Leftovers

• Standards/Consortia

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ Inside the race to find GPS alternatives

    The satellite is the first of a planned constellation called Pulsar, which is being developed by California-based Xona Space Systems. The company ultimately plans to have a constellation of 258 satellites in low Earth orbit. Although these satellites will operate much like those used to create GPS, they will orbit about 12,000 miles closer to Earth’s surface, beaming down a much stronger signal that’s more accurate—and harder to jam.

  • Jumping Rivers ☛ Rethinking Image Formats

    The solution that makes life easy… when it’s applicable. Instead of using a PNG (or JPEG), use an SVG - a scalable vector graphic.

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ Brain Drain: Talented Young People Are Abandoning Plans to Become Scientists as White House Undermines the Entire Career

    Trump's outright anti-science agenda could have devastating knock-on effects for anybody looking to make a career in the sciences, preventing the next generation of researchers from flourishing — and likely curtailing decades of cutting-edge research that long distinguished the US on the world stage.

    Researchers are already looking for greener pastures as job opportunities dry up in the US. The troubling trend is kickstarting a brain drain that could massively undercut the nation's supremacy in fields ranging from medicine to biology to physical sciences, as the New York Times reports.

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Declares That He's "Immediately" Cutting Off NASA's Access to Space

    In other words, the threat could prevent American astronauts from visiting the space station — especially considering that the only other American option, Boeing's Starliner, is likely still years away from becoming a viable alternative, if ever.

• Career/Education

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China vows to ‘resolutely safeguard’ its students’ rights after Convicted Felon ramps up attack on Harvard, Columbia

    President The Insurrectionist ramped up his campaign against top US universities Wednesday, banning visas for all foreign students coming to attend Harvard and threatening to strip Columbia of its academic accreditation.

  • France24 ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man administration ramps up attack on Harvard, Columbia

    President The Insurrectionist is intensifying his efforts against leading US universities by banning visas for new international students enrolling at Harvard and threatening to revoke Columbia’s academic accreditation. He argues that international students pose a national security risk, accuses universities of overlooking anti-Semitism on campus, and claims they promote a liberal bias.

  • Chronicle Of Higher Education ☛ What the New Travel Ban Means for Higher Ed

    Hell Toupée's latest orders bar visitors from a dozen countries and try, again, to block Harvard from enrolling foreign students.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 4 former, current members of Lingnan University Students’ Union arrested over alleged HK$1.3 million theft

    Four former and current students’ union members at Lingnan University in Hong Kong have been arrested for allegedly stealing HK$1.3 million from their organisation’s funds for personal expenses, according to police. Police Chief Inspector Au Yeung Tak said on Thursday that the four suspects – three men and one woman, aged 21 to 24 – […]

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ What Poland's election teaches us about Trump's war on Harvard

    Poland’s election reveals how authoritarian movements gain ground by turning less-educated voters against the institutions that safeguard democracy. Trump’s war on elite universities like Harvard follows the same playbook – discredit expertise, weaken oversight, and rule by resentment.

  • Futurism ☛ Are Children Losing the Ability to Read?

    "We see children who can sit still and focus for hours on YouTube or Miss Rachel," he continued, "but when you sit them down with a book, they move, wiggle, or scream and run away."

    It's well known that too much screen time can harm a child's cognitive development, and that effect may well be compounded by dropping rates in at-home reading. A recent HarperCollins survey, which found less than half of parents surveyed said that reading to their kids was "fun," may help explain that downward trend.

    The impacts of replacing reading with screen time has long-term educational impacts, too.

  • Facundo Olano ☛ Domain-Driven Design Revisited

    This is a pretty accurate description of what I work on now, and how it differs from what I worked on before. Given the kind of challenges I currently face—fleshing out business processes, reconciling terminology, modernizing the legacy monolith, figuring out what the domain entities are and who should own them—a natural next step was to take a fresh look at Domain-Driven Design.

    I picked up Vlad Khononov’s Learning Domain-Driven Design as a modern alternative to the classic Eric Evans’ blue book. It summarizes and updates the same ideas, and finally relates them to newer techniques like Microservices, Event-Driven Architecture, and Data Mesh.

  • Sergio Visinoni ☛ Interview with Baldur Bjarnason on writing, AI and media

    My name is Baldur Bjarnason, a writer, researcher, and freelance software developer. I've always been interested in understanding technology trends and their impact on society, which led me to start researching AI, or rather, generative models. I published a book in 2023 about the business impact of generative models titled The Intelligence Illusion, and I've just recently released an updated second edition. All of my books are self-published.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ A Flashlight Of Fire And Ice

    [Daniel Salião Ferreira] may or may not be a Game of Thrones fan, but he does have a fun demo of the Seebeck effect in the form of a flashlight powered by fire and ice. The basic idea is to use a thermocouple, but — in this case — he uses a Peltier effect cooler.

  • Hackaday ☛ Building An Analog Echo Plate

    These days, when you think reverb, you probably think about a guitar pedal or a plugin in your audio software. But you can also create reverb with a big metal plate and the right supporting electronics. [Tully] from [The Tul Studio] shows us how.

