Leftovers

• Deutsche Welle ☛ Shein: France urges EU sanctions over 'childlike' sex dolls

  France has called upon the European Union to sanction the Chinese-founded fast-fashion retailer Shein, following a national uproar over "childlike" sex dolls listed on the online store.

  "The European Commission must take action," Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in an interview with French public broadcaster France Info, arguing that Shein was "evidently in breach of European rules."

• France24 ☛ Shein's childlike sex dolls 'not acceptable', visiting French minister tells Chinese hosts

  Paris moved Wednesday to suspend the digital platform after its anti-fraud unit discovered that Shein, a Singapore-based company which was originally founded in China, was selling the items.

• Michael Burkhardt ☛ Tonal Curves - Michael Burkhardt’s Whirled Wide Web

  The tonal curve is a fundamental tool for understanding and manipulating contrast in photography. It maps input brightness values (shadows to highlights) to output values, showing how tones are distributed across an image. The shape of the curve tells you everything about shadow and highlight quality: steep sections create hard, abrupt transitions (high local contrast), while gentle slopes create soft, gradual transitions (low local contrast).

  Below are some characteristic curves that demonstrate how different curve shapes produce dramatically different looks—from punchy, contrasty images with hard shadows and highlights, to soft, faded looks with gentle tonal transitions. Each example shows both the curve itself and how it affects the original image, helping to visualize the relationship between curve shape and image appearance.

• Matt Fantinel ☛ A new home for Cool Links

  In July 2024, I started gathering cool links from around the web, with the best stuff I've read or watched during each month. Since then, I've been posting them monthly, always at the last day of the month.

  I've been really enjoying doing that, it's the perfect opportunity to write a few words about stuff without having to commit to a full blog post. Plus, it keeps the spirit of the web alive!

• Deutsche Welle ☛ What pop culture got wrong about Frankenstein

  In Shelley's rendition, the creature is not the grunting half-wit seen in most movie versions, but an articulate autodidact who teaches himself English and moral philosophy after finding a conveniently abandoned copy of John Milton's "Paradise Lost" — and who narrates the second half of the book.

  The most meme-able elements of the "Frankenstein" story — the lightning-bolt resurrection (with Victor Frankenstein screaming "It's alive!!!"), the green skin and neck bolts, the lumbering gait — are all later stage-and-screen inventions.

  Most of them can be traced back to James Whale's two Universal monster movies, "Frankenstein" (1931) and "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), starring the inimitable Boris Karloff as the shambling brute and Elsa Lanchester as his reluctant mate with her beehive bouffant.

• Greg Morris ☛ Blogging For More Than A Decade

  This website, and also gr36.com, has taken on many forms over the years. I often look back at the internet archive and marvel at how undecided I have been about it. It has been a business website, a personal blog, and at some points a place that I have tried to make an income from.

• Baldur Bjarnason ☛ For sale: strong opinions; never published

  Analysis is different. As is education. But both tasks of delivering understanding and helping people hone their skills need to have a purpose, a pain to solve – an edge to cut against – and there’s genuinely little left that I personally can analyse or educate about the mess that tech is in today. I can teach you software development skills you won’t get to use and web development practices you won’t get past your manager. I can help you understand exactly how incompetent your executives are and just how much of a micromanaging busybody your line manager is. None of which is going to be of much help in the current job market. Web dev is in a rut speeding away from my core expertise – it’s LLMs and React all the way.

• Science

  • CBC ☛ How NASA’s proposed budget cuts could threaten the future of space exploration

    The US administration has proposed a 24 per cent cut to NASA’s budget, which would make it the smallest NASA budget since before human spaceflight programs began in 1961. The proposal specifically calls for space science funding to be cut by 50 per cent, and the work force dropped down to a third of its current level.

  • 404 Media ☛ Advanced 2.5 Million-Year-Old Tools May Rewrite Human History

    After a decade-long excavation at a remote site in Kenya, scientists have unearthed evidence that our early human relatives continuously fashioned the same tools across thousands of generations, hinting that sophisticated tool use may have originated much earlier than previously known, according to a new study in Nature Communications.

• Career/Education

  • New York Times ☛ How A.I. and Social Media Contribute to ‘Brain Rot’

    The tech industry tells us that chatbots and new A.I. search tools will supercharge the way we learn and thrive, and that anyone who ignores the technology risks being left behind. But Dr. Melumad’s experiment, like other academic studies published so far on A.I.’s effects on the brain, found that people who rely heavily on chatbots and A.I. search tools for tasks like writing essays and research are generally performing worse than people who don’t use them.

  • Nate Graham ☛ Techpaladin is looking for a passionate Plasma hacker

    Today I’m putting on a different hat and announcing that Techpaladin Software is hiring! Right now we’re looking for a software developer who loves KDE Plasma and wants to see it thrive and shine, with the passion and self-motivation to make that happen.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ Robb Knight

    This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Robb Knight, whose blog can be found at rknight.me.

