Leftovers

• Ruben Schade ☛ Ouro Kronii is on the sidebar

  I suspect most of you read my posts via RSS, because you’re awesome. But for the few of you who check out the website: firstly, thank you too! And secondly, I’ve added Ouro Kronii under the Fan section of the sidebar.

• Jim Nielsen ☛ The Web as URLs, Not Documents

  Instead of opting into a single architecture up front with escape hatches for every need that breaks the mold, you’re opting in to the request/response cycle of the web’s natural grain, and deciding how to respond on a case-by-case basis.

• Adam Nowak ☛ Conversations

  Sometime during our time together, I felt a wave of nostalgia roll in. A quiet one. The kind you feel not for what is gone, but for what you’re lucky to still have.

• Ava ☛ is blogging romantic?

  Then also, blogging in more minimalist ways (like Bearblog) without ads and popup banners and newsletter modals feels more organic, a kind of original expression not filtered through editorial constraints and SEO optimizations. To me, it could resemble the Romantic longing for authentic, unspoiled experience, for lost innocence, for nature, for the past and a return to the natural and the immediate. I recognize this whenever some people choose to talk about it in terms of returning to a simpler, older web and indulging in nostalgia, even in design.

• Chris ☛ Do Stonks Go Up?

  In that light, we may need a reminder of one of the consequences of the Kelly criterion: making the mistake of underestimating volatility is more dangerous than overestimating it. Overestimating volatility results in a healthy, fractional Kelly bet; underestimating volatility results in overbetting.

• Anil Dash ☛ Sly Stone and the Scariest Show Ever

  I don't think I've ever felt more tension in the room during a live performance than when I was standing five feet in front of Sly Stone, in a room that felt like a powder keg ready to blow. And I don't think I've ever seen a room feel greater relief than watching him tear into "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" and feeling the frustration, anger, and resentment of everyone around him melt away from the sheer force of the joy and pure undeniable propulsive funk of that song. There's no wonder why it's one of my favorite songs of all time. And there's no better example of the power of Sly's gift.

• Digital Music News ☛ Sly Stone, Revolutionary Funk Rock Musician, Dies at 82

  In 1969 at Woodstock, Sly led the group through a new era. Their songs, like “I Wanna Take You Higher” and “Everyday People,” were anthems of hope, community, and non-conformity. Five of their tracks were Top 10 singles, while three of them reached No. 1.

• Rolling Stone ☛ Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ We've Been Misreading a Major Law of Physics For Nearly 300 Years

    Revisiting the archives, Hoek realized this common paraphrasing featured a misinterpretation that flew under the radar until 1999, when two scholars picked up on the translation of one Latin word that had been overlooked: quatenus, which means "insofar", not unless.

    To Hoek, this makes all the difference. Rather than describing how an object maintains its momentum if no forces are impressed on it, Hoek says the new reading shows Newton meant that every change in a body's momentum – every jolt, dip, swerve, and spurt – is due to external forces.

  • Quanta Magazine ☛ New Quantum Algorithm Factors Numbers With One Qubit

    To be clear, it’s not a practical advance: The process requires exponentially more energy than a million-qubit quantum computer. But it does illuminate new ways of solving these kinds of problems. “This departs from the typical way we think about computing — and not just quantum computing, but classical computing as well,” said Ulysse Chabaud, a computer scientist at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris who did not work on the new approach. “This seems crazy, if not impossible.”

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ IBM aims to build the world’s first large-scale, error-corrected quantum computer by 2028 [Ed: More false promises nobody will remember in 4 years]

    IBM announced detailed plans today to build an error-corrected quantum computer with significantly more computational capability than existing machines by 2028. It hopes to make the computer available to users via the cloud by 2029.

  • The New Stack ☛ IBM Cracks Code for Building Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computers

    There’s a lot to unpack here, but it’s worth taking a step back first. A year ago, in a Nature paper, Gambetta and his co-authors described a new error correction algorithm (the Low-Density Parity Check) that brought down the amount of physical qubits it would take to build a working quantum computer with 12 logical qubits from almost 3,000 to 288, all while having an error rate of 0.1%.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Hiltzik: Trump's attack on NASA would last for decades

    But the agency may never have had to confront a challenge like the one it faces now: a Trump administration budget plan that would cut funding for NASA’s science programs by nearly 50% and its overall spending by about 24%. Advertisement

    This is us metaphorically closing our eyes.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ A 1,000 Year-Old Gold Bracelet Fragment Found on a British Isle Dates Back to When Vikings Ruled the Land

    Located between England and Ireland, the Isle of Man is now a self-governing crown dependency of the United Kingdom, but back in 798, it was settled by Vikings, the seafaring Scandinavian warriors who colonized coastal Europe between the ninth and 11th centuries. The island’s position in the center of the British Isles made it an ideal port from which the Vikings could launch naval attacks and trading ships, according to a Manx National Heritage report. They also appreciated its rich farmland.

• Career/Education

  • Chronicle Of Higher Education ☛ Colleges Can't Trust the Federal Government. What Now?

    Dihydroxyacetone Man has turned financial support into an existential risk.

