Leftovers

• Mat Duggan ☛ Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

  Greenland is a complicated topic here in Denmark. The former colony that is still treated a bit like a colony is something that inspires a lot of emotions. Greenland has been subjected to a lot of unethical experiments by Denmark, from taking their kids to wild experiments in criminal justice. But there is also a genuine pride a lot of people have here for the place and you run into Danes who grew up there more often than I would have guessed.

• Science

  • IBM ☛ How the von Neumann bottleneck is impeding AI computing

    While von Neumann architecture creates a bottleneck for AI computing, for other applications, it’s perfectly suited. Sure, it causes issues in model training and inference, but von Neumann architecture is perfect for processing computer graphics or other compute-heavy processes. And when 32- or 64-bit floating point precision is called for, the low precision of in-memory computing isn’t up to the task.

    “For general purpose computing, there's really nothing more powerful than the von Neumann architecture,” said Burr. Under these circumstances, bytes are either operations or operands that are moving on a bus from a memory to a processor. “Just like an all-purpose deli where somebody might order some salami or pepperoni or this or that, but you're able to switch between them because you have the right ingredients on hand, and you can easily make six sandwiches in a row.” Special-purpose computing, on the other hand, may involve 5,000 tuna sandwiches for one order — like AI computing as it shuttles static model weights.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ MAHA and the End of American Modernity

    Dressed up as a health crusade, MAHA is a proxy for a larger right-wing revolt against science, technology, and public institutions. It fuses lifestyle rebellion with policy agendas that hollow out the emancipatory promises of modernity.

  • Wired ☛ 5 More Physics Equations Everyone Should Know

    In the five equations below, I’m going to explain the relationships they describe—what they mean. We’re not going to grind through any derivations, so don’t worry, there’s no math required!

• Career/Education

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Massachusetts MCAS tests: sorry kid, AI says ‘fail’

    This year, about 1,400 essays got bizarrely wrong scores and had to be reassessed. You guessed it — a contractor scored them with AI!

    The contractor, Cognia, got $36.5 million this year to mark essays, and they did that by just throwing them into the chatbot.

  • Boston Globe ☛ More than 1,000 MCAS essays scored incorrectly due to AI mishap

    The usage of AI to score MCAS essays is relatively new and scores the tests based on human-scored exemplar essays. After being scored by AI, 10% of MCAS essays are also scored by a human to compare scores and check for discrepancies, a DESE spokesperson said.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Futurism ☛ Medical Examiners Found Something Grim About the Brain of the Gunman Who Shot Up the NFL Building

    After taking his own life, the 27-year-old Tamura left behind a note that expressed anger at the National Football League. The former player accused the NFL of hiding the effects of CTE in favor of profits. He also asked for his brain to be studied and therefore chose to shoot himself in the chest, not the head.

• Proprietary

  • Lee Peterson ☛ There’s now no reason for me to own an Xbox

    I’m amazed at how much Microsoft are throwing those of us who invested in the Xbox Series X under the bus and they have now taken away my only reason to own one.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Lionsgate's Attempt to Create Movies Using AI Has Crumbled Into Disaster

      It sounds great in theory. But in practice, it’s been a slowly unfolding disaster, reports The Wrap, with copyright woes and the tech’s fundamental shortcomings coming to bear on development. More damningly, even an entire studio’s worth of movies as training data hasn’t been enough to make an AI model that’s worthy of ripping them off.

    • The Wrap ☛ Lionsgate's Runway AI Deal Runs Into Problems

      Then there’s the thorny issue of copyright protections, both for talent involved with the films being used to train those AI models, and for the content being generated on the other end. The inherent legal ambiguity of AI work likely has studio lawyers urging caution as the boundaries of what can legally be done with the technology are still being established.

      “In the movie and television industry, each production will have a variety of interested rights holders,” said Ray Seilie, attorney at Kinsella Holley Iser Kump Steinsapir LLP. “Now that there’s this tech where you can create an AI video of an actor saying something they did not say, that kind of right gets very thorny.”

