Leftovers

• Marco F ☛ Down the Self-Hosting Rabbit Hole

  tl;dr I’ve learned a lot about self-hosting in the last two weeks, installed and tried out many services, and will now hopefully slow down, see how stable everything runs, and will certainly move one or two services to another server or turn them off again - we’ll see.

• Matthew Weber ☛ 200 Posts This Year

  This is my 200th post in 2025. There’s still over a month to go in this year, so I’ll have more. When I started this blog, it was going to be nothing but books. I wanted a place where I could talk about books I’ve read, what I was going to read, and other book related things.

• Justin Meiners ☛ Take your time

  I’m someone who likes to work a little slower, explore a subject in-depth, and always go back to basics. If you’re reading this, you probably appreciate a similar craftsmen-like approach, and often find good ideas, overlooked by popular trends.

  Craftsmen correctly identify that true principles and skills that don’t change. This helps them see past the latest craze, tune out noise, and focus on long-term impact. But success with this approach can grow into a temptation to ignore time entirely. We can come to believe that our work is time-less. If we put in the hard work to make a great project, it will be appreciated, no matter when it’s done or what comes after.

• Jeroen Sangers ☛ Why I unsubscribe from every brand that sends Black Friday emails

  November is the month in which I massively unsubscribe.

  My personal rule is simple: if you send me a Black Friday offer, I unsubscribe immediately.

• Science

  • Pivot to AI ☛ White House: the US will fabricate science with chatbots

    That’s a remarkable claim. Do you think your people at the National Labs, who spend their lives writing the best simulation code they can, have just been slouching, and you can vibe-code a 100,000× speedup? I look forward to your successful results.

• Career/Education

  • Dan McQuillan ☛ Resisting GenAI & Big Tech in Higher Education

    My speaker notes & slides for the panel on 'Resisting GenAI & Big Tech in Higher Education', an event co-organised with the Climate Justice Universities Union (CJUU).

    The panel: Christoph Becker (U of Toronto, CA), Mary Finley-Brook (U of Richmond, USA), Dan McQuillan (Goldsmiths U of London, UK), Sinéad Sheehan (University of Galway, Ireland) Jennie Stephens (National University of Ireland Maynooth, IE), and Paul Lachapelle (U of Montana, USA)

  • Declan Chidlow ☛ On Writing for Publications

    I’ve been fortunate enough to write for a number of publications under some fantastic individuals and have taken away many lessons via observations and from making mistakes while doing so. I figured I’d collate some of them so that I and any similarly incapable fool can avoid future bungles.

    This article is largely written with freelance technical content writing in mind, as writing of that nature is where I most often find myself working with editors; however, it should largely be applicable generally. Don’t take my words as gospel, as they are anecdotal, and I can’t speak to their general applicability.

  • Arjen Wiersma ☛ Learning to Type

    I was under the impression that I was a good typist, but getting an ergonomic keyboard taught me otherwise.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ The AirPort Express Still Works In 2025 Thanks To Apple’s Ongoing Support

    Apple was all-in on WiFi from the beginning, launching the AirPort line of products to much fanfare in 1999. In 2004, along came the AirPort Express—a fully-functional router the size of a laptop charger, that offered audio streaming to boot. As [schvabek] found out that while a lot of older Apple gear has long ago been deprecated, the AirPort Express is still very much supported and functional to this day!

  • Wired ☛ A $100 Billion Chip Project Forced a 91-Year-Old Woman From Her Home

    Local authorities threatened to exercise their power of eminent domain, or taking land for public benefit, to forcibly uproot King and proceed with construction on a $100 billion campus where US tech giant Micron plans to make memory chips for use in a variety of electronics. King’s home has been the lone remaining residence on the 1,400 acre plot of land, which previously included dozens of other homes.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ County promised great-grandmother she could stay in home forever. Now she’s being pushed out for Micron

    “I don’t think at this point in her life Mom deserves to be displaced,” King, who lives a half mile down the road, told Syracuse.com. “Mom deserves to stay. They signed an agreement for life use.”

    But the family is negotiating, King added, acknowledging the inevitable power of the county to force Azalia King to move.

    The standoff pits an elderly widow against one of the world’s biggest chipmakers, which is backed by billions of dollars from the federal government to return semiconductor manufacturing to the U.S.

  • Chris Aldrich ☛ indexing and filing systems

    While digging about in indexing and filing systems, I ran across this chart created by the Oxford Filing Supply Company for a special Filing Supplies section of the May 1934 issue of Office Appliances magazine (Volume 59, Issue 5). It delineates the broad characteristics of most of the major commercially available filing systems of the era.

  • Eliseo Martelli ☛ Adjusting the Rangefinder Horizontal Alignment

    First things first, let me take this out of the way: I am not a professional camera technician. However, I have had to adjust the rangefinder horizontal alignment on several Leica cameras, and I have found a method that works well for me. Proceed with caution and at your own risk. Poking tools inside your camera carries significant risk. If you are uncomfortable with precision adjustments, please send your camera to a qualified technician.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Federal News Network ☛ Privatized military housing is making service members and their families sick at alarming rates, survey finds

    "This is absolutely stunning. This is a national security issue, and we need to start talking about it in that light," Brandon Chappo said.

  • Vintage Everyday ☛ Moe Howard of the Three Stooges Show How They Performed Slapstick Without Hurting Each Other in the 1960s

    During interviews and television appearances in the 1960s, when reruns of their shorts introduced them to a new generation, Moe would explain that their actions were illusions more about coordination than actual contact. He took pride in teaching how to achieve the comedic effect without harm, largely in response to concerns that children might try to imitate their behavior.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Google steers Americans looking for health care into “junk insurance”

    Crucially, these plans do not comply with the Affordable Care Act, which requires comprehensive coverage, and bans exclusions for pre-existing conditions. These plans only exist because of loopholes in the ACA, designed for very small-scale employers or temporary coverage.

