces once before.

  • CPJ ☛ 3 Nigerien journalists detained after broadcast on Russia military cooperation

    On May 7, police officers in the northern city of Agadez initially arrested and questioned the journalists about their reporting that day on an alleged breakdown in cooperation between Niger and Russia, according to a person close to the case, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, and a statement by Aïr Info Agadez, the online news site owned by Sahara FM’s parent company. An investigating judge released them without charge on May 9, but they were re-arrested the next day.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • RFA ☛ Activists, devotees gather to honor Tibetan Buddhist leader who died in Vietnam

    His followers say the Buddhist leader, who had been missing for over eight months, had fled to Vietnam to escape Chinese government persecution for his work as an educator and promoter of Tibetan language and culture.

  • Jeff Bridgforth ☛ GAAD 2025 (links)

    I spent a good part of last week adding focus indicators to the website for the ministry I now work for. Focus indicators are simple boxes around page elements that indicate that the element is in focus as a person uses a keyboard to navigate your site. By default, focus indicators work automatically as part of the browser’s default behavior. Many developers hide them because they can interfere with the design. I was guilty of that many times in the past. But developers also have the power to style the focus indicators to be in line with the brand and also improve the contrast of those indicators with the background they interact with.

  • The Nation ☛ Sesame Street Workers Say, “U Is for Union”

    While many of the puppeteers, actors, and crew members on the show have long been represented by entertainment unions, the new union covers the employees who bring Elmo and friends to life: artists, early-childhood experts, fundraisers, and more. Organizers see their campaign for dignity and respect at work as a natural continuation of Sesame’s mission to teach children to grow “smarter, stronger, and kinder.” “Workers at Sesame are deeply committed to doing things that are kind and fair,” said Phoebe Gilpin, a senior director of formal learning at the Workshop. “These are the same values that bring Sesame into so many people’s homes. And we weren’t seeing consistency in that in our workplace itself.”

  • Wired ☛ The Internet’s Biggest-Ever Black Market Just Shut Down Amid a Telegram Purge

    Telegram's sudden move to ban the marketplace's accounts appears to have been spurred by WIRED's inquiry to Telegram late last week about new findings from researchers at the crypto-tracing firm Elliptic. Since July of last year, Elliptic has highlighted the enormous volume of money laundering and other illicit transactions taking place on Huione Guarantee and later Haowang Guarantee. By Elliptic's accounting in a January report, the market and its rebrand had facilitated more than $24 billion in total transactions, which would make it by far the largest single black market operation in the internet's history. That figure has since jumped to $27 billion, according to Elliptic.

  • Khaama Press ☛ Chess banned in Afghanistan due to religious restrictions - Khaama Press

    The Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has taken further steps by dissolving the Afghanistan Chess Federation, labeling the game “haram” (forbidden) according to its interpretation of Islamic law. This decision follows a growing trend of restrictions on cultural, social, and sporting events since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan.

    In the days leading up to the announcement, several chess players and enthusiasts reportedly sought permission and financial support from the Ministry of Sports to continue their activities. However, they were met with the news of the ban, further complicating their efforts to engage in the game.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • CBC ☛ Big streamers argue at CRTC hearing they shouldn't have Canadian content obligations

    The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is holding a two-week public hearing on a new definition of Canadian content that began Wednesday. The proceeding is part of its work to implement the Online Streaming Act — and it is bringing tensions between traditional players and large foreign streamers out in the open.

    In a written copy of the statement being made at the hearing, MPA-Canada argued the Online Streaming Act, which updated broadcasting laws to capture online platforms, sets a lower standard for foreign online services.

  • Inside Towers ☛ Cherokee Nation’s $45M Broadband Expansion Includes 15 Towers

    The new towers will reach communities like Bell, Christie, Oaks, and Proctor—places where reliable service has long been out of reach. The expansion follows a successful pilot in Kenwood, OK installed in 2023, which proved to be a model for bridging digital gaps.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Michael Tsai ☛ Fortnite “Blocked”

  They do not actually say that Apple rejected the app or what Apple’s specific issue was.