    • [Old] InfoWorld ☛ AI coding tools can slow down seasoned developers by 19%

      “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,” the study said. “Surprisingly, we find that when developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without — AI makes them slower.”

      The perception gap runs deep

      Perhaps most striking is the disconnect between perception and reality. Before starting the study, developers predicted AI tools would reduce their completion time by 24%. Even after experiencing the actual slowdown, participants estimated that AI had improved their productivity by 20%.

    • Sean Goedecke ☛ AI coding agents rely too much on fallbacks

      In my experience, AI agents will do this constantly. If you’re building an app that makes an AI inference request, the generated code will likely fallback to some hard-coded response if the inference request fails. If you’re using an agent to pull structured data from some API, the agent may silently fallback to placeholder data for part of it. If you’re writing some kind of clever spam detector, the agent will want to fall back to a basic keyword check if your clever approach doesn’t work.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Systemic risk in the age of AI

      Yet governments are generally unable to distinguish between what are actually valuable contributions to society and what are intensely socially damaging.

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Zuckerberg hailed AI ‘superintelligence’. Then his smart glasses failed on stage

      To a layperson, at least, it seems that consumer technology has long since entered an era of solutions in search of problems – particularly troubling at a time when the world is facing so many genuinely intractable crises. As entertaining as it is to watch our tech overlords flounder on stage, it raises bigger questions, such as: who exactly asked for this, beyond the billionaires cashing in? And: can we just not?

  • Social Control Media

    • The Hindu ☛ Political mudslinging on social media adds to cyber police’s burden

      While the latest such case registered over a complaint by CPI(M) leader K.J. Shine has grabbed wider attention, FIRs registered this year show that the cyber wing of the Kochi City police has been dealing with more complaints involving politicians

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Teenage girls groomed into building bombs gangs [sic] in Sweden

      But as long as there are gang [sic] handlers able to operate with impunity overseas – such as by using social media to groom youngsters – the killings are likely to continue.

    • Dan Abramov ☛ Open Social

      In this post, I’ll explain the ideas of the AT Protocol, lovingly called atproto, and how it changes the relationship between the user, the developer, and the product.

      I don’t expect atproto and its ecosystem (known as the Atmosphere) to win hearts overnight. Like open source, it might take a few decades to become ubiquitous. By explaining these ideas here, I’m hoping to slightly nudge this timeline. Despite the grip of today’s social media companies, I believe open social will eventually seem inevitable in retrospect—just like open source does now. Good things can happen; all it takes is years of sustained effort by a community of stubborn enthusiasts.

      So what is it all about?

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Dark Reading ☛ Volvo Employee SSNs Stolen in Ransomware Attack

      At the root of the story is Miljödata, a Swedish company specializing in occupational software-as-a-service (SaaS), whose cloud infrastructure was breached in August. Thanks to its centralized, multi-tenant arrangement, hundreds of customers and millions of individuals have been affected. In a recent letter to its staff, Volvo NA, whose parent company is based in Sweden, revealed itself to be one such victim.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Dark Reading ☛ Iranian Hackers Use SSL.com Certs to Sign Malware

      Security researchers say multiple threat groups, including Iran's Charming Kitten APT offshoot Subtle Snail, are deploying malware with code-signing certificates from the Houston-based company.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Digital Camera World ☛ Last night I had a dystopian dream about AR camera glasses – and I worry it'll come true

      I woke up this morning with that queasy feeling you get after a bad dream. But this wasn't your typical nightmare about going to work without trousers on, or being chased by an axe murderer. No, this was about a future where we're all trapped behind screens we can't take off.

      I'm talking about AR camera glasses. Because, in case you hadn't heard, it looks like they're about to become a thing. Meta's latest Ray-Ban Display glasses were on show this month, and they look damn impressive. After years of clunky prototypes, they've finally cracked it.

