Leftovers

• Chuck Grimmett ☛ Just hit publish

  Blog posts don’t have to be Atlantic-style essays, ground-breaking ideas, or heavily researched. Not everything has to be epic or viral. You can post whatever you want, whenever you want. Keep it low friction and hit Publish. Personal blogs are meant to be low stakes.

• Rob Knight ☛ 88x31 Button Curios

  Usually if I find an 88x31 button related thing I'd bookmark it and pop it in my weeknotes but over the past few days, a smorgasbord of related links have come to my attention so, to paraphrase Morbius, it's bloggin' time.

• Matt Webb ☛ Real like ghosts or real like celebrities?

  The real world, like cyberspace, now a consensual hallucination – meaning that fiction can forge new realities. (Who would have guessed that a post on social media could make Greenland part of the USA? It could happen.)

• Alexandra Wolfe ☛ Mortality

  All joking aside, we have no choice but to step outside of the here and now, and make decisions for our future. So if ever there were a moment of Memento Mori, it’s in the writing of a will. That time to have that last say in the land of the living of what happens to us when Death finally does come.

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ NASA's Library Shutdown Scandal Is Ballooning

    The news was met with outrage by NASA insiders, who pointed out that many of these historical documents remain undigitized, a scandal that has metastasized into the first major PR challenge for recently sworn-in NASA administrator and billionaire space tourist Jared Isaacman.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ AI in Scholarly Publishing — SSP Pulse Check Report

    This report seeks to understand how publishers and scholarly communications professionals are currently using AI, how prepared their organizations are to navigate its impact, and what they see as the major barriers, opportunities, and concerns. The AI in Scholarly Publishing Pulse Check Poll was distributed to Society for Scholarly Publishing members, Scholarly Kitchen readers, and other professionals in the scholarly communications community. There were 563 respondents from a variety of organization types, sizes, and job levels.

    This post provides the high-level aggregate results. The full report, available at no cost on SSP’s website (log-in or account creation required), provides additional detail and the ability to filter the data by organization size, type, and job level of respondents.

  • Allen Downey ☛ Bayesian Decision Analysis

    This hands-on tutorial introduces practical Bayesian inference using PyMC, focusing on A/B testing, decision-making under uncertainty, and hierarchical modeling. With real-world examples, you’ll learn how to build and interpret Bayesian models, evaluate competing hypotheses, and implement adaptive strategies like Thompson sampling. Whether you’re working in marketing, healthcare, public policy, UX design, or data science more broadly, these techniques offer powerful tools for experimentation, decision-making, and evidence-based analysis.

  • Computational Complexity ☛ Computational Complexity: Computational Depth

    Today I'd like to talk about a 2006 paper about a topic I first thought about in Amsterdam and will likely play a role in this visit, Computational Depth: Concept and Applications by Luis Antunes, Dieter van Melkebeek, Vinod Variyam and myself.

    In Amsterdam, I was hosted by Paul Vitányi and Harry Buhrman at CWI, and naturally worked on Kolmogorov complexity, the algorithmic study of randomness, as well as various problems in computational complexity.

• Career/Education

  • BoingBoing ☛ New Jersey the latest state to ban cellphones in class

    New Jersey is banning cellphones in class during the school day, for grades K through 12. It joins 17 other states and Washington D.C. in getting phones out of class entirely, and 8 other states that disallow using during instruction.

• Hardware

  • Pete Brown ☛ Operators are standing by

    Rotary phones were still quite common when I was a kid. I even still had one in the first apartment I moved into after college; I had taken it from my parents’ house and it still said “Property of Indiana Bell” on the bottom. I eventually got rid of it because my long-distance calling card (remember those?) required keying in the card number on a keypad. I would have to wait for a operator and then read my card number off to them, and one of them finally said to me “You know you can just buy a touch-tone phone, right?”

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Amit Gawande ☛ I suck at routine

    I finally decided to get typing, and the first thing that came to my mind is how I suck at routine. I routinely suck at routine. I will get into a routine, but soon stop the moment I have one going.

• Proprietary

  • Techdirt ☛ Scope Of Chinese ‘Salt Typhoon’ [Breach] Keeps Getting Worse, As Trump Dismantles U.S. Cybersecurity Defenses

    Late last year, most major U.S. telecoms were the victim of a massive, historic intrusion by Chinese [intruders] who managed to [breach] into U.S. communications networks and then spy on public U.S. officials for more than a year completely undetected. The “Salt Typhoon” [breach] was so severe, the intruders spent another year rooting around the ISP networks even after discovery. AT&T and Verizon, two of the compromised companies, initially didn’t think it was worth informing subscribers this happened.

  • Macworld ☛ iOS 26 is a massive flop with iPhone users, and you can probably guess why

    Unfortunately, the latest look seems likely to be at least part of the reason why iPhone users aren’t rushing to update. Just bear in mind that iOS 26 is about more than Liquid Glass, and that the worst aesthetic excesses can be toned down by opening the Settings app and going to Display & Brightness > Liquid Glass.

