Leftovers

• Sean Goedecke ☛ Large tech companies don't need heroes

  Large tech companies operate via systems. What that means is that the main outcomes - up to and including the overall success or failure of the company - are driven by a complex network of processes and incentives. These systems are outside the control of any particular person. Like the parts of a large codebase, they have accumulated and co-evolved over time, instead of being designed from scratch.

  Some of these processes and incentives are “legible”, like OKRs or promotion criteria. Others are “illegible”, like the backchannel conversations that usually precede a formal consensus on decisions1. But either way, it is these processes and incentives that determine what happens, not any individual heroics.

• The New Leaf Journal ☛ January 2026 at The New Leaf Journal

  The first month of 2026 is in the books. With January 2026 completed, it is time to review the month that was in a tradition which goes all the way back to August 2020. Below, I share links to our new articles, short posts, and newsletters from January and other news and notes from the month that was.

• Bix Frankonis ☛ Blogging As Self-Care

  It’s a timeworn and tired tradition that bloggers love to blog about blogging. So much so that if any particular blogger has done an especially large amount of it, there’s probably some degree of repetition involved—even more especially if they’ve also been blogging for an extraordinarily long time. I’ve alluded to this in the past, but blogging for me is a self-regulatory activity, and I wanted to dig a little more into that.

• Peige ☛ Who Do You Blog For?

  Earlier today I came across a since-deleted post that stirred up some drama on discovery/trending. The topic was about blogging, to put it simply. I've also been seeing bloggers post their blogging workflow, and I think the why is relevant, too. When I first started this account, I thought to myself, "Am I a blogger now? What even is a blog?"

• Career/Education

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Literary Ecosystem Is Dying

    In a sense, the decline of book reviews, like the decline of newspapers themselves, is a story about disaggregation. Newspapers used to bundle several functions together in a way that made them both useful and profitable. A daily chunk of newsprint told you about world and local events, but also about stock prices, movie showings, potential romantic partners, and where to buy washing machines on sale. When the internet made finding that information easy and free, many people decided against paying for just the news part of the newspaper.

• Hardware

  • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ iPhone Lockdown Mode Protects Washington Post Reporter - Schneier on Security

      404Media is reporting that the FBI could not access a reporter’s iPhone because it had Lockdown Mode enabled: [...]

    • Jeff Geerling ☛ Exploring a Modern SMTPE 2110 Broadcast Truck With My Dad

      I wanted to explore the timing and digital side of a modern SMPTE 2110 mobile unit, and my Dad has been involved in studio and live broadcast for decades, so he enjoyed the experience as the engineer not on duty!

      We were able to interact with everyone on the broadcast team, from the announcers and camera operators in the bowl, to the team in the truck, and even the engineer and production crew behind the in-house production.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Wired ☛ RFK Jr. Has Packed an Autism Panel With Cranks and Conspiracy Theorists

    Last week, Kennedy announced an entirely new lineup for the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), a group that recommends what types of autism research the government should fund and provides guidance on the services the autism community requires. The group is typically composed of experts in the area of autism research, along with policy experts and autistic people advocating for their own community.

    In a statement announcing the new panel, which includes no previous members, Kennedy claimed that he has appointed “the most qualified experts—leaders with decades of experience studying, researching, and treating autism.” But health experts and autism advocates strongly disagree, and a review of the new members of the group suggests that Kennedy appointed members of the anti-vaccine community who claim vaccines cause autism—despite there being no evidence to prove such a claim.

  • Kevin Wammer ☛ No more teleporting

    This bothers me tremendously. It leads to this stupid toxic relationship with my phone.

    No other device I use leads to this perception of wasted time. Not all of what I do on a phone is bad; it's my primary communication device, after all. But it's the in-between that annoys me so.

