Leftovers

• Manuel Moreale ☛ How You Read My Content

  In conclusion, is it still worth serving content via RSS? Yes. Is the web overrun by bots? Also yes. Is somebody watching me type these words? Maybe. If you have a site and are going to run a similar experiment, let me know about it, and I’ll be happy to link it here. Also, if you want some more data from my logs, let me know.

• The Register UK ☛ AI is everywhere, but nowhere in recent productivity data

  During our conversation, Gownder cited US Bureau of Labour Statistics that suggest the advent of the personal computer also did not improve productivity, which improved by 2.7 per cent annually from 1947 to 1973, but just 2.1 percent between 1990 and 2001.

  “So despite all those PCs, it [productivity growth] was a lot lower. And [from] 2007 to 2019 it was 1.5 percent. If you look at these numbers, productivity is the foundation of job replacement and of job growth and a whole bunch of things. But when you look at this … you begin to get the picture that information technology isn't measured always in as linear a way into productivity as people assume. It just isn't there.”

• Riccardo Mori ☛ My 2025 in review

  In what, exactly? This is another thing I’ve tried to explore in 2025 and I’m still on it at the moment. I’ve looked into Linux a bit more. I have enjoyed using older Macs with older Mac OS versions and older applications that are still very useful to me today. I have enjoyed my Nothing Phone (2a) and don’t regret my switch to Android in the least. But going back to reading more — and reading more physical books — has been especially grand.

• Science

  • The Independent UK ☛ Nasa brings four astronauts back to Earth in first-ever medical evacuation

    Launched in August, Cardman, Fincke, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov were due to remain on the space station until late February.

  • Futurism ☛ Union Representing NASA Workers Says Space Agency's New Administrator Is a Straight-Up Liar

    Of particular concern is the campus’ main library, which was unceremoniously shut down last month, as the New York Times reported on December 31. NASA officials tried to downplay these concerns seemingly to no avail — as former and current staffers, advisors, and union representatives continue to watch in horror as the GSFC closures go on.

    NASA insiders cried foul following the library’s closure, warning that critical and still-undigitized materials could be thrown out in what they said were reckless efforts by the Trump administration.

  • Futurism ☛ NASA Has Some Very Bad News About Its Mars Spacecraft

    But weeks later, things aren’t looking much better. As SpaceNews senior writer Jeff Foust pointed out, NASA planetary science division director Louise Prockter conceded during a Tuesday meeting that the agency is “very unlikely” to recover the MAVEN orbiter.

• Hardware

  • Jérôme Marin ☛ China’s breakthrough in chips

    “The laws of physics in China are the same.” In early 2023, Peter Wennink, then CEO of ASML, sounded the alarm: export restrictions imposed by Western countries would push Beijing to “double up its efforts” to develop its own technologies — particularly the most advanced lithography machines, still marketed exclusively by the Dutch group and indispensable for producing cutting-edge chips. Three years later, that prediction is beginning to come true.

  • India Times ☛ Battle over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia rages in Dutch court

    A Dutch court held hearings Wednesday to weigh whether to order an investigation into Nexperia, a Chinese-owned chip company at the centre of a global tug-of-war over critical semiconductor technology.

    The firm, based in the Netherlands but whose parent company is China's Wingtech, has been the subject of a standoff between Beijing and the West that threatened to cripple car manufacturers that rely on its chips.

  • Macworld ☛ An obscure material used in every Apple device is suddenly in very short supply

    The material is called “glass cloth” and it is an important component in a particular type of substrate (essentially a little pad that the chip is mounted on to attach it to the circuit board). There aren’t may companies that make it at a high quality level and high volume. There’s essentially only one major supplier: the Japanese company Nitto Boseki, or Nittobo.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ The BookArc and Bolt laptop stands

    Spot the issue? The entire stand rests on four tiny rubber feet mounted to the aluminium frame and… that’s it. The whole feet design is weird; most of the rubber doesn’t interface the table at all, meaning you’ve got about a millimetre-wide contact surface at it narrowest point. That’s not much resistance between you and accidentally moving or bumping the stand. Which, given the high centre of gravity and the fact the laptop is a massive sail made of metal and silicon, happened constantly.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science Alert ☛ The Best Medicine For Joint Pain Isn't What You Think, Says Expert

    The best medicine isn't found in a pill bottle or an operating theatre – it's movement. Yet across countries and health systems, too few patients are being guided toward the one therapy proven to protect their joints and ease their pain: exercise.

  • El País ☛ Inactive people can reduce risk of death by 30% with five minutes of exercise a day

    The same study points to another easy measure that can improve the health of millions of people: reducing sitting time by 30 minutes a day, with short walks of a couple of minutes every hour, for example, could prevent between 3% and 7% of premature deaths.

  • The University of Leeds ☛ Microplastics detected in rural woodland

    “This shows that microplastic deposition is shaped not just by human activity, but also by environmental factors, which has important implications for monitoring, managing, and reducing microplastic pollution.

    “The widespread presence of smaller microplastics raises concerns about potential health risks from inhalation, regardless of whether people live in a city or a rural village.”

• Proprietary

  • Meta Closes Twisted Pixel, Armature & Sanzaru Games

    Meta shut down Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard's Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR).

    The New York Times reported earlier that Meta is laying off more than 10% of its Reality Labs division, specifically targeting teams working on VR and Horizon Worlds.

    Now, UploadVR can confirm that these layoffs are being conducted today, and we've seen a document indicating the entirety of three of Meta's acquired VR games studios are affected: Twisted Pixel Games, Sanzaru Games, and Armature.

  • Bobby Kotick: Embracer Group Tried to Disrupt the Deal Between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard

    The former head of Activision Blizzard revealed this during the ongoing legal proceedings with AP7. According to Bobby Kotick, Embracer Group aimed to sabotage the deal with Microsoft to improve its market position in California.

    Kotick explained that at the time, Embracer Group was actively expanding its presence in California, so it was beneficial for them to weaken Activision Blizzard—one of the largest players in the local market. The company hoped that the lawsuit filed by AP7 would hinder Activision Blizzard's ability to "hire talented employees and grow through M&A," thus clearing space for Embracer Group.

