Leftovers

• David L Farquhar ☛ Why Pets.com failed and became a dotcom joke

  The problems were evident from the beginning. in Q4 1999, Pets.com lost $42.4 million on $5.2 million in sales, bringing its total loss since its launch to $61.8 million against just $5.8 million in sales. Meanwhile it spent $11.8 million on advertising, including $1.2 million on a 1999 Superbowl ad, and lost money on every sale. Amazon was still losing money in 1999, but its gross margins were 13 percent. Ebay‘s margin was a staggering 71 percent. Pet food generally only sells with a single-digit profit margin. Pets.com was selling at a loss and also offering free shipping. This made them very popular, with 570,000 customers, but their efforts to acquire customers and then shuffle them to buying higher margin items never materialized. The company expected it to take about 3 years to start breaking even, but its venture capital and IPO money ran out long before then.

• Chuck Grimmett ☛ The blog post I think about monthly

  It also reframed data science a bit for me. You can get real world insights just by asking simple questions and looking in places nobody else is looking. You don’t always need fancy models, sometimes you can just sort a spreadsheet in different ways.

• Bix Frankonis ☛ Selective Vagueness • BIX dot BLOG

  You can’t just say, “Empathy is good, m’kay?” You have to tell people what you mean, and what your professed empathy actually has to say about—and to—the people around you. Empathy alone is not actually a virtue, at least not one that somehow can be put into practice in a vacuum. Your empathy needs to have a goal, and a direction, and it needs to be about making it clear what are your actual values in the actual world of people going around being people, together.

• Ruben Schade ☛ Sandwich questionnaire

  Sandwiches unite the world. I love that local cultures are able to take something so utilitarian and make it their own.

• Flamed Fury ☛ Fresh 88x31 Buttons

  I’ve talked about Relics Of The Web previously and I love the 88x31 format, but I still think we could have a good time with a larger banner size too. Maybe Dan’s next project could be a banner generator? Let’s make it happen, lol.

• Hardware

  • Darko Mesaroš ☛ Can my SPARC server host a website?

    TL;DR: I’m hosting a website on a 25-year-old Sun Netra X1 SPARC server running OpenBSD 7.8. The setup includes: Noctua fan mods for quiet operation, httpd serving static HTML/CSS, OpenBSD’s pf firewall with default-deny rules, and Cloudflare tunnels to expose it safely without port forwarding. The server pulls ~55MB of RAM and serves pages from my garage. Check it out live at sparc.rup12.net - because why not?

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] Pingtok: Teenagers taking drugs on TikTok

  • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] EU wants TikTok to change addictive design

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] EU says TikTok's 'addictive design' harms children

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] EU Accuses TikTok of 'Addictive Design' That Harms Children, Seeks Changes to Protect Users

• Proprietary

  • Neowin ☛ Riot's 2XKO team hit hard by layoffs just weeks after launch

    Riot is best known for its multiplayer strategy (MOBA) game League of Legends, but it has also delved into other genres in recent years. One of those turned out to be a fighting experience. Simply dubbed 2XKO, the free-to-play game launched in January 2026 featuring League characters as fighters. However, it doesn't look like Riot is happy with its release or growth during the past month.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Jérôme Marin ☛ How AI turned memory chips into a gold mine

      Last year, SK Hynix posted the highest operating profit in its history: 47 trillion won ($32.2 billion), twice as much as in 2024. Growth was even more spectacular than that of its revenue, which rose 47% over the same period. The favorable environment is also benefiting Samsung, its main rival in the memory-chip market, which reported 44 trillion won in operating profit. In the fourth quarter alone, the group even set records, buoyed by a surge in profits from its semiconductor division.

    • Jérôme Marin ☛ The $700 billion AI bill

      Questions about a potential bubble surrounding generative artificial intelligence are doing little to curb the ambitions of US tech giants. Quite the opposite: they are preparing to double down on investment. This year, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta are expected to rack up nearly $700 billion in capital expenditures — better known as capex — an increase of 60% compared with 2025. A level of investment that is “justified and sustainable,” according to Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, the main beneficiary of this spending frenzy.

      These colossal sums are primarily being poured into expanding computing power, through the purchase of hundreds of thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) used to train and run AI models. It is a full-blown arms race to avoid missing the promised technological revolution, one that is beginning to seriously worry financial markets. Not only is the profitability of these investments far from guaranteed, but their scale is now approaching, or even exceeding, the cash generated by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta.

