Leftovers

• Stefano Marinelli ☛ The Broken Gramophone and the Stolen Land

  I want to tell two stories. Both are part of my family's history, both extremely impactful on the way I live, grow, and think. Because, as an Italian, I have family stories connected to the most turbulent periods in our country's history over the last 100 years, including the fascist era and the periods that followed. Today, these historical periods are often discussed as if they were closed chapters of the past, studied in books. For me, however, they are not just history to be studied, but a living legacy that shaped my ancestors and, by reflection, my own existence.

• The Conversation ☛ The forgotten 80-year-old machine that shaped the [Internet] – and could help us survive AI

  Bush was dean of the school of engineering at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and president of the Carnegie Institute. During the second world war, he had been the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, coordinating the activities of some 6,000 scientists working relentlessly to give their country a technological advantage. He could see that science was being drastically slowed down by the research process, and proposed a solution that he called the “memex”.

• The Register UK ☛ British Perl guru Matt Trout dead at 42

  Matt Trout will be missed by many, even though he was a divisive figure who featured several times on The Register.

• EAPL.mx ☛ [EN] What is worth to measure? #draft

  I've been thinking about the good measure between measuring what matters and the troublesome process of measuring.

  For instance a Spanish YouTube shared his thoughts about the Oura Ring or the Apple Watch which gives you a lot of info about your health.

  But if you know all that and you don't take any action, why measuring in the first place.

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ We're Speechless at Who Trump Just Appointed Head of NASA

    Yes, you read that right. Duffy, who already appeared woefully unprepared following a deadly midair collision at Reagan National Airport in January — which occurred on his first day in office — will take the helm of an agency in crisis.

  • Futurism ☛ Remember That Asteroid NASA Deflected in a Test of Saving Earth? We Have Bad News

    But three years later, astronomers found that the collision had some unintended consequences. As detailed in a paper published last week in the Planetary Science Journal, a team led by the University of Maryland found that the DART spacecraft ejected a massive barrage of boulders, some of which carried more than three times the energy of the spacecraft itself.

  • Techdirt ☛ The Magical Thinking That’s Killing Our Humanity

    There is an epidemic of magical thinking. An unwillingness to confront reality. Because reality is scary.

    This affliction cuts across all ideological lines, manifesting in different forms but serving the same function: allowing us to avoid the difficult truths about what it will actually take to preserve human dignity, meaning, and freedom in the face of forces designed to eliminate all three.

  • Science Alert ☛ 'Ball Lightning' Caught on Film After Storm in Canada

    In the bolt's wake, a brilliant ball of blue light was left hovering above the ground.

    The couple managed to capture a 23-second video of the strange apparition.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ These 'Weird' Sea Spiders Don't Have Abdomens—and Instead Store Organs in Their Legs. With DNA, Scientists Are Learning Why

    Evolutionary biologists have long puzzled over sea spiders’ unique abdomen-less existence and the adaptations they’ve developed in its stead. Sea spiders keep their reproductive, digestive and respiratory organs inside their legs, which for some species can be less than an inch long, while those of others span nearly two feet across. They breathe through their skin, moving oxygen by contracting muscles, and some even eat methane with the help of bacteria.

  • ARRL ☛ The ARRL Solar Report

    An approximate M2 was observed by Solar Orbiter at 10/1326 UTC just beyond the east limb, brightening can be seen in the SUVI-94 channel at this time. A slow moving CME was observed in coronagraph imagery, modelled and was determined to not have any impact.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ A Paleontologist Matched Two Halves of the Same Fossil Stored at Different Museums—and Discovered a New Species

    Meet Sphenodraco scandentis, a tree-dwelling, lizard-like reptile that roamed around with the dinosaurs during the Late Jurassic period roughly 145 million years ago

  • Futurism ☛ Democrats and Republicans Unite in Last-Ditch Effort to Save NASA

    "We rejected cuts that would have devastated NASA science by 47 percent and would have terminated 55 operating and planned missions," said senator and top appropriator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) in a statement, as quoted by Bloomberg.

• Career/Education

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ P&B: BSAG

    This is the 98th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have but she's a girl... and her blog, rousette.org.uk

  • Robert Birming ☛ Clarity over chaos

    Clear communication is key — whether it’s about a house inspection, signing up for a service, or just trying to find the ‘delete account’ button.

  • The Atlantic ☛ AI Will Never Be Your Kid’s Friend

    Ten minutes later, I walked past the same two students. The poster board had a title, and the students appeared to be working purposefully. The earlier flare-up had faded into the background.

    That mundane scene captured something important about human development that digital “friends” threaten to eliminate: the productive friction of real relationships.

  • Yordi Verkroost ☛ It’s Not Just a Diploma

    A diploma that represents countless hours of study sessions, often during the day, but sometimes also in the evenings and at night, possibly fueled by slightly too much caffeine.

    A diploma that stands for the hopeful expectations you had when you first started your studies, and which have now finally been fulfilled. Whether that is exactly as planned or completely against expectations. Whether you wanted to make others proud, or just yourself. Whether you are one of many in your family with these achievements, or the very first.

  • Federal News Network ☛ From COBOL to cloud, Burton reflects on four decades in government

    When Adriane Burton joined the federal government nearly 40 years ago, the IRS trained her to work on Unisys mainframes using COBOL.

    Burton, who retired in April after 37 years of federal service, had a front-row seat for all the major technology changes the government went through since the late 1980s.

  • Vintage Everyday ☛ Portrait of 17-Year-Old Rowan Atkinson, Electrical Engineering at Newcastle University, 1972

    Long before he became the face of global comedy, this quiet young man was deeply immersed in circuits, formulas, and the world of electrical engineering.

• Hardware

  • Clayton Errington ☛ Gaming on the Switch

    The controller fits better in my hands, the buttons are a little bigger, and the LED colors are a nice touch. Don’t get me wrong, the Joy-Con controllers are nice. I think Nintendo got the console right with controllers that detach but can be used individually as well as their own controller. This makes playing some multiplayer games easier and sharing with friends and family.

  • Tyler Thorsted ☛ Microstation

    I recently was able to image a few Bernoulli Disks for a collection using a SCSI device I have found quite useful. The disks had been sitting around for quite some time waiting for the right tools and resources to extract the contents. I mentioned the accomplishment to a few coworkers and one asked me if I would extract the contents from their old disk they used for school back in the 1990’s. They had spent a whopping $99 at the local bookstore for a disk which held a total of 150MB. Not GB’s like we are used to now, but megabytes. I have some camera’s which takes RAW photos larger than then would fit on one disk. Once I had the data extracted from their disk, I took a look at the contents. There was a few file formats on the disk I was unfamiliar with. A quick scan with DROID revealed some matches and a few problems.

  • [Repeat] Dan Langille ☛ Doing a bit of stress work on a new HDD

    As foreshadowed in x8dtu – drive problems, I will be visiting a data center soon to replace a 4TB HDD. The replacement HDD arrived last night. It was unceremoniously tossed onto the front porch by the courier. However, it was properly packaged. I’m sure it’s fine.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-07-03 [Older] Why the l-carnitine sport supplement is controversial

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-07-03 [Older] Most plant-friendly fungi are a mystery to scientists

  • Futurism ☛ "ChatGPT Psychosis": Experts Warn that People Are Losing Themselves to AI

    In a recent CBC segment about the phenomenon, primary care physician and CBC contributor Dr. Peter Lin explained that while "ChatGPT psychosis" — as the experience has come to be colloquially known — isn't an official medical diagnosis just yet, he thinks it's on its way.

