Leftovers

• Dave Gauer ☛ Death to WYSIWYG!

  The idea was that a two-pane editor with raw HTML editing on one side and WYSIWYG editing on the other side would allow easy text entry plus fine-grained control of the document.

  I was hopelessly naive.

• Robert Birming ☛ Finding my genuine English voice

  Today, I decided to try writing in English from scratch. It doesn’t feel natural, and it takes longer, but I want to give it a fair shot.

  Maybe it’ll help calm my recurring blogging overthinking (probably not). But the main reason for this change is that I think my writing will be more “true.” What I mean is that the words will be closer to how they’d sound if I spoke them aloud.

• Science

  • FAIR ☛ I Believe in Science—But Not Necessarily Science Journalism

    I like to read science stories, even (maybe especially) when they’re not politically earthshaking. But sometimes what’s on the label is not what’s in the tin.

  • Probably Dance ☛ Revisiting Knuth’s “Premature Optimization” Paper

    People always use this quote wrong, and to get a feeling for that we just have to look at the original paper, and the context in which it was written. The paper isn’t actually about optimization. It’s about when we have to use goto statements because structured programming couldn’t express certain things at the time. Or at least it couldn’t do so efficiently, requiring extra checks, and that’s why Knuth has to talk about performance: The topic he is addressing is “Can we get rid of goto statements without sacrificing performance?”

  • Scoop News Group ☛ NSF seeks input on focus areas for its Technology, Innovation and Partnerships directorate

    According to a request for information set to be officially published Friday, NSF is looking for input that will inform its assessment of the 10 current focus areas for its Technology, Innovation and Partnerships directorate, or TIP directorate.

    Those areas were outlined by Congress when it first authorized the new arm in the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, and under that legislation, the list must be reviewed annually.

  • Rlang ☛ Kendallknight: An R package for efficient implementation of Kendall’s correlation coefficient computation

    The kendallknight package introduces an efficient implementation of Kendall’s correlation coefficient computation, significantly improving the processing time for large datasets without sacrificing accuracy. The kendallknight package, following Knight (1966) and posterior literature, reduces the time complexity resulting in drastic reductions in computation time, transforming operations that would take minutes or hours into milliseconds or minutes, while maintaining precision and correctly handling edge cases and errors. The package is particularly advantageous in econometric and statistical contexts where rapid and accurate calculation of Kendall’s correlation coefficient is desirable. Benchmarks demonstrate substantial performance gains over the Base R implementation, especially for large datasets.

• Career/Education

  • Ness Labs ☛ Why learning how to learn is the skill behind all skills

    Traditional education teaches us what to think, not how to think. We memorize facts for tests, then forget them. We follow instructions instead of designing our own learning paths. Nobody teaches us the most important skill of all: learning how to learn.

    This gap matters because skills become obsolete faster than ever. The technology you learned last year might already be outdated. The strategy that worked yesterday might fail tomorrow. What remains constant is your ability to experiment, reflect, and iterate.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Bad Times for College Graduates

    But not now. As I suggested, the current unemployment rate for young college graduates isn’t the highest we’ve ever seen. But previous peaks have come at times of general economic distress, like the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Now we have low overall unemployment, only slightly above historic lows, but unemployment among college graduates between 22 and 27 at recession-like levels.

    This has never happened before. Derek Thompson at The Atlantic plots the differential between recent-grad and overall unemployment over time: [...]

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Reflections on Shared Infrastructure and Distinctive Collections

    I’ve had the great privilege to help develop and lead Ithaka S+R for more than 20 years, including research and advisory projects supporting the work of libraries, publishers, and the research enterprise. It’s a moment of professional transition for me, as I assume responsibility for JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services and entrust Ithaka S+R to my colleagues. Through JSTOR Stewardship, we will help libraries, archives, and museums steward the distinctive collections that are essential for grounding academic work and public discourse about our history and society. My perspective has been shaped in many ways by my work over these past two decades, and here I want to reflect on some of what I’ve learned.

• Hardware

  • GamingOnLinux ☛ AMD tease new gaming chips that combine "Ryzen and Radeon for consoles, handhelds" and more

    AMD have begun teasing some next-gen chips, following on from the announcements of the ROG Xbox Ally, and Microsoft talking about next-gen console plans.