    The one thing junk insurance does not skimp on is sales and marketing. These plans outbid the rest of the market when it comes to buying Google search ads, meaning that anyone who uses Google to research health insurance will be inundated with ads for these shitty plans. The plans also spend a fortune on "search engine optimization" – basically, gaming the Google algorithm – so that the non-ad Google results for health insurance are also saturated with these garbage plans.

  • Science Alert ☛ Stressed? Your Body Thinks You're Fighting Lions Every Day, Say Anthropologists

    They pulled together a wealth of evidence that suggests our biological evolution is being outpaced by rapid technological and environmental transformations.

    Daily lives filled with triggers that put us slightly on edge, from overflowing inboxes to construction noise to work deadlines, are combining to put our bodies on alert around the clock – something that hasn't been the case for much of human history.

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Shirking: Unplugged in Stockholm

    Even if it can’t, the shirking might be a vital rest and recuperation and acknowledgment of limited bandwidth.

    This is also interbraided with the other reasons for going offline, like my frustration with the mental ice age of the corporate-owned, appified society. Maybe I can’t explain why I don’t want to go on Facebook but if I physically can’t because I don’t have a smartphone with me, I don’t have to worry as much about the other person trying to convince me or bully me. Nope, sorry, I just literally can’t.

• Proprietary

  • Clayton Errington ☛ Local Archiving - Backing up the Cloud

    With the ever changing cloud market, local archives might be the way forward. With the push to cloud services there is the advantage to pay for the service and allow someone else front the hardware cost for the convenience of resilience, data storage, and more. What happens when that service is no longer free, costs go up, company dissolves, then what do you do?

  • The Register UK ☛ Clop's Oracle EBS rampage reaches Dartmouth College

    According to a breach notification filed with Maine's attorney general, the New Hampshire Ivy League university says crooks exploited a now-patched zero-day in Oracle EBS and made off with data from its environment between August 9 and August 12. Dartmouth's review found that at least 1,494 Maine residents had their names, Social Security Numbers, and, in some cases, financial account information stolen, though it hasn't said how many people were affected overall.

  • Qt ☛ Qt for MCUs vs LVGL: A Comparative Study from Design to Deployment

    When comparing Qt for MCUs vs LVGL, our independent study with Spyrosoft shows that Qt for MCUs reduces development time for microcontroller GUI by 30% compared to LVGL. The efficiency improvement comes from Qt’s integrated toolchain, which facilitates better collaboration among designers (Figma to Qt), developers (Qt Creator or Visual Studio Code), and QA engineers (Squish for MCUs), making Qt for MCUs ideal for complex projects with cross-functional teams. Additionally, Qt for MCUs offers comprehensive safety certification packages for safety-critical industries such as automotive, two-wheelers, and medical applications, positioning it as a superior LVGL alternative when functional safety and regulatory compliance are essential.

  • The Register UK ☛ Dell says Windows 11 transition is far slower than Win 10 shift, yet PC sales have stalled [Ed: Microsoft is failing OEMs by producing stuff nobody wants to get]

    Clarke said that means 500 million PCs can’t run Windows 11, while the same number didn’t need an upgrade to handle Microsoft’s latest desktop OS. The COO therefore predicted the PC market will “flourish”, but then defined the word as meaning “roughly flat” sales despite Dell chalking up mid-to high single digits PC sales growth over the last year.

  • EE Times ☛ Cloud-first safety: EB corbos Linux for Safety Applications on AWS

    If you build safety-critical software for vehicles, you know the feeling. A design review clears on Tuesday, but the hardware bench is booked for weeks. The team slices features into spreadsheets while the calendar eats your runway.

    At IAA Mobility 2025, Elektrobit announced at the AWS theater that EB corbos Linux for Safety Applications is now available as an Amazon Machine Image on AWS.

  • Financial Express ☛ HP Layoffs: Company to cut 10% of its staff amounting to 6000 employees globally

    HP Inc. announced on Tuesday that it plans to slash 4,000 to 6,000 jobs worldwide by fiscal 2028, Reuters reported. The move is part of the company’s effort to streamline operations, adopt artificial intelligence, increase product development, improve customer service, and boost productivity.

  • MoneyControl ☛ HP layoffs: Up to 6,000 jobs to be cut as higher memory costs and weak demand weigh on earnings

    HP is preparing for one of its biggest restructuring phases yet, planning to cut up to 6,000 jobs as the PC and printer maker faces rising costs, a softer outlook for fiscal 2026 and pressure on its printing business.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ How Big Tech Became Part of the State

    Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI wield tremendous influence over our politics, but does this mean we are entering an era of technofeudalism? In a wide-ranging discussion, Evgeny Morozov and Cedric Durand ask how we ought to understand contemporary capitalism.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Hindustan Times ☛ Deloitte again accused of citing AI-generated research in a million-dollar report

      A healthcare report commissioned by a provincial government in Canada from Deloitte allegedly contained potential AI-generated errors, according to a report. It was commissioned for nearly $1.6 million. This is the second time this year that the consulting giant was accused of using AI-generated research and citations in its reports.

    • Futurism ☛ Thanksgiving Dinner Headed for Tragedy as Disastrous AI Recipes Devour Internet

      Food bloggers and recipe developers are warning home cooks to be wary of AI-generated recipes that could turn this year’s Thanksgiving dinner into a tragedy.

      As Bloomberg reports, they’ve watched in horror as AI slop has made searching for a reliable recipe on sites like Google, Facebook, and Pinterest a potential minefield.

    • Futurism ☛ AI Teddy Bear Back on the Market After Getting Caught Telling Kids How to Find Pills and Start Fires

      The controversy kicked off earlier this month, when researchers at the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund published a report detailing their findings after testing three AI-powered toys, including FoloToy’s Kumma. Across extensive tests, all of the toys produced responses that parents might find concerning, such as discussing religion, glorifying dying in battle as a warrior in Norse mythology, and telling children where to find harmful items like matches and plastic bags.

    • The Verge ☛ Leaked document reveals David Sacks tried to kill state AI laws | The Verge

      But crucially, they noticed how much power would have been handed to a certain South African tech-billionaire-turned-special-government-employee who’d tunneled his way into the West Wing — not Elon Musk, but the other one.