  • Hackaday ☛ Leakage Control For Coupled Coils

    Think of a circuit model that lets you move magnetic leakage around like sliders on a synth, without changing the external behavior of your coupled inductors. [Sam Ben-Yaakov] walks you through just that in his video ‘Versatile Coupled Inductor Circuit Model and Examples of Its Use’.

  • Herman Õunapuu ☛ Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 Tiny: how does it fare as a home server?

    On Linux (Fedora Server 42), the idle power usage was around 6.5 W to 7 W. After running powertop --auto-tune, I ended up getting that down to 6.1 W - 6.5 W. This is much lower compared to the numbers that ServeTheHome got, which were around 11-13 W (120V circuit). My measurements are made in Europe, Estonia, where we have 240V circuits.

  • Six Colors ☛ Memories of the Power Mac G5

    Stephen Hackett just took a deep dive into the story of the Power Mac G5, which introduced the “cheese grater” design also used by many years of Intel-based Mac Pros. His piece’s title, “The Broken Promise of the 3 GHz Power Mac G5,” is a reference to the infamous guarantee Steve Jobs gave that the G5 chip would reach 3 GHz, which it never did. Instead, Apple switched to Intel. (It wasn’t the only reason—G5 laptops were also seemingly impossible—but it didn’t help.)

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ Euthanasia Advocate Who Assisted in Woman’s Suicide Dies in Germany

    Dr. Florian Willet had been under investigation in Switzerland after being present when an American woman died using a so-called suicide pod.

  • New Yorker ☛ Why Did New Zealand Turn on Jacinda Ardern?

    A new memoir by the former Prime Minister revisits her time in office but doesn’t explain the confounding transformation the country underwent during COVID.

  • New York Times ☛ Used in Covid Shots, mRNA May Help Rid the Body of H.I.V.

    A new study shows how the technology deployed in Covid vaccines helped scientists coax the virus out of hiding.

  • Latvia ☛ Prison employee suspected of prescribing illegal substances

    At the end of May, the Internal Security Bureau (IDB) detained an employee of the Prison Administration's medical department on suspicion of prescribing narcotic or psychotropic substances without medical necessity, the bureau said in a release on 5 June.

  • [Old] WIISE srl benefit company ☛ Phosphate fertilizers and cadmium exposure risks

    This comprehensive review targets risk assessment authorities, researchers, policymakers, and agricultural organisations by examining the latest peer-reviewed evidence on cadmium exposure risks, the widespread contamination of agricultural soils — especially through phosphate fertilizer application — and current European regulatory frameworks, highlighting critical gaps. It also underscores the significantly lower cadmium accumulation associated with organic farming, suggesting a promising avenue for risk mitigation.

  • The Georgia Recorder ☛ Bookman: There's no way to cut $800 billion from Medicaid without hitting bone

    To get savings on that scale, you have to look elsewhere. And the truth is that millions of lower-income Americans, many of them working people, would be stripped of their health insurance if the bill becomes law. In Georgia alone, the projections are that as many as 200,000 people would lose coverage. And because Medicaid plays a larger health care role in rural communities, where the population is older and private sector jobs less likely to offer health insurance, the impact would be greater in those areas, putting additional financial strain on rural hospitals and health-care providers already struggling to stay open.

  • World Health Network ☛ 🛑 Public Health Alert: NB.1.8.1 Variant Spreading Across Asia and Beyond - WHN

    A new COVID-19 variant, NB.1.8.1, also called Nimbus, has been identified as responsible for a resurgence of cases in several Asian countries, including India, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand. This variant, a descendant of the Omicron subvariant JN.1, has been designated a Variant Under Monitoring (VUM) by the World Health Organization due to its increasing global presence and potential implications for public health.

  • The Independent UK ☛ What is new Covid variant NB.1.8.1? Symptoms as cases confirmed in UK

    The new strain, named NB.1.8.1, now accounts for just over 10 per cent of global infections , with cases now confirmed in Northern Ireland and Wales.

  • The Conversation ☛ There’s a new COVID variant driving up infections. A virologist explains what to know about NB.1.8.1

    Wastewater surveillance in Western Australia has determined NB.1.8.1 is now the dominant variant in wastewater samples collected in Perth.

    Internationally NB.1.8.1 is also growing. By late April 2025, it comprised roughly 10.7% of all submitted sequences – up from just 2.5% four weeks prior. While the absolute number of cases sequenced was still modest, this consistent upward trend has prompted closer monitoring by international public health agencies.

    NB.1.8.1 has been spreading particularly in Asia – it was the dominant variant in Hong Kong and China at the end of April.

  • India Times ☛ Coronavirus Symptoms: New COVID variant NB.1.8.1 found in the UK: What are the symptoms?

    NB.1.8.1 is a subvariant of Omicron, the version of COVID we've all become a bit too familiar with over the last couple of years. It showed up in early 2025 and, since then, has been spotted in over 20 countries—including the US, several places in Europe, and now the UK.

• Proprietary

  • Xbox Division Might See Lay-Offs By End of June – Rumour

    Microsoft is rumoured to be getting ready for yet another round of layoffs, this time around affecting Xbox Game Studios. According to The Verge’s Tom Warren, several current employees in the company has been concerned about layoffs, and more are expected to happen to various Xbox-centric divisions in the company by the end of the month.