  • University of Michigan ☛ UMich terminates plainclothes security contracts on campus

    In a public statement released via email Sunday night, interim University of Michigan President Domenico Grasso stated the University will be terminating external contracts for plainclothes security, or officers who do not wear uniforms, on campus.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Ending honors classes punishes student success

    In contrast, surrounding talented students with other top performers enhances academic achievement and boosts motivation. These students often learn at a faster pace and can forgo up to 40%-50% of standard classroom material without sacrificing understanding. But in detracked classrooms, they are forced to repeat concepts they already mastered. This is particularly troubling for the youngest students. Instead of being challenged, they are left to misinterpret their intelligence as a personal shortcoming rather than a systemic failure to meet their needs.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ Climate change heightens risk of Indian farmer suicides

    Farmer suicides have a long history in India, where many are one crop failure away from disaster.

  • NYPost ☛ Looks like it’s up to Hochul to kill the monstrous ‘assisted suicide’ bill

    New York is on track to become the 12th state to legalize "assisted suicide" — and with the most radical law yet.

  • RFK Jr. guts ACIP to pack it with antivaxxers

    I realize that nearly two weeks ago I said I’d try to get back into regular blogging and that I’ve thus far failed. I suppose I should thank Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the constant stream of horrors that he’s inflicting on public health in his new role as Secretary of Health and Human Services. No, I’m not going to thank him, but he did just do something yesterday that roused me from all the distractions that had been keeping me from delivering the regular doses of Insolence, both Respectful and not-so-Respectful, lo these past few months. What did he do? Yesterday, he fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). I will admit that I had been long predicting that RFK Jr. would tamper with ACIP somehow, perhaps appointing antivaxxers as the terms of current members ended. Clearly, I suffered a failure of crank imagination, as I had only briefly considered, only to quickly reject, the possibility that RFK Jr. might fire everybody at once. As I said at the time, I don’t think RFK Jr. would eliminate ACIP, even though he could. I was (probably) correct about that. I was also correct in predicting that RFK Jr. might try to subvert ACIP and bend it to his own antivax ends, but, again, mea culpa. I underestimated his audacity. You’d think I’d know better by now, having written about his antivax quackery, misinformation, and conspiracy theories for nearly 20 years now.

  • Harvard University ☛ Youth gun deaths rise in states that relaxed laws

    They found in states with the most permissive laws evidence of 6,029 more child deaths due to firearms than would have been expected based on the existing demographic trends — and more than 1,400 excess deaths in states with permissive firearm laws. Rates remained unchanged or decreased in states with stricter laws. The results are published in JAMA Pediatrics.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Investors Are Pressing UnitedHealth Group to Deny More Care

    UnitedHealth Group’s investors have profited from its sky-high coverage denial rates. Now, as the company faces mounting public pressure to approve more patient care, they are suing to stop the insurer from changing its “corporate practices.”

  • Wired ☛ What Tear Gas and Rubber Bullets Do to the Human Body

    “They're not less lethal if they're used lethally,” says Haar, who is also an adjunct professor of epidemiology at UC Berkeley. “There are many, many instances of them causing death, and there's also a lot of trauma that can be caused, even if they don't penetrate the skin.” The biggest concern comes if these projectiles hit the neck or face, especially the eyes. There have been cases of rubber bullets causing blindness, traumatic brain injury, and disfigurement, and less seriously, broken bones in other areas of the body.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Advice In Teen TikTok Beauty Videos Can Lead To Skin Damage

    “That high risk of irritation came from both using multiple active ingredients at the same time, such as hydroxy acids, as well as applying the same active ingredient unknowingly over and over again when that active ingredient was found in three, four, five different products,” lead investigator Dr. Molly Hales said in a news release. She's a postdoctoral research fellow in dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Will HIPAA protections continue for abortion care? Courts to soon decide.

    A decision is imminent in three of the four cases that will determine whether individual health information for legal reproductive care remains protected by a 2024 federal rule under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), including a case in Texas before the same judge who tried to revoke government approval of an abortion drug.

• Proprietary

  • Macworld ☛ If you still use Time Capsule to back up your Mac, the clock is ticking on support

    While macOS 26 Tahoe is still months away from landing on our Macs, Apple is already gearing up for major changes in the next major version of macOS. After revealing that Tahoe will be the last version to support Intel Macs, Apple is also warning users that another long-standing feature will be deprecated in macOS 27.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Cycling Directions Have Expanded Across Canada in Apple Maps

    As of yesterday, Apple’s iOS feature page indicated Canadian cycling directions were only available in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. The list has grown substantially today, adding: [...]

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Everyone says they want opinionated design until they get it

    So a part of this is inevitable, people are going to complain about new designs no matter what because the most powerful feature of software design is familiarity. That's not to say new designs are free from criticism, of course, they should absolutely be critiqued and Apple should take this feedback to heart and polish things up before the public launch this fall. So by all means, point out the things that are weird and wrong now because Apple is paying attention to The Discourse and this is the best chance they get to tweak things.