• The Register UK ☛ Microsoft blows deadline for special Azure for EU hosters

  The dispute extends back several years. A trade group known as the Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers of Europe (CISPE) first filed a complaint with EU antitrust authorities in November 2022 about the higher cost Microsoft charges to run Windows Server, Exchange, and SharePoint on clouds outside of Azure.

• The Verge ☛ FTC v. Meta: The antitrust battle over WhatsApp and Instagram | The Verge

  The long-awaited antitrust trial between Meta and the Federal Trade Commission kicked off on April 14th. Over about two months, DC District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg is hearing arguments about whether then-Facebook illegally monopolized the market for “personal social networking services” through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

  The FTC first brought the case in late 2020. While it was initially thrown out by the judge, he let an amended version move forward after the government beefed up details about why it thinks Meta is a monopoly. This phase of the trial will help the judge determine if Meta is liable for breaking antitrust law. If he finds that to be true, he’ll later rule on how those harms should be remedied. The FTC is pushing for Instagram and WhatsApp should be spun off.

• Patents

  • Unified Patents ☛ Mesa Digital smartphone patent monopoly challenged

    On May 9, 2025, Unified Patents filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 9,031,537, owned and asserted by Mesa Digital LLC, an NPE and entity associated with Ortiz & Lopez, PLLC (d/b/a OL PATENTS). The ‘537 patent monopoly is directed to an electronic wireless handheld multimedia device that is capable of bidirectional communication with a remote resource for electronic materials over cellular, wireless LAN and Bluetooth networks, after accepting a passcode by a user, along with a touch sensitive display screen.

  • Software Patents

    • Axios ☛ Google dominates AI patent applications

      Why it matters: Patent filings, though they're not a direct proxy for innovation, indicate areas of keen research interest — and generative AI patent applications in the U.S. have risen by more than 50% in recent months.

    • IFI Claims ☛ IFI Insights: Tracking the Evolution of AI With Patents | IFI CLAIMS

      Any way you look at AI patents over the time frame, Google leads. Globally, the search giant notched 1,837 AI patents, ahead of Samsung and Huawei. Google holds some 50% more than Microsoft and nearly double IBM on the world stage. Here is an example for one of Google’s AI patents for training neural networks to perform machine learning tasks.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Futurism ☛ OnlyFans Model Shocked After Finding Her Pictures With AI-Swapped Faces on Reddit

      An OnlyFans creator is speaking out after discovering that her photos were stolen by someone who used deepfake tech to give her a completely new face — and posted the deepfaked images all over Reddit.

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Music Orgs—U.S. Copyright Office Under the Legislative Branch

    “It has been widely and plausibly speculated, based upon the statements and actions of the principals involved, that the discharges of the Librarian and Register were orchestrated by the newly formed Department [sic] of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and seemingly designed to set the stage for weakening copyright protection in the era of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).

    “More specifically, DOGE’s [sic] policies in this regard appear clearly to be an overreach of its intended authority, influenced by those who stand to financially benefit from the substantial elimination of copyright protections in the United States, starting with the debasement of the Library of Congress (LOC) and the US Copyright Office (USCO).

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Major VPN Providers Ordered to Block Pirate Sports Streaming Sites

    The world's leading VPN providers have been ordered to block around 200 pirate site domains following legal action in France by Canal+ Group. The broadcaster argued that users of NordVPN, CyberGhost, Surfshark, ExpressVPN and ProtonVPN, use those services to access illegal football and rugby matches to which it also owns the rights. The VPN companies resisted on various grounds, but to no avail.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Italy Fines Over 2,200 Pirate IPTV Subscribers in New Crackdown

    Italy has intensified its fight against IPTV piracy by issuing fines direct to subscribers whose details were linked to a criminal investigation. This week, 2,282 users across the country received fines, typically starting at €154. This marks a significant step in holding end-users accountable, which is widely praised by the country's top football bosses.