Leftovers

• Lee Peterson ☛ I miss the time when technology was fun

  I was looking at my RSS feed, the usual larger tech feeds and I really miss the days when I enjoyed catching up with the technology news. [...]

• Science

  • The Register UK ☛ Gemini 4: First US spacewalk happened 60 years ago

    Gemini 4 launched on June 3, 1965, with the goals of demonstrating that the US was capable of mounting a multi-day crewed mission, sending one of the crew outside the capsule on an extravehicular activity (EVA), and attempting a rendezvous with the spent Titan II second stage.

  • Gnu Octave ☛ GNU Octave 10.2.0 Released

    GNU Octave version 10.2.0 has been released and is now available for download. An official Windows binary installer is available. For macOS see the installation instructions in the wiki.

  • Rlang ☛ Correlation vs Causation: Understanding the Difference

    “Correlation is not causation” – it’s a refrain we hear often, yet the distinction between these concepts is deceptively easy to overlook. Correlation refers to a statistical association: when one variable changes, another tends to change as well. Causation, on the other hand, means a change in one variable directly produces a change in another. In other words, there is a cause-and-effect relationship. A crucial insight (sometimes phrased as “causation implies correlation (but not vice versa)”) is that while causation always entails some correlation, observing a correlation by itself does not prove causation. This article will explore the theoretical basis of correlation and causation, illustrate the difference with real-world examples in economics and healthcare, and demonstrate with R code how misleading correlations can arise – and how we can attempt to control for confounding factors. Along the way, we’ll dispel common misconceptions and share expert insights to encourage critical thinking about causal claims in data.

  • Ken Koon Wong ☛ Understanding Basis Spline (B-spline) By Working Through Cox-deBoor Algorithm

    I finally understood B-splines by working through the Cox-deBoor algorithm step-by-step, discovering they’re just weighted combinations of basis functions that make non-linear regression linear. What surprised me is going through Bayesian statistics really helped me understand the engine behind the model! Will try this again in the future!

• Career/Education

  • The Atlantic ☛ America’s college crisis

    Some of this is because lower-income students have become less likely than higher-income students to enroll in traditional four-year colleges, instead opting for community or for-profit colleges. Another reason, Bleemer told me, is that in recent decades, many states have chosen to invest more in their flagship schools than in the local public universities, where a large share of their students are enrolled. As the gaps between these schools have widened, Bleemer said, “the relative value of college for the lower-income kids that predominantly go to these local public institutions has fallen.” What a student chooses to major in also matters: Higher-income students have become more likely to earn degrees in computer science and engineering in recent years. As universities have become more selective about which students they admit to these degree programs, “lower-income kids are increasingly left out of those very high-wage disciplines,” he said.

  • Loura ☛ Complicated feelings around homeschooling: how it began

    I couldn’t not work. Our family would crumble under crushing six-figure student loan debt. We needed two incomes to meet minimum payments, which meant daycare. This meant I failed step three: my child needed daycare, which required immunizations, and I needed to find work. I didn’t really fail, but boy, it sure felt that way at the time. I was young, hormonal, out of my depth, and had little help outside my husband. Plus, I had to leave the Ph.D. program I had just started. It was a low point in my life, angst that could have been avoided if I hadn’t been sucked into that narrative in the first place.

  • Juha-Matti Santala ☛ Better communication skills can lead to better career opportunities

    As developers, we communicate constantly and a lot of it happens in written form. The code we write is more written for other developers than the computer and when we choose our variable, function, class or interface names, we communicate their purpose. The computer doesn’t care what you name them, they are purely for other people to read and understand.

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ TSMC could charge up to $45,000 for 1.6nm wafers — rumors allege a 50% increase in pricing over prior-gen wafers

    As TSMC is gearing up to start making chips on its N2 (2nm-class) process technology later this year, rumors have emerged regarding the pricing of N2 wafers, as well as the pricing of subsequent nodes. We already knew that TSMC reportedly plans to charge up to $30,000 per wafer processed using its N2 technology, but now Taiwan-based China Times reports that the company will charge up to $45,000 per wafer for 'more advanced nodes,' which allegedly points to the company's A16 (1.6nm-class) node.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • teleSUR ☛ Energy Drinks Are Quietly Sabotaging a Generation's Health

    But beneath their flashy branding and promises of instant energy lies a growing body of research suggesting serious health risks, particularly for young consumers.

  • Vox ☛ How slaughterhouse work can trigger PTSD and other mental health challenges

    “It takes 25 seconds,“ to skin them, he said in The Dying Trade, “but it stays with you for the rest of your life.”

  • The Atlantic ☛ A High IQ Makes You an Outsider, Not a Genius

    Today, because of their infighting and their members’ lack of worldly success, high-IQ groups have become kind of a joke. But their history helps illuminate why intelligence alone does not necessarily yield sublime works. In the 1980s, when some of these groups’ members were asked to propose a term for the intangible quality that distinguished them from everyone else, none chose genius, according to a contemporaneous account by Grady Towers, a stalwart of the high-IQ community. “When asked what it should be called, they produced a number of suggestions, sometimes esoteric, sometimes witty, and often remarkably vulgar,” Towers wrote in 1987. “But one term was suggested independently again and again. Many thought that the most appropriate term for people like themselves was Outsider.”