  • Gregory Hammond ☛ Never to connect phone numbers: A project

    When I first had the idea for this blog post, I thought only North America had a set of “never to connect” phone numbers. Of course, that’s probably my Canadian and North American-centric point of view. However, I was wrong, and I want to highlight two other English-speaking countries that have some numbers usable for entertainment purposes.

  • Macworld ☛ How long do MacBooks and Macs last?

    This means that Apple currently provides support for these versions of macOS: macOS Sequoia, macOS Sonoma (macOS 14), and macOS Ventura (macOS 13). Prior to the arrival of Sequoia in September 2024, Monterey (macOS 12) was also supported, but now Monterey has fallen off that list and with it Macs from before 2017, and in some cases, 2018.

    Later in 2025 Apple will introduce the next version of macOS: macOS 26 Tahoe. At that point it is likely to drop support for macOS Ventura and with it the MacBooks and MacBook Pro from 2017.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Wired ☛ Apple Is Pushing AI Into More of Its Products—but Still Lacks a State-of-the-Art Model

      Even if Apple still lags behind in terms of building advanced AI, the company is publishing AI research at a steady clip. A paper posted a few days before WWDC points to significant shortcomings with today’s most advanced AI models—a convenient finding, perhaps, if you are still getting up to speed.

    • Sean Goedecke ☛ The first big AI disaster is yet to happen

      However, it’s unclear to me how strongly you might attribute these two types of disaster to the AI language model. Language models are not strong enough persuaders to turn anybody into a mass shooter. If a government is making bad policy based on AI, isn’t that ultimately the government’s fault? I think it’s more likely that the first widely-recognized AI language model disaster comes from agents.

    • Robin Sloan ☛ What's the smallest possible LLM?

      I enjoyed lis­tening to a recent talk by Scott Aaronson with the irre­sistible title How Much Math Is Knowable?, and it got me thinking about the space-time tradeoff in com­puter pro­gramming.

    • Armin Ronacher ☛ GenAI Criticism and Moral Quandaries

      Glyph makes the point that LLMs reduce code review to a non enjoyable part. For me code review is a fact of life and part of the job. That's just what we do as programmers. I don't do it because I want the person that wrote the code to grow and become a better programmer, I do it because I want code to be merged. That does not mean I do not care about the career opportunities or skills of the other person, I do! But that's an effort all on its own. Sometimes it takes place in a code review, most of the time however that's happening in a one-on-one setting. The reality is that we're often not in the mindset of wanting personal growth when receiving review comments either.

    • Futurism ☛ YouTube Playlists Are Advertising "No AI" as Entire Site Gets Choked by AI Slop

      It's gotten so bad that playlists curators are now labelling their videos "No AI" — though there's no stopping them from simply lying, of course. Whatever your taste, if you're looking for something ambient, the odds that the algorithm will now recommend you AI-generated music are alarmingly high.

    • Rlang ☛ Slop 'coding' with Hey Hi (AI) agents is not for scientists

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Michael Geist ☛ The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 235: Teresa Scassa on the Alberta Clearview Hey Hi (AI) Ruling That Could Have a Big Impact on Privacy and Generative AI

      The privacy concerns with Clearview Hey Hi (AI) sparked investigations and court cases around the world. The issues date back many years, but recently an Alberta court weighed in on the application of provincial privacy law in a decision that has big implications not only for that company but for the intersection between privacy and generative AI.

    • The Strategist ☛ How digital identities challenge traditional espionage

      It used to be so simple. An intelligence officer could fly to a country, change passports and, with a false identity, emerge as a completely different person. But those days are long since over. Biometrics and facial recognition technologies can easily detect people travelling on false identities. Even if you can travel on false documents, a simple Google search uncovers your lack of an online profile and digital legend.

    • Wired ☛ Airlines Don’t Want You to Know They Sold Your Flight Data to DHS

      A data broker owned by the country’s major airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and United, collected US travelers’ domestic flight records, sold access to them to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and then as part of the contract told CBP to not reveal where the data came from, according to internal CBP documents obtained by 404 Media. The data includes passenger names, their full flight itineraries, and financial details.

    • PC World ☛ Microsoft Edge taps local AI to supercharge your search history

      Microsoft’s notes on the current release beta for Edge, as noticed by The Verge, indicate that the company is using what it calls an “AI-powered History search.” If you turn this feature on, you’ll be able to search your history of sites stored in Edge without ensuring that your search query is typed just so: Edge will accommodate “synonyms, phrases, or typos,” Microsoft says.

    • Brian Merchant ☛ The weaponization of Waymo

      As a result, there’s been some speculation that the cars were burned to destroy evidence. There’s likely more to it than that—and that the cars weren’t torched to destroy evidence as much to punish collaborators.

      It’s true, after all, that Waymos are roving surveillance machines. 404 Media has reported that the LAPD, as well as other police departments across the country, have obtained surveillance footage from Waymo vehicles and used it as evidence. Google, for its part, confirmed that it hands over this data upon request, usually, it says, through court order, warrant, or subpoena.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Doctors against data abuse — BMA and RCGP protest NHS AI data handover

      And, of course, there’s not really such a thing as anonymised data. It’s notoriously easy to de-anonymise a data set. NHS England is mostly using “anonymised” as an excuse to get around data protection issues.

