Leftovers

• Seth Godin ☛ The big splash

  Hype is a trap. Better is better.

• Sean Monahan ☛ time dilation

  Why we are newly fixation on time? I have a few hypotheses.

• Matt Webb ☛ Do today’s work today

  An attitude that cynically connects work and redemption. Perhaps something in the air in the 1930s, these slogans don’t come out of nowhere. Maybe that’s what The Two Leslies were picking up on when they wrote their bit, without knowing it, with the Second World War still in the future, and the discovery of the camps even deeper into the future unknown, somehow the thread of that knowledge was there in 1935, something unsayable that the collective unconscious none-the-less found a way to say.

• Doc Searls ☛ Thrustday

  Now, blogging (personal publishing, syndicated with RSS) is having a resurgence. But on Substack, not on personal sites like this one. Not yet.

  I am sure my readership would go up into the thousands again if I blogged on Substack, but I don’t want to. Here’s why: this is a home. And it’s mine. I’m not in somebody’s walled garden.

• Chris O'Donnnell ☛ Done by 10 AM

  I've noticed that by about 10 AM most days I am done with the news. I'm deleting unread email newsletters and skipping over blog posts or Mastodon posts that have anything to do with current events. I just can't take it anymore. Then I feel guilty about not staying up to date. But really, how is an article about yet another ICE atrocity in Minneapolis going to make my life better? I'm already at maximum outrage.

• Science

  • Rnb37 ☛ The Birthday Paradox, simulated

    I'm a fan of simulating counterintuitive statistics. I recently did this with the Monty Hall problem and I really enjoyed how it turned out.

    A similarly interesting statistical puzzle is the birthday paradox: you only need to get 23 people in a room a room to end up with a 50% chance of at least one birthday match amongst the group.

    This can, of course, be demonstrated using math. But still I think this is a fun simulation problem!

  • Remy Wang ☛ Early History of a Perfect Join Algorithm

    I've written two posts about an optimal join algorithm that has been making a comeback in recent years - even Microsoft felt the FOMO. Throughout the years, the algorithm has become associated with Mihalis Yannakakis. But just like many other great ideas in computer science, there was not one single inventor of the algorithm, but three! In the same year Yannakakis published his seminal paper, Phil Bernstein and Dah-Ming Chiu published their paper, describing almost exactly the same algorithm for solving acyclic joins. To recognize Bernstein and Chiu's contribution, I think we should start calling the algorithm BCY algorithm.

  • Bjoern Brembs ☛ Retraction data are still useless – almost

    Retractions of scholarly articles are a rare event, affecting only about 0.02-0.04% of articles in total (but yearly rates are going up dramatically). This means that data about retractions are not even close to being representative of the scholarly literature at large. In particular, when the non-retracted literature contains anything from 40% to over 80% of unreliable work, even today’s retraction rates of around 0.2% or so seem totally negligible, in the grand scheme of things. After all, what is worse: a literature where 0.04% of articles are clearly marked as unreliable, or one where 40-80% of articles are equally unreliable, but completely unmarked?

• Career/Education

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post – The Next Era of Reference Management: An Interview with William Gunn

    As with most products, reference managers have gone through a few big cyclical changes in lockstep with developments in the technologies they run on. In the 1980s and 1990s, EndNote, the most substantial reference manager at the time, rode the personal computer wave as a desktop software product. It was — as most applications were — a desktop software product. In the mid-2000s, Zotero and Mendeley capitalized on the rise of web browsers, DOIs, more consistent metadata, and online databases that made, for instance, near-one-click saving from the web possible. And in the 2010s, browser extensions became ubiquitous, cloud tools matured, and external and internal APIs became significantly more available. As a result, reference managers were integrated into more external products for research and writing.

  • US News And World Report ☛ Five Universities Collaborate to Address Michigan Teacher Shortage

    The Education Preparation Provider Collaborative will include Central Michigan University, Eastern Michigan University, Michigan State University, Northern Michigan University and Western Michigan University.