    • Greg Morris ☛ A Very Good Guess

      This is the bit that gets lost in every breathless announcement about an LLM passing a bar exam or acing a medical test. Passing a test and being a doctor are two completely different things. One requires pattern matching against a dataset. The other requires judgement, context, and the ability to sit across from another human and figure out what's actually going on.

      LLMs are not alive. They don't "know" things. They are prediction machines that guess the most logical output based on the data they've been trained on. As much as the companies might lead you to believe otherwise, and I genuinely think Anthropic are under the impression Claude is alive, all LLM output is a guess. The more powerful they get, the better the guess. It's still a guess.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ UK tabloid newspapers quote fake experts created with AI

      The incentive to print this stuff is obvious — journalists are treated like trash. You had dreams once, but now you work at a declining content mill which runs on clicks, and anything that saves you five minutes makes your job that little bit less precarious for a moment. You see an email of PR trash, you top and tail it in house style, bang! Job done. You quoted an expert, see, you can point at your journalism.

    • The New Stack ☛ GitLab CEO on why AI isn't helping enterprise ship code faster

      As Staples noted, developers spend only 10 to 20% of their day actually writing code. That translates to maybe one to two hours per day. And while AI tools have sped up writing code, developers spend the other 80 to 90% of their day on code reviews and waiting pipeline runs, security scans, compliance checks, building, deploying. Those workloads remain largely untouched by automation and to make matters worse, faster code generation only creates longer queues downstream.

    • The Conversation ☛ AI-generated text is overwhelming institutions – setting off a no-win ‘arms race’ with AI detectors

      In 2023, the science fiction literary magazine Clarkesworld stopped accepting new submissions because so many were generated by artificial intelligence. Near as the editors could tell, many submitters pasted the magazine’s detailed story guidelines into an AI and sent in the results. And they weren’t alone. Other fiction magazines have also reported a high number of AI-generated submissions.

      This is only one example of a ubiquitous trend. A legacy system relied on the difficulty of writing and cognition to limit volume. Generative AI overwhelms the system because the humans on the receiving end can’t keep up.

    • Shayon Mukherjee ☛ Understanding how GIL Affects Checkpoint Performance in PyTorch Training

      I have been spending time learning about model training infrastructure lately, and something that stood out to me was GIL contention when saving training checkpoints in PyTorch. Having spent years in the Ruby world dealing with the GVL (Global VM Lock, Ruby’s equivalent), I was naturally drawn to it. The symptoms are familiar, like - you spin up background threads expecting parallelism, and instead everything gets slower.

      So, as one does, I decided to go down some rabbit holes as an opportunity to learn more about what the GIL actually is, why it makes saving checkpoints in the background counterproductive when done with threads, what the fix looks like, and how I measured all of it on an H100 (rented for a few hours) with a real Llama model to get a better mental model. Here is my attempt at piecing it all together.

    • Baldur Bjarnason ☛ Have I hardened against LLMs?

      My views on the technology itself are roughly the same as when I published the first edition of the book. The downside pretty comprehensively outweighs the upside and, to echo your own summary, the technology is only narrowly useful for a very specific set of use cases, and even then you need to take care.

      That’s still my position. What’s hardened are my views on the tech industry, software, management, and influential members of the software developer ecosystem.

  • Social Control Media

    • Vox ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] The messy truth about TikTok’s Cheeto Mussolini-aligned takeover

    • Cédric ☛ No more YouTube algorithm | alienlebarge

      Let’s start a little experiment. Since I have no self-control, I need technology to help me out.

      For the next few days, I’ve configured my apps to avoid being subjected to the YouTube algorithm.

      To do this, I’m relying on three essential building blocks: [...]

    • BoingBoing ☛ DHS is stalking Reddit users online

      Independent journalist and dashing leading man, Ken Klippenstein, recently spilled the beans on something many of us assumed had been going on for a long time: the Department of Homeland Security has been spying on social media users. With a warrant! And only those who pose a significant threat to national security or have been convicted of a crime!

    • Ken Klippenstein ☛ Homeland Security Spying on Reddit Users

      At one point the bulletin inadvertently reveals the “intelligence collection requirements” driving this surveillance—a window into how the federal government justifies this kind of social media snooping on Americans. According to these requirements, much of the work is sanctioned under so-called “Force Protection,” a military term for safeguarding troops from enemy attack. By repurposing this battlefield concept, homeland security is treating a Reddit thread like a hostile environment.

