Leftovers

• Eric Bailey ☛ Newsletters that regularly hit my inbox these days

  Email newsletters occupy a comfortable space between the accidental discovery of browsing social media and the intent-driven act of reading a feed of subscribed blog updates. They also breaks up the tedium of staying on top of email, most of which is regrettably transactional at this point.

• Jim Nielsen ☛ Measurement and Numbers

  Wisdom is knowing when to use numbers and when to use something else.

• University of Toronto ☛ Improving my GNU Emacs 'which-key' experience with a Ctrl-h binding

  One of the GNU Emacs packages that I use is which-key (which is now in GNU Emacs v30). I use it because I don't always remember specific extended key bindings (ones that start with a prefix) that are available to me, especially in MH-E, which effectively has its own set of key bindings for a large collection of commands. Which-key gives me a useful but minimal popup prompt about what's available and I can usually use that to navigate to what I want. Recently I read Omar Antolín's The case against which-key: a polemic, which didn't convince me but did teach me two useful tricks in one.

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ Scientists Detect Sign of Something Impossible Out in Deep Space

    Black holes can produce huge, propagating ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves, which were predicted by Einstein back in 1916. Nearly 100 years later, LIGO — which consists of two observatories on opposite corners of the US — made history by making the first ever detection of these cosmic shudders.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Preprints and Journals: A Model Publishing Ecosystem - The Scholarly Kitchen

    It seems each camp is in deep and engaged discussion of their future, but failing to pause and consider a more holistic view of what a publishing ecosystem may look like. And yet the need to focus on a culture of research integrity is something all, at least in principle, can agree on, so why the discord? In essence it boils down to a deep distrust of the for-profit motive, pitted against the ideals of science. While it is certainly true that a for-profit view of science is only one perspective, it is also true that without that, scientific research and the publication of research would not be a successful endeavor. And then again, science should be open and collaborative without the need to consider projected financial gain.

  • One Happy Fellow ☛ Programming Language Theory has a public relations problem

    Programming Language Theory (PLT) is one of my favourite areas of computer science yet I feel it's one of the most misunderstood by outsiders.

    It's full of beautiful constructions and great ideas at the intersection of pure theory and practical applications. And yet outside of the PLT community, it's considered cryptic, hard, useless, not practical. The problems are similar to the public perception of pure maths ("why would I learn it?", "does it have any practical applications?") but somehow even worse.

    How did it happen?

• Career/Education

  • The Nation ☛ The Damage Being Done to the Museums in the Nation’s Capital

    Our art critic visits the Smithsonian American Art Museum to get a closer look at the Trump administration’s attack on DC arts institutions.

  • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ Oklahomans challenging nation’s first religious public school declare victory, end lawsuit

    “The very notion of a religious public school is a legal contradiction in terms,” said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. “We’re pleased that the courts stopped this direct assault on public education and religious freedom. Public schools must remain secular and welcome all students, regardless of faith.”

  • US News And World Report ☛ Trump Sued by US States Over Withholding $6.8 Billion for Schools

    Attorneys general or governors from 24 states and the District of Columbia sued in federal court in Providence, Rhode Island, arguing that the U.S. Department of Education and the Office of Management and Budget threw schools nationwide into chaos by unconstitutionally freezing funding for six programs approved by Congress.

  • Vox ☛ The Supreme Court just handed Trump the biggest victory of his second term, in McMahon v. New York

    The Court’s decision in McMahon v. New York, was handed down on the Court’s “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other expedited matters that the justices often decide without full briefing or oral argument. As is often the case in shadow docket decisions, none of the Republican justices explained their decision. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent, which was joined by both of her fellow Democratic justices.

  • France24 ☛ US Supreme Court clears way for Trump to dismantle Department of Education

    The US Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to move forward with its controversial plan to gut the Department of Education, delivering a major victory to its effort to shrink the federal government's role in public schooling. The Court lifted a lower court's block on mass layoffs and the transfer of key department functions – a move critics say could gut protections for students and disrupt critical funding streams for schools across the country.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ As Michigan scrambles to improve literacy, school librarians are losing their jobs

    “I saw firsthand the impact that having a certified school librarian in the school with an active school library had for students,” Koleszar said. “It helps literacy. It helps them with proper research, it helps them to go through the best sources. It connects them to the best possible information, especially in an age when misinformation is just running rampant.”