  • Tedium ☛ This Retro YouTuber Wants To Take Over Commodore. Yes, He’s Serious

    Today in Tedium: The difference between being a fan that simply likes something and one that wants to keep that thing alive is a massive gulf. It’s the difference between going into a store and buying a finished product, and having to figure out a business model for it and deal with customer support headaches. If that company sells products, you’re suddenly in the manufacturing business, and that can prove immensely frustrating. And then you have to make clear that your motives are legit, that you can keep running the thing. That’s a lot to take on. But recently, Christian “Peri Fractic” Simpson, a retro-tech YouTuber, decided to do just that, revealing that he and some business partners were interested in taking over the Commodore brand. I was curious—so I reached out. Via fax. And once we connected via 21st century technology, I found a highly passionate guy who decided to follow through on a dream. Today’s Tedium discusses the prospect of a Commodore megafan running a legendary computer brand. — Ernie @ Tedium

  • The Register UK ☛ Fugaku successor in the works as Fujitsu wins HPC contract

    MONAKA is set to be fabricated using a 2nm production process, and will feature up to 144 ArmV9 cores with support for SVE2 vector extensions. It will employ a chiplet architecture with SRAM tiles stacked atop the processor tiles.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia records first Covid-19 death of 2025

    The individual had serious comorbidities, and the person did not take the second booster vaccine shot.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Rights abuses continue in North Korea a decade after probe, says UN investigator

    A UN official says the abuses are exacerbated by Covid-era controls that have yet to be lifted.

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Scanned the Brains of Hardcore Gooners and Found Something Ominous

    These results aren't entirely surprising. A 2021 study found that problematic porn watchers suffer deficits in everything from working memory and decision-making to inhibition control and attention span; a 2014 paper found reductions in gray matter volume associated with consuming adult content.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Opinion | Don’t let TikTok be your child’s only sex ed teacher

    This story is not unique. Because our laws governing sex education are so inadequate as to be non-existent, students are turning to social media or forming self-taught sex ed cooperatives to learn this information. Sixty-seven percent of 11-15-year olds in the US use TikTok. While some TikTok content is made by health professionals, the majority of videos, which receive billions of views, are by non-professionals and contain information that may or may not be true. How can we leave our children to fend for themselves, rather than provide them with the information and skills to navigate relationships and their own sexual development?

  • NPR ☛ Screen addiction and suicidal behaviors are linked for teens, a study shows

    The study, published in JAMA on Wednesday, looked at data on more than 4,000 kids from an ongoing longitudinal study following them for years, starting at ages 9 to 10. It found that by age 14, about a third of the kids had become increasingly addicted to social media, about a quarter had become increasingly addicted to their mobile phone and more than 40% showed signs of addiction to video games.

• Proprietary

  • Net Media Europe ☛ Microsoft To Axe Thousands Of Sales Staff – Report

    More job losses for Microsoft, after report tech giant is planning to cut thousands of jobs, particularly in sales

    Microsoft is reportedly preparing to cut thousands of more jobs, in another worrying development for its global workforce.

    Bloomberg reported that the job losses, aimed mostly at sales teams (but possibly also other departments), could be announced in early July after Redmond’s Q4 and fiscal year end ends on 30 June.

    Last month in May 2025, Microsoft had already confirmed it was laying off 3 percent of its workforce across all levels, teams and regions (some 6,000 staff) – the firm’s biggest round of layoffs since 2023, when it slashed more than 10,000 staff amongst a broader wave of post-pandemic adjustments in the tech industry.

  • International Business Times ☛ Microsoft Reportedly Eyes Sales Staff for Next Round of Cuts After May's 6,000 Layoffs

    After slashing 6,000 jobs in May 2025, Microsoft's workforce is bracing for another shake-up as the tech giant is reportedly planning more layoffs in thousands.

    This restructuring is being done to streamline operations so as to stay competitive in a fast-evolving market with the company pouring billions into artificial intelligence (AI).

  • Dolphin Publications B V ☛ Microsoft plans to lay off thousands of sales employees

    Microsoft plans to cut thousands of jobs, mainly within its sales teams. The company wants to shift its focus to AI investments. It is not alone in this: competitor AWS also plans to lay off staff and replace them with AI.

    Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Tuesday that the AI rollout will lead to a reduction in the company’s workforce in the coming years. According to Bloomberg sources, Microsoft is also working on a similar initiative, which will see thousands of jobs in the sales department disappear.

    The upcoming layoffs follow earlier cutbacks by Microsoft in May, when approximately 6,000 employees lost their jobs. The company is increasing its investments in AI in order to strengthen its position. Now that it is increasingly distancing itself from OpenAI, the former supplier of the AI technology that made Copilot possible, this may well be necessary.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft 365 brings the shutters down on legacy protocols

    Finally, third-party apps will need administrator consent to access files and sites. Microsoft said: "Users allowing third-party apps to access file and site content can lead to overexposure of an organization's content. Requiring admins to consent to this access can help reduce overexposure."