    The most recent round of layoffs involved more than 300 employees at Microsoft, some being from the company’s legal teams. According to Warren, employee morale has also been affected by the fact that Microsoft has been staggering its layoffs, which has ended up making several employees feel uneasy about their jobs.

    “I’ve spoken to nearly a dozen current employees and every single one of them is concerned about the ongoing layoffs,” wrote Warren. The random nature of these cuts and the fact Microsoft isn’t doing them all in one go has really hit morale inside the company.“

  • RTL ☛ Google also commit: Amazon agrees to tackle fake reviews in UK: regulator

    Amazon has agreed to clamp down on fake online reviews of products advertised on its UK site, Britain's competition regulator said Friday.

    Google agreed a similar UK commitment in January after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an investigation into the matter five years ago.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Straits Times ☛ OpenAI finds more Chinese groups using Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Chaffbot for malicious purposes

      The operations detected were generally small in scale and targeted limited audiences.

    • Axios ☛ Why AI security playbooks need perpetual updating

      Case in point: A bad actor could trick an AI agent into exfiltrating internal documents simply by embedding a hidden instruction in what looks like a normal email or calendar invite.

    • Raspberry Pi ☛ Build a Raspberry Pi classifier: detect different Raspberry Pi models

      In part one of this new tutorial series, you can learn how to use a Raspberry Pi AI Camera to detect different Raspberry Pi models. This series was created by David Plowman, an engineer at Raspberry Pi with a special interest in image processing hardware, as well as camera software and algorithms.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Vietnamese Magazine ☛ When Connection Becomes Control: Facebook's Dark Side in Việt Nam

      In an increasingly digitized world, social media platforms like Facebook often present themselves as champions of open communication and connectivity. However, a recent in-depth report, "Community-led Assessment of Rights in the Tech Industry: Facebook’s Operations in Vietnam," published by Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV) on May 31, 2025, paints a far less optimistic picture of Facebook's presence in the Southeast Asian nation.

      The report reveals a deeply concerning pattern of complicity, suggesting that Facebook is not just navigating Việt Nam’s authoritarian landscape but actively aiding the government in stifling dissent and controlling information.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ The fare-dodging trick going viral

      Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: “There is an epidemic of fare-dodging in this country. Yobs are laughing at working people who do the right thing. It’s a disgrace. I am sick to my back teeth of it – the authorities need to be shamed into action.”

      Last week Mr Jenrick filmed himself confronting fare-dodgers at Stratford Station amid growing public anger that petty crime is going unpunished.

• Linux Foundation

  • It's FOSS ☛ OpenInfra Foundation is Now Part of the Linux Foundation Family [Ed: It's GAFAM, not "family"]

    The OpenInfra Foundation, home to projects like OpenStack, Kata Containers, and StarlingX has officially joined the Linux Foundation family. This move represents a strategic pairing between two influential organizations in the open source infrastructure space.

  • PR Newswire ☛ LF Decentralized Trust Announces Six New Members, Expanded Certified Service Provider Program [Ed: Linux Foundation uses the Linux brand to promote actual scammers]

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • The New Stack ☛ You Can Build Authentication In-House, But Should You?

      The stakes have only grown as modern applications demand more from their auth systems to support features like Single Sign-On, SCIM, RBAC, bot detection, and more. What starts as a simple login flow quickly scales to become critical application infrastructure.

      Yes, you can build it. But the real question is: should you?

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • YLE ☛ People in Finland withdrawing less cash

      There was a roughly six percent decrease in banknote withdrawals from cashpoints, bank tellers as well as store checkouts, the central bank reported.

    • The Georgia Recorder ☛ Social media giants ask judge to block Georgia age verification law

      Judge Amy Totenberg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia announced at the Tuesday hearing that she will determine soon whether to hear more evidence regarding a lawsuit by a group called NetChoice to stop the law. NetChoice represents various internet-based services, including powerful businesses like Google and Meta, as well as smaller companies like online journal site Dreamwidth Studios. On the same day, a Florida judge blocked sections of a similar Florida law.

      Children under the age of 16 would need parental consent to open social media accounts under the new Georgia law, which is set to go into effect July 1.

• Defence/Aggression

  • JURIST ☛ UN warns natural disasters may worsen Haiti humanitarian crisis

    During a press conference Tuesday, the UN World Food Program (WFP) raised concerns about the humanitarian situation worsening in Haiti with the coming hurricane season. The WFP said that political instability, violence and food shortages in the country may be escalated by a single storm.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ US Supreme Court throws out Mexican lawsuit against gunmakers

    The sellers responsible for the 'iron river' of firearms that flows from the U.S. to Mexico's cartels cannot be blamed for what the guns are used for, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled.

  • France24 ☛ Governments scramble to understand new Convicted Felon travel bans

    Governments of countries subject to US President The Insurrectionist's travel ban on Thursday challenged the controversial decision, calling it a "misunderstanding." Convicted Felon called the decision to suspend travel visas a national security issue, saying some targeted countries, including Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, of harboring terrorists, while accusing citizens of others of overstaying their visas.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man revives a travel ban. Could it be legal this time?