  • Crooked Timber ☛ Attention is All You Need — Crooked Timber

    This collapse is increasingly obvious; recent high-profile midbrow examples include Chris Hayes’ book (best experienced through the medium of an Ezra Klein podcast) and Derek Thompson’s report on the end of reading:

    "“What do you mean you don’t read books?” And they go, “Well, we just studied Animal Farm in our class, and we read excerpts of Animal Farm and watched some YouTube videos about it.” And I basically lose my mind. I’m like, Animal Farm is a children’s parable. It’s like 90 pages long."

    But we still don’t know how bad things really are — for two reasons: [...]

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Smart Coffee Table To Guide Your Commute

    One of the simple pleasures of life is enjoying a drive to work… only to get stuck in traffic that you could’ve known about if you just checked before your daily commute. Who are we kidding? There’s almost nothing worse. [Michael Rechtin] saw this as a great opportunity to spruce up his living room with something practical, a coffee table that serves as a traffic map of Cincinnati.

  • Hackaday ☛ 2025 One Hertz Challenge: Ham Radio Foxhunt Transmitter

    [Jim Matthews] submitted their Ham Radio foxhunt transmitter project for the 2025 One Hertz Challenge.

  • Hackaday ☛ Hurdy-posting Continues With The Balfolk Boombox, A Synth Gurdy

    The Hurdy-Gurdy continues to worm its way into pole position as the hacker’s instrument. How else could you explain a medieval wheel fiddle being turned into a synthesizer? Move over, keytar — [Rory Scammell]’s Balfolk Boombox is the real deal.

  • Hackaday ☛ From Leash To Locomotion: CARA The Robotic Dog

    Normally when you hear the words “rope” and “dog” in the same sentence, you think about a dog on a leash, but in this robot dog, the rope is what makes it move, not what stops it from going too far. [Aaed Musa]’s latest project is CARA, a robotic dog made mostly of 3D printed parts, with brushless motors and ropes used to tie the motors and legs together.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Antivaxxers will testify before a Senate committee…again

    As I said yesterday, I’m in a place where I think I can try to resurrect this blog again. Truth be told, I’ve missed commenting on areas that I normally like to apply Insolence to, be it Respectful or Not-So-Respectful. More importantly, since Donald Trump was elected President again last November and longtime antivax activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became Secretary of Health and Human Services and his sycophants, toadies, and lackeys were installed to run the Food and Drug Administration (Dr. Marty Makary), the National Institutes of Health (Dr. Jay Bhattacharya), and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services (America’s Quack Dr. Mehmet Oz), there’s just so much to comment on where I think I can make a tiny difference that it’s been frustrating these last few months to be limited to once a week over at my not-so-super-secret other blog. (Or maybe I have way too inflated an opinion of myself and my own importance, conflating my need to blog with your need to read my blogs. I don’t know.) But where to start?

  • Shameless self-promotion better late than never: Anti-Vax America

    I can’t believe that it’s been a month since I last posted here. Realizing that led me to decided I need to get off my posterior and resurrect this blog. I also can’t believe that it’s been nearly a month since a podcast for which I was interviewed went live. I figured that a good way to try to get things rolling would be by promoting my appearance last month on the podcast It Could Happen Here, which last week ran a five part series, Anti-Vax America. It Could Happen Here is a really good podcast, one that I listen to on a regular basis, if not catching every episode. (But, then, I don’t catch every episode of any podcast that I follow.)

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Air Force rolls out gender-neutral fitness test for EOD technicians

    Air Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal, or EOD, technicians will take a new gender- and age-neutral fitness test starting next month, the service has announced, with a medicine ball toss, a powerlift and a dynamic drill with 80-lbs of weight known as the Gruseter.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Regrowing hearing cells: New gene functions discovered in zebrafish offer clues for future hearing loss treatments

    David Raible, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Washington who studies the zebrafish lateral line sensory system, commented on the significance of the new study. "This work illuminates an elegant mechanism for maintaining neuromast stem cells while promoting hair cell regeneration. It may help us investigate whether similar processes exist or could be activated in mammals."

• Proprietary

  • Scoop News Group ☛ House passes bill to formalize NTIA’s cyber role following Salt Typhoon attacks

    The National Telecommunications and Information Administration Organization Act cleared the House via voice vote and is now teed up for Senate consideration — the same position the bill found itself in last year before stalling out in the upper chamber.