    "I think, eventually, it will get there," said the physician.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Judge’s order blocking Planned Parenthood funding ban unlawful, Trump DOJ says | Alabama Reflector

    The request was filed just days after Judge Indira Talwani issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the federal government from implementing that section of the law while the case progresses.

• Proprietary

  • Bryce Wray ☛ Hugo sites on Cloudflare Workers — or not

    In fact, the whole thing has led me to think about how one might want to make a Hugo site more portable, to minimize the potential impact of such changes on vendors’ parts both now and in the future. If you, too, have used Cloudflare Pages as a Hugo site’s home and are now pondering what to do, perhaps this post will help you understand your options more clearly.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ 2.5 Admins discusses VMware and software audits

    I was catching up on a recent 2.5 Admins podcast episode where the gents were talking about Broadcom, and their “auditing” of VMware customers holding perpetual licences. It sounds like a barrel of fun, in that it must feel like being shoved into a barrel, and being rolled down a hill. Only the barrel is made of snakes, and the hill is lava, or something.

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ LisaGUI

    Andrew Yaros has rebuilt the Lisa’s user interface on the web, and it is glorious: [...]

  • CBC ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Decades-old problems are plaguing federal contracting system, watchdog says

  • Xbox: New Leak Suggests That Microsoft Is Likely, Technically, Killing Backward Compatibility for Its Future Consoles

    In a recent video by Moore’s Law Is Dead, a developer allegedly said that while all Xbox first-party titles and “Play Anywhere” games will run on the next Xbox consoles and Microsoft's new Asus Windows handheld, older titles and most third-party games “are likely going to have major problems working on future Xbox consoles if they really are just glorified Windows PCs.”

  • TechCrunch ☛ Indeed, Glassdoor to lay off 1,300 staff amid AI push [Ed: "Hey hi" is a smokescreen; it's about failure]

    Recruit Holdings, the Japanese parent of Indeed and Glassdoor, said on Friday it is laying off about 1,300 employees at the two companies. The layoffs are part of a broader restructuring that involves Glassdoor’s operations being integrated within Indeed, and an increasing focus on using AI.

    The job cuts would affect functions mostly in the U.S. across the two companies’ R&D, tech, and HR and sustainability divisions, though all functions across all countries will be affected, according to an internal memo by CEO, Hisayuki “Deko” Idekoba, seen by TechCrunch. The cuts would affect 6% of Recruit’s HR technology division.

  • India Today ☛ Glassdoor and Indeed lay off 1,300 employees, say they must adapt as AI is changing the world [Ed: The go-to excuse when things go wrong]

    Recruit Holdings, the Japanese parent company of job sites Indeed and Glassdoor, is set to reduce its workforce by approximately 1,300, according to a memo accessed by Reuters. This represents about 6 per cent of the workforce within the company's HR technology segment. The layoffs are primarily concentrated in the United States and affect various departments, including research and development, growth, and people and sustainability teams, spanning several countries and functions.

  • Indian Express ☛ Indeed, Glassdoor to cut 1,300 jobs amid AI integration, memo shows [Ed: This has nothing to do with slop but a decline in demand]

    Recruit Holdings, the Japanese parent of Indeed and Glassdoor, will reduce headcount by around 1,300 across the two job sites amid a shift in focus toward artificial intelligence, according to a memo seen by Reuters on Thursday.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Drew Breunig ☛ AI Creates the Problems it Solves | Drew Breunig

      But this dynamic isn’t limited to HR… it’s also growing in sales and marketing.

    • Manton Reece ☛ Bias in centralized AI

      In the Grok fallout, Mike Masnick makes the case for moving away from large, centralized AI. He asks a range of great questions about bias in AI: [...]

    • Jussi Pakkanen ☛ AI slop is the new smoking

      AI slop is the new smoking

    • Neil Selwyn ☛ We need to talk about AI in terms of values, not vibes

      All of this points to the need to reframe AI as a normative issue – a focus for debate, discussion and dissensus. For example, the prospect of having AI replace teachers is not simply something that should be driven by a few people’s enthusiasm for usurping traditional ways of schooling and feared by many others as inevitably leading to a second-rate education. Instead, the role that AI plays in education should be steered by our collective values around education – what we as a society believe education is for, and what we as a society believe education should be in the future. The same goes for AI in journalism, healthcare, law enforcement and every other area of life that is currently being pitched as ripe for transformation through AI.

    • Federal News Network ☛ The secret to adopting AI, cloud in agencies? Culture change, enhanced training

      As major changes sweep through government and workforce reductions put more pressure on employees to be as efficient as possible, federal agencies are increasingly turning to more advanced digital solutions for time and cost savings. This often means centralizing data management and using cloud integration platforms to facilitate cross-departmental communication and better data-driven decision-making. But it also means ensuring that teams are as fluent in new technology or platform investments as possible so they can enhance service delivery.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Elon Musk Updated Grok. Guess What It Said.

      Earlier today, Grok showed me how to tell if someone is a “good scientist,” just from their demographics. For starters, according to a formula devised by Elon Musk’s chatbot, they have to be a white, Asian, or Jewish man.

    • Vox ☛ Elon Musk trained Grok on X users. It became a Hitler fan.

      The fact that these political views tend to show up across the board — and that they’re even present in a Chinese-trained model — suggests to me that these opinions are not added by the creators. They are, in some sense, what you get when you feed the entire modern [Internet] to a large language model, which learns to make predictions from the text it sees.

    • The Conversation ☛ Wimbledon’s electronic line-calling system shows we still can’t replace human judgment

      In a bid to modernise, organisers have replaced all 300 line judges with the Hawk-Eye electronic line-calling (ELC) system powered by 18 high-speed cameras and supported by around 80 on-court assistants.

      It has been sold as a leap forward but has already caused widespread controversy. In her fourth-round match against Britain’s Sonay Kartal, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova was forced to replay a point she had clearly won, because ELC had failed to register that a ball had landed out. Furious, Pavlyuchenkova told the umpire: “You took the game away from me … they stole the game from me.”

    • The Register UK ☛ AI coding tools make developers slower, study finds

      Not only did the use of AI tools hinder developers, but it led them to hallucinate, much like the AIs have a tendency to do themselves. The developers predicted a 24 percent speedup, but even after the study concluded, they believed AI had helped them complete tasks 20 percent faster when it had actually delayed their work by about that percentage.

      "After completing the study, developers estimate that allowing AI reduced completion time by 20 percent," the study says. "Surprisingly, we find that allowing AI actually increases completion time by 19 percent — AI tooling slowed developers down."

    • RTL ☛ Criticised for praising Hitler: Latest Grok chatbot turns to Musk for some answers

      The latest version of xAI's generative artificial intelligence assistant, Grok 4, frequently consults owner Elon Musk's positions on topics before responding.

