Leftovers

• Nick Heer ☛ On Software Quality – Pixel Envy

  When I think about the quality of something, I put my expectations in context. If I were thinking about the quality of a restaurant meal, for example, it is not enough to merely provide sustenance. It must taste good, should look good, and ideally be more interesting than the individual ingredients suggest. The balance is different in software. The most important factor is whether the features I use perform as expected. If it does so with unique design and flair, that is a welcome bonus, but it must be built on a solid foundation.

  In short, the way I think about software quality is the amount of meaningful problems.

• Jack Baty ☛ Pausing this (for now) - Jack Baty

  I'm fickle, and could be back before you know it, so I'm leaving this up, for now.

  See y'all back at baty.net.

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Can psychopaths change?

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Deep sea landscapes are a new frontier of human exploration – here’s what we may find

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Curious kids: why don’t humans have tails?

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Why it’s funnier when you’re not allowed to laugh

• Career/Education

  • The Local DK ☛ 'Ditch your hustler mindset': How internationals cope with Danish workplace norms

    Many of the readers who responded to our survey mentioned work-life balance as a major, and positive readjustment they had to make.

  • The Georgia Recorder ☛ Trump Education Department outsources more responsibilities, continuing proposed wind-down

    McMahon “is unlawfully dismantling the Education Department by moving programs and offices to other federal agencies despite a clear warning from Congress that she lacks the authority to do so,” Gittleman said.

    She added that “these moves come as the Trump Administration has attempted to fire large numbers of career public servants in these very offices — and is now trying to shift their critical work across multiple federal agencies with no educational expertise.”

  • Unmitigated Risk ☛ Teach to the Median, Punish the Variance

    Factories exist to produce consistent, cost-effective products. That is the point. The relentless optimization of cost of goods sold is not a side effect of industrial production. It is the mandate. And it works, until it doesn’t. The reason products last so much less than they did twenty years ago is not that we forgot how to make durable things. It is that durability lost the cost argument. Quality is expensive. Variance is expensive. The system optimizes both out. What survives is the median product, built to a price, reliable enough to ship, and no more.

  • David Gerrells ☛ agents, ai, and software engineering

    Down the road in my career I, like yourself, have learned that often "A" decision is better than no decision. When someone asks what the "best" solution is the answer is that dreaded "it depends". How big is it? How long do we have? What is the budget? What has already been built? What was it made of?

  • Chris Coyier ☛ You Get Good At What You Do (Or Do You?)

    I used to feel really strongly about this. You get good at what you do. Like, if you build websites all the time, you get good at building websites. If you make burritos all the time, you get good at making burritos.

  • Bix Frankonis ☛ The Theft Of An Ideal

    So, it really is about theft, not just loss. The system is what it does, and what it does is extract as much value from you as possible while offering too little in return, leaving behind our charred husks. It is a social cannibalism that, as Sergeant Wu said, is pronounced “capitalism”.

  • CER ☛ England: Time to replace Computer Science with Computing

    Bottomline: CS just isn’t the thing anymore. Computing and computing across the curriculum is what is needed.

    As a director of a Program in Computing for the Arts and Sciences, and someone who spent 25 years in a College of Computing, I wholly endorse this change and welcome it. As I described in a blog post from a couple of years back, “computer science” was originally invented to be a broad subject to be taught to everyone. Over the last 60 years, “computer science” has become more narrow (e.g., overly emphasizing algorithms while de-emphasizing building and creativity and social impacts, as Sue Sentance describes in this blog post, while “computing” represents a broader perspective. When we think about what should be taught to everyone in secondary school, Computing (and digital literacy, as the reports suggest) are more appropriate than what we now mean when we say Computer Science.

• Hardware

  • Andrew Eikum ☛ Things I Like: Feker Alice 98 keyboard

    A coworker at my job just had one on his desk one day. I did a double-take. It looked almost exactly like the old Microsoft keyboards, but it definitely wasn’t. I picked it up (my coworker was not in the office that day) and looked underneath for more info on what the heck this thing is. It’s a “Feker Alice Ergonomic Keyboard,” huh? I ran back to my desk to look it up and there it is! Someone has finally remade the old Microsoft keyboard layout! With the numpad and everything!