      But the homeland security spies are interested in more than just Budget-Chicken. They are using Reddit to gauge the vibe of the country at large and what they think of immigration authorities like themselves. (They could simply consult public polling, which most recently suggests that almost two-thirds of Americans believe immigration enforcement has “gone too far.”)

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Spaceraccoon ☛ Ticket Tricking OpenSSL.org with Google Groups | Spaceraccoon's Blog

      Over the holidays, I found some time to work on a small idea I had for a while. As a sometimes-Google Workspace admin with a security background, I’ve always been aware of the risk of having public Google Groups. They’re an easy vector for the Ticket Trick attack, where email OTPs or verification emails are sent to a Google Group under an official company domain, allowing that user to then create or verify an account as @companya.com. Depending on how well the company has secured their account management controls, this can leak access to internal portals or SaaS tenants.

      While writing this up, I realised this had already been done about six years ago, but I thought what was interesting was the evolution of the tooling and approach.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Remove Your Ring Camera With a Claw Hammer

      You want to point a freaking camera at every postal worker and cookie-selling Girl Scout and dinner party attendee that approaches your door? What is this, a house, or a prison? It is plainly crazy. It is far afield from reasonable. Its normalization is evidence of a latent societal sickness. We don’t point cameras at our friends. We don’t leer suspiciously at our neighbors. We don’t assail humanity with an accusatory spotlight. These things are not okay.

• Defence/Aggression

  • European Commission ☛ Commission preliminarily finds TikTok's addictive design in breach of the Digital Services Act

    The Commission's investigation preliminarily indicates that TikTok did not adequately assess how these addictive features could harm the physical and mental wellbeing of its users, including minors and vulnerable adults.

    For example, by constantly ‘rewarding' users with new content, certain design features of TikTok fuel the urge to keep scrolling and shift the brain of users into ‘autopilot mode'. Scientific research shows that this may lead to compulsive behaviour and reduce users' self-control.

    Additionally, in its assessment, TikTok disregarded important indicators of compulsive use of the app, such as the time that minors spend on TikTok at night, the frequency with which users open the app, and other potential indicators.

  • Nick Heer ☛ TikTok’s Design Breaches Digital Services Act, According to Preliminary European Commission Findings

    It is fair for regulators to question the efficacy of measures claiming to “promote healthier sleep habits”. This wishy-washy verbiage is just as irritating as when it is employed by supplement companies and it should be more strictly regulated.

  • NBC ☛ Landmark trial accusing social media companies of addicting children to their platforms begins

    Instagram’s parent company Meta and Google’s YouTube will face claims that their platforms deliberately addict and harm children. TikTok and Snap, which were originally named in the lawsuit, settled for undisclosed sums.

    “This was only the first case — there are hundreds of parents and school districts in the social media addiction trials that start today, and sadly, new families every day who are speaking out and bringing Big Tech to court for its deliberately harmful products,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the nonprofit Tech Oversight Project.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Architecture Beneath the Crisis

    After publishing eleven Crisis essays, I wanted to step back from the events themselves and talk about the deeper architecture underneath them — popular sovereignty, moral inheritance, contingency, sacrifice, redemption, and the strange feeling that something in American civic life has shifted from drift to impact.

    In this conversation, I move between philosophy and politics, between Wittgenstein and Thomas Jefferson, between narrative and law, between moral imagination and democratic responsibility. It is unscripted and unfiltered — not a performance, not a debate, but a real-time attempt to make sense of how we inherit freedom and what it means to exercise it when it’s under strain.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The Nuremberg Caucus

    But what would "rising to the moment" look like? What can the opposition party do without majorities in either house? Well, they could start by refusing to continue to fund ICE, a masked thug snatch/murder squad that roams our streets, killing with impunity:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-passes-sprawling-spending-package-democrats-split-ice-funding-rcna255273

    That's table stakes. What would a real political response to fascism look like? Again, it wouldn't stop with banning masks for ICE goons, or even requiring them to wear QR codes: [...]

