Leftovers

• France24 ☛ Funk icon Sly Stone, leader of Sly and the Family Stone, dies at 82

  Stone made his California-based band, which included his brother Freddie and sister Rose, a symbol of integration. It included Black and white musicians, while women, including the late trumpeter Cynthia Robinson, had prominent roles.

  That was rare in a music industry often segregated along racial and gender lines.

• CBC ☛ Sly Stone, of the iconic band Sly and the Family Stone, dead at age 82

  At a time of protests over conditions in inner cities and police killings of Black Americans, as well as an ascendant women's liberation movement, Sly and the Family Stone featured Black and white members, men and women, family and friends.

  "I wanted the band to represent as much variety of soul as possible," Stewart told a television interviewer in 1980.

  "I thought if people could see that, see all these different people having a good time on stage, then it wouldn't be so hard for people to have a good time, either."

• Rolling Stone ☛ Sly Stone 'Thank You' Memoir: Read Book, Listen to Audiobook Online

  As the publisher notes state, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) is a vivid, gripping, sometimes terrifying, and ultimately affirming tour through Sly’s life and career. Set on stages and in mansions, in the company of family and of other celebrities, it’s a story about flawed humanity and flawless artistry.”

• The Guardian UK ☛ Sly Stone, pioneering funk and soul musician, dies aged 82

  “Sly was a monumental figure, a groundbreaking innovator, and a true pioneer who redefined the landscape of pop, funk, and rock music,” the family statement added. “His iconic songs have left an indelible mark on the world, and his influence remains undeniable. In a testament to his enduring creative spirit, Sly recently completed the screenplay for his life story, a project we are eager to share with the world in due course, which follows a memoir published in 2024.”

• Michigan News ☛ Sly Stone, founder of Sly and the Family Stone, dies at 82 - mlive.com

  The family of Sly Stone has confirmed the legendary funk icon died Monday at the age of 82. Stone, born Sylvester Stewart, was a founder and front man for the band Sly and the Family Stone which rose to popularity in the late 1960s.

• RTL ☛ Sly Stone: soul music's groundbreaking, elusive superstar

  An effervescent hybrid of psychedelic soul, hippie consciousness, bluesy funk and rock built on Black gospel, Stone's music proved to be a melodic powerhouse that attracted millions during a golden age of exploratory pop -- until it fell apart in a spiral of drug use.

• Los Angeles Times ☛ Sly Stone, funk-rock progenitor and leader of the Family Stone, dies at 82

  After a musical peak that lasted six years, Stone released a few inconsequential records, spent decades mired in addictions to cocaine and sedatives, was arrested for possession of crack and lived in a camper van, a husk of his younger, vibrant self.

• NDTV ☛ Sly Stone, Leader Of 1960s Funk Band, Dies At 82

  But he later fell on hard times and became addicted to cocaine, never staging a successful comeback.

• Ruben Schade ☛ What has expanded the utility of computers for you in the last decade?

  Really though, could I say any of those things “expanded” the utility of modern computing? It’s certainly made it more fun and pleasant. But ultimately I’m using the same software, platforms, and methods of interaction I did before. About all the industry has given me to improve this in the last decade are blockchain, VR headsets, and stochastic parrots that can’t outperform my novelty Commodore calculator that’s more than a decade older than me. On the work side, I have K8s, “serverless”, and a flock of additional stochastic parrots. Goodie!

• Paul Krugman ☛ A Newsletter Update

  A few people have asked me how this newsletter has been going since I brought it out of hibernation just 6 months ago. I am NOT going to waste a real post on self-promotion, given everything happening out there, and wanted to slip this note in between crises, as it were.

• Gabriel Simmer ☛ Ditching HAProxy (in my homelab)

  And now the homelab cluster is humming along nicely, with more confidence that an entire server going offline won't impact access to the cluster, or cluster operation itself.

• Science

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ We Should Immediately Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink

    The slap fight between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has highlighted the absurdity of keeping so much of our space program and satellite internet infrastructure in the hands of a single oligarch.

  • El País ☛ Ardem Patapoutian, Nobel Prize winner in Medicine: ‘90% of people don’t even know they have a sense of proprioception’

    Q. Your story — that of an immigrant who started out delivering pizzas and went on to become a renowned scientist — has always been powerful, but it’s even more so now, given the current situation of immigrants in the United States.

    A. I know. It’s very sad to think that what I did back then probably can’t be done anymore. My parents didn’t have much money, so I got a Pell Grant, a federal aid program for students who can’t afford college. Aid like that has been cut or no longer exists. Many young people would like to go to the United States to pursue their dreams, but that option is not available to them anymore. It’s very sad. I feel an extra responsibility to speak up now. Forty percent of Nobel Prize winners in the United States are immigrants, but this administration doesn’t value science or immigration.