    • Michigan Advance ☛ University of Michigan denounced for using private investigators to surveil student protesters • Michigan Advance

      Walker is among the five U of M students who were interviewed in the report. They declared that they were trailed, eavesdropped on, recorded, and verbally harassed by what they considered intimidation tactics from the university. They said they recognized dozens of investigators, often working in teams, who were behind their steps around campus and Ann Arbor, sometimes sitting at nearby tables at cafes and bars.

    • Michał Woźniak ☛ Telegram is indistinguishable from an FSB honeypot

      Many people who focus on information security, including myself, have long considered Telegram suspicious and untrustworthy. Now, based on findings published by the investigative journalism outlet IStories (original in Russian; English version by OCCRP available here), and my own analysis of packet captures from Telegram for Android and of Telegram’s protocol described below, I consider Telegram to be a indistinguishable from a surveillance honeypot.

    • Rest of World ☛ Talabat, Botim, and Careem expand beyond food and rides - Rest of World

      The race for super-apps is intensifying in the Middle East.

      Unlike Western markets, where Google, Apple, and Meta maintain separate app ecosystems with strict integration limits, in countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, tech giants are following in the footsteps of China’s WeChat.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Eateries, entertainment premises could lose licence over conduct ‘contrary’ to national security

    Hong Kong authorities have warned restaurants, entertainment premises, and other businesses that they could lose their licences if they engage in acts deemed “contrary” to national security.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Micron balks at court order to share 73 pages of sensitive data with China's banned YMTC chipmaker — Micron strives to protect IP from Chinese chip firm on the entity list

    Micron has petitioned the Supreme Court to reverse earlier rulings that granted YMTC’s legal team access to 73 pages of confidential 3D NAND documents, citing national security concerns.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Contributor: Why I'm going to a 'No Kings' rally against Trump, and you should too

    What is happening in Los Angeles with the National Guard is not simply President Trump’s brainstorm to move past the Musk scandal. It is the next step in his tryouts for autocracy.

  • The Register UK ☛ Judge: OPM likely broke privacy law with DOGE [sic] access

    The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which oversees HR policies and personnel systems for civilian federal employees, granted DOGE [sic] affiliates access to sensitive databases, according to a lawsuit filed in February by government employee unions. The plaintiffs alleged that OPM leadership violated the Privacy Act by disclosing employee records, including Social Security numbers, health information, banking data, and family details, to individuals with no legal right to access them, and failed to implement proper data safeguards as required by federal law.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ The Pentagon is gutting the team that tests AI and weapons systems

    It is a significant overhaul of a department that in 40 years has never before been placed so squarely on the chopping block. Here’s how today’s defense tech companies, which have fostered close connections to the Trump administration, stand to gain, and why safety testing might suffer as a result.

  • Wired ☛ A Google Shareholder Is Suing the Company Over the TikTok Ban

    Tan is now stepping up his fight against what he sees as a worrying and potentially costly trend away from respecting the American legal system. On Tuesday, he filed a shareholder lawsuit in Delaware state court against Google’s parent organization Alphabet. Tan alleges the company wrongfully denied a request he made for internal documents about Google’s decision to risk billions of dollars in fines by not complying with the TikTok ban.

    “The biggest thing that motivates me here is I’ve been frustrated by the volume of recent attacks on our legal system,” says Tan, who is in his late twenties and owns a small number of Alphabet shares directly and through investment funds. “If Google is outright breaking the law, and they don’t have to acknowledge it, they very much are above the law, and that doesn’t seem right to me.”

  • The Local DK ☛ Why Denmark wants to cut use of Microsoft products at key ministry

    Stage confirmed the strategy in an interview with newspaper Politiken in which she confirmed that Microsoft products are to be phased out at the Ministry of Digitisation.

  • YLE ☛ HS: Dozens of Finns Party candidates sign supporter cards for openly-fascist Blue-Black Movement

    The openly fascist Blue-and-Black Movement has significant support among politically-active members of the Finns Party, according to a report by Helsingin Sanomat.

  • SBS ☛ Sydney Islamic preacher's sermons were antisemitic, court told

    The case in the Federal Court was brought by the nation's peak Jewish body — the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) — and centres on a series of allegedly inflammatory speeches made by preacher Wissam Haddad in the wake of Hamas' October 7 2023 attack on Israel.

  • Techdirt ☛ California Sues Trump Over Unprecedented Federal Seizure Of State National Guard

    The constitutional implications here are important. Trump bypassed California Governor Gavin Newsom entirely, ordering Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to directly command 2,000—then another 2,000—California National Guard members under 10 USC 12406, a statute that explicitly requires such orders to go “through the governors of the States.”

    This isn’t just another Trump tantrum. It’s a fundamental violation of the constitutional balance between federal and state authority that the Founders specifically designed to prevent military rule. In the last few months we’ve seen so many attacks on the basic Constitutional underpinnings of America that it’s easy to brush this off as just another one. But this attack on the American way is the most serious one yet.