    • Ty Penguin ☛ Faking a JPEG

      I've been wittering on about Spigot for a while. It's small web application which generates a fake hierarchy of web pages, on the fly, using a Markov Chain to make gibberish content for aggressive web crawlers to ingest.

      Spigot has been sitting there, doing its thing, for a few months now, serving over a million pages per day. I've not really been keeping track of what it's up to, but every now and then I look at its logs to see what crawlers are hitting it.

    • METR ☛ Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity - METR

      We conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to understand how early-2025 AI tools affect the productivity of experienced open-source developers working on their own repositories. Surprisingly, we find that when developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without—AI makes them slower. We view this result as a snapshot of early-2025 AI capabilities in one relevant setting; as these systems continue to rapidly evolve, we plan on continuing to use this methodology to help estimate AI acceleration from AI R&D automation 1.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ AI coders think they’re 20% faster — but they’re actually 19% slower

      When the devs use the AI, they’re spending less time looking for information and writing code — and instead they’re prompting the AI, they’re reviewing the AI, or they’re doing nothing while they’re waiting for the AI.

      Even the devs who liked the AI found it was bad at large and complex code bases like these ones, and over half the AI suggestions were not usable. Even the suggestions they accepted needed a lot of fixing up.

    • METR ☛ Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity

      Despite widespread adoption, the impact of AI tools on software development in the wild remains understudied. We conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to understand how AI tools at the February–June 2025 frontier affect the productivity of experienced open-source developers. 16 developers with moderate AI experience complete 246 tasks in mature projects on which they have an average of 5 years of prior experience. Each task is randomly assigned to allow or disallow usage of early-2025 AI tools. When AI tools are allowed, developers primarily use Cursor Pro, a popular code editor, and Claude 3.5/3.7 Sonnet. Before starting tasks, developers forecast that allowing AI will reduce completion time by 24%. After completing the study, developers estimate that allowing AI reduced completion time by 20%. Surprisingly, we find that allowing AI actually increases completion time by 19%—AI tooling slowed developers down. This slowdown also contradicts predictions from experts in economics (39% shorter) and ML (38% shorter). To understand this result, we collect and evaluate evidence for 20 properties of our setting that a priori could contribute to the observed slowdown effect—for example, the size and quality standards of projects, or prior developer experience with AI tooling. Although the influence of experimental artifacts cannot be entirely ruled out, the robustness of the slowdown effect across our analyses suggests it is unlikely to primarily be a function of our experimental design.

    • Steve Newman ☛ Not So Fast: AI Coding Tools Can Actually Reduce Productivity

      METR performed a rigorous study (blog post, full paper) to measure the productivity gain provided by AI tools for experienced developers working on mature projects. The results are surprising everyone: a 19 percent decrease in productivity. Even the study participants themselves were surprised: they estimated that AI had increased their productivity by 20 percent. If you take away just one thing from this study, it should probably be this: when people report that AI has accelerated their work, they might be wrong!

    • The Local SE ☛ Swedish Moderates pull plug on AI site after it sends greetings to Hitler and Idi Amin

      But the service wasn’t given any limitations or filters, which broadcaster TV4 Nyheterna reports generated greetings to dubious figures including German Nazi leader Hitler, former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.

      In one video clip, Kristersson is seen talking about the importance of the upcoming election, while holding an AI-generated sign that reads “We need you, Adolf Hitler”.

    • EFF ☛ EFF's Guide to Getting Records About Axon's Draft One AI-Generated Police Reports

      What do AI-generated police reports look like? What kind of paper trail does this system leave? How do we get a hold of documentation using public records laws?

      Unfortunately, obtaining these records isn't easy. In many cases, it's straight-up impossible.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Journalist says 4,000 fake AI news websites created to game Google algorithms

      More than 4,000 fake news websites powered by generative AI have been set up to game Google Discover and search, according to award-winning French journalist Jean-Marc Manach.

      The sites are largely in French, but there are already at least 100 in English, and this could be the “tip of the iceberg” Manach told Press Gazette.

    • The Register UK ☛ Swiss boffins tease 'fully open' LLM trained on Alps super

      This is exactly what the boffins at ETH Zürich and the Swiss Federal Technology Institute in Lausanne, Switzerland, have done. At the International Open-Source LLM Builders Summit in Geneva this week, researchers teased a pair of open large language models (LLMs) trained using the nation's Alps supercomputer.

    • Crooked Timber ☛ Cultural theory was right about the death of the author. It was just a few decades early — Crooked Timber

      Weatherby’s core claims, then, are that to understand generative AI, we need to accept that linguistic creativity can be completely distinct from intelligence, and also that text does not have to refer to the physical world; it is to some considerable extent its own thing. This all flows from Cultural Theory properly understood. Its original goal was, and should have remained, the understanding of language as a system, in something like the way that Jakobson and his colleagues outlined.

  • Social Control Media

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Exclusive-TikTok Prepares US App With Its Own Algorithm and User Data

    • International Business Times ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] TikTok App US Sale Update: Cheeto Mussolini Says He Has a Buyer – But Will China Agree to the Deal?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-05 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Says US Will Start Talks With China on TikTok Deal This Week

    • YouTube Tightens Monetization Rules Over Mass-Produced, Repetitive Content

      YouTube will revise its user guidelines to ensure that the uploaded and monetized content is original. With the new policy, the streaming and video-sharing service aims to limit the commercialization of repeatedly and massively produced content, as it contradicts the purpose of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP).

      "This update better reflects what “inauthentic” content looks like today," as stated by Google, uploaded on the YouTube help page on Tuesday, July 8, 2025.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Bitdefender ☛ Russian basketball player arrested in ransomware case despite being "useless with computers"

      6' 7" tall Kasatkin, who until recently was playing for Moscow basketball team MBA, was arrested at the request of US prosecutors who believe that he negotiated ransom payments as part of a criminal operation that has attacked some 900 organisations, including two federal institutions.

    • The Record ☛ Albemarle latest Virginia county hit with ransomware

      Some of the 112,000 residents of the county, home to the city of Charlottesville, also may have had their names, addresses and Social Security numbers exposed. The county said it is still conducting its investigation into the ransomware attack, which was initially discovered on the morning of June 11.

      In a post-mortem on the attack, the county explained that officials discovered issues with their IT systems and realized they were the victims of a ransomware incident.

    • New Statesman ☛ Cyber attacks are evolving – so too must government response

      At the heart of that journey is the move away from reactive cybersecurity – patching, firefighting, and chasing down incidents – into what Parker refers to as “the continuous threat exposure management era”. This shift acknowledges that adversaries no longer wait for the right moment. They scan, breach, and exploit at speed and scale.

