Leftovers

• Hardware

  • Carl Svensson ☛ Commodore, IBM, OS/2, ARexx: Deal or No Deal?

    Last year, I investigated a long-standing claim about an alleged botched deal between Sun Microsystems and Commodore, regarding licensing of the Amiga 3000. My original intention was to write about another purported deal - one between IBM and Commodore - but the UNIX rabbithole was too tempting, and I decided to fall into it.

    Upon closer examination, the whole Amiga 3000 debacle seems highly unlikely. It does, however, offer everything a good Amiga anecdote needs to stay popular: The Amiga's ingenuity offering something no other platform could, the Amiga finally being recognized by the Business Boys Club, and of course the incompetence of Commodore's management. Which is why I was surprised when I first heard about a supposed deal between IBM and Commodore.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] N.L. government working to secure plant with decades-old rotting fish sauce from falling into the ocean

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-25 [Older] Blood supplies running low in Germany

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] Germany news: More and more people turning away from alcohol

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] Europol busts massive synthetic drug production network

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] More than water: Calgary infrastructure woes putting pressure on city hall

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] 'Prepare for rotating outages’: N.L. Hydro warns of possible power emergency

  • Futurism ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini’s HHS Trashes Top African Health Organization as “Fake” and “Powerless”

  • Futurism ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] Top African Health Official Blasts Cheeto Mussolini Administration’s Plans for Human Experimentation in Africa

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] N.B. report finds herbicides, heavy metals not the cause of 'most' undiagnosed neurological illnesses

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Samples from Manitoba bird die-off test positive for H5N1, but researcher says that offers some relief

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] How grocery giants control who can sell food in your neighbourhood

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Couple believed 'skeletal' boy had eating disorder but was never diagnosed, Ontario murder trial told

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] Cloudflare whacks WAF bypass bug that opened side door for attackers

  • Bleeping Computer ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Zendesk ticket systems hijacked in massive global spam wave

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] EU opens probe into Musk's Grok chatbot

    • Ben Tsai ☛ Outsourcing thinking ↗

      In the context of work, you can take a utilitarian view of business communication that narrowly sees communication like emails and Slacks and Jira comments as getting a job done. All that matters is getting the thing done. However, I think we are losing important something when our communication is laundered through a machine. While our intent may be to clarify what we are trying to say, “it's impossible to separate the meaning from the expression of it…Changing the phrasing changes the message.”1

      If we drain all of our messages of our own words, we are losing a primary channel that we have of maintaining relationships with our colleagues. The simple greetings, small talk, emoji reactions may seem trivial, but they reflect the human beings on each side. Even the misunderstandings, churn, struggling through language barriers, are meaningful. As Erik follows up: [...]

  • Social Control Media

    • Joshua Blais ☛ Distraction is a Sin

      Yet we pull out our phones to scroll mindlessly right in the middle of the focused work that we are supposed to be doing for the benefit of the human race.

      Many of us spend over a day a week on the little black mirror in our pockets - and we have the arrogance to say we are not slaves?

      We are wasting our lives away on literal nothingness.

    • Cryptography Engineering ☛ WhatsApp Encryption, a Lawsuit, and a Lot of Noise

      Our story begins with a new class action lawsuit filed by the esteemed law firm Quinn Emanuel on behalf of several plaintiffs. The lawsuit notes that WhatsApp claims to use end-to-end encryption to protect its users, but alleges that all WhatsApp users’ private data is secretly available through a special terminal on Mark Zuckerberg’s desk. Ok, the lawsuit does not say precisely that — but it comes pretty darn close: [...]

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Krebs On Security ☛ Please Don’t Feed the Scattered Lapsus ShinyHunters

      A prolific data ransom gang that calls itself Scattered Lapsus ShinyHunters (SLSH) has a distinctive playbook when it seeks to extort payment from victim firms: Harassing, threatening and even swatting executives and their families, all while notifying journalists and regulators about the extent of the intrusion. Some victims reportedly are paying — perhaps as much to contain the stolen data as to stop the escalating personal attacks. But a top SLSH expert warns that engaging at all beyond a “We’re not paying” response only encourages further harassment, noting that the group’s fractious and unreliable history means the only winning move is not to pay.