    • Manton Reece ☛ ChatGPT Pulse

      ChatGPT Pulse takes your AI chat history, optionally your email and calendar, and other tips you give it to provide a morning report on topics you’re probably interested in. It’s essentially a personalized “website” with posts written only for you.

    • ABC ☛ Final rules for social media ban revealed, with no legally enforceable effectiveness standard

      As expected, platforms will not be told which technology to use for age screening, but will need to ensure their policies are transparent and consistent, and that there is a process for disputes.

    • News AU ☛ Porn access in Australia set for major shake-up

      The changes come from a new online safety code announced by the Federal Government’s eSafety Commissioner. The government’s goal is to protect children from harmful material, particularly violence and online pornography.

      To do that, users will soon have to verify their age when signing into services like Google or Microsoft, so content can be filtered if they’re under 18.

    • New Statesman ☛ Why Starmer wants digital ID cards now

      So Tony Blair is back, in more ways than one. On policy: his 2006 proposal for a programme of national ID cards, which ultimately failed, has been revived. As for the politics: this is a bit of positioning that could have come straight from the Blair playbook.

    • The Verge ☛ Microsoft Photos will soon auto-categorize your pictures

      Once Photos sorts your images, you’ll find the folders it creates beneath the Categories section on the left navigation bar. For now, Photos can only identify and categorize screenshots, receipts, identity documents, and notes, but it would likely be even more helpful if you could specify the categories you’d like it to create, like photos of your dog or of the beach.

  • Confidentiality

    • India Times ☛ Data breach exposes 2.73 lakh bank records

      An unsecured cloud server leaked hundreds of thousands of bank transfer records online, compromising critical data including names, banking details, and contact information.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Trump to deploy troops to Portland, Oregon, vows ‘Full Force’

    Trump did not specify what legal justification he had to do so, what military branch would be used or other key details. The troops would be used to defend U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities from “domestic terrorists,” he said.

  • India Times ☛ ByteDance expected to play big role in new US TikTok, sources say

    ByteDance will be maintaining ownership of TikTok's US business operations and will cede control of the app's data, content and algorithm to the newly formed joint venture, the sources said. The new details about the ownership structure may raise questions in Congress and among critics about whether the deal approved by Trump represents a qualified divestiture of all of TikTok's US assets as required under a 2024 law, which required ByteDance to divest its US operations or face a ban.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Supreme Court allows Trump to cancel $4B in foreign aid already approved by Congress • Michigan Advance

    The new nine-page order doesn’t provide any additional details about why a majority of the Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to rescind the funding without congressional approval.

  • The Register UK ☛ Beijing's RedNovember hacked critical US, global orgs

    RedNovember, a Chinese state-sponsored cyberspy group, targeted government and critical private-sector networks around the globe between June 2024 and July 2025, exploiting buggy internet-facing appliances to deploy a Go-based backdoor called Pantegana and other offensive security tools, including Cobalt Strike and SparkRAT.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Find it in your heart to seek the truth’: Epstein survivor pushes for lawmakers to release files

    Jess Michaels says authorities are ‘completely ignoring’ hers and dozens of other victims’ statements about Epstein’s trafficking

  • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ Newly Released Epstein Estate Documents Mention Elon Musk

    Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have released partial records from a third batch of documents they received from the Jeffrey Epstein estate earlier this week that includes notes that contain the names of current and former Trump allies Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, as well as Peter Thiel and Prince Andrew.

  • The Independent UK ☛ New Epstein files reveal Prince Andrew ‘flew to Florida with Ghislaine Maxwell on paedophile’s private jet’

    The documents also made reference to a potential visit to the sex offender’s island, Little St James, by X owner Elon Musk.

  • France24 ☛ Musk, Thiel and Bannon named in Epstein schedules released by Democrats

    Daily agendas belonging to Jeffrey Epstein and released by Congressional Democrats on Friday revealed the disgraced financier had plans to meet with Republican donors Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, as well as conservative commentator and former Trump aide Steve Bannon. The calendars do not indicate whether the meetings in fact took place.