  • Michael Tsai ☛ Gmail Ending Support for Gmailify and POP Fetching

  • The Register UK ☛ Judge tosses CrowdStrike shareholder suit over 2024 outage

    The update was malformed, and CrowdStrike's internal validation system, designed to ensure updates didn't cause serious snafus, failed to catch the issue, as the company later explained in a post-mortem. CrowdStrike acknowledged it had made a mistake, causing its share price to plummet and leaving the company with months of uncertainty for investors, many of whom are institutional.

    One such institutional group was the Plymouth County Retirement Association, which filed a lawsuit in July 2024. Other parties signed on to the suit, turning it into a class action complaint under the leadership of New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who oversees the New York State Common Retirement Fund, one of the institutional CrowdStrike investors who lost money following the outage. Pitman dismissed the case this week.

  • The Register UK ☛ New Linux malware targets the cloud, steals creds

    While malware operators have traditionally focused on Windows-based systems, VoidLink's cloud-first focus is significant. Government agencies, global enterprises, critical infrastructure and other high-value attack targets increasingly run on cloud-based services and host their most sensitive systems in the cloud - so malware that hunts for infected machines' public cloud providers is likely to reap bigger rewards for government-sponsored spies as well as financially-motivated ransomware gangs.

  • Rob Knight ☛ Bullet Journal Is a System for Selling More Bullet Journal

    12 months later and it's as if a completely separate entity runs the website having only been given a vague description of what it was before. I would go to the site to find a guide on a specific concept I'd previously seen and those pages were either impossible to find just by navigating or when I did find them via Google search they would 404. Not found. Get fucked. Pay us for a course instead.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Opposition to MElon’s Hey Hi (AI) Stripping Clothing Off Children Is Nearly Universal, Polling Shows

      Good.

    • Futurism ☛ Financial Expert Says OpenAI Is on the Verge of Running Out of Money

      The AI industry continues to pour tens of billions of dollars into resource-intensive models and the infrastructure to run them. In the face of it all, their promises of kickstarting a technological revolution that could one day be immensely profitable remain convincing enough for investors to prop up sky-high valuations — at least for now.

    • Futurism ☛ Tech Billionaires Have No Answer for What'll Happen If AI Takes All Jobs

      Speaking at a press conference last month, Geoffrey Hinton — a pioneer in the field of neural networks, the bedrock of modern AI — remarked that “it’s clear that a lot of jobs are going to disappear: it’s not clear that it’s going to create a lot of jobs to replace that.”

    • Walled Culture ☛ Walled Culture the book, three years on

      What’s really problematic about the rise of services based on generative AI is not that they are using huge amounts of copyright material – those will probably be licensed in one way or another – but that the creators of that material are unlikely to see much benefit from the payments made to publishers, recording companies and studios. Generative AI is portrayed as a novel and exciting chapter in technology, but actually, it’s not new, since much of the foundational work goes back decades. And as far as ordinary people and creators are concerned, it is definitely the same old copyright story: companies reaping the benefits and profits, while everyone else is expected to accept with gratitude the few scraps tossed their way.

    • RTL ☛ Sexualised photos of children and women: Musk's Grok barred from undressing images after global backlash - RTL Today

      X said it will “geoblock the ability” of all Grok and X users to create images of people in “bikinis, underwear, and similar attire” in those jurisdictions where such actions are deemed illegal.

    • Yarn Spinner Pty Ltd ☛ Why We Don't Use AI

      We get asked about AI a lot. Whether we’re going to add it to Yarn Spinner, whether we use it ourselves, what we think about it. Fair questions. Time to write it all down.

      Yarn Spinner doesn’t use the technology that’s currently being called AI. We don’t have generative AI features in the product, and we don’t use code generation tools to build it, and we don’t accept contributions we know contain generated material. Let’s talk about why.

      TL;DR: AI companies make tools for hurting people and we don’t want to support that.

    • Tidepool Heavy Industries ☛ Stop using natural language interfaces

      There's a classic CS diagram visualizing latency numbers for various compute operations: nanoseconds to lock a mutex, microseconds to reference memory, milliseconds to read 1 MB from disk. LLM inference usually takes 10s of seconds to complete. Streaming responses help compensate, but it's slow.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Who Is Sienna Rose and Is She AI? All Signs Point to 'Yes'

      In a statement to Rolling Stone, streaming platform Deezer confirmed “that many of Sienna Rose’s albums and songs are detected and flagged as AI on Deezer.”

    • Futurism ☛ Tech Startup Hiring Desperate Unemployed People to Teach AI to Do Their Old Jobs

      And while debate swirls about whether AI is actually replacing jobs in any serious numbers, many tech startups are trying to make it a reality. As the Wall Street Journal reports, a buzzy San Francisco-based AI company called Mercor is hiring desperate job-seekers for a particularly ghoulish task: training AI models to one day do the work they used to do.

    • Futurism ☛ AI Has Basically Killed Stack Overflow

      “Of course, one could point to 2022 and say ‘look, it’s because of AI,’ and yes, AI certainly accelerated the decline, but this is the result of consistently punishing users for trying to participate in your community,” one Reddit user argued. “People were just happy to finally have a tool that didn’t tell them their questions were stupid.”

      Others pointed out that the most important questions simply may have already been asked.

  • Social Control Media

    • RTL ☛ Museveni's 40-year-rule: Uganda votes under internet blackout and police crackdown - RTL Today

      With President Museveni looking to extend his 40-year-rule in the upcoming election, Ugandans are voting on Thursday amid expected police crackdowns and an [Internet] blackout.

    • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ Is it possible to live without WhatsApp? ⁄ Manual do Usuário

      In many parts of the world outside the US, the “big boss” of those who decide to get rid of Meta is WhatsApp. And how could it not be? Some research on phone habits shows that up to 99.1% of Brazilians over the age of 16 use the messaging app. Here, it is ubiquitous; the standard means of communication for many people and companies.

    • Zimbabwe ☛ Warning: Fake Accounts Impersonating Techzim and Editor

      Techzim is aware of fake Facebook accounts pretending to be Leonard Sengere and Techzim following our recent coverage of EcoCash-related scams.

