Leftovers

• Dark Reading ☛ Zombie Projects Rise Again to Undermine Security

  The lack of attention to forgotten — dare we say, "undead" — services causes cybersecurity headaches in two ways, says Andrew Scott, director of product at cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks.

  "If you've got a device that has been forgotten, you're probably not looking after it, so if it were compromised, it may be hard for you to know," he says. "And two: The longer that those things stay out there, stay unmanaged or not getting the TLC and patch cycles ... the more likely that they are vulnerable to risks over time."

• Sean Monahan ☛ the last working class teens

  Maybe because in the era of the working class teen, you could get a job at a video store and still afford a car and drive around with your friends and feel free. The sense I had, my friends had, that the world we lived in was temporary, fading fast, was not unique to us, to the working class teens of Buffalo and Rochester and Detroit and Grand Rapids.

  Everyone has felt it. As they watch their youth pass.

• Matthew Weber ☛ Creating A Historical Record Of Your Life

  It’s nice having a historical record. I’m trying desperately not to overcomplicate it, as I usually do with these things. Right now, I have some that are in my field notes and some that are in my daily Emacs notes. I may combine them eventually, but for now, I’m liking how this is done, and I think as I go along, it will be nice to have it at my back.

• James G ☛ No work is ever wasted

  I knew I had to come back to this point. No work is ever wasted.

  These words have multiple meanings to me, but among them is the pressure I sometimes feel for my writing to be destined for this blog. This is in contrast to writing something like a journal entry which is only for me. I would never say that any of my writing is “wasted”. But I do know how difficult it feels to think that what I write should be here on this blog.

• Evan Hahn ☛ Notes from October 2025

  I’m not a PHP developer but I was invited to speak at Longhorn PHP, where I gave a talk about understanding Unicode. I’ve given a version of this talk before but it was fun to adapt it for a PHP crowd. Hopefully a recording will be posted soon.

• Annie Mueller ☛ Duck duck duck dichotomy

  It’s not about the right choice or wrong choice or the accurate choice or idiotic choice or worst choice or best choice.

  It’s about exerting your will. Choosing something. Selecting an option and then acting on it. Saying Yes.

• Alexandru Scvorțov ☛ A blogroll

  Blogrolls are an old idea from back when people used the term blogosphere unironically. The way I remember it is that blogposts had a central pane with the main content and several side panes with other things. These other things would be links to posts on the same blog, usually as a historical list, or they could be links to posts on other blogs in the form of a blogroll.

• Ben Werdmuller ☛ There's no such thing as neutral technology

  At the News Product Alliance Summit in Chicago this month, I took part in a panel discussion about building a community-focused ethic of news technology, and facilitated a related workshop on picking tools that match your values. It’s about newsrooms, but the lessons apply to any organization.

  This post proposes a way to think about technology assessments not just in terms of cost or capability, but in terms of values. Values alignment isn’t a nice-to-have: misaligned values create risk that could cause major problems for an organization later on.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Bitdefender ☛ Spam text scammer fined £200,000 for targeting people in debt, after sending nearly one million messages

    According to an ICO press release, Bharat Singh Chand of Burry Port, Carmarthenshire, was behind an operation that used a "SIM farm" - capable of sending thousands of texts in quick succession - promoting "debt solutions" and "energy-saving grants."

  • The Register UK ☛ 'Keep Android Open' movement fights Google dev requirement

    The petition asks organizations to add their signature to an open letter opposing Google's verification process [PDF], which requires a one-time $25 fee and Google payment profile, agreeing to Google's Terms and Conditions, supplying government identification, proving ownership of app signing keys, and declaring current and future app identifiers.

    "While we recognize the importance of platform security and user safety, this requirement represents an unprecedented expansion of Google's control over the Android ecosystem that threatens innovation, competition, privacy, and user freedom," the letter says. "We urge Google to rescind this policy immediately."

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Why Mobile App Security Can’t Stop At Login

    The biggest misconception in mobile app security today is: If the login is secure, the app is secure. That couldn’t be further from the truth!