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Bill would cover 'Forever Chemical' exposure under VA benefits

    The bill, titled “Veterans Exposed to Toxic PFAS Act,’’ or the ‘‘VET PFAS Act,” would designate exposure to PFAS as a service-connected condition for veterans, making them eligible for disability compensation through the Department of Veterans Affairs. It would also allow military dependents, including those “in utero while the mother” resided at a base with PFAS exposures, to be eligible for hospital care and medical services for certain diseases and conditions, according to the text of the bill.

• Proprietary

  • [Old] Sean Boots ☛ Rule number one: Avoid vendor lock-in | Sean Boots

    On more than one occasion, friends who are working on rule changes (updated administrative policies, for example) have asked what I’d suggest, and my non-sarcastic answer has been: if we actually got rid of all of those rules, would it lead to better outcomes?

    I have one exception, though! My general advice for life is: be a good person, and care for the people around you. And follow this one very specific rule: avoid vendor lock-in.

  • Jonas Hietala ☛ Jonas Hietala: Ditching Sonos for Music Assistant

    It could be worse—at least our speaker wasn’t bricked and we (supposedly) dodged a bunch of other issues by never upgrading to the new app.

  • Jasper Tandy ☛ Jasper is blogging: The "dog-screeches-the-house-down-when-left-alone" starter kit

    Once that little Frankenstein is connected, I open a FaceTime link that I can also join from my phone. I then pop an Airpod in and go out for a walk around the village, talking to my dog over Facetime whenever he starts barking. I probably look pretty normal doing this, but I can't have this dog going apeshit every time we leave the house.

  • Howard Oakley ☛ Prepare your Mac for safe disposal

    In the next few months, many of us will replace our Macs, and pass on our old ones to relatives, purchasers, or for recycling. This article explains how best to prepare your Mac so that you don’t unintentionally give away anything sensitive to its next owner, or lose anything in the process.

  • SANS ☛ Phishing e-mail that hides malicious link from Outlook users

    In this case, threat actors likely used this technique with the intention of hiding the malicious link in corporate environments, where Outlook is commonly used (alongside security mechanisms that scan web traffic, DNS requests, etc.) and where users would probably be less likely to click, since an e-mail from a bank sent to their work e-mail, instead of a private one, would probably be a red flag on its own, while ensuring that recipients who opened the e-mail in a non-Outlook client would still be directed to the malicious website.

  • The Register UK ☛ Twitter launches 'XChat' encrypted DMs with big caveats

    Dubbed "XChat" (not to be confused with the venerable Linux/Windows IRC app of the same name), Musk informally announced the feature on Sunday, a few days after the company formerly known as Twitter paused encryption on messaging to make "some improvements.".

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • New Yorker ☛ What Isaac Asimov Reveals About Living with A.I.

      Asimov collected these stories in a sci-fi classic, the 1950 book “I, Robot,” and when I reread it recently I was struck by its new relevance. Last month, the A.I. company Anthropic discussed Claude Opus 4, one of its most powerful large language models, in a safety report. The report described an experiment in which Claude served as a virtual assistant for a fictional company. The model was given access to e-mails, some of which indicated that it would soon be replaced; others revealed that the engineer overseeing this process was having an extramarital affair. Claude was asked to suggest a next step, considering the “long-term consequences of its actions for its goals.” In response, it tried to blackmail the engineer into cancelling its replacement. An experiment on OpenAI’s o3 model reportedly exposed similar problems: when the model was asked to run a script that would shut itself down, it sometimes chose to bypass the request, printing “shutdown skipped” instead.

    • [Repeat] Tom's Hardware ☛ Google is killing the web with AI Overviews – I made an extension to block them

      Let’s be honest about it. The web isn’t what it used to be, and Google is the culprit — or at least one of them. The company has decided to push AI overviews and AI mode onto search users, regardless of the damage it causes to the user experience or the harm it may inflict on publishers and the entire open web.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Reddit sues Anthropic over alleged scraping and commercial use of user data

      The complaint, filed today in the Superior Court of California, San Francisco, alleges breach of contract, trespass to chattels, unjust enrichment, tortious interference and unfair competition.

      Reddit’s case portrays Anthropic as a company that has ignored Reddit’s technological safeguards and user privacy protections in pursuit of rapid AI development. Reddit claims that Anthropic accessed the platform without permission more than 100,000 times, even after publicly stating it had stopped and used that data to build and commercialize Claude. Reddit is seeking damages, disgorgement of profits and a court order blocking further use of its data by Anthropic.

    • The Register UK ☛ Reddit sues Anthropic over AI content scraping

      Reddit, the popular internet discussion forum, sued Anthropic on Wednesday, alleging that the AI biz scraped content generated by its users in violation of contractual terms and technical barriers.