• Security

  • Bleeping Computer ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] ShinyHunters claim to be behind SSO-account data theft attacks

  • 2026-01-24 [Older] France’s Waltio faces ransom threat from notorious hacker collective

  • 2026-01-24 [Older] Call-On-Doc allegedly had a breach affecting more than 1 million patients. They’ve yet to comment.

  • Hungarian Conservative ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] Hungarian and Romanian Police Detain Young Hackers over Fake Threat Calls

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • BBC ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] How crypto criminals stole $700 million from people – often using age-old tricks

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] South Korea brings home 73 scam suspects from Cambodia

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Spotify Launches AI-Driven 'Prompted Playlist' for Premium Users in US, Canada [Ed: Mass surveillance spun as "AI-Driven"]

    • Kevin Boone ☛ Kevin Boone: Digital voice assistants vs. privacy in 2026

      The problem with Kinect was that nobody knew when it was listening, or what Microsoft was doing with the information it collected. Concerns escalated when researchers demonstrated that Kinect was sensitive enough to measure the user’s heart and respiration rate, although there’s no evidence that Microsoft ever collected this kind of data. In any case, Microsoft responded to their customers’ objections for once, and demoted Kinect from an essential component to a plug-in accessory. Three years later, Kinect was discontinued. Gamers just didn’t benefit enough from it, to be willing to accept the privacy risks. Frankly, game developers didn’t warm to it either, further decreasing its usefulness.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-25 [Older] What you can do to bypass authoritarian surveillance

  • Confidentiality

    • CBC ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Decision reserved for Regina police officer who targeted 33 women using internal databases

    • 2026-01-22 [Older] Kazakhstan Considers Criminal Liability for Mass Leaks of Personal Data

    • The Register UK ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Europe’s GDPR cops dished out €1.2B in fines last year as data breaches piled up

    • Bleeping Computer ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] INC ransomware opsec fail allowed data recovery for 12 US orgs

    • 2026-01-21 [Older] Alerted to a breach in November, Advanced Family Surgery Center remains publicly silent

    • TechTarget ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] 2025: Double the breaches, but less patient data compromised

    • The Independent UK ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] UK: Secret gagging order should not have been used to cover up Afghan data breach, Sir Ben Wallace says

    • 2026-01-20 [Older] UK: North West Ambulance Service’s increased breach reports may reflect better reporting

    • 2026-01-20 [Older] SK Telecom files lawsuit to revoke record 135 bln-won fine over data breach

    • 2026-01-21 [Older] Hong Kong issues Code of Practice under the Protection of Critical Infrastructures (Computer Systems) Ordinance

    • EPIC ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] EPIC Releases New Report on Protecting Health Privacy in the Digital Age

    • PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ ICYMI: NordVPN Data Breach

      NordVPN denied allegations that its internal Salesforce development servers were breached, saying that cybercriminals obtained “dummy data” from a trial account on a third-party automated testing platform, according to an article from Bleeping Computer. The company's statement comes after a threat actor (using the 1011 handle) claimed on a hacking forum over the weekend that they stole more than 10 databases containing sensitive information like Salesforce API keys and Jira tokens, following a brute-force attack against a NordVPN development server. “Today I am leaking +10 DB's source codes from a NordVPN development server. This information was acquired by bruteforcing a misconfigured server of NordVPN, which has salesforce and jira information stored. Compromissed information: SalesForce api keys, jira tokens and more,” the threat actor said. However, as NordVPN revealed today, this is actually test data stolen from a temporary test environment deployed months earlier during trial testing a potential vendor for automated testing. The Lithuanian VPN service added that the test environment had no connection with its own infrastructure and that the stolen data doesn't include sensitive customer or business information.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Former US prosecutor says Cheeto Mussolini 'willfully' broke laws

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Germany: Far-right extremist 'Saxon Separatists' stand trial

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Germany news: Berlin mulls sending migrants to third nations

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Davos: Germany's Merz says old world order 'unraveling'

    Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] Iran protests: Family recounts fatal shooting

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] Japan: Assassin of ex-PM Shinzo Abe jailed for life

  • Project Censored ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] Manufactured Borders, Manufactured Intelligence