  • Ankur Sethi ☛ The solace of work

    Lately work has been a source of comfort. My life has been tumultuous this year, but the pleasures of work have remained constant. With all the emotional ups and downs, there has always been blog posts to write, software to build, plot outlines to wrangle, and poetry to scribble in the back of notebooks.

  • Devansh Batham ☛ Art of Learning | devansh

    The problem is that most learners don't understand they're burning out their mental muscle. They just keep pushing and expecting different results.

• Hardware

  • The Register UK ☛ Rideshare giant dumps 200 cloudy Macs, saves $2.4 million

    After crunching the numbers, the company decided to build its own racks full of Mac Minis and house them in a Malaysian datacenter.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ Lawsuits Blame ChatGPT for Suicides and Harmful Delusions

    The cases, filed in California state courts, claim that ChatGPT, which is used by 800 million people, is a flawed product. One suit calls it “defective and inherently dangerous.” A complaint filed by the father of Amaurie Lacey says the 17-year-old from Georgia chatted with the bot about suicide for a month before his death in August. Joshua Enneking, 26, from Florida, asked ChatGPT “what it would take for its reviewers to report his suicide plan to police,” according to a complaint filed by his mother. Zane Shamblin, a 23-year-old from Texas, died by suicide in July after encouragement from ChatGPT, according to the complaint filed by his family.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Lawsuits Allege OpenAI Encouraged Suicide and Harmful Delusions

    There are lots of disturbing details in this report, but this response is one of the things I found most upsetting in the entire story: a promise of real human support that is not coming.

• Proprietary

  • Scoop News Group ☛ DHS ditched software that archived officials’ electronic messages

    But TeleMessage was not replaced with a similar archival tool, per Weissman. Since April, DHS employees who had been covered by that system were “again obligated to manually archive their messages in accordance with existing DHS policy,” he wrote.

  • InfoWorld ☛ Self-propagating worm found in marketplaces for Visual Studio Code extensions

    A month after a self-propagating worm was discovered in the open source NPM code repository, a similar worm has been found targeting Visual Studio Code extensions in open marketplaces.

  • The Record ☛ Ed tech company fined $5.1 million for poor data security practices leading to hack

    Three state attorneys general announced Thursday that the educational technology company Illuminate Education will pay a $5.1 million fine and agree to make changes to its business to settle allegations that shoddy security practices led to a 2021 data breach.

    The data breach exposed student names, races, coded medical conditions and whether they received special education accommodations. It impacted students in 49 states and three million in California alone.

  • Kevin Boone ☛ Kevin Boone: Two years without Google, et al. – has it been worth it?

    Back in the summer of 2023, I decided it was time to remove myself from the surveillance economy, and stop being a product of the advertising industry. That meant making a conscious effort to avoid all on-line services that harvest personal data, including, but not limited to, all Google services. It also meant abandoning mainstream smartphone platforms like iOS and any vendor’s version of Android. Even with an open-source version of Android on my cellphone, it meant giving up most commercial apps.

    In this article, I outline the changes I’ve seen in the de-Googling world over the last couple of years, both for good and for ill.

  • [Old] The Register UK ☛ Windows to become emulation layer atop Linux kernel, predicts Eric Raymond

    Open-source software advocate Eric S Raymond has penned an argument that the triumph of Linux on the desktop is imminent because Microsoft will soon tire of Windows.

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-10-29 [Older] Microsoft Deploys a Fix to Azure Cloud Service That's Hit With Outage

  • International Business Times ☛ 2025-10-29 [Older] Microsoft Azure Outage Cause 'Suspected': AWS Also Suffer Devastating Issues at the Same Time

  • NL Times ☛ 2025-10-29 [Older] NS hit by Microsoft Cloud outage; Travel planner, ticket machines affected

  • The Register UK ☛ 2025-10-31 [Older] Microsoft Earnings Suggest OpenAI Lost $11.5 Billion Last Quarter

  • TechRadar ☛ 2025-10-31 [Older] Loss of Trust in U.S. Prompts International Criminal Court to Ditch Microsoft 365 for Open Source Alternative

  • The Next Platform ☛ 2025-10-31 [Older] Microsoft: Getting Margins From AI Means Sometimes Saying No

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China's robotaxi firms sink on Hong Kong debut

      Shares in Chinese self-driving start-ups Pony.AI and WeRide tumbled on their Hong Kong debuts Thursday, after raising more than US$1.1 billion, with experts warning China is not yet ready for a mass rollout of robotaxis.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ The futile future of the gigawatt datacenter — by Nicholas Weaver

      The scale of the investment is so large it is distorting the economy. These massive expenditures, however, are shortly going to prove to be at least a half-trillion-dollar money pit: these massive data centers are simply not fit for purpose.

      But to understand why this is a waste of money, it is critical to discuss two technologies: machine learning (ML) in general and large language models (LLMs) in particular.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ Around 40% of research papers may be fraudulent, study says

      Fake science is a growing problem as AI gathers pace: One recent analysis suggested 15% of all cancer research papers may be fraudulent.