      In every section of the draft order, President Donald Trump was directing his cabinet secretaries and agency heads to imminently issue reports and guidance on how to punish states with AI laws, within the next 90 days. In the Attorney General’s case, they had 30 days to establish an entire legal task force to sue those states. Every single one of them would have to consult David Sacks, the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto — and one of the most influential tech venture capitalists in the world — while executing the order.

    • Kirill A Korinsky ☛ Abliterated Large Language Models Treat Users as Capable Adults

      This article examines the effects of abliteration on Large Language Models (LLMs) and demonstrates that abliterated models treat users as capable adults, whereas original models tend to treat users as incapacitated individuals requiring protection by default.

    • Gergely Nagy ☛ You probably shouldn't block AI bots from your website

      Dude. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of “progress”. Progress means moving forward, to grow. The slop machines don’t do that.

      These bastards are killing the open web, moving us backwards by making it even harder to self-host anything, driving us towards centralization, which is the exact opposite of progress.

      They steal and plunder, and make the life of everyone outside the billionaire / fascist class miserable. That is not progress.

      Companies keep firing people “because AI will take over their jobs”, only to re-hire them at lower wage, because the AI absolutely can’t. This is not progress.

      It’s being pushed and forced on us. That is not progress.

    • The Verge ☛ The AI boom is based on a fundamental mistake

      Cutting-edge research shows language is not the same as intelligence. The entire AI bubble is built on ignoring it.

    • Crazy Stupid Tech ☛ We remember the internet bubble. This mania looks and feels the same.

      The artificial intelligence revolution will be only three years old at the end of November. Think about that for a moment. In just 36 months AI has gone from great-new-toy, to global phenomenon, to where we are today – debating whether we are in one of the biggest technology bubbles or booms in modern times.

    • Robin Sloan ☛ All that is solid melts into code

      P.S. AI con­tinues to be a spec­tacle of strange cause and effect. In another uni­verse without a strong cul­ture of open source, there’s not an enor­mous pile of freely avail­able code — in fact there’s hardly any at all — and the models get good at some­thing else. Or maybe they don’t get good at anything. It’s been suggested, and cer­tainly feels plau­sible to me, that training on the super­struc­tured if-then of code makes models better at the if-then of lan­guage, better at logic and entail­ment generally.

    • BuzzFeed Inc ☛ I Set A Trap To Catch My Students Cheating With AI. The Results Were Shocking.

      Students are afraid to fail, and AI presents itself as a savior. But what we learn from history is that progress requires failure. It requires reflection. Students are not just undermining their ability to learn, but to someday lead.

      I asked my students to reflect, so I suppose I will end with my own reflection. I don’t use AI for anything in my academic or personal life. I value almost nothing more than my ability to think and to freely express myself. Even when I make mistakes, at least they are my mistakes.

      We live in an era where personal expression is saturated by digital filters, hivemind thinking is promoted through endless algorithms and academic freedom itself is under assault by the weakest minds among us. AI has only made this worse. It is a crisis.

    • Futurism ☛ Meet the Group Breaking People Out of Hey Hi (AI) Delusions

      "We're seeing some people who are so deep in it that they don't need Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Chaffbot anymore. They see their delusion in everything."

    • Futurism ☛ Scientists Discover “Universal” Jailbreak for Nearly Every AI, and the Way It Works Will Hurt Your Brain

      It's Hey Hi (AI) versus verse.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Major insurers move to avoid liability for Hey Hi (AI) lawsuits as multi-billion dollar risks emerge — Recent public incidents have lead to costly repercussions

      Major insurers are moving to ring-fence their exposure to artificial intelligence failures, after a run of costly and highly public incidents pushed concerns about systemic, correlated losses.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Atlantic ☛ People Are Underestimating America’s Groyper Problem

      The notion that American anti-Semitism is an outside influence operation rather than a homegrown menace is a comforting story. Unfortunately, it’s not true. Fuentes followers punch above their weight in American discourse because they are young and disproportionately online; some foreigners no doubt found this far-right niche useful for generating engagement and revenue. But the rise of American anti-Semitism is not a foreign phenomenon, and it is not an online illusion.

    • The Walrus ☛ Why Don’t We Take Stalking More Seriously?

      Such obsessive behaviour is often seen as funny or harmless—how many of us joke about stalking our crushes or dates on social media? “We romanticize, even glorify, stalking,” says Kropp. Pop culture reinforces the myth that if you keep pursuing your love interest, you’ll win them over in the end—like Ryan Gosling’s character in The Notebook precariously dangling off a Ferris wheel until his love interest, who previously rejected him, agrees to a date. “I’ve worked with a lot of stalkers,” says Kropp, “and they buy into that myth.”

      The lack of seriousness many attach to stalking means it’s often hard to recognize, even when it’s clearly wrong. Sometimes it becomes entertainment: You, a Netflix thriller about a bookstore manager and serial killer who secretly monitors the women he dates, has been criticized for glamorizing stalking by framing it as misguided desire.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Record ☛ Software companies must be held liable for British economic security, say MPs

      The report by the Business and Trade Committee says economic threats facing the United Kingdom are “multiplying — and, in the years ahead, will grow exponentially” leading to “a huge increase in the private ownership of public risk.”

      While calling on the government to take action to manage these threats more broadly, the committee identified three specific measures to address cybersecurity risks: “introducing liability for software developers, incentivising business investment in cyber resilience, and mandatory reporting following a malicious cyber incident.”

    • IT Wire ☛ iTWire - Ransomware attack targets Korean financial sector: report

      The attack combines Qilin’s ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) with potential involvement from North Korea-affiliated cyber criminals, and the attack targets managed service providers (MSPs) to access financial services companies.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Shai-Hulud worm returns stronger and more automated than ever before

      Self-replicating malware has infected almost 500 open-source packages, exposing more than 26,000 Microsoft's proprietary prison GitHub repositories in less than 24 hours.

