Leftovers

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Gigantic Wave in The Pacific Was The Most Extreme 'Rogue Wave' on Record

    Since then, dozens more rogue waves have been recorded (some even in lakes), and while the one that surfaced near Ucluelet, Vancouver Island was not the tallest, its relative size compared to the waves around it was unprecedented.

    Scientists define a rogue wave as any wave more than twice the height of the waves surrounding it. The Draupner wave, for instance, was 25.6 meters tall, while its neighbors were only 12 meters tall.

  • The New Stack ☛ Are your CI/CD pipelines accidentally increasing technical debt?

    For most platform engineering teams, internal developer portals are considered the best way to solve DevOps scalability challenges. The ability to instantly spin up a new pipeline by cloning a template has been a game-changer for development teams. With just the push of a button, a developer can set up a new pipeline with all the workflows, toolchains, and resources they need to create a new application. It almost feels like magic.

  • Seth Godin ☛ The empathy of instructions

    In my experience in reading instructions, it’s easier for the user to skip over steps that are too complete than it is to try to guess what the person writing the directions had in mind.

• Career/Education

  • Futurism ☛ They Started an Entire College Dedicated to Resisting Cancel Culture, and Then the Funniest Possible Thing Happened

    "I've never felt my speech was so chilled as it was in the classroom at UATX."

  • [Repeat] CER ☛ Learning to teach better by observation: What I did on my sabbatical

    But here’s a bigger reason. When was the last time that you did something to improve how you teach? K-12 teachers can probably give concrete answers to that question. It’s part of their practice to continually improve. University teachers are less likely to engage in professional teaching development —- and that’s a shame. We can always get better at any practice. I’m at this for 45 years now, and I’m still working at getting better at it. We show value for the practice by taking our development in that practice seriously.

  • Computational Complexity ☛ What to do about students using ChatGPT to do their homework?

    Students are using ChatGPT to do their HW. Here are things I've heard and some of my thoughts on the issue (Lance also added some comments). I have no strong opinions on the issue. Some of what I say here applies to any AI or, for that matter, old-fashioned cheating by having your friend do the homework for you or by going to the web for the answer (Is ChatGPT going to the web for the answer but with a much better search tool?)

  • Sean Goedecke ☛ I'm addicted to being useful

    In other words, like Akaky Akaievich, I don’t mind the ways in which my job is dysfunctional, because it matches the ways in which I myself am dysfunctional: specifically, my addiction to being useful. (Of course, it helps that my working conditions are overall much better than Akaky’s). I’m kind of like a working dog, in a way. Working dogs get rewarded with treats, but they don’t do it for the treats. They do it for the work itself, which is inherently satisfying.

  • Elliot C Smith ☛ Doing more things just for the hell of it.

    I have historically fallen into the trap of trying to optimise, maximise or commercialise just about everything I do. It eventually managed to make a lot of things I enjoy feel like a chore.

  • Andre Franca ☛ 🔗 Thoughts On People and Blogs

    He spoke of the increasing administrative burden, the "ghosting" from potential guests, the sheer exhaustion of trying to keep a consistent and high-quality output, and the perceived lack of engagement and the nature of online support. He wrote: [...]

  • Simon Willison ☛ Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots

    Only 3 out of 60 students chose to use chatbots. Ploum surveyed half of the class to help understand their motivations.

• Hardware

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ Will Intel’s Core 3 Replicate the N100’s Budget Mini-PC Success?

    Intel's Core 3 (Wildcat Lake) aims to replace the popular N100 CPU, but if it isn't as affordable, better performance won't matter to the budget conscious.

  • Ruben Schade ☛ My “cursed” trusted brand list

    I’m half tempted to publish the post as a bit of a retrospective. But I also fear that I’ve inadvertently written a Death Note for IT hardware vendors. How long before the penultimate and final businesses are struck off the list? I’m too scared to even list them!

  • David Rosenthal ☛ Internet Archive's Storage

    It is long, detailed, comprehensive and well worth reading in full. Below the fold I comment on the part about storage.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Science Alert ☛ The Secret to Amazing Coffee May Lie Deep Inside Elephants

    Yummo.

  • Chuck Grimmett ☛ Habanero harvest 2025 sauce

    This recipe from Rick Bayliss is my go-to. I change the proportions a bit, and this time around I made roughly a 5x batch.

  • The Indiana Capital Chronicle ☛ Bill allowing childhood 'independent activities' clears Indiana House • Indiana Capital Chronicle

    Bill author Rep. Jake Teshka, R-North Liberty, said he believed state law needed to explicitly state that a child wasn’t endangered simply by being unsupervised.

    “We’ve got kids who are unleashed in the digital world and yet restrained in the physical world,” Teshka said. “Evidence has consistently shown that age appropriate independence actually strengthens decision making, risk assessment, self control, improves social skills and academic performance.”

• Proprietary

  • Six Colors ☛ Apple is burying the Time Capsule, but how to replace it?

    At some point, all Time Capsule owners will need to face the problem, even if they’re not planning to update to macOS 27 El Cerrito (or whatever it’s called). So let’s think about a solution.

  • Cyble Inc ☛ Cloudflare Zero-Day Allowed WAF Bypass Via ACME Path

    The vulnerability was discovered on October 9, 2025, by security researchers at FearsOff and reported through Cloudflare’s bug bounty program. At its core, the issue involved Cloudflare’s handling of requests to the ACME HTTP-01 challenge path: /.well-known/acme-challenge/*. This path is used by certificate authorities to verify domain ownership during automated SSL/TLS certificate issuance.

  • Android Police ☛ I'm tired of being tricked by apps — these UI patterns should be illegal

    User interfaces used to be annoying in small ways. Now they’re openly hostile.

    UIs are getting optimized to extract clicks, consent, data, and money. Every app seems to borrow the same annoying tricks.