    • [Repeat] BIA Net ☛ Social media platforms turn to censorship to protect commercial interests

      However, this compliance did not create genuine legal accountability. In practice, social media platforms have moved away from transparency and effectively turned into mechanisms of “digital obedience” for the state.

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Uganda shuts down [Internet] ahead of pivotal election

      The Uganda Communications Commission ordered mobile service providers to shut down public [Internet] connections from 6pm (5pm SAST) on Tuesday in order to curb “misinformation, disinformation, electoral fraud and related risks”.

    • The Atlantic ☛ Elon Musk Cannot Get Away With This

      If there is no red line around AI-generated sex abuse, then no line exists.

    • US News And World Report ☛ US Teachers Union Says It Is Leaving X Over Sexualized AI Images of Children

      The American Federation ‌of ​Teachers says it is leaving X, ‌citing the social media site's creation and dissemination of "sickening" images of ​children in various states of undress.

    • The Verge ☛ X claims it has stopped Grok from undressing people, but of course it hasn’t

      UK communication regulator Ofcom has opened an investigation, and the UK is bringing a law into force this week that makes creating nonconsensual intimate deepfake images a criminal offense. Earlier on Wednesday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer told MPs that “To update the House, I have been informed this morning that X is acting to ensure full compliance with UK law. If so, that is welcome, but we’re not going to back down, and they must act.” The BBC reports that the prime minister’s official spokesperson called it a “qualified welcome,” based on media reports that X had taken action on the issues, but our testing indicates that isn’t true yet.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Site36 ☛ Access to biometric police data: EU Commission wants to negotiate secretly with the U.S.

      The U.S. is demanding automated access to biometric police and asylum data in EU states. Also Trump’s infamous anti-migrant-militia ICE could use the fingerprints and facial images. Nevertheless, the Commission is starting negotiations under high secrecy.

    • Techdirt ☛ DHS Wants To Harvest Biometric Data From Anyone Helping A Foreigner Stay In This Country Legally

      This was first pitched by the DHS back in November, as “Papers Please” reports. Public comments are being accepted, but probably not being welcomed unless they’re sufficiently congratulatory of this expansion of surveillance power. Here’s what Papers Please has to say about it in its recent post: [...]

    • Techdirt ☛ ICE Is Going On A Surveillance Shopping Spree

      There are many different agencies under U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that deal with immigration, as well as non-immigration related agencies such as Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). ICE is specifically the enforcement arm of the U.S. immigration apparatus. Their stated mission is to “[p]rotect America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety.”

    • Pete Brown ☛ 🔗 Congress Pushes DHS for Details on ICE’s New Facial Recognition App:...

      I’m glad they are pushing Noem et al. on this, but the accuracy (or the lack thereof) of the tool is beside the point. Even if this app were 100% accurate and never generated any false positives, it is a blatant invasion of privacy and ought to banned outright.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Marisa Kabas ☛ ICE is headed to Maine

    As ICE continues its deadly assault on Minneapolis and communities throughout the country, its likely next target has been revealed: The state of Maine. On Tuesday I learned that people were gearing up for enforcement actions based on rumors, and by Wednesday the mayors of the state's two largest cities addressed it, decrying ICE tactics as a “paramilitary approach.”

    Mayor of Portland Mayor Mark Dion issued this statement Wednesday afternoon: [...]

  • Garrett Bucks ☛ What a rage-filled heart, an exhausted heart, a terrified heart, and a grieving heart have in common

    I will not lecture you. But I will offer this.

    What you are feeling right now, be it volcanic anger or exhaustion or guilt or confusion or incapacitation isn’t just real, it is sacred. It is your heart reacting, in any number of ways, to its own sudden expansion. You are feeling something deeply, and it may or not yet be pulling you in a clear direction, but in either case it is a gorgeous reminder: You are human. And you are reacting to horrors being rained down on other human beings. You ache for them and rage for them and feel incapacitated on their behalf because that is what human beings do when we don’t turn off the part of us that knows we are made for more than cruelty.

  • US Navy Times ☛ Former US sailor sentenced to 16 years for selling ship intel to China

    A federal judge in San Diego sentenced Jinchao Wei, 25, to 200 months. A federal jury convicted Wei in August of six crimes, including espionage. He was paid more than $12,000 for the information he sold, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

  • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ Democrats Say DOJ Is Probing Their Involvement in ‘Illegal Orders’ Video - NOTUS — News of the United States

    In fiery statements Wednesday, the lawmakers accused the Trump administration of seeking to silence its enemies and politicize the Justice Department.

  • Truthdig ☛ What Happens When the People Refuse to Be Afraid?

    None of this means that we’re home safe. Trump and his right-wing billionaire funders are still openly opposed to democracy, red state governors are actively purging people in their blue cities from the voting rolls with the approval of five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court, and billionaire-owned and -run media operations from CBS to Fox to Sinclair daily sing his praises.

    But there’s also an active and growing resistance across media and in local communities that’s emerging within both parties. Even as Facebook and Twitter censor anti-Trump posts and armies of trolls and bots attack Democrats and progressives, average working-class people are waking up hard and fast from coast to coast.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Further | One People, Realm, Leader: But Don't Call Them Nazis | Opinion

    The atrocities and the fury mount. Astoundingly, after a murderous thug shot a mother of three in the face in broad daylight - "He didn't kill her because he was scared, he killed her because she wasn't" - state terror has ramped up with more lies, goons, attacks on "gangs of wine moms," brutish agitprop literally echoing the Nazis'. So when mini-Bovino went to take a leak at a store, the people's wrath, a bittersweet splendor, erupted. Their/our edict: "Get the fuck out."