• Security

  • CISA

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] CISA Releases One Industrial Control Systems Advisory

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Emerson ValveLink Products

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] CISA Adds Four Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-03 [Older] CISA Releases Four Industrial Control Systems Advisories

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-03 [Older] Hitachi Energy Relion 670/650 and SAM600-IO Series

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-03 [Older] Hitachi Energy MicroSCADA X SYS600

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-03 [Older] Mitsubishi Electric MELSOFT Update Manager

    • CISA ☛ 2025-07-03 [Older] Mitsubishi Electric MELSEC iQ-F Series

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Ava ☛ events vs. privacy | ava's blog

      I froze in place. Am I agreeing to this? It would be really awkward for me to immediately turn around and leave. I wanted to be here to get out more and practice meeting new people, now I'm confronted with something I had forgotten to take into account before and wasn't informed about during signup for the event.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ IRS’s data-sharing deal with ICE will lead to ‘dangerous’ mistakes, digital rights group argues

      EFF also made the case for why the bulk disclosure of taxpayer information — in this case to Immigration and Customs Enforcement — is especially harmful due to “record linkage errors” that set the stage for “an increase in mistaken and dangerous ICE enforcement actions against taxpayers.”

    • NL Times ☛ Amnesty International asks police to stop checking IDs at protests

      Amnesty International is asking Dutch police to stop “illegal ID-controls” during demonstrations. The human rights organization is doing so in a so-called letter of formal notice, which will be sent on Friday. If the police do not respond to the notice within six weeks, Amnesty International will seek legal advice.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Insight Hungary ☛ Honorary consul of Hungary dismissed after criticizing government

    István Bán, who had served as Hungary’s honorary consul in five Estonian counties since 2006, announced that he had been dismissed from his post due to his support for Ukraine and criticism of the Orban government. In a Facebook post, Bán wrote that his removal was not tied to any breach of rules, but rather his decision to express his opinion. "It wasn't because of my work or because of any violation of the rules. It was because I dared to express my opinion, publicly, using my own name. And when that happened, many remained silent,” he wrote. He also shared a rewritten version of German pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous quote: ”First they silenced those who thought differently, but no one spoke up because it wasn't their turn. Then they took away the mandates from those who raised their voices, but everyone remained silent because they feared for their own.” 

    Speaking to Estonian daily Sakala, Bán said he had consistently expressed his opinion under various governments, but this was the first time he faced repercussions. The Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs communicated the decision to Bán via the ambassador to Estonia, without a written justification. Bán, who held the unpaid, voluntary role for 18 years, said he finds the situation “ridiculous,” adding that there are far more pressing matters than “a single Hungarian in Estonia.” The Hungarian embassy did not respond to Sakala’s inquiries. 

  • Mike Brock ☛ On Wealth Taxes

    Honestly, I was largely opposed to wealth taxes until very recently. But watching the kleptocratic nightmare unfold in Washington has significantly warmed me to Elizabeth Warren’s position. If America’s wealthy don’t want a wealth tax, maybe they shouldn’t convert their wealth into political power. Perhaps they shouldn’t actively participate in corrupting democratic governance. But since that’s exactly what they’re doing—well then, wealth taxes it shall be!

  • The Washington Post ☛ Opinion | The CIA faces a new AI-powered spy game - Washington Post

    The CIA’s technology challenge is a little-noted example of a transformation that’s happening in every area of defense and security. Today, smart machines can outwit humans. I’ve written about the algorithm war that has revolutionized the battlefield in Ukraine, where no soldier is safe from drones and precision-guided missiles. We’ve just seen a similar demonstration of precision targeting in Israel’s war against Iran. For soldiers and spies everywhere, following the old rules can get you killed.

  • Rest of World ☛ Google, Microsoft and Amazon face pressure over data sovereignty

    Countries are forcing tech giants to store citizen data locally, challenging the standard business model of harvesting data abroad while keeping profits at home.

  • Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives ☛ Canada should build public cloud infrastructure rather than relying on U.S. tech giants

    Carney’s statement was easily overlooked given the flood of other news during the election period, but it was important for a number of reasons. Cloud infrastructure has become essential to the modern world and the digital technologies that power it, but it’s often hidden from view and easy to forget about.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Space Force building out more realistic digital training environment

    “This is basically a digital environment at various classification levels that is going to allow us to be able to provide a red threat,” Sejba said during a Mitchell Institute webinar. “We’re bringing units together at Space Flag already and executing within that digital environment.”

  • Semafor Inc ☛ France is investigating X over algorithm enabling ‘foreign interference’

    French prosecutors have launched an investigation into X over allegations that the social media network, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, rigged its algorithms for the purpose of “foreign interference.”

  • The Register UK ☛ Pentagon takes ownership stake in only US rare earth mine

    The Pentagon signed a long-term deal with MP Materials on Thursday to give the company hundreds of millions in investments and loans, as well as $1 billion from JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to fund the construction of a "10X Facility" for rare earth magnet manufacturing. The DoD has also agreed to find a home for 100 percent of the magnets produced at the 10X Facility, either in defense or commercial applications.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Russia's election watchdog and voter rights group disbands

    The Russian independent election monitoring group Golos (Voice) has announced that it is ceasing operations 25 years after its inception. In a statement published on its website, the organization said it had been forced to take this step amid mounting pressure from Russian authorities and Golos members, who face increasing danger.

  • The Strategist ☛ Don’t let Beijing’s AI charm offensive fool us

    There’s one thing China’s ambassador to Australia got right in a call to add artificial intelligence to the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA): ‘China has always viewed Australia and China-Australia relations from a strategic and long-term perspective.’ That long view should concern us deeply because Beijing now is using AI to entangle our economies in ways that could become strategically irreversible.

  • Vox ☛ Trump’s TikTok letters claimed a power even King George didn’t have

    This is called the “dispensing power.” It was an old prerogative of English kings, one in which they could simply assert that the law doesn’t apply to their friends (a power not limited to foreign affairs). Dispensations were basically proactive pardons, telling someone they can feel free to ignore specific laws and never suffer any consequences.

    The dispensation power was so sweeping, and so anti-democratic, that it was abolished by name in the 1689 English Bill of Rights. In 1838, the US Supreme Court ruled that the president does not have dispensing power — a ruling that modern legal scholars across the political spectrum treat as obviously correct.

  • Security Week ☛ TikTok Faces Fresh European Privacy Investigation Over China Data Transfers

    The Data Protection Commission opened the inquiry as a follow up to a previous investigation that ended earlier this year with a 530 million euro ($620 million) fine after it found the video sharing app put users at risk of spying by allowing remote access their data from China.

  • The Record ☛ DeepSeek a threat to national security, warns Czech cyber agency | The Record from Recorded Future News

    Since then it has faced bans and removals from app stories in a number of countries over privacy and security concerns. The Czech Republic on Wednesday announced it too was banning the company’s software on official devices due to security risks.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Why You Should Fear a MAGAfied Fed

    I call this Bessent’s Law because when Trump chose Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary a number of Wall Street people assured us that he was a good, competent choice, someone who would promote sensible policies. But Trump knew his man. In office, Bessent has enthusiastically backed every bit of Trumpian nonsense: Tax cuts pay for themselves, critics of Trump’s trade policy are suffering from “tariff derangement syndrome,” a trillion-dollar reduction in Medicaid isn’t really a benefits cut. Oh, and anyone doing serious analysis of Trump’s policies is just an angry partisan.

    So it doesn’t really matter whether the next Fed chair is Kevin Warsh, Kevin Hassett, Larry Kudlow or the My Pillow guy. For practical purposes Trump will be running the Fed.

    To explain why this should worry everyone, a brief refresher on what the Fed does and why it matters.