      >

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • Federal News Network ☛ Privatized military housing is making service members and their families sick at alarming rates, survey finds

    The Change the Air Foundation recently conducted the Safe Military Housing Survey — one of the most comprehensive efforts yet to collect data the Defense Department has never been able to track accurately. The survey was designed to answer questions previous studies had overlooked and to provide Congress and the Pentagon with better data on what families across all branches and ranks are actually experiencing in military housing.

• Security

  • Security Week ☛ Cox Confirms Oracle EBS Hack as Cybercriminals Name 100 Alleged Victims

    More than 1.6 Tb of data allegedly stolen from Cox was made public by the hackers.

  • Security Week ☛ 146,000 Impacted by Delta Dental of Virginia Data Breach

    Names, Social Security numbers, ID numbers, and health information were stolen from a compromised email account.

  • Security Week ☛ Mazda Says No Data Leakage or Operational Impact From Oracle Hack

    The Cl0p ransomware group has listed Mazda and Mazda USA as victims of the Oracle EBS campaign on its leak website.

  • Security Week ☛ CISA Confirms Exploitation of Recent Oracle Identity Manager Vulnerability

    CISA has added CVE-2025-61757 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. 

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Gunnar Morling ☛ On Idempotency Keys

      In distributed systems, there’s a common understanding that it is not possible to guarantee exactly-once delivery of messages. What is possible though is exactly-once processing. By adding a unique idempotency key to each message, you can enable consumers to recognize and ignore duplicate messages, i.e. messages which they have received and successfully processed before.

      Now, how does this work exactly? When receiving a message, a consumer takes the message’s idempotency key and compares it to the keys of the messages which it already has processed. If it has seen the key before, the incoming message is a duplicate and can be ignored. Otherwise, the consumer goes on to process the message, for instance by storing the message itself, or a view derived from it, in some kind of database.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • New York Times ☛ X Displays Users’ Locations, Fueling Scrutiny Over Political Accounts

      Online sleuths quickly found that some accounts posting about U.S. politics, including those in support of the MAGA movement, appeared not to be based in the United States.

    • Futurism ☛ Twitter Debuted a New Feature and the Funniest Possible Thing Happened

      "This is total armageddon for the online right."

    • RFERL ☛ New X Feature Exposes Who In Iran Is Bypassing State For Unblocked Internet

      The social control media platform X rolled out a new ‘About This Account’ feature over the weekend that displays basic but key information, such as where an account is based and how it connects to the X app.

    • EDRI ☛ Why age verification misses the mark and puts everyone at risk

      In the name of protecting young people from online harm, many lawmakers have suggested measures such as monitoring conversations, restricting their behaviour, or excluding them from online spaces altogether. Despite EDRi’s early and continued warnings, age verification keeps gaining popularity in this debate, to the point that it has been endorsed by the European Commission and by the Council. Without drastic intervention, the European Parliament could soon follow suit.

      EDRi has serious concerns about age verification and the wider narrative that young people must endure invasive and intrusive measures to be protected online. As we have long advocated, the root causes of harm need to be addressed in order to make the internet safer for all its users. Age-based exclusion does not solve these root causes and merely delays people’s exposure to harm.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ The State of AI: Chatbot companions and the future of our privacy

      But tellingly, one area the laws fail to address is user privacy.

      This is despite the fact that AI companions, even more so than other types of generative AI, depend on people to share deeply personal information—from their day-to-day-routines, innermost thoughts, and questions they might not feel comfortable asking real people.

      After all, the more users tell their AI companions, the better the bots become at keeping them engaged. This is what MIT researchers Robert Mahari and Pat Pataranutaporn called “addictive intelligence” in an op-ed we published last year, warning that the developers of AI companions make “deliberate design choices ... to maximize user engagement.”

    • Security Week ☛ Alumni, Student, and Staff Information Stolen From Harvard University

      The potentially compromised information, Harvard said, includes data related to fundraising and alumni engagement activities, such as addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, donation details, event attendance, and other biographical information.

  • Confidentiality

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Code Formatting Tools Share Secrets By The Thousands

      Those links follow common, intuitive formats, they said, and JSONformatter and CodeBeautify also have “Recent Links” pages that allow a random user to browse all saved content and associated links, along with the titles, descriptions, and dates.

      “This makes extraction trivial – because we can behave like a real user using legitimate functionality,” the researchers said. “For every provided link on a Recent Links page, we extracted the id value, and requested the contents from the /service/getDataFromID endpoint to transform it into the raw content we’re really after.”

• Defence/Aggression

  • New York Times ☛ Jewish Leaders Rebuke Mamdani Over Response to Synagogue Protest

    The mayor-elect chastised a synagogue that hosted an event promoting migration to Israel and settlements in occupied territories. His stance further tested his strained relationship with pro-Israel Jews.

  • New York Times ☛ How the Coast Guard Revised Its Policy on Swastikas, Nooses and Bullying

    After days of backlash, the Homeland Security Department said hateful and violent behavior would not be tolerated.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Congressional report details China's new deep-sea cable cutter that can sever armored cables in 13,000 feet of water — report warns of rising Chinese undersea cable cutting capabilities

    A new annual report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission delivered to Congress states that China is actively developing technologies to sever undersea cables.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Gen Zers have taken on their governments. From around the world, they tell us why.

    From Nepal to Peru and from Madagascar to Morocco, Generation Z-led protests have rocked governments. The revolution has brushstrokes of youth, from the use of a gaming platform to organize it to a ubiquitous symbol – a Jolly Roger flag. Perhaps most extraordinary about the Gen Z protests: their interconnection. A global generation has spawned a global movement.

  • Mike Brock ☛ On Orders, Examples, and the Fascism Happening on Live Television

    Mark Kelly—former Navy combat pilot, astronaut, sitting United States Senator—stated a simple legal fact on video: members of the US military can refuse illegal orders. Not as opinion. Not as political positioning. As established law codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and affirmed at Nuremberg when “I was following orders” was rejected as defense for war crimes.

    The Trump Administration opened a federal investigation into him for saying this.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Hegseth’s Self-Incriminating Response to That Ad

    It bears noting that the ad does not call for ignoring legal orders. It’s merely a public-service announcement reminding members of the military and the intelligence community of their right to avoid implication in crimes. The ad can be interpreted as a call for rebellion only if the orders coming from above are in fact illegal.