  • Common Dreams ☛ Fossil fuel phaseout urgent as 1.5°C target likely to be passed by 2030

    The report notes that air temperature over global land areas was second warmest, while the Antarctic saw its warmest annual temperature on record. Temperature rise in 2025 was mainly due to “the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, from continued emissions and reduced uptake of carbon dioxide by natural sinks”–underscoring the urgent need for a fossil fuel phaseout.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Taiwan Endures Greater Cyber Pressure From China

    The report comes as the relationship between China and Taiwan suffered setbacks in the past year. China considers the island — a former Japanese colony that became independent when the Nationalist Party retreated to the island following its defeat in a civil war against the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 — as part of its territory. The island democracy, however, continues to resist political efforts to absorb it into the mainland. In December, the US committed to an $11 billion arms sale to Taiwan, and Japan's recently elected prime minister caused a kerfuffle by stating that if China attacked Taiwan, it would threaten Japan's survival and allow the country to exercise its right of self defense.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ After the shooting of Renee Good, we see dissent can be fatal in Trump’s America – all bets are off

    She looked at me coldly. “You’re a fucking idiot,” she said, when I told her how rude I’d been. “What if they’d asked you where the girls’ father is? And why aren’t you travelling with their birth certificates?” I couldn’t believe that I was getting grief off this person who has never met a cab driver she couldn’t start a fight with – but then, her antecedents were murdered by Nazis. She understands a real threat when she sees it. Nothing should take away from Good’s courage or convictions. But there are lessons to be learned: a system that puts paramilitaries on US streets to round people up willy-nilly should be approached by those protesting with the understanding that there is nothing – nothing – it won’t do to shut them up.

  • YLE ☛ Finnish PM floats social media ban for under-15s

    Speaking at the mobility-focused summit on Wednesday, Orpo said he supports banning social media use for those under 15, citing screen time as one of the biggest obstacles to kids moving more.

  • The Zambian Observer ☛ It would be ‘stupid’ to have Elon Musk’s Starlink in South Africa — Parliament committee chairperson

    • In a video shared on X, Zibi said the government would be “stupid” to allow Starlink to operate due to Musk’s open disdain for South Africa.

    • Zibi accused Musk of being a “white supremacist” who had declared himself an enemy of South Africa’s constitutional order and who frequently spread lies and misinformation about the country.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Kelly and Hegseth fight over ‘unlawful orders’ video headed to court

    The suit is the latest escalation in the fight between the senator and the secretary after Hegseth moved to censure Kelly and start a process to reduce his rank last week. Hegseth had previously threatened to prosecute Kelly, a retired Navy captain, combat pilot and astronaut, for a Nov. 18 video urging troops not to follow unlawful military orders. Kelly was one of six current members of Congress with intelligence and military backgrounds who released a video aimed at American service members in the early weeks of the Pentagon’s bombing campaign of vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Swedish military to pump forces, money into mobile drone-defense units

    The plan entails several independent company-sized units that will be required to be mobile and modular to mix and match different weapons, including guns and radar systems. Assets requiring protection will include bridges, rail hubs, nuclear and hydroelectric power plants, as well as cities, according to a government press release.

  • University of Michigan ☛ The Right Finnish: Ukraine’s Deal Will Decide Who Writes the Rules of the 21st Century

    After fighting bravely against the Soviet invasion in 1939–40, Finland ceded 10% of its territory. But territorial loss was only the beginning. The 1948 Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance between Finland and the Soviet Union preserved nominal independence at a steep price: Finland could not join NATO, criticize Soviet actions or pursue an independent foreign policy.

    For example, the treaty obligated Finland to defend against an attack “by Germany or its allies” on the Soviets — Cold War code for the Western European alliances that eventually became NATO. Moscow reinforced these constraints through election interference, ministerial pressure and support for Finnish communists, keeping Helsinki politically subdued.

    Finland preserved independence by surrendering sovereignty. Current peace proposals threaten to replicate this model for Ukraine.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Where We Go from Here

    In my opinion, the Epstein scandal is a tool. It undercuts Trump’s ability to grab and redirect attention. It can create moments of cognitive dissonance, as it did for MTG. It is a way to turn Trump’s conspiracism and populism against him and may make other related narrative lines more salient. And if there’s a surprise disclosure — perhaps about Melania’s origin story — all the better. But as you keep the focus on Epstein, remember that there needs to be a direction beyond Epstein as well, a direction which incorporates the oligarchs who are still key players in Trump’s network of power.

  • FAIR ☛ ACTION ALERT: Why Didn’t NYT, WaPo Report What They Knew About Venezuelan Invasion? — FAIR

    In a 2,000-word play-by-play, the Post (1/3/26) called it a “surprise strike” in a headline, and a “secretive operation” in the article. The Times, for its part, dubbed it a “surprise nighttime operation” (1/3/26), noting that “the military took pains to maintain so-called tactical surprise” (1/3/26).

    But word quickly got out that it was not a surprise to either paper. Semafor (1/3/26), an outlet co-founded by former Times media columnist Ben Smith, reported that both the Times and Post “learned of a secret US raid on Venezuela soon before it was scheduled to begin,” but chose not to report on it, to “avoid endangering US troops.” Semafor sourced its report to “two people familiar with the communications between the administration and the news organizations.”

  • TruthOut ☛ Ford Plant Suspends Worker After Trump Flips Him Off | Truthout

    Sabula’s remark that Trump is a “pedophile protector” is a reference to the president stalling the release of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein, an alleged child sex trafficker and former close friend of the president’s. After campaigning in 2024 in favor of releasing the Epstein files, Trump reneged on that promise once he re-entered the White House, and has since wrongly derided bipartisan calls to make the files public as a Democratic Party-led “hoax.”

    After Trump reluctantly signed a bill into law that required the Epstein files to be made public, the DOJ recently admitted that only about 1 percent of files have been added to an online database for viewing, missing by far a mid-December deadline.

• Environment

  • Project Censored ☛ Illegal Gold Rush Strips 140,000 Hectares from the Peruvian Amazon

    A new report published by Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) and its Peruvian partner organization, Conservación Amazónica, found that 140,000 hectares of land in the Peruvian Amazon have been cleared for illegal gold mining. The illegal miners use dredges, “floating machines that chew up and spit out riverbeds—leaving the toxic mercury used to extract gold from sediment in their wake.” MAAP used ultra-high resolution aerial images to locate dredges alongside deforestation. This investigation revealed that the environmental crisis that was previously limited to the south of Peru has moved further north, according to a Guardian report by Luke Taylor, also published in Earth Island Journal.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Court House News ☛ States clash with Trump admin over electric vehicle infrastructure

      In June, U.S. District Judge Tana Lin granted the states’ motion for a preliminary injunction requiring the Federal Highway Administration to restore funding for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula (NEVI) Program, which allocated $5 billion to states to build electric vehicle charging networks across the country.