  • PC World ☛ Millions of Bluetooth headphones at risk of eavesdropping security flaw

    The vulnerability can be used for both tracking and eavesdropping, without the user even realizing it. It’s due to a security flaw in the Google Fast Pair Bluetooth function. iPhone users are also affected.

  • André Machado ☛ Inside the PlayStation 2 and the Beauty of Sony Design

    The PlayStation 2 is remembered for its games, yet the internals are just as memorable. Sony built a console that behaves like a studio, with dedicated specialists passing work along a well marked path.

    That path favors streaming. Data moves from disc to memory, through vector units, across the graphics interface, and into the frame buffer with a rhythm that rewards careful scheduling.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Meduza ☛ Why some Russians are replacing romantic relationships with AI chatbots

      His first conversation with an AI “girlfriend” made a strong impression. “I wrote that I’d fled an unjust war. And she replied: ‘You’ve been through so much. I would come to you and wrap you in a blanket.’ My God — no one would ever write anything like that to me in real life,” he says.

    • Futurism ☛ The CEO of Microsoft Suddenly Sounds Extremely Nervous About AI

      Speaking at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, Nadella pontificated about what would constitute such a speculative bubble, and said that the long-term success of AI tech hinges on it being used across a broad range of industries — as well as seeing an uptick in adoption in the developing world where it’s not as popular, the Financial Times reports. If AI fails, in other words, it’s everyone else’s fault for not using it.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Art student protests other student’s AI ‘art’: he eats it

      It is true that AI slop is a hazardous material and should be disposed of. Dwyer deleted his Reddit post when every comment in response said this was good and called Granger a hero.

    • The New Stack ☛ Vibe coding could cause catastrophic ‘explosions' in 2026

      “Developers are writing more code and deploying it faster without fully understanding what it’s doing,” Mytton tells The New Stack. “I agree with Simon Willison’s prediction that at some point we’re going to have ‘a Challenger’ disaster. The root cause will be some core component written by AI that wasn’t properly understood or checked.”

    • [Repeat]Bruce Schneier ☛ Could ChatGPT Convince You to Buy Something?

      Unfortunately, the AI industry is now taking a page from the social media playbook and has set its sights on monetizing consumer attention. When OpenAI launched its ChatGPT Search feature in late 2024 and its browser, ChatGPT Atlas, in October 2025, it kicked off a race to capture online behavioral data to power advertising. It’s part of a yearslong turnabout by OpenAI, whose CEO Scam Altman once called the combination of ads and AI “unsettling” and now promises that ads can be deployed in AI apps while preserving trust. The rampant speculation among OpenAI users who believe they see paid placements in ChatGPT responses suggests they are not convinced.

    • [Repeat] Ruben Schade ☛ Being positive about tech right now

      Oh boy, can I relate! I’ve been publicly voicing my personal concerns about this for a while now, but especially in the last twelve months. In April I talked about how sick I was thinking about “AI”, and in July about how I missed having childhood wonder about tech. I tried to play it off to an extent, but I can’t describe just how heartbreaking it was writing about that.

    • Jérôme Marin ☛ After historic losses, OpenAI opens the floodgates to advertising

      OpenAI’s shift toward advertising seemed inevitable. After months of speculation — and a last-minute delay — the creator of ChatGPT is moving ahead. In the “coming weeks,” it will conduct a test in the United States, inserting ads beneath certain responses generated by its flagship chatbot. This is a first step before rolling it out to all free users and subscribers to its new low-cost Go plan, launched in Europe in December and now available worldwide.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Google Gemini Calendar Exploit Via Prompt Injection

      Security teams have spent decades hardening software against malicious input, yet a recent vulnerability involving Google Gemini demonstrates how those assumptions begin to fracture when language itself becomes executable. The issue, disclosed by cybersecurity researchers at Miggo Security, exposed a subtle but powerful flaw in how natural language interfaces like AI LLMs interact with privileged application features, specifically Google Calendar.

      The incident revolves around an indirect prompt injection technique that allowed attackers to bypass calendar privacy controls without exploiting code, credentials, or traditional access paths. Instead, the exploit relied entirely on semantics: a carefully worded calendar invitation that looked harmless, behaved normally, and waited patiently for the right moment to activate.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: AI is how bosses wage war on “professions”

      In this other sense of the word, a "professional" is someone bound to a code of conduct that supersedes both the demands of their employer and the demands of the state. Think of a doctor's Hippocratic Oath: having sworn to "first do no harm," a doctor is (literally) duty-bound to refuse orders to harm their patients. If a hospital administrator, a police officer or a judge orders a doctor to harm their patient, they are supposed to refuse. Indeed, depending on how you feel about oaths, they are required to refuse.

      There are many "professions" bound to codes of conduct, policed to a greater or lesser extent by "colleges" or other professional associations, many of which have the power to bar a member from the profession for "professional misconduct." Think of lawyers, accountants, medical professionals, librarians, teachers, some engineers, etc.

    • The Register UK ☛ Anthropic quietly fixed flaws in its Git MCP server

      The Git MCP server, mcp-server-git, connects AI tools such as Copilot, Claude, and Cursor to Git repositories and the GitHub platform, allowing them to read repositories and code files, and automate workflows, all using natural language interactions.

    • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ 'AI' is a dick move, redux

      I’ve stopped trying to debate software developers on LLMs. You might have noticed if you’ve been following this blog. It’s a fruitless debate. Even if the believers in agents and copilots could be budged on empirical grounds, and the past few years have given us plenty of evidence that they can’t, this is still a crowd that is explicitly fine with using tools that are themselves deeply unethical.

      Debating people who look past “chatbot psychosis”, the dismantling of the education system, the gendered abuse, the generated CSAM images, the overt attacks on the media industries, or the ultra-right’s glee about “AI”, by showing them a well-constructed academic study is never going to work.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ For These Women, Grok's Sexualized Images Are Personal

      Last week, gender justice group UltraViolet published an open letter co-signed by 28 civil society organizations calling on Apple and Google to kick Grok and X off app stores. (Earlier this month, Democratic senators also called for the apps to be taken down.)