  • Techdirt ☛ Trump Administration Sends Marines To Site Of Anti-ICE Protests

    Now another 700 Marines are being added to this bed-less, toilet-less mess. And it’s all being done with the same attention of detail we’ve grown accustomed to seeing from this administration: do whatever you want and when it all falls apart, start looking for scapegoats.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Russia’s Wagner to leave Mali

    Wagner, used by the Kremlin to expand its influence in several countries, offers “regime survival” packages across the region in exchange for mining concessions that experts say exploit some of the world’s poorest nations.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ We Finally Know What “American Carnage” Was About

    Until ICE moved in Los Angeles was, in fact, remarkably peaceful. Like other major American cities, LA experienced a significant but not huge crime wave in the aftermath of Covid but has since seen that wave more than completely recede: [...]

  • The Wrap ☛ Gavin Newsom Demands Trump Remove National Guard From LA Immigration Protests: 'Breach of State Sovereignty'

    “We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” the governor writes, adding: “This is a serious breach of state sovereignty”

  • Garry Kasparov ☛ I Resisted Putin in Russia. Here’s the Right Way to Protest.

    When it comes to political protest, that same logic applies: You can have a thousand nonviolent protesters, but if one car is set on fire, it’s not a protest, it’s a riot. And, if we are being honest, the number of cars burned in California is a little more than one at this point. With each car that goes up in flames, MAGA gets another free midterm campaign ad.

    Call it unfair. It’s the cold, hard political reality.

    I know this because I spent years leading protests against the most bad faith actor of them all: Vladimir Putin. The KGB veteran dictator would leap at any opportunity to frame our movement for free and fair elections as a terrorist threat. As a matter of principle and practicality, my fellow activists and I never resorted to violence. In the face of egregious regime abuses, we had to remain extremely disciplined. We knew that the Russian police were not there to maintain public order, but to incite disorder. We knew that Putin’s kangaroo courts would never give us a fair hearing. We knew that a pliant media ecosystem would not offer us a platform to share our grievances with the public.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ States sue to block Trump administration plan to distribute machine-gun conversion devices

    “These devices enable firearms to fire up to 900 bullets per minute. The increased rate of fire allows carnage and chaos to reign on the streets,” said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown in a virtual press briefing Monday with fellow Democrats, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings.

    “Everyone nearby becomes vulnerable to serious injury or death. These are battlefield weapons that have no place in our communities,” Brown said.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Silence of the Generals

    The president also encouraged a violation of regulations. Trump, himself a convicted felon, doesn’t care about rules and laws, but active-duty military members are not allowed to attend political rallies in uniform. They are not allowed to express partisan views while on duty, or to show disrespect for American elected officials. Trump may not know these rules and regulations, but the officers who lead these men and women know them well. It is part of their oath, their credo, and their identity as officers to remain apart from such displays. Young soldiers will make mistakes. But if senior officers remain silent, what lesson will those young men and women take from what happened today?

    The president cares nothing for the military, for its history, or for the men and women who serve the United States. They are, like everything else around him, only raw material: They either feed his narcissism, or they are useless. Those who love him, he claims as “his” military. But those who have laid down their life for their country are, as he so repugnantly put it, just suckers and losers, anonymous saps lying under cold headstones in places such as Arlington National Cemetery that clearly make Trump uncomfortable. Today, he showed that he has no compunction about turning every American soldier into a hooting partisan.

  • USMC ☛ Lawmakers condemn Trump’s use of Guard, active-duty troops in LA

    “Such unilateral action, taken without consultation with local leaders, risks escalating tensions rather than calming them,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Sunday night. “This move sets a troubling precedent for military intervention in local law enforcement.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ Russian overnight drone strike on Ukraine’s Kharkiv kills three, injures 60 — Meduza

    • Michał Woźniak ☛ Telegram is indistinguishable from an FSB honeypot

      Many people who focus on information security, including myself, have long considered Telegram suspicious and untrustworthy. Now, based on findings published by the investigative journalism outlet IStories (original in Russian; English version by OCCRP available here), and my own analysis of packet captures from Telegram for Android and of Telegram’s protocol described below, I consider Telegram to be a indistinguishable from a surveillance honeypot.

    • Meduza ☛ Telegram denies allegations that contractors handling its servers have ties to Russian intelligence — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Possessed maniacs with their Shaheds’: Zelensky condemns Russian attack damaging historic Kyiv cathedral — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Sorry, society doesn’t develop like this’ Stéphane Bauer, the director of Kunstraum Kreuzberg hosting Meduza’s ‘No’ exhibition, explains how he avoids becoming trapped in an art bubble — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Secret patients’ Belarusian hospitals have quietly treated Russian soldiers wounded in Ukraine — including a commander linked to Bucha killings — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Meduza joins other independent outlets and Anti-Corruption Foundation to host third annual fundraiser for Russian political prisoners — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Kyiv confirms authenticity of photo showing Ukrainian POW with ‘Glory to Russia’ carved into stomach — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Israeli Interior Ministry says country did not send Patriot missile systems to Ukraine, contradicting ambassador’s earlier statement — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ One dead after Ukrainian drone strikes gas station in Russia’s Belgorod — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ U.S. charges founder of crypto company Evita with laundering $500 million for Russian clients — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian drone strike on Ukraine’s Odesa kills two, damages maternity hospital — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Russian regions begin fining residents for posting drone strike footage — Meduza

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • DeSmog ☛ Tories Ditched Net Zero Commitment While Receiving £250,000 from Oil Investors and Climate Deniers

    New records released today reveal that Kemi Badenoch’s party accepted £50,000 in January from Neil Record, the chair of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – the UK’s foremost climate science denial group.