    • JURIST ☛ US federal court deems Trump's clean energy grant cancellation illegal

      The court concluded that while cancellation of the grants may have constituted a legitimate government purpose, the different treatment for of Democratic-led states and Republican-led states was not rationally related to that purpose. The court stated:

      "In fact, Defendants concede that Plaintiffs’ seven terminated grants are “comparable” to awards to grantees in Red States that were not terminated. The only identifiable difference—the grant recipient’s state’s political identity and, specifically, its electoral votes cast against President Trump—does not provide a rational basis for why Defendants chose to terminate Plaintiffs’ grants over others to advance their stated interest of aligning grant funding with agency priorities."

• Finance

  • The Economist ☛ Why Europe is rediscovering the virtues of cash

    Enter a church in Sweden in the bleak midwinter and you will find one of its recesses faintly aglow. A thicket of candles, lit by visitors commemorating a loved one, offers a break from the bustle of modern life. Once, such contemplative scenes were disturbed only by the sound of coins clinking into a metal box accepting donations for each candle. No longer. In these modern times, the candles remain but the cash box has often been replaced by a QR code. Instead of rummaging through their change purses, prospective candle-lighters zap a few kronor to the church through Swish, a ubiquitous payment app. The sound of coins against metal has been replaced by the dull buzz of mobile phones announcing that a payment has gone through.

  • Europe is Rediscovering the Virtues of Cash

    Over one in three cinemas in the Netherlands no longer accept notes and coins. Cash usage across the euro area dropped from 79% of in-person transactions in 2016 to just 52% in 2024. Sweden leads the digital shift where 90% of purchases now happen digitally and cash represents under 1% of GDP compared to 22% in Japan.

    The policy change stems from concerns about financial inclusion for elderly and poor populations who struggle with digital systems. Resilience worries also drove the decision after Spaniards facing nationwide power cuts last spring found themselves unable to buy food. European officials worry about dependence on American payment giants Visa and MasterCard. The EU now recommends citizens store enough cash to survive a week without electricity or internet access.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Futurism ☛ Grok Is Getting Access to Classified Military Networks

    In addition to the Grok integration, Hegseth announced the creation of a new role within the Department of Defense, the “Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer,” to be filled by Cameron Stanley. Stanley was most recently the national security transformation lead at Amazon Web Services, a role he began after a lengthy career as as science and tech advisor at the Pentagon.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Executive branch budget pact includes IT investments, less for DOGE

    On the executive branch funding released Sunday for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, lawmakers agreed on $124.3 million for salaries and expenses in the White House’s Office of Administration, with up to $12.8 million used for IT modernization. No more than $10 million of that IT pie should be spent for security and continuity of operations improvements.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Fed Is Quietly Bailing Out Wall Street

    The Federal Reserve has quietly delivered nearly half a trillion dollars to Wall Street with few strings attached over the past few months through an obscure government financial program intended for banks struggling to make cash payments.

    These cash infusions could signal instability in the broader financial sector — and come as the central bank is besieged by potentially market-rattling turmoil following the Trump administration’s launch of a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.

  • [Repeat] Scoop News Group ☛ Hill warning: Don’t put cyber offense before defense

    “I’m concerned we’re putting the cart before the horse, when we have not had a hearing on why the [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security] Agency has lost one-third of its workforce in the last year,” the top Democrat on the full committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said. “We ought to be cautious about pursuing an approach involving the use of offensive cyber tools that could result in retaliation or escalation if we’re not in a position to help defend U.S. networks.”

  • Scoop News Group ☛ TSA plans to beef up its IT help desk

    “TSA requires an IT contractor who can locally support the users and IT equipment and provide a central help desk for rapid responses and trouble resolution,” per the forecast, which was published Thursday on APFS.

    DHS estimates a formal request for offers will go live next week.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • RTL ☛ Amid [Internet] blackout: AI-created Iran protest videos gain traction - RTL Today

      US disinformation watchdog NewsGuard said it identified seven AI-generated videos depicting the Iranian protests -- created by both pro- and anti-government actors -- that have collectively amassed some 3.5 million views across online platforms.

    • Open Caucasus Media ☛ Russia’s soft power project focused on Armenia funded through presidential grant

      In May 2025, the Russian daily Vedomosti reported that Kiriyenko would be ‘tasked’ to advance Russian interests in Armenia ‘through soft power’ ahead of the 2026 parliamentary elections.

    • Techdirt ☛ Elon Musk Plays Disinfo Telephone: How Oregon’s Mundane Voter Roll Cleanup Is Turned Into False Claim Of ‘Fake Voters’

      The game works like this: Someone takes a factual but largely unremarkable story, gives it a slight spin, and passes it along. The next person picks it up, adds another layer of spin, and passes that along. By the time it reaches someone with a massive audience—say, the richest man in the world—the original mundane fact has been transformed into a full-blown conspiracy theory. And that final, mangled version is what millions of people see and believe.

      So let’s trace this particular game of telephone from start to finish.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Record ☛ Ugandan officials turn off [Internet] on eve of national elections

    “It is especially alarming coming as it does just before a crucial election already marred by massive repression and an unprecedented crackdown on opposition parties and dissenting voices.”

    Chagutah called the fact that no end date has been given for when the blackout will lift “ominous.”

  • The Independent UK ☛ University free speech row as students want Reform UK banned

    Nearly half (47 per cent) of students believe universities are becoming less tolerant of diverse viewpoints, a figure that has almost doubled since 2016.

  • BBC ☛ Uganda elections 2026: Communications authority imposes an [Internet] blackout ahead of vote

    Earlier this month, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) described reports of an [Internet] blackout as "mere rumours", saying the commission's role was to guarantee uninterrupted connectivity nationwide.