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-09 [Older] Ukraine Opens up Arms Exports, Seeking to Cash in on Wartime Technology

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Ukraine Urges Acceleration of Peace Talks, Says Only Cheeto Mussolini Can Broker Deal

    • NL Times ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] Over 130 Ukrainian soldiers receiving treatment, rehab in Netherlands

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Turns to US Military Leaders for Diplomatic Efforts on Iran and Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] Canada Sends AIM Missiles for Ukraine Air Defences, Ukrainian Minister Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] Ukraine Seeks to Soften Key Condition for New IMF Loan, Bloomberg News Reports

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] In freezing Kyiv, Ukrainians endure without heat, power

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] Ukraine updates: POW swap deal reached at Abu Dhabi talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Xi, Putin Hail Ties in Video Call as Ukraine War Nears Anniversary

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-03 [Older] Ukraine updates: Strikes on Kyiv resume amid deep cold

    • The Local DK ☛ 2026-02-03 [Older] Sweden and Denmark pledge $290 million to Ukraine air defence

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-03 [Older] Families Suffer as Ukrainian Engineers Can No Longer Keep up With Repairing Infrastructure

    • CNN ☛ 2026-02-09 [Older] Russian authorities detain suspect over St. Petersburg cafe blast

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-09 [Older] Ukraine updates: Child killed in Russian drone strike

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-09 [Older] Germany Indicts Ukrainian Over Parcel Bomb Allegations Tied to Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-09 [Older] Russian Drone Attacks on Ukraine Kill Four, Including Mother and Child

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-09 [Older] Russian Forces Pressuring Pokrovsk as 'Last Battles' Rage

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-09 [Older] Russia's FSB Says Ukraine's SBU Was Behind Assassination Attempt on Top General

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-09 [Older] Russia's Lavrov Sees No 'Bright Future' for Economic Ties With U.S

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Heated Rivalry and Modest Fantasies for Monstrous Times

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Arrest in Dubai after shooting of Russian general — FSB

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Could Hungary win its case against the EU's Russian gas ban?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] US, Russia vie for influence in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso

    • The Age AU ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Zelensky says US is readying huge economic deals with Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Russian Skater Petr Gumennik Becomes Latest Olympian to Change Music Due to Copyright Issues

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Indian Refiners Avoid Russian Oil in Push for US Trade Deal

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Four Indian Students Injured in Knife Attack in Russia, Embassy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Russian Airstrike on Ukrainian City Kills 1 as US Pushes June Deadline for Peace Deal

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Russia Says Man Suspected of Shooting Top General Has Been Flown to Moscow From Dubai

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Suspect in Shooting of Senior Russian General Has Been Detained, Russia Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Ukraine Businesses Struggle to Cope as Russian Attacks Bring Power Cuts and Uncertainty

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-08 [Older] Ukraine Imposes Sanctions on Foreign Suppliers of Components for Russian Missiles

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia strikes war-hit nation’s power grid

    • The Age AU ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] ‘Sabotage’: Russian general shot in Moscow amid Ukraine ceasefire talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] Russia Launched 400 Drones, 40 Missiles to Hit Ukraine's Energy Sector, Zelenskiy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] Russia Launches Massive Attack on Ukraine's Energy System, Zelenskiy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] Two Polish Airports Reopen After NATO Jets Activated Over Russian Strikes on Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] The Kyiv Family, With Its Pets and Pigs, Defying Russia and the Cold

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] Russia to Interrogate Two Suspects Over Attempted Killing of General, Report Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] Ukraine Backs Pope's Call for Olympic Truce in War With Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] US Pushes Russia and Ukraine to End War by Summer, Zelenskiy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-07 [Older] US Gave Ukraine and Russia a June Deadline to Reach Agreement to End War, Zelenskyy Says

    • CBC ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] U.S.-Russia nuclear weapons treaty has expired. What happens now?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] Russian general hospitalized after 'several shots' in Moscow

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] A Deputy Chief of Russia's Military Intelligence Service Is Shot and Wounded in Moscow

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] Azerbaijan Issues Strong Protest to Russia Over Lawmaker's Comments on Karabakh Trial

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] Norway Says It Expects More Russian Spying in the Arctic, Sabotage Activity

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] Pro-Russia Disinformation Falsely Links Macron to Epstein, French Government Source Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] Kremlin Says Russia and US Agree Quick Arms Talks Needed. US Accuses China of Secret Nuclear Tests

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] Russian Foreign Minister Accuses Ukraine of Assassination Attempt on Top Russian General in Moscow