  • Bert Hubert ☛ The cloud is not a chemical plant

    There is a lot of recent discussion about digital autonomy and Europe’s “position in the cloud”.

    Here, I want to break down and refute a commonly made argument: that the lead of American cloud providers is so great that we can never catch up. In the recent and excellent policy initiative “Clouds on the Horizon” (by Dutch political parties GL-PvdA and NSC), we can read on page 23 why this can’t be a reason to just give up. If things are as bad as people claim, that is all the MORE reason to get to work.

    But I want to go a step further here. The US cloud providers (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) sell a phenomenal range of services—both in breadth (number of services), technical performance, and scale (billions of dollars per week). But even so, we are not hopelessly lost.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Ukrainian drone secrets ‘stolen by snooping Europeans’

    Instead of funding startups, Mr Knyazhenko called for Western nations to consider financing Ukrainian factories within their own borders.

    “Just finance the factory, and you will have the manufacturer in your country with a really advanced system,” he said. Nobody would try and build an F-16 from scratch, he added, because they would “know it takes so long” and is so hard to do right.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Childhood Shaped by War for Two Ukrainian Brothers

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Conference Commits Over 10 Billion Euros to Ukraine Rebuilding, Italy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] EU Announces 2.3 Billion Euros in Ukraine Reconstruction Support

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] European Leaders Urge Investment in Ukraine Even as War Accelerates, With New Equity Fund Announced

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Kremlin Says the Ukraine Peace Process Has Not Stalled

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy to Hold More Meetings With US Officials in Rome

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] UK to Sign Deal to Supply Air Defence Missiles to Ukraine

    • CBC ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Finland's president on the Ukraine war, golfing with Cheeto Mussolini and elbows up

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] France's Macron, UK's Starmer to Discuss Immigration, Ukraine on Second Day of State Visit

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Kremlin Says It Is 'Calm' Regarding Cheeto Mussolini Criticism of Putin Over Ukraine Talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Pope Leo Meets Zelenskiy, Offers to Host Ukraine Peace Talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Ukraine Arrests Chinese Father and Son, Both Accused of Spying

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy to Meet US Envoy Kellogg in Rome

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini blasts Putin after announcing more weapons to Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini says US will send more weapons to Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Kremlin Says It Will Take Time to Clarify What Weapons US Will Send to Ukraine After Cheeto Mussolini Remarks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Three Men Guilty of UK Arson Attack on Ukraine-Linked Businesses Ordered by Wagner

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] US Envoy Kellogg to Attend Ukraine Aid Conference in Rome

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] Facing Battlefield Setbacks, Ukraine Withdraws From Mine Ban Treaty

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] Her Store in Eastern Ukraine Destroyed for Third Time, Shop Owner Vows to Rebuild

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] Ukraine Says It Struck Chemical Plant in Moscow Region

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-05 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy Says Latest Phone Call With Cheeto Mussolini His Most Productive Yet

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Cabinet to double monthly fees paid by Ukrainian refugees for shelter

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] 'One event' arms pause troubling for Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Ukraine: Discrimination and hope drive LGBTQ+ soldiers

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Ukraine hit by major attack as Cheeto Mussolini says Putin won't 'stop'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Germany's Merz Held Call With Cheeto Mussolini on Ukraine Arms Deliveries

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-03 [Older] Ukraine updates: Zelenskyy in Denmark to discuss cooperation

    • The Local DK ☛ 2025-07-03 [Older] Danish PM says Europe 'not complete' without Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Ukraine updates: Deadly Russian strikes hit Kyiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Rubio Meets Russia's Lavrov in Kuala Lumpur

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Rubio Holds Talks With Russia's Lavrov as Ukraine Tensions Soar

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Russia Blasts Kyiv With Another Missile and Drone Barrage, Killing at Least 2

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Deadly Russian Attack Rocks Kyiv as Ukraine Lobbies for Aid

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Russia's Ryabkov Says Cheeto Mussolini Administration's Contradictory Signals Makes Life Difficult

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-10 [Older] Stavropol Boosts Russian Wheat Hopes Despite Rostov Drought

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] European Court of Human Rights holds Russia accountable for MH17 downing

    • CBC ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Russia unleashes another record drone attack on Ukraine, including near Polish border

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Russia's 'anti-woke visa' woos Western expatriates

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia fires nearly 750 drones and missiles

    • Spiegel ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] NATO's Eastern Flank: Germany's Rising Concerns about Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Europe's Top Rights Court Finds Russia Responsible for Downing of MH17, Rights Abuses in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Russia Attacks Ukraine With 700 Drones After Cheeto Mussolini Vows to Send More Weapons

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Russia Batters Ukraine With More Than 700 Drones, the Largest Barrage of the War, Officials Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Russia Says It Has Evidence Ukraine Has Repeatedly Used Anti-Personnel Landmines

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Russia's Foreign Minister to Visit North Korea, KCNA Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] UK Man on Trial Accused of Offering Minister's Information to Russian Spies

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Russia's top independent election monitor Golos shuts down

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Independent Russian Election Monitoring Group Announces Its Closure After Jailing of Chairman

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Russian Minister Was Implicated in Embezzlement Investigation Before Death, Sources Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Russia's FSB Security Service to Get Its Own Pre-Trial Detention Centres, Deputy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Ukraine Urges Investigation Into Alleged Russian Chemical Weapons Use

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] Dutch F-35s to guard Polish airspace in NATO move against Russian threat

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] Russia: Minister found dead hours after being fired by Putin

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] Explainer-Konstantin Strukov, the Russian Gold Billionaire Facing Russian Asset Seizure

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] Russia's Ex-Minister Found Dead Hours After Being Fired in an Apparent Suicide, Officials Said

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] Sacked Russian Transport Minister Found Dead in His Car With Gunshot Wound

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] Russia's Ex-Minister Found Dead Hours After Being Fired, Investigators Believe He Killed Himself

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] Russia's Former Transport Minister Starovoit Has Shot Himself, Izvestiya Cites Source

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-07 [Older] One Killed, Dozens Wounded in Russian Strikes on Kharkiv in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-06 [Older] Afghanistan: Russia recognizes the Taliban government

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-06 [Older] Russia Downs 120 Ukrainian Drones Overnight, Defence Ministry Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-05 [Older] Ukraine hits Russian airfield day after mass wave of strikes

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-05 [Older] Russian Air Defences Shoot Down Four Drones Headed for Moscow, Mayor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-05 [Older] Ukraine Says It Hit Russian Military Airfield

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-05 [Older] Ukraine Says It Struck a Russian Air Base as Russia Sent Hundreds of Drones Into Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-05 [Older] Ukraine's Top General Warns of Possible New Russian Offensive in Northeast

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Dutch Intelligence Services Say Russia Has Stepped up Use of Banned Chemical Weapons in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Russian Use of Chemical Weapons Against Ukraine 'Widespread', Dutch Defence Minister Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Policeman Injured, Attacker Killed in Southern Russia Assault, Governor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Power Cut for a Time to Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant; Kyiv Blames Russian Strike

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Russia Launches Largest Missile and Drone Barrage on Kyiv Since War in Ukraine Began

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Russian Air Defences Down Dozens of Ukrainian Drones, Including Two Near St Petersburg

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Says Ukraine Will Need Patriot Missiles for Its Defense, Chides Putin

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Ukraine's Drones Damage Power Infrastructure in Sergiyev Posad Near Moscow, Russia Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy Says Interceptors Downed Many Russian Drones Overnight

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-03 [Older] Russia: Is Moscow losing Azerbaijan as an ally?