  • The Record ☛ Exploited Wing file transfer bug risks ‘total server compromise,’ CISA warns | The Record from Recorded Future News

    On Monday, the Shadowserver Foundation said it saw about 2,000 Wing FTP Server instances exposed to the [Internet], including hundreds in the U.S. and Europe. Shadowserver said it has seen exploitation attempts since the start of July.

  • Macworld ☛ These fully working Mac emulators will waste hours of your day

    The emulators have been around for a few years at Infinite Mac, but on Frame of preference, they are presented in a fun, new way with the original Macintosh designs. While you’re playing around with the emulators, be sure to read Wichary’s commentary, as there are loads of interesting insights into software design and aesthetics.

  • The Register UK ☛ Google tangled up in $600m Chromebook corruption probe

    Earlier this year, Indonesia’s Attorney General announced an investigation into why authorities chose Chromebooks as client devices when a pilot of the machines pointed out they’re not useful without reliable [Internet] connections – a situation that’s common across Indonesia.

  • Android Police ☛ Google says ChromeOS will merge into Android

    Rumors in late 2024 claimed Google was planning to merge ChromeOS with Android. At the time, a report suggested the company would undertake a "multi-year project to fully transition ChromeOS into Android," though it never officially announced this. That's changing now, with a high-level Google executive confirming the move.

  • PC World ☛ How I convinced a Windows fan to buy a Chromebook

    Long story short: it worked! I got through to him. He raised some good points, mind you, but a lot of them were misconceptions rooted in outdated Chromebook myths. Here’s how our conversation went and what I said to him to change his mind.

  • The Gamer ☛ Perfect Dark Might Be Cancelled, But Arkane's Blade Could Still Save Xbox

    Arkane’s already been hit by Microsoft layoffs once before, when Arkane Austin was closed after the dismal performance of Redfall, another vampire Arkane game. Understandably, considering the studio’s long silence since announcing Blade, it’s hard not to feel a little antsy.

  • Patch ☛ 🌱 Patch AM: Microsoft layoffs hit Bellevue workforce

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • 404 Media ☛ Swedish Prime Minister Pulls AI Campaign Tool After It Was Used to Ask Hitler for Support

      Sweden's Moderate party allowed users to make the PM hold a sign bearing any name they wanted. You know what happened next.

    • The Verge ☛ Elon Musk’s AI bot adds a ridiculous anime companion with ‘NSFW’ mode

      Ani also has what TestingCatalog describes as an “NSFW” mode where the character wears lingerie. (And just a warning: if you search for posts about the characters on X, you’ll probably come across NSFW videos.)

    • Drew Breunig ☛ Delegation is the AI Metric that Matters

      Delegations signal improvements in models, better applications, or increased user trust (or, occasionally, user laziness).

      User delegation is not just a valuable key metric for product owners. It’s also central to the societal question about which decisions we’re comfortable delegating to AI.

    • The Revelator ☛ How to Get AI Out of Your Google Search Results

      A few weeks ago, I wrote an editorial discouraging environmentalists from using generative AI programs like ChatGPT due to their extraordinary energy and water consumption. If you care about the planet, I argued, you shouldn’t use such climate-damaging systems.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Grok Adds Pornographic Anime Girlfriend, Lands $200M Defense Contract

      There’s never a dull moment with Grok, the chatbot from Elon Musk‘s xAI, which he has consistently called the “smartest” AI in existence despite its forays into racial conspiracy theories, tendency to speak in the first person as Musk himself, and recent output of what it termed “Hitler fanfic.”

    • Daniel Stenberg ☛ Death by a thousand slops

      On HackerOne the users get their reputation lowered when we close reports as not applicable. That is only really a mild “threat” to experienced HackerOne participants. For new users on the platform that is mostly a pointless exercise as they can just create a new account next week. Banning those users is similarly a rather toothless threat.

      Besides, there seem to be so many so even if one goes away, there are a thousand more.

    • Security Week ☛ Grok-4 Falls to a Jailbreak Two Days After Its Release

      The Echo Chamber jailbreak attack was described on June 23, 2025. xAI’a latest Grok-4 was released on July 9, 2025. Two days later it fell to a combined Echo Chamber and Crescendo jailbreak attack.