  • Louie Mantia ☛ Rose-Gold-Tinted Liquid Glasses

    The general adoption of this may test the patience of an already weary community of developers who feel tired of toiling away on trivial changes such as this. As I said, I don’t think there is any meaningful benefit to it, and designers and developers may themselves feel that as they implement it.

    Larger companies may take a hard look at whether it makes sense to have native apps at all versus just web apps. With so much eroded goodwill and Apple profiting immense amounts from third party developers, larger companies may reasonably question the benefit. I think they’d be right to do so. The web’s capabilities likely cover a lot of use cases that many apps need.

  • Dedoimedo ☛ Windows 11 fresh install results

    I have no intention of using Windows 11. It's a pointless operating system. But I test it occasionally, just to see what the state of the estate is, so to speak. I recently did a fairly extensive test on my dual-boot IdeaPad laptop, which included a version 24H2 upgrade, with all its associated problems. Long story short, it would seem my Administrator account on said box is borked beyond repair, and I will need to do a reset or a fresh install.

    Before attempting that, I wanted to check how Windows 11 behaves if configured afresh, no old stuff. On the test laptop, I had gone from Windows 10 to 11, and done a great deal of tweaks and customization. So, for the sake of fairness, let's do a new, blank-slate experiment. Follow me.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Companies That Replaced Humans With AI Are Realizing Their Mistake

      "The human touch remains irreplaceable in many interactions, and organizations must balance technology with human empathy and understanding," said Kathy Ross, Gartner's senior director of customer service and support analysis.

      That's a vibe employees have been feeling for a while now. Another report, this one by IT firm GoTo and research agency Workplace Intelligence, found that 62 percent of employees are currently saying that AI is "significantly overhyped."

    • Futurism ☛ Solar Company Sues Google for Giving Damaging Information in AI Overviews

      A solar firm in Minnesota is suing Google for defamation after the tech giant's shoddy AI Overviews feature allegedly made up wild lies about the company — and significantly hurt its business as a result.

      "This lawsuit is not just about defending our company's reputation; it's about standing up for fairness, truth, and accountability in the age of artificial intelligence," Nicholas Kasprowicz, general counsel for the solar company, Wolf River Electric, said in a statement.

    • Star Tribune ☛ Lawsuit against Google centers on false information in AI Overview

      “Members of the public, including potential employees and customers, have viewed the defamatory publications made by Google and have relied upon these false statements in regurgitating, spreading, and further defaming Wolf River, all because of Google’s false and unsupported statements,” the complaint said.

    • The Atlantic ☛ The Entire Internet Is Reverting to Beta

      A car that accelerates instead of braking every once in a while is not ready for the road. A faucet that occasionally spits out boiling water instead of cold does not belong in your home. Working properly most of the time simply isn’t good enough for technologies that people are heavily reliant upon. And two and a half years after the launch of ChatGPT, generative AI is becoming such a technology.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Salesforce: AI agents don’t work — but we’re charging 6% more for AI anyway

      The agent bots had 58% success on tasks that can be done in one single step. That dropped to 35% success if they had to take multiple steps. The chatbot agents are also bad at confidentiality: [...]

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Google bribes iNaturalist to use generative AI — volunteers quit in outrage

      That is, the volunteers would work for free to improve Google’s bot. This plan didn’t go down so well.

      It turns out people do free work for knowledge because they hold principles and stuff. Many deleted their accounts — which also deletes their observations from iNaturalist — because they didn’t volunteer to feed a lying slop machine that’s an environmental disaster. And they no longer wanted anything to do with a charity so lost it didn’t see why this was not a good idea.

    • Johan Halse ☛ Average

      Remember: this is all being rammed down our throats at the speed of a hundred billion dollars. There are truly jaw-dropping sums being invested, and all that moolah needs to generate more moolah for Big Tech somehow. If recent history has taught us anything, it's that the people at the top aren't quite as sharp as we perhaps thought they were, and they're herd animals at their core. Modern management is all about anxiously eyeing everyone else, making sure you're wearing the correct color Patagonia vest and firing the proper percentage of people every year. Maybe another thousand layoffs will get you invited to a chat with the bros by one of Marc Andreesen's seven fireplaces? So much of the AI hype at the upper echelon of tech seems purely performative at this point. Your stock will suffer if you're not foaming at the mouth about AI, so you just adjust the collar of your $2000 button-down shirt, sigh, and start foaming.