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] Russian Intelligence Official Under Western Sanctions Is Shot and Wounded in Moscow

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] Zelenskyy Says Ukrainian Air Force Needs to Improve as Russian Drone Barrages Take a Toll

    • Scheerpost ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] Moscow: US and Russia ‘No Longer Bound’ by New START Limits as Treaty Set to Expire

    • CBC ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] U.S., Russia agree to re-establish military-to-military dialogue following Ukraine talks

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] New START: Last US-Russia nuclear treaty expires, raising fears of new global arms race

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] Russia expels German diplomat in tit-for-tat espionage row

    • Truthdig ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] Last Treaty Curbing US, Russian Nuclear Weapons Has Collapsed

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] Kremlin Dismisses Western Claims That Epstein Was Russian Intelligence Asset

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] Kremlin Says Russia Will Stay a Responsible Nuclear Power Despite New START's Expiry

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] US and Russia Agree to Reestablish Military Dialogue After Ukraine Talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] Russia Expels German Diplomat, Accuses Berlin of 'Spy Mania'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] Russian Captain Jailed Over Crew Member's Death in U.S. Tanker Crash

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] Ukraine Says Starlink Terminals Used by Russia Deactivated in Blow to Moscow

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] Ukraine Hit Infrastructure at Russian Missile Launch Site, Military Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] US, Russia to Reestablish Military-To-Military Talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] US, Ukraine, Russia Delegations Agree to Exchange 314 Prisoners, Witkoff Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] India's oil shake-up: Can Venezuela really replace Russia?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Ukraine updates: Trilateral talks as Russia keeps up attacks

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] US works to counter Russia in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso

    • HRW ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Russia: Crackdown on Dissent Escalates

    • HRW ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Ukraine: Civilians Perennial Targets of Russian Attacks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Russia and Ukraine Envoys Meet in Abu Dhabi for 2 Days of US-Brokered Talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] New Arms Race Looms as Clock Ticks Down on Last Russia-US Nuclear Treaty

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] At Least Seven Killed, Eight Hurt in Russian Attacks in Ukraine-Controlled Donetsk, Governor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] China's Xi and Russia's Putin Discuss Their Growing Links, Ties With US and Global Crises

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Cyprus Confirms Death of Russian Ex-Uralkali CEO Baumgertner

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] In Kyiv Freezing Under Russian Attacks, a Veteran Plumber Fights Back by Fixing the Heat

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] 'Nobody Wants to Die': Ukrainians Flee From Southeast as Russia Lurches Forward

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Olympics-Italy Foiled Russia-Linked Cyberattacks on Embassies, Olympic Sites, Minister Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Pope Leo Urges Russia and US to Renew Last Nuclear Arms Treaty

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Russian Comedian Accused of Telling Offensive Joke About Ukraine War Veteran Is Jailed for Nearly Six Years

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Russia Says Uranium Proposal for Iran Is Still on the Table

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Serbia Seeks EU Gas Deals as It Reduces Russian Supplies, Says President Vucic

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Ukraine, Russia Wrap 'Productive' First Day of US-Backed Peace Talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-04 [Older] Ukraine Says Russia Is Illegally Targeting the Power Grid. Here's What the Law Says

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-03 [Older] FIFA boss Infantino wants Russia to return to football

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-03 [Older] Poland to Probe Possible Links Between Epstein and Russia, PM Tusk Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-03 [Older] Russia Disregarded U.S. Peace Efforts by Attacking Ukraine's Energy Sector, Zelenskiy Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-03 [Older] Russia's Investment in Northern Fleet Undiminished, UK Naval Chief Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-03 [Older] Russia's Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Discuss Work of OPEC+, Kremlin Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-03 [Older] Ukraine to Adjust Peace Negotiators' Work After Russia's Strike, Zelenskiy Says

    • Vox ☛ 2026-02-03 [Older] Is a new US-Russia arms race about to begin?

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Business Insider ☛ Waymo Gets Grilled by Lawmakers Over Chinese Cars and Overseas Workers

      "You said in your testimony that we're locked in a race with China, but it seems like you're getting in bed with China," Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio said, pointing to Waymo's plans to use vehicles made by a subsidiary of Geely, a Chinese automaker.

      Peña said the Alphabet-owned company uses a mix of platforms, but Moreno pushed back, questioning if Waymo was using a "backdoor" to sidestep the federal "connected vehicle" rule, which restricts foreign-linked technology in sensitive systems.