  • Le Monde ☛ Uganda cuts [Internet] access ahead of elections

    Ugandan authorities shut down [Internet] access nationwide on Tuesday, January 13, two days ahead of elections in which President Yoweri Museveni has overseen a crackdown on the opposition as he seeks to extend his 40-year rule. The 81-year-old leader, who once said African rulers should not overstay their time in office, is widely expected to win a seventh term on Thursday due to his total control over state and security bodies.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Uganda: Crackdown, [Internet] blackout ahead of vote

    Journalists in the capital Kampala say they lost [Internet] access after the Uganda Communications Commission ordered [Internet] providers cut access to prevent the spread of "misinformation" and electoral fraud.

    Some international phone calls were also being blocked said the journalists.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Northwestern University ☛ Newspaper family saves Oregon paper

    The goal is to preserve independent newspapers, which accounted for a majority of newspaper closures and mergers over the last year, according to data gathered by Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative.

    But there’s no single — or simple — solution to ensure the survival of America’s 5,400 or so remaining newspapers. Many approaches are needed, including community and public support, to sustain these essential local businesses.

  • Washingon-Baltimore News Guild ☛ WBNG condemns FBI search of Washington Post Guild member's home - Washington-Baltimore News Guild

    The Washington-Baltimore News Guild unequivocally condemns the reported search of a Washington Post reporter’s home and the seizure of her electronic devices by federal agents. Such actions represent a dangerous escalation that threatens press freedom and the fundamental role of journalists in holding power accountable.

  • TruthOut ☛ Free Press Advocates Decry FBI Search of Washington Post Reporter’s Home

    Post reporter Hannah Natanson, whose reporting focuses extensively on the consequences of President Donald Trump’s attempts to fire workers and dismantle entire government agencies, was at her home when federal investigators arrived. Agents seized her electronic devices, including her phone and laptop computers, and searched her entire home as part of the raid.

  • Techdirt ☛ Bari Weiss Is Sad That People Aren’t Enjoying Her Clumsy Destruction Of CBS News

    If you missed it, Trump-allied billionaire Larry Ellison and his nepobaby son David hired an unqualified troll named Bari Weiss to “run” CBS News. And by “run” CBS news, I mean destroying what little journalism was left at the media giant and creating an alternate-reality safe space for right wing billionaires and their increasingly radical ideologies. While pretending to be “restoring trust in journalism.”

    It’s… not going well.

  • TruthOut ☛ “CBS Evening News” Has Lost Over a Million Viewers Since Bari Weiss Takeover

    Data from media audience measurement firm Nielsen shows that the show lost nearly a quarter of its viewership in the first five days of Dokoupil taking over the program, from January 5 to January 9, compared to the same period last year.

  • The Tyee ☛ Stop Blocking Media, BC Human Rights Report Will Tell Police

    The commissioner wants police to stop using “exclusion zones” to bar the media from areas where officers are undertaking enforcement activities, unless they have judicial permission or are facing an immediate public safety threat.

    And with police forces continuing to restrict media access despite legal rulings calling the practice unconstitutional, the commissioner is asking the province to formally restrict the practice, while also asking for more education for frontline officers.

  • BoingBoing ☛ FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

    Searching a journalist's home is an extraordinary step. Even past administrations that aggressively pursued leak investigations — and the Obama administration was notably aggressive — stopped short of raiding reporters' homes. "Searches of newsrooms and journalists are hallmarks of illiberal regimes, and we must ensure that these practices are not normalized here," said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ FBI raids home of Washington Post reporter in ‘highly unusual and aggressive’ move

    The reporter’s home and devices were searched, and her Garmin watch, phone, and two laptop computers, one belonging to her employer, were seized, the newspaper said. It added that agents told Natanson she was not the focus of the probe, and was not accused of any wrongdoing.

  • Mediaite ☛ FBI Search Washington Post Journalist's Home, Seize Devices

    The move to search and seize is noted by The Post as rare, even in aggressive leak investigations where authorities typically pursue journalists’ phone or email records rather than physically searching their homes.

    Natanson has spent the past year closely covering the Trump administration’s campaign to fire large numbers of federal workers and reshape the civil service to more directly serve the president’s agenda. Her reporting documented widespread anger and fear inside government agencies as employees confronted pressure to fall in line or risk losing their jobs.

  • The Dissenter ☛ Coalition Opposes Rep. Luna's Effort To Silence Journalist

    “The subpoena has few parallels or precedents in recent history and poses a grave danger to the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedom,” the coalition declared in a letter [PDF] addressed to the House of Representatives.

    “Luna’s comments on social media have made clear that she lacked a legitimate legislative purpose for proposing the subpoena. In one post explaining the subpoena, she claimed the purpose was for Harp to ‘face accountability’ as ‘the media has gotten away with too much for too long and I’m sick of it.’”

  • Techdirt ☛ Prosecutors Flee DOJ After Being Told To Investigate The Murdered Woman, Not The Murderer

    Last week, we wrote about how ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother, on a Minneapolis street in broad daylight. We wrote about how the Trump administration immediately began lying about it despite multiple video angles showing exactly what happened. We wrote about how the media called documented murder a “dispute.”

    This week, we’re writing about how career Justice Department prosecutors—people who’ve spent their careers putting away fraudsters, drug dealers, and actual criminals—looked at how the administration is handling this case and said: we want no part of this.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Manuel Matuzović ☛ Workshop: Deep Dive on Accessibility Testing

    Once again, I’ve teamed up with my friends at Smashing Magazine 😻 to share with you everything I know about web accessibility testing! In this smashing workshop we’ll talk about automatic and manual testing, screen reader basics, Single Page Applications, Dev Tools, and more.

    Sounds interesting? Great! Here are some more details about the workshop: [...]

  • Adam Bonica ☛ The Wall Looks Permanent Until It Falls

    Start with work and economic life. Americans work longer hours, pay more out-of-pocket for college and childcare, lack parental leave, and enjoy less economic mobility. The share of income going to the top 1 percent is nearly double the OECD average. American CEOs earn, on average, 354 times as much as their workers. More workers are trapped in poverty-wage jobs. Collective bargaining covers fewer workers. And social protections are less generous for those who fall on hard times, with the government raising less in taxes and spending more on the military.