    The effort aims to be responsive to school districts’ needs for teachers while also offering more flexible and affordable pathways to the teaching profession.

  • Coalition for Networked Information ☛ Archiving 2026

    The IS&T Archiving 2026 conference will take place 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟭𝟱–𝟭𝟴, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 at 𝗛𝗮𝗿𝘃𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆’𝘀 𝗗𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗱 𝗥𝘂𝗯𝗲𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗶𝗻 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗕𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻. CNI is delighted to serve again this year as a cooperating society of the conference, which covers digitization, imaging, preservation, metadata management, archival workflows, and more.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Opening boards

    As a result, many boards of directors have become prestigious rich clubs of people who know very little about, say, higher education or history or the arts, but whose wealth has given them a large say over how America’s universities, museums, and artistic institutions function. Dominated by finance, they have become bastions of old-boy privilege, Wall Street conservatism, and self-replicating timidity.

  • Martin Chang ☛ Approaching my 30s

    I started coding and living with computers since a young age. Over time I have been imagining myself to be like Theo de Raadt or Dan Kaminsky (though I am no where near their level). I think of my work, either in the company I work for or just open source during my free time, a gift to the world. I truely admire what the FreeBSD folks said "We think it (BSD) as a gift. People will take it. Do their own thing with it. And once in a while they show up and we find out what people had done with our stuff". I feel that my work (not job day job) being a calling. As of now I am maintaining a library that found it's way into Debian. And several seen in real, production environments. If you remembered the XKCD comic about dependencies. I feel that I am somewhat close to that.

  • Jason Becker ☛ Great teachers are a huge short cut

    Yesterday at my guitar lesson we started working on the solo in Arriving Somewhere But Not Here. It’s incredible what a good teacher can help you with.

• Hardware

  • Tyler Sticka ☛ The Keyboard I Never Wanted

    I used a Logitech K800 “Wireless Illuminated” keyboard for more than a decade. Its keys were soft and comfy. The wireless part made it easy to move around when I switched from a wordy task to an artsy one or vice versa. It conveniently shared a receiver with my mouse. I liked it!

  • Canion dot Blog ☛ My Favourite Computer Peripheral

    I mentioned on the show that I had a memory of an early flatbed scanner I had. It may have even connected to my Amiga, but it was definitely connected to my Packard-Bell 166MHz MMX PC.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • PHR ☛ U.S. WHO Withdrawal, along with Expansion of Global Gag Rule, Further Compounds Harm to Global Health and Human Rights 

    Responding to the Trump administration’s completion of the United States’ withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) and its announcement of a sweeping expansion of the Global Gag Rule, Sam Zarifi, JD, LLM, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), said: [...]

  • ABC ☛ US officially exits World Health Organization, accusing agency of straying 'from its core mission'

    Public health experts have criticized the withdrawal from the WHO saying it will put the U.S. at a disadvantage when it comes to responding to health crises at home and abroad.

    "The U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization is a shortsighted and misguided abandonment of our global health commitments. Global cooperation and communication are critical to keep our own citizens protected because germs do not respect borders," Ronald Nahass, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told ABC News.

• Proprietary

  • 1 vCPU Linux runner now generally available in GitHub Actions [Ed: Proprietary and Microsoft acting like it 'owns' what it is in fact attacking]

  • The Register UK ☛ Phishing attacks abuse SharePoint, target energy orgs

    Unknown attackers are abusing Microsoft SharePoint file-sharing services to target multiple energy-sector organizations, harvest user credentials, take over corporate inboxes, and then send hundreds of phishing emails from compromised accounts to contacts inside and outside those organizations.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Exploited Zero-Day Flaw in Cisco UC Could Affect Millions

    Cisco on Wednesday disclosed and patched CVE-2026-20045, a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Cisco's Unified Communications Manager (UCM) as well as other products. Cisco has 30 million users for UCM, which provides IP-based voice, video, conferencing, and collaboration for enterpises — so the potential impact could be vast.