  • Nevada Current ☛ Just follow orders or obey the law? What US troops told us about refusing illegal commands

    U.S. service members take an oath to uphold the Constitution. In addition, under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the U.S. Manual for Courts-Martial, service members must obey lawful orders and disobey unlawful orders. Unlawful orders are those that clearly violate the U.S. Constitution, international human rights standards or the Geneva Conventions.

    Service members who follow an illegal order can be held liable and court-martialed or subject to prosecution by international tribunals. Following orders from a superior is no defense.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Pentagon threatens to court-martial senator for ‘illegal orders’ video

    “Our laws are clear; you can refuse illegal orders,” Kelly said in the Nov. 18 video. The video also featured similar statements from other members of Congress, often blending together statements between speakers. The other speakers were Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Rep. Jason Crow( D-Colo.), Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.).

  • USMC ☛ Pentagon says it’s investigating senator for ‘illegal orders’ video

    Kelly said he upheld his oath to the Constitution and dismissed the Pentagon investigation as the work of “bullies.”

    “If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” Kelly said in a statement.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ DOGE [sic] Was a Harbinger of Trump’s Assault on Decency and Privacy

    But although DOGE [sic] is gone, its malign legacy endures. Arguably DOGE [sic]’s biggest “achievement” was shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development. And the dismantling of USAID has left a legacy of death. According to one recent study, closing the agency “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children.”

  • Futurism ☛ DOGE [sic] Operatives Scared They're in Real Trouble Now That Elon Has Abandoned Them

    DOGE [sic] leaves a trail of chaos and tragedy behind. With the help of a ragtag band of teenagers and other underqualified lackeys who were tasked with doing the dirty work, Musk took a figurative — and in some ways, literal — chainsaw to federal government agencies.

  • The Nation ☛ Congress Should Push Back Against the New US-Saudi Arms Agreement

    It is particularly ill-advised for the United States to make the kind of commitment described by Senator Shaheen to a government run by Mohammed bin Salman.

    From his role in directing the murder of US-resident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi to his brutal war in Yemen, which left nearly 400,000 people dead, he has shown himself to be a repressive, erratic leader who cannot and should not be relied on as a security partner.

  • Techdirt ☛ The Fascism Is Happening Live On TV

    Because the alternative—the world where constitutional law becomes grounds for investigation, where “making examples” is normal, where all orders are legal because the leader gave them—that world is being built right now.

    Not in some dystopian future. Today. On Fox News. By the Trump Administration.

    With federal investigations and propaganda praise and audiences nodding along as if political persecution were patriotism rather than the exact thing the Founders built constitutional protections to prevent.

    This is fascism.

    And it’s happening.

  • Digital Music News ☛ TikTok Hires New Public Policy Chief for the Americas

    Democratic Senator Ed Markey raised questions about the deal again this week, noting that the White House has not answered many questions about the deal, and has also not followed the 2024 law. In a letter addressed to Trump on Monday, Markey said both Congress and the American people need to understand the terms and status of the deal.

    “Your repeated unlawful extensions of the divestment deadline and vague comments about the deal raise significant questions about whether you have been able to secure an agreement that keeps TikTok online and addresses the national security concerns posed by ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok,” Markey wrote.

  • ADF ☛ U.N. Report Shows Increasing Collaboration of Houthis, al-Shabaab

    Dealings with al-Shabaab, the report says, is “part of a Houthi strategy to wield increasing influence in the region.” Somali sources indicate that they have detected interactions between the Houthis, al-Shabaab and the Islamic State group in Somalia. The nation’s security forces also have seized explosives and drones shipped from Yemen to Somalia and arrested arms traffickers.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • France24 ☛ France to reintroduce voluntary military service with eye on European security

      With war looming near Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron plans to introduce a voluntary military service starting next year. Young volunteers aged 18 could serve for 10 months with pay, aiming for 3,000 recruits in 2026 and 50,000 by 2035. The initiative comes amid security concerns, echoing warnings from France’s military leadership, while other European countries like Belgium and Germany are considering similar programs.

    • France24 ☛ France wants to bring voluntary military service back

      War looms once again on European soil, as top military officials recently sparked controversy by suggesting the potential sacrifice of children in future conflicts. In response to growing security concerns, France is considering reinstating military service on a voluntary basis, signalling a renewed focus on national defence and preparedness, as FRANCE 24's Marc Perelman explains.

    • France24 ☛ France grants drug trafficker day release to meet potential employer, sparking outrage

      The French prison service granted a notorious drug trafficker day release from a maximum security prison on Monday so that he could go and meet a prospective employer. The decision sparked outrage in France, where the recent murder of an anti-trafficking activist's brother in Marseille has reignited calls to tackle drug crime.

    • France24 ☛ Fifty kidnapped school students in Nigeria escape

      In today's edition, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu orders the recruitment of 30,000 more police officers following Friday's abduction.

      Also, European and African leaders meet in Angola for talks to deepen economic and security ties.

      And Jamaican reggae legend Jimmy Cliff passed away at age 81 after a battle with pneumonia.

    • France24 ☛ India, Nigeria, Sri Lanka: X reveals where viral MAGA accounts are based

      MElon's X has rolled out a new location feature: the app now shows the country or region that the account is based in. This triggered outrage, confusion and ridicule on the platform, particularly as many political accounts - namely prominent MAGA accounts - were not even listed within the United States. The new feature also meant the Department of Homeland Security was accused of being operated from Israel. Vedika Bahl explains in Truth or Fake.

    • Atlantic Council ☛ In Mozambique, US economic priorities hinge on security investments

      US-backed gas and mining projects could transform Mozambique’s economy, yet persistent terrorist violence threatens progress. Targeted security partnerships offer a path to protect communities and safeguard investments.

    • The Strategist ☛ Reflections on a decade of writing for The Strategist

      I published my 300th Strategist article last week, marking 10 years of writing, arguing and reflecting on Australia’s security, resilience and place in the world.