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft Windows Media Player stops serving up CD info

    Microsoft is celebrating the resurgence of interest in physical media in the only way it knows how… by halting the Windows Media Player metadata service.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Democratic senators demand Apple, Google take X and Grok off app stores over sexual images: Report

      Three Democratic ⁠US senators are ‌calling ‌on Apple and ‌Alphabet's Google to remove X and Grok ​from ​their respective ‌app ‍stores ‍over the spread of ‌nonconsensual sexual images of women and ‍minors on ‍the ⁠platforms, ⁠NBC News reported Friday.

    • Irish Examiner ☛ Global outrage over Grok AI images on X puts Irish and EU regulators under pressure in their first major test

      For reasons that aren’t yet clear, Grok, the AI tool on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform X, last month started to adhere to requests to take existing photos of women and children and to generate new images of them in bikinis, in sexually suggestive poses, or covered in substances resembling semen.

    • The Register UK ☛ X pulls Grok images after UK ban threat over undress tool

      Regulators have taken a similarly hard line. Ofcom has warned that platforms that fail to curb illegal or harmful content could face enforcement action and hefty fines under the Online Safety Act, while the Information Commissioner's Office said it is looking into whether data protection laws were breached, particularly where images of real people were altered without their consent.

    • Wired ☛ X Didn’t Fix Grok's ‘Undressing’ Problem. It Just Makes People Pay for It

      The apparent change comes after days of growing outrage against and scrutiny of Musk’s X and xAI, the company behind the Grok chatbot. The companies face an increasing number of investigations from regulators around the world over the creation of nonconsensual explicit imagery and alleged sexual images of children. British prime minister Keir Starmer has not ruled out banning X in the country and said the actions have been “unlawful.”

    • Stephen Smith ☛ Review of Taming Silicon Valley

      The book is good at laying out all the problems with AI and lists a top ten: [...]

    • New York Times ☛ Grok, Elon Musk’s A.I., Is Generating Sexualized Images of Real People, Fueling Outrage

      The altered pictures were part of a recent flood of Grok-generated images that sexualize women and children on X, Mr. Musk’s social media platform. In response to user requests, the chatbot has manipulated photos of people to dress them in skimpy garments, remove their clothes altogether or pose their bodies in suggestive ways.

    • Rlang ☛ Retrieval-Augmented Generation: Setting up a Knowledge Store in R

      Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini have incredible potential to streamline day-to-day tasks, whether that’s processing vast amounts of information, providing a human-like chat interface for customers or generating code. But they also come with notable risks if not harnessed responsibly.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Grok generates bikini pics of children — UK, US oddly powerless

      The hot new use case for Twitter’s Grok chatbot is to take photos of women and children and generate sexy bikini pictures of them right there on the Twitter timeline. This is Grok’s “spicy” mode. Or not even bikinis. A lot of it’s straight-up AI-generated child pornography.

    • The New Stack ☛ The Hidden Cost Killing Your Innovation Strategy

      This is the AI blind spot debt. It is not a single pile of bad code or security risk; it is a chaotic, invisible proliferation of custom models, external APIs and rogue agents scattered across your organization. You cannot govern what you cannot see, and right now, most organizations are flying blind.

    • [Old] Jesse Warden ☛ GitHub Copilot Research Finds “Downward Pressure on Code Quality” – Software, Fitness, and Gaming

      using Copilot is strongly correlated with mistake code being pushed to the repo

    • Martin Alderson ☛ Which programming languages are most token-efficient?

      One of the biggest constraints LLMs have is on context length. This is a difficult problem to solve, as memory usage rises significantly with longer context window in current transformer architectures. And with the current memory shortages, I don't think the world is drowning in memory right now.

      As such, for software development agents, how 'token efficient' a programming language actually could make a big difference and I wonder if it starts becoming a factor in language selection in the future. Given a significant amount of a coding agents context window is going to be code, a more token efficient language should allow longer sessions and require fewer resources to deliver.

  • Social Control Media

    • Rnb37 ☛ We might have been slower to abandon Stack Overflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole

      If you were a software developer prior to 2024, you probably used Stack Overflow. It was a reliable place to find good answers to many technical questions. If you asked any questions there, you probably also know that it was a toxic hellhole—you often got criticized for not having basic knowledge or not understanding error messages.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Emisoft Ltd ☛ The State of Ransomware in the U.S.: Report and Statistics 2025

      To analyze ransomware activity in 2025, we relied on global data from RansomLook.io and Ransomware.live, two highly respected platforms that track ransomware victim claims across dark-web leak sites, criminal forums, Telegram channels, and other underground sources.

      Their different approaches to tracking activity yield slightly different data, providing independent but largely consistent data sets, particularly since 2023. We’ve analyzed data from the last several years to see what trends, if any, present themselves.