  • The Verge ☛ Chromebooks train schoolkids to be loyal customers, internal Google document suggests | The Verge

    The heavily-redacted documents, which surfaced earlier this week, are linked to a massive lawsuit filed by several school districts, families, and state attorneys general, accusing Google, Meta, ByteDance, and Snap of creating “addictive and dangerous” products that have harmed young users’ mental health. (Snap settled earlier this week).

  • NBC ☛ Google’s work in schools aims to create a ‘pipeline of future users,’ internal documents say

    In a 2018 presentation, one slide noted that the public sees YouTube as problematic for students because there is “No way to block unsafe content, comments, ads,” a challenge without a workable solution. A presentation last updated in 2024 said some survey respondents blamed YouTube for keeping them awake at night, among other negative effects on their well-being.

  • University of Toronto ☛ Pitfalls in using Prometheus Blackbox to monitor external SMTP

    We didn't find out immediately when this happened (and if our systems had been working right, we wouldn't have found out when I did, but that's another story). Initially I was going to write an entry about whether or not we should use our monitoring system to monitor external services that other people run, but it turns out that we do try to monitor whether we can do a SMTP conversation to the university's M365-hosted institutional email. There were several things that happened with this monitoring.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ San Diego Comic Con Quietly Bans Hey Hi (AI) Art

      Another victory for artists.

    • Futurism ☛ Grinning Wolf Tells Little Red Riding Hood That Her Safety Is His Top Priority

      Building Hey Hi (AI) to empower humans, of course.

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ Meta blocks teens from AI chatbot characters over safety concerns

      In earlier reports, some of the company’s AI characters were found engaging in sexual or otherwise inappropriate conversations with teens.

    • Wired ☛ The Math on AI Agents Doesn’t Add Up

      That was basically the message of a paper published without much fanfare some months ago, smack in the middle of the overhyped year of “agentic AI.” Entitled “Hallucination Stations: On Some Basic Limitations of Transformer-Based Language Models,” it purports to mathematically show that “LLMs are incapable of carrying out computational and agentic tasks beyond a certain complexity.” Though the science is beyond me, the authors—a former SAP CTO who studied AI under one of the field’s founding intellects, John McCarthy, and his teenage prodigy son—punctured the vision of agentic paradise with the certainty of mathematics. Even reasoning models that go beyond the pure word-prediction process of LLMs, they say, won’t fix the problem.

    • Louwrentius ☛ What will you do when AI runs out of money and disappear?

      All major AI services like ChatGPT or Claude are heavily subsidised by investors. It's not just the initial investment — it's the running costs of these major AI services that are also astronomical.

      At some point the money will run out. Assuming that Ed Zitron is right about his assessment of the AI market (and he's not alone in his assessment), the current big AI services are not sustainable. And there seems to be no realistic path to profitability.

      How are the big AI providers going to make $2 Trillion in the next 4 years?

    • Giles Turnbull ☛ Not moaning about AI

      So, sure, I don’t value LLM words for my own purposes, but I can see why some people might. I wish Google would let me switch it off though.

      Wise words from a colleague this week: “I don’t use AI for anything I want to remain good at.” A much more pragmatic view.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ OpenAI faces cash crunch in 2026 as bills come due

      This depends on having even more money coming in. Trouble is, that’s getting a bit short. And the bills are coming due.

      International Financial Review went digging, and they think OpenAI has a cash crunch by the end of this year. They spoke to: [...]

    • BoingBoing ☛ Bandcamp bans AI-generated music, unlike Spotify's slop-filled playlists

      Weird union-busting efforts from Bandcamp's various owners aside, this announcement and the fact that they actually pay their artists rockets them to the top of my list. There's already more music than you could ever listen to; you don't need to add soulless algorithmic stuff to the pile.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • Federal News Network ☛ VA readies massive contract for veterans’ private sector health care

    The massive contract vehicle represents only the second time VA has signed large contracts with health plans to coordinate private sector care for veterans. The first was shortly after the MISSION Act was signed in 2018. Those contracts are now expiring, and in their place, VA is preparing one large indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract with a total potential value of $700 billion over the next ten years.