    • Meduza ☛ Russia’s new state dictionary calls authoritarianism the ‘most effective’ form of government and bans the word ‘ass’ — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ Journalist Farida Rustamova explains how Russia’s elites went from dreading war to fearing peace — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ 17-year-old college student gives birth in bathroom stall and leaves baby wrapped on floor. Hospitals in her region of Russia have stopped offering abortions. — Meduza

    • New York Times ☛ Russian Disinformation Comes to Mexico, Seeking to Rupture US Ties

      A U.S. government cable said that Kremlin-run outlets had scaled up their efforts across Latin America, seeking to turn people against the United States and garner support for Russia.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Futurism ☛ The Robot That Could Crush a Human Skull

    It sounds like he had compelling evidence. In a harrowing close call, one robot narrowly missed striking an employee when it suddenly malfunctioned and punched a refrigerator, leaving a “¼-inch deep gash” in the appliance’s “stainless-steel door,” the suit claims.

    Days after raising these issues with Adcock and Edelberg, Gruendel was fired.

  • CNBC ☛ Figure AI whistleblower fired says robot can 'fracture a human skull'

    A former engineer for Figure AI filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming he was unlawfully terminated after warning executives about product safety.

    The suit filed on Friday says plaintiff Robert Gruendel was fired in September, days after lodging his "most direct and documented safety complaints."

  • The Nation ☛ Why Did So Many People in Epstein’s Circle Look the Other Way?

    I’m sorry, but how stupid are we supposed to be? Here’s a late-middle-aged man who was convicted of soliciting a child and who swans about the academic and financial stratosphere accompanied by very young women. According to a Mother Jones interview with Epstein’s long-standing friend the art collector and industrialist Stuart Pivar, “If the conversation drifted beyond his interests, Epstein was known to interrupt, ‘What does that got to do with pussy?!’” And his friends thought there was nothing to see here? Seriously?

  • The Local ☛ Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era

    I was embarrassed. I had been naively operating with a pre-ChatGPT mindset, still assuming a pitch’s ideas and prose were actually connected to the person who sent it. Worse, the reason the pitch had been appealing to me to begin with was likely because a large language model somewhere was remixing my own prompt asking for stories where “health and money collide,” flattering me by sending me back what I wanted to hear.

    But if Victoria’s pitch appeared to be an AI-generated fabrication, and if she was making up interviews and bylines, what to make of her long list of publications?

• Environment

  • Court House News ☛ Compound changes in oceans alarm scientists

    Researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Mercator Ocean International in Toulouse, France, and the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris created a framework and tool to standardize and assess ocean variables and figure out when those variables are changed due to the warming climate.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ How Oregon’s Data Center Boom Is Creating a Water Crisis

    It never occurred to Doherty that his effort to fix the water problem would provoke the ire of a group of local officials who resented scrutiny of their role in the pollution. That it would end his political career, tank his cattle sales, and cause him so much stress he’d lose 50 pounds. He couldn’t have foreseen the multibillion-dollar political scandal submerged in that fouled water, the class action lawsuit that would rise from it, the intervention by the Oregon governor and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a civil suit from the Oregon attorney general, or sanctions from the state’s ethics commission and Department of Environmental Quality. He never thought parents in the area would be terrified that their children might sneak a glass of poisonous water from the kitchen sink. And he never imagined that one of the world’s largest tech companies — Amazon — could play a part in the crisis.

    “The historical precedent here is Flint, Michigan,” says Kristin Ostrom, executive director of Oregon Rural Action (ORA), a water rights advocacy group. “In part because of how slow the response to the crisis has been, and in part because of who’s affected. These are people who have no political or economic power, and very little knowledge of the risk.”

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Tyee ☛ The Head of BC Hydro on Wind Power, Dam Megaprojects and More

      This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.

      The Tyee: BC Hydro says it needs to increase electricity generation by about 5,000 gigawatt hours a year by 2034. That’s as much generating capacity as Site C, and it seems like a short timeline. Why should people feel confident that it can actually accomplish that goal?

    • US News And World Report ☛ New Female Crash Dummy Aims to Make Cars Safer for Women

      The U.S. Transportation Department has approved a new female crash test dummy called THOR-05F, designed to better reflect how women’s bodies respond in a car crash.

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ Canadian village taps abandoned coal mines for clean geothermal energy

      The ACET team is studying how groundwater trapped in the abandoned mines maintains stable temperatures year-round. It remains cooler than the surface in summer and warmer in winter.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ The world’s 20 most spectacular railway stations

      Covering five continents, these extraordinary spaces reveal the artistry, ambition and grandeur that made early train travel so thrilling

    • University of Michigan ☛ Bitcoin mining needs regulatory legislation 

      When I think of environmental destruction, oil spills and smokestacks are the first to come to mind. But alongside the archetypes of pollution is an unsuspecting industry: cryptocurrency. In fact, it is one of the biggest culprits of energy consumption, eating up nearly 1% of the entire globe’s electricity usage.

      The intense computing power required for Bitcoin mining has enormous environmental consequences. Hence, governmental regulations need to be implemented to mitigate these impacts.

• Finance

  • [Old] InformationWeek ☛ NTP's Fate Hinges On 'Father Time'

    The Network Time Protocol provides a foundation to modern computing. So why does NTP's support hinge so much on the shaky finances of one 59-year-old developer?

  • Reuters ☛ Klarna to launch dollar-backed stablecoin as race in digital payments heats up

    Klarna said it aims to position KlarnaUSD for everyday payments and cross-border transactions, pitching it as a faster and cheaper alternative to conventional banking. The buy-now-pay-later company, one of Europe's largest fintech firms, has its biggest user base in the United States.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Latvia ☛ Security service asks for prosecutions over alleged Balvi vote-buying effort

    On 19th November 2025, Latvian State Security Service (VDD) asked the Prosecution Office to initiate criminal prosecution against two Latvian citizens for attempted vote-buying during this year’s municipal elections in Balvi municipality, the VDD said on November 24th.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Marcos challenges accuser to return home and prove allegations

    The scandal has ignited public anger and caused economic growth to slow sharply in the third quarter.