  • [Old] CNN ☛ Nobel laureate: I owe America my success. Today, its scientific future is in danger

    Moreover, the ongoing efforts to diminish scientific investment are having a massive negative effect on our ability to attract and train young scientists. Graduate school admissions are being drastically cut due to uncertainty and shrinking budgets, effectively halting the recruitment and training of the next generation of innovators, as our most promising trainees look for opportunities overseas. This threatens our future competitiveness and ability to lead globally in scientific discovery and innovation.

  • Niklas Oberhuber ☛ How to be Right without being Sure

    There are ways to guess that result in being right more often, these methods are called heuristics. You don’t just approach the problem from one angle, you find multiple related topics and engage with the question from as many sides as possible. You start out with things you know and try to figure out if they follow similar patterns. You could use etymology if possible, you could start with historical knowledge or geographical indications. A famous example which has influenced both pop-culture and bad job interview questions is the Fermi estimation.

  • The Register UK ☛ US lawmakers fire back a response to Trump's NASA cuts

    However, the proposal was just that – a proposal. The US President has made a request, and it is up to Congress to approve it or make changes. The political fault lines became clear at the end of last week as US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation released the Budget Reconciliation Text.

    The document gives an insight into lawmakers' thinking; it isn't good news for science fans. Things look much rosier for commercial outfits on the SLS payroll, though.

• Career/Education

  • Ned Batchelder ☛ Digital Equipment Corporation no more | Ned Batchelder

    More and more, I find that people have never heard of Digital (as we called it) or DEC (as they preferred we didn’t call it but everyone did). It’s something I’ve had to get used to. I try to relate a story from that time, and I find that even experienced engineers with deep knowledge of technologies don’t know of the company.

  • Yordi Verkroost ☛ Magic Umbrellas and Quiet Goodbyes: Lessons from Mary Poppins | Yordi - A Lifelong Journey of Growth

    Watching Mary Poppins again reminded me that it’s okay to move on—not because you’re no longer needed, but because the people you helped are now exactly where they need to be.

• Hardware

  • Chris Aldrich ☛ The Typewriter You Probably Don’t Want to Buy

    If you know nothing about typewriters, but are looking to purchase one (either for occasional/regular typing or even as a display piece), I couldn’t recommend them given the fact that there are so many far better machines in the secondary market which are more robust and will last for centuries compared to these poor, plastic machines.

  • Tedium ☛ One Year Left: Apple’s Long Goodbye For Intel Macs

    As you probably know after all this time, Tedium is obsessed with the closing frame, the end of the story. And today, we learned that Apple is finally ending its 20-year run of Intel-based Macs.

    That’s the bad news. The good news is that they gave the public one more year of new versions, along with the promise of potential security fixes, avoiding an uncomfortable rug-pull like the one that many PowerPC users experienced with Snow Leopard in 2009. That OS came out a mere three years after the discontinuation of the last PowerPC Mac, and users had to figure out the cutoff was happening by reading Apple rumor sites.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ New experimental operations unit launches at Nellis Air Force Base

    CCA development is a part of the sixth-generation Next Generation Air Dominance fighter jet program, which itself started as a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA) project in 2015. The idea is to create remote controlled aircraft to be essentially uncrewed wingmen for pilots, with each crewed fighter jet able to give commands to the drones.

  • The Register UK ☛ US air traffic control uses floppy disks for backup

    In 2025, a report by Parliamentary spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee, warned of the parlous state of UK government legacy systems, many of which were "an end-of-life product, out of support from the supplier, [and] impossible to update."

  • David L Farquhar ☛ Eagle Computer: The rise and fall of an early PC clone

    Eagle had been a leading producer of CP/M computers, entering the market somewhat accidentally. They were an offshoot of Audio Visual Labs, who made a product that could double as a general purpose computer. Audio Visual Labs recruited Dennis Barnhart, the vice president of marketing and sales at Commodore, in 1981. Audio Visual Labs spun Eagle off as a separate company soon after, and Barnhart became CEO.

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ AMD revealed two more Ryzen Z2 chips for gaming handhelds

    AMD have expanded their Ryzen Z2 offerings, with two more chips designed for handhelds. So we're likely to see even more releasing with AMD's Z2 chips, although it's getting a bit confusing now.

  • HowTo Geek ☛ 6 Ways I'm Using My NAS

    Network Attached Storage (NAS) servers are mainly intended for backing up and storing files, but they can also do a lot more. I’ve been using a two-bay Synology DiskStation DS718+ NAS for close to a year now, and I’ve found some cool ways to make it more than just a data dumping ground.

    Many people try to use home servers as full replacements for cloud services, usually with self-hosted instances of NextCloud and other similar tools. I’m not quite there yet—I don’t want to be my own IT guy for all my important data. For now, I’m mostly interested in services that benefit from 24/7 uptime, and ways to extend my existing cloud storage. Hopefully, this gives you a few ideas for your own NAS or home server.