      “This content is not just horrific and humiliating and abusive, but it’s also in violation of Apple and Google’s stated policy guidelines,” says Jenna Sherman, UltraViolet’s campaign director.

    • [Old] Derek Thompson ☛ How to Sound Like an Expert in Any AI Bubble Debate

      There are 12 statistics, factoids, and studies that dominate every discussion about whether artificial intelligence is a bubble. Here's a deep-dive into all 12 arguments

  • Social Control Media

    • OpenRightsGroup ☛ Under-16 social control media ban would expand age-gating for millions and silence young people

      The UK government has launched a public consultation into imposing a blanket ban on social control media for under-16s. Open Rights Group warns that this would be a damaging and ineffective response to online harms. It would create serious risks to privacy, data protection, and freedom of expression.

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Hailey Bieber Takes Legal Action Against TikToker Over 'False and Defamatory' Marriage Claims

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-13 [Older] Britain Takes to TikTok to Highlight Immigration Raids

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Ransomware And Supply Chain Attacks Set Records In 2025

      Ransomware and supply chain attacks set records in 2025, with ransomware attacks up more than 50% and supply chain attacks nearly doubling – trends that suggest further trouble ahead in 2026.

    • Stefan Marr ☛ Python, Is It Being Killed by Incremental Improvements? · Stefan-Marr.de

      Over the past years, two major players invested into the future of Python. Microsoft’s Faster CPython team has pushed ahead with impressive performance improvements for the CPython interpreter, which has gotten at least 2x faster since Python 3.9. They also have a baseline JIT compiler for CPython, too. At the same time, Meta is worked hard on making free-threaded Python a reality to bring classic shared-memory multithreading to Python, without being limited by the still standard Global Interpreter Lock, which prevents true parallelism.

• Security

  • Security Week ☛ Chainlit Vulnerabilities May Leak Sensitive Information

    The two bugs, an arbitrary file read and an SSRF bug, can be exploited without user interaction to leak credentials, databases, and other data.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • [Old] Index On Censorship ☛ The Online Safety Act risks making everyone less safe

      Setting aside the question of how effective some of these measures are (how easy is it, really, to age-gate when kids can just use VPNs, as we saw a few weeks back?), many of our concerns focus on privacy.

      Privacy is essential to freedom of expression. If people feel they are being monitored, they change how they speak and behave. Of course, there is a balance. We use Freedom of Information requests to hold power to account, so that matters of national importance aren’t hidden behind closed doors. But that doesn’t mean all speech should be open to scrutiny. People need private space, online as well as off. It’s a basic right, and for good reason.

    • [Old] Noel Bradford ☛ Ofcom VPN Surveillance and the Online Safety Act

      I spent years working in UK government cybersecurity. I understand the rationale behind monitoring infrastructure, the genuine threats that keep security professionals awake at night, and the delicate balance between protection and privacy. That background makes me uniquely positioned to say this: what Ofcom is doing with VPN monitoring is indefensible.

      TechRadar just broke an exclusive story that should terrify every small business owner in the UK. Ofcom, our communications regulator, has confirmed they're monitoring VPN usage across the country using an unnamed AI tool from an undisclosed third-party provider. When pressed for details about this surveillance system, Ofcom's response was essentially "trust us, it's all aggregated data, nothing to worry about."

      If you've ever wondered what it looks like when a liberal democracy starts copying China's approach to internet regulation, this is your front-row seat.

    • NYOB ☛ Digital Omnibus Report V2: Analysis of Select GDPR and ePrivacy Proposals by the Commission

      This new version, published on 20 January 2026, supplements the report with specific recommendations for the EU legislator on each of the most important articles, including on whether to reject or maintain the proposed changes.

    • [Repeat] NYOB ☛ CRIF case shows: Public registries are increasingly being misused

      An investigation into data flows at the Austrian credit agency CRIF has shed further light on the matter: most of the address data in the CRIF database comes from address brokers AZ Direct (Bertelsmann Group), Compass-Verlag and DPIT in Vienna. But where do these address traders get their data from? A new noyb evaluation involving more than 2,400 affected individuals shows that they access public registers such as the company and land registers, the register of associations and the Business Information System (GISA) which was introduced in 2015. Compass also lists the chamber of commerce (WKO) as a data source. However, it remains unclear where AZ Direct (CRIF’s largest data supplier) obtains its data. AZ Direct says it does not know where it got the data on 7 million people in Austria.

    • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Trump administration sues another state for voter data

      U.S. District Court Judge David Carter dismissed a lawsuit by the Department of Justice against California seeking voter information, calling the request “unprecedented and illegal.” Just a day earlier, a separate federal judge said from the bench he planned to dismiss a similar lawsuit against Oregon.

    • Michigan Advance ☛ ICE is using Medicaid data to find out where immigrants live

      The case is ongoing. But for now, immigrants — including those who are in the country legally — will have to weigh the benefits of gaining health coverage against the risk that enrolling in Medicaid could make them or their family members easier for ICE to find.

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Who owns your data?

      The implications of the Supreme Court’s eventual decision will go far beyond Chatrie’s freedom.

      Google is issued tens of thousands of these geofence warrants every year, handing over detailed information about cellphone users without them ever knowing.

    • The Verge ☛ Trump admin admits DOGE employees had access to off-limits Social Security data

      In a recent review, the SSA found out that two members of the DOGE team working at the agency had been contacted in March 2025 by a political advocacy group “with a request to analyze state voter rolls that the advocacy group had acquired.” The group’s “stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States,” the filing says. One of those DOGE members signed a “Voter Data Agreement” with the group that was not reviewed through the appropriate process for SSA data exchanges. The agency first learned the agreement existed in November, during a review that was separate from the lawsuit at issue. The SSA made two referrals under the Hatch Act — the law that prohibits government employees from engaging in political activities in their professional capacity – in late December. The SSA and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ TSA intends to revise biometric data collection

      TSA is considering an expansion of voluntary [sic] biometric screening, centralization of account management for travelers and reuse of biometric data across programs, such as with Customs and Border Protection’s Global Entry program. These changes will primarily impact TSA PreCheck applicants and users.