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Techdirt ☛ MAHA People Are Mad At RFK Jr. And For Good Reason As He Reverses Stance On Glyphosate

    Bayer-Monsanto has been the defendant in a number of lawsuits over its Roundup product. Specifically, those suits have been powered by claims that glyphosate causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer primarily impacting blood cells. Whether or not you or I think those claims are true, Kennedy sure said he did, since he acted as counsel in some of these suits.

  • Greg Morris ☛ Think For Yourself

    Every running subreddit I visit has some version of the same post. "My Runna plan says 10 miles today but my knee hurts, what should I do?" or "Garmin is telling me to take a rest day but I feel fine, should I ignore it?" These are grown adults asking strangers on the [Intternet] for permission to listen to their own body.

  • Politico LLC ☛ RFK Jr. says we need more herbicide production, stunning his followers

    “We can secure supply chains without giving the most evil corporation in the world immunity,” Vani Hari, a social media influencer and Kennedy supporter, wrote on X, referencing Trump’s move to increase production of the herbicide, glyphosate, which is sold as Roundup by the German conglomerate Bayer.

• Proprietary

  • Ubisoft CEO Promises Continued Layoffs, Says New Strategy Will Fix Post-Pandemic Struggles at Studio

    Ubisoft began 2026 with a massive reorganization that divided the company into creative houses. These houses are focused on specific ‘billion-dollar’ franchises to pull the publisher out of the red. However, much more resizing is still expected in the future.

    Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot bluntly states that future layoffs are a huge part of the $200 million cost reductions. This resizing and voluntary departures are essential to achieving ‘disciplined workforce management’ as part of the publisher’s long-term goals.

    Why it matters: Despite the recent revamp, Ubisoft has a long way to go before it sheds enough weight. Therefore, a lot more trouble is expected for the current developers.

  • Marcin Wichary ☛ “Just a little detail that wouldn’t sell anything”

    The green LED was replaced by a white one, but “pulsating light indicates that the computer is sleeping” buried the nicest part of it – the animation was designed to mimic human breathing at 12 breaths per minute, and feel comforting and soothing: [...]

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Sam Altman Fumes That It Takes Longer to Train a Human Than an AI, Plus They Eat All That Wasteful Food

      The latest case in point: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s tone-deaf comments at an event hosted by The Indian Express — made fresh off his skin-crawlingly awkward refusal to join hands with Anthropic’s Dario Amodei on stage with other industry titans — in which he attempted to downplay critiques of AI’s environmental impact.

    • Indian Express ☛ Sam Altman at Express Adda: Why training a human for 20 years uses more energy than ChatGPT | Technology News - The Indian Express

      Altman was responding to a question posed by Anant Goenka, Executive Director of The Indian Express Group, who cited a previous interview with Bill Gates and asked whether it’s accurate to say a single ChatGPT query currently uses the equivalent of 1.5 iPhone battery charges.

    • Wired ☛ AI Will Never Be Conscious

      In his new book, A World Appears, Michael Pollan argues that artificial intelligence can do many things—it just can’t be a person.

    • Wired ☛ ‘Uncanny Valley’: AI Researcher Resignations, Bots Hiring Humans, and Evie Magazine’s Party

      This episode of Uncanny Valley covers the people resigning from AI companies and the humans getting hired by AI agents. Plus, we attend a soiree thrown by a conservative women's magazine.

    • Seth Michael Larson ☛ Respecting maintainer time should be in security policies

      This makes triaging vulnerabilities by often under-resourced maintainer more difficult, time-consuming, and stressful. Whether a report is a genuine vulnerability or not, it now requires more time from maintainers to make a determination than is necessary. I've heard from multiple maintainers how specifically report length weighs negatively on maintainer time, whether these are “slop vulnerability reports” or just overly-thorough reporters.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Is AI Good for Democracy?

      Beneficiaries of these arms races are US mega-corporations capturing wealth from the rest of us at an unprecedented rate. A substantial fraction of global economy has reoriented around AI in just the past few years, and that trend is accelerating. In parallel, this industry’s lobbying interests are quickly becoming the object, rather than the subject, of US government power.