  • Kevin Kelly ☛ The Technium: Essentials for Independent Travel in China

    However, unlike the rest of the world, China uses its own parallel set of apps that you will need to operate there. Here are what I consider the essential mobile apps for independent travel in China. A good rule of thumb is to download your apps outside of China before you leave, because most are behind their great firewall. Make sure you are downloading the “international” version of the app (if it has one) so that it uses English.

  • [Old] Forbes ☛ Who Are the Top 10 Power Influencers in Mobile?

    # Number 1 spot belongs to ex-Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen whose blog Communities Dominate Brands is a fixture on the mobile scene largely because of Ahonen's comprehensive knowledge of the mobile ecosystem. Tomi is based out of Hong Kong.

• Career/Education

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Why Hundreds of Taylor Swift Fans Are Flocking to See This 100-Year-Old Painting at a Museum in Germany

    Fans appear to have made the connection between the music video and the museum’s painting on their own. As word spread on social media, hundreds of visitors—mostly young women, teenagers and girls—started showing up at the 200-year-old museum, asking staffers to point them in the direction of Ophelia.

• Hardware

  • Simon Collison ☛ Composing with field recordings

    Field recordings often require processing for use in electroacoustic compositions such as basic EQ treatment, filtering or compression. Do you believe this to be a reductive or an additive process and why?

    It’s probably worth noting upfront that, with an art college education and thirty-plus years as a creative professional (predominantly in graphic and digital design), I have come to loathe the limitations and opportunities for gatekeeping that come with rigid processes. The idea that there is only one right way to do something has always infuriated me to the point that even if it is right, I still want to look at the alternatives, because they could be ripe with opportunities for fresh approaches.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Food banks were ‘operating on fumes’ even before SNAP chaos

    The unparalleled stress of a SNAP disruption on food pantries and the food banks that collect, warehouse and distribute food comes at a time when they were already stretched thin. High grocery prices have pushed more Americans to look to food banks for help. But organizations providing food relief have lost more than $1 billion in federal aid and are bracing for the impacts of legislation that will permanently limit the reach of SNAP.

    Food banks now are asking local governments and donors to step in as they prepare for long lines. Many operations have increased orders ahead of the expected SNAP chaos, though some food pantries say they may have to ration food if supplies dwindle too quickly.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Trump Is Ready to Let Millions of Americans Go Hungry

    The Trump administration recently declared that, because of the ongoing federal government shutdown, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) will stop funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) starting November 1. Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia are suing the administration to try to force it to fund the food stamp program; Donald Trump’s Department of Justice admitted in court on Thursday that the government has enough funds in emergency reserve to pay for SNAP benefits next month but is nonetheless refusing to do so. If the government does refuse to fund the program, as many as forty-two million low-income Americans could lose their benefits.

  • Maury ☛ Radiation (biology) is complicated

    Applying the standard model of radiation-induced cancer — a 5% risk for every sievert of lifetime dose — lying on a bed made of these rocks 24/7 would give you an extra 0.0000025% cancer risk each hour, 0.000005% each day and 0.02% each year.

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Ransomware gang runs ads for Microsoft Teams to pwn victims

    Imagine searching for Microsoft Teams, seeing a text link at the top of the results, visiting it, and then getting hit with malware. The Rhysida ransomware gang, an especially insidious criminal organization that has stolen millions of people's info, has been placing fake ads for Microsoft Teams in search engines and then infecting victims who make the mistake of clicking them.

  • The Record ☛ Chinese [crackers] scanning, exploiting Cisco ASA firewalls used by governments worldwide

    Incident responders from Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 have been tracking the targeting of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA) — popular devices used by governments and large businesses to consolidate several different security tasks into a single appliance. In addition to acting as firewalls, the appliances also prevent some intrusions, handle spam, conduct antivirus checks and more.