    • Wired ☛ AI 'Nudify' Websites Are Raking in Millions of Dollars

      An analysis of 85 nudify and “undress” websites—which allow people to upload photos and use AI to generate “nude” pictures of the subjects with just a few clicks—has found that most of the sites rely on tech services from Google, Amazon, and Cloudflare to operate and stay online. The findings, revealed by Indicator, a publication investigating digital deception, say that the websites had a combined average of 18.5 million visitors for each of the past six months and collectively may be making up to $36 million per year.

    • Ruben Schade ☛ Ask Ruben: do you use LLMs to write posts?

      Regarding LLMs, it’s a matter of taste. Also for ethical, moral, legal, environmental, and financial reasons, but you and I likely don’t see eye to eye if you’re asking.

    • Alisa Sireneva ☛ "AI discourse" is a joke

      The question is not whether AI can generate garbage, but whether we consider this low quality acceptable. If you follow the “fuck it, we ball” attitude, then you’ll found a startup, hire juniors, and use LLMs. If you’re not a technocrat, you won’t be the first to market, but you’ll build a product that actually works, and you’ll do that by hiring experienced devs and avoiding vibecoding.

      This topic is fundamentally philosophical (will you focus on the far future or only the present?), ethical (will you do the right thing if you’re punished for it?), economical (how much are you willing to decrease quality to increase profits?), and political (should we correct for these externalities?). It’s absolutely not a coincidence that those pushing LLMs are typically centrist or right, and leftists tend to avoid them. The war on AI is all but a proxy war for moral compasses.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Register UK ☛ Someone hijacked Elmo's X account to post antisemitic rants

      They also referred to Trump as a "child f*cker," and demanded the president "release the files," referring to the Jeffrey Epstein criminal investigation. Those posts have since been removed.

• Pseudo-Open Source

  • Openwashing

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Zuckerberg used open source to scale AI - now the lock-in begins

      Critics who’ve accused Meta of “open-source washing” were right to believe this wasn’t going to last. Zuckerberg softened his stance on the issue already last year, telling the Dwarkesh Patel podcast that it was wrong to be “dogmatic” about open-source software and that if it became irresponsible to give his AI away in the future, “then we won’t”.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • India Times ☛ Meta investors, Zuckerberg to square off at $8 billion trial over alleged privacy violations

      The case dates back to 2018, after it emerged that data from millions of Facebook users was accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump's successful campaign for US president in 2016.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Epstein Fracture: How Narrative Collapse Reveals the Path to Democratic Resistance

    But the fracture this created within Trump’s coalition reveals something far more devastating than broken promises—it suggests Trump himself may be desperately trying to cover up the very corruption he promised to expose.

    What we’re witnessing isn’t just political disagreement—it’s the inevitable collapse of a fascist coalition built on shared lies rather than shared principles, combined with the dawning realization among Trump’s supporters that they may have been manipulated by someone protecting the network they thought he was fighting.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Greece Is Shutting the Door to Refugees

    The suspended examination of asylum applications concerns all arrivals departing from Northern Africa via a route increasingly used by people trying to reach Europe. The Greek government reported that over 7,000 people arrived via this route in just ten days — and termed this a “state of emergency.”

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Allies Of the Billionaires

    In this post I offered a brief history of the efforts by the filthy rich to destroy the New Deal. Under Trump those attacks are now aimed at democracy. This post lays out the field of conflict between the filthy rich and normal people. Who are the allies of the filthy rich, and what can we do with that information?

  • The Register UK ☛ Iran seeks three cloud providers to power its government

    The org recently posted a notification of its desire to evaluate, grade, and rank cloud players to assess their suitability to host government services.

  • Hiiraan Online ☛ Clan militia urged to regroup after Al-Shabaab captures key Hiiraan town

    Al-Shabab fighters seized the strategic crossroads town of Moqokori in central Hiiraan this week, a loss a former Somali National Army commander called both a tactical setback and a psychological blow to the Hawadle clan militia that has led community resistance.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ The role of Mosque planning rows in Britain’s Islam debate

    There’s a long tradition of remodelling disused churches and other buildings. As the number of Muslims increases it seems likely there will be greater demand for additional, dedicated places of worship. According to the 2021 census, there were 3.8 million Muslims living in England, or 6.7 per cent of the population, up from 4.9 per cent in 2011.