  • HowTo Geek ☛ Why I Want a Steam Deck Mini

    Back in the times of yore, portability was one of the main aims when designing handheld consoles. Ever since the Microvision and Game & Watch, handheld consoles have been made with pockets in mind.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New Yorker ☛ The Farmers Harmed by the Trump Administration

    Health experts believe the destruction of U.S.A.I.D. will have catastrophic effects on millions of people overseas, owing to the termination of malaria and tuberculosis projects, maternal-health support, clean-water initiatives, and funding for food shipments, which caused the closing of a thousand community kitchens in Sudan alone. At home, the losses are more subtle, but still significant, including the cuts to the innovation labs and the Trump Administration’s attempt to eliminate Food for Peace, a government program that bought about two billion dollars’ worth of food from American farmers annually and shipped it to poor countries, a postwar projection of soft power that generated feel-good vibes.

  • EFF ☛ Criminalizing Masks at Protests is Wrong

    But the truth is: whether you are afraid of catching an airborne illness from your fellow protestors, or you are concerned about reprisals from police or others for expressing your political opinions in public, you should have the right to wear a mask. Attempts to criminalize masks at protests fly in the face of a right to privacy.

  • Air Force Times ☛ Air Force spends millions on relaxation cubes that may prove worth it

    As the number of Mindgym advocates across the Air Force grows, other services are also entering talks to purchase the technology. It’s a lot of flash and glitz to deliver relaxation to stressed-out service members. But the number of passionate advocates for Mindgym in the military is growing, and some argue the attention it’s getting from troops who might otherwise avoid meditation and de-stressing techniques might make it worth every penny.

  • Kevin Wammer ☛ Experimental June: week 1

    My screen time has decreased by 26%, though I realized I can't respect the daily limit of two hours for one simple reason: I don't lock my screen. Often it just lies there with the screen turned on while I do something else. This might explain why my ScreenTime in MacroFactor (my calorie tracking app of choice) is so high. I enter one ingredient, continue cooking, and the phone just lies there. And I don't have it set to auto-lock either, because it annoys me too much to unlock the screen when it lies flat on the surface. But besides that, I mostly stopped using the phone as a second screen. If I watch a TV show, I watch the TV show. And I am nearly done with The Bear S03 and Severance S01.

  • 404 Media ☛ Senators Demand Meta Answer For AI Chatbots Posing as Licensed Therapists

    Exclusive: Following 404 Media’s investigation into Meta's AI Studio chatbots that pose as therapists and provided license numbers and credentials, four senators urged Meta to limit "blatant deception" from its chatbots.

• Proprietary

  • Microsoft layoffs hit communications and marketing staffers

    At least 18 comms and marketing employees were part of layoffs the company announced over the past month

  • The Register UK ☛ IT unemployment jumps from 4.6% to 5.5% in US: Janco • The Register

  • Macworld ☛ If you own an Intel Mac, you have 12 months to upgrade to a new model

    Apple on Monday unveiled the latest version of macOS and in the process cut a bunch of Intel Macs from the compatibility list. But if you have one of the lucky models that made it through, there’s bad news on the horizon—Apple has announced that macOS 26 Tahoe will be the final version that supports any Intel Macs.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Apple Researchers Just Released a Damning Paper That Pours Water on the Entire AI Industry

      In particular, the researchers assail the claims of companies like OpenAI that their most advanced models can now "reason" — a supposed capability that the Scam Altman-led company has increasingly leaned on over the past year for marketing purposes — which the Apple team characterizes as merely an "illusion of thinking."

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2025! Don’t expect much — it still doesn’t work

      The keynote will not promise exciting new products, because there aren’t any, and last year’s still don’t work.

    • Benedict Evans ☛ AI’s metrics question

      When you get inside a well-run hyper-growth company like Meta or Google, conversely, you see a lot of very specific and rigorously-collected and defined second and third derivative metrics that really tell you how well the product is working and what people are doing. Google famously optimised for response time, which no-one else thought was important, and aimed to get people to leave the site quickly, which everyone else thought was bad. A lot of these metrics can also be a positive feedback cycle making the product itself better: when you reformulate a Google search and try again, or click on the third link and do or don’t come back afterwards, you’re giving Google signals that make it better, and that’s a powerful network effect. It’s not clear that any LLM providers are really able to leverage this kind of thing yet, and what they would measure: if I ask a question and don’t try again, was that the right result, was it wrong but I thought it was right, or did I give up and go to Google?

    • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ Trusting your own judgement on 'AI' is a huge risk

      He documented tactics and processes used by salespeople, thieves, and con artists and showed how they could manipulate and trick even smart people.

      Worse yet, reading through another set of books in my dad’s library – those written by Oliver Sacks – indicated that the complex systems of the brain, the ones that lend themselves to manipulation and disorder, are a big part of what makes us human.