    President The Insurrectionist’s new travel ban draws on lessons from his first term. He cites national security justification for the restrictions, while critics point to legal and moral problems.

  • The Strategist ☛ Overshadowed by border dispute, India-Pakistan water security risks grow

    A disputed India-Pakistan border in Kashmir isn’t the only threat to stability on the subcontinent. One that’s often overlooked is water security.

  • New York Times ☛ Israeli Military Recovers Bodies of Two Hostages Taken in Oct. 7 Attack

    Judi Weinstein Haggai and Gad Haggai, who were in their 70s, were killed by members of a small Palestinian militant group, according to the Israeli security forces.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Australia PM rules out relaxing biosecurity rules ahead of Convicted Felon meeting

    He said Australia will not relax its biosecurity rules during tariff negotiations with the US.

  • Security Week ☛ China Issues Warrants for Alleged Taiwanese Hackers and Bans a Business for Pro-Independence Links

    China issued warrants for 20 Taiwanese people it said carried out hacking missions in the Chinese mainland on behalf of the island’s ruling party.

  • New York Times ☛ Syrians Rejoice at Being Exempted From Convicted Felon Travel Ban

    Damascus residents hope the decision is another sign that the world is normalizing relations with Syria after the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.

  • The Local SE ☛ How countries in Europe are pushing for curbs on children's social media use

    The European Union already has some of the world’s most stringent digital rules to rein in Big Tech, with multiple probes ongoing into how platforms protect children – or not.

    There are now demands for the EU to go further as a rising body of evidence shows the negative effects of social media on children’s mental and physical health.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Operation Spider’s Web and what it means for the US military

    Last weekend, Ukraine launched a daring drone attack against airfields thousands of miles inside Russia. Dubbed Operation Spider’s Web, the attack drew global attention. It was more than just an intelligence coup de grâce — it was planned over 18 months and involved smuggling the drones into Russia and launching them close to their targets. The attack also revealed how vulnerable military installations within the United States could be to a similar strike.

  • Techdirt ☛ “The Intern In Charge”: Meet The 22-Year-Old Trump’s Team Picked To Lead Terrorism Prevention

    His career blastoff came quickly. A year after graduation, the 22-year-old with no apparent national security expertise is now a Department of Homeland Security official overseeing the government’s main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million grant program intended to help communities combat violent extremism.

    The White House appointed Fugate, a former Trump campaign worker who interned at the hard-right Heritage Foundation, to a Homeland Security role that was expanded to include the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships. Known as CP3, the office has led nationwide efforts to prevent hate-fueled attacks, school shootings and other forms of targeted violence.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Elon Musk is gone, but DOGE [sic]’s actions are hard to reverse. The US Institute of Peace is a case study

    Thousands of workers across the federal government saw the playbook in action over the last four months. But the Institute of Peace, a small, 300-employee organization, is unique: The blitz during its takeover has been, for the moment, reversed in court. The headquarters taken away in a weekend of lightning moves is back in the hands of its original board and acting president.

    The question they must answer now is a point that U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell made during one hearing: Even a win “makes no promises” about how difficult or possible it will be to put the Institute of Peace back together. “A bull in a China shop breaks a lot of things,” the judge said.

    Nearly three weeks since the judge delivered a win, the institute is slowly trying to reboot. But there are barriers, and winning might not mean full restoration. For other agencies and departments fighting their own DOGE [sic] battles, it is a cautionary tale.

  • The Conversation ☛ Russia has been working on creating drones that ‘call home’, go undercover and start fires. Here’s how they work

    It also helps them gradually upgrade their drones. Investigations into downed Shaheds show that Russia has been coating the drones in carbon, which resists detection by radar by absorbing incoming waves instead of reflecting them back. They have also been adding Sim cards to transmit data back to Russia through mobile networks.

  • Mike Brock ☛ My Ideology. No Bullshit

    That's it. That's the whole framework. I'm not a socialist. I'm not a libertarian. I'm not a progressive or a conservative in any traditional sense. I'm a liberal—in the classical sense, meaning I believe in the American republican system as a properly classical liberal system of government. From this categorization comes my label: I am a liberal because I believe in liberal democracy as the founders designed it.

    This makes me highly partisan on exactly one issue: the republican structure itself. I will fight anyone, anywhere, any time who threatens the constitutional framework that makes democratic self-governance possible. But on the question of what policies we should implement within that framework? I'm genuinely democratic. I think we should aim to satisfy the policy preferences of the majority of Americans, as expressed through polling, town halls, and the actual democratic process of debate and deliberation.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Russian hybrid warfare: Ukraine's success offers lessons for Europe

    The Kremlin employs hybrid warfare tactics to remain below the threshold that would trigger a unified and potentially overwhelming European response. This has led to a surge in sabotage, cyberattacks, political interference, and disinformation campaigns across Europe, with a particular emphasis on countries closer to Russia.