    • Security Week ☛ In Other News: 8,000 Ransomware Attacks, China [Breached] US Gov Emails, IDHS Breach Impacts 700k

      According to Emsisoft’s ‘State of Ransomware in the US’ report for 2025, cybercrime groups claimed to have targeted more than 8,000 organizations, up from roughly 6,000 in the previous year. The number of active ransomware groups increased by approximately 30% compared to 2024. The most active groups were Qiling, Akira, Cl0p, Play, and Safepay.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Ruben Schade ☛ Blockchains and Australian coffee cards

      But all of these technical issues were a sideshow to the main event. Anyone who’s spent five minutes living in the real world knows that fraud occurs “off chain” (to use their lingo). People committing financial crimes aren’t [breaking into] the mainframe to add numbers to a balance column, they’re performing illegal activities elsewhere to eventually make that number go up. Or in the words of a computer scientist, garbage in, garbage out.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Major overhaul coming to Gmail

      The most significant addition is a new feature called AI Overviews. Borrowing from the same concept used in Google Search, AI Overviews summarise long e-mail threads into concise digests, highlighting key decisions, deadlines and discussion points. Instead of scrolling through dozens of replies, users are presented with a short synthesis of the conversation when opening an e-mail.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ Gmail gets Gemini, but falls short of true agentic AI

      Google announced Thursday it will now integrate Gemini into Gmail, adding functionalities of a personal assistant. Think automated to-do lists and email responses.

    • Doc Searls ☛ How the Past Models the Future

      I ran it after reading Is Craigslist the Last Real Place on the Internet? by Jennifer Swann in Wired. It shows Craigslist doing no tracking at all. This totally retro and morally correct.

      Craigslist also doesn’t interrupt your experience with a cookie notice, because it doesn’t play the cookie game. And it’s been that way since Craig Newmark founded the service 31 years ago, on March 1, 1995, at the very dawn of the commercial Web.

    • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ Once again, Google threatens the 3 billion (!) Gmail users with AI

      Once again, Google threatens the 3 billion (!) Gmail users with Gemini (AI) features. This time, the change is dramatic: [...]

    • Maine Morning Star ☛ Worried about surveillance, states enact privacy laws and restrict license plate readers

      At the same time, the administration is trying to consolidate the bits of personal data held across federal agencies, creating a single trove of information on people who live in the United States.

    • PC World ☛ All Microsoft 365 users will need to activate MFA soon, or else

      Microsoft has announced that Microsoft 365 users must enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) support by February 9th, otherwise they will not be able to log in to the service’s admin center.

    • The Register UK ☛ How hackers fight back against ICE surveillance tech

      Flock operates the largest network of surveillance cameras in America, and, while it has contracts with thousands of police departments and municipalities across the US, sometimes ICE gains access to this footage, according to US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and those who have looked into Flock's misuse.

    • [Old] PIA ☛ ChatGPT Privacy Explained: Risks, Data Use, and Security Tips

      Does ChatGPT Collect Personal Data? A Closer Look

      The short answer is: yes. Here’s a detailed breakdown of how the company handles your data.

    • Bitdefender ☛ pcTattletale founder pleads guilty in rare stalkerware prosecution

      The founder of a spyware company that encouraged customers to secretly monitor their romantic partners has pleaded guilty to federal charges - marking one of the few successful US prosecutions of a stalkerware operator.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Register UK ☛ Cloudflare pours cold water on Venezuela attack BGP theory

    On Tuesday, Cloudflare principal network engineer Bryton Herdes took that deep dive and came up for air to post an analysis that confirmed Helton detected a BGP leak – an incident in which networks choose sub-optimal routing that means traffic flows across sclerotic links and therefore moves slowly and unreliably.

    “While we can’t say with certainty what caused this route leak, our data suggests that it’s likely cause was more mundane,” Herdes wrote. “That’s in part because BGP route leaks happen all of the time, and they have always been part of the Internet — most often for reasons that aren’t malicious.”

  • The Strategist ☛ Iran is rewriting its rules of war—and raising the stakes for everyone

    In an unprecedented declaration, Iran’s Supreme National Defense Council has reserved the right to launch preemptive strikes based on what it calls ‘objective signs of threat.’ This is not mere rhetorical flourish. Buried in the 6 January statement’s dense, Quranic-inflected language is a genuine doctrinal shift—from reactive deterrence to what Tehran describes as ‘active and unpredictable deterrence.’ The implication is stark—Iran may now believe the costs of waiting outweigh the risks of acting first.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Judge blocks Donald Trump's executive orders on mail-in ballots for Washington and Oregon

    US District Judge John H. Chun in Seattle found that those requirements exceeded the president's authority, following similar rulings in a Massachusetts case brought by 19 states and in a Washington, DC, case by Democratic and civil rights groups.

  • US Navy Times ☛ Navy F-35 pilots train to wield drones with touchscreen tablets

    The tactical exercise saw the F-35 pilots use the tablets to control multiple Collaborative Combat Aircraft at once. These autonomous unmanned systems, operating with artificial intelligence, can be used as “loyal wingmen” by aviators.