  • Social Control Media

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ WhatsApp founders hated ads - Meta is adding them anyway

      Founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton also hated ads. They’d spent a combined 20 years working at Yahoo bonding over their frustration with a business model that sucked up personal data to show us pop-ups. Building ad systems was “depressing”, Koum said in an interview in mid-2014. But not too depressing to sell their chat service to online ad magnate Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, just a few months later. Eight of WhatsApp’s roughly 50 employees made more than $100-million off that deal, while Koum gained a net worth of $6.8-billion.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ J.D. Vance Becomes the Most Blocked Account on Bluesky

      Vance commented once more in support of Thomas’ opinion, adding a conspiracist flourish in a third post by claiming that “many of those scientists [in favor of gender-affirming care for minors] are receiving substantial resources from big pharma to push these medicines on kids.” Predictably, the vice president received thousands more hostile replies than likes for these provocations, but as of Thursday afternoon, he had 9,000 followers on the platform. His account was also verified by Bluesky after it temporarily suspended Vance on Wednesday due to a false alarm that the page was not authentic. “Vice President Vance’s account was briefly flagged by our automated systems that try to detect impersonation attempts, which have targeted public figures like him in the past,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch of the accidental ban. “The account was quickly restored and verified so people can easily confirm its authenticity.”

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Futurism ☛ Risk Expert Says "Learn to Code" Is Now Worse Advice Than "Get a Face Tattoo"

      Indeed, in its latest labor market report, the New York Federal Reserve found that recent college graduates who majored in computer science or computer engineering have higher rates of unemployment than those who studied journalism, political science, and even English.

    • Federal News Network ☛ Agencies grapple with cyber skills gap in control systems

      Earlier this year, the Air Force introduced a new cybersecurity training specifically focused on how to protect systems such as gas pipelines, power grids and traffic signals. The course is the first to meet the standards for the “control systems security specialist” role under DoD’s cyber workforce framework.

    • Threat Source ☛ When legitimate tools go rogue

      Concerned, Elena logged in from home to investigate. Almost immediately, two more alerts appeared. One signaled that Mimikatz (a tool popular with threat actors to steal credentials) had been used on the same Finance machine. The other reported a PsExec download (a command line tool used to execute processes) on a domain controller.

    • Security Week ☛ Chain IQ, UBS Data Stolen in Ransomware Attack

      The attack on Chain IQ was claimed by the ransomware group Worldleaks, which added the company to its Tor-based leak site on June 11, claiming the theft of roughly 910 GB of data, or more than 1.9 million files.

    • The Record ☛ Alleged Ryuk ransomware gang member arrested in Ukraine and extradited to US

      The group launched over 2,400 ransomware attacks in multiple countries, encrypting victims’ data and demanding cryptocurrency payments in exchange for access, authorities said. It is believed to have used the Ryuk ransomware strain in many of the attacks, which targeted corporations, critical infrastructure and industrial enterprises across the world, typically for financial gain.

    • Bitdefender ☛ Ransomware gang busted in Thailand hotel raid

      What they found was not only a floor housing a sophisticated gambling operation with poker tables, large quantities of cash chips, and some 20 foreign gamblers, but also - on the eighth floor - six Chinese nationals who were distributing links to companies designed to infect them with ransomware.

      Thai police say that the six men apprehended on the hotel's top floor were employees of the gang, specifically paid to try to infect Chinese companies with ransomware. Nine laptops and 15 mobile devices were seized by the authorities from the men.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Scoop News Group ☛ ICE seeks proprietary data and tech to monitor up to a million people 

      ICE outlined a range of data the contractor would work with, including business associations, court records, social media posts on platforms like X and TikTok, the dark web, international travel data, shipping information, geolocation information (including information from license plate readers), crime data, property records, supply chain information, information about cryptocurrency and blockchain, scientific research and development data, and international patent info.

    • The Register UK ☛ US dawdles over 'unconstitutional' tower dump appeal

      The term "tower dump" refers to law enforcement obtaining records from cell towers, specifically related to individuals' locations and connection times, via warrants.

    • Threat Source ☛ A week with a "smart" car

      There’s an EU regulation that requires new cars to come equipped with “Advanced Vehicle Systems,” which include features like driver drowsiness and attention warnings, lane-keeping systems and intelligent speed assistance. I hadn’t swapped cars in over a decade, so I was blissfully unaware of just how intrusive these systems could be.

    • Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Recommended email providers

      All of these providers are more private than the popular, "free" email providers that we often see day to day. Gmail is popular but has — in the past — scanned mail to target ads, served ads in inboxes and is guilty of myriad other ills and wrongdoing. I feel confident making that statement given how far these providers have buried the bar in the ground.

      Don't use Microsoft's mail offerings. Or AOL (lol) or your ISP's. If it's free, don't use it.