  • NPR ☛ Despite ongoing Taliban threats, the U.S. is ending some protections for Afghans

    A 2024 United Nations report found that 23.7 million people — over half of the population — required humanitarian assistance last year. In addition, Secretary Marco Rubio terminated all but two State Department and USAID programs in Afghanistan, one of which expires at the end of June. In total, 22 programs worth nearly $1.03 billion were shuttered, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

    Responding to the DHS claim that Afghanistan has had an "improved security situation" Feraji says over a dozen terrorist organizations — including Al Qaeda and ISIS — now operate freely within Afghanistan.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Futurism ☛ Musk Questions Why Trump Won't Release Epstein Files

    The ludicrous attempt to dismiss the extremely hot-button topic — a textbook case of the Streisand effect — didn't sit well with his supporters, causing him to get "ratioed" on his own social media platform, racking up so many more comments than likes that it set an all-time record.

  • Futurism ☛ Metadata From the "Raw" Epstein Video Shows Something Extremely Sketchy

    After Wired reporters and independent experts reviewed its metadata, however, a more complicated story emerged: that the video appears to have been modified from its initial form, likely using Adobe's Premiere Pro video editing software.

• Environment

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Investors bet on Zambian copper despite US tariffs

    Canadian mining company Barrick is pushing ahead with a $2 billion expansion of its copper operations in Zambia, its CEO said, stressing his bullish stance on the metal’s prospects despite looming US tariffs.

  • New York Times ☛ Meta Built a Data Center Next Door. The Neighbors’ Water Taps Went Dry.

    The Morrises’ experience is one of a growing number of water-related issues around Newton County, which is a one-and-a-half-hour drive east of Atlanta and has a population of about 120,000 people. As tech giants like Meta build data centers in the area, local wells have been damaged, the cost of municipal water has soared and the county’s water commission may face a shortage of the vital resource.

  • CBC ☛ Wildfire smoke puts Toronto among worst in the world for air quality; weather alerts in place

    Smoke from forest fires over northern Ontario and the Prairies is expected to cause or is causing poor air quality and reduced visibility, Environment Canada says.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hackaday ☛ What Will It Take To Restore A Serious Flight Simulator?

      [Jared] managed to find a professional FAA-certified flight simulator at an auction (a disassembled, partial one anyway) and wondered, what would it take to rebuild it into the coolest flight sim rig ever?

    • Wired ☛ GM’s Final EV Battery Strategy Copies China’s Playbook: Super Cheap Cells

      GM has stated today it will build low-cost lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells in Spring Hill, Tennessee, starting in late 2027. Conversion of cell lines to produce that chemistry will begin later this year. The cell plant at the Spring Hill complex is owned and operated by Ultium Cells, GM’s joint-venture battery company with LG Energy Solution. A GM assembly plant in the same complex builds the Cadillac Lyriq and Acura ZDX electric SUVs.

    • The Register UK ☛ US railroad industry's outdate radio protocol is vulnerable

      Commonly referred to as FRED, for the post-caboose Flashing Rear-End Device that now sits at the back of freight trains and transmits data to the locomotive using the protocol, the system uses an old BCH checksum to create packets that, since the age of software-defined radios, can be easily spoofed.

    • Silicon Angle ☛ Meta to invest ‘hundreds of billions’ in new multi-gigawatt AI data centers

      The first data center cluster that the company is building as part of the project is called Prometheus. According to Zuckerberg, it’s set to launch next year and will consume multiple gigawatts of power. One gigawatt corresponds to the electricity use of about one million households.

    • The Local SE ☛ Switzerland's SBB plans new night train to Copenhagen and Malmö

      The Swiss government has outlined plans to provide 1.2 million francs in subsidies this year, increasing this to 8.9 million francs in 2026 when the service starts running, with a similar amount then earmarked each year between 2027-2030

    • India Times ☛ Meta's Zuckerberg pledges hundreds of billions for AI data centers in superintelligence push

      Its first multi-gigawatt data center, dubbed Prometheus, is expected to come online in 2026, while another, called Hyperion, will be able to scale up to 5 gigawatts over the coming years, Zuckerberg said in a post on his Threads social media platform.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ California is set to become the first US state to manage power outages with AI

      At the DTECH Midwest utility industry summit in Minneapolis on July 15, CAISO is set to announce a deal to run a pilot program using new AI software called Genie, from the energy-services giant OATI. The software uses generative AI to analyze and carry out real-time analyses for grid operators and comes with the potential to autonomously make decisions about key functions on the grid, a switch that might resemble going from uniformed traffic officers to sensor-equipped stoplights.