  • US Navy ☛ F-35 pilots and Navy Collaborative Combat Aircraft hone tactics in Joint Simulation Environment | NAVAIR

    The Navy’s CCA are multi-role uncrewed combat vehicles that will operate with crewed fighters enhancing the mission effectiveness of crewed platforms in highly contested environments. They are central to the Department’s future strategy, enabling pilots to focus on high-level decision-making while expanding operational capabilities. The JSE is playing a key role in developing tactics and operational concepts for integrating these systems with fifth-generation platforms like the F-35.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Navy F-35 pilots train to wield drones with touchscreen tablets

    The JSE plans to add new aircraft and weapons systems to its training center in fiscal year 2026, which include the EA-18G Growler, E-2D Advanced Hawkeye and the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Robert Jenrick: Police are giving in to Islamists

    Citing the decision of West Midlands Police to ban Israeli football fans from a match with Aston Villa, Mr Jenrick warned that the “fight against Islamism is the fight of our generation”.

  • LWN ☛ European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

    The European Commission has opened a "call for evidence" to help shape its European Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy. The commission is looking to reduce its dependence on software from non-EU countries: [...]

  • YLE ☛ Survey: Majority of Finns do not use [slop] at work

    Two in five respondents meanwhile said they never use [slop] tools at work.

  • Defence Web ☛ Russian mercenaries have a bad reputation but some African regimes still employ them: study explores why

    Russian mercenaries, like the Wagner group, have a poor reputation. Multiple western outlets have reported on their military ineffectiveness, their abysmal human rights record, and their exploitative nature.

  • The Gray Zone ☛ Greenland mining firm hires Trump-tied lobbyists amid US invasion threats

  • FAIR ☛ Michelle Ellner on Venezuela Invasion

  • FAIR ☛ Think You Saw State-Sanctioned Murder? You Failed Media’s ‘Rorschach Test’

    Millions have seen the video, but some reports suggest that you should not believe your eyes that saw ICE agents murder Renee Nicole Good as she attempted to slowly move her car away from them.

  • FAIR ☛ The First Amendment Allows You to Report Things the Government Doesn’t Want Reported

    Committee member Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R–Fla.) called for Harp’s criminal prosecution, accusing him of “leaking classified information” and “doxing” the colonel. In a statement to the Washington Post, she said:

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Insight Hungary ☛ Trump hints at Budapest visit amid election campaign

      US President Donald Trump has wished Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán “best of luck” in his election campaign and hinted at a possible visit to Budapest, underlining the close ties between the two leaders in a letter Orbán shared on Facebook. The message followed a White House meeting on November 7, after which Trump granted Hungary a one-year exemption from US sanctions on Russian energy. In the letter,  Trump praised Orbán’s “bold leadership” and said he looked forward to “deepening cooperation” on defence, energy, and illegal migration, adding: “You have always stood firm to defend the principles that make Hungary such a tremendous place – faith, family, and sovereignty.”

      Orbán, a far-right leader who has been in power for 16 years, faces his toughest elections, amid economic stagnation, rising living costs, and a child abuse scandal in a government institute that has strengthened an opposition challenger who leads most polls. The election is expected to be held in April. Trump and Orbán also discussed possible financial assistance in November, though Trump later rejected Orbán’s claim that Washington had agreed to up to $20bn in support. Orbán admitted on Monday that Hungary had not secured the level of backing it initially sought, but that talks were ongoing. Trump also thanked Orbán for an invitation to visit Hungary, saying his team would “be in touch” about scheduling. In contrast, Orbán noted a visit by a “high-ranking” US politician was likely before the election

    • Meduza ☛ Behind the contact line How would the 20-point peace plan impact the millions of Ukrainians living under Russian occupation? — Meduza

    • Meduza ☛ ‘Nothing is sacred for the authorities’: Russia is opening the forests around Lake Baikal to clearcutting. Environmentalists warn Meduza the damage could be irreversible. — Meduza

• Environment

  • The Atlantic ☛ Eat More Deer

    Wherever deer are overabundant, they are at best a nuisance and at worst a plague. They trample gardens, destroy farmland, carry ticks that spread Lyme disease, and disrupt forest ecosystems, allowing invasive species to spread. They are involved in tens of thousands of car crashes each year in New York and New Jersey, where state wildlife departments have encouraged hunters to harvest more deer. In especially populated regions, wildlife agencies hire sharpshooters to cull the animals. Last year, New Hampshire legislators expanded the deer-hunting season in an attempt to keep the population under control. By the looks of the forest floor, which was pitted with hoof marks and scattered with marble-shaped droppings, that effort was falling short.

  • Vox ☛ Why rebuilding in LA has been so slow after the Palisades and Eaton fires

    The massive, fast-moving wildfires that tore through Los Angeles County last January directly killed at least 31 people and sickened many more, torching more than 16,000 structures in total. With an economic toll estimated as high as $275 billion, the 2025 Los Angeles fires may be the costliest disaster in US history.