    The economy is just the beginning.

    We spend nearly twice as much on healthcare as other wealthy countries do. Yet life expectancy is well below average, infant and maternal mortality rates are alarmingly high, and more Americans remain uninsured.

  • Futurism ☛ ICE Reportedly Stole a 10th Grader's Phone, Then Seemingly Sold It for Cash

    One of these civilians was tenth grader Arnoldo Bazan, who was getting McDonald’s with his father, Arnulfo Bazan Carrillo, when they were pulled over by masked agents. According to Arnoldo, after several agents violently tackled his father — who is undocumented — to the ground, with one pressing a knee into his neck, another put the 16-year-old in a suffocating chokehold. When he told the agent that he was a citizen and a minor, the agent didn’t stop.

  • Truthdig ☛ 'Now Is the Time': Minnesota Calls for General Strike to Drive Out ICE

    On Jan. 13, a coalition of faith leaders, union presidents, business owners and community figures in Minneapolis called on “every worker in Minnesota to refuse to show up to work” and “every single Minnesotan to not spend a dime” on Jan. 23 to demand an end to the “violence and horror” that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has unleashed on the community and the agency’s complete removal from the state.

    “We are going to leverage our economic power, our labor, our prayer for one another,” said JaNaé Bates, co-executive director of Isaiah MN, a multiracial interfaith community organizing network.

    “We are not going to shop, we are not going to work, we are not going to school on Friday, January 23.”

  • MinnPost ☛ ICE occupation, unlike Floyd protests, is an intentional disruption - MinnPost

    This month, the same kind of insecurity is not an accident, but fundamental to a named federal operation sending unaccountable SUVs full of masked men to sow chaos for political propaganda. The ICE officer who killed Renee Good last week was filming himself while doing it, not with a body camera but with his personal cell phone: one hand on a gun, and one hitting record for personal posterity. Much recent Trump-orchestrated activity in the Twin Cities seems similarly oriented to creating “content” to feed a right-wing media machine.

    The only meaningful pushback against the terror campaign comes in the form of my neighbors, regular people doing extraordinary and difficult work. They are coordinating themselves from the bottom up, grassroots, using phone chat apps. They are patrolling outside schools and immigrant businesses. They are putting in hours tailing ICE agents, blowing whistles, and witnessing the questionable incarceration of vulnerable neighbors. I know many people who have done this work every day, and I am in awe of their courage.

  • MinnPost ☛ Two-plus dozen ICE vehicles lack necessary lights, sirens

    More news on the ICE front: [...]

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Remarks of Gov. Tim Walz’s address on ICE actions in Minnesota – Twin Cities

    My fellow Minnesotans,

    What’s happening in Minnesota right now defies belief.

    News reports simply don’t do justice to the level of chaos and disruption and trauma the federal government is raining down upon our communities.

    Two to three thousand armed agents of the federal government have been deployed to Minnesota.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Walz calls for Minnesotans to record ICE, continue resistance to immigration crackdown

    As a federal immigration enforcement surge continues in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday called on Minnesotans to peacefully resist the administration of President Donald Trump and to record videos of immigration agents operating in the state.

    “Help us establish a record of exactly what’s happening in our communities. You have an absolute right to peacefully film ICE agents as they conduct these activities,” Walz said in a five-minute speech. “So carry your phone with you at all times, and if you see these ICE agents in your neighborhood, take out that phone and hit record. Help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans, not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution.”

  • Techdirt ☛ We Found More Than 40 Cases Of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds And Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing

    In nearly 20 cases, agents appeared to use chokeholds and other neck restraints that the Department of Homeland Security prohibits “unless deadly force is authorized.”

    About two dozen videos show officers kneeling on people’s necks or backs or keeping them face down on the ground while already handcuffed. Such tactics are not prohibited outright but are often discouraged, including by federal trainers, in part because using them for a prolonged time risks asphyxiation.

    We reviewed footage with a panel of eight former police officers and law enforcement experts. They were appalled.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Most Americans Condemn ICE’s Murder of Renee Good

    By an average margin of more than 22 points, Americans overwhelmingly find that ICE’s killing of Renee Good was unjustified (a scenario we traditionally describe as “murder”). Republicans weren’t just wrong in predicting a landslide of support for ICE; the landslide went in the exact opposite direction. Ahmari’s prediction was wrong by a hilarious margin of 62 points, a failure that should permanently discredit his media branding as a post-partisan populist who’s in touch with the American people.

    And as bad as these numbers are, the details are even worse. Just look at the crosstabs: [...]

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ ICE Has Become a Rogue Paramilitary

    Ross shot Good as she attempted to leave, which we know because we can see in his own footage that she was dramatically cranking the wheel away from him. The car had passed him by when he fired the first of three shots, which we know because both of his legs are visible on the ground to the left of the car in the footage from several angles. His life was not under threat, which we know because killing her had no bearing on the car’s immediate course and he walked away unharmed. And if he had actually been under threat, shooting her would have contributed nothing to his self-defense, which we know because cars do not stop instantly when their drivers die.

  • Pro Publica ☛ Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds on U.S. Citizens

    • Former Police Are Appalled: We showed former police and immigration officials videos of incidents. They said agents are out of control. One said it’s “the kind of action which should get you fired.”

    • Banned Tactics, No Punishment: There is a federal ban on chokeholds and similar tactics. But there is no sign of punishment for officers who’ve used them.

  • The Tyee ☛ Is It Time to Ban Tipping?

    Tipping and tipflation signal a growing shift in responsibility for workers’ pay from employers to customers, with significant consequences like income volatility and workplace inequity.

    The spread of tipping isn’t the best way to help workers make ends meet.

    Instead Canadians should consider a bold alternative: banning tipping and replacing it with a living-wage floor, ensuring decent wages for all workers and transparent pricing for customers.

  • RFERL ☛ Iranian Doctor Says Security Forces 'Shooting Inside' Hospitals

    A doctor inside Iran has told RFE/RL's Radio Farda that security forces have stormed hospitals and executed wounded protesters amid a brutal state crackdown on nationwide antiestablishment protests.