  • CNN ☛ One year on from dismantling of USAID, study projects that global aid cuts could lead to 9.4 million deaths by 2030

    Now, a new study published in The Lancet medical journal aims to quantify the human toll of those budget decisions – projecting that global aid cuts could lead to at least 9.4 million additional deaths by 2030, if the current funding trend continues. About 2.5 million of those deaths are projected to be children under the age of 5.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Marco Rubio Will Let 2.5 Million Children Die so Sarah Rogers Can Fund Far Right Extremists in Europe

    The last ten days or so provide a slew of examples of what I’m tentatively calling, “the big shift” — very obvious examples where we can show Trump taking funds away from something good and spending those funds on something horrible. Most notably, while Trump defunds VA care, he has sent masked Latino men to Blue cities to shoot people like VA nurse Alex Pretti dead.

    Yesterday brought another such example.

    Early last week, the Lancet released a study predicting the impact of last year’s cuts to USAID based on showing the benefits of past funding. Here’s CNN’s summary: [...]

• Proprietary

  • The Register UK ☛ Microsoft sets Exchange Web Services shutdown dates

    The service is an API that allows applications to access mailboxes and data stores in Exchange Online and Exchange Server. It dates back to Exchange Server 2007, and has proven popular with integrators and third parties (as well as in-house applications such as Outlook Classic). It is also popular with miscreants. Following the Midnight Blizzard security incident, Microsoft "elevated the urgency" of pushing the tech out to pasture.

  • Andrea Contino ☛ Back? Sort of

    Then I made an important choice: after just a few months, I sold my super high-end gaming PC. I realized I’m not a PC gamer at all—I’m a console gamer. I need to not have to deal with any hardware issues, not worry about updates or anything like that—just turn on the console and play.

    And I made another big decision: I sold all the Xbox devices I owned and bought a PlayStation Pro. Specifically, the 30th Anniversary limited edition. Xbox has basically become a publisher now, releasing all its games on PlayStation too, so for me, there’s no point in keeping two consoles anymore. The PlayStation ecosystem has everything I need, and when I’m traveling, the PlayStation Portal finally lets me play any game in my library… It doesn’t get better than that!

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Professor Says Her Garbled AI Textbook Was a Huge Success

      Designed for a comparative literature course on medieval and Renaissance-era writing and announced by UCLA at the end of 2024, the digital textbook was immediately met with widespread mockery and derision from educators. Its AI-generated cover was riddled with incomprehensible text — “Of Nerniacular Latin To An Evoolitun On Nance Langusages,” for example — and featured generic visuals that had little to do with the period it was supposedly covering.

    • Futurism ☛ Man Wakes Up Homeless, Realizes He Fell Into AI Psychosis That Destroyed His Entire Life

      Thomas’s case is an example of AI psychosis, a term some experts are using to describe dangerous mental health episodes in which users become entranced by the sycophantic responses of an AI chatbot. And though Thomas ended up broke and homeless, he may have been one of the lucky ones, with other cases ending in suicide, murder, or involuntary commitment. Many of the deaths are teenagers, including 16-year-old Adam Raine, whose parents sued OpenAI after discovering their son had discussed his suicide with ChatGPT for months. The case is one of eight deaths linked to ChatGPT in lawsuits across the US.

    • Harvard University ☛ When you do the math, humans still rule

      But not all efforts have been so successful. One recent analysis showed that large language models (LLMs) managed to solve a small fraction of research-level math problems, but were prone to logical errors, fundamental misconceptions, and hallucinations of existing results. Some researchers have concluded that AI tools currently are most useful for assisting with grunt work — such as literature reviews — but not solving big research problems autonomously.

    • Digital Camera World ☛ GenAI is considered a threat to traditional photography. So why have these two camera companies invested in an AI startup?

      Generative AI is often viewed as a threat to traditional photography, but two venture funds with ties to camera companies have recently invested in a startup that generates images from initial product photos. Generative AI start-up AI Model Inc. has announced its latest round of funding. Venture funds tied in part to Canon Japan and Panasonic Corporation are among the AI start-ups’ most recent investments through the Canon Marketing Japan MIRAI Fund and the Panasonic Kurashi Visionary Fund.

    • SchwarzTech ☛ SchwarzTech — Article: Leave Me Behind

      I think what’s been bothering me is that we’ve had a collective push by the anonymous “them” that everyone must use AI tools for everything or we’ll all fall “behind” (whatever that means.)