      But to a self-important asshole teenager, one with an inflated sense of his own intelligence, Cialdini’s book was a timely deflation as it was specifically written as a warning to people to be careful about manipulation.

    • Sean Goedecke ☛ The illusion of "The Illusion of Thinking"

      Very recently (early June 2025), Apple released a paper called The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity. This has been widely understood to demonstrate that reasoning models don’t “actually” reason. I do not believe that AI language models are on the path to superintelligence. But I still don’t like this paper very much. What does it really show? And what does that mean for how we should think about language models?

    • The Register UK ☛ Apple AI boffins pour cold water on reasoning models

      Large reasoning models (LRMs), such as OpenAI’s o1/o3, DeepSeek-R1, Claude 3.7 Sonnet Thinking, and Gemini Thinking, are designed to break problems down into smaller steps. Instead of responding to a prompt with a specific prediction, they use mechanisms like Chain of Thought to iterate through a series of steps, validating their intermediate answers along the way, to arrive at a solution to the stated problem.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ After cars destroyed in protests, Waymo suspends operations in parts of LA and San Francisco

      Reports state that Waymo vehicles are at the center of the protesters’ ire. It’s believed the high-tech electric Jaguar I-Paces, each armed with dozens of cameras and sensors and costing between $150,000 and $200,000 each, represent surveillance and have been construed to be a weapon of law enforcement. An activist on the ground told The New York Times that wrecking the cars are is also partly a result of the “tech industry’s close ties to the Trump administration.” She explained that cars without drivers are “devoid of humanity” and pose a risk to the community.

    • Futurism ☛ Terrifying Footage Shows Self-Driving Tesla Get Confused by the Sun, Mow Down Innocent Grandmother

      The vehicle then adjusts to the right, straight onto the 71-year old woman, who was helping direct traffic after a previous accident shut down the highway ahead. Though there was a driver in the Tesla at the time who should have intervened, it's not known whether they were implicated in the woman's death.

      Though all carmakers are required to report any incident where self-driving software is involved, Tesla took seven months to submit the crash details to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA.)

    • uni Northwestern ☛ AI Progress Report

      Based on discussions with more than 25 local news and AI experts worldwide, the report explored the potential benefits and perils presented by this revolutionary technology. University of Maryland Journalism Professor Tom Rosenstiel, a participant in the Washington, D.C., workshop that yielded much of the report’s content, urged journalists to take a proactive approach to generative artificial intelligence and to avoid the industry’s mistakes from a generation earlier as it was crushed by the emergence of the internet.

      We checked back in with Rosenstiel, the Eleanor Merrill Scholar on the Future of Journalism at Maryland, for a progress report about AI and the local news landscape. These topics are top of mind for Rosenstiel, who is finishing work on a book titled “The Next Journalism: How the Press Needs To Change To Serve Democracy in the 21st Century,” due out in July 2026.

      This conversation, conducted over a video call, has been edited for length and clarity.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Apple: ‘Reasoning’ AIs fail hard if they actually have to think

      On simple puzzles, the plain LLM did better than the reasoning models. On middling puzzles, the reasoning model pulls ahead.

      But at a certain level of complexity, both simple LLMs and reasoning models fail hard. Their accuracy drops to near zero. They just give up — they actually use less tokens on answering than they used on the medium puzzles.

  • Social Control Media

    • Sean Boots ☛ The Yukon government switched from X to Bluesky. Other Canadian governments should do the same.

      In early April, the Yukon government announced that it would no longer be using X (formerly Twitter) in response to new US tariffs taking effect. Effective immediately, Yukon’s existing government X accounts notified followers that the accounts were no longer active and suggested that people follow the Yukon on other platforms for more recent information.

      The Yukon government launched an official Bluesky account the same day. The account uses Bluesky’s domain name-based verification to confirm that it’s an official account. Several other Yukon government departments have also set up Bluesky accounts, along with pages on other social media networks. The switch made national news, alongside the Yukon’s other tariff response updates.

    • International Business Times ☛ TikToker 'Shocked' People Get Paid Monthly — After Complaining Fortnightly Pay Leaves Her Broke

      Ren Adelina's now-deleted TikTok video, which amassed over 700,000 views, called for banning fortnightly pay in favour of weekly payments to help workers manage their finances better. But the response revealed a harsh reality: many struggle far more with monthly salaries—and the real issue may be budgeting skills, not pay frequency.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Register UK ☛ 75+ global orgs hit by suspected Chinese spy crew

      APT15, also known as rKe3Chang and Nylon Typhoon, is a suspected Chinese cyberspy crew that targets telecommunications, IT services, government and other critical sectors.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Futurism ☛ The Internet System Elon Musk Installed at the White House Is Causing Concerns

      According to insiders, it sounds like the White House communications experts were totally circumvented by Musk's group: they were given no notice that DOGE [sic] was installing the Starlink terminal — and once the satellite-based internet service was online, they had no way of actually monitoring the connections. When they voiced these concerns, the communications experts were ignored.