  • International Business Times ☛ Who Is Peter Thiel? The Latest Name in Epstein Files Alongside Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, Former Advisor to Donald Trump

    The latest batch of 8,544 pages includes schedules, call logs and notes from Epstein's estate. They form part of a wider release overseen by the House Oversight Committee, which Democrats say is intended to increase transparency.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Mainstream Press Confesses They Missed the Other Politicized Prosecutions

    These are the kinds of allegations that right wingers claim, without merit, went on in the January 6 case: missing video, missing communications, and personal involvement of a political appointee. And the delay in production suggests there might be something bigger going on.

    And yet you won’t hear that from the vast majority of the mainstream press.

• Environment

  • Pro Publica ☛ The Fight to Get FEMA Aid After Hurricane Helene in Hardest-Hit North Carolina Counties

    Slogging through a thick slop of mud and rock, Brian Hill passed the roof that Hurricane Helene’s floodwaters had just ripped off someone’s barn and dumped into his yard. Then he peered into the unrecognizable chaos inside what had been his family’s dream home.

    The century-old white farmhouse, surrounded by the rugged peaks of western North Carolina, sat less than 15 yards from the normally tranquil Cattail Creek. As Helene’s rainfall barrelled down the Black Mountains last September, the creek swelled into a raging river that encircled the house. Its waves pounded the walls, tore off doors, smashed windows and devoured the front and back porches.

  • Pro Publica ☛ One North Carolina Family’s Journey to Rebuild After Hurricane Helene: Watch

    When Brian and Susie Hill bought a historic house on Cattail Creek in Yancey County, North Carolina, in 2023, they planned to stay forever. Their daughter, Lucy, would chase fireflies in the evenings across their wide expanse of grass.

    “It’s that feeling that you always wanted of going home,” Susie said. “Your little family and your little dog and your big yard and the chickens.”

  • Pro Publica ☛ Are You Still Rebuilding After Hurricane Helene? We Want to Hear From You.

    ProPublica and The Assembly have been reporting on the impact of Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, and we know recovery is far from over.

    We want to hear from North Carolinians whose homes were damaged or destroyed to better understand how well the state housing recovery program, RenewNC, is working for those who need it. If you’ve applied for funding to repair or rebuild your home, let us know what the process has been like, the challenges you’ve experienced and the impact that’s had on your life. We'd also like to hear from you if your home was damaged but you haven’t applied to understand why.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Register UK ☛ Wind and solar will power datacenters more cheaply than SMRs

      But analysis from the Centre for Net Zero (CNZ) says it would cost 43 percent less to power a 120 MW data facility with renewables and a small amount of gas-generated energy, when compared with an SMR.

      It claims that a microgrid comprising offshore wind, solar, battery storage, and backed up by gas generation, would be significantly cheaper to run annually than procuring power sourced from a nuclear SMR.

    • Wired ☛ Inside the Nuclear Bunkers, Mines, and Mountains Being Retrofitted as Data Centers

      The Cyberfort facility is one of many bunkers around the world that have now been repurposed as cloud storage spaces. Former bomb shelters in China, derelict Soviet command-and-control centers in Kyiv, and abandoned Department of Defense bunkers across the United States have all been repackaged over the last two decades as “future-proof” data storage sites.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Hindu ☛ Elephants in fragmented habitats of South Bengal record higher levels of stress, reveals study 

      As a part of the study, a team of scientists and researchers assessed physiological stress by measuring faecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) levels and metabolic states using faecal triiodothyronine (fT3) across three free-ranging Asian elephant populations (one in Central India and two in Northeastern India) whose home ranges encompass varying extents of disturbance in human-production landscapes.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Atlantic ☛ Hegseth Summons Top Military Leaders to Washington

    To have hundreds of generals and admirals from all over the world in the same room, pulled off key battles and front lines, “poses a huge security risk,” Nancy Youssef, a staff writer at The Atlantic, said last night. “It’s reasonable to ask if it really stops there, or whether this is part of a broader effort to let them know the expectations of them going forward under this administration.”