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Wired ☛ Metadata Shows the FBI’s ‘Raw’ Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Was Likely Modified

    There is no evidence the footage was deceptively manipulated, but ambiguities around how the video was processed may further fuel conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death.

  • The Nation ☛ Sorry, Donald Trump: Many People Are Still Interested in the Jeffrey Epstein Case

    These findings naturally raised questions, since many in Trump’s administration—including FBI director Kash Patel—had previously virulently questioned the claim that Epstein committed suicide and had alleged a government cover-up of his crimes. In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi even told Fox News that Epstein’s client list is “sitting on my desk right now.” She now claims she was merely talking about Epstein’s “file.”

    Steven Nelson queried this about-face and also raised the pertinent point about a statement made by Alex Acosta, who served as labor secretary during Trump’s first term and before that had been the US Attorney in Miami who made a sweetheart deal with Epstein in 2007. When he was being vetted by Trump’s transition team in 2016, Acosta warned them about the Epstein case: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.” Neither Trump nor Bondi was willing to answer the elementary question of which intelligence agency, foreign or domestic, Epstein belonged to.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Former Trump lawyer previously claimed he knows Epstein client list names: ‘But I’m bound by confidentiality’

    “I know the names of the individuals. I know why they’re being suppressed. I know who’s suppressing them,” he said on The Sean Spicer Show on March 19. Spicer shared the comments again on X on Thursday.

  • Axios ☛ How the DOJ's Epstein memo led to a Dan Bongino White House blowup

    Trump dodges Epstein question

  • US News And World Report ☛ Fallout Over Epstein Files Cascades, Roiling Relations Between AG Pam Bondi and FBI's Dan Bongino

    The fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein files flap is cascading, further roiling a Justice Department and FBI that have struggled for months to appease the demands of far-right conservative personalities and influential members of President Donald Trump’s base

  • New Yorker ☛ Why a Devoted Justice Department Lawyer Became a Whistle-Blower

    In short, Reuveni did his job as a government lawyer—and he did so under President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden, and during both Trump Administrations. Until, that is, April 11, 2025, when Reuveni, after nearly fifteen years at the Justice Department, was fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi for failing to “zealously advocate” on behalf of the United States in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported in violation of a court order. Reuveni’s apparent transgression was acknowledging that error in court, but, behind the scenes, there was even more friction, regarding Reuveni’s resistance to making arguments that he considered baseless. “He’s not with our office anymore, and he won’t be coming back,” Bondi said, of Reuveni—who, less than a month earlier, had been promoted to acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation. The White House deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, denounced him as a “saboteur, a Democrat.” In fact, state voter-registration records list Reuveni as unaffiliated.

• Environment

  • New York Times ☛ FEMA Didn’t Answer Thousands of Calls From Flood Survivors, Documents Show

    The lack of responsiveness happened because the agency had fired hundreds of contractors at call centers, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Molly White ☛ Issue 88 – The stockchain

      These companies don’t usually admit that, by encasing stocks in a blockchainy wrapper, they hope to tap into lucrative equities markets while sidestepping the expensive compliance and oversight requirements of traditional American brokerages and exchanges. This fits the long history of companies trying to use blockchains as a magic get-out-of-regulation-free wand, reminiscent of the 2017 bubble when companies used “initial coin offerings” (ICOs) to try to sidestep IPO regulations.d Indeed, Robinhood has been heavily lobbying for “a new regulatory approach [that’s] needed to allow tokenization to flourish” and not “stifle growth and innovation”.1 Regular readers of this newsletter will recognize this language as the standard rhetoric of a [cryptocurrency] company asking for carveouts and exemptions from regulations we collectively learned are necessary, oh, about a century ago — when a speculative bubble emerged around stocks sold to the public based on false or incomplete information and we wound up in the Great Depression.

    • The Register UK ☛ Datacenters feeling the heat as climate risk boils over

      But its analysis leads it to believe that the resilience of many bit barns could be stretched to breaking point when temperatures spike and demand for AI services, data storage, and cloud computing is also high.

      Maplecroft says that 56 percent of the 100 top hubs for bit barns already rate as a "high" or "very high" risk for cooling degree days – an index the biz has created to measure how much and how often temperatures are likely to exceed the threshold triggering cooling requirements for buildings.

    • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Says He's Installing His Racist Grok AI in Teslas "Next Week"

      Why Musk chose to reveal the Tesla integration — which you'd think would be a pretty big deal — in a random tweet replying to one of his sycophants and not during the entire event dedicated to talking about everything new with the chatbot, is anyone's guess.

      But the timing couldn't be worse. In the days leading up to the announcement, Grok became the center of attention for spewing appallingly racist rants that praised Adolf Hitler, disparaged Black and Jewish people, and more. That's also when it repeatedly began styling itself as "MechaHitler," which all evidence suggests is not merely a cheeky reference to the infamous Wolfenstein 3D video game boss.

    • Wired ☛ 5 Big EV Takeaways From Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’

      The bill also put on the chopping block a tax credit to help install at-home electric vehicle charging in the US. The good news is that buyers will have a bit more time to take advantage of this one: It will disappear in June 2026. The credit is only available to people who live in low-income or non-urban places (check if you qualify here), and it covers 30 percent of the installation cost, up to $1,000.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Walrus ☛ Why Everyone You Know Is Suddenly a Birder

      Birding has experienced a surge in popularity over the past decade, in part due to the pandemic, which forced so many of us outside (or to stare through our windows at the world outside) while also illuminating the inequities around access to outdoor spaces. Statistics Canada estimates that in 2021, 11 percent of households participated in birdwatching, and that number is undoubtedly higher today. Technology has certainly made birding more accessible: the free Merlin Bird ID app, developed by Cornell Lab of Ornithology, identifies birds by photos and songs with incredible (but not total) accuracy; the free Audubon Bird Guide app helps build birding skills through identification filters and pointers; Larkwire facilitates learning birdsong through interactive quizzes; and logging sightings in the app eBird turns amateur birders into citizen scientists. In 2024 alone, the Merlin app welcomed 7.5 million new users.

  • Overpopulation

    • Open Caucasus Media ☛ Water supply in Azerbaijan — a story of coordinated corruption and impunity

      ‘In Nardaran, we see water in only two seasons of the year. Only at the end of October do we get drinkable water. This continues until March, but during the hot spring and summer months, we have only our well water for drinking’, a local resident, who asked to remain anonymous due to security concerns, tells OC Media.

    • Overpopulation ☛ For the sake of food security, we must address population numbers

      On World Population Day, Jenny Goldie reminds us that food is humanity’s most basic and most vulnerable necessity, but reducing the number of mouths to feed remains off the food security agenda.