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Alphabet races towards $4-trillion valuation

    Shares of the company rose more than 5% to hit a record high of $315.90, giving it a market capitalization of $3.82-trillion. The stock has climbed nearly 70% so far this year, far outperforming AI rivals Microsoft and Amazon.com.

    Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple have previously hit a $4-trillion valuation. Only Nvidia and Apple remain on the list.

  • India Times ☛ apple job cuts: Apple cuts dozens of sales roles in major restructuring

    People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg, employees were informed over the past two weeks, with cuts spanning several sales teams. The affected roles included account managers handling major corporate and institutional clients, as well as staff at Apple’s briefing centers that host demonstrations for potential enterprise customers.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Apple cuts jobs across its sales organization in rare layoff

    Management notified the affected workers over the last couple of weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. The cuts extended across the sales organization — hitting some teams especially hard — though the company didn’t tell employees how many roles were involved.

    The affected jobs included account managers serving major businesses, schools and government agencies, as well as the staff who operate Apple’s briefing centers for institutional meetings and product demonstrations for prospective major customers.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ The small fights for democracy are the epics of our time

    But maybe subconsciously I’ve been drawn to these stories of powerful people encountering restraints. Just look around. Neither the law nor common decency seem to be holding our elites back these days.

    Nor can I shake a sense of decline. Last year, I wondered where we would be on Thanksgiving 2025, as a new administration committed to attacking immigrants, gutting health care and undermining democracy took shape.

    So, with the holiday near, let’s take stock of Alabama.

  • International Business Times ☛ How a Black Friday Boycott in the US Is Aimed at Trump, ICE and Amazon

    The 'We Ain't Buying It' campaign was launched by a coalition of grassroots groups including Black Voters Matter, Indivisible, 50501, Until Freedom, and the Working Families Party, many of which have been active in past protests, especially under the No Kings movement.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Amazon commits up to $50 billion to boost AI, supercomputing infrastructure for agencies

    The company announced the up to $50 billion investment Monday, stating it is estimated to add nearly 1.3 gigawatts of AI and supercomputing capacity through new data centers. The project is expected to break ground in 2026, Amazon said, describing it as the “first-ever AI and high-performance computing (HPC) purpose-built infrastructure for the U.S. government.”

  • Nick Heer ☛ Polarization in the United States Has Become the World’s Side Hustle

    The U.S. market is a larger audience, too. But those of us in rich countries outside the U.S. should not get too comfortable; I found plenty of guides similar to the ones shown by Koebler for targeting Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and more. Worrisome — especially if you, say, are somewhere with an electorate trying to drive the place you live off a cliff.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • El País ☛ X’s new location feature raises questions about the origin of some MAGA accounts

      The controversy over pro-Trump profiles operated from abroad has resurfaced years after the first judicial and journalist investigations revealed armies of bots linked to Russia that carried out a massive social-media campaign against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 U.S. elections. In the months leading up to the vote, the so-called Internet Research Agency, a nominally independent company based in St. Petersburg but closely tied to the Putin regime, impersonated U.S. citizens to spread fake news in support of Trump’s candidacy. The case led to an FBI investigation and an order to arrest 12 Russian military intelligence officers charged with conspiracy.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Nation ☛ She Gave a Lecture on White Supremacy. IU Removed Her From the Class.

    During the lecture on white supremacy, Adams didn’t talk about the term “Make America Great Again,” and none of the students voiced objections in person, according to a student who attended the lecture. During the next class, Adams reportedly told students that if they ever had a disagreement, they were welcome to talk to her about it—either openly or in private. Then she split students into groups, and they spent the rest of the time discussing a reading assignment.

    The next class was scheduled to cover immigration, but Adams didn’t show up. Instead, a different professor arrived and presented a guest lecture on her prior research, which was about children with autism. Starting October 6, Adams was barred from teaching the course.

  • Court House News ☛ Fired over Charlie Kirk posts | Courthouse News Service

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • New York Times ☛ BBC Chair Tries to Calm Political ‘Firestorm’ Over Convicted Felon Edit

    Samir Shah defended Britain’s public broadcaster at a parliamentary committee hearing on Monday, while apologizing (again) for the misleading edit of a Jan. 6 speech by Hell Toupée.

  • American Oversight ☛ Protect Democracy Sues for Records on Reported Trump Administration Efforts to Investigate and Target Nonprofits

    The lawsuit against the U.S. Departments of the Treasury, State, and Homeland Security, as well as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, follows the government’s failure to respond to Protect Democracy’s October Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The requests sought records concerning the administration’s lists of nonprofit organizations it is targeting for investigation, along with other documents related to its sweeping executive actions and directives purporting to combat “Antifa” but that appear to have been deployed to investigate civil society organizations with no ties to political violence.

  • Press Gazette ☛ DMG Media expands social media publishing team with senior hires

    Head of social at Pubity Group Nathan Aspell is joining as director of creative and platforms at DMG Media’s social-first publishing wing: DMG New Media.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Journalist.net: The platform enabling any publisher to draw on global newsroom

    Freelance jounalists can join Journalist.net for free after proving their credentials, with more than 10,000 already signed up. The platform then plays matchmaker between clients – anyone from a major newsbrand to a Youtuber or podcaster – and professional journalists.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Photojournalist group axes exhibition after university pulls venue

    The exhibition took nine months to prepare and featured a selection of historical photographs and photo stories covering important moments in Hong Kong since the late 1980s to the present, the press group said.

    “Not being able to let the public understand the history of photojournalism in Hong Kong and showcase the excellent work of our members throughout the years is truly a great loss to the promotion and future development of the photojournalism profession. The association deeply regrets this,” the HKPPA said.

  • Techdirt ☛ Larry Ellison Met With Trump To Discuss Which CNN Reporters They Plan To Fire

    While Ellison has some competing suitors with names like Comcast NBC Universal and Netflix, the winning bidder will need approval from the Trump DOJ and FCC. Knowing that they likely have a distinct tactical advantage via corruption, Ellison and Trump appear to be already measuring the drapes, discussing programming changes (and CNN hirings and firings) that will please the president: [...]