      To understand these arms races, let’s look at an example of particular interest to democracies worldwide: how AI is changing the relationship between democratic government and citizens. Interactions that used to happen between people and elected representatives are expanding to a massive scale, with AIs taking the roles that humans once did.

    • Pete Brown ☛ Tech people keep falling for the same scam.

      There’s an argument to be had as to whether, absent all of the cultural and economic forces that have shaped and which drive the tech industry, the products that industry builds are good or bad in the abstract. But there is no way any sentient, responsibly aware adult should be looking at what has happened to basically every part of the tech economy and not understand that sooner or later, the investors want their money and all of this awesome stuff you think you’re able to do right now will dry up and turn into data-mining and advertising.

    • Martin Alderson ☛ Which web frameworks are most token-efficient for AI agents?

      The first thing to point out was how good the results were in every single environment. Every single one produced a working blog with no obvious bugs[2]. While this is obviously a very simple prompt, they all figured out how to run the server, install any packages they needed, start the server and tested it worked. It astonishes me how far we've come in a year in agentic development - I think it would have been impressive if even one of these experiments worked out of the box back then.

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ cocAIne

      Every now and then I make the mistake of of posting something on Mastodon that really should have gone on the blog first. This is one of those, from last week. It did some numbers.

    • Fabrizio Ferri Benedetti ☛ The writing was always the cheap part

      You can throw barely optimized code at a compiler and an executable file will come out at the other side. Think of the worst coding patterns: software might still work even when it uses goto statements. The cost for badly coded, sloppy software shows in decreased performance and stability, higher maintenance costs, and so on. The main “customer” of the code, though, are compilers, and they don’t really care about those aspects as long as the code runs. That’s why tests, linting, benchmarking, and human reviews exist.

    • Bix Frankonis ☛ On Contradictions And Confidence

      In a later post about false confidence, Greg questions (challenges, really) “people treating AI as a substitute for understanding, and then walking around with the confidence of someone who actually did the work”. Isn’t turning to a third-party—whether it be organically carbon or artificially silicon—to add to your blog post knowledge and ideas you yourself didn’t actually have when writing the post, substantially doing a similar thing?

    • Maury ☛ Be careful with LLM "Agents"

      I get it: Large Language Models are interesting... but you really should not give "Agentic AI" access to your computer, accounts or wallet.

      To do away with the hype: Open Claw, Antigravity and Claude Code are just LLMs with shell access, and at it's core, an LLM is a weighted random number generator.

    • The Pragmatic CTO ☛ Lines of Code Are Back (And It's Worse Than Before)

      In 2009, Tom DeMarco—the man who wrote "you can't control what you can't measure"—formally retracted the statement. Software projects, he concluded, are fundamentally experimental; the important goal is transformation, not control. By 2023, Kent Beck was calling LOC "an input metric"—the worst category. "Only use it if you have nothing else to measure success with."

      That was the consensus. Settled. Done.

      Then AI showed up, and we brought it back.

  • Social Control Media

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Spain to Probe X, Meta, TikTok Over AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material

    • NL Times ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] Online pharmacies allegedly share sensitive health data with Google, Meta, TikTok

    • CBC ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] TikTok shuts down 2 accounts promoting opium in Punjabi within Winnipeg

    • The Strategist ☛ Australia’s under-16s social media reform deserves refinement—not dismissal

      Yes, age verification is complex. Platform architectures vary. Circumvention is possible. These are genuine implementation issues. But the reform was never about building a hermetically sealed digital perimeter. It is a social policy intervention, enabled through technology, designed to reset norms around childhood, risk and platform accountability in a digitally saturated environment.

      Framing the debate as a test of technical impermeability risks creating a false benchmark. Just because some teenagers remain online doesn’t make the policy a failure. By that logic, age restrictions on films would be invalid because some children still watch R-rated content. Drink-driving laws would be pointless because some people still offend. Tobacco age limits would be meaningless because under-age smoking did not immediately disappear.

    • PC World ☛ Facebook ads for Windows 11 deliver malware

      PCWorld reports that malicious Facebook ads are distributing malware disguised as legitimate Windows 11 upgrades, mimicking official Microsoft download pages.