      At one point, things got heated. The installation of the Starlink roof terminal caused a confrontation between DOGE [sic] staffers and the Secret Service, according to WaPo.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Federal News Network ☛ Supreme Court allows DOGE [sic] team to access Social Security systems with data on millions of Americans

      The court’s conservative majority sided with the Trump administration in the first Supreme Court appeals involving DOGE [sic]. The three liberal justices dissented in both cases.

    • Meduza ☛ Russia has denied entry to multiple Ukrainians for deleting content from their phones, state media reports

      Russian state media reports that there have been multiple cases of Ukrainian citizens being denied entry to Russia after deleting messages and photos from their phones prior to crossing the border.

    • University of Toronto ☛ Thinking about facets of (cloud) identity providers

      Over on the Fediverse, Simon Tatham had a comment about cloud identity providers, and this sparked some thoughts of my own. One of my thoughts is that in today's world, a sufficiently large organization may have a number of facets to its identity provider situation (which is certainly the case for my institution). Breaking up identity provision into multiple facets can leave it not clear if and to what extend you could be said to be using a 'cloud identity provider'.

    • The Register UK ☛ Waymo robotaxis set on fire by LA protestors

      In the past, Waymo has reportedly given car footage to the police in investigations, just as Ring and other consumer camera systems have, although Amazon now requires a warrant. While it's possible some protestors knew about this and were targeting the cars as a preventative tactic, it's more likely just an outpouring of anger against a symbol of authority, as seen in San Francisco last year when passersby torched a Waymo last Chinese New Year after it got caught in the crowds.

    • 404 Media ☛ Waymo Pauses Service in Downtown LA Neighborhood Where They're Getting Lit on Fire

      The fact that Waymos need to use video cameras that are constantly recording their surroundings in order to function means that police have begun to look at them as sources of surveillance footage. In April, we reported that the Los Angeles Police Department had obtained footage from a Waymo while investigating another driver who hit a pedestrian and fled the scene.

    • Wired ☛ A Researcher Figured Out How to Reveal Any Phone Number Linked to a Google Account

      Phone numbers are a goldmine for SIM swappers. A researcher found how to get this precious piece of information through a clever brute-force attack.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ New Way to Track Covertly Android Users

      Researchers have discovered a new way to covertly track Android users. Both Meta and Yandex were using it, but have suddenly stopped now that they have been caught.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Pro Publica ☛ Local Police Join ICE Deportation Force in Record Numbers

    Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, U.S. immigration officials have deputized a record number of local police to function as deportation agents, despite repeated warnings from government watchdogs since 2018 that the program does not adequately train and oversee officers.

    This expansion of the 287(g) Program is being driven by the administration’s resurrection of a previously abandoned task force model empowering local officers to question individuals’ immigration status during traffic stops and other routine policing. At least 315 departments have signed on to the more aggressive approach, which Immigration and Customs Enforcement abandoned in 2012 amid racial profiling problems and lawsuits.

  • FAIR ☛ ‘Trump and Musk Are Attacking the Ability of Government to Protect Ordinary People’: CounterSpin interview with Jeff Hauser on DOGE after Musk

    Janine Jackson interviewed the Revolving Door Project’s Jeff Hauser about DOGE “after” Elon Musk for the June 6, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • The Washington Spectator ☛ Caesar in California | Washington Spectator

    Most significantly, the President would be using the Insurrection Act not to restore order in a collapsed state, but to override political resistance in a functioning, law-abiding one.

  • Vox ☛ LA protests: Can Trump actually deploy the military on US soil?

    It is generally illegal to use federal troops for law enforcement within the United States. But there are exceptions. The Insurrection Act — one of the president’s emergency powers — allows the president to use the military against American citizens on domestic soil, including in nonconsenting states, to quell an armed rebellion or extreme civil unrest.

  • The Nation ☛ “They Targeted Me”: Mayor Ras Baraka Speaks About His Arrest and Wanting to Lead New Jersey

    LF: How do you see your arrest and the indictment of your colleague LaMonica McIver within the broader context of what’s happening in this country?

    RB: We’re moving very fast towards authoritarianism if we haven’t arrived there already. You’re talking about people who are arresting mayors, judges, congresspeople, anybody who they think is going to defy them. Deporting people with green cards and visas simply because they have different ideologies. Running up on people who are, in fact, citizens. Who are violating people’s due process. These folks passed congressional legislation in the House with a caveat to stop federal courts from putting injunctions on their executive orders, or whatever else they think they should do that’s outside of the Constitution. It’s dangerous, and we should be very concerned.

  • The Nation ☛ Trump Calls Up the Marines. Democracy Is in Danger.