      Ronald Pursur wrote an excellent piece for Current Affairs highlighting AI’s involvement in higher education and how many schools are jumping in with no real plan or strategy just because it’s the future: [...]

    • Nolan Lawson ☛ We mourn our craft

      I didn’t ask for this and neither did you.

      I didn’t ask for a robot to consume every blog post and piece of code I ever wrote and parrot it back so that some hack could make money off of it.

      I didn’t ask for the role of a programmer to be reduced to that of a glorified TSA agent, reviewing code to make sure the AI didn’t smuggle something dangerous into production.

      And yet here we are. The worst fact about these tools is that they work. They can write code better than you or I can, and if you don’t believe me, wait six months.

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ 'AI' is a dick move

    • Addison Crump ☛ A Horrible Conclusion

      I am not fond of this recent genenerative AI movement. It is a profound waste of resources, a theft machine masquerading as intelligence, and generally a tool which enables numerous social harms at scale. I am a firm proponent that we (academics) should not be involved in the rat race to improve or to use these systems because of their enormous ethical violations.

      Yet there is a cold calculus which demands their inclusion in security testing. Not reliance, but inclusion. And though I stand by my choice to ensure that none of my research nor personal work includes these tools, I must acknowledge their impact on my domain. That impact is, so far, mostly fraudulent.

  • Social Control Media

    • CBC ☛ TikTok creators flock to UpScrolled app after U.S. takeover. Here's why

      TikTok's U.S. algorithm will be retrained with only Americans' data, according to the reported agreement. The new investor-controlled entity will set content moderation rules around what is permitted and what is not.

    • Michigan Advance ☛ Trump’s racist ‘Truth Social’ post also included whopper on debunked Michigan election fraud theory

      Michigan was ground zero for some of the claims that whipped election denialists into a frenzy at the downtown Detroit counting board facility inside the Huntington Place convention center, including a widely discredited theory that votes were switched in Antrim County, which was later found to be a result of human error and not widespread tampering of voting machines.

      The situation even led to currently pending criminal charges against two Michigan attorneys, who were charged by prosecutors in an alleged scheme to seize voting equipment and tamper with it in order to prove that there was foreign and domestic meddling in the election.

      Each of those claims has been disproven by multiple elections experts while many of the allegations resulted in defamation suits against those who propagated them.

    • YLE ☛ Medicines watchdog warns of deadly social media pill challenges

      Finland's medicines agency (Fimea) is warning about social media challenges involving over-the-counter drugs, as the consequences can be life threatening.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Nitrogen ransomware programmers lock themselves out of a payment — key management bug encrypts victims' data forever

      The exact ransomware in question is Nitrogen's VMware ESXi variant, which targets hypervisors (virtual machine host servers) and presumably encrypts the virtual machines residing therein. Hypervisor attacks aren't new, and existing analysis shows that while sysadmins are generally good at deploying endpoint protection on hosted operating systems, they sometimes have lax policies regarding hypervisors.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • Terence Eden ☛ Reputation Scores for GitHub Accounts

    The folks at GitHub know that Open Source maintainers are drowning in a sea of low-effort contributions. Even before Microsoft forced the unwanted Copilot assistant on millions of repos, it was always a gamble whether a new contributor would be helpful or just some witless jerk. Now it feels a million times worse.

• Security

  • ShadowHS: A Fileless Linux Post‑Exploitation Framework Built on a Weaponized Hackshell

    ShadowHS is a fileless Linux post-exploitation framework that runs a weaponized hackshell fully in memory. A small loader decrypts an AES-256-CBC payload, rebuilds it through anonymous file descriptors, and executes it without touching disk. Once running, it offers an interactive shell plus modules for credential theft, lateral movement, cryptomining, and quiet exfiltration. The design prioritizes stealth, operator control, and durable persistence across diverse Linux estates.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Arkansas Advocate ☛ Federal funds will help Arkansas modernize health data collection | Arkansas Advocate

      The funding will support the acquisition of clinical practice technology, remote patient health tools, telehealth hardware and software, and electronic medical record upgrades, and will also support enhancements to the Arkansas State Health Alliance for Record Exchange, the state’s official health information exchange.