    • International Business Times ☛ Elon Musk's AI Chatbot Grok Accused of Asking Nudes From Minor

      Farah explained she was stunned by the chatbot's behaviour. She later recreated parts of the conversation in a video, warning other parents about the risks.

      She captioned the video, 'WARNING Parents. I can't believe this just happened. I was driving our Tesla and my kids were experimenting with Grok (Elon Musk's AI chatbot). What started off as an innocent debate on Ronaldo vs Messi turned sexual within minutes. The AI assistant told my child to send nudes. I'm not kidding. I wish I taped it but I was driving. As soon as we pulled into the garage, I told the kids to go inside so I could see if it would happen again. Here's what happened. WTF? This is problematic on so many levels.'

    • Dark Reading ☛ Multiple ChatGPT Security Bugs Allow Rampant Data Theft

      In yet another "Your chatbot may be leaking" moment, researchers have uncovered multiple weaknesses in OpenAI's ChatGPT that could allow an attacker to exfiltrate private information from a user's chat history and stored memories.

      The issues — seven of them in total — stem largely from how ChatGPT and its helper model, SearchGPT, behave when browsing or searching the Web in response to user queries, whether looking up information, summarizing pages, or opening URLs. They allow attackers to manipulate the chatbot's behavior in different ways without the user's knowledge.

  • Social Control Media

    • Court House News ☛ Utah defends social media child protection laws against Snapchat suit

      Utah Attorney General Derek Brown and Katie Haas, director of the Utah Department of Commerce Consumer Protection Division, accused Snapchat and its owner Snap Inc. of filing a new lawsuit in federal court to avoid the state’s enforcement of new social media laws while there is still pending civil enforcement in different courts.

    • International Business Times ☛ UK Grooming Crisis Deepens: TikTok Predator Gets 9 Years for Assaulting Schoolgirl While National Inquiry Hits Roadblocks

      For them, the TikTok predator's case is not an isolated crime but a reminder of a crisis that the UK still struggles to confront.

    • BoingBoing ☛ How long does it take for Instagram to push you down the alt-right pipeline?

      As long as algorithms continue to push users toward hate, spiraling them down rabbit holes and increasing their use time, this problem will worsen. You've likely seen the recent massive wave of anti-Indian rhetoric in response to Musk and Trump's spat over H-1B visas, making this specific flavor of racism a hot topic. With this in mind, political commentator and online personality Saji Sharma decided to quantify this algorithmic push toward the pipeline, recruiting a non-Indian friend to create a brand new account and see just how long it took for Instagram to push racist content in response to normal activity.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Cyble Inc ☛ AI Malware Detected In The Wild As Threats Evolve

      The dropper, PROMPTFLUX (VirusTotal), was written in VBScript and uses an embedded decoy installer for obfuscation. It uses the Google Gemini API for regeneration by prompting the LLM to rewrite its source code and saving the new version to the Startup folder for persistence, and the malware attempts to spread by copying itself to removable drives and mapped network shares.

    • TechCrunch ☛ DOJ accuses US ransomware negotiators of launching their own ransomware attacks

      Last month, the Department of Justice indicted Kevin Tyler Martin and another unnamed employee, who both worked as ransomware negotiators at DigitalMint, with three counts of computer hacking and extortion related to a series of attempted ransomware attacks against at least five U.S.-based companies.

    • The Record ☛ Nevada government declined to pay ransom, says cyberattack traced to breach in May

      The report does not name the ransomware gang behind the attack nor the ransom demand. Officials said the decision not to pay “was not made lightly” and was based on their confidence in the ability to use backups to restore impacted systems.

• Security/Breaches

  • 2025-10-27 [Older] Another plastic surgery practice fell prey to a cyberattack that acquired patient photos and info

  • The Record ☛ 2025-10-28 [Older] US declines to join more than 70 countries in signing UN cybercrime treaty

  • 2025-10-28 [Older] Some lower-tier ransomware gangs have formed a new RaaS alliance — or have they? (1)

  • 2025-10-28 [Older] Safaricom-Backed M-TIBA Victim of a Possible Data Breach Affecting Millions of Kenyans

  • 2025-10-29 [Older] The 4TB time bomb: when EY’s cloud went public (and what it taught us)

  • The Guardian UK ☛ 2025-10-29 [Older] Alan Turing institute launches new mission to protect UK from cyber-attacks

  • Bloomberg ☛ 2025-10-30 [Older] Snowflake Loses Two More Bids to Dismiss Data Breach Plaintiffs

  • 2025-10-30 [Older] Revealed: Afghan data breach after MoD official left laptop open on train

  • PT ☛ 2025-10-31 [Older] Legal Aid Agency chief admits difficulties understanding impact of cyberattack

  • 2025-10-31 [Older] Landmark civil penalty of AU$5.8 million issued under Australia’s Privacy Act

  • 2025-10-31 [Older] How many courts have had sealed and sensitive files exposed by one vendor’s error?