  • Dark Reading ☛ US Refuses to Sign UN Cybercrime Treaty

    As China, Iran, Russia, and the European Union signed onto a new global cybercrime treaty, the United States and a minority of other nations continue to voice concerns over the global agreement's impact on human rights — and the expansion of covered crimes to including any "serious" offense enabled by information communications technology (ICT).

  • Dark Reading ☛ An 18-Year-Old Codebase Left Smart Buildings Wide Open

    "The entire code base was actually old, 18 years old, without any security code review done prior," he says.

    What Krstic uncovered reads like a greatest hits list of industrial control system (ICS) weaknesses: backdoors, unencrypted firmware, default credentials, buffer overflows, and unauthenticated remote root exploits. While the vendor claimed the devices were never meant to be connected to the Internet, they required Internet connectivity to receive updates.

  • Murtuzaali Surti ☛ Reflections on the AWS & Azure Outages

    AWS and Azure, two of the largest cloud providers having a market share of ~30% and ~23% respectively (as of 2025), experienced large scale outages recently. These outages affected multiple interdependent services. In this post, I will explore what are the implications of these outages, what can be done about them, and how fragile the web really is.

  • Lee Peterson ☛ I don’t trust Apple Journal

    Here’s my main reason, it doesn’t sync. My two devices are out of sync with no message and I don’t know which one is correct.

  • Chris Enns ☛ Stephen Robles Goes Full Time Tech Content Creator

    Congratulations to Stephen Robles on quitting his full-time job at Riverside and going all in on being an Apple / tech podcaster and content creator.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Wall Street Analyst Warns That Nvidia Is Facing Serious Trouble

      Many economists have been watching in horror as they warn that AI spending is propping up the US economy with misallocated capital. Wall Street, however, is only seeing green. As Bloomberg notes in its reporting on the analyst, Goldberg is currently swimming against a stream of epic proportions.

      “This is not my first bubble,” Goldberg told the publication, referring to the dot-com investment bubble of the late 1990s.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ AI still fails at completing real-life work, study finds

      With all the talk of AI replacing humans at work, a new study suggests the technology couldn’t if it tried. Scale AI and the Center for AI Safety (CAIS) put AI to the test completing various real-world freelance projects, including tasks across product design, game development, data analysis, and scientific writing.

    • New York Times ☛ A.I. Is Making Death Threats Way More Realistic

      The posts were part of a surge of vitriol directed at Ms. Roper and her colleagues at Collective Shout, an Australian activist group, on X and other social media platforms. Some of it, including images of the women flayed, decapitated or fed into a wood chipper, was seemingly enabled — and given a visceral realism — by generative artificial intelligence. In some of the images, Ms. Roper was wearing a blue floral dress that she does, in fact, own.

    • Jeff Bridgforth ☛ Thoughts on AI

      For several weeks, I have wanted to put together a position statement or personal declaration about how I was going to approach using AI. I have read some very good articles that have informed my thinking. Several people have written their own AI statements and I have found those helpful as I continue to think through the subject and figure how I want to respond. I am not sure I am ready to write a formal statement. But I wanted to try to write something to help me process my thoughts. It has been heavy on my mind recently.

    • Cryptography.doc OÜ ☛ AI scrapers request commented scripts

      The robots.txt for the site in question forbids all crawlers, so they were either failing to check the policies expressed in that file, or ignoring them if they had. But then there were many requests for the file coming from agents which self-identified as proper browsers - mostly as variations of Firefox, Chrome, or Safari.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ AI makes you think you’re a genius when you’re an idiot

      The AI users did not question the chatbot at length — they just asked it once what the answer was and used whatever the chatbot, regurgitated.

      But also, the chatbot users estimated their results as being even better than they actually were. In fact, the more “AI literate” the subjects measured as, the more wrongly overconfident they were.

  • Social Control Media

    • El País ☛ Chelsea Manning, former intelligence analyst: “If someone were to publish a massive leak today, people would say ‘oh this isn’t true”

      Q. You have said that time spent on social media is Zuckerberg’s or Musk’s, not your own.

      A. Exactly. I don’t think that they’re in control of the way we consume information. They make money off of our time. They don’t necessarily control it, [but] they certainly benefit and tune these things to be able to continue to take up our time. At one point it was for advertising, and at this point it just seems to be to keep us sedated and not really dig too deeply into the things that are happening in society. Television and various mass media forms have taken on this role as well. The amount of information is designed to be overwhelming.