  • Wired ☛ The Oceans Just Keep Getting Hotter

    For the eighth year in a row, the world’s oceans absorbed a record-breaking amount of heat in 2025. It was equivalent to the energy it would take to boil 2 billion Olympic swimming pools.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Federal News Network ☛ Ever tried fixing your own car? The right-to-repair fight is heating up as costs soar and Congress weighs a national law

      Despite strong bipartisan support and rising repair costs, right-to-repair provisions were stripped from the NDAA. Now, all eyes are on the REPAIR Act as lawmakers debate whether Americans should control how and where they fix their vehicles.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Meta inks deals to supply a staggering 6 gigawatts in nuclear power for data center ambitions — enough wattage to supply 5 million homes

      The power that Meta acquired will come from three different providers — Vistra Corp. with its existing nuclear plants and a couple of startups: OpenAI-backed Oklo, Inc., and TerraPower LLC, which is supported by Bill Gates and Nvidia. Vistra will deliver 2,176MW of power to Meta from its Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear plants in Ohio, with a further increase of 433MW across the two sites and the Beaver Valley plant in Pennsylvania. On the other hand, both Oklo and TerraPower are still working on their small modular reactor prototypes, which we don’t expect to be deployed until the 2030s.

    • Hindustan Times ☛ ‘Don’t ignore 7 million rail commuters’

      The associations met earlier this week and reached out to commuters through WhatsApp groups. They discussed how they would approach representatives of various political parties. On the agenda were on-going railway projects, delays and last-mile connectivity. The Central and Western Railways cater to 7 million commuters daily, but the conditions outside railway stations across Mumbai are abysmal, they pointed out.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Revelator ☛ The Seduction of Despair, the Persistence of Possibility

  • Overpopulation

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Trump administration's Colorado River options could hit California hard

      Several of the alternatives are “alarming” because they could mean major water cutbacks for Southern California, said Shivaji Deshmukh, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District, which distributes water in the region.

      He said any of the alternatives would likely “lead to lengthy litigation.”

• Finance

  • MWL ☛ 2025 Income Sources

    I make a living writing by earning money from every available channel. That means I need to see which channels are worth my time, which I should benignly neglect, and which I should partially or completely drop. Each year since 2019, I’ve posted the results.

    First, my usual caveats and exceptions.

  • Andre Franca ☛ Why People Should Not Ask for Donations or Money to Run Their Own Personal Blog

    Why do you run a blog? Is it to make a living, or is it a hobby? If you write from your small corner of the internet for pleasure, to meet new people, or simply for engagement, then you probably shouldn’t ask for money for it. Here's why: [...]

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Atlantic ☛ Does Anyone Else Have 1898 Déjà Vu?

    Twain was horrified by the violence, but he was particularly enraged about the redemptive rhetoric that cloaked it. “We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem,” he told a reporter in 1900. His many subsequent published writings opposing American imperialism (as well as his version of the “Battle Hymn,” which he did not publish but was found written into a book he owned) were works of bitter satire highlighting the disconnect between the reality of conquest and the language of redemption. In “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” Twain extracted what he called “the Actual Thing”—war, violence, greed exploitation—from the “outside cover” of the “Blessings of Civilization.” The United States had become “yet another Civilized Power, with its banner of the Prince of Peace in one hand and its loot-basket and its butcher-knife in the other.”

  • The Independent UK ☛ Bill Gates sent $8B to ex-wife Melinda for charity work, instantly making foundation one of world’s largest

    The spokesperson said the $12.5 billion commitment has been fulfilled. It’s unclear where the remaining $4.62 billion was allocated.

  • New York Times ☛ Google Co-Founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page Reduce Ties to California

    The Google founders’ shrinking connections to California underscore the impact of a potential ballot measure that would affect the state’s wealthiest residents. Proposed by a health care union, the measure calls for Californians worth more than $1 billion to pay a one-time tax that would be equivalent of 5 percent of their assets. If the measure gains enough signatures to reach the state ballot in November and wins approval, it would retroactively apply to anyone who lived in the state as of Jan. 1 and they would have five years to pay it.

  • Sean Conner ☛ Why does the Electoral College exist?

    [...] As such, the Founding Fathers were treading into uncharted territory and given what they knew at the time, I don't think they did all that bad.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Right Is Exploiting the Bondi Massacre to Silence Dissent

    The Jewish Council of Australia has been an active voice of opposition to those linking anti-genocide protests with violence. A growing group of progressive Jewish people who reject the equation of anti-semitism with criticism of Israel, the Jewish Council regularly faces the wrath of the Zionist political establishment and the Murdoch media. Jacobin spoke with Jewish Council representatives Sarah Schwartz and Max Kaiser about the dangers of the current moment.

  • SFGate ☛ A sticker covering Trump's face could now void your national park pass

    The Department of the Interior recently updated its “Void if Altered” rules for 2026, explicitly flagging stickers and other coverings as alterations that could invalidate the pass. The move appears to respond to visitors preparing to cover the image of Trump, which was set to begin appearing on passes Jan. 1 despite legal challenges.

  • Newsweek ☛ Covering Trump's face on national park pass could make it void - Newsweek

    SFGATE reported it had obtained an internal DOI email from business specialists Allison Christofis and Jeff Beauchamp to National Park Service staff with the updated guidance via a Park Service employee who requested anonymity.