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Mega-blockades expected to impact transit in more than 20 states

    Truckers and farmers are blocking highways across Mexico this Monday, Nov. 24 as they call on the federal government to combat insecurity and extortion and provide more support for producers of crops such as corn and beans.

  • Michael Geist ☛ The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 251: Jennifer Pybus on the Debate Over Canadian Digital Sovereignty

    Digital sovereignty is hot the digital policy phrase of the moment driving discussion on Canadian digital policy involving AI, digital infrastructure, privacy, and cultural policy among others. Yet despite its widespread use, its meaning remains opaque as it often used to frame – or reframe – longstanding policy positions. The government has begun to flesh out the issue with Treasury Board recently releasing a white paper on digital sovereignty that provides a useful starting point for discussion.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ 85% of Muslim women want polygamy to be legally invalid: Survey

    Mumbai: A significant majority of Muslim women want polygamy outlawed, with 85% saying it should be legally invalid and 87% wanting the application of existing criminal provisions against their husbands if they remarry, a new survey has found.

  • EFF ☛ Speaking Freely: Laura Vidal

    Laura Vidal is a Venezuelan researcher and writer focused on digital rights, community resilience, and the informal ways people learn and resist under authoritarian pressure. She holds a Doctorate in Education Sciences and intercultural communication, and her work explores how narratives, digital platforms, and transnational communities shape strategies of care, resistance, and belonging, particularly in Latin America and within the Venezuelan diaspora. She has investigated online censorship, disinformation, and digital literacy and is currently observing how regional and diasporic actors build third spaces online to defend civic space across borders. Her writing has appeared in Global Voices, IFEX, EFF, APC and other platforms that amplify underrepresented voices in tech and human rights.

  • Pro Publica ☛ How Trump's Immigration Forces Misuse “Less Lethal” Weapons

    Since President Donald Trump’s administration launched high-intensity immigration sweeps this year, federal agents have routinely countered protestors using crowd control weapons — rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, tear gas and pepper balls. They’ve fired on American citizens and noncitizens alike in ways that some experts say might be criminal.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ The EFF we need now

    Technology is now so embedded in daily life, so entangled with power, that digital civil liberties are civil liberties. It’s a world where police reports are written by AI using software designed to avoid public accountability; where networked public safety sensors are being used to surveil activists; where technology is increasingly used to ratchet up authoritarian agendas. We need the EFF more than ever.

    So what would it look like for EFF to meet this moment head-on? Understanding that the way technology intersects with society has evolved, and knowing that its executive director Cindy Cohn is stepping down, I thought I’d explore — hypothetically — how I would lead it into its next era.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ A woman or girl killed every 10 minutes, UN report finds

    New data from the UN shows the worrying scale of global femicides, with some 50,000 women and girls killed by a partner or family member in 2024 alone. UN Women says no real progress has been made on the deadly trend.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • AccessNow ☛ Access Now marks 10 years of resourcing digital rights activism

    Access Now grants marks 10 years of funding digital rights activism globally, celebrating 10 extraordinary grantees.

  • AccessNow ☛ Access Now Grants: meet the Digital First Aiders

    Among the groups we support through Access Now Grants, one stands out as the sometimes-unsung heroes of digital rights: the “Digital First Aiders.”

  • AccessNow ☛ Access Now Grants: meet the Community Defenders

  • AccessNow ☛ Access Now Grants: meet the Frontline Fighters

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Niger completes new major link in fiber optic cable network

    Only about one in five Nigeriens use the [Internet], according to the International Telecommunication Union, lower than the continental average of around one in three.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Digital Music News ☛ HAVEN.’s ‘I Run’ Explained: How an AI-Generated Track Took Over TikTok, Got Banned from Streaming Platforms, Then Started All Over

    The mysterious and fast-surging EDM track “I Run” has been the biggest story of the past week — with a sudden removal from DSPs and a subsequent return. Here’s a rundown of exactly what happened with dance music’s most viral AI-generated track… to date.

  • Techdirt ☛ Enshittification Ahoy: Streaming Video Price Hikes Show No Sign Of Slowing Down

    As we saw with traditional cable, eventually this consolidation scheme falls apart as consumers flee to alternative, cheaper (or free) entertainment options, including piracy.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Techdirt ☛ If Your Antitrust Case Depends On Pretending TikTok Doesn’t Exist, It’s Going To Fail

  The broader problem here is that by the time the case reached trial, the competitive landscape had already shifted dramatically. Meta’s supposed monopoly was being actively challenged by TikTok’s explosive growth, forcing Meta to completely overhaul its products. The FTC’s case depended on freezing the market in time and pretending this competition didn’t exist.

  And, really, this all shows how terrible a tool antitrust is to deal with these markets.

• Wired ☛ Europe Is Bending the Knee to the US on Tech Policy

  Almost everything is on hiatus. The EU AI Act, Digital Services Act, and Digital Markets Act are all at risk. The European Commission is preparing to end the year with virtually no movement on its most important tech policy initiatives. Many measures may even be reversed.

• Trademarks

  • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Should American Trademark Law Speak English

    Solicitor General urges denial in VETEMENTS case, crystallizing clash between English-first and multilingual visions of American commerce

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Live Sports Piracy: EU Commission Admits that Anti-Piracy Advice Had Limited Impact

    The European Commission has published its assessment of the May 2023 Recommendation aimed at combating live sports piracy. While even the modest progress reported is positive by definition, for rightsholders urging immediate action, the promise of further discussion as a foundation for future initiatives and potential progress, are not what most, if any, had in mind.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ ‘Destroyed’ Usenet Provider NSE and BREIN End 16-Year Battle With Secret Settlement

    Usenet provider News-Service Europe (NSE) and anti-piracy group BREIN have settled their long-running legal dispute. The 16-year battle, during which the Dutch Usenet provider was forced to shut down, only to be later vindicated by the Supreme Court, has ended with a confidential agreement that both parties are pleased with.