    • Doc Searls ☛ !@#$%^&ingPa55w0rds

      I'm trying to sign in to Linkedin on a second laptop, in a browser. Here is my log of how that goes: [...]

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EPIC ☛ Letter Calling for FTC Oversight and Suspension of Meta’s AI Chatbot Advertising Practice

      We, the undersigned 36 organizations dedicated to privacy, data justice, civil rights, children’s rights, consumer protection, and research, write to demand immediate action in response to Meta Platforms, Inc.’s October 1, 2025, announcement that, effective December 16, 2025, it will begin using user interactions with AI chatbots (voice and text) to personalize advertising and content.1

      This unprecedented use of deeply sensitive data presents outsized risks to consumer data privacy and security, and is at odds with the FTC’s 2020 Order secured against Facebook (now Meta). It also underscores the urgent need for enforcement of Section 5 of the FTC Act against unfair and deceptive AI practices. The danger of regulatory inaction at this critical moment, when generative AI is driving an unprecedented expansion of commercial surveillance, could be catastrophic and irreversible.

    • Futurism ☛ Woman Baffled When Cops Accuse Her of Random Crime, Saying They Have Cameras Everywhere

      “You know we have cameras in that jurisdiction and you can’t get a breath of fresh air, in or out of that place, without us knowing, correct?” he kicked off the conversation, according to alarming reporting by local media site Denverite.

      Milliman was convinced that Elser had stolen a package off someone’s stoop. As evidence, Milliman had obtained records compiled by Flock, a controversial police surveillance startup that’s taking the United States by storm.

    • EFF ☛ Once Again, Chat Control Flails After Strong Public Pressure

      It’s time for lawmakers to stop attempting to compromise encryption under the guise of public safety. Instead of making minor tweaks and resubmitting this proposal over and over, the EU Council should accept that any sort of client-side scanning of devices undermines encryption, and move on to developing real solutions that don’t violate the human rights of people around the world.

    • Pro Publica ☛ DHS Plans to Collect State Driver’s License Data for Citizenship Checks

      Incorporating driver’s license information would allow election officials whose rolls don’t include voters’ Social Security numbers to conduct bulk searches by driver’s license number. Ultimately, the system would link these two crucial identifiers for the purpose of citizenship checks, said Michael Morse, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

      “It is the key that unlocks everything,” Morse said.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The [Internet] was made for privacy

      One obvious way in which tech is exceptional: its flexibility. Digital computers are "Turing-complete, universal von Neumann machines," which means that they are engines capable of computing every valid program. They are truly general purpose. We have many other general purpose machines, of course, but they are simple things, like wheels. Computers are unique in that they are both complex and universal, and every computer can run every program. Just as we don't know how to make knives that only cut in beneficial ways, we also don't know how to make computers that only run desirable programs.

• Defence/Aggression

  • LRT ☛ Lithuanian Railways to halt transit of Lukoil products to Kaliningrad under US sanctions

    Last year, LTG transported a total of 371,000 tons of oil products to the Russian exclave, of which 345,000 tons were Lukoil shipments. No Rosneft products were moved through Lithuania either last year or this year. This year, LTG carried 194,000 tons of Lukoil oil to and from Kaliningrad.

  • Arkansas Advocate ☛ Arkansas Supreme Court declares two laws unconstitutional in case involving paper-ballot initiative | Arkansas Advocate

    In the 4-3 decision, Justice Shawn Womack, writing for the majority, said a circuit judge erred in ordering County Clerk Rachelle Evans to certify an initiative petition for voters to consider because the petition was untimely filed under Article 5, Section 1 of the Arkansas Constitution. The Supreme Court opinion reversed and dismissed the lower court’s order.