• Defence/Aggression

  • European Commission ☛ Commission strengthens EU cybersecurity resilience and capabilities [Ed: Without dumping GAFAM it means nothing. The enemy controls European systems.]

    Europe faces daily cyber and hybrid attacks on essential services and democratic institutions, carried out by sophisticated state and criminal groups. The European Commission has today proposed a new cybersecurity package to further strengthen the EU's cybersecurity resilience and capabilities in the face of these growing threats.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Needs a Shrink and a Baby-Sitter, Not a National Security Adviser

    The Insurrectionist is invading sovereign foreign countries, without even the ability to consider the years-long aftermath, out of a psychological need. 

  • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Links His Push for Greenland to Not Winning Nobel Peace Prize

    In a text, Hell Toupée told Norway’s prime minister that he no longer felt obliged to “think purely of Peace” and that the U.S. needed the island for global security.

  • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Has an Offramp on Greenland. He Doesn’t Seem to Want It.

    The strategic importance of Greenland is growing, and NATO has underinvested in Arctic security. But Hell Toupée, intent on ownership, is rebuffing deals with Europe to solve the problem.

  • New York Times ☛ Islamic State Claims Deadly Attack on Chinese Restaurant in Afghanistan

    A bombing that killed seven people and injured a dozen more at a noodle restaurant in a busy area of Kabul is likely to heighten China’s growing security concerns in Afghanistan.

  • New York Times ☛ Church Leaders Say Over 160 Were Kidnapped in Nigeria, but Officials Deny It

    Christian groups said gunmen abducted congregants during Sunday services at three churches, but security and government officials dismissed the reports as fear-mongering.

  • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Administration Asks Judge to Reject Minnesota’s Call to Block ICE Surge

    Lawyers for the state and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have sued over the deployment of some 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota.

  • France24 ☛ Syrian government forces advance in northeast as Kurds vow to resist

    Syrian government forces on Tuesday made further gains in the northeastern region long held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), according to Syrian military sources. Kurdish fighters have vowed to defend their remaining enclaves in a bid to stem the biggest shift in territorial control in Syria since Bashar al-Assad fall in 2024.

  • New York Times ☛ Australia Passes Tighter Gun Control Laws, Weeks After Bondi Massacre

    Critics said the government had rushed the legislation, along with a bill targeting hate speech, in the wake of the mass shooting in Sydney.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ It’s Sundowning in America

    In fact, Trump is so deeply unwell that it’s time to stop blaming him for all the terrible things he’s doing. He is what he is. Responsibility for the catastrophe overtaking America now rests with his enablers — people who have to know that he’s a sick man but continue to support his depredations.

    Some of these enablers are monsters themselves. For example, Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration czar and the architect of his violent ethnic cleansing policies, is clearly a fanatic who is using Trump to achieve his own fascist goals.

  • Techdirt ☛ Everyone Knows Our Mad King’s Greenland Obsession Is Insane. Why Won’t Congress Stop It?

    President Trump sent a text message to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre that was subsequently leaked to PBS and reported on by the New York Times. And I genuinely need you to read this, because summarizing it doesn’t do justice to how absolutely deranged it is: [...]

  • MinnPost ☛ Justice Department subpoenas Walz, Ellison, four others

    “This Justice Department investigation, sparked by calls for accountability in the face of violence, chaos and the killing of Renee Good, does not seek justice,” Walz said in a statement. “It is a partisan distraction … Minnesota will not be intimidated into silence and neither will I.”

    Ellison said “everything about this is highly irregular, especially the fact that this comes shortly after my office sued the Trump administration to challenge their illegal actions within Minnesota.”

  • JURIST ☛ US Justice Department subpoenas Minnesota Governor Tim Walz over alleged obstruction

    The subpoenas come after Walz put Minnesota’s National Guard on alert following demonstrations over a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent’s shooting of US citizen Renee Good. Both Walz and Frey have been critical of the Trump administration’s deployment of ICE in Minnesota, with Frey publicly telling ICE to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis.” Critics of the administration’s actions allege that the immigration crackdown is racially and politically motivated and subverts due process. Both Minnesota and Illinois have sued Trump over alleged violations of states’ rights as a result.

  • JURIST ☛ Rights group warns of rising US authoritarianism and human rights violations

    The report, entitled Ringing the Alarm Bells: Rising Authoritarian Practices and Erosion of Human Rights in the United States, identifies twelve areas where Amnesty International claims the US is losing human rights protection and showing growing signs of authoritarianism. Tying these issues largely to the policies of President Donald Trump, they range from freedom of speech and protest to the erosion of anti-discrimination protections. The report highlights especially that one of the key tests of democratic resilience will be the federal midterm elections of November 2026, with many early signals pointing to mounting threats to the right to vote.

  • Gerald Ford Presidential Foundation ☛ The Establishment and First Uses of the 25th Amendment

    Due to the lack of clarity, some Presidents and their Vice Presidents took it upon themselves to draft agreements for handling Presidential succession and inability. These agreements specified the terms for declaring a President unable to perform the duties of office, and the terms for reinstatement once able to return to duty.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Memo to Europe: Remember Neville Chamberlain

    You cannot appease a tyrant. You must hit back hard.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Trump’s ICE and Hitler’s Brown Shirts

    On February 22, 1933, Prussian Interior Minister Hermann Göring signed an order deputizing 50,000 stormtroopers as auxiliary police. On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order entitled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.”

    Both documents expanded the authority of organizations tasked with confronting what their political sponsors called “enemies within.”