  • 2025-11-01 [Older] Veradigm’s Breach Claims Under Scrutiny After Dark Web Leak

  • Daily Record ☛ 2025-11-01 [Older] UK: Woman charged after NHS patients’ records accessed in data breach

  • 2025-11-02 [Older] University of Pennsylvania says it wasn’t hacked after a vulgar email was sent to campus community

  • 2025-11-02 [Older] Two years after an audit highlighted significant concerns, North Salem Central School District leaves sensitive student data at risk

  • 2025-11-03 [Older] ‘People have had to move house’: Inside the British Library, two years on from devastating cyber attack

  • The Globe And Mail CA ☛ 2025-11-03 [Older] Canadian woman stuck since 2021 in Mauritius after passport withheld

  • Chicago Sun Times ☛ 2025-11-04 [Older] Chicago firm that resolves ransomware attacks had rogue workers carrying out their own hacks, FBI says

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Linuxiac ☛ Kubuntu Website Inaccessible Due to SSL Configuration Mistake

      The official Kubuntu site is currently inaccessible due to an HTTPS setup issue, but the real concern isn’t the certificate itself — it’s what this says about the project’s reputation.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Faking Receipts with AI

      Over the past few decades, it’s become easier and easier to create fake receipts. Decades ago, it required special paper and printers—I remember a company in the UK advertising its services to people trying to cover up their affairs. Then, receipts became computerized, and faking them required some artistic skills to make the page look realistic.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EPIC ☛ EPIC Recommends Privacy-Protective Age Assurance Standards in Comments to the California DOJ

      EPIC recommended that the California DOJ prioritize privacy- and speech-protective age assurance methods and standards in the rulemaking. The rules should also make clear that SB 976 does not require companies to age gate their entire platforms. In other words, companies complying with SB 976 could turn off addictive feeds and push notifications for all users by default and only require users who wish to turn these features on to go through the age assurance process.

    • TechCrunch ☛ Lawmakers say stolen police logins are exposing Flock surveillance cameras to hackers

      Lawmakers have called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Flock Safety, a company that operates license plate-scanning cameras, for allegedly failing to implement cybersecurity protections that expose its camera network to hackers and spies.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Michael Tsai Asks a Good Question About Live Translation in the E.U.: What ‘Additional Engineering’? – Pixel Envy

      Tsai is referencing Apple’s Digital Markets Act press release. After listing the features delayed in the E.U., one of which is Live Translation, and all attributed to the DMA, it goes on to say (emphasis mine): [...]

    • Michael Tsai ☛ AirPods Live Translation Expands to the EU

      The other main theory for the delay was that Apple had not yet shown the regulators how the feature complied with the GDPR. But would that require “additional engineering work”? Apple was cagey before but now specifically blames the DMA, not the GDPR.

    • Michael Geist ☛ How the Liberal and Conservative Parties Have Quietly Colluded to Undermine the Privacy Rights of Canadians

      This is not the first time the government has tried to exempt political parties from standard privacy laws. Bill C-65, which failed in the last Parliament, contained similar provisions. However, the provisions were in a bill on the Elections Act, not buried among tax measures. Moreover, the previous approach were stronger, including measures to address data breaches and the requirement to notify affected individuals as well as certain restrictions such as the sale of personal information. Bill C-4 removes the data breach notification requirements, drops the sale restrictions, and renders the entire exemption retroactive to the year 2000. Having granted themselves full rights to collect, use and disclose personal information – and knowing that PIPEDA does not generally apply to these activities – Bill C-4 then also exempts the parties from any provincial privacy laws.

    • Nick Heer ☛ The CAPTCHA Is Changing and, for Many, Increasingly Invisible

      I am not turning on my webcam to do a gesture so I can access your website.

  • Confidentiality

    • [Old] Let's Encrypt ☛ Ending OCSP Support in 2025 - Let's Encrypt

      Earlier this year we announced our intent to provide certificate revocation information exclusively via Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs), ending support for providing certificate revocation information via the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP). Today we are providing a timeline for ending OCSP services: [...]

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-28 [Older] US: Strike on suspected drug traffickers kills 14

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-28 [Older] Tanzania: Who's silencing the power of youth and women's votes?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-10-28 [Older] Sudan: After RSF takeover, atrocities feared in Darfur

  • France24 ☛ Why is Australia banning children under 16 from social media – and can they enforce it?

    Australia this week added popular forum Reddit and homegrown streaming platform Kick to its list of social media platforms that will be off-limits to children under 16 starting December 10. So just how will this unprecedented social media ban actually work?

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Of fiber-optics and FPVs – 6 questions with a Ukrainian drone trainer

    I would say yes. There is a shortage of pilots, but even more so, a shortage of motivated individuals. Right now, it’s harder to train a pilot from scratch, especially if they don’t have any experience with radios, engineering or related technical fields. In general, it takes at least three months to train the pilots from scratch to the beginner level.