    In deciding the case, the Supreme Court majority declared unconstitutional two state laws governing the time frame during which county-level ballot measures can be filed because they conflict with the filing window established in Article 5, Section 1. That section says initiative petitions in cities and counties must be filed no earlier than 90 days and no later than 60 days before an election.

  • Techdirt ☛ ICE’s Hiring Surge Is Attracting A Bunch Of People Who Are Too Unfit (Or Too Criminal) To Work At ICE

    ICE can generate multiple horrible stories a day but it still can’t seem to find enough brown people to deport daily to satisfy White House advisor Stephen Miller’s demands for 3,000 arrests per day.

    Trump and the GOP threw a lot of money at this problem with the Big Beautiful Bill. A lot of money: $75 billion over the next four years. Part of that goes to another metric ICE will apparently never meet: 10,000 new hires.

  • [Old] Vivekananda International Foundation ☛ The ‘Londonistan’ Phenomenon and UK Intelligence

    The word ‘Londonistan’ was coined by the French counter-intelligence service in 1995. It referred to the UK government’s policy of allowing radical Islamists from across the globe to set up political offices in London, thereby escaping pressure from counter-terrorist agencies in their home countries. The immediate provocation for the epithet was Britain’s refusal to extradite Algerian terrorist suspect Rachid Ramda, who had been granted asylum in the country since 1992.2 British officials purported to be concerned over Ramda’s human rights, and whether he would be granted a fair trial in France. For a full decade, they dragged their feet on the issue. After the 7 July 2005 (7/7) bombings in London however, these concerns vanished and Ramda was extradited within six months.

  • [Old] Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa ☛ Londonistan

    What has happened to free speech, religious freedom and personal safety in the land of the Magna Carta? This slow burn of individual liberty is explained in Melanie Phillips’ groundbreaking book, Londonistan. This tour de force documents, often in chilling detail, how London, one of the great cities of the Western world, has become “home to the largest collection of Islamist activists since the terrorist production line was established in Afghanistan.”

    This, alas, is not a new phenomenon. Over the past decade, and “under the noses of successive British governments, Britain’s capital has been turned into ‘Londonistan,’” and is now “the major European center for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamic terror and extremism.” This transformation has not been confined to the banks of the Thames River, but has rippled out across the country, a process detailed in the book. While it may be a stretch for Phillips to suggest “that it was in Britain that al-Qaeda was actually formed as a movement,” she is right to stress how the tentacles of Islamism have reached into every region of the nation—from Hampshire to Yorkshire to Ayrshire.

  • [Old] West Point ☛ The Changing Scene in Londonistan - Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

    in the first month of 2010, the world was reminded of the terrorism threat in the United Kingdom. Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab’s partial radicalization in London, the decision to finally proscribe the extremist group al-Muhajiroun and the ratcheting up of the terrorism threat level ahead of the Summit on Afghanistan all highlighted once again how the United Kingdom remains the focus of the terrorism threat to the West.[1] The nature of this threat, however, has changed since the days before 9/11, when London was often called “Londonistan” due to the heavy presence of extremist groups in the city.[2] Today, radicalization and extremist activity in the United Kingdom no longer occurs at the level it once did. Nevertheless, the activity still taking place is harder to legislate against and more difficult to combat.

    This article will explain how “Londonistan” has changed during the last decade. Overtly violent extremist preaching has become much more discrete, while the internet has become a major feature in radicalizing young people. The article will also show how old and new threats have melded together to create a threat matrix that presents a new set of legislative challenges for British authorities.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Meduza ☛ One bad apple: Meduza explains why the Kremlin is cracking down on Russia’s Yabloko party and its floundering campaign for peace — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ How Russian and American signaling turned nuclear again It’s October 30, 2025. Here are three stories worth your attention. — Meduza

    • Insight Hungary ☛ Orbán to create a Ukraine-skeptic bloc with Slovakia and Czech Republic

      Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will travel to the United States next week to discuss the implications of recent remarks by Matt Whitaker, the US ambassador to NATO, who said Washington expects countries such as Hungary to draw up plans to end their reliance on Russian oil and gas. Orbán, speaking to Italian news outlet La Repubblica during a visit to the Vatican, said he would “soon be meeting with Trump to resolve the issue of oil sanctions,” adding that without Russian energy, Hungarian prices would “skyrocket” and that Trump "made a mistake" with imposing sanctions on Moscow. He said he would “try to find a way out, especially for Hungary.” Hungary's Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó confirmed that the government is examining “what exactly these decisions mean legally and physically” but said the new US sanctions have not yet affected Hungary’s energy supply.

      Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s political director, accused La Repubblica of publishing misinformation. In a post on X, he said: “Fake news strikes again — the goal is clear: to divide and weaken the leaders who stand for peace,” claiming the newspaper had “put words in Prime Minister Orbán’s mouth that he never said.” According to him, Orbán merely stated that he would discuss the sanctions with Trump in Washington and warned that Hungary’s dependence on Russian energy made price spikes likely. 

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Nation ☛ Federal Whistleblowers Sound an Alarm Over Civil Rights at HUD

    Recently, four attorneys and staff workers at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD’s Office of General Counsel and Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, went public with an emergency complaint, which they filed through US Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office, and taken to the press. I spoke with two of those courageous whistleblowers about what made their actions necessary. Paul Osadebe is an attorney working in the federal government, a shop steward for the American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, Local 476 in Washington, DC, and a member of the Federal Unionists Network. Palmer Heenan is also an attorney working in the federal government and also a member of AFGE and FUN.

• Environment

  • Truthdig ☛ Scientists Have a Dire New Warning About the State of the Planet - Truthdig

    A sobering tally of what the year’s data reveals about the state of the planet makes one thing clear: “We are hurtling toward climate chaos,” wrote an international team of researchers. They added that recent climatic developments “emphasize the extreme insufficiency of global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mark the beginning of a grim new chapter for life on Earth.”

    Language from scientists doesn’t get much more alarming than that — and they’ve got good reason to be frightened. In 2023, for instance, the ability of the land to absorb our carbon emissions dropped significantly. The report confirms that last year was the hottest on record, and was likely the hottest in at least 125,000 years. This year, Greenland’s and Antarctica’s ice mass hit record lows, and extreme heat in the oceans drove the largest coral bleaching event on record, with over 80% of the world’s reef area affected. Accordingly, earlier this month another team of researchers announced that the world has reached its first major tipping point — in which an Earth system dramatically changes, often irreversibly — as many coral ecosystems pass a point of no return. And in September, still more scientists declared that we’ve hit the seventh of nine planetary boundaries — thresholds that keep our world hospitable to life — as ocean acidification continues to worsen. Taken together, the developments show that humanity is pushing critical Earth systems toward collapse.

  • FAIR ☛ Rachel Cleetus on Climate Culpability, Dean Baker on Trumponomics

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Americans Are Defaulting on Car Loans at an Alarming Rate

      As the economy stagnates and both cars and car insurance have become more expensive, new research from the consumer-protection-focused nonprofit Consumer Federation of America (CFA) shows that executives from top auto insurance companies are netting massive compensation packages.

      The average price for a new vehicle topped a record-breaking $50,000 in September. Meanwhile, auto loan delinquency rates are at all-time highs for those with subprime credit ratings — those with credit scores below 670 — doubling since 2021 to reach 6.43 percent. The default rate is now worse than during the last three recessions: the COVID-19 pandemic, the Great Recession, and the dot-com bust.

      Unlike defaulting on a rent or a mortgage — where tenants and homeowners can have months of legal proceedings before they’re evicted — vehicles can be repossessed in a matter of days, leaving car-dependent Americans stranded.

