Leftovers

• Naz Hamid ☛ Naz Hamid • Opinionated vs. Flexible Software

  Products can and should evolve. It takes strong leadership to maintain the vision and core product that drew your users to it in the first place, and to stay. It may be inevitable though: something better comes along that is born out of a new time and place, and what was once new becomes old again.

• Science

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ NASA Engineers Revive Long-Dormant Thrusters on Voyager 1, the Farthest Spacecraft From Earth, in a 'Miracle Save'

    In the nick of time, NASA teams addressed clogging issues in the probe’s backup roll thrusters, before the only antenna capable of sending commands to it went offline

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ The NSA's "Fifty Years of Mathematical Cryptanalysis (1937–1987)"

    Weirdly, this is the second time the NSA has declassified the document. John Young got a copy in 2019. This one has a few less redactions. And nothing that was provided in 2019 was redacted here.

• Hardware

  • Futurism ☛ Something Wild Happens When You Try to Take a Video of a Car's Sensors

    What you're witnessing isn't lens flare or a digital glitch — it's real, physical damage to the camera. And it's permanent.

• Proprietary

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk’s AI Just Went There

      Earlier this year, after Grok admitted when a user asked it to reveal its source code that it had been instructed not to criticize Musk or Donald Trump, xAI engineering head Igor Babushkin claimed that the person who made that change "was an ex-OpenAI employee" that hadn't figured out how things work at their new job.

    • Gabriel Simmer ☛ Large Language Models

      And that's where I stand with LLMs. They're a mathematical formula for finding the connections between words and stringing together sentences based on averages. This in itself is not inherently good or evil, but the way they are constructed and run can be very unethical. And indeed, many of the ways they're being adopted or shoehorned into products is straight up wrong.

  • Social Control Media

    • Meduza ☛ Russian official fired after daughter posts TikTok threatening to send man to war — Meduza

    • Site36 ☛ Red hands conspiracy: Decades-old protest symbolism is smeared to be anti-Semitic in Gaza context

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • GamingOnLinux ☛ Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is now open source [Ed: Mindless, foolish openwashing of Windows, nothing to serve Linux at all

    • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft open sources Windows Subsystem for Linux

      We will update this piece if the company responds.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Harvard Bought This Stained Copy of the Magna Carta for $27.50. It Turned Out to Be an Original

      Issued by Edward I in 1300, this version of the historic text is one of only seven known surviving copies. It’s been hiding in plain sight in Harvard Law School’s library since 1946

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • CBC ☛ Bankrupt DNA testing company 23andMe to be bought by Regeneron

      The transaction will, however, put the spotlight back on data privacy issues, especially in light of 23andMe's recent challenges.

    • Futurism ☛ Bankrupt 23andMe Just Sold Off All Your DNA Data

      Said samples were willingly given by consumers in exchange for 23andMe to decode their DNA, a process that offered people a fascinating glimpse into their genetic makeup and family histories. That kind of biometric data is both wildly valuable and widely sought-after, so when 23andMe went belly-up financially, its trove of genetic information quickly drew attention as a lucrative asset. That realization immediately sparked concerns among data privacy experts, who warned that a sale of 23andMe data meant that the genetic information of customers, not to mention information about customers' close and distant relatives, was up for grabs to the highest bidder.

    • Troy Hunt ☛ Have I Been Pwned 2.0 is Now Live!

      Just one little thing first - we've dropped username and phone number search support from the website. Username searches were introduced in 2014 for the Snapchat incident, and phone number searches in 2021 for the Facebook incident. And that was it. That's the only time we ever loaded those classes of data, and there are several good reasons why. Firstly, they're both painful to parse out of a breach compared to email addresses, which we simply use a regex to extract (we've open sourced the code that does this). Usernames are a string. Phone numbers are, well, it depends. They're not just numbers because if you properly internationalise them (like they were in the Facebook incident), they've also got a plus at the front, but they're frequently all over the place in terms of format. And we can't send notifications because nobody "owns" a username, and phone numbers are very expensive to send SMSs to compared to sending emails. Plus, every other incident in HIBP other than those two has had email addresses, so if we're asking "have I been pwned?" we can always answer that question without loading those two hard-to-parse fields, which usually aren't present in most breaches anyway. When the old site offered to accept them in the search box, it created confusion and support overhead: "why wasn't my number in the [whatever] breach?!". That's why it's gone from the website, but we've kept it supported on the API to ensure we don't break anything... just don't expect to see more data there.