      What I've typically looked for in choosing a mail provider is support for core, open standards. IMAP/SMTP, CalDAV and CardDAV. I prefer that mail, contacts and calendars are colocated and accessible from any device. Colocating this information typically makes web interfaces and other ancillary services more useful.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Your Meta AI prompts are in a live, public feed

      The AOL dump was a catastrophe. In an eyeblink, many of the users in the dataset were de-anonymized. The dump revealed personal, intimate and compromising facts about the lives of AOL search users. The AOL dump is notable for many reasons, not least because it jumpstarted the academic and technical discourse about the limits of "de-identifying" datasets by stripping out personally identifying information prior to releasing them for use by business partners, researchers, or the general public.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Self-Driving Car Video Footage

      Lots of things are collecting lots of video of lots of other things. How and under what rules that video is used and reused will be a continuing source of debate.

• Defence/Aggression

  • FAIR ☛ Murdoch Cheers on Candidate’s Arrest—and Authoritarianism

    US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained New York City’s comptroller, Brad Lander, as he and other activists escorted immigrants in the halls of Manhattan’s federal immigration court house (AP, 6/17/25; New York Times, 6/17/25; Democracy Now!, 6/18/25).

  • [Old] Mother Jones ☛ JD Vance Just Decried Political Violence. But He Endorsed a Book Celebrating It. – Mother Jones

    Even by today’s standards, Unhumans is extreme, transparently authoritarian, and evocative of Nazi propaganda in its insistence on the complete dehumanization of political opponents. The thesis of the book is that the right is up against “unhumans” intent on destroying civilization. It defines unhumans broadly—saying that the label applies to communists, socialists, leftists, and so-called progressives. In summarizing their argument, they write: [...]

  • [Old] The Nation ☛ Jack Posobiec Calls Leftists “Unhuman.” JD Vance Seems to Agree.

    Why isn’t Vance’s endorsement of Unhumans a major news story? Is it too serious? The cat lady tirade, after all, is funny, fitting the theme of “weird” that the Harris campaign has been pushing ever since adding Walz to the ticket. Unhumans is hard to be lighthearted about. It’s not an imaginary tryst with a sofa. There are no cute vermin memes out there, no pretty girls posting photos of themselves stamping on cockroaches.

  • [Old] Current Affairs ☛ Trumpworld’s Favorite Writer Says The Right Must Emulate Dictators in Battling Leftist 'Unhumans'

    Unhumans disturbed me because it seemed more than a little, well, fascist. It argues that leftist “unhumans” must be ruthlessly dealt with and praises dictators like Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, who were known for inflicting torture, terror, and death on dissidents. It argues that extreme measures, such as the banning of all teachers unions, should be carried out immediately. And it recommends “an eye for an eye” justice: “That which is done by the communist and the regime must be done unto them.” Posobiec and Lisec are not always clear who exactly they think is “unhuman” and what the limits of this ruthlessness should be. They say they are against violence, but they also openly endorse Pinochet’s tactic of conducting extrajudicial executions by throwing people out of helicopters. Lisec also says that certain “actions and ideologies”—note, ideologies—deserve to be met with “capital punishment.” I find it alarming that a book making this case is circulating among people so close to the executive branch.

  • [Old] Finland ☛ Criminal Investigation by the NBI into Cable Damage in the Gulf of Finland Concluded - Police

    The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has completed its criminal investigation into the damage caused to cables in the Gulf of Finland on 25 December 2024. Based on the investigation, senior officers of the tanker Eagle S are suspected of aggravated criminal mischief and aggravated interference with telecommunications.

  • The Record ☛ Finland could charge Russia-linked ship’s officers over cable breaks by ‘August at the latest’

    The suspects, who are believed to be Georgian nationals, were the three most senior officers on board the Eagle S, a Russia-linked oil tanker. The ship was seized by Finnish authorities after dragging its anchor along the seafloor for almost 62 miles, amid concerns over Russian sabotage and subversion activities in Europe.

  • [Repeat] Digital Music News ☛ Google Shareholder Sues Google & DOJ Over TikTok Extension

    While Tan declined to specify whether he personally supports the TikTok ban, he believes the real issue is enforcement. “There is a federal law that says the TikTok app should not be on your store, and I can see TikTok on the app store,” he says. “Congress passed the law, the Supreme Court upheld it. It’s not debatable.”