    • New Republic ☛ Ro Khanna Reads Out Names of Six “Powerful Men” in Epstein Files

      “Yesterday, Congressman Massie and I went to the Department of Justice to read the unredacted Epstein files. We spent about two hours there, and we learned that 70 to 80 percent of the files are still redacted. In fact, there were six wealthy, powerful men that the DOJ hid for no apparent reason,” Khanna said. “When Congressman Massie and I pointed this out to the DOJ, they acknowledged their mistake, and now they have revealed the identity of these six powerful men.

    • The Londoner ☛ Jeremy Vine loves him, motorists hate him. Is this man London’s most controversial cyclist?

      Erp began filming himself for protection in 2006, as soon as bike-mounted video cameras hit the market. He talks about these early devices like some talk about classic cars, reminiscing to me about his first: an ungainly, telescope-like camera called the Oregon Scientific. As he amassed a small following on YouTube, he would occasionally burn footage of dangerous divers onto DVDs and take the evidence down to his local police station. But the authorities rarely did anything.

      It wasn’t until 2018 that these small acts of witness started turning into real prosecutions. Andy Cox, head of the Met’s roads and traffic policing unit, announced that the force would begin prosecuting drivers on the basis of dashcam footage. “The police cannot be everywhere all of the time, but the public can be,” Cox said. And so a star was born: Erp became a prolific chronicler of road crime.

    • BoingBoing ☛ This cyclist has gotten 36 London drivers banned

      Erp — known to London's motorists as Cycling Mikey — has reported over 2,400 drivers to the Metropolitan Police since 2019 for using their phones at the wheel. He has a junction in Hyde Park nicknamed "Gandalf's corner" because he stands in the road, blocking wrong-way traffic. His reports have led to at least 2,721 penalty points, £168,568 in fines, and 36 driver disqualifications, The Londoner reports. He's caught Guy Ritchie and Frank Lampard on camera and uploads everything to his channel, which has 120,000 subscribers.

      Erp was 19 when a drunk driver killed his father in Harare, Zimbabwe. He started filming London drivers in 2006, but prosecutions didn't materialize until 2018, when the Met began accepting dashcam evidence. He's been punched, kicked, and run over. The Daily Mail named him one of their top 12 villains of 2024, alongside Oasis and school dinners.

    • YLE ☛ Valmet Automotive gears up to build electric buses in Finland

      In mid-December, Valmet Automotive announced plans to assemble military vehicles for Sisu Auto at the Uusikaupunki facility. The firm also announced plans in October to partner with Finnish defence vehicle firm Patria in manufacturing efforts.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Vox ☛ 2026-02-06 [Older] Those cute talking parrots on TikTok? A new investigation reveals the cruel “bird mills” that breed them for profit.

• Finance

  • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-05 [Older] Analysis-Big US Banks Boost Washington Lobbying Muscle as Policy Fights Heat Up

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Gray Media Group ☛ Family says HOA told them they couldn’t use their generator during ice storm blackout: ‘It’s unbearable’

    Caravello said her family set up the generator safely outside on the porch and ran the cords through their door during the blackout.

    But just hours after starting up the generator, Caravello received an email from their HOA management company, Metropolitan Properties, demanding they “remove it immediately.” The letter cited fire hazard concerns and said the generator didn’t fit the community’s aesthetic guidelines.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Next Move ☛ Olympic Protest

    Of course not. Those regimes would never tolerate the (frankly, mild) criticism American athletes are now voicing. There’d be duct tape over the mouth of any Team PRC athlete before they could get out the Mandarin for “mixed emotions.”

    I should know. I represented the Soviet Union on the global chess circuit from a young age. A KGB handler always accompanied me for chess tournaments abroad. Before I turned 20, the Soviet government kept my mother back in the USSR in order to discourage defection. The communist authorities essentially made her their hostage.

    Apparently, this is what MAGA wants to emulate.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • [Old] Doc Searls ☛ Toward post-Journalism journalism

    Let’s start a quarter-millennium ago, with The Enlightenment, the ideas of which were applied by the framers of our republic. The Enlightenment’s value system elevated the principles of liberty, freedom, self-reliance, personal rights, and reason, among others. As a movement, it was suspended when industry won the industrial revolution, which, among other things, created the modern corporation. By “modern” I mean big, or wannabe big. (Although the East India Company was big enough to deserve the Boston Tea Party in 1773.) Think railroads, oil companies, car companies, phone companies… and media companies, starting with newspapers.