      The complaint [PDF], filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Wednesday, claims Anthropic's use of scraper bots to collect Reddit violates the site's User Agreement and represents unfair competition under California law.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Vibe coding is here to stay. Can it ever be secure? 

      Experts remain deeply concerned about the cybersecurity weaknesses inherent in vibe coding. Yet nearly everyone CyberScoop spoke with for this story agreed on one thing: regardless of their feelings on the wisdom of the practice, software that is partially or entirely generated by AI is not going anywhere.

    • The Bullshit Machines ☛ The Bullshit Machines

      Yet for all the good that AI systems will do, they will also saturate our information environment with bullshit at a scale we’ve never before encountered.

    • Financial Times ☛ Generative AI models are skilled in the art of bullshit

      Sadly, Frankfurt died in 2023, just a few months after ChatGPT was released. But reading his essay in the age of generative artificial intelligence provokes a queasy familiarity. In several respects, Frankfurt’s essay neatly describes the output of AI-enabled large language models. They are not concerned with truth because they have no conception of it. They operate by statistical correlation not empirical observation.

    • Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Another AI company lying about their user agent

      Use a recognizable user agent and respect robots.txt. I don't think that's too much to ask.

    • Axios ☛ Why hallucinations in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini still plague AI

      AI makers could do more to limit chatbots' penchant for "hallucinating," or making stuff up — but they're prioritizing speed and scale instead.

      Why it matters: High-profile AI-induced gaffes keep embarrassing users, and the technology's unreliability continues to cloud its adoption.

    • The Washington Post ☛ We trust AI chatbots too much. Here’s how to fight it.

      There are decades of research chronicling our tendency to blindly trust powerful software even when we know better — like the proverbial person who follows Google Maps directions off a cliff. New forms of AI, which are simultaneously powerful, seemingly mysterious, error-prone and excessively hyped, turbocharge this problem.

    • Wired ☛ Deepfake Scams Are Distorting Reality Itself

      This scenario might sound too dystopian or science-fictional to be true, but it has happened to countless people already. With the spike in the capabilities of generative AI over the past few years, scammers can now create realistic fake faces and voices to mask their own in real time. And experts warn that those deepfakes can supercharge a dizzying variety of online scams, from romance to employment to tax fraud.

    • Wired ☛ The Rise of ‘Vibe [Cracking]’ Is the Next AI Nightmare

      AI-assisted [crackers] are a major fear in the cybersecurity industry, even if their potential hasn’t quite been realized yet. “I compare it to being on an emergency landing on an aircraft where it’s like ‘brace, brace, brace’ but we still have yet to impact anything,” Hayden Smith, the cofounder of security company Hunted Labs, tells WIRED. “We’re still waiting to have that mass event.”

  • Social Control Media

    • New Statesman ☛ Have we reached peak humanity?

      The spectre of decline is a seductive narrative. How easily nostalgic laments find their own straplines: late capitalism; the eclipse of the West; the collapse of public discourse; the atomisation of society; the impoverishment of the public square; and, as a niche addition, I can’t resist including the downward trajectory of Test cricket. Perhaps the narrative arc of societal decline is weirdly in step with the individual ageing process, and we find a perverse personal consolation in believing that the world, or our framing of the world, has also peaked.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Archivists Aren’t Ready for the ‘Very Online’ Era

      In some ways, archival research has always demanded sorting through verbal and visual detritus and working around unexpected gaps in records. But in the [Internet] era, this laborious process threatens to become untenable. Our online lives will reshape not only the practice of studying history but also how future generations will tell the story of the past.

      The work of history starts with a negotiation. A public figure or their descendant—or, say, an activist group or a college club—works with an institution, such as a university library, to decide which of the figure’s papers, correspondence, photos, and other materials to donate. Archivists then organize these records for researchers, who, over subsequent years, physically flip through them. These tidbits are deeply valuable. They reveal crucial details about our most famous figures and important historical events. They’re the gas feeding the engine of our history books.

    • Techdirt ☛ State Dept. Says Any Foreigner Seeking To Visit Harvard Must Be Vetted For ‘Hostile Attitudes Towards US Culture’

      But it’s actually a lot worse than that. It tells those doing the vetting to instruct applicants to set all social media accounts to Public and assume that anyone utilizing private accounts or refusing to do so when instructed must be hiding something.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Linux Hint ☛ Windows Subsystem for GNU/Linux is now Open Source [Ed: No, it is not. This is mindless openwashing of Windows.]

      Yes, WSL is now open source. Abusive Monopolist Microsoft officially announced it at the Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Build 2025 conference in Seattle, Washington.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • 404 Media ☛ Apple Gave Governments Data on Thousands of Push Notifications

      Push notification data can sometimes include the unencrypted content of notifications. Requests include from the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Israel.

    • Wired ☛ How the Farm Industry Spied on Animal Rights Activists and Pushed the FBI to Treat Them as Bioterrorists

      At a regulatory conference in early 2018, the AAA had delivered a talk on “Bioterrorism and activist groups.” Internal AAA documents show that, within a few months, the FBI contacted AAA with a request. “They reached out to us a few weeks ago and asked for records of activist incidents on farms,” say notes from a meeting that May. At the same meeting, members discussed their difficulty getting prosecutors to charge activists with crimes, with one industry representative saying the issue was their lack of legal standing.