  • Confidentiality

    • Michael Burkhardt ☛ How long does it take a hacker to brute force your password in 2025? - Michael Burkhardt's Whirled Wide Web

      Sure, there are a lot of variables so the truth may vary considerably from what’s shown. But it’s a good reminder that strong passwords and a secure password vault are necessities these days.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The North Lines IN ☛ 50 pc of mosques in Pakistan serve as terror fronts: PoJK activist

    On the existence of terror camps, Professor added, “Yes, there are many terror camps still operating in PoJK and across Pakistan. In fact, around 50% of mosques in Pakistan have become fronts for terrorism.” He pointed out how these camps have evolved to avoid detection, becoming more discreet but still training people for attacks.

  • Techdirt ☛ After GAO Started Investigating DOGE [sic] , DOGE [sic] Decided To ‘Investigate’ GAO

    This latest overreach comes after months of DOGE [sic] attempting to position itself as some kind of revolutionary government auditor — despite lacking the expertise or process knowledge that actual auditing requires. As we’ve covered before, everything DOGE [sic] claims to be doing was already being handled by skilled professionals within government — professionals whom Musk promptly fired, like the technical experts at 18F. Real government auditors have been watching in horror as DOGE [sic] has been doing the opposite of proper auditing procedures.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Trump Administration Wants to Pursue Its Lawless Agenda Unchecked

    Beneath the technical arguments at the Supreme Court last week was an effort to take away one of the only really effective legal tools for reining in the executive branch.

  • CS Monitor ☛ What makes a ‘good’ madrassa? Pakistani schools face scrutiny.

    Yet some madrassas have also developed a reputation of being “nurseries of extremism,” radicalizing young, disenfranchised men. The Pakistani madrassa system has been linked to high-profile members of the Taliban, and is blamed for bolstering the insurgency in India-occupied Kashmir by providing fighters and financial support.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Corporations Are Working to Kneecap State Regulators

    This means that as guardrails for consumers and workers are dismantled on a federal level, states are in danger of losing their ability to pick up the slack.

    In fifteen states this year, according to a review by the Lever, lawmakers have introduced “judicial deference” laws, which would stack the deck against state regulators and allow corporate America to swiftly challenge and strip away state protections ranging from restrictions on pollution to consumer safeguards.

  • Wired ☛ DOGE [sic] Loses Battle to Take Over USIP—and Its $500 Million Headquarters

    “The purported removal of members of the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace (“USIP”) … was unlawful,” Howell wrote in the order, “and therefore null, void, and without legal effect.”

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Wired ☛ For Tech Whistleblowers, There’s Safety in Numbers

    Then, while working at a media outlet that connects whistleblowers with journalists, she noticed parallels in the coercive tactics used by groups trying to suppress information. “There is a sort of playbook that powerful entities seem to use over and over again,” she says. “You expose something about the powerful, they try to discredit you, people in your community may ostracize you.”

• Environment

  • Futurism ☛ China's Green Energy Surge Has Caused CO2 Emissions to Fall for the First Time

    Analysis by Carbon Brief, a UK-based climate publication, attributed the decline in CO2 output to green energy sources like wind, solar, and nuclear infrastructure, cutting the need for coal-powered energy. It notes that the drop in CO2 output came despite a nationwide surge in energy demand.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • H2 View ☛ Zeppelin Power Systems demonstrates hydrogen fuel cell generator in Hamburg | Technology | H2 View

      The system has an output of 50 kVA and can store approximately 30kg of hydrogen in its cylinder bundles. Furthermore, the generator is suitable for various industrial applications, such as stationary, maritime, rail, and emergency power supply.