  • Variety ☛ Trump 'Flouting the Law' With TikTok Executive Order, US Senator Says

    Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement after the White House said the president would delay enforcing the TikTok divest-or-ban law: “Once again, the Trump administration is flouting the law and ignoring its own national security findings about the risks posed by a PRC-controlled TikTok,” referring to the People’s Republic of China.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Trump Delays TikTok Ban or Sale for Another 90 Days

    The law that Trump’s orders have circumvented, signed by Joe Biden and upheld by the Supreme Court just before Trump’s second term began, is the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a product of concerns from Congress that foreign-owned apps such as TikTok could be used to spy on or politically manipulate Americans. On Jan. 20, his first day in office, Trump ordered the initial delay of a ban after the app briefly went dark — then, in April, he was forced to approve another 75-day delay because a potential deal to spin off a majority of TikTok to a U.S. company controlled by American investors unraveled when China balked at his tariffs on global trade. Any sale of TikTok by ByteDance is likely impossible without approval from Beijing.

  • The Verge ☛ Trump gives TikTok another ban extension

    Several lawmakers, including those who’ve criticized a divest-or-ban law for TikTok and ByteDance, have warned that Trump’s repeated extensions are untenable and illegal. After Trump’s last extension in April, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-VA) told The Verge the move was “against the law” and said “the whole thing is a sham if the algorithm doesn’t move from out of Beijing’s hands.”

    Even before the second extension, Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Cory Booker (D-NJ), who oppose a ban of TikTok, wrote Trump that it would be “unacceptable and unworkable for your Administration to continue ignoring the requirements in the law.” They warned, “any further extensions of the TikTok deadline will require Oracle, Apple, Google, and other companies to continue risking ruinous legal liability, a difficult decision to justify in perpetuity.”

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ TikTok deal gets another extension from Trump

    Significant pressure has been placed on TikTok, known for its popular social video app, after a law was signed in 2024 that required TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its U.S. operations of TikTok or the app would be banned in the U.S.

    The new order signed by Trump will give TikTok an extension until Sept. 17. During that period, the Justice Department will not enforce the 2024 law that would have banned TikTok in the country or impose penalties on companies that distribute TikTok, the order said.

  • Mike Brock ☛ Democracy Has Enemies

    Once we’ve secured our own democracy, our obligation doesn’t end—it begins anew. We owe justice to those whose freedoms are crushed by authoritarian regimes that meddled in our affairs, oppressed their citizens, and undermined democratic principles worldwide.

    Forgiveness is not on the table for tyrants. Justice is.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘He’s moving at a truly alarming speed’: Trump propels US into authoritarianism

    A senator handcuffed, people snatched in public, military deployed – Trump’s slide towards autocracy has come quicker than critics feared

  • SBS ☛ Australia's new move against Russia's 'shadow fleet'

    It is largely made up of ageing Russian oil vessels, the number unknown but estimated to be hundreds, used to evade sanctions and trade in goods to help support Russia amid the war in Ukraine.

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Lucknow’s first grid road system to take shape in IT City

      Grid road system is a rectangular layout that provides multiple routes with a network of streets (laid out in a rectangular pattern), where roads intersect at right angles, creating a grid-like structure.

      Officials said the scheme is gaining momentum with active participation from local landowners through land pooling.

    • Futurism ☛ Honda Enters Space Race, Successfully Tests Reusable Rocket

      On Tuesday, the Japanese conglomerate surprised us all by declaring that its research arm, Honda R&D, had successfully launched and landed its prototype reusable rocket, in a major step towards achieving its dream of suborbital spaceflight by 2029.

    • Futurism ☛ Cybertruck Burned So Severely That Its Driver's Bones Disintegrated

      A Cybertruck owner in Texas was burned to death after crashing his vehicle in a ditch and becoming trapped inside.

      According to a lawsuit filed by his widow and parents against the Elon Musk-led EV maker, the fire burned so hot that his bones literally disintegrated.

    • Computers Are Bad ☛ 2025-06-19 hydronuclear testing

      The thermonuclear weapon was not the only post-WWII design innovation. At around the same time, Los Alamos developed a related concept: the boosted weapon. Boosted weapons were essentially an improvement in the efficiency of nuclear weapons. When the core of a weapon goes supercritical, the fission produces a powerful pulse of neutrons. Those neutrons cause more fission, the chain reaction that makes up the basic principle of the atomic bomb. The problem is that the whole process isn't fast enough: the energy produced blows the core apart before it's been sufficiently "saturated" with neutrons to completely fission. That leads to a lot of the fuel in the core being scattered, rather than actually contributing to the explosive energy.