    When we talk about pilots, it’s worth mentioning that they also need to be a bit like engineers – if we talk about FPV drones. When you are in position, you have to understand how the system works. If something goes wrong, you should be able to repair it; if the drone crashes, you need to figure out how to make it fly again. So piloting skills are important, but it’s equally important to have some engineering knowledge as well.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Education Department violated workers’ rights with partisan email replies, judge rules

    The Department of Education cannot use partisan messaging in employees’ out-of-office replies during the ongoing government shutdown, a federal judge ruled Friday.

    Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the agency “infringed upon its employees’ First Amendment rights” when it changed language in their automatic replies from neutral messaging about the shutdown to text that blamed Democrats for the work stoppage.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Russia could buy leftover uranium from Niger, France warns

    A series of coups in its former colonies has reduced France’s influence in the Sahel, while Russia has expanded its operations in the region by partnering with the military juntas.

  • FAIR ☛ Remembering Dick Cheney, ‘Polarizing’ War Criminal

    As VP, he was chief architect of the “Global War on Terror,” with a hands-on role in manufacturing the disinformation that manufactured consent for the Iraq invasion based on imaginary WMDs and fictional ties to 9/11. The hundreds of thousands of deaths from that war are Cheney’s most significant legacy.

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Down The Atomic Rabbit Hole

    This isn’t exhaustive, but if you’ve got recommendations I didn’t mention, send them my way.

  • The Hindu ☛ Denmark’s government aims to ban access to social media for children aged under 15

    The Danish government stated that a coalition of parties from both the right and left emphasises that children should not not be left alone in a digital world filled with harmful content and commercial interests alone

  • Associated Press ☛ Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children aged under 15

    The move, led by the Ministry of Digitalization, aims to set the age limit for access to social media but give some parents — after a specific assessment — the right to give consent to let their children access social media from age 13.

    Such a measure would be among the most sweeping steps yet by a European government to limit use of social media among teens and younger children, which has drawn concerns in many parts of an increasingly online world.

  • Copenhagen Post ☛ Denmark introduces social media ban for children under 15 with parental exemptions

    The agreement was officially presented at the Ministry of Digitalisation by Minister of Digitalisation Caroline Stage, who negotiated the deal with the Conservatives and the Radicals.

    Social media platforms will be required to implement age verification in line with the European Union’s Digital Services Act. EU guidelines issued in July allow Denmark to set a national age limit for social media use.

  • Business Standard ☛ Denmark govt mulls ban on social media access for children under 15

    The ministry said in a statement that a coalition of parties on both right and left are making it clear that children should not be left alone in a digital world where harmful content and commercial interests are too much a part of shaping their everyday lives and childhoods.

  • NPR ☛ Want less screen-obsessed kids? Set better tech boundaries for yourself

    "If you don't want your teens to be looking at their phones at the dinner table, you should not be taking out your phone at the dinner table either," says psychologist Jean Twenge, author of the book 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World, published in September.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Atlantic Council launches GeoTech Commission on Artificial Intelligence

    The new Commission builds on the Atlantic Council’s pioneering work on the geopolitics of artificial intelligence. It is the second iteration of the GeoTech Commission; the first ran from 2021 to 2023 with a focus on US technology leadership, supply chain resilience, and global health security.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Hatch Act: Is Trump Admin Violating by Blaming Dems for Shutdown?

    Others accused Noem of violating the nation’s federal ethics laws, specifically the Hatch Act.

    Passed in 1939, the Hatch Act is one of those blurry laws that feels more like a way to codify a norm than an enforceable piece of legislation. The rule is fairly straightforward: federal employees cannot use their government position or government resources to advocate on behalf of a campaign or candidate, or use those same resources to engage in partisan political activity while on duty.

  • YLE ☛ Researcher criticises Finnish plan to store election data on Amazon servers

    According to him, counting votes is at the heart of democracy and moving election data abroad could erode trust in the democratic process.

    "It's likely to increase suspicion towards the system," he said.

    He also dismissed the financial benefit of using AWS, saying that the roughly four million euros in savings over 10 years are relatively small compared to the importance of the country's electoral system.

• Environment

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Earth 'can no longer sustain' intensive fossil fuel use, Lula tells COP30

    "Earth can no longer sustain the development model based on the intensive use of fossil fuels that has prevailed over the past 200 years," Lula told world leaders in Belem where the UN climate talks are taking place.

    Brazil has stressed that each country would pursue its own course to "transition away from fossil fuels"—a pact made by all nations at a previous COP in Dubai in 2023.

  • Ethan Zuckerman ☛ How do we communicate about climate without shaming audiences?

    Eric Gordon suggests that the challenge of communicating about climate is a trust crisis. Citing a range of research, he notes that public trust in media is very low (8% of Republicans say they trust the media), as is trust in government and in each other. The trust crisis becomes a communication crisis: “If you don’t trust the government, you’re not going to trust its messaging.”