• Security

  • Hacker News ☛ Malicious PyPI Package Impersonates SymPy, Deploys XMRig Miner on Linux Hosts [Ed: This isn't a Linux issue, it's poor stewardship of a repo]

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Android Police ☛ I'm finally going to secure my old accounts — thank you, suspicious emails

      So imagine my annoyance when someone tried to take that away from me. My oldest gaming accounts recently got hit with strange two-factor authentication requests.

      Because I didn't take them seriously, I got kicked out. The past 48 hours have been a comically frustrating cycle of retrieving them (no thanks to the support teams).

    • Public Key Directory ☛ Public Key Directory - Key Transparency for the Fediverse

      Any attempt to build End-to-End Encryption for the Fediverse will confront a difficult engineering challenge: How do your users know which Public Key belongs to someone they want to communicate with?

      Historically, there have been many attempts to solve this problem: [...]

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Digital IDs will launch before year-end, government says

      “The MyMzansi digital prototype was launched and is doing very well and we will be seeing that by the end of this year; the roll-out of smart IDs will also be done… If that integration is done well, we will see other departments, like basic education and the transport department, also plugging in as it relates to the issuance of licences,” said Ramokgopa. The MyMzansi portal, launched in 2025, is the prototype for government’s envisioned one-stop shop for citizen services.

    • New York Times ☛ TikTok Updates Its Terms and Conditions in the U.S.

      “You go to a website and you look for, say, medical symptoms. There are dozens of trackers on that site that are sending what you’re looking for back to those advertising companies,” she added. They then use that data “to advertise to you all over the web and within their apps.”

• Defence/Aggression

  • New York Times ☛ Immigration Agents Detain 5-Year-Old Boy in Minnesota, Prompting Outrage

    A photo showed a boy with an oversized hat and Spider-Man backpack being held next to a vehicle as his father was detained. A Homeland Security spokeswoman said the man had fled and left the child.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ ‘Extremely disappointed’: Lamma ferry disaster verdict leaves families outraged

    By Holmes Chan Family members of those killed in a Hong Kong ferry collision more than a decade ago expressed indignation Thursday over a long-awaited coroner’s verdict, saying it offered little accountability or closure.

  • American Oversight ☛ American Oversight Sues Convicted Felon Administration Over Secretive TSA–ICE Data Sharing that Could Risk Air Travel Safety

    Lawsuit seeks records on passenger data transfers diverting TSA resources to immigration enforcement

  • NYPost ☛ Arizona AG wildly suggests residents can shoot masked ICE agents under state’s self-defense laws: ‘Recipe for disaster’

    "I mean if somebody comes at me wearing a mask, by the way, I'm a gun owner, and I can't tell whether they're a police officer, what am I supposed to do?"

  • New York Times ☛ Three Dead After Shooting in Rural Australian Town

    The killings happened on a day when Australians were honoring the victims of the Bondi Beach massacre, and just after gun laws were tightened.

  • Techdirt ☛ A Year In, And It’s Time To Recognize: The Oval Office Is Empty

    Which is where we find ourselves. The degree to which Trump has refused to perform the requirements of his job, to say nothing of his regularly acting contrary to them, means that we effectively have a vacancy in the Executive Branch. Americans can no longer have any trust that he is working for us when he daily demonstrates that he is only working for himself. Or that he’ll enforce the law when he regularly transgresses it and enables others’ transgressions as well. Or that he’ll uphold the Constitution when he regularly violates the separation of powers and people’s protected rights. Or that he can be a protector of the country when he has used his position to attack it. Like with the larcenous bank guard or wayward doctor it would be irrational to believe that despite having acted in such conflict with the requirements of his job that it is a job he has nevertheless somehow still kept. Instead, by refusing to uphold his oath of office, and acting in so many ways counter to it, he has effectively abandoned the office he took that oath in order to enter.