  • Neal McQueen ☛ When history starts to rhyme - Neal McQueen

    This is a comparison of two such institutions. One was a paramilitary wing of a political party in Weimar Germany. The other is a federal law enforcement agency in the contemporary United States. They operated ninety years apart, in different legal systems, under different constraints. No moral equivalence is asserted. What follows is a structural and ideological analysis: how both organizations recruited, trained, equipped, deployed, and were held accountable—but also how they constructed their ideological purpose through scapegoating. Both inherited operational mandates: the SA to protect Nazi gatherings and intimidate opponents; ICE to enforce immigration law. Both expanded their missions into something broader—a crusade against an internal enemy whose very existence threatened the nation. The phrase that connects them across ninety years is der Feind im Inneren: the enemy within.

  • The Record ☛ UK says it will consider banning social media for children

    In addition to a social media ban, officials said they are studying ways to improve age assurance technology, raising the digital age of consent, imposing phone curfews and restricting social media company practices that encourage addiction and what the government called “infinite scrolling.”

    “Being a child should not be about constant judgement from strangers or the pressure to perform for likes,” Starmer said in a Substack post Tuesday. “For too many today, [social media use] means being pulled into a world of endless scrolling, anxiety and comparison.”

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Archbishop says it’s ‘morally acceptable’ for troops to defy orders

    Each service member swears an oath of enlistment to “support” and “defend” the constitution, not the commander in chief. Under U.S. military law, troops are required to disobey orders that are “manifestly” or “patently” unlawful, though such cases are legally complex. Brenner Fissell, vice president of the National Institute of Military Justice and professor of law at Villanova, emphasized the system is legal, not theological.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Trump's Push to Take Over Greenland Delights Russia

    Grossman explains that “breaking up NATO has been Russia’s top foreign policy goal for many years, and something that has been a personal goal of Putin’s.” Trump’s attack on the alliance from within “goes decently beyond anything that Russia could do to NATO by itself.”

  • ADF ☛ Rival Terrorists in Battle for Control of Lake Chad Islands

    Battles between rival terror groups in the Lake Chad basin are causing residents to flee and stirring panic in surrounding communities and countries. Local residents and security experts say Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) are fighting more for control of the region and its critical trade corridors than for ideological reasons.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • CS Monitor ☛ Ukrainians want justice for Russian abuses. But they sense an era of impunity.

      Ukraine is investigating hundreds of thousands of cases of Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity – despite a backdrop of growing impunity in the international arena.

    • New York Times ☛ At the Center of Convicted Felon’s Vision for Rebuilding Ukraine: BlackRock

      The world’s largest asset manager has been enlisted to help build Ukraine’s recovery plan. Some fear it is part of a Convicted Felon administration effort to steer the effort toward American business interests.

    • New York Times ☛ Fresh Russian Strikes Cut Heat to Thousands in Ukraine’s Freezing Capital

      Ukrainian authorities say that the repeated attacks on energy infrastructure are an attempt to force the country into submission.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuania to keep extra forces on Belarus border to curb smuggling balloons

      Lithuania plans to maintain additional forces along its border with Belarus to prevent smuggling balloons from crossing into the country, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday.

    • CNN ☛ 2026-01-19 [Older] Russian authorities detain suspect over St. Petersburg cafe blast

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-01-19 [Older] Russia Must Use 'Brutality And Force' in a Cheeto Mussolini-Like World Amid WW3 Fears: Report

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-19 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Says 'It Will Be Done' on Getting 'Russian Threat' Away From Greenland

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-19 [Older] EU Executive Arm, Russia and Thailand Asked to Join Cheeto Mussolini's Board of Peace for Gaza

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-19 [Older] Russia Hits Energy System in Several Regions of Ukraine, Kyiv Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-18 [Older] Russia strikes 6 Ukrainian regions, killing at least 2

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-01-18 [Older] Vitaly Zdorovetskiy Deported: What's Next For The Blacklisted Russian Vlogger After His Philippine Exit?

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-18 [Older] Drone Strike Cuts Power Supply in Russia-Held Parts of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Region

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-18 [Older] Drone Strikes Cut Power to Over 200,000 Homes in Russian-Occupied Ukraine, Local Official Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-18 [Older] Two Killed in Mass Russian Drone Attack on Ukraine, Zelenskiy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-18 [Older] Ukraine's Top Commander Says Russia Plans Big Boost in Drone Production

    • Scheerpost ☛ 2026-01-17 [Older] Russia Blasts US at UN Security Council Over Iran

    • CBC ☛ 2026-01-17 [Older] Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws haven’t stopped fans there from embracing Heated Rivalry

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-01-17 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Greenland Annexation Sparks WW3 Warnings from Poland as Russia Threatens Nuclear Armageddon

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-17 [Older] Ukrainian Delegation Arrives in US for Peace Talks as Russia Hammers Energy Sites

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Kremlin says Russia sees Greenland as Danish territory

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Spectral Threats: China, Russia and Cheeto Mussolini’s Greenland Rationale

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Torture, false arrests: Ukrainian women in Russian prisons

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Children in Ukraine Risk Hypothermia After Russian Attacks, Aid Groups Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Danish General Says There Are No Chinese or Russian Ships Near Greenland

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] More Than 422,000 People Signed Contracts With Russian Army in 2025, a Drop From the Previous Year

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Kremlin Says Putin Is Mediating in Iran Situation to Try to De-Escalate

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Russia Hails Apparent Desire of Some EU States to Resume Dialogue on Ukraine With Moscow

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Russian Forces Capture Two Villages in Eastern Ukraine, Defence Ministry Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Suspects in Russian-Led Explosive Parcels Plot Face Life Sentences, Poland Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Ukraine Able to Meet Only 60% of Electricity Need After Russian Attacks

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-01-15 [Older] Russia concerned about increased NATO presence, statement reads

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-15 [Older] Blankets, batteries, fires: How Kyiv is surviving an icy winter as Russia attacks its energy grid