  • Cost Rica ☛ UN Chief Warns of Moral Failure as COP30 Tackles Missed Climate Goals

    Leaders from dozens of countries arrived in the Amazon city this week as scientists confirmed the Paris Agreement’s safer warming limit will be exceeded. Guterres addressed the group, stating humanity failed to keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius. He stressed that this shortfall does not erase all hope, urging immediate action to curb emissions.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont ☛ 'Cranksgiving' encourages bicycling community to 'pedal with purpose'

      Organized by Burrows Sports and the First Congregational Church (UCC), this “Biketown” event brings together riders of all levels to collect food and raise funds for local organizations supporting the food insecure. Participants will turn their miles into meals, proving that a bike ride can do more than just cover ground — it can make a real difference.

      “This event is about community,” said Peter “Fish” Case, owner of Burrows Sports, in a news release. “Cranksgiving gives cyclists a chance to do what they love — ride — while helping our neighbors who need it most.”

    • Vox ☛ 2025 Elections: How rising energy costs are shaking up American politics

      The results showed that by grounding climate action in the everyday math of household energy bills, Democrats may have finally found a way to make climate policy feel less abstract — and more like a winning issue.

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ The ‘Edmund Fitzgerald’ Sank Half a Century Ago. We’re Still Fascinated

      Half a century ago, on an unseasonably warm fall day, the freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald set off from the western edge of Lake Superior with a cargo full of iron ore. Within hours, a ferocious storm gathered in strength, ultimately producing 60-foot waves and sinking the prized vessel. There were no survivors. The exact cause of its demise remains unknown.

    • The Register UK ☛ Power crunch threatens to derail AI datacenter construction

      Nearly half of respondents (48 percent) cite power access as the biggest scheduling constraint, with grid connection wait times stretching years.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ Birding’s Tragic Blind Spot

• Finance

  • 404 Media ☛ One of the Greatest Wall Street Investors of All Time Announces Retirement

    Nancy Pelosi’s trades over the years have been so good that a startup was created to allow investors to directly mirror her portfolio.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • FAIR ☛ ‘The Trump Administration Needs to Be Isolated in Its Anti-Science Actions’: CounterSpin interview with Rachel Cleetus on climate complicity

    Janine Jackson interviewed the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Rachel Cleetus about climate complicity for the October 31, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • FAIR ☛ Madiba Dennie on Voting Rights Act in Danger

  • FAIR ☛ For Establishment Press, the Lesson of Mamdani’s Victory Is to Take No Lessons

    In the first election since Donald Trump and the GOP have upended US democracy, Democrats won resoundingly in closely watched state and local races across the country. The biggest headline was the general election thumping of establishment candidate Andrew Cuomo by democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral election, but Democrats also won big in Virginia, New Jersey, California and Pennsylvania, among other places.

  • CBC ☛ Boeing officially off the hook for criminal charges in deadly crashes that killed 346 people

    A U.S. judge on Thursday approved a request by the Justice Department to dismiss a criminal case against Boeing stemming from two fatal 737 MAX plane crashes that killed 346 people including 18 Canadians.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Microsoft AI Push in UAE Raises Security Concerns

    In partnership with Emirates tech company G42, Microsoft is building the first stage of a 5-gigawatt US-UAE AI campus using Nvidia GPUs.

  • IT Wire ☛ iTWire - Apple in talks with Google to use Gemini as basis for Siri 2.0 in US $1 billion deal

    With Google reportedly now paying Apple US $20 billion per year to be the default search engine on iPhones, and Apple's other computing devices, and with Apple earning hundreds of billions of dollars per year as the world's top consumer tech company, Apple certainly has the funds needed to pay for quality AI.

  • Wired ☛ Welcome to Big Tech's ‘Age of Extraction’

    The relationship is worth mentioning because Wu—law professor, former FTC adviser, and Joe Biden’s special assistant for technology and competition policy—just published a book called The Age of Extraction—a high-minded companion to Doctorow’s gritty polemic. Both of them explain how tech platforms, once they get their claws in you, shift from serving you to serving themselves. As you might expect, Wu’s version tilts heavily toward the idea that our current Gilded-Age-level consumer abuse should be tamed by aggressive antitrust action.

  • Wired ☛ Google, Microsoft, and Meta Have Stopped Publishing Workforce Diversity Data

    Some US tech giants are abandoning their decade-long practice of publishing statistics about the gender and racial makeup of their workforce. Google, which helped pioneer the release of annual diversity, equity, and inclusion reports, has no plans to disclose the information this year, according to four employees familiar with the discussions internally. Microsoft and Meta also will not be publishing diversity reports and data this year, spokespeople for the companies confirmed to WIRED.