    • The Register UK ☛ DARPA sets energy beaming distance, power record

      This particular test, the POWER Receiver Array Demo (PRAD), demonstated a new type of receiver technology for the laser beam. The receiver, designed by Teravec Technologies with support from Packet Digital and the Rochester Institute of Technology, features a compact aperture that allows the laser to enter with minimal light loss. Inside, the beam strikes a parabolic mirror that reflects it onto dozens of photovoltaic cells housed within the device, converting the laser light into usable electrical power.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Collateral Damage: The Environmental Cost of Cuba’s Terrorism Designation

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Futurism ☛ A Longtime Tesla Bull Dumped His Stock, Predicting a Total Collapse

    As Business Insider reports, based on financial disclosures, investor Ross Gerber of the Gerber-Kawasaki wealth management firm unloaded more than 26,000 of his company's Tesla shares in the first quarter of 2025, roughly ten percent of the firm's stake.

  • Court House News ☛ Elon Musk, who’s suing Microsoft, is also software giant’s special guest in new Grok AI partnership

    Musk's deal means that the latest versions of xAI's Grok models will be hosted on Microsoft's cloud computing platform, alongside competing models from other companies.

  • Rik Huijzer ☛ Yuri Bezmenov: Psychological Warfare Subversion & Control of... - Rik's Weblog

    This is the transcript of a lecture by Yuri Bezmenov (alias Tomas Schuman), a Soviet KGB defector. He "explains in detail his scheme for the KGB process of subversion and takeover of target societies at a lecture in Los Angeles, 1983." The transcript was generated by OpenAI whisper and manually verified and improved by me: [...]

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Register UK ☛ LLMs can beat humans in debates - if they get personal info

      Fresh research is indicating that in online debates, LLMs are much more effective than humans at using personal information about their opponents, with potentially alarming consequences for mass disinformation campaigns.

    • The Record ☛ Russia-linked disinformation floods Poland, Romania as voters cast ballots | The Record from Recorded Future News

      Romania and Poland each reported increased Russian disinformation activity ahead of their presidential elections, with authorities warning the Kremlin-backed network Doppelgänger is actively attempting to influence voters.

      Romania’s Interior Ministry said on Friday that the group, which has been operating in Europe since at least 2022, launched a new disinformation campaign targeting the second round of the Romanian presidential election held on Sunday. Last year, the country annulled its presidential election results following revelations of Russian interference.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Techdirt ☛ Where Did All Those Brave Free Speech Warriors Go?

    Since the start of the Trump administration, many of our biggest concerns about how MAGA would attack free speech have not only proven true, but have turned out to be understated. Nearly all parts of the administration are seeking to silence critical speech. Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed “free speech warriors” who signed the infamous Harper’s Letter five years ago have gone mysteriously quiet. They were absolutely frantic about “cancel culture” for years, but when actual government censorship comes along? Crickets.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Right Has Embraced the Cancel Culture It Claimed to Hate

    In other words, the Right’s versions of wokeness and cancel culture share everything that was worst about the progressive versions. The hostility to free speech norms, for example, is an important point of continuity between the two, although far more dangerous in this version because the new cancelers have so much more power and so many fewer scruples.

  • The Register UK ☛ Trump signs TAKE IT DOWN law to stop revenge porn

    President Donald Trump officially signed Monday the TAKE IT DOWN Act, a bill to criminalize revenge porn - both real and AI-generated. But internet rights groups have repeatedly warned the law is overly broad and vague, and could be used to order the takedown of protected speech.

  • Wired ☛ Trump Signs Controversial Law Targeting Nonconsensual Sexual Content

    But free speech advocates are concerned that a lack of guardrails in the Take It Down Act could allow bad actors to weaponize the policy to force tech companies to unjustly censor online content. The new law is modeled on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which requires internet service providers to expeditiously remove material that someone claims is infringing on their copyright. Companies can be held financially liable for ignoring valid requests, which has motivated many firms to err on the side of caution and preemptively remove content before a copyright dispute has been resolved.