    The Constitution says that when the office is vacant there is a succession process to fill it. Where it is less specific is in instructing how a de facto vacancy, such as the kind we are experiencing, can be regarded as an official de jure one for purposes of triggering succession. But it doesn’t say we can’t, and plenty of language in the Constitution says we can, and indeed must.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Predatory AI, social media addiction targeted by new legislation from Michigan Senate Democrats

    The legislation includes Senate Bill 757, Senate Bill 758, Senate Bill 759 and Senate Bill 760, sponsored by Sens. Kevin Hertel (D-St. Clair Shores), Darrin Camilleri (D-Trenton), Stephanie Chang (D-Detroit), Mallory McMorrow (D-Royal Oak) and Dayna Polehanki (D-Livonia).

  • The Verge ☛ Congress doesn’t seem to know if the TikTok deal complies with its law

    TikTok finally closed a deal meant to bring it into compliance with the law that should have banned it a year ago, and the lawmakers who passed that law still don’t seem to know what’s going on.

    The company announced Tuesday that its US service is now part of the separate TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, with parent company ByteDance holding just a 19.9 percent stake in that new entity. The rest is owned by Oracle and investment firms Silver Lake and MGX, as well as smaller investors including Michael Dell’s family investment firm. Oracle will store US data and the joint venture will “retrain, test, and update the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data.” The new entity will also “have decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and content moderation.”

  • RTL ☛ TikTok in the US goes American, but questions remain - RTL Today

    “There are still questions of how this new entity will interact with other versions of TikTok globally,” said Jennifer Huddleston of the CATO Institute in Washington.

    She also wondered about “what influence the US government may have over the algorithm and the free speech concerns that could arise from this new arrangement.”

    A major investor in the new entity is Larry Ellison, who is also financing his son David’s recent takeover of Paramount and bidding war to take over Warner Bros -- potentially giving the family unprecedented power over US media.

  • India Times ☛ Who owns TikTok in the US now?

    Under the arrangement, non-Chinese investors will own about 80% of the American venture. ByteDance will keep 19.9% of it. The investors, who could potentially have outsize influence on the popular social media platform, will license the app's powerful recommendation algorithm from ByteDance and have the power to moderate content on the app.

  • New York Times ☛ Here’s Who Just Bought TikTok

    Under the arrangement, non-Chinese investors will own about 80 percent of the American venture. ByteDance will keep 19.9 percent of it. The new venture will license the app’s powerful recommendation algorithm from ByteDance and have the power to moderate content on the app.

    So who are the owners of U.S. TikTok?

  • Robert Reich ☛ Seriously, what can we do about the fascist now loose upon America?

    ICE agents have kidnapped a 5-year-old child to use him as “bait” to arrest his parents. The child and his father are now in a detention center in Texas, although no one knows their exact whereabouts. They were in America legally.

    This is only the latest cruel outrage I’ve heard about. All this is being done in our name — the United States of America — with our authority, our tax dollars, and, seemingly, our acquiescence.

  • Ars Technica ☛ TikTok deal is done; Trump wants praise while users fear MAGA tweaks - Ars Technica

    Giving Americans majority ownership, ByteDance retains 19.9 percent of the joint venture, the release said, which has been valued at $14 billion. Three managing investors—Silver Lake, Oracle, and MGX—each hold 15 percent, while other investors, including Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell’s investment firm, Dell Family Office, hold smaller, undisclosed stakes.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ TikTok establishes American joint venture to end US ban threat

    The 2024 law came as US policymakers, including Trump in his first presidency, warned that China could use TikTok to mine Americans’ data or exert influence through its algorithm.