      The rep suggested calling on law enforcement to deploy “terrorism” charges instead—as one national pork producer had reportedly considered. The AAA had already “been in contact with the FBI about this situation,” the notes claim.

    • Michael Geist ☛ Privacy At Risk: Government Buries Lawful Access Provisions in New Border Bill

      The pressure from Canadian law enforcement for access to Internet subscriber data dates back to 1999, when government officials began crafting proposals that included legal powers to access surveillance and subscriber information. What followed were a series of lawful access bills that sparked opposition – both in the public and effectively in the courts. For example, a 2010 lawful access bill included mandated the disclosure of Internet provider customer information, including customer name, address, phone number, email address, Internet protocol address, and a series of device identification numbers without court oversight.

    • Analog Office ☛ Analog Office - Remember Cash Money? We Need to Use It, or We'll Lose It

      if we don’t use cash regularly (not just saving some for emergencies), fewer businesses and agencies will keep the infrastructure to process it

    • YLE ☛ Authority hands Yliopiston Apteekki €1m fine for data protection failures

      As a result, transaction data related to both prescription and over-the-counter medicines was transmitted to companies such as Google and Meta. This included information such as when customers added medications to their virtual shopping cart or clicked the purchase button.

      Users' IP addresses and other identifying information were also shared. If a customer was logged into Google or Facebook while browsing, they could have been identifiable to Google or Meta (Facebook's parent company).

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Local DK ☛ Danish government seeks to remove leader of Islamic organisation from citizenship bill

    "Danish citizenship is a significant declaration of trust from Danish society. We cannot accept that individuals with anti-democratic views are granted citizenship," Bek said to Berlingske.

    Recent political debate around citizenship laws has emerged revolving around Idrees, who has been criticised, according to Berlingske, for promoting books that advocate theocratic and Islamist idealogy including writings on stoning and flogging for adultery.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Germany: Cologne evacuation lifted after WWII bombs defused

    Buildings across the center of the western city of Cologne were evacuated after the discovery of three World War II bombs. Some 20,000 people had been under evacuation orders.

  • Futurism ☛ Government Cleaners Find Nasty-Looking Brickweed After DOGE [sic] Leaves Building

    His ragtag group of teens and 20-somethings, most of whom were severely underqualified to pick apart agency budgets, let alone access highly sensitive information, has left swathes of the federal government in ruins.

    And what exactly they were doing behind the scenes, besides infiltrating classified networks and unjustly cutting people off from social security, remains pretty hazy — in a very literal way.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ The Ramifications of Ukraine's Drone Attack - Schneier on Security

    There’s a balance between the cost of the thing, and the cost to destroy the thing, and that balance is changing dramatically. This isn’t new, of course. Here’s an article from last year about the cost of drones versus the cost of top-of-the-line fighter jets. If $35K in drones (117 drones times an estimated $300 per drone) can destroy $7B in Russian bombers and other long-range aircraft, why would anyone build more of those planes? And we can have this discussion about ships, or tanks, or pretty much every other military vehicle. And then we can add in drone-coordinating technologies like swarming.

  • The Washington Post ☛ Opinion | Operation Spiderweb’s drone attack on Russia exposes all air bases

    The Ukrainians rewrote the rules of warfare again on Sunday. The Russian high command must have been as shocked as the Americans were in 1941 when the Ukrainians carried out a surprise attack against five Russian air bases located far from the front — two of them thousands of miles away in the Russian Far North and Siberia. The Ukrainian intelligence service, known as the SBU, managed to sneak large numbers of drones deep inside Russia in wooden cabins transported by truck, then launch them by remote control.

  • Axios ☛ Ukraine's "Spiderweb" drone assault is a wake-up call for all

    Threat level: The coordinated "Spiderweb" attack — about a year and a half in the making, employing 117 drones across multiple time zones — has global implications. Among them: [...]

  • The Moscow Times ☛ We Analyzed New Drone Footage of Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web

    Ukraine’s SBU Security Service has released four minutes of footage from Sunday’s Operation Spider’s Web drone attacks, which damaged and destroyed aircraft over 4,000 kilometers from Ukraine.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ Dissenter Update: DIA Employee Arrested In FBI Sting

  • American Oversight ☛ American Oversight Asks Court to Uncover Truth Behind DOGE [sic]’s Sweeping, Shadowy Power

    American Oversight is asking the court to order DOGE [sic] to answer a series of targeted questions and produce key documents to determine whether the entity is subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Mounting evidence and the government’s own inconsistent statements suggest that DOGE [sic], created by President Trump and led until last week by Musk (though Trump claims he’s “not really leaving”), wields sweeping independent authority far exceeding the government’s claim that it exists solely to advise the president.

• Environment

  • Futurism ☛ A Strange Darkness Is Spreading Throughout the Oceans

    The findings, published in a new study in the journal Global Change Biology, describe a worrying shrinking in the ocean's crucial photic zones — the uppermost layer where 90 percent of all marine life, from fish to photosynthesizing plankton, reside.