    Moscow’s hybrid war against Europe mirrors the tactics used by the Kremlin in Ukraine following the start of Russia’s invasion in 2014. Ukraine’s response to the often unprecedented challenges posed by Russian hybrid warfare offers important lessons for Kyiv’s European partners.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • France24 ☛ NATO chief Mark Rutte gives presser after Brussels defence talks

      Watch again the press conference of Mark Rutte, the NATO leader, on the sidelines of a security summit in Brussels on Thursday, June 5.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-06-04 [Older] Ukraine: Cheeto Mussolini says Putin vows 'response' to airfield attack

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-04 [Older] EU Commission Proposes Extending Temporary Protection for Ukrainians to March 2027

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-04 [Older] Farmers in EU Raise Alarm Over Mercosur, Ukraine Trade Deals

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-04 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Says He Spoke to Putin About Ukraine Drone Attacks, Iran

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-04 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy Suggests Truce Until Meeting With Putin Can Be Arranged

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-03 [Older] Exclusive-Ukraine's 2025 Grain Harvest May Fall 10%, Minister Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-03 [Older] Kremlin Says Ukraine Peace Efforts Are Complex, No Quick Decisions Should Be Expected

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-03 [Older] Macron to Visit Meloni After Rivalry Creates Tension on Ukraine, Trade

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-03 [Older] Ukraine President's Chief of Staff in US for Talks on Defence Support

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-02 [Older] Danish PM Says Ukraine Seems Successful in Defending Itself

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-02 [Older] The Election of a Cheeto Mussolini Ally in Poland Could Alter EU and Ukraine Policies

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-01 [Older] Exclusive-Ukraine to Set Out Roadmap for Peace at Istanbul Talks, Document Shows

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-01 [Older] Lavrov, Rubio Discuss Settlement of War in Ukraine, Forthcoming Talks, Agencies Report

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-01 [Older] Senior Ukrainian Military Commander Tenders Resignation Over Lethal Strike on Training Facility

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-01 [Older] Top Defense Officials Say Ukraine War Has Blurred Lines, Exposing Global Threats

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-01 [Older] Zelenskiy Says Ukraine Will Attend Istanbul Talks on Monday

    • TruthOut ☛ 2025-05-31 [Older] From Ukraine to Greenland, Are Cheeto Mussolini’s Geopolitical Ambitions Driven by Mining?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-31 [Older] China Bristles at Macron Linking Ukraine Defence to Taiwan Threats

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-31 [Older] Poland Holds a Pivotal Presidential Runoff Influenced by Cheeto Mussolini, the Far Right and the War in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-30 [Older] In Ukraine's Kharkiv, Ballet Offers 'Rebirth' After Bombs and Bullets

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-05-30 [Older] Ukraine Yet to Give Decision on Taking Part in Istanbul Talks

    • Vox ☛ 2025-05-29 [Older] Ukraine hasn’t won over Cheeto Mussolini. But it might not need to.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-05-28 [Older] Germany to help Ukraine increase missile production

    • Insight Hungary ☛ Fidesz delays vote on controversial law targeting NGOs and the media

      Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz, postponed a parliamentary vote on the controversial legislation that targets organizations receiving foreign funding, 444 reports. The bill, often likened to Russia’s “foreign agent” law, would give the government powers to monitor and potentially ban groups deemed to threaten Hungary’s "sovereignty". Though Fidesz holds a two-thirds majority in parliament and the vote was expected to pass in mid-June, party leader Máté Kocsis announced it would be delayed until the fall..

      The proposed bill has drawn widespread criticism from civil society, opposition politicians, and the international media. Amnesty International celebrated the recent developments as a “huge joint success” but warned that the "fight isn’t over". NGOs such as Transparency International and the Hungarian Helsinki Committee have condemned the bill as a threat to democracy and free expression. The proposed legislation sparked mass protests in Hungary, and public figures who don't typically speak out on politics made vocal statements criticizing the bill.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • NDTV ☛ What Are The Epstein Files Elon Musk Referred To In Feud With donald Trump US

    Trump is also believed to have flown on Epstein's private jet a lot of times in the 1990s, majorly between Florida and New York, as per the documents released in the case related to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's heiress, currently serving 20 years in prison for helping him target and sexually abuse young girls and women.

    The two of them were photographed several times at Trump's private golf club during the 1990s as well as in the early 2000s.

    In an interview with New York magazine in 2002, Trump said he had known Epstein for 15 years and called him a "terrific guy". He added that Epstein was a "lot of fun to be with.” "... it is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side," Trump said.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Faked Telegraph article was result of deception by source

    The article was, in fact, written by a real journalist, based on a real telephone interview with a man who appears to have deceived the reporter and given them a fake name.

• Environment

  • US News And World Report ☛ Planet-Warming Emissions Dropped When Companies Had to Report Them. EPA Wants to End That

    In a way, Brockman’s monitoring echoes the reporting that the Environmental Protection Agency began requiring from large polluters more than a decade ago. Emissions from four coal-fired plants in southwest Indiana have dropped 60% since 2010, when the rule took effect.

    That rule is now on the chopping block, one of many that President Donald Trump’s EPA argues is costly and burdensome for industry.

  • Science Alert ☛ Our Atmosphere's Growing Thirst Is a Hidden Cause of Worsening Droughts

    Droughts are becoming more severe and widespread across the globe. But it's not just changing rainfall patterns that are to blame. The atmosphere is also getting thirstier.