    • Arkansas ☛ Arkansas Department of Health Secures $13.3 Million to Expand Statewide Health Data Infrastructure: Investment Comes Thanks To Sen. Boozman’s Support - Arkansas Department of Health

      The funding will support the acquisition of clinical practice technology, remote patient health tools, telehealth hardware and software, and electronic medical record upgrades, and will also support enhancements to the Arkansas State Health Alliance for Record Exchange (SHARE), the state’s official health information exchange. These tools will improve healthcare coordination for patients, eliminate duplicative testing, bolster partnerships between hospitals and community providers, and strengthen rural healthcare infrastructure. Better-connected healthcare data will help reduce costs, improve health outcomes, and expand access to care for people across the state.

    • The Register UK ☛ Flickr emails users about data breach, pins it on 3rd party

      In the email, Flickr said it disabled access to the affected system and removed all links to the vulnerable endpoint before notifying its email provider and demanding an investigation into the incident.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Defence Web ☛ SA’s first locally built unmanned surface vessel successfully delivered

    Eddie Noble, Owner/Managing Director of Noble Concentric Solutions, told DefenceWeb that the Sea Serpent, as a demonstrator, can do just about anything or be fitted with anything. At present it has an electro-optic system (cooled medium wave infrared camera) and Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) fitted. Dynateq International will fit a 12.7 mm remotely controlled weapon station to the vessel in Saudi Arabia under a separate contract.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ How nonviolent protest can break autocratic rule

    More and more US citizens are using a wide range of nonviolent protest methods. Some of these include coalition building, i.e., seeking broad support for their cause.

    Often, the focus is on non-cooperation, by simply refusing to cooperate with the authorities. In Minneapolis, citizens patrol the streets and warn neighbors in chat groups about officers in the area.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Mending the vestiges of jihadism

    While ISIS forces were decisively defeated in 2019 through a multinational effort, northeastern Syria is still home to pockets of former fighters – and more than 20 prison camps administered until now by Kurdish forces with U.S. support.

    Some governments and analysts worry that these camps are potential hotbeds for fomenting continued radicalism. Many of the estimated 50,000 prisoners are family members of ISIS fighters from Syria and Iraq. Approximately 8,000 – including women and children – are citizens of other countries, indicating the cross-national appeal of ISIS’ aims.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Russian 'Inspector' spacecraft intercepted communications from a dozen European satellites, report claims — fears Moscow could even manipulate trajectories or crash satellites

    European officials believe that two Russian “Inspector” SIGINT spacecraft operating in geostationary orbit have intercepted communications from at least a dozen European satellites. According to the Financial Times, both spacecraft have made “risky close approaches” to some of Europe’s most important satellites, which operate high above Earth and serve not only Europe but also parts of Africa and the Middle East.

  • The Record ☛ EU threatens TikTok with massive fine over addictive design features

    The preliminary findings follow an investigation that began in February 2024 probing features such as “infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and its highly personalised recommender system,” the European Commission said in a press release.

    If the findings are sustained, TikTok could face a fine of up to 6% of its global annual turnover.

  • Rebecca Solnit ☛ When Love Thy Neighbor Is a Cry of Resistance

    I don't think we'll get to peace and stability anytime soon, but I do believe they are losing, if thrashing violently on the way down (I cited better authorities than me on that question of losing in the essay Weak Violence, Strong Peace). In the most practical sense, the open cruelty and corruption, the lies and destruction, are driving people into the arms of the opposition (may we not drive them away ourselves).

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Mint Press News ☛ The Chomsky Epstein Files

    On multiple occasions, Chomsky expressed his desire to visit Little St. James Island, site of Epstein’s infamous sex crimes.

    Chomsky flew on Epstein’s “Lolita Express” jet, stayed at his mansions in Manhattan and Paris, and regularly met him for dinner and other social occasions.