    • Wired ☛ NASA’s Quiet Supersonic Jet Takes Flight

      The X-59 will generate a lower “sonic thump” thanks to its unique design. It was given a long, slender nose that accounts for about a third of the total length and breaks up pressure waves that would otherwise merge on other parts of the airplane. The engine was mounted on top of the X-59’s fuselage, rather than underneath as on a fighter jet, to keep a smooth underside that limits shock waves and also to direct sound waves up into the sky rather than down toward the ground. NASA aims to provide key data to aircraft manufacturers so they can build less noisy supersonic planes.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Save This Species: The ‘Little Three-Horned Devil,’ One of Puerto Rico’s Rarest Plants

• Finance

  • FAIR ☛ Don’t Worry, Wall Street Journal—Health Insurers Are Profitable!

    On October 21, Elevance Health (the rebrand of for-profit health insurer Anthem) announced its third quarter results. Operating revenue went up 12% from the same three-month period last year, and profits as measured by normal accounting rules rose 17%. UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest insurer, went one better, raising its expectations for how much profit it will make this year, as it eased Wall Street’s worries by increasing the premiums it will charge for coverage in 2026.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Germany's Volkswagen loses €1 billion in single quarter

    This is its first quarterly loss in five years.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Nebraska DHHS post questioned for political message on public agency website

    The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services website posted a banner this week blaming U.S. Senate Democrats for the federal government shutdown and urging them to “stop using Nebraska’s most vulnerable people for political leverage.”

  • Techdirt ☛ DHS, White House Shrug Off Having Their Social Media Lies Pointed Out To Them

    The administration knows it’s lying. We know it’s lying. It knows that we know it’s lying. And it doesn’t care. The MAGA faithful don’t care that they’re being lied to pretty much all the time. All they care about is how much the messaging aligns with their bigotry and hatred. Everyone else who spots the lies can feel free to point them out, but this administration is living its best life in the post-truth era it has crafted for itself.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Cyber scholarship-for-service students say government has pulled rug on them, potentially burdening them with debt

    A landmark program that offers scholarships in exchange for federal service is threatening to saddle students with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt amid hiring freezes and budget cuts, raising questions about the future of an initiative proponents say has helped close the government’s cyber workforce gap.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Saudi real estate developer partners with Google on AI

    Saudi real estate developer Arabian Dyar has partnered with Google in a deal worth up to $100 million to integrate AI and big data tools across its projects — from land selection to facility management.

  • The Register UK ☛ OpenStack community finds new strength in resilience

    "It's about independence and control," said Thierry Carrez, general manager at the OpenInfra Foundation. "It's not a feature, it's really a state. You're sovereign if you have some control and some independence from others" - whether those are countries or companies."

  • Simon Willison ☛ CoreWeave adds Marimo to their 2025 acquisition spree

    Give CoreWeave's buying spree only really started this year it's impossible to say how well these acquisitions are likely to play out - they haven't yet established a track record.

  • Arduino ☛ Arduino x Qualcomm Technologies: joining forces to empower developers worldwide

    It’s official: Arduino is part of the Qualcomm family!

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Prince Andrew's demotion: Epstein scandal still not over

    The king's latest move against former-Prince Andrew, obliterating his titles and any remaining trace of status, appears dramatic. Yet statistics tell a different story: thirty percent of women have at least one experience of abuse and in most cases, they are not complaining about a celebrity or a prince. Fifty percent of victims are complaining about somebody they know, including family members.

    [...]

    The ABC report and the experts they interview do not try to clarify whether children are learning these tactics spontaneously, whether it comes from their home or whether it comes from exposure to social control media.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ The Government Is Shut Down. Government Social Media Accounts Are Decidedly Not.

      Social media use is “tied to DHS’s core mission of defending the homeland,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Pussy Riot's Alyokhina chronicles activism in new memoir

    Together with her fellow Pussy Riot member Olga Borisova, Maria Alyokhina authored a 500-page book detailing the events that transpired between December 2013 and April 2022. "From the moment I left the prison colony to the moment I had to leave Russia absolutely reluctantly," Alyokhina explains.