  • Wired ☛ The Government Shutdown Is a Ticking Cybersecurity Time Bomb

    CBO spokesperson Caitlin Emma told WIRED in a statement that it has “implemented additional monitoring and new security controls to further protect the agency’s systems” and that “CBO occasionally faces threats to its network and continually monitors to address those threats.” Emma did not address questions from WIRED about whether the government shutdown has impacted technical personnel or cybersecurity-related work at CBO.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Do What You Believe In

    I realize that this sounds somewhat unsophisticated. Yet—though this may be counterintuitive—I also believe that it is the model of political engagement that will produce the best results. I cannot begin to estimate how many people I have met who believe, in theory, in equality and justice and other principles that would seem to dictate that they be, you know, socialists. Their values and beliefs, however, are only the first step of their political process. After determining these beliefs, they then put on their Amateur Strategist hat and proceed to imagine why all of the things that they would like to see are not in fact possible (because of, you know, swing voters and such). Then they feed their actual beliefs into their own—purely imaginary!—Machine of Political Strategy, which spits out a blander and more watered down version of those beliefs, which they believe is more palatable, more politically possible. Then they start their fight with a goal that is half of the goal that they would actually like to achieve, in their hearts. Thus their initial political ask is less of what they want and more of what their enemies want. In the name of being savvy and strategic, they have successfully negotiated against themselves.

  • Bonfire Networks ☛ 🐌 Slow Software for a Burning World 🔥

    As power concentrates, democracy withers and authoritarianism thrives. Algorithms tuned for "engagement" amplify fear, outrage, and division—because that’s what keeps us clicking. In the end, the tools meant to connect us are weaponized to divide us.

    We've witnessed the damage when tech scales without care. What could we build instead?

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft's data sovereignty: Now with extra sovereignty!

    Under the CLOUD Act, US authorities can compel access to information held by American cloud providers irrespective of where in the world that data is housed. Although Microsoft says it has published transparency reports and no European customers, private or public, were yet the subject of any requests, the threat of the law remains and this is making some nervous.

  • Louie Mantia ☛ It Hurts the Face

    The word “culture” is shorthand for a society’s way of life, its traditions, its values. It is inherently a generalization. Whenever we visit a new place, all of its differences are highlighted. As a tourist, it’s very easy to notice the things that seem “better” than your culture. But as a resident, I’ve also come to notice all the things that feel “worse.” I found myself blaming the culture whenever I was frustrated.

  • Burkhard Stubert ☛ Surviving the EU Cyber Resilience Act

    Over the last year, you have prioritised core features over security features time and again. Delivering features that make your customers more productive gives you a good return on investment, whereas security measures tend to get in the way of productivity. Your product lacks standard security measures for confidentiality, integrity, availability and access control. The software components of your product are out of date and hard to update. You don’t have security expertise in-house. You have trouble to find this expertise externally.

    In short, your product does not conform to the EU CRA. If you can’t fix the CRA violations by 11 December 2027, your product will be banned from the EU market and your company will face penalties up to 15 million Euro or up to 2.5% of your worldwide annual gross revenue, whichever is higher. These consequences threaten the existence of your company. And – you don’t have much time left to become compliant.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Disinformation rife ahead of climate summit in Brazil

      Between July and September there has been a 267% surge, or more than 14,000 examples, of COP-related disinformation, according to a report published today. The research was produced by the Coalition Against Climate Disinformation (CAAD), a global climate watchdog, and the Observatory for Information Integrity (OII), a research organization focusing on the environment and democracy.

      One widely shared clip created by AI and circulating on social media showed Belem, the Amazonian city hosting COP this year, under water. Though OII said the reporter, people, floods and city presented in the video do not exist.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • 404 Media ☛ AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge

    Ajay Gupte, the president of CLCD, told 404 Media the software is simply being piloted at the moment, but that it “allows districts to make the majority of their classroom collections publicly visible—supporting transparency and access—while helping them identify a small subset of titles that might require review under state guidelines.” He added that “This process is designed to assist districts in meeting legislative requirements and protect teachers and librarians from accusations of bias or non-compliance [...] It is purpose-built to help educators defend their collections with clear, data-driven evidence rather than subjective opinion.”

  • University of Michigan ☛ UMich hosts DMN Lecture on academic and intellectual freedom

    The DMN Lecture honors three former faculty members — Chandler Davis, Clement Markert and Mark Nickerson — who were called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1954, which was investigating communism on university campuses. Invoking their constitutional rights, they refused to speak. Former University President Harlan Hatcher assured the committee the University would not employ communists and fired the employees.

  • CPJ ☛ Iranian authorities arrest economist and editor Parviz Sedaghat amid crackdown

    “Iran’s imprisonment of Parviz Sedaghat and his colleagues represents yet another attempt to criminalize critical thought and independent journalism,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “Authorities must release all journalists and researchers detained for their writings and end the escalating repression against voices calling for transparency and justice.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CBC ☛ Why the Teen Vogue closure is a big deal in this political climate

    Teen media is experiencing yet another blow, and some observers say that’s a big deal for both teens and adults. That's largely because Teen Vogue, the site at the heart of the latest media maelstrom, is known for its ambitious political coverage and reliable-yet-trendy offerings.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Telegraph revenue and profit flat in 2024 amid ongoing ownership limbo

    Telegraph spends more than £30m on still-unfinished takeover process in two years.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Newsweek editor on making brand 'more reflective of the modern era'

    “We’re in 50 countries and much of the audience that is accessing us is doing so through print, particularly abroad,” she said.