    • Hamilton Nolan ☛ The Subway Is Not Scary

      When I say this, you may read my meaning to be, “The subways are fine if you are brave,” or “Riding the subway is a character-building because it teaches you to be tough.” No. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that the subway is fine. It is not scary. It is the standard mode of transportation for millions of New Yorkers. Six million rides a day. Let me try to put it in terms that a non-New Yorker can understand. “I am scared of riding the Google shuttle bus to my job at Google.” “I am scared of riding the Epcot monorail.” See how crazy that sounds? Same basic thing.

      Most of the people who live outside the city drive cars to work. This is far more dangerous than riding the subway. Last year there were ten murders in the NYC subway system, with well over a billion total rides taken. During the same time period, there were 253 traffic fatalities in New York City. One person dead every day and a half. Cars? Those things are fucking dangerous. The subway? You might be tempted to buy a churro. Could be damaging to your diet, yeah. But you can work it off. Don’t make such a big deal out of it.

    • LRT ☛ Rail Baltica link to Vilnius to be built after 2030 – ministry

      The European-gauge railway connection between Vilnius and the Rail Baltica route will be constructed only after 2030, once the main line is completed, Ministry of Transport and Communications confirmed on Thursday.

  • Overpopulation

    • Crooked Timber ☛ Are pro-natalists living on the same planet ?

      What about the blue dotted lines? These assume drastic reductions in fertility. On the low side, that involves the entire world becoming like South Korea, where the combination of high employment rates for women and pre-modern male attitudes on gender role has produced reproduction rates below 0.5.

      But even in this extreme case, world population in 2100 only falls to 6 billion, the same as in 2000. I was around at the time, and did not feel as if there were too few people about.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Register UK ☛ SpaceX's Starship explodes again ... during test prep

    The explosion occurred on a test stand, and it is unclear how much damage the facility sustained. According to SpaceX, "a safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for."

  • The Verge ☛ SpaceX Starship explodes again, this time on the ground

    The explosion follows others during the seventh, eighth, and ninth Starship flight tests earlier this year. “Initial analysis indicates the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as a COPV, or composite overwrapped pressure vessel, containing gaseous nitrogen in Starship’s nosecone area, but the full data review is ongoing,” SpaceX says. On X, the company called the explosion a “major anomaly.”

  • Science Alert ☛ SpaceX Starship Explodes in Towering Fireball

    The explosion – which sent a towering fireball into the air – happened at the Starbase launch facility at about 11:00 pm (0400 GMT Thursday), SpaceX and law enforcement officials said.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Golden Teapot Dome: Mark Kelly Warns "This Is a Very Hard Physics Problem"

    Elon can’t do what he’s already being paid to do. But Republicans are poised to provide billions more, probably to him, to take on a far more complex problem.

    And Mark Kelly, a guy who (even Whiskey Pete recognizes) would know, seems to suspect that Hegseth just fired the people who would tell him that this boondoggle is physically impossible to pull off.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Meduza ☛ Argentina says it uncovered Russian spy ring suspected of disinformation efforts

      According to Adorni, the group’s aim was to build a circle of individuals loyal to Russia’s interests who could carry out disinformation campaigns and influence operations against the Argentine state. He did not specify whether the Russians had been detained or whether they remain in Argentina.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Musk: Grok Telling Truth About Right-Wing Terrorism Is 'Major Fail'

      Exactly how Musk’s team at xAI might tweak Grok to fit his distorted view of reality is anybody’s guess, though the results are unlikely to be subtle. Last month, X users were bewildered as the bot repeatedly invoked the specter of a supposed “white genocide” in South Africa, even when asked to weigh in on totally unrelated subjects. White people are not being systemically murdered in South Africa, where Musk was born, but he and Trump have repeatedly and falsely proclaimed that the nation’s white minority are victims of violent persecution, with the president fast-tracking the process of immigration to the U.S. for a handful of “refugees” fleeing this imaginary atrocity. Many speculated that Grok had been specifically altered to bring up South Africa at Musk’s instructions; even then, it had no way of substantiating the baseless notion of a “white genocide” occurring there.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Police cancel Budapest Pride, mayor says the ban is 'irrelevant'

    The Hungarian police prohibited the Budapest Pride, citing their "capacity as assembly authorities," 24.hu reports.

    Gergely Karácsony announced on Monday that the Budapest Municipality will organize the Budapest Pride event on 28 June in partnership with the Rainbow Mission Foundation. At the time, the mayor said that the Budapest Pride is a municipal event and does not require official authorization. In an interview with The Guardian, Karacsony said, “There is currently no law that could ban a municipal event,” he said. “Obviously, anything can happen in Hungary. But we will come up with a plan C.”