      But while CAISO may deliver electrons to cutting-edge Silicon Valley companies and laboratories, the actual task of managing the state’s electrical system is surprisingly analog.

  • Overpopulation

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Delhi water supply to be streamlined zone-wise, says govt

      The Delhi Jal Board (DJB) is working on a policy to deploy private operators to manage water and sewage services by carving the Capital into eight zones—on the lines of reforms by power distribution companies—with a sharp focus on curbing 50-52% water supply loss, senior government functionaries said on Monday.

• Finance

  • HT Digital Streams Ltd ☛ Layoff riddle: Why are companies getting worse at letting employees go?

    Last week’s jobs numbers in the US may have shown a drop in the number of pink slips hitting workers’ desks in May, but don’t be fooled: Layoffs are alive and well in 2025. In the first half of the year, employers in America let go of nearly 745,000 people, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That’s the second-highest number for the period since 2009—surpassed only by the first six months of 2020, when covid essentially shut down the global economy.

  • The Olympian ☛ Microsoft announced 9,000 layoffs. What does that mean for WA state?

    The software company contends it’s boosting its agility by trimming down layers with fewer managers, cuts that coincide with recent investments in AI. The most recent round of layoffs amount to less than 4% of Microsoft’s global workforce.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • IT Wire ☛ iTWire - Airtel chooses Ericsson core for Fixed Wireless Access in India

    Indian telecoms multinational Bharti Airtel has chosen Ericsson provide the core network for the telco’s rollout of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services in India.

  • The Verge ☛ US government announces $200 million Grok contract a week after ‘MechaHitler’ incident

    xAI is one of several leading AI companies to receive the award, alongside Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. But the timing of the announcement is striking given Grok’s recent high-profile spiral, which drew congressional ire and public pushback. The use of technology, and especially AI, in the defense space has long been a controversial topic even within the tech industry, and Musk’s prior involvement in slashing federal government contracts through his work at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) still raises questions about potential conflicts — though his relationship with President Donald Trump has more recently soured, and Trump’s administration has claimed Musk would step back from any potential conflicts while at DOGE.

  • The Local SE ☛ 'Awesome people get pushed away': What's happening in the Swedish gaming industry?

    For years, gaming has been one of Sweden's largest exports, with the gaming industry employing thousands in recent years. Many of those are international workers on work permits. We spoke to some of them to get an insider's perspective on what's happening in the industry.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Microsoft South Africa to get new MD as Lillian Barnard moves to regional role

    Lillian Barnard, president of Microsoft Africa and acting MD of Microsoft South Africa, is relinquishing both roles after being named as the new head of the software giant’s enterprise partner solutions business in the Middle East and Africa.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Record ☛ Russia-linked group spoofing European journalists to spread disinformation

      A Kremlin-linked disinformation group has been impersonating real journalists and publishing fake articles on spoofed news websites to spread false narratives in France, Armenia, Germany, Moldova and Norway, researchers have found.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • JURIST ☛ Pakistan dispatch: Islamabad court targets Pakistan’s last social control media outlet for dissent with YouTube censorship order

    Abu Bakar Khan is a JURIST staff correspondent and lawyer based in Pakistan.   Pakistan’s information and freedom of speech landscape has steadily narrowed over the past several years as the state began systematically removing independent voices from television channels and newspaper columns.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Censorship for Citizenship

    If anyone believed him at the time, they should be disabused by now. One of his most brazen attacks on freedom of speech thus far came this past weekend, when the president said that he was thinking about stripping a comedian of her citizenship—for no apparent reason other than that she regularly criticizes him.

  • CPJ ☛ Senegalese commentator arrested, prime minister calls for media boycott

    “These charges represent an escalation in the government’s punitive attitude toward the media and promote a dangerous conflation between the press and the political opposition,” said Moussa Ngom, CPJ’s Francophone Africa representative. “Senegalese authorities must release news commentators Badara Gadiaga, Abdou Nguer, and Bachir Fofana, and refrain from reprisals against the media for their criticism. Alleged press offenses should not be criminalized.”