  • US Senate ☛ This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks Act’’ or the ‘‘TAKE IT DOWN Act’’. [PDF]

  • RTL ☛ Up to three years in prison: Trump signs bill outlawing 'revenge porn'

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on free expression, has said the bill gives "the powerful a dangerous new route to manipulate platforms into removing lawful speech that they simply don't like."

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • JURIST ☛ Press freedom group condemns censorship of Pakistan journalist Ahmad Noorani

    The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged Pakistani authorities on Friday to restore domestic access to the YouTube channel of the exiled investigative journalist Ahmad Noorani, following the journalist’s recent criticism of the Pakistani army. CJP’s Asia program coordinator Beh Lih Yi stated that “the brutal intimidation of journalists and their families must stop, and the Pakistan government must allow the media to report freely.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Meduza ☛ ‘Your apartments have been sold’: How Russia is stripping Ukrainians of their property in Crimea

    In occupied Crimea, corrupt notaries are helping transfer ownership of Ukrainians’ apartments to Russian military personnel. It’s just one of several schemes the Kremlin-installed authorities are using to strip Ukrainians of their property — especially those who refused to take Russian citizenship. RFE/RL’s Crimean service, Krym.Realii, looked into how Russia has systematized the seizure of Ukrainian-owned homes across the occupied peninsula. Meduza shares an abridged English-language version of the outlet’s findings.

  • Robert Vitonsky ☛ Don't Guess My Language

    IP tells you where the request comes from, that’s it. It doesn’t tell you what language the user wants, speaks, or even understands. It fails all the time — VPNs, travel, people living abroad, countries with multiple official languages. This isn’t cleverness, it gives outright annoyance.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Civil rights lawyers have one simple piece of advice for border stops: Keep your mouth shut

    Despite carrying a U.S. passport, CBP agents led Piker to a private room where they questioned him for nearly two hours about his views on Trump, Israel, and Hamas. As reported in The Guardian, this happened despite Piker being enrolled in the global entry program, which typically speeds up travel. The incident ended only after Piker specifically asked if he was being detained.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ Search engines are getting worse, so OpenWebSearch funded by the European Union want to fix it

    Not gaming news but an important subject to cover anyway since it's something that affects me and GamingOnLinux directly, as well as all of you who regularly use a search engine. The OpenWebSearch might be one way to save us all.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Techdirt ☛ 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).

    The “ATSC Transition” is championed by the National Association of Broadcasters, who want to effectively privatize the public airwaves, allowing broadcasters to encrypt over-the-air programming, meaning that you will only be able to receive those encrypted shows if you buy a new TV with built-in DRM keys. It’s a tax on American TV viewers, forcing you to buy a new TV so you can continue to access a public resource you already own.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Nick Heer ☛ Apple Is Working to Permit Other Default Virtual Assistants on iOS, but Only in the E.U.

  Make no mistake, however: Apple is barely about to “let” E.U. users switch from Siri to something else, as the MacRumors headline claims. It is doing so with the reasonable anticipation Siri’s in-universe monopoly will fall on the wrong side of regulations already established. Good.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • Digital Music News ☛ Darth Vader AI Voice in Fortnite Draws SAG-AFTRA Ire

      “Fortnite’s signatory company, Llama Productions, chose to replace the work of human performers with AI technology. Unfortunately, they did so without providing any notice of their intent to do this and without bargaining with us over appropriate terms,” SAG-AFTRA’s statement continues. “As such, we have filed an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] against Llama Productions.”

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ SAG-AFTRA files unfair labor charge against use of Darth Vader's voice in 'Fortnite'

      On Monday, Hollywood actors guild SAG-AFTRA filed an unfair labor charge over the use of an AI-powered version of the iconic “Star Wars” villain’s voice in the massively popular video game “Fortnite.”

    • US News And World Report ☛ SAG-AFTRA Files Unfair Labor Practice Charge Over Use of AI to Make Darth Vader's Voice in Fortnite

      SAG-AFTRA called a strike against major game companies in July after more than a year of negotiations around the union’s interactive media agreement broke down over concerns around the use of unregulated artificial intelligence.

      In a statement, SAG-AFTRA said the union supports the rights of members and their estates to control the use of their digital replicas.