  • Project Censored ☛ 2026-01-19 [Older] Corporate Complicity: A Whistleblower and the Eject Elbit Campaign

  • TruthOut ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Repeatedly Refers to Greenland as Iceland in Speech Vowing Takeover

  • Vox ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] Canada’s prime minister just declared the end of the world as we know it

  • Scheerpost ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] Canada PM Mark Carney Warns ‘American Hegemony’ Is Destroying World Order in Candid Speech

  • TruthOut ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] Mark Carney Warns “American Hegemony” Is Destroying World Order in Candid Speech

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] Carney to address cabinet after forceful speech aimed at Cheeto Mussolini administration

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] Katy Perry joins Trudeau in Davos to support former PM's speech on value of 'soft power'

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] Did Carney just signal a massive shift in Canada's foreign policy direction?

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Carney's Davos speech strikes a chord in Mexico

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Carney Speech: The Rupture is a Necessary Part of the Transition

  • Vox ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] The week the US and Canada broke up

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] Between the Donroe and Carney Doctrines

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] For Canada and Carney, the end of the old order is just the start

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] Holocaust survivor Leon Weintraub: "We were dehumanized"

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] 'Awful, despicable': Canadian veterans slam Cheeto Mussolini's comments about NATO troops

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-25 [Older] Germany news: Majority see Cheeto Mussolini as threat to nation

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] How Israeli settler violence empties Palestinian villages

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] Protests in Iran: Official casualty figures in doubt

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] China saves Filipino sailors near South China Sea shoal

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Japan's ruling party vulnerable as snap poll looms

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Outrage as Cheeto Mussolini undermines NATO role in Afghanistan war

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Davos 2026: Zelenskyy repeats call for Europe to 'act now'

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Thousands of locals have left Kyiv amid blackouts

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Germany: Nord Stream suspect cannot claim immunity

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Donald Trump Threatens to Sue Trevor Noah Over Jeffrey Epstein Joke

    Noah delivered the offending joke after Billie Eilish took home Song of the Year. Noah said, “That is a Grammy that every artist wants almost as much as Trump wants Greenland. Which makes sense because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton.”

    The joke elicited a good amount of laughter, but also some “oohs” from the crowd, which Noah happily responded to. “I told you it’s my last year,” said the former Daily Show host, who insisted this would be his last time emceeing the Grammys after a six-year run. “What are you gonna do about it?”

• Environment

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Brrr! Why a polar vortex is causing extreme cold in Canada

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] Woman found dead in Montreal West home during power outage

  • Energy/Transportation

    • CBC ☛ 2026-01-25 [Older] ‘Not out of the woods,’ N.L. Hydro says as station slowly restarts after being choked with ice

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] Germany's rail service dealt major blow by government

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] Germany updates: Majority of Germans reject Teslas [Ed: Swasticars]

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] How Venezuela Grew Poor With More Oil Than Saudi Arabia

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] Germany news: Hamburg hosting North Sea energy summit

    • Pro Publica ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] Our Reporting Showed Washington Ranks Last in Green Energy Growth. Now the State Is Working to Speed It Up.

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] Hungary's Opposition Taps Energy Expert to Lead Foreign Policy Ahead of Vote

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] US, Kazakhstan Energy Ministries Discuss Cooperation

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Colombia Imposes Tariffs and Halts Energy Sales to Ecuador as Trade Feud Escalates

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] Opinion: Could Mexico make America great again? The energy equation

    • CBC ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] In wake of new energy pact, could China invest in West Coast pipeline?

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2026-01-25 [Older] Canada's wildfire paradox: fewer fires, greater destruction highlighted in new analysis

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] Germany weighs boon and bane of China's industrial expansion

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] Half of US braces for huge winter storm

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] How Israeli settler violence empties

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-25 [Older] Japan returns last 2 pandas to China amid strained ties

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] The business of saving nature

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-25 [Older] Conservation efforts in Tanzania under scrutiny as trophy hunting interests turn the screw on Maasai communities, wildlife

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] Australian boy injured by shark dies

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] Germany weighs boon and bane of China's industrial expansion

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] Bulgarians quit Germany, choose remote work

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Union says federal public service job cuts are going to be 'like the Hunger Games'

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-19 [Older] Canadians still worried about economy, remain cautious about spending