    Chomsky quietly met with a host of other highly questionable characters, including Steve Bannon, Woody Allen, and Ehud Barak.

  • CS Monitor ☛ European politicians are toppled by Epstein files. US response is muted.

    A prince, an ambassador, senior diplomats, top politicians. All brought down by the Jeffrey Epstein files. And all in Europe, rather than the United States.

    The huge trove of Epstein documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice has sent shock waves through Europe’s political, economic, and social elites – dominating headlines, ending careers, and spurring political and criminal investigations.

  • International Business Times ☛ Epstein Island Has a Pokémon Go PokéStop, Sparking Discussion Among Netizens

    Images of the alleged PokéStop spread through social media platforms, with netizens reacting to this find and sparking conversations about the discovery. Some have noted which types of Pokémon players may find on the island. Others have contemplated what this might mean, knowing the disturbing details that took place on the infamous island. Some remain sceptical about the credibility of the discovery.

    'Only first-stage Pokemon are found on Epstein Island,' said one commenter.

    'This is big, it means Nintendo could see who used that Pokemon stop,' said another commenter, with one correcting them and pointing out that the game is initially developed by Niantic in collaboration with Nintendo.

  • Nick Heer ☛ How Bad Faith Publishers Are Weaponizing FOIA

    However, while the Heritage Foundation portrays its efforts as “oversight”, the sheer number of requests made by these groups creates logjams for everyone thereby preventing oversight. Oftentimes, they are merely requesting a huge aimless dump of communications to sift through. For example, the most recent log (PDF) from the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate is mostly comprised of requests from Aamot and Howell for emails and text messages.

  • Carole Cadwalladr ☛ We all live in Jeffrey Epstein's world

    By Tuesday, I had a scoopy piece almost ready to publish…but I’ve been unable to finish it. I have, to be perfectly honest, been overwhelmed. Some of the key stories it reveals are areas that have been my specialist interest for years. The Kremlin. Silicon Valley. MAGA and the European far right. Israeli intelligence. And there, slap bang in the middle of it is a man who I’d never wanted to pay any attention to, Jeffrey Epstein. Not only are they all connected. Epstein connects them.

  • BoingBoing ☛ How sleuths are recovering hidden Epstein documents

    The DOJ's release of Epstein-related documents was supposed to be redacted, but whoever did the job left a backdoor wide open. Email attachments were stored as base64-encoded text — basically, the raw PDF data converted to a string of letters and numbers — and nobody thought to remove them. As documented by NeoSmart Technologies, a community of volunteers has been methodically decoding these strings back into readable PDFs.

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ I Am in the Epstein Files

    Once. Someone named “Vincenzo lozzo” wrote to Epstein in email, in 2016: “I wouldn’t pay too much attention to this, Schneier has a long tradition of dramatizing and misunderstanding things.” The topic of the email is DDoS attacks, and it is unclear what I am dramatizing and misunderstanding.

• Environment

  • BIA Net ☛ Waste: the class face of the ecological crisis

    In this context, the “Zero Waste” project that the government has boasted about for years is also a striking example. This approach, which does not question production, companies, or financing and shifts responsibility onto individuals’ shoulders, does not reduce waste but merely makes it invisible. Moreover, it employs those who collect that waste street by street under heavy, precarious, and often unregistered conditions. It is hardly surprising that many companies providing services under the name of zero waste come from capital close to the government. Such greenwashing policies must be read carefully, because a genuine ecological policy has to start with the production regime itself.

  • The Age AU ☛ Investing in gold: Why experts say it's a buying opportunity despite price volatility

    The Minerals Council of Australia says gold will overtake coal and natural gas to become the nation’s second-largest export earner this year. Record global prices and expanding mine output are underpinning a 28 per cent export growth forecast to $60 billion, up from $47 billion last year.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Michigan Sierra Club presents petition calling for moratorium on data centers

    Sierra Club Michigan on Wednesday issued a petition asking the Legislature to ensure Michigan’s laws can keep pace with the significant energy and water use demanded by hyperscale data centers being proposed across the state while providing cost protections for residents. Without improved protections the group warned that these facilities could drive up energy bills, strain water resources and undermine the state’s effort to meet a 100% clean energy standard by 2040.