  • Techdirt ☛ Why Making Social Media Companies Liable For User Content Doesn’t Do What Many People Think It Will

    The core issue is that most people fundamentally misunderstand both how content moderation works and what drives platform incentives. There’s a persistent myth that companies could achieve near-perfect moderation if they just “tried harder” or faced sufficient legal consequences. This ignores the mathematical reality of what happens when you attempt to moderate billions of pieces of content daily, and it misunderstands how liability actually changes corporate behavior.

    Part of the confusion, I think, stems from people’s failure to understand the impossibility of doing content moderation well at scale. There is a very wrong assumption that social media platforms could do perfect (or very good) content moderation if they just tried harder or had more incentive to do better. Without denying that some entities (*cough* ExTwitter *cough*) have made it clear they don’t care at all, most others do try to get this right, and discover over and over again how impossible that is.

  • The Register UK ☛ Iran’s internet goes offline amid claims of ‘enemy abuse’

    Internet watchers at CloudFlare and NetBlocks both report that internet traffic in Iran dropped precipitously late on Wednesday and has remained near zero since.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • New Yorker ☛ How My Reporting on the Columbia Protests Led to My Deportation

    Unfortunately for Officer Martinez, I didn’t work with anyone. I participated in the protests as an independent student journalist who one day stumbled upon tents on the lawn. My writing, all of which is now publicly available, was certainly sympathetic to the protesters and their demands, but it comprised an accurate and honest documentation of the events at Columbia. That, of course, was the problem.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • JURIST ☛ Amnesty International calls for investigation into alleged police torture during March protests in Türkiye

    Amnesty International on Wednesday spurred Turkish authorities to investigate widespread allegations of police violence during largely peaceful protests held across the country and sounded alarm of potential acts of torture under international law.

  • BIA Net ☛ Turkey ends mandatory equal inheritance sharing, sparking concerns over women’s rights

    The Federation of Turkish Women’s Associations said the reform undermines gender equality.

    “This so-called 'consensual sharing' approach fails to offer women, who are already under economic and social pressure, a fair negotiation environment,” the group stated on social media. “It amounts to a violation of property rights.”

  • Fireborn ☛ I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back: Post 4 – Wayland Is Growing Up. And Now We Don’t Have a Choice

    This post wasn’t supposed to exist — not yet. I meant to talk about bootloaders. About inaccessible USB installs. About the deafening silence between pressing the power button and hearing a screen reader. That post is still coming.

    But something bigger is happening now.

  • TheEvilSkeleton ☛ It’s True, “We” Don’t Care About Accessibility on Linux | TheEvilSkeleton

    What do virtue-signalers and privileged people without disabilities sharing content about accessibility on Linux being trash have in common? They don’t actually really care about the group they’re defending; they just exploit these victims’ unfortunate situation to either fuel hate against groups and projects actually trying to make the world a better place.

    I never thought I’d be this upset to a point I’d be writing an article about something this sensitive with a clickbait-y title. It’s simultaneously demotivating, unproductive, and infuriating. I’m here writing this post fully knowing that I could have been working on accessibility in GNOME, but really, I’m so tired of having my mood ruined because of privileged people spending at most 5 minutes to write erroneous posts and then pretending to be oblivious when confronted while it takes us 5 months of unpaid work to get a quarter of recognition, let alone acknowledgment, without accounting for the time “wasted” addressing these accusations.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • Techdirt ☛ Nintendo Is Already Punishing Switch 2 Users Over Piracy ‘Suspicions’

    When it comes to extracting ROMs, that is perfectly legal in America. Threats to render a $500 console functionally destroyed because someone engaged in legal activity isn’t just absurd, it should itself be illegal. As is often the case, Nintendo is asserting rights it simply doesn’t have here, with overly broad restrictions on a console that the buyer, in theory at least, owns.

    Well, we have yet to see Nintendo go that nuclear route of bricking devices, but it is already exacting punishments on owners of the Switch 2 for the use of a MIG Switch.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ X vs. Music Publishers: Settlement Looms in Copyright Clash After "Maximum Pain" Revelation

    In a complaint filed at a Nashville federal court two years ago, Universal Music, Sony Music, EMI and others, accused X Corp of ‘breeding’ mass copyright infringement.

    The social media company allegedly failed to respond adequately to takedown notices and lacked a proper termination policy.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Google Receives Piracy Shield Orders to Block Pirate Sites in Public DNS

    Italian telecoms regulator AGCOM has regularly criticized Google over its anti-piracy efforts, but the signs suggest that change is on the way. AGCOM says a system activated last month, relayed blocking orders received by the Piracy Shield anti-piracy system, directly to Google, which "promptly" blocked pirate site domains on its public DNS resolver. AGCOM says the system should be fully operational "as soon as possible" but warns that Google will still have to do more.