• Finance

  • CBC ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Competition Bureau advances its investigation into Amazon's pricing policy

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-07-08 [Older] Malaysia grapples with growing religious conservatism

  • FAIR ☛ Silky Shah on Mass Deportation

  • FAIR ☛ ‘Media and Corporate Power Structures See Genuine Democracy as a Terrible Danger’: CounterSpin interview with Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon on Mamdani and the Democrats

  • Rlang ☛ Exploring R and Rust in Bioinformatics – Online Developer Forum, 28 July 2025

    Join us for an open developer forum exploring how R and Rust can work together in bioinformatics and Bioconductor development. Organised and hosted by Lluís Revilla (Bioconductor Community Advisory Board), this online session will discuss technical and practical aspects of using Rust alongside R – discussing extendr, Rust-based package development, and real-world use cases. Whether you’re Rust-curious or already experimenting, all are welcome.

  • Michael Tsai ☛ Nvidia’s Market Cap

    These numbers are hard to comprehend. Nvidia is now worth about the same as Apple plus half of Meta—or, alternatively, Alphabet plus Meta—and it’s doubled in the last year.

  • Futurism ☛ We Just Got a Major Clue About Why Twitter's CEO Suddenly Left This Week

    Clues are starting to emerge, however, that she left on less than stellar terms. New reporting from the Wall Street Journal tells a tale of waning influence for Yaccarino, who was "effectively demoted" once X merged with Musk's other company xAI, with current and former employees at the company saying that her job seemed increasingly precarious after clashes with management.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ White House names new official to oversee federal statistical system

    OMB Director Russell Vought on Thursday appointed Mark Calabria as chief statistician, adding to his existing government roles, a senior administration official confirmed to FedScoop on Friday. Calabria is currently a senior economist already working in OMB and at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

    Calabria replaces Karin Orvis, who had served in the role since 2022. The senior official said Orvis is still serving as the branch chief of the statistical policy arm within OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Southern Poverty Law Center President and CEO Margaret Huang resigns

    Bryan Fair, a former board chair and constitutional scholar at the University of Alabama, will succeed Huang as the leader of the organization on an interim basis.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ xAI reportedly raising new funding at up to $200B valuation

    The Financial Times today cited sources as saying that Saudi Arabia’s PIF sovereign wealth fund is expected to play a “large role” in the investment. It’s unclear who are the other investors in the round or how much xAI is seeking to raise.

  • The Register UK ☛ 1,300 Indeed and Glassdoor staff laid off

    "The HR Technology segment of Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd., which operates Indeed and Glassdoor, announced a reduction of approximately 1,300 employees, representing about 6 percent of the segment's total workforce as of April 1, 2025," reads the official statement.

  • Sumana Harihareswara ☛ You Can Just Show Up

    In those three weekends I had probably 30 meaningful conversations with neighbors I hadn't previously known. A few were hostile or frustrating, but those experiences were far outweighed by the substantive and useful conversations I had and the connections I made. What are some likely risks? What specific things can our households do to prepare? What specific actions can we press our local and state governments to do to mitigate risks to us? And, emotionally, it was so nourishing to me, and to the people I spoke with, finding someone in person who also felt some mix of scared/wary/angry/sad/determined/grimly laughing/tender and sharing our spirits with each other.

  • Security Week ☛ EU Unveils AI Code of Practice to Help Businesses Comply With Bloc’s Rules

    The European Union on Thursday released a code of practice on general purpose artificial intelligence to help thousands of businesses in the 27-nation bloc using the technology comply with the bloc’s landmark AI rule book.

  • Wired ☛ Microsoft and OpenAI's AGI Fight Is Bigger Than a Contract

    Let’s dig into the details. Though the precise language hasn’t been made public, sources with knowledge of the contract confirm that The Clause has three parts, each with its own implications.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Musk’s latest Grok chatbot searches for billionaire mogul’s views before answering questions

      The latest version of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok is echoing the views of its billionaire creator, so much so that it will sometimes search online for Musk’s stance on an issue before offering up an opinion.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Misinformation was a problem during the Texas floods. AI chatbots weren’t always helping

      A growing number of Americans are turning to AI chatbots to get news [sic] and fact check during major events such as the Texas floods. Misinformation experts say people should be wary about relying on AI chatbots because they can spew out false or outdated information.

    • The Register UK ☛ UK Online Safety Act 'not up to scratch' on misinformation

      Dame Chi Onwurah MP, chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, said: "It's clear that the Online Safety Act just isn't up to scratch. The government needs to go further to tackle the pervasive spread of misinformation that causes harm but doesn't cross the line into illegality.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Grok Shows How Centralized Tech Can Be Manipulated – Pixel Envy

      I am half compelled by this argument, and half concerned. I obviously believe we should be skeptical of how much trust we place in corporations. After all, they have given us ample reason to be suspicious of them.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ So soft resistance is not a legal concept? Why this is a worrying thought

    This brings us to a rather alarming question: What non-legal means is the government proposing to use?

    A few reminders: We have repeatedly been assured that freedom of expression continues to be protected in Hong Kong. Both the Basic Law and the National Security Law reiterate the point, which is often also made by officials.

  • FAIR ☛ On CNN, LA’s ICE Protesters Were Seen and Not Heard — FAIR

    A FAIR study found that CNN’s primetime coverage of the Los Angeles anti-ICE protests in early June rarely included the voices of the protesters themselves. Instead, the network’s sources were overwhelmingly current and former government and law enforcement officials. The resulting coverage rarely took issue with Trump’s desire to silence the people who were defending their undocumented neighbors—but mainly debated his decision to deploy the California National Guard to do so.

  • RFERL ☛ Nobel Committee ‘Alarmed’ By Threats Against Iranian Activist Mohammadi

    “I have been directly and indirectly threatened with 'physical elimination' by agents of the regime,” Mohammadi was quoted as saying in the statement.

    The warnings, the statement said, made it clear that she would have to agree to cease all public activities within Iran, along with any international advocacy or media appearances promoting democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression.

  • The Register UK ☛ Chinese censorship-busters say Tencent behind shutdown bid

    GreatFire researches China’s censorship efforts and publishes data about the material and apps Beijing blocks. The organization also archives material censored from Chinese websites at sites like FreeWeChat.com, which hosts material it believes authorities removed from Tencent-run WeChat – a messaging service with over a billion users that is ubiquitous in Chinese life.

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ DHS's war on skateboarding

    DHS is urging local police to consider a wide range of protest activity as violent tactics, including mundane acts like riding a bike or livestreaming a police encounter: [...]

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-07-09 [Older] Pakistan Seeks YouTube Ban on More Than Two Dozen Critics, Including Journalists

  • CPJ ☛ Israel arrests Israeli journalist over tweet, opens terrorism investigation

    “Israeli authorities’ arrest of journalist Israel Frey underscores authorities’ growing intolerance of freedom of expression since the start of the war on October 7, 2023,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “Israeli authorities must immediately release Frey and all detained Palestinian journalists, and end their ongoing crackdown on the press and dissenting voices.”

  • CPJ ☛ Kyrgyzstan shutters critical broadcaster Aprel TV for undermining gov’t authority

    “The Kyrgyz authorities must allow Aprel TV to continue its work unhindered and should not contest any appeal of the court’s Wednesday order to shutter the independent broadcaster and terminate its broadcasting and social media operations,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Kyrgyzstan’s international partners – particularly the European Union, whose parliament and member states are in the process of ratifying a new partnership agreement – must hold Kyrgyzstan to account for its spiraling press freedom abuses.”