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Anglophone Liberal Socialism Meets Its Nordic Counterpart

    While the Nordic countries have long proved capable of reconciling the best aspects of liberalism with socialism, the relationship in the Anglosphere has always been troubled. A new book, and recent events in the world, suggest this may be changing.

  • The Verge ☛ Trump’s new target: Microsoft head of global affairs Lisa Monaco

    It’s not clear why Trump took this moment to go after Monaco, but it’s possible he’s just now becoming aware of her Microsoft role. CNBC notes that Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo posted about Monaco’s new job just last night. And, right-wing activist Laura Loomer has been calling for Monaco’s head since July.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Futurism ☛ Chinese Release of "Together" Edited Woman's Face Onto Gay Man to Censor Same-Sex Couple

    China’s censors have a penchant for removing references to homosexuality in movies like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the Harry Potter franchise, but these previous attempts were clumsy and created confusing plot holes in movies by deleting scenes. Now, the sophisticated and seamless digital edit in “Together” signals what appears to be a new step in content suppression in China.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Horror film digitally altered in China to make gay couple straight

    In one scene, which features a wedding between two men, one of the men’s faces was altered to look like a woman’s. Cinemagoers in China only noticed the change when side-by-side screenshots of the scene circulated on social media.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Republican push for tips on Charlie Kirk posts drives firings of public workers

    Indiana Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita soon obtained a screenshot of the post by Swierc, an administrator at Ball State University, and added it to an official website naming and shaming educators for their comments about Kirk.

    Libs of Tik Tok, a social media account dedicated to mocking liberals, shared her comments with its 4.4 million followers on X. A week after the post, the university fired her.

  • The Conversation ☛ Why scientists may be fearful of speaking out about Trump’s autism claims

    But online toxicity and hostility on social media have increased to the extent that both scientists and, indeed, science journalists have a real fear of writing about topics even where they have strong expertise. And with the US government making major cuts to research funding and targeting politicised areas such as climate science in particular, some may be inclined to stay quiet or self-censor to avoid losing their grants.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Permitted Trump-Epstein statue smashed and removed

    Yesterday, we shared images of a statue placed on the National Mall that had been approved and granted a permit to remain in place until Sunday, the 28th. I was just informed by the artists, The Secret Handshake Project, that the artwork was destroyed in the middle of the night, with no notice, by US Park police.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Legendary journalist Georg Stefan Troller dies aged 103

    He escaped the Nazis, then joined the US military fighting Germany in Word War II. He later became a legendary author, filmmaker and journalist, known for his unique interviews with international luminaries.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Mirror to lose five 'general news reporters' in Reach shake-up

    Reach is proposing to cut the number of general news reporters working on the Daily and Sunday Mirror by five – with those remaining spread across new shift patterns.

  • Court House News ☛ Nexstar and Sinclair bring Jimmy Kimmel’s show back on local [sic] TV stations, ending boycotts

    As a result of Sinclair and Nexstar's boycott, viewers in cities representing roughly a quarter of ABC's local TV affiliates had been left without the late-night program on local TV. The blackouts escalated nationwide uproar around First Amendment protections — particularly as the Trump administration and other conservatives police speech after Kirk’s killing. They also cast a spotlight on political influence in the media landscape, with critics lambasting companies that they accuse of censoring content.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Why Is the Pentagon Afraid of the Press?