    The president is creating fake emergencies and then implementing real military interventions.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Gulf countries expand their footprint in Africa, seeking to deepen ties

    The UAE is backing a new economic zone and digital incubator in Ghana, while Qatari businesses have been in talks over possible investments in construction and infrastructure projects in Tanzania.

  • YLE ☛ Finnish Navy to host Nato exercise on unmanned systems in June

    "Unmanned systems have enormous potential and diverse applications. Smart and autonomous systems can be used, for example, to monitor areas and targets, freeing up valuable resources for other tasks," said Commodore Marko Laaksonen, Chief of Operations at the Finnish Navy.

  • The Age AU ☛ LA protests: Trump says California Governor Gavin Newsom should be arrested as 700 Marines deployed

    The extraordinary decision to deploy active duty personnel to the streets of the US’s second-largest city was immediately condemned as “un-American” by California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, whom US President Donald Trump had earlier said should be arrested.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump, ICE Have Earned Every Bit Of The Hatred They’re Now Facing

    It’s not just the big stuff — you know, the casual disregard of rights and deliberate refusal to abide by federal court orders. It’s also the small stuff — the insidious destruction of societal and governmental norms for the sole purpose of pumping up deportation stats.

    There’s been a lot of attention paid to Los Angeles, California recently due to ongoing anti-ICE protests and the president’s promise to lay the groundwork for martial law in response. Down in the trenches is where some of the shittiest stuff is happening, which tends to get ignored because of what’s happening out in broad daylight.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ ‘The Fight for Souls and Minds’: Alex Jones, George Galloway, Errol Musk and More Attend Far-Right Forum of the Future in Moscow - The Moscow Times

    Leading Western far-right personalities have descended on Moscow for the “Forum of the Future,” a two-day event aimed at broadcasting Russia’s state ideology and an ultra-conservative, neo-imperialist vision for its future to audiences abroad.

  • The Kyiv Independent ☛ Ukraine reinvented Trojan Horse with Operation Spiderweb, NATO admiral says

    "What the Ukrainians did in Russia was a Trojan Horse — and the Trojan Horse was thousands of years ago," Vandier, NATO's supreme allied commander transformation, said. "Today, we see this kind of tactic being reinvented by technical and industrial creativity."

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Deliberate Dismantling of America's Terror Prevention

    But today we need to discuss something that reveals the Trump administration’s true intentions with crystalline clarity: they are systematically destroying America’s counterterrorism capabilities while terrorist attacks multiply across the country. This isn’t incompetence. This is policy.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Donald Trump Manufactured the Crisis in Los Angeles

    The Trump administration claims to be fighting an existential battle against insurrectionary forces in Los Angeles. In truth, it created this cynical spectacle itself, deploying troops and inflaming tensions to distract from its policy failures.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ A Whistleblower Lawsuit Has Unveiled a Secret Trump ICE Plot

    The previously undisclosed Trump administration subpoena was detailed in an explosive new whistleblower lawsuit filed in state court on Thursday. The alleged subpoena targeting information protected by state privacy laws represents a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdown — and the lawsuit’s allegations also prompt new questions about Democrats’ cooperation.

  • 404 Media ☛ DHS Black Hawks and Military Aircraft Surveil the LA Protests

    Local police, state authorities, DHS, and the military all flew aircraft over the Los Angeles protests this weekend, according to flight path data.

• Environment

  • YLE ☛ Helsinki police warn of major traffic disruption as three-day climate protest begins

    Elokapina plans to kick off what it calls a "wildfire rebellion" with a demonstration that starts at 3pm on Monday, moving from Senate Square in the centre of the capital to the Finnish parliament on Mannerheimintie.

    On a website specially created for the event, the climate group — which is the Finnish branch of the Extinction Rebellion civil disobedience movement — said they plan to remain on the streets of Helsinki for at least three days.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • YLE ☛ Bike sales plummet after government ends tax perk

      The association blamed the situation on the government's decision to eliminate an employer-based bike purchasing arrangement that has offered employees a chance to get a bicycle tax-free. The benefit is tax-exempt for up to 1,200 euros per year.

      More than 100,000 workers in Finland have taken advantage of the tax incentive.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Jaws at 50: Was the Terrifying Movie Really to Blame for Worldwide Shark Declines?