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ 14 independent publishers to join alternative book festival

    A total of 14 independent publishers will take part in an alternative book festival this week after some of them were barred from participating in Hong Kong’s official book fair, which opens on Wednesday.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Islamophobia codes would bring back blasphemy laws

    Similarly, it may be that some people angry about the “grooming gangs” hate Muslims; but it is also the case that fear of being called Islamophobic prevented proper investigation of the gangs for many years. Does Mr Grieve really want to help cover-up?

    Let me make a proposition: too many Muslim leaders in this country are over-sensitive to criticism of their faith and of them. Does that make me Islamophobic?

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ South Africa begins complex job of overhauling media laws

    This is the third version of the document (read it here), with the first and second editions published in 2020 and 2023, respectively, and brings much needed momentum to updating the policy landscape of South Africa’s broadcasting sector.

  • The Hindu ☛ Anti-sacrilege bill likely to tabled in Punjab Assembly

    The draft bill may propose life imprisonment for sacrilege acts against religious scriptures, sources said.

    There may also be a provision for setting up special courts to deal with cases pertaining to desecration of scriptures. There will be no parole for those guilty of sacrilege acts, they further said.7

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Press freedom groups condemn hearing, demand release of Georgian journalist Mzia Amaglobeli 

    Monday’s court hearing in the case of Georgian journalist Mzia Amaglobeli shows the disproportionate and politicized nature of the charges against her and she must be released immediately, said three international press freedom organizations whose representatives monitored the proceedings.

  • 404 Media ☛ The Media's Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work

    But pivoting to AI is not a business strategy. Telling journalists they must use AI is not a business strategy. Partnering with AI companies is a business move, but becoming reliant on revenue from tech giants who are creating a machine that duplicates the work you’ve already created is not a smart or sustainable business move, and therefore it is not a smart business strategy. It is true that AI is changing the internet and is threatening journalists and media outlets. But the only AI-related business strategy that makes any sense whatsoever is one where media companies and journalists go to great pains to show their audiences that they are human beings, and that the work they are doing is worth supporting because it is human work that is vital to their audiences. This is something GQ’s editorial director Will Welch recently told New York magazine: “The good news for any digital publisher is that the new game we all have to play is also a sustainable one: You have to build a direct relationship with your core readers,” he said.

  • The Hindu ☛ The Hindu journalist receives ITFoK media award for best reporting 

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Site36 ☛ Maja T. stops hunger strike: Following 40 days, their state of health was life-threatening

    Even a cardiac arrest could no longer be ruled out: Maja T. ended their refusal to eat in a Hungarian prison hospital. The German Foreign Minister announced a new initiative to speak with Hungary. After 40 days without solid food, the German citizen Maja T. has ended their hunger strike in Hungarian custody.

  • Cherokee Phoenix ☛ ‘We didn’t kill enough Indians’: Ann Coulter comments nothing new

    “Coulter’s statement, on its face, is a despicable rhetorical shot trained on the First Peoples of this continent, designed to dehumanize and diminish us and our ancestors and puts us at risk of further injury,” Hoskin posted on Facebook. “We have faced enough of that since this country’s founding. Such rhetoric has aided and abetted the destruction of tribes, their life ways, languages and cultures, the violation of treaty rights, violence, oppression, suppression and dispossession.”

    Political leaders calling for genocide of Native people and decrying their complete eradication is nothing new to Indigenous people. Hoskin referenced President Andrew Jackson as a former leader who might have agreed with Coulter if he were alive today. Jackson has long been considered to have demonstrated hostility to tribes having championed the Indian Removal Act of 1820, which led to the forced removal of eastern tribes from their homelands to Indian Territory (today Oklahoma).

  • Law Society Gazette ☛ Solicitor held in contempt to face SDT hearing

    McKeeve, who is no longer with Jones Day, was fined £25,000 for contempt following a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice. Passing judgment, Mr Justice Adam Johnson described his actions as a ‘spontaneous act of colossal stupidity’ but said they did not warrant a custodial sentence.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ Help shape Internet number resource policy at APNIC 60 in Da Nang!