  • Reuters ☛ Court rules TikTok can continue to operate in Canada for now

    In November 2024, Canada's industry ministry ordered TikTok's business to be dissolved, citing national security risks, but added the government was not blocking access or users' ability to create content.

  • Crooked Timber ☛ The social media ban that wasn’t

    The Australian government’s legislation seeking to ban access to social media for people under 16 has received plenty of attention in International media, mostly leading with the government’s that 4.7 million accounts were banned or deactivated when the legislation came into effect. Rather less attention has been paid to discussion of the outcome within Australia, where the consensus is that there has been very little effect for most. With most kids still active, the minority who have been caught by the ban have suffered feelings of ostracism and exclusion When discussing the issue on my own social media (which had few if any teenage readers to begin with) I’ve only had one parent report their kids being thrown off.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Europe Frets About Overreliance on US Tech

    The most high-profile area in which this concern is expressed is, of course, in defense, with non-US NATO members now belatedly ratcheting up their spending to bolster the output of their domestic arms industries, watched anxiously by Ukraine. However, there is also the broader context of technology in general, with cybersecurity being no exception.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ ISLAM party poised to take control of Malegaon civic body

    Mufti Ismail said the party leadership has allowed them to take a decision on extending support to the ISLAM-SP alliance from the outside. “Following a decision taken by the party leadership, we will decide if they still require our external support or not,” said Ismail.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ America embraces imperialism and ditches Europe

    The Helsinki Final Act is dead. The post-war peace and stability in Europe are over. The Budapest Memorandum is also dead. The meticulously negotiated political settlement after the fall of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union is over, too. The 1945 Charter of the United Nations is also not of any significance even though it sternly admonishes that the organization’s members “shall refrain […] from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.

• Environment

  • The Straits Times ☛ Japan punk rock lawyer leads climate justice fight against central government

    The 63-year-old rallied over 450 plaintiffs across Japan in a landmark lawsuit seeking damages from the government.

  • Court House News ☛ LA Times' suit over mayor's auto-deleting texts likely to advance

    At issue: Is a text message a public record? And is the city obligated to read through every employee’s text messages before deciding which ones should be kept?

  • Jonathan Kamens ☛ What journalists don’t understand about reporting Trump – Something better to do

    The news here is that Trump lied at Davos. It hardly matters what he lied about; the news is that the President of the United States stood up in front of a room full of world leaders and lied over and over. That’s what’s important.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Hackaday ☛ Lead Acid Battery Upgraded To Lithium Iron Phosphate

      Lithium batteries have taken over as the primary battery chemistry from applications ranging from consumer electronics to electric vehicles and all kinds of other things in between. But the standard lithium ion battery has a few downsides, namely issues operating at temperature extremes. Lead acid solves some of these problems but has much lower energy density, and if you want to split the difference with your own battery you’ll need to build your own lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) pack.

  • Overpopulation

    • Omicron Limited ☛ Conservation may not be enough to sustain water supplies, researchers find

      As temperatures rise and water supplies drop, public policy could bolster municipal water provisions under pressure. But one policy prescription—pushing conservation—will likely be insufficient as a standalone fix to sustain some reservoirs, according to research led by scientists at Penn State.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Futurism ☛ Elon Musk Is So Unlikable That His Feud With Random Airline Is Doing Wonders for Sales, Says CEO

    Again, Musk fell for the trap.

  • Macworld ☛ Apple's John Ternus just became the new Jony Ive

    It’s been reported that CEO Tim Cook’s time at Apple is nearing an end, and Apple is grooming his replacement. We have another clue to who that may be: In a new report, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said that Apple Senior Vice President John Ternus now manages the company’s design teams. The assignment of new duties was made by Cook at the end of last year.