  • Breach Media ☛ National Post quietly rewrote wire stories to push pro-Israel narrative, analysis finds

    The study looked at the frequency of specific terms and phrases in the National Post versions of CP articles to better understand the content, scale, and scope of these edits. The terms analyzed were selected by T4P and CJPME based on existing observations of how the newspaper’s articles differ from other establishment media in their use of charged language when reporting on Palestine and Israel.

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Security Week ☛ US Seeks Forfeiture of $7.74M in Cryptocurrency Tied to North Korean IT Workers [Ed: Fake currencies are not hard to vanish]

      The US is seeking the forfeiture of $7.74 million in cryptocurrency in frozen wallets tied to North Korean fake IT workers schemes.

    • FAIR ☛ ‘The Families Wanted Boeing to Face Real Accountability’: CounterSpin interview with Katya Schwenk on Boeing deal

      Janine Jackson interviewed independent journalist Katya Schwenk about Boeing’s non-prosecution deal for the June 6, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

    • Wired ☛ A Political Battle Is Brewing Over Data Centers

      The rapid growth in the number of data centers across the US has seen a corresponding rise in local pushback against them. While the projects bring in tax dollars, they often use massive amounts of electricity and water. A recent BloombergNEF analysis found that AI’s electricity demand in the US is expected to triple by 2035, while in Virginia data centers currently use as much electricity as 60 percent of the households in the state.

    • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Are Solar Panels Really Worth It?

      With the Belgian government changing the way solar panels are (not) financed again, I wondered whether they’re still a worthy investment. Not only an investment but also a way to help reduce the CO2 pollution. Most consumers no doubt will approach solar panels from a financial perspective. That way, it becomes a bit more straightforward to answer the question—but that answer is very likely to change after you’ve made the investment!

      Let’s try to approach things from a couple of different directions.

    • Scientific American ☛ Why the Waymo Car Fires in Recent Los Angeles Protests Caused the Robotaxis to Burn So Completely

      During recent protests in Los Angeles, fires triggered “thermal runaway” in several Waymo robotaxis’ lithium-ion battery packs. The phenomenon sent temperatures past 1,000 degrees Celsius, vaporized much of the cars and spewed lung-searing hydrogen fluoride

    • The Nation ☛ ­­The Wild Lives of Cargo Ships

      Kumekawa begins with the ship’s prehistory: the decisions and commissions that led to its being built. But the Vessel’s first long voyage was to the South Atlantic, where it was sent to aid in England’s recapture of the Falkland Islands in 1982. A battleship the Vessel was not: Without an engine of its own, it had to be hauled there on top of another, bigger boat (the humiliation!). Once arrived, it served as a “floatel” for soldiers deployed in the aftermath of Margaret Thatcher’s counteroffensive. Such was its storied role in this peculiar conflagration that it made it onto a commemorative postage stamp issued in 1987.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Local DK ☛ Denmark’s total population exceeds six million

      “The birth rate in Denmark has been falling during a period in which immigration has increased. That means immigration has had an increased effect on the population growth compared to before,” he said.

• Finance

  • Digital Music News ☛ New York State Ticketing Resale Restrictions Suddenly Stalled—One Manager Fumes: ‘They Protected Profiteers Exploiting the System’

    State legislation that would put resale restrictions on New York ticket resellers has been stalled until next year. In the meantime, an extension of existing ticketing laws has been introduced. Bills that would place new restrictions on New York State ticket resellers have been postponed until next year at the earliest.

  • FSF ☛ IRS tax filing software released to the people as free software

    There clearly is a ways to go in establishing a user-friendly way for governments to share their code. GitHub is still owned and controlled by a major proprietary software company, but when enough of us tell our government officials and representatives that we need to have our user freedoms respected, they listen. We shouldn't have to ask our leaders to respect our rights, but we don't have a choice. We must continue using our voices to protect user freedom now and long into the future. Thank you for speaking up for free software.

  • The New Stack ☛ What Does AI Cost? No One Knows. [Ed: It's not even AI, it's just slop with false label, "hey hi"]

    At FinOpsX last week in San Diego, the reality of AI opens a new maze that is infinitely more complex than managing traditional cloud costs and the value it brings.

  • HT Digital Streams Ltd ☛ Google offers buyout: Why is the tech giant paying employees to leave? [Ed: The corrupt, lousy, sloppy media now participates in GAFAM's effort to paint layoffs as something they clearly are not, in this case "buyout"]

    Google on Tuesday is trimming its workforce by offering buyouts to employees across several divisions. The layoffs target teams across the company’s knowledge and information (K&I) unit, central engineering units as well as marketing, research and communications teams, reported CNBC.