    In a new study published in Nature, my colleagues and I show that this rising "atmospheric thirst" – also known as atmospheric evaporative demand (AED) – is responsible for about 40% of the increase in drought severity over the last four decades (1981-2022).

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Breach Media ☛ To become an ‘energy superpower’, Canada wants to bulldoze Indigenous rights

      Pam Palmater joins Desmond Cole on The Breach Show to discuss legislative efforts to fast-track resource extraction projects at the expense of Indigenous rights and sovereignty

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ What’s Being Done to Public Lands Is a Crime

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Carnivorous Plants Have Been Trapping Animals for Millions of Years. So Why Have They Never Grown Larger?

      Most of this carnivorous botany is small, but the diversity of different trapping mechanisms raises an evolutionary question. Why haven’t carnivorous plants grown to sizes large enough to rival the human-munching plants we repeatedly invoke in fiction?

      Plants make their own food. We all learn this basic fact of nature early on: The biological process photosynthesis allows plants to use sunlight to fuel their own food production and make our planet green. But exceptions to every rule exist, of course, and some plants need a little more than photosynthesis or soil nutrients alone can provide. Some plants have needs that can only be met by animal sources, a requirement that plants have evolved time and again to meet over tens of millions of years.

  • Overpopulation

    • Vintage Everyday ☛ “Universe 25” Experiment, One of the Most Disturbing Studies in the History of Science by John B. Calhoun

      Initially, the colony prospered, but after 317 days, population growth began to stagnate. Upon reaching 600 mice, serious social problems arose: hierarchies were established, the strongest individuals began to attack others, and aggressive and maladaptive behaviors emerged, such as violence between females and a lack of reproductive interest in males. As passive, non-reproductive (beautiful mice) males dominated, the birth rate plummeted, juvenile mortality reached 100%, and the colony collapsed into cannibalism and homosexuality.

      The experiment was repeated 25 times, each time with similar results, and has been used to model the study of social collapse and urban sociology.

• Finance

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Golden Harvest to shutter MegaBox branch – 6th cinema to close in Hong Kong this year

    Hong Kong cinema chain Golden Harvest has announced that it will close its branch in the Kowloon Bay shopping mall MegaBox on Monday due to “the end of the tenancy.” It will be the sixth cinema to shut down in the city this year.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • FAIR ☛ Jeff Hauser on DOGE After Musk, Katya Schwenk on Boeing Deal

  • EFF ☛ Judges Stand With Law Firms (and EFF) Against Trump’s Executive Orders

    EFF was one of the very first legal organizations to publicly come out in support of Perkins Coie when it became the first law firm to challenge the legality of President Trump’s executive order targeting it. Since then, EFF has joined four amicus briefs in support of targeted law firms, and in all four cases, judges from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia have indicated they’re having none of it. Three have issued permanent injunctions deeming the executive orders null and void, and the fourth seems to be headed in that same direction.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Anduril raises $2.5B in funding to finance manufacturing initiatives

    Anduril develops hardware systems for the defense sector. Its product portfolio includes aircraft, autonomous submarines, edge computing devices and a range of other products. The systems are powered by an internally-developed software platform called Lattice that automates tasks such as analyzing sensor data.

  • The Register UK ☛ Europe proposes vague path toward digital sovereignty

    Virkkunen responded by describing the US as a past partner while highlighting other countries in the context of the International Digital Strategy.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Techdirt ☛ Parents Use Republican’s Own Law Against Them To Keep Their Kids From Being Subjected To Election Conspiracy Theories

      The problem, of course, is that there are no “legitimate concerns,” which means students will purposefully be made stupider by idiots who are heavily reliant on an ignorant voter base to remain in office. $33 million is being spent to indoctrinate students, which is apparently fine with state Republicans who don’t mind indoctrination, so long as it’s their indoctrination.

      Here’s what makes this new development really fun. The Republicans pushed through a bill that allows parents to opt their kids out of any “learning material or activity” a parent felt was “harmful” to their children. That law went into effect this year, and was crafted specifically to allow parents to prevent their kids from being subjected to anything they considered to be “woke.”

    • Popular Information LLC ☛ UPDATE: Oklahoma parents fight back - by Judd Legum

      Ironically, WOKE is taking advantage of a law passed by the Republican-controlled Oklahoma legislature in 2024. The law allows "parents who object to any learning material or activity on the basis that it is harmful" to "withdraw their children from the activity or from the class or program in which the material is used." The letter warns schools that if the opt-out requests are "not honored, or if our child experiences discrimination or any mistreatment, we will pursue any and all legal, equitable, and injunctive remedies available to us at law and equity."

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Vietnamese Magazine ☛ Freedom of Expression in Việt Nam - Part 4: Western Ideas and Việt Nam’s Struggle for Free Speech

    British philosopher John Stuart Mill, in his classic work On Liberty (1859), laid out a foundational argument that still influences discussions about free speech today: "The worth of a state in the long run is the worth of the individuals composing it." Mill argued that the state should only interfere with an individual's actions if those actions directly harm others. This is his harm principle, which establishes a philosophical boundary for limiting freedom of expression.