  • Nieman Lab ☛ As the nation’s eyes turn to Minneapolis, they’re also turning to Minnesota Public Radio

    Minnesota Public Radio finished the fourth quarter of 2025 as the No. 1 local public radio outlet in the United States in terms of web traffic, according to our regular rankings derived from Similarweb data. It also finished as No. 1 in traffic for the months of November and December, though Oregon Public Broadcasting snuck past it to take the top spot in October.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Periodic reminder that "good billionaire" Marc Benioff is still a massive piece of shit

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ How Sweden defied liberal outrage to crush the gang [sic] violence epidemic

    In April 2024, Swedish police were handed sweeping new powers to tackle the rise of Middle Eastern drug syndicates that were grooming boys and girls into being “foot soldiers” by offering them up to 150,000 kroner (£12,500) per job.

    Across Swedish cities, officers now have the power to stop and search people – including children – and vehicles without specific suspicion of a crime, similar in scope to powers given to police in Britain.

  • Two law firm workers banned from profession after theft convictions [Ed: Theft is OK in this profession as long as it is done "professionally". They go after the wrong Wilson, the lesser thief.]

    Two women who were separately convicted of theft from the law firms where they worked have been banned from the profession.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • [Old] PIRG ☛ Jared Wilson, Voices for Right to Repair

    I want to emphasize just how much consolidation is affecting this. Even if they had this repair monopoly, but there was some segmentation, it would provide some incentive for these dealerships to do a better job. And the fact that they have consolidated so much means that they absolutely don’t have to at all, because you just have no other choice. It’s not practical to take your 20-ton machine and move it 300 miles to go get work done. The logistics of that just don’t work.

  • [Old] NBC ☛ Right-to-repair revolution: Farmers challenge John Deere's control over equipment repair

    According to the lawsuit he is part of, Wilson and others accuse John Deere of blocking farmers and everyday mechanics from fixing equipment without going through John Deere dealers. Although the company doesn’t prohibit users from fixing equipment themselves, the lawsuit claims it locks users out of repairs because of the limited access to software that only dealerships can access. The lawsuit says that makes most fixes nearly impossible.A lot like cars, the farming equipment is equipped with sensors. The John Deere tractors, for instance, run on firmware that is necessary for basic functions, according to the lawsuit. If something is wrong with the equipment, a code will appear on a display monitor inside the machine. The suit says interpreting the error codes on tractors, for instance, requires software that “Deere refuses to make available to farmers.”

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Don Marti ☛ speaking truth to weakness

  But raising a stink about this stuff might not be speaking truth to power so much as pointing out flaws in something that’s already precarious. Google and Meta already have about half the ad money, but advertising grows about as fast as the economy does, and investors expect Google and Meta to keep growing at double-digit rates. The flood of decisions to keep doing more crimes, faster, is sounding more and more like desperation. What if the “content and regulation” issues are part of an increasingly frantic scramble for short-term revenue?

• Patents

  • BoingBoing ☛ BMW patents logo-shaped screw to block DIY repairs

    In the latest blow to right to repair, BMW has patented a screw which incorporates the automaker's iconic logo design into the head. The screw head design patent filing was spotted by Autoblog: [...]

  • Arena Media Brands LLC ☛ BMW’s Screw That No One Else Can Turn - Autoblog

    BMW patented a roundel-shaped screw head requiring a special, brand-specific tool.

    The design prevents owners and independent mechanics from servicing some car components.

    Competing brands like Mercedes-Benz are making vehicles easier, not harder, to repair.

• Gemini* and Gopher

  • Technology and Free Software

    • Gatekeeping the Weird Web

      So he got in touch with Microsoft, or tried to. Really what he had was an AI chatbot (because, well, that's all Microsoft seems to do these days), and a ticketing system that seemed to bury his tickets; he suspects the system was probably flooded with people trying to improve their SEO, and I don't doubt it, because isn't that the way of the web these days, a bunch of selfish twits making things hard to impossible for everything else. It wasn't until Ars Technica reached out to Microsoft that some of the blocks got removed. And it's only some: the front page got re-added, but certain high-profile sites that should've been ranking, weren't. Partial success.