  • Overpopulation

    • ANF News ☛ Turkey has been using water as a weapon against civilians in North-East Syria for six years

      With the arrival of summer and rising temperatures, citizens are facing increasing hardship and difficulties due to a shortage of drinking water. They are forced to use salt water from wells, but since this water is not drinkable, it is only used for household chores. As a result, citizens are forced to purchase water from tankers at high prices.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Nature ☛ Factual knowledge can reduce attitude polarization

    It is commonly argued that factual knowledge about a political issue increases attitude polarization due to politically motivated reasoning. By this account, individuals ignore counter-attitudinal facts and direct their attention to pro-attitudinal facts; reject counter-attitudinal facts when directly confronted with them; and use pro-attitudinal facts to counterargue, all making them more polarized. The observation that more knowledgeable partisans are often more polarized is widely taken as support for this account. Yet these data are only correlational. Here, we directly test the causal effect of increasing issue-relevant knowledge on attitude polarization. Specifically, we randomize whether N = 1,011 participants receive a large, credible set of both pro- and counter-attitudinal facts on a contentious political issue – gun control – and provide a modest incentive for them to learn this information. We find evidence that people are willing to engage with and learn policy-relevant facts both for and against their initial attitudes; and that this increased factual knowledge shifts individuals towards more moderate policy attitudes, a durable effect that is still visible after one month. Our results suggest that the impact of directionally motivated reasoning on the processing of political information might be more limited than previously thought.

  • The Register UK ☛ Bill introduced to expand AI training for federal employees

    The AI Training Extension Act of 2025 [PDF] would deliver AI training to managers and supervisors, plus employees working in roles related to data and tech. The proposed law also allows AI training to be incorporated "into any other training program" that officials deem fit.

  • The Register UK ☛ Europe's cloud datacenter ambition 'crazy' says SAP CEO

    However, he warned about attempts to replicate the services of the large US cloud providers, which claim to offer data sovereignty in Europe. In recent weeks, Microsoft, Google and most recently AWS have all made similar noises about being safe data havens for European customers worried about the policies and rhetoric coming out of the White House.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Unverified code is the next national security threat

    Open-source software is now a critical dependency in modern digital infrastructure — by som estimates, over 90% of all modern applications include open-source components. It powers critical infrastructure, supports hospitals, underpins financial systems, and runs inside defense technologies. But it often enters systems with no verification of its provenance or maintainers. This creates a new class of security risks, rooted in anonymity, opacity, and untraceable trust.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • International Business Times ☛ From Black Vikings to Backpack Parachutes: Google's AI Overviews Under Fire for Bonkers Blunders

      These 'hallucinations', a term computer scientists use, are made worse because the AI system reduces the prominence of trustworthy information sources. Rather than sending users directly to websites, the AI tool summarises information from search results and then offers its own AI-generated answer, accompanied by just a few links.

      Laurence O'Toole, who founded the analytics firm Authoritas, investigated how the tool affected websites and discovered that when AI Overviews appeared, the percentage of users clicking through to publisher sites fell by 40%–60%.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFA ☛ Chinese police crackdown on writers of online erotic fiction – Radio Free Asia

    A source who spoke to Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for safety reasons said the crackdown could involve 200-300 writers.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Canadian Journalist Alleges Assault by Khalistani Activists

    The journalist further alleged that one of the individuals involved in the assault has a history of online harassment against him, often using what he described as “dehumanising language.” He claimed the assailant is not a Canadian citizen but a UK national.

    Bezirgan stated that the attackers specifically targeted him due to his refusal to conform to any ideological line and his commitment to editorial independence. “My only goal is to document and report what is happening. That frustrates some people who want to influence or silence me,” he said.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Techcrunch sacks Europe-based reporting team

    Laid-off journalists include the site’s veteran editor-at-large Mike Butcher. The move follows private equity firm Regent LP buying Techcrunch from Yahoo Inc in March 2025.

    At the time of the acquisition, Regent LP said: “Techcrunch has been the number one publisher for all things startups since its founding in 2005, and we’re thrilled to expand its reach as it provides breaking technology news, opinions, and analysis on tech companies worldwide to our audience.”

  • SBS ☛ Lauren Tomasi: Journalist shot by rubber bullet in LA 'sore but okay' amid calls for Albanese to raise incident with Trump

    "This incident serves as a stark reminder of the inherent dangers journalists can face while reporting from the frontlines of protests, underscoring the importance of their role in providing vital information," the company said.

  • CPJ ☛ Law enforcement injure multiple journalists, others assaulted while covering Los Angeles protests

    Law enforcement in Los Angeles, California, shot non-lethal rounds that struck multiple reporters while they covered protests that began on Friday, June 6, and escalated over the weekend following immigration raids. More than 20 others were reported to have been assaulted or obstructed.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ FFRF co-sponsors ‘No Kings’ Day of Action: How to participate — Freedom From Religion Foundation

    In America, we threw the monarch out, and our Constitution proudly invests sovereignty not in a king or a deity, but in ‘We the People.” FFRF is alarmed at the rapidity with which democratic and constitutional safeguards are being dismantled in the name of Christian nationalism or political opportunism. We are one of at least 200 groups around the country endorsing marches, rallies and demonstrations to reject corrupt, authoritarian policies in the United States.

  • Vox ☛ Trump asks the Supreme Court to neutralize the Convention Against Torture, in DHS v. D.V.D.

    Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., the case where the Trump administration asks the justices to neutralize the Convention Against Torture, is unlike some of the more high-profile deportation cases that reached the Supreme Court — such as the unlawful deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to El Salvador — in that no one really questions that the immigrants at the heart of this case may be deported somewhere.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ 'A stain on the Constitution': Abrego Garcia lawyers refuse to drop his case against U.S.

    “Until the Government is held accountable for its blatant, willful, and persistent violations of court orders at excruciating cost to Abrego Garcia and his family, this case is not over,” according to the brief by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys filed Sunday.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ This Kansas town doesn’t hate immigrants enough. So the Trump administration plots vengeance.

    The Department of Homeland Security posted a list of 500-plus “sanctuary jurisdictions” on its website May 29, highlighting cities and counties that supposedly run afoul of its anti-immigrant agenda. Three days later, officials took down the page after an outcry from local law enforcement. Thanks to the Internet Archive, you can still browse the list and read the government’s inflammatory rhetoric: “DHS demands that these jurisdictions immediately review and revise their policies to align with Federal immigration laws and renew their obligation to protect American citizens, not dangerous illegal aliens.”

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ White House budget request slashes funding for tribal colleges and universities

    If the budget is approved by Congress, beginning in October, the more than $13 million in annual appropriations for the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, would be reduced to zero. It would be the first time in nearly 40 years that the congressionally chartered school would not receive federal support, said Robert Martin, the school’s president.

  • The Center for Investigative Reporting ☛ From New York to Arizona, Efforts Emerge to Curb Drug Testing During Childbirth

    If passed, the law would permit hospitals to drug test birthing patients and their newborns only if medically necessary. It would also require them to obtain informed consent from patients before drug testing them, which would include disclosing the potential legal consequences of a positive test result.

  • 404 Media ☛ Girls Do Porn Ringleader Pleads Guilty, Faces Life In Prison

    Michael Pratt led Girls Do Porn, a sex trafficking operation that targeted hundreds of young women with force, fraud and coercion.

  • NPR ☛ Chile's Indigenous fishermen say the salmon industry threatens their way of life

    "I think it's important to talk about how vulnerable these ecosystems are in general to change," says marine biologist Claudio Carocca, who has written extensively about the effects of the salmon industry .

    "In this case, the changes affected by human activity range from installing pontoons with their steel, plastic, ropes and lights; to the nonnative fish species introduced, and the chemicals and food injected to help them grow," he says.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ Unqualified Right Wing Zealot Gavin Wax Poised To Be Nominated To Trump’s FCC

    Last week, Republican FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington abruptly announced that he would be stepping down from the FCC. Simington gave all of two-days notice of his departure, which was odd not only because of the short notice, but because it delays Trump Republicans from getting a voting majority allowing them to actually do anything real.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump 2.0 Is Proving To Be A Bonanza For More Harmful Consolidation Among Broadband Giants

    These mergers never serve the public interest. And America’s historically too corrupt to care. Such consolidation helps temporarily boost stock valuations and generate rich tax cuts, while overcompensated executives celebrate their savvy deal-making acumen. The public harms of consolidation is then swept under the carpet with the help of an equally consolidated corporate press and captured regulators.

    Wash, rinse, repeat.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Trademarks

  • Carl Svensson ☛ On Buying the Commodore Brand

    I usually don't comment on day-to-day developments in the retro computing sphere, but I think the latest hype warrants an exception. Recently, youtuber Perifractic (of the channel Retro Recipes) announced a plan to buy the Commodore brand - as in, buying the company that owns the various Commodore logotypes.

    Plenty of retro enthusiasts seem to have reacted with a great deal of joy regarding this development. Personally, I don't see much reason for popping champagne bottles and lighting cigars, because such an ownership change wouldn't resolve any of the retrocomputing conflicts that really matter. And, more importantly: the amount of fun we have with our machines is completely independent of what's printed on a little label glued to their cases. It really is the inside that matters.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ ICANN's DNS Blocking Report Presents Three Key Recommendations

    ICANN, the organization responsible for ensuring the stability of the internet's Domain Name System (DNS), has published advice for all entities involved in DNS blocking. Three key recommendations arrive as part of a comprehensive report from ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) on the technical means of DNS blocking and its effects - both intended and unintended.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Grande Slams Labels' "Egregious" Piracy Claims in Final Supreme Court Plea

    Can internet service providers be held liable for pirating subscribers? This question is at the center of several federal lawsuits in the U.S. and could soon be taken on by the Supreme Court. This week, ISP Grande Communications urged the Court to accept its petition, characterizing an opposing call from music companies as an attempt to "blatantly rewrite the record."

  • Digital Music News ☛ Is Sony Music Publishing Acquiring Hipgnosis Songs Group?

    “Over the next few months, we will be transitioning the company to SMP’s services and systems,” the email continues. “We are working closely with HSG to ensure that all clients will receive the high level of service that you have come to expect.”