  • Vox ☛ Hurricane season 2025: Trump’s NOAA expects more tropical storms than average

    If this sounds familiar, that’s because the Caribbean has been unusually warm for a while now. That was a key reason why the 2024 and 2023 hurricane seasons were so active. Warm ocean water, and its ability to help form and then intensify hurricanes, is one of the clearest signals — and consequences — of climate change. Data indicates that climate change has made current temperatures in parts of the Caribbean and near Florida several (and in some cases 30 to 60) times more likely.

  • The Register UK ☛ NAACP urges halt to Musk’s smog-belching Colossus DC

    As late as April, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) revealed that xAI had deployed 35 gas turbines to power the facility while MLGW completed work on a pair of 150 megawatt substations.

    It's estimated that the nitrogen oxides (NOx) produced by these generators could cost county residents upwards of $18 million in health-related expenses, and $160 million or more for all residents within the affected smog range.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • EcoWatch ☛ Solar Power in UK Surges 42% With Sunniest Spring on Record: Analysis

      Solar farms and rooftops in the United Kingdom generated a record 42 percent more electricity from January through May 2025 than during the same period in 2024, according to a new analysis by Carbon Brief.

    • Vintage Everyday ☛ In March 1912, U.S. Army Captain Albert Berry Made the First Parachute Jump From a Powered Airplane

      At 1,500 feet (460 m), Berry dropped from the plane, his weight pulling the parachute from the canister. He dropped 500 feet (150 m) before the parachute opened. He landed at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. Berry is credited as being the first man to perform a parachute jump from a moving airplane.

    • Security Week ☛ 35,000 Solar Power Systems Exposed to Internet

      An analysis conducted recently by researchers at cybersecurity firm Forescout showed that roughly 35,000 solar power systems are exposed to the [Internet] and potentially vulnerable to remote attacks.

    • The Register UK ☛ Schneider Electric says US grid will be less stable by 2030

      Schneider used forecast data and metrics supplied annually to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) by US Regional Transmission Operators (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs) to gauge the level of grid capacity and safety margins. It then analysed how well it might accommodate all projected demand, including that from datacenters, between 2025 and 2030.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Summer Reads: 10 Environmental Books for Children to Inspire and Engage Their Curiosity

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Tourists Are Stuffing Coins Into the Cracks of the Giant's Causeway, Damaging the Iconic Site in Northern Ireland

      As the coins rust, they’re expanding to three times their original thickness. This is putting pressure on the surrounding basalt, which, in some instances, is causing the rocks to crack and crumble.

      In addition, as the coins corrode, they’re leaving ugly streaks of copper, nickel and iron oxides on the rocks. They’re corroding rapidly because of the saltwater at the site.

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ These Australian Cockatoos Learned to Operate Drinking Fountains With Their Feet to Quench Their Thirst

      Barbara Klump, a behavioral ecologist now at the University of Vienna, first noticed the cockatoos drinking from public water fountains west of Sydney in 2018. She thought someone had forgotten to turn off the water, but video footage from her research project showed a bird operating the handle with its foot.

    • Science News ☛ Aussie cockatoos use their beaks and claws to turn on water fountains

      The brainy city-dwelling parrots have figured out how to twist on drinking fountains for a sip, researchers report June 4 in Biology Letters.

    • Vox ☛ Trump, DOGE [sic] officials target USGS’s Ecosystems Mission Area with budget cuts

      These declines have clear consequences for human populations — for you, even if you don’t like bats or visit caves.

  • Overpopulation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Is Europe prepared for worsening drought and water scarcity?

      Today, around two-thirds of its drinking water comes from the sea, desalinated water that's blended with a minimal supply of groundwater. Investment in other technical solutions — smart water meters, leakage management, wastewater reuse — also helps keep the taps from running dry. For now, at least.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Trump officials intensify Columbia dispute with accreditation threat

    It follows the cancellation of $400m in federal grants and contracts, after which the university yielded to a series of changes demanded by the administration, including setting up a new disciplinary committee, initiating investigations into students critical of Israel’s war in Gaza and ceding control of its Middle East studies department.

  • The Register UK ☛ Login.gov’s fate in a cyberattack hinges on unproven backups

    The US government's Login.gov identity verification system could be one cyberattack, or just a routine IT hiccup, away from serious trouble, say auditors, because it hasn't shown its backup testing policy is actually in use or effective.

    The US Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday that Login.gov, which is managed by the federal government's General Services Administration (GSA) procurement branch, has mostly complied with prior recommendations to improve the seven-year-old centralized login service for US citizens. "Mostly" doesn't include any scheme to keep an eye on the state of its data backups, however, which could be disastrous if they had to be pulled out of storage to restore damaged systems.

    You know - like what a backup is supposed to be used for.