    The Asia Pacific Internet community is getting ready for APNIC 60, taking place from 4 to 11 September 2025 at the Furama Resort in Da Nang, Viet Nam. This major event is your chance to help shape the policies that govern how Internet number resources — IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) — are managed across our region.

  • RIPE ☛ RIPE NCC Days Chișinău

    Our latest RIPE NCC Days event took place in Chișinău, Moldova from 18-19 June 2025. At the meeting, we heard from local community leaders and examined the landscape of the Internet in Moldova and its neighbours.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ Don’t publish your podcast only on Spotify ⁄ Manual do Usuário

    After publishing the first episode, Spotify displays a message about the RSS feed and the show’s unavailability on other apps.

    They could do better, highlighting the Enable RSS button instead of Done and using a more understandable label. (How many people know what “RSS” is?)

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• India Times ☛ LinkedIn settles antitrust lawsuit, agrees to contracting changes

  LinkedIn was accused in the 2022 lawsuit of illegally fashioning some business contracts to bar third-parties from competing with the company, allowing it to overcharge for premium services and upgraded account features.

• Open Web Advocacy ☛ Apple’s Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

  TL;DR: Apple’s rules and technical restrictions are blocking other browser vendors from successfully offering their own engines to users in the EU. At the recent Digital Markets Act (DMA) workshop, Apple claimed it didn’t know why no browser vendor has ported their engine to iOS over the past 15 months. But the reality is Apple knows exactly what the barriers are, and has chosen not to remove them.

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Digital Camera World ☛ GoPro tries using patent courts to block Insta360 – and both sides claim a win!

      Worryingly for users of any brand except GoPro, it seems that the company is gaining sympathy for patents that essentially argue that GoPro can exclusively have control over the idea of action cameras and electronic image stabilization.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • India Times ☛ Mexican voice actors demand regulation on AI voice cloning

      From the Monument to the Revolution in downtown Mexico City, dozens of audiovisual professionals held signs, including ones that read: "I don't want to be replaced by AI." "We are requesting that the voice be considered a biometric so that it is protected," Lili Barba, president of the Mexican Association of Commercial Announcements, told AFP.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Meta Snaps Up 'Conversational Voice AI' Startup PlayAI

      Now today, Meta has confirmed its acquisition of PlayAI. According to an internal memo reported by Bloomberg, the entire PlayAI will be joining Meta. The memo states, “PlayAI’s work in creating natural voices, along with a platform for easy voice creation, is a great match for our work and roadmap across AI characters, Meta AI, wearables, and audio content creation. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

    • International Business Times ☛ Is Ozzy Osbourne Dying and Set to Be 'Euthanised'? Kelly Osbourne Slams AI Hoax—'That's Not My Dad!'

      'So, there's this video going around on social media, and it's supposed to be my dad, but it's AI,' she told her followers, visibly frustrated. 'It has a voice like my dad's — David Attenborough or something — and it starts out saying, 'I don't need a doctor to tell me that I'm going to die.''

• Copyrights

  • Digital Music News ☛ Warner Music Is Hiring 'AI Automation & Growth' Analysts

    This move comes as WMG continues to reallocate resources following layoffs that were part of a broader $300 million cost-cutting initiative. While the company has not directly linked the new role to these cuts, the timing suggests a strategic pivot towards automation and AI as a way to drive future growth. The job listing seems to reflect that, stating “you’ll be joining a team that’s building the future of how Warner Music Group operates.”

  • Digital Music News ☛ Velvet Sundown Loses Spotify Uploads Amid Possible Crackdown

    And given the commercial consequences of losing listeners and royalties to an endless sea of machine-made music, it’s safe to say there was some Velvet Sundown pushback despite an initial wave of nonchalant (or nonexistent) responses.

    As for what the future holds for AI on streaming, we’re once again heavy on questions and light on answers. Of course, Velvet Sundown’s Spotify pulldown doesn’t exactly bode well for forthcoming AI releases, which may well spread out across multiple “artist” profiles as opposed to dropping via a small group of accounts.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Helix IPTV Owner Sentenced to 3 Years Prison For Piracy & Money Laundering

    Arrested in 2019 following an investigation by the UK's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, the former owner of pirate IPTV service Helix Hosting has just been sentenced to three years in prison by a court in the UK. Stephen Woodward, 36, reportedly generated around £1 million in revenue from three services, with offending that reportedly continued after his initial arrest.