    My job has been to ask questions on behalf of my fellow citizens, seeking information we all have the right to know about national security in the United States. The First Amendment protects my ability to do this work. But one week ago, the Pentagon announced that journalists would no longer be accredited to enter the building unless they sign a new agreement. In the past, reporters were required to sign a one-page agreement with stipulations about locking office doors and wearing badges above the waist. The new restrictions are very different. Although worded somewhat ambiguously, they appear to put sharp limits on news-gathering activities and may impose penalties on people seeking information—including unclassified information—outside of what decision makers want to share. Under the proposed rules, which run to 17 pages, “information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.” Anyone who publishes unapproved information could, theoretically, have their accreditation revoked, which would leave them barred from the Pentagon—and maybe from military facilities worldwide. Reporters who refuse to sign will lose the badge that has, until now, given them the right to work in a building that has been available to the press—through wars and national crises, under Democratic administrations and Republican ones—since the Pentagon opened its doors on January 15, 1943.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Neihardt Foundation to honor Nebraska Public Media

    NPM, previously known as Nebraska Educational Telecommunications, interviewed Neihardt, known for writing “Black Elk Speaks,” including by one of its best-known broadcasters, Ron Hull. Those discussions eventually led New York-based TV talk show host Dick Cavett to host Neihardt for a lengthier interview that Cavett — a Nebraska native — called one of his most memorable.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Futurism ☛ Report Warns That AI Is About to Make Your Boss a Panopticon Overlord

    This week, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), a group representing nearly 45 million workers across 40 European countries, published a comprehensive report about the disturbing impact of algorithms that increasingly control the workplace.

    Titled “Negotiating the Algorithm,” the 70-page tome lays out the basic facts about algorithmic management, the use of AI programs to oversee workers on the job. Far from a dystopian fantasy, the ETUC alerts readers to the alarming rise of the tech. In fact, an early study from this year found that 79 percent of job sites across the EU — and 90 percent in the US — already use at least one algorithmic management tool to govern the rank and file.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Native Americans Condemn Pentagon Move to Preserve Wounded Knee Medals

    "Celebrating war crimes is not patriotic. This decision undermines truth-telling, reconciliation, and the healing that Indian Country and the United States still need," Larry Wright Jr., the Congress' executive director, said in a statement.

    The Battle of Wounded Knee, also known as the Wounded Knee Massacre, took place on Dec. 29, 1890, in South Dakota, when U.S. soldiers killed and wounded more than 300 Lakota Sioux men, women and children.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Hegseth says Wounded Knee soldiers will keep their Medals of Honor

    While the events of that day are sometimes described as a battle, historical records show that the U.S. Army, which was in the midst of amid a campaign to repress the tribes in the area, killed an estimated 250 Native Americans, including women and children, of the Lakota Sioux tribe, while attempting to disarm Native American fighters who had already surrendered at their camp.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Trade Unions Need to Fight Against Algorithmic Exploitation

    Companies are increasingly using algorithmic management tools as a way to maximize the exploitation of workers. The power that managers gain from these tools can seem daunting, but there are opportunities that must be seized for workers to push back.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Tibetan Activists Protest Outside UN, Demand Independence

    Tibetan activists gathered outside the United Nations headquarters in New York on Friday, holding a protest against China and calling for global support for Tibetan independence. The demonstrators raised slogans such as "Free Tibet, China out, China out of Tibet now."

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Techdirt ☛ Warner Bros Joins Disney In Suing Sling TV For Making Streaming Video Cheaper And More Convenient

    These mini-subscriptions, starting at around $5, have already proven to be pretty popular. But, of course, it challenges the traditional cable TV model of getting folks locked into recurring (and expensive) monthly subscriptions. Subscriptions that often mandate that you include sports programming many people simply don’t want to pay for.

  • Futurism ☛ New Public Toilets Make You Watch Ads to Get Toilet Paper

    Recent video shared by China Insider — an outlet co-produced by anti-China media groups NTD and The Epoch Times, for what it’s worth — shows an incredible video of a woman forced to scan a QR code with her phone in order to activate a toilet paper dispenser.