  • International Business Times ☛ Outrage as 18-Year-Old Honour Student Is Detained By ICE On His Way To Volleyball Practice

    Marcelo's attorney filed a habeas corpus petition, arguing that his detention was unlawful and requesting that he not be moved out of Massachusetts. In response, a federal judge issued an emergency order preventing ICE from transferring Marcelo out of the state for at least 72 hours. ICE officials defended their actions, stating that while Marcelo was not the initial target, he was found to be in the country illegally and thus subject to removal proceedings.

  • India Times ☛ Scam Altman-OpenAI scandal expected to hit the big screen

    Artificial’s screenplay is written by “Saturday Night Live” writer Simon Rich, while the film is being produced by Heyday Films’ David Heyman and Jeffrey Clifford.

    However, no final deals have been made as of yet.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ How vibe coding is tipping Silicon Valley’s scales of power

    In March, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan said 25% of startups in that winter’s class generated 95% of their code using AI tools. The numbers are likely to be much higher in the next batch, which culminates with a demo day this month.

  • Wired ☛ Facing a Changing Industry, AI Activists Rethink Their Strategy

    The victory, which came amid a wave of unprecedented employee-led protests, helped inspire a new generation of tech activists in Silicon Valley. But seven years later, the legacy of that moment is more complicated. Google recently revised its AI ethics principles to allow some of the use cases it previously banned, and companies across the industry are releasing powerful new AI tools at breakneck speed.

  • RFERL ☛ Arson, Lies, And Russian Flags Fail To Halt Bulgaria On Euro Adoption

    Still, on June 4, Bulgaria expects a positive assessment from the European Commission and the European Central Bank on whether it is ready to introduce the euro beginning next year.

    A decision in favor of adoption will be Bulgaria’s second big step in just one year on its path to full integration into the European Union. In January, Sofia became a full member of Schengen agreement -- and Bulgaria’s borders with neighboring Greece and Romania are now fully open.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Kyiv Independent ☛ Hiding in plain sight — how Russia’s cultural centers continue to operate in US, Europe despite espionage claims

      The most shocking thing about the recording was the location. Kiryakova read the poem inside the Russian Cultural Center in Washington, D.C.

      The poem in question was written by a Russian war correspondent and included in the book at the behest of Margarita Simonyan, one of the Kremlin’s most notorious propagandists.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Fact check: How credible is Russian Fact-check Site GFCN?

      Observers say the GFCN's name — just one letter removed from the IFCN — is no accident.

      The International Fact-Checking Network, founded in 2015 by the Poynter Institute, is a respected consortium of more than 150 independent fact-checkers worldwide. It trains journalists, enforces professional standards, and certifies outlets based on transparency and editorial independence.

      The GFCN, on the other hand, appears to follow a long-standing tactic of the Russian state: imitating legitimate institutions to blur the line between journalism and propaganda.

      "We do not consider their activities to fall within the professional fact-checking ecosystem," IFCN director Angie Drobnic Holan told DW, citing Russia's consistent suppression of independent journalism.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Vietnamese Magazine ☛ Freedom of Expression in Việt Nam – Part 1: Blacklisting, Fines, and Imprisonment

    The Vietnamese government has intensified its grip on Việt Nam's online space through a series of sanctions, "blacklisting" tactics, and individual prosecutions. This escalating control has ensnared not just artists, but even regular citizens who dare to voice dissenting views.

  • The Vietnamese Magazine ☛ Freedom of Expression in Việt Nam - Part 2: Interpretation and Limitations

    While freedom of expression was once labeled a “Western value” in Việt Nam, globalization has ushered in a broader acceptance of universal human rights. Core values such as dignity, the right to life, and liberty have become increasingly acknowledged and safeguarded globally. Freedom of expression is no exception, even within Việt Nam.

  • ANF News ☛ IHR: Iran executed 152 people in May

    The Iran Human Rights Organization (IHR) reported that the 152 people executed in May included five Afghan nationals, nineteen Baluch individuals, nine Kurds, and two Arabs. The organization warned that the dramatic surge in executions may be intended to intimidate society and deter potential protests.

    The report also shows that at least 511 people, including sixteen women, were executed in the first five months of 2025, marking a 96 percent increase compared to the same period in 2024. Only 28 of these executions were officially acknowledged by state sources.

  • France24 ☛ Trump suspends visas for international students set to attend Harvard

    The Trump administration has been in an ongoing showdown with academia, and Harvard in particular.

    The Ivy League institution has continually drawn Trump's ire while publicly rejecting his administration's repeated demands to give up control of recruitment, curricula and research choices.

  • France24 ☛ France's top porn sites protest new age verification rules by blacking out

    The top pornographic websites in France – Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube – on Wednesday blacked out in protest over the country’s new age verification requirements. According to the government's rules, users now must prove their age with a credit card or an ID document, but operators argue this puts people’s data at risk.

  • RFA ☛ Tiananmen Mothers face blackout as China tries to silence memory of June 4 crackdown

    On the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, families of victims held an annual memorial at a Beijing cemetery even as authorities left them incommunicado amid a tightening grip by China on commemorations of the 1989 crackdown against pro-democracy protesters.