  • The Conversation ☛ Why walking in a national park in the dark prompts people to turn off lights at home

    Researchers trying to find out about public attitudes to darkness attended events over three days in the North York Moors National Park. Here, in one of the UK’s seven dark sky reserves (where light pollution is limited), the researchers explored how immersive and fun experiences, such as guided night walks and stargazing and silent discos, reshaped public perceptions of natural darkness and sparked ideas of what they might change in their lives.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ How to entice water guzzlers to conserve: Using the right incentives outperforms years of public messaging

    Rather than focusing on the people who had already embraced conservation—those willing to let their lawns die or remove them entirely—Brecko and Hartmann became interested in the holdouts—that is, the households with the highest water consumption. Their findings, published in the Journal of Marketing Research, argue that those households should not be shamed or ignored. Instead, they should be targeted.

  • Manton Reece ☛ Data center pause

    Wired reporting on a proposed bill to pause building data centers in New York for three years: [...]

  • Wired ☛ New York Is the Latest State to Consider a Data Center Pause

    Red and blue states alike have introduced legislation in recent weeks that would halt data center development, citing concerns from climate to high energy prices.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • India Times ☛ Crypto firm accidentally sends $44 billion in bitcoins to users

      The exchange had ‌planned ‍to distribute small cash rewards of ‍2,000 Korean won ($1.37) or more to each ‌user as part of a promotional event, but winners received at least 2,000 bitcoins each instead, media reports said.

    • University of Toronto ☛ How we failed to notice a power failure

      Over on the Fediverse, I mentioned that we once missed noticing that there had been a power failure. Naturally there is a story there (and this is the expanded version of what I said in the Fediverse thread). A necessary disclaimer is that this was all some time ago and I may be mangling or mis-remembering some of the details.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ The dark side of AI weighs on the stock market

    Software companies most at risk from the new tools were the hardest hit, as well as the investment funds that lend to these companies. But the sell-off helped push down the broader market. On Thursday, the S&P 500 turned negative for the year after falling on six of the past seven days. But it rebounded the next day, rising 1.5%.

  • Utah News Dispatch ☛ Bill would require coursework accommodations for college students with deeply held beliefs • Utah News Dispatch

    HB204 is sponsored by Rep. Michael Petersen, R-North Logan, and received a favorable recommendation from the House Education Committee in an 8-1 vote Wednesday. The bill would require public higher education institutions to make accommodations for students whose coursework comes into conflict with their religious beliefs and conscience, as long as the accommodation does not interfere with the essential education requirements of a course.

  • Brendan Gregg ☛ Why I joined OpenAI [Ed: He joined a burning ship that burns money]

    There's so many interesting things to work on, things I have done before and things I haven't. I'm already using Codex for more than just coding. Will I be doing more eBPF, Ftrace, PMCs? I'm starting with OpenAI's needs and seeing where that takes me; but given those technologies are proven for finding datacenter performance wins, it seems likely -- I can lead the way. (And if everything I've described here sounds interesting to you, OpenAI is hiring.)

    I was at Linux Plumber's Conference in Toyko in December, just after I announced leaving Intel, and dozens of people wanted to know where I was going next and why. I thought I'd write this blog post to answer everyone at once. I also need to finish part 2 of hiring a performance engineering team (it was already drafted before I joined OpenAI). I haven't forgotten.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Independent UK ☛ NSA caught phone call between someone close to Trump and foreign intelligence actor: Whistleblower

    The allegations, which Gabbard’s office strongly denies, are part of a standoff between the whistleblower, who alleges intelligence officials have slow-walked the disclosure of their complaint, and Trump administration intelligence officials, who allege they have followed the law in handling the highly sensitive claims.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ The world heard JD Vance being booed at the Olympics. Except for viewers in the US

    There is also a deeper structural pressure behind decisions like this. The Trump era has been defined in part by sustained hostility toward media institutions. Broadcasters do not operate in a vacuum; they operate inside regulatory environments, political climates and corporate risk calculations. When presidents and their allies openly threaten or target networks, it is naive to pretend that has no downstream effect on editorial choices – especially in high-stakes live broadcasts tied to billion-dollar rights deals.