    Mill also declared, "The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs." From this perspective, Mill drew a clear distinction between offensive speech and harmful speech.

  • Open Caucasus Media ☛ Convicted union activist faces transfer to stricter prison for ‘acting like opposition figure’

    Convicted Azerbaijani labour activist Elvin Mustafayev faces transfer to a tougher, stricter prison reserved for criminals convicted of grave crimes after the head of his prison accused him of ‘acting like an opposition figure’.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump Hiring Program: The Best Praise For The Administration Is Compulsory Praise

    It was a couple of weeks ago when I was stupidly watching one cable news channel or another when I witnessed some GOP talking head say that Donald Trump likes to build a team of competing viewpoints that fight with one another as a way of producing the best results. I think it was Scott Jennings, but I can’t be sure. You’ll forgive me if I can’t recall which husk of a person with their soul on loan said something so profoundly ignorant. After all, one of the overarching stories of this administration from the jump has been how Trump has surrounded himself not just at the top level with yes-men sycophants, but how that posture has translated further down the ranks of government.

  • Techdirt ☛ A Takedown Of The Take It Down Act

    Congress responded with the TAKE IT DOWN Act, introduced by Senator Ted Cruz and quickly co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers. On its face, the law targets non-consensual intimate imagery, including synthetic content. In practice, it creates a sweeping speech-removal regime with few safeguards.

    Keep in mind, the law was passed under an administration that has shown little regard for civil liberties or dissenting speech. It gives the government broad power to remove online content of which it disapproves and opens the door to selective enforcement. Trump made his intentions clear during his March State of the Union: [...]

  • CS Monitor ☛ What’s behind Trump’s assault on Harvard and crown-jewel US universities?

    No one thinks the United States’ oldest university – founded in 1636 and named after a Puritan minister who was its first major donor – will go out of business. But its ambitions, prestige, and influence could start to diminish, even as classes of graduates continue to don gowns in Harvard Yard.

    That prospect would delight cultural warriors in Mr. Trump’s policy circles who want to leverage government power over liberal-coded institutions and bring them to heel. “The universities seem all powerful and they have acted as if they were all powerful, and we’re finally revealing that we can hit that where it hurts,” Christopher Rufo, a conservative education activist, told The New York Times in April.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Techdirt ☛ ‘Journalist’ For Right Wing Propaganda Outlet OAN Fired For Accidentally Almost Doing Honest Journalism

    Hesgeth, himself a former fake journalist who failed upward into his completely unqualified role as Secretary of Defense, has launched a new harmful assault on real journalism to cover up the fact his short tenure has been potholed by a steady stream of staffer leaks and historically problematic security fuck ups. Screw ups which Cuccia’s broader post, of course, dutifully downplays.

  • Associated Press ☛ OAN's Pentagon reporter out of a job after expressing opinion publicly

    Yet days after publicly criticizing a Trump appointee, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Cuccia found herself out of a job.

    In taking to Substack last week to express a personal opinion about a figure she covers, Cuccia did something that would be frowned upon in many legacy newsrooms. The message that she was sent, however, is most likely to resound in places where opinion is fine — but only a certain variety.

  • New Yorker ☛ Can Public Media Survive Trump?

    When I reconnected with Pickard recently, he acknowledged that it’s understandable why, “at first glance,” Trump’s attacks appear to be “a perfect enactment of every liberal and libertarian’s worst nightmare for when you allow government to get involved in our media system.” And yet Pickard, who has advocated for greater government support for journalism, doesn’t see this moment in such terms. Indeed, if anything, it’s showing how public media institutions can sometimes stand up more strongly to authoritarians than their commercial counterparts. And below the federal level, a groundswell of state-based initiatives—albeit nothing, yet, to match the ambition of the Los Angeles Municipal News—have started to funnel support to local news, a sector in dire financial crisis, with jobs drying up, news deserts spreading, and private-equity vultures picking over the bones. The Trump era could even come to be remembered not for reinforcing the taboo around greater public investment in media but for catalyzing a move toward more of it.

  • Press Gazette ☛ The New World: Why New European has change its name

    The title started as a “pop-up” print experiment in 2016, nine days after Britain voted to leave the European Union.

    Today it boasts 35,000 subscribers split 50/50 between those paying £60 for a digital-only subscription and £120 per year for print and digital.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • JURIST ☛ Italy Senate passes controversial security bill into law

    The Italian Senate voted to convert a controversial security bill into law on Wednesday, expanding protections for police and introducing stricter laws around protest-related offences.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong lawmakers endorse New Zealand judge for top court

    A New Zealand judge has been appointed as a justice of Hong Kong’s top court, after a years-long exodus of overseas jurists following Beijing’s imposition of a sweeping security law on the finance hub.