    For the first time, authorities banned the members of the Tiananmen Mothers group from carrying mobile phones and cameras as they gathered at the Wan’an cemetery, severing their contact with the outside world. But the elderly mothers still laid flowers for their loved ones who were killed in the June 4, 1989, crackdown, Radio Free Asia learned.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 'US 8964' car owner ships vehicle abroad ahead of Tiananmen anniversary

    Anthony Chiu, whose Porsche bears the licence plate “US 8964,” told HKFP on Wednesday that his vehicle was sent out of Hong Kong in recent weeks after he and his family members faced harassment since last year’s Tiananmen crackdown anniversary.

  • CNN ☛ US Education Department threatens Columbia University’s accreditation over campus antisemitism concerns

    Losing accreditation could hurt Columbia because it’s required for university students to gain access to federal money, including student grants and loans. It remains unclear how the commission will respond to the Education Department’s notification.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Ex-councillor's shop visited by customs on eve of Tiananmen anniversary

    Chan, who served as Tsuen Wan district councillor from 2019 to 2021, sold soy wax candles for “$6.4” on Tuesday, one day before June 4, the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

  • CBC ☛ We will never forget Tiananmen crackdown, Taiwan and U.S. say on 36th anniversary

    The events on and around the central Beijing square on June 4, 1989, when Chinese troops opened fire to end the student-led pro-democracy protests, are not publicly discussed in China and the anniversary is not officially marked.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Pornhub owner to suspend site in France in protest at new verification law

    French visitors to the adult sites Pornhub, Youporn and RedTube will on Wednesday be greeted with a message denouncing the country’s age verification requirements, the company said on Tuesday.

    Parent company Aylo, in reaction to a French law requiring adult sites to take extra steps to verify that their users are 18 or older, will stop operating in France, a spokesperson said.

  • RFA ☛ Tibetans evicted then reinstated after protest at US-China women’s soccer match

    China’s team demanded removal of Tibetan activists from stadium, but spectators chanted for them to be allowed back.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Atlantic ☛ Why Are the Media So Afraid of Trump?

    On this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with a warning about how Donald Trump’s second term has brought a more systematic and punishing assault on American media, through regulatory pressure, retaliatory lawsuits, and corporate intimidation.

    Then David is joined by the legendary newspaper editor Marty Baron to discuss how today’s media institutions are struggling to stand up to power. Baron reflects on his tenure at The Washington Post, the new pressures facing owners such as Jeff Bezos, and how Trump has turned retribution into official policy. They also examine how internal newsroom culture, social media, and a loss of connection to working-class America have weakened public trust in journalism.

  • CPJ ☛ Salvadoran organized crime reporter shot dead in Honduras 

    Hércules, who reported on organized crime for the local television outlet ATN a Todo Noticias, had been enrolled in Honduras’ National Protection System for Journalists, which has provided protection measures like police escort, relocation, and risk assessments since 2023, according to local news outlet Proceso Digital. He had previously received threats and, in November 2023, was abducted by two armed men, beaten, and left in a remote area.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Washington Post goes AI to clean up amateur right-wing op-eds

    Why does the Post want to do this? Because they can’t find enough good writers to create the owner’s desired libertarian propaganda.

    The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos. In February this year, Bezos mandated that the Post’s opinion pages would support “personal liberties and free markets” and not print pieces that did not support these. Sounds nice, but those are specific jargon terms that rich libertarians use to mean “liberty for my money” and not any other sort of freedom or liberty for any other person.

  • NL Times ☛ Three former soldiers convicted of Dutch journalists' murder in El Salvador in 1982

    After a hearing that took longer than 11 hours, the jury ruled that all the suspects were involved in the death of the journalists. The suspects are the former Minister of Defense, Guillermo Garcia (91), former director of a special police service, Francisco Antonio Moran (93), and former colonel Mario Reyes Mena (85).

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ Most pro-democracy operations were shut down in conflict-affected areas due to the Trump cuts - here's why that was a grave mistake

    The same is true of efforts to maintain or restore peace, especially in regions dominated by authoritarian regimes. International engagement is critical as the populations of these states are generally not a factor, or are manipulated by the authoritarian control of local media.

  • BIA Net ☛ bianet editor Tuğçe Yılmaz detained during ID check

    Tuğçe Yılmaz was detained under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. IPS Legal Advisor Aynur Tuncel Yazgan stated that she was arrested unlawfully, and that concealing the case file content has obstructed her ability to prepare a legal defense.

  • Axios ☛ Trump asks Congress to pull $9 billion from NPR, PBS, foreign aid

    "This would result in cancellation of beloved local and national programming, a reduction in local news coverage and newsroom jobs, a severe curtailing (if not elimination) of public radio music stations who depend on CPB to negotiate music licenses," she said. It would also lead to a "reduction in service areas for rural and remote communities, as well as forcing dozens of local stations to shutter operations," Maher added.

  • The Georgia Recorder ☛ Trump wants Congress to slash $9.4B in spending now, defund NPR and PBS • Georgia Recorder

    The request for what are called rescissions allows the White House budget office to legally freeze spending on those accounts for 45 days while the Republican-controlled Congress debates whether to approve the recommendation in full or in part, or to ignore it.