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] Canada PM Carney Strongly Opposes US Tariffs Over Greenland

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] EU prosecutor: Third of VAT fraud cases linked to Slovakia

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] High inflation in Nigeria weighs heavily on everyday life

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] Quebec latest province to take shot at Ontario premier’s upcoming Crown Royal whisky ban

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] These federal workers were told they could work from anywhere. Now they have to move to Ottawa

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Jérôme Marin ☛ OpenAI’s insatiable appetite

    This funding waltz illustrates an unrelenting hunt for capital. Since 2019, the pioneer of generative artificial intelligence has already raised nearly $60 billion, including more than $40 billion last year, mainly from Japan’s SoftBank conglomerate. Yet those sums remain insufficient given the ambitious roadmap championed by CEO Sam Altman. OpenAI plans to spend up to $1.4 trillion on computing power over the next eight years, even as it continues to rack up heavy losses.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Stock swindles

    We call Trump a "reality TV star" and it's true, as far as it goes. Trump did play a billionaire on TV long before he grifted actual billions, using his status as the poor man's idea of a rich man to secure liar loans and rip off creditors, contractors, business partners, workers, and governments – local, state and federal.

    He rose to power on this, boasting on stage that cheating "makes me smart": [...]

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Germany news: Berlin, Rome sign cooperation agreement

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] Chile's president-elect picks Pinochet lawyers as ministers

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Threatens Canada With a 100% Tariff Over Its China Trade Deal and Escalates Feud With Carney

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Threatens Canada With 100% Tariff Over Pending Trade Deal With China

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] Canada's Carney to Visit Australia in March

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Opinion: Mexico could lose out as Canada risks USMCA with bet on ‘new world order’

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Fact check: Fakes spread online amid Syria's power shift

    • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Administration Shares Doctored Photo of Minnesota Activist After Her Arrest

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Hong Kong: Organizers of Tiananmen vigil put on trial

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] Will D.H.S. Destroy Free Speech In Minnesota?

  • BIA Net ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Turkey's media watchdog fines HBO Max, MUBI over 'immoral' content

  • CPJ ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Journalists covering pro-Kurdish protests detained in Turkey

  • BIA Net ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] Adult content creator Merve Taşkın permanently leaves Turkey, citing prosecution fears

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] Media freedom in the spotlight as Kuciak murder case reopens

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] Retrial in murder of Slovak journalist and fiancee begins

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-24 [Older] DW correspondent arrested in Niger

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Pakistan arrests rights lawyer, husband over 'cyber terrorism', family says

  • The Next Move ☛ Alex Pretti’s Gun Rights

    There is no federal regulation on carrying guns anywhere outside of federal property. The federal government has little say over state or local gun-carry policies. The FBI director has no power to declare gun carry at a protest in Minnesota unlawful—if the incident preceding Pretti’s death even qualifies as a protest at all, given how few people were gathered on the street.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] India: Can 'heritage walks' make learning history more fun?

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] Exclusive-Carney Likely to Visit India in Early March as Canada Trade Pivot Intensifies, Envoy Says

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-21 [Older] New EU anti-racism strategy misses the point, say NGOs

  • TruthOut ☛ 2026-01-20 [Older] ICE Violently Targets Legal Observers and Community Members in Minneapolis

  • CBC ☛ 2026-01-25 [Older] Parks Canada shuttering Historic Places website, sparking heritage concerns

  • TruthOut ☛ 2026-01-26 [Older] Immigrant Children Lead Uprising at Texas Detention Center

  • TruthOut ☛ 2026-01-23 [Older] Minneapolis’s 2020 Uprising Laid an Abolitionist Groundwork for ICE Resistance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-01-22 [Older] India: Woman arrested over suicide of man she accused

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • University of Toronto ☛ The consoles of UEFI, serial and otherwise, and their discontents

    UEFI is the modern firmware standard for x86 PCs and other systems; sometimes the actual implementation is called a UEFI BIOS, but the whole area is a bit confusing. I recently wrote about getting FreeBSD to use a serial console on a UEFI system and mentioned that some UEFI BIOSes could echo console output to a serial port, which caused Greg A. Woods to ask a good question in a comment: [...]