    After scanning the code, the woman has the choice to either pay a few cents for some bathroom tissue — or, strikingly, watch an ad. The bizarre mechanism might be vaguely dystopian, but it’s admittedly pretty seamless from a user point of view, taking just a few seconds of effort.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Verge ☛ Can Google be trusted without a break up?

  It’s the second time in just a few months that a judge has faced the question of breaking up Google. In a separate case over Google’s search monopoly, Judge Amit Mehta declined to do so, opting for lower-lift remedies like banning anticompetitive practices and sharing data. The facts that led Mehta to decide against a break up have no bearing on this case, the government argued in its opening statement. Still, Brinkema’s ruling could be an indicator of how widely judges share Mehta’s caution, as more cases against Big Tech companies roll toward a trial.

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh

  A week ago, I turned that book into a speech, which I delivered as the annual Nordlander Memorial Lecture at Cornell, where I'm an AD White Professor-at-Large. This was my first-ever speech about AI and I wasn't sure how it would go over, but thankfully, it went great and sparked a lively Q&A. One of those questions came from a young man who said something like "So, you're saying a third of the stock market is tied up in seven AI companies that have no way to become profitable and that this is a bubble that's going to burst and take the whole economy with it?"

  I said, "Yes, that's right."

• Court House News ☛ Former Google engineer testifies ad tech software can be feasibly migrated

  Her testimony was part of the ongoing remedies trial following U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema’s order that Google had violated antitrust laws. The first trial took place one year ago and explored the U.S. Department of Justice’s charges that the Silicon Valley giant engaged in a systematic campaign to seize control of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers.

• The Register UK ☛ EU probes SAP over alleged software support stranglehold

  Following a preliminary investigation, the executive branch of the European Union said there were grounds to consider whether the enterprise application behemoth may have distorted competition in the lucrative aftermarket for on-prem software support.

  In a prepared statement, Teresa Ribera, EC executive vice-president for clean, just and competitive transition, said: "Thousands of companies across Europe use SAP's software to run their business, as well as its related maintenance and support services. We are concerned that SAP may have restricted competition in this crucial aftermarket, by making it harder for rivals to compete, leaving European customers with fewer choices and higher costs.

• Wired ☛ Amazon Will Pay $2.5 Billion to Settle FTC Suit That Alleged ‘Dark Patterns’ in Prime Sign-Ups

  The $2.5 billion payment includes $1 billion that has to be paid to the FTC, and $1.5 billion that will go directly to consumers who unknowingly signed up for Prime, or tried and failed to cancel their Prime subscriptions due to Amazon’s online interface, between June 23, 2019 and June 23, 2025. Individual consumers can get compensated up to $51 each.

• Nick Heer ☛ Google Provides Feedback on the Digital Markets Act

  The study in question, though published by Copenhagen Business School, was funded by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a tech industry lobbying firm funded in part by Google. I do not have the background to assess if the paper’s conclusions are well-founded, but it should be noted the low-end of the paper’s estimates was a loss of €8.5 billion, or just 0.05% of total industry revenue (page 45). The same lobbyists also funded a survey (PDF) conducted online by Nextrade Group.

• Patents

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Big Pharma Is About to Lose Billions on Expired Patents

    Some of the biggest pharmaceutical firms in the US are nearing the end of multibillion-dollar patent windfalls as their exclusive rights to produce certain medications. The patent cliff could spark a massive wave of new drug manufacturing mergers.

  • Vox ☛ Trump $100,000 H-1B visas: The cost of limiting high-skilled immigration.

    Actually when we restricted immigrants in the 1920s with the National Origins Act, the US experienced a 68 percent decline in patenting. And part of that was because Americans actually became less innovative without immigrants around.

    Immigrants are also highly entrepreneurial, so they’re 80 percent more likely to start companies than Americans are, and that of course means more jobs as well.

    We also know from research what happens when it’s restricted. I have a paper that shows that when the cap fell — there’s a cap, a limit on the number of H-1B visas that can be issued in any given year — when that was reduced, US companies actually responded by offshoring.