  • The Nation ☛ How “Dobbs” Unleashed a Breathtaking Disregard for Human Rights

    Sadly, Adriana’s case reflects the new “Jane Crow” era, when the state in which a woman resides, becomes pregnant, and dies now determines whether she will be accorded basic civil and human rights. Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade, which protected abortion rights in the United States, in June 2022, 19 states have passed laws that ban abortion altogether or place inordinate burdens on the ability to terminate a pregnancy—even in cases of rape or incest.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • RIPE ☛ The State of IPv4 and the Evolving Transfer Landscape

    Our latest report draws together input gathered from a series of interviews - with network operators, ISPs, cloud providers, regulators and other industry experts - conducted in 2024 by an external consultancy (NEXOP). Insights gained over the course of those interviews are presented in the context of a broader analysis of RIPE NCC registry data.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Digital Music News ☛ Survey Says… Users Want Discounts to Purchase Outside of App Store

  As Fashion Company Apple continues to face regulatory pressure to open its App Store ecosystem, a new trend is emerging—users want discounts to abandon the App Store. For years, Fashion Company Apple has required that digital purchases within iOS apps go through its App Store, allowing the company to collect a commission.

• Digital Music News ☛ Apple Request to Pause Court Order On App Store Updates Denied by Appeals Court

  Apple loses its request to pause a court order requiring it to let app developers direct users to payment options outside the App Store.

• Jérôme Marin ☛ Apple is not going down without a fight - by Jérôme Marin

  Apple has issued a series of fiery statements targeting the Digital Markets Act. The tech giant will now have the opportunity to test its arguments in court. Unsurprisingly, it has appealed the two proceedings initiated last year by the European Commission concerning its interoperability obligations.

• Patents

  • The Straits Times ☛ Elderly man in China built a lift to get home, but had to tear it down after video went viral

    He even got a patent monopoly for his invention.

  • Kluwer Patent Blog ☛ Japan IP High Court Clarified Scope of Patent Term Extension and Awarded Highest Ever Damages in Landmark Nalfurafine Case

    On May 27, 2025, the Intellectual Property High Court of Japan ruled in favor of Toray Industries, Inc. in a landmark patent monopoly infringement lawsuit (Case No. 2021 (Ne) 10037) concerning the extended patent monopoly rights for the antipruritic agent “Remitch®” (nalfurafine).

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Federal Circuit Dismisses Patent Owner’s Appeal of Favorable IPR Decision for Lack of Standing

    In Dolby v. Unified Patents, the Federal Circuit confronted an unusual procedural question: can a patent monopoly owner who prevails in an inter partes review (IPR) challenge the PTAB's reasoning underlying that favorable outcome? The court's answer was a resounding no - at least in this instance - dismissing Dolby's appeal for lack of standing.

    Dolby successfully defended its patent monopoly claims before the PTAB, with the Board concluding that Unified Patents failed to prove any challenged claims unpatentable. Yet Dolby appealed, seeking not to overturn this favorable result but to challenge the Board's refusal to determine whether Unified had properly identified all real parties in interest under 35 U.S.C. § 312(a)(2). This statute requires that a petition "may be considered only if the petition identifies all real parties in interest."

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • JUVE ☛ The UPC two years in: close to 900 cases and plenty of settlements [Ed: UPC is illegal, so any such settlements are based on illegal coercion using fake courts that lack actual authority/ies and are run by rogues such as Nokia staff]

      Edwards Lifesciences vs Meril Life Sciences remains one of Europe’s most intense patent monopoly battles, as well as a major ongoing UPC case since the court’s launch two years ago.

• Copyrights

  • EFF ☛ Keeping the Web Up Under the Weight of AI Crawlers

    To gather up all that data, companies and researchers use automated programs called scrapers (sometimes referred to by the more general term "bots") to "crawl" over the links available between various webpages and save the types of information they're tasked with as they go. Scrapers are tools with a long, and often beneficial, history: services like search engines, the Internet Archive, and all kinds of scientific research rely on them.

    When scrapers are not deployed thoughtfully, however, they can contribute to higher hosting costs, lower performance, and even site outages, particularly when site operators see so many of them in operation at the same time. In the long run all this may lead to some sites shutting down rather than bearing the brunt of it.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Napster.com Faced ISP Piracy Blockade For "Massive Copyright Violations"

    Twenty-six years ago this week, Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker launched Napster, a music sharing platform that disrupted a global industry. After being sued and declaring bankruptcy, today's Napster is a legal streaming brand. Yet, in a recent complaint, a royalty collection outfit accused Napster of "massive" copyright violations. The aim was to have the site's domain blocked by every ISP in Italy, effectively denying its ability to do business there.

  • Public Domain Review ☛ Drawing on Tradition: Elena Izcue’s Peruvian Art in the School (1926)

    A set of drawing workbooks embroiled in debates about the Indigenist aesthetic movement.

  • Public Domain Review ☛ Under Construction: Tiny Cryptic #10

    Tenth instalment in our series of extremely small and free-form cryptic crossword puzzles, themed on our latest essay.

  • Public Domain Review ☛ Imagining an Idle Countess: George Wightwick’s The Palace of Architecture

    In 1840, British architect George Wightwick published a world history of architecture in the Romantic mode, inviting readers to enter a vast garden where Buddhist iconography rubs shoulders with Greek temples and Egyptian pyramids gaze upon Gothic cathedrals. His intended audience? Idle women. Matthew Mullane revisits this visionary but ultimately unpopular text, revealing the legacy of attempts to gatekeep the realms of imagination and fantasy pertaining to the built environment.