    The “voluntary exit program” applies to the US-based employees. Some teams are also making it mandatory for remote employees who live within 50 miles of the company to come back to the office, according to the report. They will be expected to assume a hybrid work schedule “in order to bring folks more together in-person,” said the company.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • France24 ☛ Italian referendums on citizenship, labour laws fail due to low turnout

    Italian referendum proposals to ease citizenship laws and increase worker protections failed on Monday due to low voter turnout. The outcome was a win for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her far-right allies, who strongly opposed the proposals.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Mexico’s first-ever judicial elections draw international scrutiny over low turnout, process flaws

    After observing Mexico's electoral process from May 24 to June 1, a mission of the Organization of American States gave several recommendations for future judicial elections, the next one being in 2027.

  • JURIST ☛ Human Rights Watch rebukes use of Pakistan blasphemy laws to expropriate land, persecute religious minorities

    Human Rights Watch (HRW) Sunday warned that Pakistan’s “blasphemy laws” are being invoked in a discriminatory manner toward non-Muslim minorities, resulting in entire communities being forced from their homes. In its 29-page report, HRW claimed that individuals and communities affiliated with religious minorities are denied equality before the law.

  • EFF ☛ Oppose STOP CSAM: Protecting Kids Shouldn’t Mean Breaking the Tools That Keep Us Safe

    A Senate bill re-introduced this week threatens security and free speech on the [Internet]. EFF urges Congress to reject the STOP CSAM Act of 2025 (S. 1829), which would undermine services offering end-to-end encryption and force [Internet] companies to take down lawful user content.

  • The Register UK ☛ Cisco president says coding syntax wastes expensive synapses

    Notably, Patel never hinted Cisco has given any consideration to job cuts in its engineering corps, although the switch slinger did make two rounds of cuts last year, shedding five percent of workers in February and then announcing another seven percent cut in August. The second round of cuts came as part of a plan to restructure the company to improve its AI capabilities.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ I read Trump’s new drone orders so you don’t have to – these 5 changes could seriously impact aerial photo and video

    The executive orders themselves are not law but kickstart the process that could result in future changes to legislation, instructing key players to submit proposals and changes within a set amount of days.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • FAIR ☛ When Media Tell Us Who ‘Won’ a Latin American Election, Start to Ask Questions

      Elections in Latin America are often controversial. While many countries in the Global North regularly shuffle between parties offering alternating versions of neoliberalism, voting in Central and South America often offers starker contrasts: An anti-imperialist candidate in the mold of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez might be up against a neoliberal such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. It could hardly be otherwise, in a region with the world’s biggest gap between the richest and poorest.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • New York Times ☛ YouTube Loosens Video Content Moderation Rules

    The world’s largest video platform has told content moderators to favor “freedom of expression” over the risk of harm in deciding what to take down.

  • Techdirt ☛ Columbia’s Capitulation Backfired Spectacularly As Trump Admin Threatens Its Accreditation

    Appeasing bullies never works. Not only does it reveal your willingness to abandon principles, but bullies will never be satisfied — they’ll always demand more.

    Columbia University is learning this lesson the hard way. The school quickly caved to Trump’s demands to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests and discipline faculty. Meanwhile, Harvard stood up and fought back, winning praise, support, and initial legal victories.

    So how is capitulation working out for Columbia? Not well. Not well at all.

  • The Vietnamese Magazine ☛ Freedom of Expression in Việt Nam – Part 5: Lessons from International Legal Frameworks

    While debates over freedom of expression in Việt Nam remain ongoing, many nations have enshrined this right in their foundational legal documents, from East Asia to Europe.

    For instance, Article 11 in Taiwan’s 1947 Constitution affirms: “The people shall have freedom of speech, teaching, writing and publication” (人民有言論、講學、著作及出版之自由).

  • JURIST ☛ Rights group rebukes use of Pakistan blasphemy laws to expropriate land, persecute religious minorities

    In its 29-page report, HRW claimed that individuals and communities affiliated with religious minorities are denied equality before the law. The organization alerted that communities in particular have been exploited for economic motives such as “land grabs.”

    Under sections 295-298 of the Pakistani Penal Code, acts such as derogatory remarks against “holy personages” or defiance of the Qur’an can lead to fines, imprisonment for life, or even capital punishment. HRW said that “although no one has been executed for blasphemy… vigilantes have killed dozens of people in mob violence following blasphemy accusations.” Most of the targeted groups are claimed to be Christians and Ahmadis, who, faced with threats, were forced to flee their homes.

  • NDTV ☛ JD Vance's Deportation Threat To Fashion Critic Who Mocked His Style

    US Vice President JD Vance appeared to advocate for deporting a popular fashion blogger who criticised his dressing style in the past. Derek Guy, the fashion commentator behind the popular X account known as "Menswear Guy", came under Vance's line of fire after he opened up about coming to the United States illegally from Canada as a kid after his father found work in the country.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Malta jails two men for life for role in journalist's murder

    The investigation revealed that the assassination was carried out by three men. Two brothers were convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2022, while another accomplice received a 15-year sentence in 2021 after confessing and providing key information.

  • The Nation ☛ Happy 160th Anniversary to “The Nation”!