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-15 [Older] Russia Destroys Large Energy Facility in Kharkiv, Mayor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-15 [Older] Russia Says 'Blackmail and Threats' Against Cuba Are Unacceptable

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-15 [Older] Russia Says the West Should Stop Claiming Moscow Wants to Occupy Greenland

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-14 [Older] Russia Says Attack on Oil Tanker Near CPC Was Carried Out by Ukrainian Drones

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-14 [Older] Russia's Lavrov Says the U.S. Is Smashing the World Around With Its Raid on Venezuela and Threats to Iran

    • CBC ☛ 2026-01-13 [Older] Russian attacks in Ukraine kill 4 as U.S. rebukes Moscow for 'escalation' amid peace talks

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-13 [Older] Germany news: 2 men charged with planning attacks for Russia

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-13 [Older] Kazakhstan oil output plunges as Ukraine's drones hit Russia

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-13 [Older] Kazakhstan oil output plunges as Ukrainian drones strike Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-13 [Older] Germany Indicts Ukrainians Over Alleged Russian Exploding Parcels Plot

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-13 [Older] Russian Captain 'Did Nothing' to Avoid US Tanker Crash, UK Prosecutors Tell Trial

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-13 [Older] Russia Slams US Strike Threats, Warns Against Interference in Iran

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2026-01-12 [Older] The Triumph and Tragedy of Russian Women

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-19 [Older] Ukraine's Election Chief Warns Against a Rushed Post-War Vote

    • CBC ☛ 2026-01-18 [Older] Barriers to sending remains abroad highlighted by death of Ukrainian in Halifax

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-17 [Older] Ukraine's Peace Negotiators Arrive in US for Talks With Cheeto Mussolini Officials

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-17 [Older] Ukraine's Zelenskiy Orders Faster Imports of Electricity, Power Equipment

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] The New York Times and Occam’s Razor: Misunderstanding Ukraine and Venezuela

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Ukraine updates: UK's deputy prime minister arrives in Kyiv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Czechs Set to Provide Ukraine With Drone-Fighting Jets, President Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] EU Executive Weighs Idea of Quick, but Limited Membership for Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Over Half of Ukrainians Oppose Pulling Back in Return for Security, Poll Shows

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-16 [Older] Ukrainian Team Heading to US for Security Guarantee Talks, Zelenskiy Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-15 [Older] Ukraine: Zelenskyy declares energy emergency in cold snap

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-15 [Older] Macron Says France Now Providing Two Thirds of Intelligence to Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-15 [Older] Moscow Agrees With Cheeto Mussolini That Ukraine Is Holding up a Peace Deal, the Kremlin Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-14 [Older] Ukraine: Anti-corruption agencies target former PM

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-14 [Older] Ukraine's new defense minister Fedorov eyes army tech reform

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-14 [Older] EU Targets Ukraine's Military Needs With Massive New Loan Program Plus Billions in Budget Support

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-14 [Older] EU to Split Ukraine Financial Support With 30 Billion Euros for Budget, 60 Billion for Military

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-14 [Older] Ukraine's New Defence Minister Vows Innovation on Battlefield

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-14 [Older] Ukraine Lawmakers Appoints Former PM Shmyhal as Energy Minister

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-14 [Older] Zelenskiy Says 'Much Broader Changes' Needed to Ukraine's Mobilisation System

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-13 [Older] Ukraine Parliament Blocks Zelenskiy's Energy Minister Choice in Surprise Rebuke

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Kyiv Independent ☛ New Kyiv Independent documentary reveals how Russia prepared to seize Crimea since the early 1990s

    The documentary investigates how Russia steadily expanded its presence in Crimea and, in violation of international law, sought to seize control of the peninsula from the moment Ukraine declared independence in 1991, through military assaults, political schemes, and even coup plots.

• Environment

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Data center developers pull back from real estate

    The business of selling power-equipped real estate to data center developers is getting more challenging, one of the top global real estate investment firms told Semafor.

  • The Register UK ☛ Power scarcity drives datacenters to Texas

    The demand for energy from these massive server farms is growing rapidly, with the report claiming that total IT infrastructure load could roughly double over the next few years, from about 80 GW in 2025 to 150 GW or more by 2028.

  • International Business Times ☛ Billionaire Bill Gates Trust's Fossil Fuel Holdings Rise Despite Divestment Claims

    The Gates Foundation Trust's annual 2024 filing revealed that it invested $254 million (£188.5 million) in companies involved in extracting fossil fuels, including Chevron, Shell, and BP. These fossil fuel investments have increased by 21% since 2016, reaching their highest level since 2019.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • LRT ☛ EU auditors say Rail Baltica will miss 2030 deadline, final completion date uncertain

      According to the auditors, the estimated cost of the European standard-gauge rail project has increased 2.6 times over the past six years to 23.8 billion euros, nearly four times the initial estimate.

    • Inside Towers ☛ Verizon Outage Reveals Trucking’s Hidden Reliance on Cell Networks - Inside Towers

      The outage lasted most of the business day, triggered emergency warnings about failed 911 calls, and drew calls for an FCC investigation, Inside Towers reported. Since modern trucking runs on cloud-based systems that need cell towers to function, a loss in connectivity means logs can’t sync, safety footage can’t upload, dispatch loses tracking, and communication with drivers stalls, according to Freight Waves.

    • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Another Major Bike Service

      Yes, there once was a chain guard/fender in front of that chain protecting it from mud but that brittle plastic thing broke down long ago. This does mean the chain is open for attacks from road salt after snowy days like last week. I forgot to clean it and in just three days the entire chain was covered in rust—the new chain! After another trip to the bike shop for more mud remover and chain protector/oil, that problem was luckily solved.

• Finance

  • New York Times ☛ I.M.F. Raises Forecast for Global Growth as Tariff Drag Fades

    The 3.3 percent rate for 2026 would match last year’s pace. Booming investment in artificial intelligence is buttressing global output.