  • The Register UK ☛ YouTube's AI moderator pulls Windows 11 workaround videos

    Is installing Windows 11 with a local account or on unsupported hardware harmful or dangerous? YouTube's AI moderation system seems to think so, as it has started pulling videos that show users how to sidestep Microsoft's setup restrictions.

  • The Washington Post ☛ A Tennessee man posted a Charlie Kirk meme. He spent a month in jail.

    The 61-year-old Tennessee man plans to sue after authorities dropped charges over a political Facebook post. Free-speech advocates say it’s a symptom of a wider crackdown.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Dissenter ☛ British Journalist Sami Hamdi Fights Deportation While In ICE Detention

  • BIA Net ☛ Tele1 TV journalists resign in protest over trustee takeover of channel

    Employees of Tele1 TV have resigned collectively in protest over the government's appointment of a trustee to the channel, following the arrest of its editor-in-chief, Merdan Yanardağ.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Trump Returns to '60 Minutes' After Lawsuit Settlement

    The president has an uneasy history with television's most popular newsmagazine. But he has signaled friendlier relations with CBS News after the takeover of its parent company this summer by new Paramount CEO David Ellison, the son of wealthy supporter Larry Ellison.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ ‘Could that happen to us?’: Study details Kansas journalists’ reactions to 2023 newspaper raid 

    Was it a warning bell that roused Kansas journalists to be more ardent watchdogs for their communities?

    A recent article co-written by a professor at the University of Kansas works to bring new meaning to Aug. 11, 2023, the day that law enforcement executed search warrants that threatened the rural newspaper. One of the answers it provides: The raid caused “shared press distress.”

  • American Oversight ☛ American Oversight Warns USAID Over Unlawful Policy Undermining FOIA Rights

    Friday, American Oversight sent a letter to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) warning that its recently announced Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) “still interested” rule requiring requesters to reconfirm that they wish to keep their pending FOIA requests open — or risk having them closed altogether — has no basis in law, exceeds the agency’s authority, and was implemented without proper notice or a public comment period on the change as required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

    In September, we filed suit against the U.S. Department of Energy over a similar attempt to require requesters to reconfirm their interest in pending FOIA requests. At the time, we warned the changes at DOE were “being used by the administration as a trial balloon for dismantling FOIA, and if the court doesn’t step in now, this unlawful policy will spread and gut the public’s right to know across the federal government.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • US News And World Report ☛ US Judge Permanently Blocks Trump Order Requiring Voters to Prove Citizenship

    A federal judge on Friday permanently blocked part of an executive order from Republican U.S. President Donald Trump, ruling that the president cannot require voters to show passports or similar documents as proof of citizenship before voting.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ National Guard told to create ‘quick reaction forces’ for civil unrest

    Signed by Major Gen. Ronald Burkett, operations director for the National Guard, the memos reviewed by The Associated Press give various numbers for each state’s force — often 500 each — that total more than 23,000 troops in all. The memos direct Washington, D.C., to maintain a “specialized” military police battalion with 50 National Guard soldiers on active duty orders.

  • American Oversight ☛ Lawsuit Filed Against Trump Administration for Concealing Records About Shadowy Voter Data Maintenance Efforts - American Oversight Trump Administration Concealing Records Lawsuit

    The set of three lawsuits seek to compel DHS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the Social Security Administration (SSA) to release emails and related records that could shed light on how the administration is using federal data systems to verify the citizenship of those on state voter rolls. The records could also reveal how agencies are coordinating to build or operate a shared voter-maintenance database.

  • Wired ☛ ICE Wants to Build a Shadow Deportation Network in Texas

    US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is exploring plans to launch a privately-run, statewide transportation system in Texas. The agency envisions a nonstop operation, funneling immigrants detained in 254 counties into ICE facilities and staging locations across the state.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Linuxiac ☛ Kodi 21.3 Enhances HDR Playback, Fixes Blu-ray Issues on Linux

    Over nine months after the previous 21.2 release, the Kodi team has rolled out the new 21.3 update for this popular, self-hosted, open-source media player, introducing notable improvements across video playback, performance, and peripheral support.

Monopolies/Monopsonies