    The report noted that the Park Service has long warned that passes may be invalidated if the signature area is changed, but that the updated policy also specifies that stickers placed on the front of the pass can void it.

  • Outside Interactive Inc ☛ The Battle Over Trump’s Face on National Parks Passes Continues

    In the month or so since McCarty launched the idea, she has sold close to 7,000 stickers.

    McCarty is donating the earnings from sticker sales to nonprofit groups that work with the NPS. She told Outside she recently sent a check for $16,000 to the National Parks Conservation Association, the nonprofit that advocates for protecting the parks.

  • WGLT Radio ☛ National Park Service will void passes with stickers over Trump's face | WGLT

    The Park Service has long said passes can be voided if the signature strip is altered, but the updated guidance now explicitly includes stickers or markings on the front of the card.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Conan O'Brien Says Donald Trump Has Been Bad for Comedy

    Conan O’Brien is concerned that the anger over Donald Trump has caused comedians to lose their humor. O’Brien spoke at the Oxford Union earlier this week and reflected on how the ire around the current administration has resulted in less laughs and too much fury.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • The Nation ☛ Abolish ICE or GTFO

    ICE must be abolished, root and stem, by the next Democratic administration. As a stopgap, it must be defunded by the current collection of Democrats, should the party take power in the upcoming election. ICE is the one true litmus test for an incoming post-Trump administration. The Democrats will likely not be inclined to do this. Again, paramilitary thugs have their uses to leaders the world over, and Democrats are traditionally afraid of looking “weak” on immigration or actually dismantling the tools of the enemy. Democrats, if they’re going to do this, must be forced to do this, by the people whose support they seek.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Woman killed by ICE agent in Minneapolis was a mother of 3, U.S. citizen and new to the city

    She was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado and appears to never have been charged with anything involving law enforcement beyond a traffic ticket.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ As Iran protests continue, policymakers should apply these key lessons

    Although the protests are inspiring and potentially historic, some of the developments are being overshadowed by the United States. On January 2 (and again two days later), US President Donald Trump issued an unspecified threat to the regime not to use further violence against its citizens. It is admirable that the Trump administration is focusing attention on the Iranian people, but it is also inconsistent with the administration’s past decisions to cut funds for vital [Internet] circumvention services in Iran and avoid speaking out against the regime’s human rights violations.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ New Protests Erupt in Iran Despite Internet Shutdown

    Protests have taken place across Iran for 13 days in a movement sparked by anger over the rising cost of living that is now marked by calls for the end of the clerical system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution which ousted the pro-Western shah.

  • Human rights Activists News Agency ☛ From the Streets to Universities: Iran’s Protests Enter Their Eleventh Day - Hrana

    The protests on the eleventh day emerged against a backdrop in which the economic crisis and livelihood instability have gone beyond the stage of warning. Rapidly rising prices, the continuous devaluation of the national currency, and the inability of a large segment of society to meet basic needs have turned economic pressure into a daily reality for millions of citizens. Under such conditions, protest is no longer merely an emotional reaction to an isolated event, but rather a reflection of the long-term erosion of public trust in economic and administrative policies.

    On the eleventh day, the simultaneous presence of street protests, active participation by universities, and signs of labor-related discontent demonstrated that the scope of protests has expanded beyond livelihood demands and now reflects deeper dissatisfaction with governance practices, the lack of accountability, and the closure of legal avenues for protest. The persistence of demonstrations, despite widespread arrests and security pressure, indicates that a significant portion of society now views the cost of protest as lower than the cost of silence and inaction.

  • RFERL ☛ Unrest In Iran Grows Despite Moves By Authorities To Stifle Dissent

    Videos from social media and those sent to RFE/RL's Radio Farda on the evening of January 9 are showing crowds massing in various parts of the capital, Tehran, and in the major cities of Shiraz and Mashhad. Earlier in the day, protests reached the southeastern city of Zahedan, where Sunni Baluch worshippers took to the streets after Friday prayers.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Iran goes dark: Regime cuts [Internet] amid protests, unrest

    The regime seems to have barred [Internet] access in Iran during the latest wave of protests. Texting and mobile data are down, cellular networks are severely limited, and even accessing the [Internet] via Starlink satellites seems to be affected.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Iran: Internet cut off as protests spread nationwide

    Videos shared online before communications were shut showed crowds chanting slogans including "Death to the dictator" and "Death to the Islamic Republic" in Tehran and other cities, with fires burning in the streets.

    The Norway-based Iran Human Rights NGO reported that 45 demonstrators have now been killed by Iranian security forces since the unrest began in late December.

  • NDTV ☛ Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi Warns Of Possible "Massacre" During Internet Shutdown

    Iranian Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi on Friday warned security forces in the Islamic republic could be preparing to commit a "massacre under the cover of a sweeping communications blackout" after imposing a nationwide [Internet] shutdown.

    The [Internet] shutdown is "not a technical failure... it is a tactic", the veteran campaigner, who now lives in exile, said on her official Telegram account.