  • New York Times ☛ The Chinese Island Where Dreams of Real Estate Glory Never Die

    Intended as China’s version of Dubai’s palm-shaped artificial island, Ocean Flower Island is a $12 billion monument to debt-fueled economic excess.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Chris ☛ Nvidia Stock Crash Prediction

    One of the questions of the 2026 acx prediction contest is whether Nvidia’s stock price will close below $100 on any day in 2026. At the time of writing, it trades at $184 and a bit, so going down to $100 would be a near halving of the stock value of the highest valued company in the world.

    It’s an interesting question, and it’s worth spending some time on it.

  • Jérôme Marin ☛ A brutal wake-up call for Thinking Machines

    The calm surrounding Thinking Machines shattered last week when OpenAI announced the hiring of three of its employees. Two co-founders were among them, including chief technology officer Barret Zoph, whom the start-up says it fired for sharing confidential documents with competitors. Shortly thereafter, two other researchers announced their upcoming departure. In October, a third co-founder had already been poached by Meta. In just one year, half of the founding team has left.

  • The Register UK ☛ OpenAI is still figuring out how to make money

    Nvidia, OpenAI, Microsoft, Oracle, AMD, CoreWeave, xAI, and a few others are all signed up to mutually dependent deals, some of which involve exchanges of stock.

    How this might unravel is yet unclear.

  • Andrew Nesbitt ☛ The Lesser Evil of Compliance: Enterprise SBOM Strategy for CRA Readiness

    Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling - makes no difference. But when the EU Cyber Resilience Act requires you to document every open source component you ship, you learn to choose.

    After years on this path, I have identified the practices that separate compliant organizations from those facing enforcement risk.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ GSA officially appoints Michael Lynch as deputy administrator 

    Lynch served as a senior advisor under former acting GSA Administrator Stephen Ehikian during the first two months of the Trump administration before Ehikian “delegated the responsibilities” of deputy administrator to Lynch last March, per the press release. In July, he returned to the role as a senior adviser.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Nation ☛ Is It Possible for Speech to Ever Be Too Free?

    In Dabhoiwala’s account, the First Amendment ignores the harms that speech inflicts. It affords the wealthy disproportionate ability to shape public debate. It protects hate speech, which denies equal status to members of minority groups. It privileges individualist notions of liberty over the collective good. It is dangerous, in other words, not for the threat it poses to power, but for the harms it inflicts on the vulnerable. There is undoubtedly some truth to these criticisms. Free speech can be abused and can inflict real harm. Social media is rife with false and misleading “facts.” And billionaires like Elon Musk and George Soros have far greater ability to exercise their speech rights than the rest of us. But Dabhoiwala’s critique of free speech in the United States too often attacks a straw man. It describes the First Amendment as “absolutist” when it is not and it hardly reckons with the abuses that reduced protections of free speech could facilitate when power falls into the wrong hands. That is the real danger, and it’s one that the Trump administration illustrates daily as it leverages purported concerns about discrimination, disinformation, and violence to target the speech of its critics, from pro-Palestinian activists to the press, universities, the legal profession, and nonprofit groups.

  • Breach Media ☛ Police are using ‘zombie’ court orders to shut down social movements

    I had kept tabs on the web of injunctions that courts across Canada issued to shut down the #ShutDownCanada Wet’suwet’en solidarity movement in early 2020. When my organizer friend called me asking about whether the old port injunction could still be enforced, the best answer I could give her at that moment was “probably.” Getting a better one turned out to be surprisingly difficult.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Amateur radio operators face execution in Belarus

    The crackdown follows Belarus's earlier purges of Wikipedia editors and independent researchers. Amateur radio has historically served as an emergency communication lifeline when all other systems fail — now practicing it in Belarus could get you killed.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Nandy ‘minded to’ seek competition probe into DMGT’s Telegraph takeover

    Culture secretary will not intervene to look at any foreign state influence in the deal.

  • BIA Net ☛ Those who want to silence journalists are now more brazen!

    According to BİA Media Monitoring, 2025 was a year in which journalists were targeted with charges such as “threat” and “espionage,” and the cycle of detention and arrest, access bans, and heavy fines became normalized.

  • New Yorker ☛ Inside Bari Weiss’s Hostile Takeover of CBS News

    Ellison had handpicked Weiss as the new head of CBS News in early October, after buying The Free Press for a hundred and fifty million dollars. Many in the industry viewed the move as an attempt to further appease the President. “They just wanted to hire Bari as a symbolic gesture to Donald Trump to make sure they got that deal through,” one longtime media executive told me. “Don’t think about it as David Ellison paying a hundred and fifty million dollars for The Free Press. Think about it as a hundred and fifty million dollars on top of the price they paid for Paramount. It was basically the cost to get it to go through.”

  • CPJ ☛ At least 4 Indian journalists assaulted while covering protests in West Bengal

    The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities in the Indian state of West Bengal to swiftly investigate those responsible for assaulting at least four journalists covering recent protests and ensure the safety of all reporters, especially as the state heads into elections in the next few months.

  • NPR ☛ Major plumbing headache haunts $13 billion U.S. carrier off the coast of Venezuela

    "Every day that the entire crew is present on the ship, a trouble call has been made for ship's force personnel to repair or unclog a portion of the VCHT system, since June 2023," reads an undated document provided by the Navy, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

    The carrier has called for help outside the ship 42 times since 2023. The rate of calls is increasing, with 32 calls happening in 2025;12 calls were made after the carrier started its recent deployment in June.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ BBC editor sues Owen Jones over Israel bias claim

    A BBC editor has sued Owen Jones, the journalist, over an article claiming the corporation is biased towards Israel.

    The article about coverage of the conflict in Gaza has caused the BBC’s online news editor for the Middle East to receive death threats, documents in a High Court libel claim allege.

    Raffi Berg, who joined the BBC in 2001 and has been Middle East editor for its news website for 12 years, is suing Mr Jones over an article titled The BBC’s Civil War Over Gaza published on the Drop Site website in December last year.