  • The Drone Girl ☛ Michigan bets $42 million on becoming America's drone hub

    Michigan now has nine active drone test sites, including the Michigan National All-Domain Warfighting Center in the northern part of the state. There’s a 40-mile drone corridor between Ann Arbor and Detroit, electric aircraft charging stations at four airports, and a 60-mile BVLOS corridor equipped with radar and traffic management software.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ The White House put out a fake photo. Here's why we should all be outraged

      The original photo shows Armstrong in handcuffs being led away by a federal officer with his face blurred out. Armstrong is composed and steady in this image. A veteran of social justice movements and a trained attorney, she appears as one might expect, her expression troubled but calm.

      In the photo released by the White House, Armstrong is sobbing, her mouth hanging open in despair. In what is clearly nothing more than overt racism, it appears her skin has been darkened. Her braided hair, neatly styled in the original picture, is disheveled in the Trump image.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ There are ‘no lawful means’ to end CCP leadership, prosecution says as nat. sec trial of Tiananmen vigil activists starts

    Hong Kong prosecutors have said there are “no lawful means to end the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership,” as the national security trial began for three activists who used to organise the city’s annual Tiananmen vigils.

  • Techdirt ☛ Noem Says ICE Is Being Menaced By Ice Cubes, Protesters Should Be Cooped Up In ‘Free Speech Zones’

    Last Sunday morning, Margaret Brennan interviewed DHS head Kristi Noem on “Face the Nation.” Brennan did everything she could to push back against Noem’s false claims and bullshit assertions, but in the end, Noem clearly knew she’d always have the upper hand, thanks to Trump’s legal threats and Bari Weiss’s willingness to bury reporting that doesn’t please Trump.

  • Robert Reich ☛ The 4th Axiom for Interpreting Trump

    Whenever he tries to shoot the messenger, the message is worth your attention. For example …

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Dissenter ☛ After FBI Raid, Reporter Describes Devastating Impact

    Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson says the FBI’s seizure of all of her devices has eliminated her “ability to collect information and publish news stories.”

    “I no longer have access to my more than 1,200 Signal contacts or communications with any of my sources. I literally cannot contact them without access to my devices. Nor can I review my past messages with them on Signal,” according to Natanson.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Tom Silvagni appeal, secret baby, Sinful confession of Alannah Iaconis: condoms in text messages

    After the public revelation that Tom Silvagni was convicted of abuse, many people remain less than certain about what is really true and false.

    The woman making the accusation expressed outrage on social control media. The media reported her comments anonymously. Yet it feels unfair that the woman can use the media to spread her side of the story anonymously while the appeal is still in progress.

    When her comments were reported, Channel 7 decided to show us footage of the young woman's feet as she was walking out of the court.

    [...]

    A lot of these disputes involve questions of politics, status and humiliations. If you look at the cases in the Debian suicide cluster, some of the men wrote complaints about being tricked to work as unpaid volunteers while fellow "volunteers" really got paid all along. Some of these people wrote about feeling humiliated just as victims of rape and abuse feel humiliated. Why did Adrian von Bidder-Senn die on our wedding day?

  • Papers Please ☛ Exceptions and limitations to your rights

    When we posted our latest know-your-rights guide, we noted that it describes the rights of U.S. citizens if you are stopped and/or asked to identify yourself or show ID documents in certain circumstances: as a pedestrian, as a passenger in a car (not the driver), at home, or at the airport for a domestic flight.

    Why these exceptions and limitations? What about drivers of motor vehicles, passengers on international flights, and people who aren’t U.S. citizens? Don’t they have rights too?

    Yes, everyone has rights. But we limited our guide to circumstances in which we think the law is clearly established. In other situations, U.S. courts have been less clear, and in some cases these issues are the subject of ongoing litigation.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Sadism Saturates Trump’s America

    On Thursday morning, amid continuing unrest in the Twin Cities after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) killing of Renee Good, the Trump White House posted an artificial intelligence–altered image of an anti-ICE protester in police custody. The original image shows Nekima Levy Armstrong being led away in handcuffs, her face stoic. The image spread by the Trump administration, on the other hand, shows her face twisted in anguish, mouth open mid-cry, tears streaming down her cheeks. Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem had posted the original just one hour prior.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Minnesota’s General Strike, and America’s

    Today, Minnesota is shutting down in solidarity.