  • Techdirt ☛ Judge Tears Into ICE Over Its Inhumane Facilities, Insane Amount Of Lying

    But it still needs to be seen to be believed. The baseline disregard for detainees health and well-being is nothing new. Neither are the attempts of law enforcement officials to lie their way out of a lawsuit. But the absolute stupidity of the lies and the complete lack of effort of those attempting to shield themselves from accountability goes past the normal ghoulishness we associate with the people doing the imprisoning.

    There’s a new level of contempt on display here — one that indicates these people have nothing to fear from the courts because this administration will never consider these acts and the lies used to cover them up as something in need of punishment.

  • Court House News ☛ 11th Circuit kills 'Cop City' opponents' referendum effort

    Dubbed “Cop City” by opponents, the 85-acre complex opened in April 2025 after months of protests and hours of public commentary urging council members not to lease the land to the Atlanta Police Foundation.

    Debate over the training center drew national attention after state troopers fatally shot a protester near the site in January 2023. Opponents expressed fears that the training center — which includes burn buildings, “mock” villages, VR tools, a driving course, a shooting range and a wellness center — will fuel police militarization and deepen over-policing of poor and majority-Black communities.

  • Mike Brock ☛ Never Apologize for Swearing When They Kill Someone

    ICE shot a woman dead in Minneapolis. Mayor Jacob Frey said ICE should leave the city and used the word “fuck” while doing it.

    Now the right wants him to apologize for swearing.

    Not ICE for the killing. Frey for the swearing.

  • Newsweek ☛ McDonald's responds after "no-ICE" sign seen at Minnesota location

    According to images of the sign that circulated widely online, it read: "This is a private business. You are not permitted to enter non-public areas of this business (including offices, break rooms, storages areas, and staff-only areas) without a valid JUDICIAL WARRANT signed by a judge or magistrate."

    It added that ICE officers "may not question employees or search the premises without proper legal authority," and that those who enter without a warrant "will be asked to leave."

  • International Business Times ☛ McDonald's Explains 'No Entry' Signage for ICE Agents After Fatal Shooting of Renee Nicole Good

    Now, McDonald's and Hilton's actions of banning ICE members are said to be transforming the brands into a battleground for civil rights, corporate ethics, and national security. What started as a localised protest by well-known companies is fast becoming a national debate, especially because killings of civilians are involved.

  • Adrian Roselli ☛ Brief Note on Application Keyboard Shortcuts

    Instead, this post is to tell you not to stress about what keys a screen reader uses. This is because screen readers have pass-through commands, which tell the screen reader to ignore the next key or combo and pass it through to the application (whether an installed application or the web browser running your application).

  • [Old] The Guardian UK ☛ White supremacists and militias have infiltrated police across US, report says

    White supremacist groups have infiltrated US law enforcement agencies in every region of the country over the last two decades, according to a new report about the ties between police and far-right vigilante groups.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ MAGA Response to Minneapolis Shooting: She Deserved It

    The push to normalize the killing of individuals — both citizens and migrants — by federal authorities is no accident. For a year now, the Trump administration has publicly celebrated the increased militancy and cruel spectacle of its immigration enforcement operations. Raids on buildings in Chicago, mass deportations to torture prisons in El Salvador, and detention camps in gator-infested swamp land are just some of the headline-grabbing abuses orchestrated by Trump and Noem’s DHS, before the surge of ICE agents to Minneapolis earlier this week, which led to the death of a U.S. citizen.

  • Wired ☛ ICE Agent Who Reportedly Shot Renee Good Was a Firearms Trainer, per Testimony

    Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer identified by multiple news outlets as the federal agent who shot 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday, is a veteran deportation officer in ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, according to sworn testimony from the federal district court in Minnesota obtained by WIRED. A member of a Special Response Team, ICE’s version of a SWAT team, he’s had duties as a firearms trainer and led teams drawn from multiple federal agencies including the FBI, Ross testified.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Atlantic ☛ Can We Save the Internet?

    Then Charlie is joined by Mike Masnick, Alex Komoroske, and Zoe Weinberg to discuss a vision for a positive future of the [Internet]. The trio helped write the “Resonant Computing Manifesto,” a framework for building technology that leaves people feeling nourished rather than hollow. They discuss how to combat engagement-maximizing products that hijack attention, erode agency, and creep people out through surveillance and manipulation. The conversation is both a diagnosis and a call to action: Stop only defending against the worst futures, and start articulating, designing, and demanding the kinds of digital spaces that make us more human.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Italy Fines Cloudflare €14 Million for Refusing to Filter Pirate Sites on Public 1.1.1.1 DNS

    Italy’s communications regulator AGCOM imposed a record-breaking €14.2 million fine on Cloudflare after the company failed to implement the required piracy blocking measures. Cloudflare argued that filtering its global 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver would be "impossible" without hurting overall performance. AGCOM disagreed, noting that Cloudflare is not necessarily a neutral intermediary either.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Digital Music News ☛ Ticketmaster Class Action Lawsuit Approved for Full Trial in Quebec

  In the bigger picture, it’s not a secret that the platform and its Live Nation parent are grappling with (besides a DOJ antitrust suit and an FTC complaint) a number of class actions at present.