    Since 1865, we’ve held fast in our belief in the liberating power of simply telling people the truth.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • The Nation ☛ What I Saw in LA Wasn’t an Insurrection. It Was a Police Riot.

    The idea that cops were just reacting to protester provocation is absurd. Cops occupied intersections in an attempt to split the protest, then occasionally charged the protest lines that surrounded them to force the crowds to temporarily retreat. These assaults seemed unrelated to protester action or lack thereof. At one point, while the cops were unloading round after round of blue-tipped rubber bullets into a crowd hunkered down behind a barricade, a different group of protesters approached from the side and threw a firework into the center of the police line. The cops turned their fire against the group, which ran off, but did not pursue them. Thirty seconds later, the cops were back to shooting at the barricade.

    We have heard a lot about the assault of police officers during these protests. Why haven’t we seen it? Where’s the body cam footage showing protesters injuring cops, striking them, putting them out of commission? I saw a police officer struck by a water bottle thrown by protesters in a barrage launched around 7:30 pm after those protesters spent hours absorbing “less lethal” rounds and being deafened by flash bangs, but that’s about it. Meanwhile, we’ve got drone footage of a mounted officer using his horse to trample a protester, who lies prone on the ground, surrounded by mounted police. We’ve got cops beating protesters with truncheons, cops deploying tear gas, cops bringing box after box of ammunition to the line so they could fire again and again and again into crowds of protesters exercising tremendous restraint throughout the day.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Is a Crackdown on Unions

    The assault on and arrest of California labor leader David Huerta during the brutal immigration crackdown in Los Angeles this weekend is part of a broader attack on unionized workers by Donald Trump’s deportation machine. Unions are mobilizing in response.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ You're a Bunch of Cowards!

    I don’t know about all of that. What I do know is that if you are looking for negative role models for masculine virtue, there is an easy way to find them. They are employed by ICE. They are employed by the Department of Homeland Security. They are employed by the sprawling and unaccountable security state, and right now, they are out on the streets of our cities, snatching up mothers and infiltrating elementary schools. There is much to be said about the political processes that deployed these men, and the chain of socioeconomic failures that placed our nation in the position we find ourselves. But there is another important thing to be said directly to the men who go to work every day and don the tactical vests and facemasks and act like the willing gestapo agents of our idiot political leader: You guys are fucking cowards.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Banging on a Gate: Pam Bondi Found a Cyber Investigator Who Doesn't Check Phone Logs!

    One of the nuttiest parts of this is that the affiant — the guy who cited the threat of doxing as proof of intimidation and then doxed himself — is a senior HSI Agent pulled off his normal duty conducting cyber financial investigations, the kind of thing that normally targets international crypto-facilitated crimes.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Platform work, redux

    The Norwegian oil profits, after all, mostly went into a sovereign wealth fund that has become the largest in the world, from which generations of Norwegians will benefit. Of course, this is no justification for how workers have been treated – neither here nor in the case of digital platform work. But just imagine what it would mean if the profits(*) made by companies that erect platforms onto the public resources that is the [Internet] went into sovereign wealth funds as well! This could happen through taxation or through public ownership of the platforms (depending on where one stands on bigger questions about political economy).

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Zimbabwe ☛ The UK is training 400k civil servants on AI. Should Zimbabwe even bother?

    But let’s be real for a minute.

    Many government offices still rely on pen and paper. Reliable [Internet] is not everywhere. Frequent power cuts are a thing even though we are currently in a decent state.

    So, the question is: AI tools need stable [Internet] and working computers, are we ready for that investment?

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • The Register UK ☛ Apple says macOS 26 will be the last to support Intel chips

    "Apple Silicon enables us all to achieve things that were previously unimaginable," said Matthew Firlik, senior director of developer relations, during the Platforms State of the Union keynote. "And it's time to put all of our focus and innovation there. And so, macOS Tahoe will be the final release for Intel Macs."

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Russ Reveals An Uncleared Sample On ‘Losin’ Control’ Cost Him $850,000 to License

    Rapper Russ reveals that failing to properly clear a sample back in 2015 led to him having to pay nearly $1 million to secure the rights. Singer-songwriter Russ admitted on the “And the Writer Is…” podcast that his 2015 hit “Losin’ Control” featured a sample he didn’t clear until well after the song blew up.

  • EFF ☛ Despite Changes, A.B. 412 Still Harms Small Developers

    The bill’s amendments have made compliance even harder, since it now requires technologists to go beyond copyrighted material and somehow identify “pre-registered” copyrights. The amended bill also has new requirements that demand technologists document and keep track of when they look at works that aren’t copyrighted but are subject to exclusive rights, such as pre-1972 sound recordings—rights that, not coincidentally, are primarily controlled by large entertainment companies.

  • [Repeat] Press Gazette ☛ Getty legal action against AI photo firm is 'day of reckoning', start of trial hears

    Getty claims this infringes copyright and that the works created by Stable Diffusion, which can generate synthetic images in response to commands entered by users, are also in breach of copyright laws.

    Stability AI is opposing the claim, which it told the court was “an overt threat” to its business.