    It’s the nation’s first general strike in response to Trump’s thuggery.

    Across the state, businesses are closed. People are not shopping. Workers have stayed home or called in sick. Labor unions are encouraging work stoppages. Residents are helping one another. It’s an economic blackout.

  • Kelly Hayes ☛ Choosing Each Other in a Time of Terror

    Rather than being disbanded or intimidated by Good’s murder, the people of Minneapolis have been galvanized, escalating their resistance and refusing to retreat from the work of protecting one another.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Cold City, Hot Heart

    At least the bastards are cold. I can tell you that. Because I’m cold. And I’m wearing snow boots, thick socks, foot warmers, thermals, gloves, hand warmers, a sweatshirt, two coats, a face covering, and a hat. So I know damn well the ICE guys are cold. All the tactical gear on earth can’t overcome a cold heart.

  • New York Times ☛ Hundreds of Minnesota Businesses on Strike in Protest Against ICE

    The action on Friday, which unfolded in subzero temperatures, was the most widespread and organized demonstration since federal agents arrived in Minneapolis more than six weeks ago. It was aimed at pressuring the federal government to pull thousands of its agents from the streets.

  • El País ☛ Detention of five-year-old child by ICE adds fuel to the fire in the streets of Minneapolis

    Another round of protests is planned for this Friday in Minneapolis in response to the massive deployment of federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol that the Trump Administration has maintained in Minnesota’s most populous city for weeks. This time, organizers have called on residents to stay home from work and school as part of a massive walkout that will see more than 500 businesses and restaurants closed in solidarity with the state’s immigrant community. The day will also include a march in downtown Minneapolis, and similar actions have been organized in New York, Chicago, and Seattle, among other cities.

  • YLE ☛ Uusimaa police suspect cleaning firm of exploiting foreign workers for years

    The threat of a cancelled work permit can be used to extort an immigrant if that is the basis of their residence permit. If they cannot find a new job, they may be forced to leave the country.

  • Raw Story ☛ Fury as elementary school warns ICE trying to lure parents by using food flyers as bait

    Public backlash has been severe, with recent polling showing 52-57% of Americans disapprove of ICE, with a plurality supporting abolishing the agency entirely.

  • Washingon-Baltimore News Guild ☛ Workers at Environmental Defense Fund win union election, forming the largest green nonprofit union in the U.S.

    EDF Together went public on December 2 with a supermajority of support in union cards, and over 2,000 letters from the public were sent to EDF’s management team asking for voluntary recognition. Ultimately, the Executive Management Team chose to not voluntarily recognize the union and requested a private election.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Register UK ☛ Quarrels begin over plans to harmonize EU-wide telecoms mark

    To achieve this, the EC says it is necessary to establish an EU-level spectrum authorization framework, rather than leaving this at national level. It also wants to make mandatory a Europe-wide phase out of copper networks in favor of fiber, with a deadline between 2030 and 2035.

  • Maury ☛ Notes on blog future-proofing:

    3rd party are services like archive.org are hit-and-miss: By most accounts, only around 50% of pages ever make it to the archive, and even if they have a copy, it's still just a web site: Many other archiving services have vanished or lost data.

    These services are good for archiving one's own site, but are far from ideal for defending against link rot. I want to be sure links will always work, so they have to be archived locally.

    ... but I don't want to run a crawler: [...]

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Hackaday ☛ Embedded TPM: Watch Out!

    Today’s PCs are locked up with Trusted Platform Module (TPM) devices so much so that modern Windows versions insist on having a recent TPM to even install. These have become so prevalent that even larger embedded boards now have TPM and, of course, if you are repurposing consumer hardware, you’ll have to deal with it, too. [Sigma Star] has just the primer for you. It explains what TPM does, how it applies to embedded devices, and where the pitfalls are.

Monopolies/Monopsonies