  Just in passing, this includes Swifties’ Eras Tour suit; a different suit from allegedly shortchanged consumers; and a newer complaint yet alleging the use of illegal surveillance and tracking tools.

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Elon Musk’s Grok Has Friends in High Places

      A former X executive behind Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot, now serving as US Patent Office chief AI officer, has received a “highly unusual” carveout that allows him to retain company shares while influencing AI policy.

    • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ Sony Patents AI That Plays Video Games for You If You Get Stuck

      According to the patent, gamers would choose between a “Guide Mode” that shows an AI presenting the proper way forward or a “Complete Mode” that would simply assume control over the player’s character and play the whole thing on their behalf.

    • 1981 Media Ltd ☛ Sony AI patent will see PlayStation games play themselves when players are stuck

      The patent was originally filed in September 2024, but the World Intellectual Property Organization published an international status report on the patent this week.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • The Guardian UK ☛ Grok is undressing women and children. Don’t expect the US to take action

      Over the past year, Elon Musk has made a series of protocol changes to Grok, the proprietary AI chatbot of his company xAI, which runs prominently on his social media site X, formerly Twitter. Many of these changes have been geared to make the bot more amenable to producing pornography. In August, Grok launched an image generator, branded as Grok Imagine, which featured a service geared toward creating nude, suggestive or sexually explicit content, including computer-generated pornographic images of real women. The feature, which was quickly used to create naked images of celebrities such as Taylor Swift, also allowed users to create brief videos, complete with animations and sounds.

    • RTL ☛ Sexualised images of women and minors: Grok limits AI image editing to paid users after nudes backlash

      But EU digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier told reporters “this doesn’t change our fundamental issue, paid subscription or non-paid subscription. We don’t want to see such images. It’s as simple as that.”

      “What we’re asking platforms to do is to make sure that their design, that their systems do not allow the generation of such illegal content,” he added.

    • RTL ☛ Musk's Grok under fire over sexualized images despite new limits

      Grok appeared to deflect the criticism with a new monetization policy, posting on the platform X late Thursday that image generation and editing were now “limited to paying subscribers,” alongside a link to a premium subscription.

      British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office joined the chorus of critics, condemning the move as an affront to victims and “not a solution.”

    • Vox ☛ X just paywalled Grok’s deepfakes. Here’s why it won’t work.

      To be clear, you can’t ask Grok — or most mainstream AIs, for that matter — for nudes. But you can ask Grok to “undress” an image someone posted on X, or if that doesn’t work, ask it to put them in a tiny, invisible bikini. The US has laws against this kind of abuse, and yet the team at xAI has been almost…blasé about it.

    • India Times ☛ Grok turns off AI image generation for non-payers after nudes backlash

      Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok has turned off its image creation feature for non-paying users following backlash over its use to create sexualized deepfakes of women and children.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ X Sues Music Publishers Over "Weaponized" DMCA Takedown Conspiracy

    Elon Musk's X Corp. filed a landmark antitrust complaint against the NMPA, Sony, Universal, and other major music publishers, claiming that they used a coordinated "extortionate campaign" to force licensing deals. The lawsuit alleges that a flood of "baseless" DMCA notices targeted over 200,000 posts and suspended 50,000 users, allegedly to coerce X to sign industry-wide agreements.

    x twitterThe legal battle between X Corp. and the music industry has just escalated from a straightforward copyright lawsuit into a full-blown antitrust war.

  • Techdirt ☛ Fair Use Is A Right. Ignoring It Has Consequences.

    The DMCA gives copyright holders a powerful tool to take down other people’s content from platforms like YouTube. The “notice and takedown” process requires only an email, or filling out a web form, in order to accuse another user of copyright infringement and have their content taken down. And multiple notices typically lead to the target’s account being suspended, because doing so helps the platform avoid liability. There’s no court or referee involved, so anyone can bring an accusation and get a nearly instantaneous takedown.

    Of course, that power invites abuse. Because filing a DMCA infringement notice is so easy, there’s a temptation to use it at the drop of a hat to take down speech that someone doesn’t like. To prevent that, before sending a takedown notice, a copyright holder has to consider whether the use they’re complaining about is a fair use. Specifically, the copyright holder needs to form a “good faith belief” that the use is not “authorized by the law,” such as through fair use.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Salt-N-Pepa Copyright Lawsuit Against Universal Music Group Dismissed

    Salt-N-Pepa have reached a dead end in their lawsuit against Universal Music Group. Last year, the rap duo filed a suit alleging the company was holding their music “hostage” by not allowing them to reclaim control of their music’s intellectual property 35 years after its release, a violation of the Copyright Act. UMG later filed a motion to have the case dismissed “for failure to state a claim.” The motion was granted by District Judge Denise Cote in United States District Court — Southern District of New York.