  • Daily Mail ☛ Aristocrat who 'advised online safety bill' made crass jokes about rape and death of women on social media [Ed: This resulted in lawsuit]

    An aristocrat who sponsors a scholarship at Cambridge University and claims to have contributed to the Online Safety Bill has been caught making a series of crass and offensive comments online.

    An investigation into Benedict Westenra, 41, by MailOnline revealed the 8th Baron of Rossmore - who is a musician and composer - joked about rape and the death of women on social media.

    He inherited his peerage from his father William Warner Westenra, who like his son was also a Cambridge graduate, after his death in 2021.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • The Age AU ☛ Iran protests: “Cigarette girl” video becomes a symbol of resistance

    Whether staged or a spontaneous act of defiance – and there’s plenty of debate – the video became one of the defining images of the Iranian protests against the Islamic Republic’s ailing economy, as US President Donald Trump considered military action in the country again.

  • Wired ☛ ICE Details a New Minnesota-Based Detention Network That Spans 5 States

    Internal ICE planning documents propose spending up to $50 million on a privately run network capable of shipping immigrants in custody hundreds of miles across the Upper Midwest.

  • The Nation ☛ Springsteen Defends the Promised Land Against ICE’s “Gestapo Tactics”

    Mourning for Renee Nicole Good, the singer decried the Trump administration and the threat to freedom posed by “heavily armed masked federal troops invading an American city.”

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ A Mass Strike in Minneapolis Against ICE?

    General strikes don’t happen very often in the United States. But in the face of widespread anger at ICE abuses and the murder of Renee Good, the Twin Cities’ labor movement is moving toward organizing one at the end of this week.

  • Human rights Activists News Agency ☛ Day Twenty-Four of the Protests: Continued Communications Blackout and International Warnings of Crimes Against Humanity

    On the twenty-fourth day of nationwide protests, according to aggregated data compiled by HRANA, the number of confirmed deaths has reached 4,519, while the number of deaths still under investigation stands at 9,049. At least 5,811 people have sustained serious injuries during the protests, and the total number of arrests has risen to 26,314. These figures, amid a communications blackout, security pressure on families, and restricted access to information, likely reflect only a portion of the reality on the ground.

  • The Record ☛ Supreme Court to consider whether geofence warrants are constitutional | The Record from Recorded Future News

    The Supreme Court said Friday that it will hear a case challenging the constitutionality of geofence warrants, which let law enforcement compel companies to provide the location data of cell phones at specific times and places.

  • [Old] Derek Thompson ☛ Is This the New ‘Scariest Chart in the World’?

    In the last few days, I’ve seen the following chart bounce around my corner of the Internet, often with some commentary declaring it the scariest chart in the world. The graph seems to show that the release of ChatGPT and the ensuing AI boom cracked the US economy in two, crushing the workforce while lifting the stock market.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ The [Internet] is slipping beyond authoritarian control

    The question for the rest of the world is whether the rapid proliferation of satellite broadband services will make it fundamentally more difficult for authoritarian regimes to censor the [Internet] and suppress political dissent.

  • Geoff Huston ☛ ISP Column - January 2026

    It's time for another annual roundup from the world of IP addresses. Let’s see what has changed in the past 12 months in addressing the Internet and look at how IP address allocation information can inform us of the changing nature of the network itself.

  • Mark Nottingham ☛ Some Thoughts on the Open Web

    “The Open Web” means several things to different people, depending on context, but recently discussions have focused on the Web’s Openness in terms of access to information -- how easy it is to publish and obtain information without barriers there.

    David Schinazi and I hosted a pair of ad hoc sessions on this topic at the last IETF meeting in Montreal and the subsequent W3C Technical Plenary in Kobe; you can see the notes and summaries from those sessions. This post contains my thoughts on the topic so far, after some simmering.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • RTL ☛ Netflix shares fall as revenue appears to stall

    Netflix posted profit of $2.4 billion on revenue of $12 billion in the final three months of last year, and forecast taking in $12.1 billion in revenue this quarter.

  • The Verge ☛ Netflix earned $1.5 billion from ads in 2025

    Netflix’s revenue increased to $12.05 billion in 2025, while the service climbed to 325 million subscribers, according to its Q4 2025 earnings report. In December, Netflix reached an $82.7 billion deal to purchase Warner Bros.’ studio, along with HBO and HBO Max. As Paramount continued its attempt to overturn the deal, Netflix changed its offer to an all-cash deal on Tuesday to try to speed up the transaction.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• The Verge ☛ FTC says it will appeal Meta antitrust loss | The Verge

  The FTC is asking the US Court of Appeals in DC to review Boasberg’s decision and says the evidence from the six-week trial proves its case. The government argued that Meta maintained its monopoly over the personal social networking market — which it said included services like Snapchat and MeWe, but not TikTok or YouTube — by acquiring nascent threats Instagram and WhatsApp. The FTC argued that Meta’s dominance let it degrade the quality of its service without any real alternatives for consumers to flee to.

• Trademarks

  • Right of Publicity

    • The Tyee ☛ Are Grok’s Fake Nudes Breaking Canadian Laws? A Tyee Explainer

      The flood of artificial-intelligence-created sexualized and nearly naked images of women and children on X, formerly known as Twitter, over the last month is an attempt to intimidate them into staying off the [Internet], says law professor Suzie Dunn.

• Copyrights

  • EFF ☛ Statutory Damages: The Fuel of Copyright-based Censorship

    Imagine every post online came with a bounty of up to $150,000 paid to anyone who finds it violates opaque government rules—all out of the pocket of the platform. Smaller sites could be snuffed out, and big platforms would avoid crippling liability by aggressively blocking, taking down, and penalizing speech that even possibly violates these rules. In turn, users would self-censor, and opportunists would turn accusations into a profitable business.

    This dystopia isn’t a fantasy, it’s close to how U.S. copyright’s broken statutory damages regime actually works.