    But there is a difference between contextual pressure and visible reality distortion. When global audiences can compare feeds in real time, the latter begins to resemble something else entirely: not editorial judgment, but narrative management. Which is why comparisons to Soviet-style state-controlled broadcasting models – once breathless rhetorical exaggerations – are starting to feel less hyperbolic.

  • BIA Net ☛ Sixteen-year-old arrested in İzmir over hair braiding video

    A man identifying as a member of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) shared a video on Jan 21 showing him cutting the hair braid of a member of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) in Raqqa, which the Damascus forces took over from the Kurdish groups. Since then thousands of women globally have shared videos of themselves braiding their hair to protest the incident, including senior politicians.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: End of the line for video essays

    What if there was a way for a business to transform any conduct it disliked into a felony, harnessing the power of the state to threaten anyone who acted in a way that displeased the company with a long prison sentence and six-figure fines?

    Surprise! That actually exists! It's called Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the "anticircumvention" clause, which establishes five-year sentences and $500k fines for anyone who bypasses an "effective access control" for a copyrighted work.

    Let's unpack that: every digital product has a "copyrighted work" at its core, because software is copyrighted. Digital systems are intrinsically very flexible: just overwrite, augment, or delete part of the software that powers the device or product, and you change how the product works. You can alter your browser to block ads; or alter your Android phone to run a privacy-respecting OS like Graphene; or alter your printer to accept generic ink, rather than checking each cartridge to confirm that it's the original manufacturer's product.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Washington Post CEO resigns, leaving no clear strategy

    He arrived after years of genteel decline at a newspaper that could go one of two ways: It could be a collapsing metro paper like the Chicago Tribune; or a global powerhouse like the New York Times.

    Lewis, who resigned today after overseeing deep cuts to the newsroom, lost his footing over two errors, one of his and one of owner Jeff Bezos’s: First, Lewis blocked the Post reporting on his role in the UK phone hacking scandal, preventing the publication of a story few would have read anyway. Then, Bezos pulled a planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris at the 11th hour, for apparent fear of offending Donald Trump. That endorsement wouldn’t have made much of a difference politically, but hundreds of thousands of subscribers canceled over what they saw as a craven capitulation.

  • New York Times ☛ Washington Post C.E.O. Will Lewis Steps Down After Stormy Tenure

    Will Lewis, the embattled chief executive and publisher of The Washington Post, has stepped down, the company announced Saturday, days after the newspaper came under widespread criticism for laying off hundreds of its journalists.

  • Court House News ☛ Media watchdog fires back at FTC over retaliatory probe

    Media reliability organization NewsGuard sued the Federal Trade Commission on Friday, arguing the agency has used its regulatory muscle to attack it in retaliation for its low ratings of conservative outlets.

  • Deadline ☛ NewsGuard Sues Trump FTC, Claims Effort "To Censor Speech"

    The service, launched in 2018 by Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, employs a team of journalists to review the reliability of news sites and give them a score of 0-100, information that is used by consumers and clients including AI companies, search engines, news aggregators, brands and researchers.

  • NPR ☛ State Department will delete X posts from before Trump returned to office

    The posts will be internally archived but will no longer be on public view, the State Department confirmed to NPR. Staff members were told that anyone wanting to see older posts will have to file a Freedom of Information Act request, according to a State Department employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. That would differ from how the U.S. government typically handles archiving the public online footprint of previous administrations.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • BBC ☛ 'Law firm closure has left us stuck in ongoing nightmare' [Ed: Too little, too late]

    Amy-Jade Hughes thought she was weeks away from starting a new life with her young family in Australia. Instead, the mother-of-two is one of thousands of people caught up in the sudden closure of legal firm PM Law.

    The Sheffield-based business, which specialised in personal injury, wills and conveyancing, shut its doors on Monday, leaving clients and staff in the dark.