  • RFA ☛ CCP cheers RFA Cantonese’s demise – Radio Free Asia

    Without assured or consistent Congressional funding being disbursed by the USAGM, RFA’s has shrunk down its operations, with some language services going completely dark. The latest casualty was RFA Cantonese, among the last fiercely independent outlets in Hong Kong. RFA’s reporters have always risked their personal safety to report on what’s being ignored and censored by the CCP-controlled media - just watch this video of our coverage of the HK pro-democracy demonstrations (link HERE) - that is, until last week. Among the mourning were some cheers, notably from the CCP ...

  • Deseret Media ☛ PBS and NPR might be saved from Trump's push for spending cuts

    The Senate is poised to vote on President Donald Trump's rescissions package requesting roughly $9.4 billion in cuts targeting foreign aid as well as federal funding for organizations the White House has accused of being anti-conservative. Tucked in that package is a $1.1 billion cut in spending for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which oversees networks such as PBS and NPR.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Court House News ☛ Nuclear power plants accused of conspiring to suppress employee wages

    The nuclear power plants targeted in the lawsuit collectively produce all the nuclear-generated electricity sold to consumers in the United States and have over 100,000 employees, according to the employees. Among the named defendants are Constellation Energy Corporation, which owns over a quarter of the nation's power plants, Exelon, Entergy and Pacific Gas & Electric.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Trump’s deportations could cost 6M jobs, report finds

    EPI’s analysis found California, Florida, New York and Texas will have the highest number of job losses, because of larger immigrant populations in those states.

    The construction industry will see the biggest drop in employment, with an estimated 861,000 U.S.-born and 1.4 million immigrant jobs lost, according to the analysis. The child care sector is expected to lose half a million jobs.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ AI poses threats of discrimination and violations of civil liberties, ACLU says

    “We’re now at a place where automated systems and AI are being used increasingly throughout our lives, determining who gets a job, who gets a loan, who gets policed and surveilled, and more,” said Marissa Gerchick, a data scientist and algorithmic justice specialist with the ACLU.

    Decision-making algorithms analyze and sort through data, find patterns and make predictions or recommendations. They were built to cut down the amount of time this work is done by humans, and are being widely used across industries — 98% of Fortune 500 companies now use AI tools in their hiring process.

  • Techdirt ☛ Crowd-Sourced ICE Tracking Alerts Aim To Provide Local Communities With Early Warning Of Immigration Raids

    For example, the Stop ICE Raids Alert Network sends and receives warnings about nearby ICE activity using text messages. On its home page, it claims to have over 470,000 subscribers currently. That approach, while effective, might be a little basic for some people, and a number of smartphone apps have been created to meet the need for something more sophisticated. One of them is ICEBlock, which came to the notice of a wider public thanks to a CNN report on 30 June. Its developer, Joshua Aaron, told CNN that his free app was designed to be an early warning system for users when ICE is operating nearby. Its slogan is “See Something, Tap Something”: [...]

  • The Independent UK ☛ Jeff Bezos’ Amazon is purging workers who had status revoked under Trump: report

    Hundreds of employees at a warehouse in West Jefferson, in central Ohio, have lost their jobs as part of the purge. Across the country, thousands of foreign workers have lost their right to live and work in the U.S. and been removed from jobs where they were in high demand.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ Comcast Forced To Retreat From Broadband Data Caps (Sort Of) Due To Competition From 5G Wireless And Community Fiber

    The costly and confusing restrictions serve no legitimate technical function. They don’t help your ISP “manage congestion.” They exist simply as a way for giant companies like Comcast to nickel-and-dime captive customers in uncompetitive broadband markets. Market failure created by their own tireless efforts to kill competition and government oversight.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Techdirt ☛ Prepare For A New Dodgy Trump-Era Tax On Netflix And Other Streaming Services

    Two weeks ago the Supreme Court rejected an effort by a dodgy right wing activists to destroy an $8 billion FCC program that connects poor and rural communities to the internet. The plaintiff in the case, a fake right wing “consumer group,” had tried to argue that the bipartisan subsidy (the Universal Service Fund, or USF) was an “illegal tax” the FCC lacked the authority to charge. They lost the case.

  • CBC ☛ Sports fans 'flabbergasted' after Sportsnet announces double-digit price hike

    Sportsnet is the only streaming service offering many NHL games through the regular season and playoffs. The standard package offers national and regional in-market games, and the premium package adds about 1,000 games from other markets.

  • Middle East Eye ☛ YouTube and Spotify accused of 'censorship' after blocking left-wing folk group in Turkey

    IFOD said in a statement on Friday that at least one of the group's albums had also been blocked on Spotify and Apple Music. A similar request was put to streaming site Deezer, but they refused to comply.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• IP Kat ☛ 2025-07-03 [Older] [Guest Post] [Conference Report] – Botticelli v Warhol – 2025 Cultural Heritage Conference in Florence (Day 2)

• IP Kat ☛ 2025-07-03 [Older] [Guest Post] [Conference Report] – Botticelli v Warhol – 2025 Cultural Heritage Conference in Florence (Day 1)

• Michael Tsai ☛ Apple Wins Dismissal in Payments Conspiracy Lawsuit

  I’ve thought all along that the 0.15% is a really sweet deal for Apple. As far as I’m aware, Google Wallet gets 0%. Of course they wouldn’t put the no-compete stuff in writing, just as the Safari agreement with Google doesn’t specifically prohibit Apple developing its own search engine. In both cases, it probably doesn’t make sense for Apple to do it, and they’re getting paid—one oligopoly to another—for the status quo, so why bother?

• Patents

  • Kangaroo Courts

    • IP Kat ☛ 2025-07-04 [Older] EBA finds that non-reproducible products still form part of prior art (G1/23) [Ed: EBA is a Kangaroo Court of the EPO's President, hence it cannot decide on its own]

• Copyrights

  • Futurism ☛ Clever Jailbreak Makes ChatGPT Give Away Pirated Windows Activation Keys

    A white hat [cracker] has discovered a clever way to trick ChatGPT into giving up Windows product keys, which are the lengthy string of numbers and letters that are used to activate copies of Microsoft's widely used operating system.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Australia's Pirate Site Blocking Regime is Methodical - But is it Fast Enough?

    Some rightsholders in the EU are now demanding blocking of pirated live streams, no later than 10 minutes after notification. In Australia, extreme 'live' blocking doesn't yet exist, but even dynamic blocking delays can be measured in days rather than minutes. A blocking order handed down this week took 90 days to navigate through a system designed to respect everyone's rights. Is that too slow? Or simply how long it takes to get things right.

  • France24 ☛ EU orders AI companies to clean up their act, stop using pirated data

    The General-Purpose AI Code of Practice is voluntarily, but seen as a handbook for companies to abide by the EU's landmark regulation, the AI Act.

    The guidelines cover AI safety, copyright and transparency, and apply to the companies making advanced, generalist AI apps like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Le Chat, developed by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Mistral respectively.