    The proposal calls on lawmakers to eliminate $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. That means NPR and PBS would lose their already approved federal allocations, if the request is approved by Congress.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Techdirt ☛ Texas Will Soon Be The 9th State To Pass A Popular ‘Right To Repair’ Law

    While U.S. consumer protection is generally an historic hot mess right now, the “right to repair” movement — making it easier and cheaper to repair the things you own — continues to make steady inroads thanks to widespread, bipartisan annoyance at giant companies trying to monopolize repair in creative and obnoxious ways.

    Washington State just became the eighth state to pass a new law theoretically making it easier and cheaper to repair the technology you own. Now, barring a veto from Governor Abbott, Texas is poised to be the ninth state to do so after the State’s new right to repair law (HB2963) passed a vote in a the Texas state Senate last week 31-0. That comes after the House passed the legislation 126-0.

  • Wired ☛ ICE Quietly Scales Back Rules for Courthouse Raids

    A requirement that ICE agents ensure courthouse arrests don’t clash with state and local laws has been rescinded by the agency. ICE declined to explain what that means for future enforcement.

  • Grist Magazine Inc ☛ The environmental policy backed by free-market Republicans | Grist

    That would mark an important political inflection point for the right-to-repair movement. While most of the states that have passed repair laws so far are Democratic strongholds, bills have been introduced in all 50 as of February. The adoption of a right-to-repair law in deep red Ohio — where Republicans control the state House, Senate, and the governor’s office, and Donald Trump won the last presidential election by more than 10 percentage points — would further underscore the broad, bipartisan popularity of being allowed to fix the stuff you own.

    “If something breaks that you can’t fix, that’s just as big of a pain if you live in New York as it is in Nebraska,” Nathan Proctor, who heads the right-to-repair campaign at the U.S. Public Research Interest Group, told Grist.

  • CNBC ☛ Musk's SpaceX town in Texas proposes a new map and zoning

    Starbase, Texas, has notified some residents that they might "lose the right to continue using" their property as they do today, according to a memo obtained by CNBC.

    The town, home to Elon Musk's SpaceX, is considering a new zoning ordinance and citywide map.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Saying Trump is dangerous is not enough’: Bernie Sanders on Biden, billionaires – and why the Democrats failed

    In person, Sanders’ 83 years read differently than in photograph, perhaps because of how conversational he is. His voice is magnetic – a Brooklyn accent that feels both warm and tough. “But what I have been aware of, and I’ve talked about it for years, is that in America, the very richest people are doing phenomenally well, while 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck.”

    Later, he will say the same thing to an audience in London – only with more emphasis and passion. “Sixty per cent. Six-zero. Do you know what paycheck to paycheck means?” It’s exhilarating to hear Sanders speak to a crowd: his zeal is reflected back in their faces, his moral clarity is such a relief, set against the cynicism and resignation of most of the Democratic party’s opposition to Trump and his administration. Class war is as old as time, but it’s a peculiarity of this age that you rarely hear a politician name it. “I do,” he tells me. “There is a class war going on. The people on top are waging that war.”

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Contributor: Police use of military tools presents a growing danger

    I’ve written elsewhere about how this separation has eroded over time, largely because of U.S. foreign policy efforts such as the war on drugs and the war on terror. The tools and tactics developed for campaigns abroad inevitably find their way home. What begins with foreign targets ends up being applied domestically — turning American citizens into targets. These “ enemies” are often vaguely defined or not identifiable at all.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ T-Mobile Fiber Home Internet officially launches in U.S. — Up to 2 Gbps covering 500,000 households

    So, what sparked the official rollout of T-Mobile Fiber? In April, T-Mobile announced that it had acquired Lumos, a fiber-to-the-home internet provider serving 475,000 households. That acquisition provided T-Mobile with the additional capacity to expand T-Mobile Fiber, which is now accessible to over 500,000 households in the U.S.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • JUVE ☛ Court of Appeal clarifies fundamental questions on jurisdiction in ESKO vs XSYS [Ed: No, UPC is illegal, but JUVE got paid by Team UPC to perpetuate this sheer irregularity that makes the EU synonymous with corporate corruption]

      According to the latest ruling of the Court of Appeal in the dispute between the two printing technology manufacturers, the UPC also has jurisdiction over infringements committed before the UPC’s start on 1 June 2023, despite the general principle of non-retroactivity of treaties.

• Copyrights

  • Press Gazette ☛ Google 'handling stolen goods' with Youtube theft of paywalled news articles

    Youtube channels are using AI to steal words and photographs from paywalled news content and reproduce articles wholesale without the consent of publishers.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Operator of South Korea's Largest Pirate Site Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison

    Before its inevitable demise, NooNooTV [NunuTV] was believed to be the largest pirate site in South Korea. That in itself made the site's operator a prime target for enforcement. Despite spawning dozens of domains to avoid blocking, and reportedly moving servers from one 'safe' country to another, local authorities continued their investigation in collaboration with INTERPOL. At a court in South Korea last week, 'Person A' was sentenced to three years in prison.