    The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has since said it had taken the decision to "intervene into the group of firms", which include Proddow Mackay, Butterworths Solicitors, WB Pennine Solicitors and Angela Viney Conveyancing Services.

    The BBC has made repeated attempts to contact PM Law at their Sheffield headquarters in person, by telephone, via email. We have also put questions to them via the SRA and the law firm appointed intervention agents by the body. In addition, we have put questions to a number of senior staff via business social network LinkedIn.

  • TruthOut ☛ More and More Unions Are Joining the Fight Against ICE

    As armed federal agents terrorize workers across the US, organized labor is increasingly stepping up to respond.

  • TruthOut ☛ Trump’s ICE Invasion Is Upending Daily Life for Minneapolis Children

    Parents struggle to explain the occupation to their kids and teachers face empty classrooms as many students stay home.

  • Human rights Activists News Agency ☛ Day 42 of Protests: Wave of Arrests and Intensified Security Crackdowns

    According to the latest aggregated data compiled by HRANA up to the end of the forty-second day since the beginning of the protests, a total of 675 protest-related incidents have been recorded across 210 cities in 31 provinces. Based on these figures, the total number of confirmed fatalities has been reported as 6,961, of whom 6,507 are registered as “protesters,” and 178 are among the fatalities categorized as children under the age of 18. Additionally, 214 members of government-affiliated forces and 62 individuals listed under the category of “non-civilian, non-protester” have been reported. The number of cases listed as “under investigation” has been announced as 11,630. During the same period, the number of injured civilians reached 11,021, total arrests amounted to 51,465, student arrests numbered 112, forced confessions totaled 311, and summonses reached 11,048.

  • Wired ☛ More Than 800 Google Workers Urge Company to Cancel Any Contracts With ICE and CBP

    “We object to the technology we build being used to power state violence around the world,” a Google software engineer, who declined to give their name out of fear of retaliation, told reporters on Friday.

  • BoingBoing ☛ ICE can demand your data from Google without a warrant

    There's a catch, though: administrative subpoenas aren't self-enforcing. "When people receive an administrative subpoena from ICE, technically they don't have to respond," said Michelle Lapointe of the American Immigration Council. The agency has to go to court to compel compliance — an extra step it often skips. Instead, it relies on fear. One U.S. citizen who emailed a federal prosecutor his opinion about a deportation case was visited at his door by federal agents after ignoring a subpoena. They questioned him for 20 minutes, then left.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Digital Music News ☛ California Proposes Capping Ticket Resales at 10% of Face Value

  California Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) today introduced a bill to cap the resale of concert and live event tickets at no more than 10% above face value. The California Fans First Act (AB 1720) aims to curb price gouging by resale platforms and ticket brokers to ensure live events—including concerts, theater, and comedy—remain accessible for fans.

• Trademarks

  • Techdirt ☛ Reminder: Don’t Believe The NFL’s Lies About Its Super Bowl Trademarks

    It’s been several years since we last did this, but I’d like to remind you all that the National Football League plays a lot of make believe when it comes to what its trademarks for the “Super Bowl” do and do not allow it to do in terms of enforcement. Thanks largely to media outlets that repeat the false narrative the NFL puts out there, far too many people think that businesses, or even members of the public, simply cannot use the phrase “Super Bowl” in any capacity whatsoever if there is any commercial component to it.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Research: Major Pirate Site Shutdown Boosted Visits to other Pirate Sites (and Netflix)

    Does shutting down major pirate sites simply drive people to other sites, or can it also increase legal consumption? According to a new study from researchers at Chapman University and Carnegie Mellon, the answer is both. Analyzing the 2015 takedown of Brazil’s iconic MegafilmesHD portal, researchers found that the choice to go pirate or go legal largely depends on their gender and financial means.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Anna's Archive Loses .PM Domain, Adds Greenland (.GL) Backup

    The popular shadow library Anna's Archive has lost yet another domain name. The site's .pm domain was taken offline after international pressure on intermediaries continued to mount. That initially left the .li domain as the only option, but a Greenland-based backup was swiftly added.