  • Boston Globe ☛ Iran signals fast trials and executions for protesters

    The Human Rights Activists News Agency said 2,403 of the dead were protesters and 147 were government-affiliated. Twelve children were killed, along with nine civilians it said were not taking part in protests.

    More than 18,100 people have been detained, the group said.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Oglala Sioux Tribe says three tribal members arrested in Minneapolis are in ICE detention

    “The Oglala Sioux Tribe’s memorandum makes clear that ‘tribal citizens are not aliens’ and are ‘categorically outside immigration jurisdiction,’” President Frank Star Comes Out said.

  • Techdirt ☛ Following Murder Of Renee Good By ICE Officers, ICE Blocks Congressional Reps From Its Detention Facility

    The wagons are circling even tighter — a metaphor that ICE has made extremely apt now that it’s just the extension of the administration’s xenophobic id: an invading force that’s meant to rid America of anyone not sufficiently white enough to “deserve” to live in the United States.

    It’s back on its old bullshit, continuing to pretend it’s not legally obligated to allow members of Congress to tour its detention facilities. DHS and ICE have claimed (without legal support) that they need advance notice, citing unspecified “security” concerns of the “national” variety. The government continues to place obstacles in the path of congressional representatives who are engaged in acts that are supported by law and legal precedent: oversight of ICE operations.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • US News And World Report ☛ Verizon Outage Disrupts Calling and Data Services for Wireless Customers Across the US

    The carrier acknowledged that there was an “issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers." Verizon didn't specify what was causing the disruptions, but said in updates shared on social media that it had deployed its engineering teams and was working to resolve the problem “as quickly as possible.”

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Trump says he doesn't care about USMCA; Sheinbaum says US businesses do

    Trump’s remarks came 5 1/2 months before the commencement of the formal review of the USMCA, which superseded the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, on July 1, 2020.

  • Semafor Inc ☛ US patent data shows where tech growth lies

    The push for green inventions comes from car companies, with Honda and auto component-maker Toshiba dominating those grant filings. It’s a signal that companies continue to see real business value in developing those new technologies, outside of the political ESG discourse that has tempered in recent years. And as energy becomes a focal point in the AI race, innovation on the battery front will continue in the coming years.

• Copyrights

  • Decrypt ☛ Google Seeks Dismissal of Publisher Lawsuit Over AI Search Summaries

    Google and its parent company Alphabet have filed a motion to dismiss antitrust claims from Penske Media Corporation and its subsidiaries, saying that displaying AI-generated summaries on its search engine constitutes lawful product improvement rather than anti-competitive behavior.

    Filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, this marks Google’s third attempt to kill the lawsuit after publishers amended their complaints twice following earlier dismissal motions.

    Penske Media, which owns Rolling Stone, Variety, Billboard, and Deadline, sued Google last September, alleging the search giant forces publishers to surrender content for AI training and republishing as a condition of appearing in search results.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post — AI Use: From Policies to Reality

    Last month, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) hosted its third Publication Integrity Week, featuring a week-long series of online events bringing together a diverse group of speakers, practitioners, and community members to examine pressing challenges and opportunities in scholarly publishing. As part of the week, Gráinne McNamara hosted a panel discussion to continue the conversation around AI (artificial intelligence) use: policies and reality — with a range of perspectives shared by Jeremy Ng, Elizabeth Moylan, Coco Nijhoff, and Lauren Flintoft.

  • The Conversation ☛ Wikipedia at 25: can its original ideals survive in the age of AI?

    The scale of human labour that goes into Wikipedia is easy to take for granted, given its disarming simplicity of presentation. Statista estimates 4.4 billion people accessed the site in 2024 – over half the world and two-thirds of internet users. More than 125 million people have edited at least one entry.

    Wikipedia carries no advertising and does not trade in users’ data – central to its claim of editorial independence. But users regularly see fundraising banners and appeals, and the Wikimedia Foundation has built paid services to manage high-volume reuse of its content – particularly by bots scraping it for AI training. The foundation’s total assets now stand at more than US$310 million (£230 million).

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Groupon 'Redeems' Itself With Rapid Takedown of Pirate IPTV Deal

    Groupon, the global marketplace that aims to offer users some of the best online deals, recently featured an offer that was too good to be true. After Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN flagged an illegal IPTV service on the platform, Groupon reportedly took swift action to remove it. BREIN credits this rapid response to its new 'Trusted Flagger' status under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Court Orders Porkbun and Other Registrars to Hand Over PornXP Domains to Aylo

    Formerly known as Mindgeek, Aylo is the driving force behind free ‘tube’ sites such as Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube. It also owns many adult brands, including Brazzers and Reality Kings, that charge for subscriptions.

    The company controls an impressive library of more than 40,000 registered copyrighted works. When this content appears on third-party sites, it doesn’t hesitate to take legal action.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Fifth Circuit Hands Down Landmark Vetter v. Resnik Decision

    Keeping the focus on brass tacks, per the initial suit from Vetter, despite the recapture, Resnik refused “to relinquish claim to the Double Shot copyright outside of the United States” and purported “to retain the exclusive right to exploit the work in all foreign countries.”

    “‘FYI, under the U.S. Copyright law, a termination of transfer notice only terminates a transfer for the United States,’” counsel for the defendant wrote in 2023. “‘All rights outside of the United States do not revert so Mr. Resnik/Windsong Music retain the copyright to ‘Double Shot’ outside of the United States for the life of copyright.’”

  • Techdirt ☛ Online Gaming’s Final Boss: The Copyright Bully

    For decades, that participatory experience was a key part of one of the longest-running video games still in operation: Everquest. Players had the official client, acquired lawfully from EverQuest’s developers, and modders figured out how to enable those clients to communicate with their own servers and then modify their play experience – creating new communities along the way.

    Everquest’s copyright owners implicitly blessed all this. But the current owners, a private equity firm called Daybreak, want to end that independent creativity. They are using copyright claims to threaten modders who wanted to customize the EverQuest experience to suit a different playstyle, running their own servers where things worked the way they wanted.