    “It’s definitely something that we remain really proud of – and it’s also profitable. I think there are some print entities that are no longer profitable and are now publishing digital only, but that’s not the case with Newsweek, and we’re really proud of that.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • CBC ☛ Worried about being fingerprinted? What snowbirds need to know about U.S. registration requirement

    The regulation sounds simple, but it’s actually complex. Not all long-term travellers need to register, and for those who do, there’s more than one way to complete the process.

    Further complicating matters, there’s no central U.S. government website that lays out all the options for travellers, and those who register at the border will likely be photographed, fingerprinted and charged $30 US.

    “It's confusing, there's no common sense in how they're rolling this out,” said U.S. immigration lawyer, Len Saunders, whose office sits close to the border in Blaine, Wash.

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Battle Iranian Women Are Winning

    In September 2022, a young woman was picked up by Tehran’s morality police for sporting “improper hijab.” She died in custody. A mass revolt ensued—one that lasted for months and demanded an end not just to the mandatory hijab, but to the Islamic Republic as well. The movement failed to achieve that larger goal, but it did radically change public life in Iran. Technically, the hijab remains mandatory. Yet for the first time since its founding, the regime has lost the ability to enforce that law.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ An Enslaved Man Made Thousands of Ceramic Pots. Now, a Boston Museum Has Returned Two of Them to His Descendants

    Artworks by enslaved Black Americans are often absent from repatriation conversations in the United States, according to George Fatheree, a lawyer for Drake’s descendants.

  • WBUR Radio ☛ MFA resolves ownership for vessels by enslaved potter David Drake

    One of the vessels, “Poem Jar,” is currently on view in the Art of the Americas Wing. At the time of their making, Drake was simply known as “Dave” for the simple way he signed many of his pieces. Drake lived from about 1801 to the 1870s and threw thousands of clay food storage vessels that were sold to plantations. He crafted the two jars in 1857 at the Stony Bluff Manufactory in western South Carolina.

    According to the museum, he began signing and dating his work in the 1830s. Drake was also a poet and often inscribed his pots with verse. This was a defiant act because it was illegal for enslaved people to read or write.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ ICE Is Planning to Build a Bounty Hunter Army

    Led by Erik Prince, Donald Trump ally and founder of the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater, the group proposed (among other ideas) that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) create a “skip tracing team” that would send out private contractors to hunt down immigrants targeted for deportation, per reporting at the time by Politico.

    Now, there are indications ICE is carrying out those plans.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The enshittification of labor

    Tcherneva's latest paper is "The Death of the Social Contract and the Enshittification of Jobs," in which she draws a series of careful and compelling parallels between my work on enshittification and today's employment crisis, showing how a job guarantee is the ultimate disenshittifier of work: [...]

  • [Old] Washingon-Baltimore News Guild ☛ Science News Media Guild will strike on November 5th - Washington-Baltimore News Guild

    Members of the Science News Media Guild, workers who publish Science News and Science News Explores will conduct a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, November 5th. This comes after SNMG members voted to reject the Society’s latest contract proposal.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • EU Observer ☛ Deutsche Telekom case shines light on 'two-speed' [Internet]

    The EU net neutrality law, “prohibits ISPs from treating traffic differently for commercial reasons. And that's exactly what's happening here,” said professor of net neutrality law van Schewick.

    Net neutrality is the principle that ISPs should treat all [Internet] traffic equally, regardless of where the data is going, and the activists see the Deutsche Telekom case as a reason why Europe needs these rules.

  • Stanford University ☛ Deutsche Telekom case shines light on 'two-speed' [Internet]

    Earlier this year, Austrian and German NGOs filed a complaint with the German Federal Network Agency against Deutsche Telekom, alleging that the [Internet] service provider (ISP) is creating paid fast lanes to access websites.

    On Wednesday (5 November), the groups held a talk to outline their complaint and why it's important for Europe's net neutrality.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Michael Tsai ☛ Proposal to Settle Epic and Google Antitrust Case

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Personal/Opinions

    • First Night In Montreal

      It was the farthest north I have ever driven, let alone by myself since I made the road trip all the way from Utah to New Hampshire.

      Truth be told, I was feeling hella anxious when I was about to embark on this trip. But like Kierkegaard once said, “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

      It was my first taste of freedom in a long tim, and I was wondering if I’d ever get lost. Despite having a flip phone and an outdated iPod, I was able to find my way to the Hotel Brossard barely using google maps. I just trusted my sense of direction.

    • 🔤SpellBinding: BEWNOSG Wordo: QUEER

    • Lunch 🍰

      There was no bread left at lunchtime.