    • Mark Hysted ☛ trying ActivityPub

      Going to have a go at utilising ActivityPub on this blog, it now becomes part of the fediverse.

    • Chuck Grimmett ☛ FediBoost Plugin

      Brandon Kraft built a WordPress plugin that solves a core frustration in the fediverse: Sites have their own identities, but most of us have separate identities in the fediverse, too. FediBoost automatically boosts posts from your site’s identity from your own identity in the fediverse.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Register UK ☛ Lazarus Group targets healthcare orgs with Medusa ransomware

      North Korea’s Lazarus Group appears to have added another tool to its kit. It has begun using Medusa ransomware in extortion attacks targeting at least one US healthcare organization and an unnamed victim in the Middle East, according to Symantec and Carbon Black threat hunters.

      The US healthcare attempt failed, while the Middle East organization was hit with the Medusa strain, the researchers said.

    • Dark Reading ☛ Lazarus Group Picks a New Poison: Medusa Ransomware

      Lazarus Group's embrace of Medusa shows the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) "rapacious involvement in cybercrime continues unabated," the researchers wrote. The attacks are also the latest example of the threat group's penchant for hitting critical infrastructure targets, most notably healthcare entities.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • The Zambian Observer ☛ Starlink remains unlicensed in South Africa despite offering a R500 million deal to connect 5,000 rural schools, due to regulatory hurdles

    South Africa’s ICASA is cracking down on unauthorized Starlink use, while an estimated 14,000 people access the service via foreign-registered roaming packages.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • Security Week ☛ GitHub Issues Abused in Copilot Attack Leading to Repository Takeover

    A vulnerability in GitHub Codespaces could have allowed attackers to take over repositories by injecting malicious Copilot instructions in a GitHub issue.

    The attack, Orca Security says, could have allowed attackers to trigger passive prompt injections via GitHub issues, instructing Copilot to silently leak a user’s GitHub token.

• Security

  • CISA

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-20 [Older] CISA Adds Two Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] EnOcean SmartServer IoT

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Valmet DNA Engineering Web Tools

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Jinan USR IOT Technology Limited (PUSR) USR-W610

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Welker OdorEyes EcoSystem Pulse Bypass System with XL4 Controller

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] CISA Adds Two Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] CISA Adds Four Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Siemens Simcenter Femap and Nastran

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Delta Electronics ASDA-Soft

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] GE Vernova Enervista UR Setup

    • CISA ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Honeywell CCTV Products

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • NYOB ☛ Digital Omnibus Report V3: Analysis of Select GDPR and ePrivacy Proposals by the Commission

      On 19 November 2025, the European Commission published its proposal for the "Digital Omnibus", subsequently sparking significant criticism and opposition. noyb conducted a thorough analysis of all the changes relevant to the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, which we firstly published a few days after the proposal was issued by the European Commission. The comprehensive report provides a comparison of the existing law with the Commission's proposal and compiles all our insights. The report also discusses relevant case law and the impact on data subjects, authorities and controllers, providing real-life examples of potential consequences.

      This new version, published on 24 February 2026, supplements our detailed legal analysis (version 1) and recommendations (version 2) with comments on the joint EDPB/EDPS opinion on the data part of the Digital Omnibus published on 11 February 2026.

    • EFF ☛ Tech Companies Shouldn’t Be Bullied Into Doing Surveillance

      Companies, especially technology companies, often fail to live up to their public statements and internal policies related to human rights and civil liberties for all sorts of reasons, including profit. Government pressure shouldn’t be one of those reasons.

    • The Verge ☛ Let me see some ID: age verification is spreading across the [Internet]

      Age verification is a reality on a growing number of social media platforms, requiring an ID or facial scan for full access to everything from YouTube to Roblox. The age-gating wave is coming along with calls for stronger child safety measures online, despite concerns about privacy, security, and censorship.

    • The Verge ☛ Apple’s new age verification tools block underage app downloads where required by law

      One of the big updates is that users in Australia, Brazil, and Singapore can’t download apps rated 18-plus unless their age has been confirmed through “reasonable methods,” which the App Store can confirm automatically. Apple notes that developers may still “have separate obligations to independently confirm that their users are adults,” and they can use Apple’s Declared Age Range API, introduced last year to let app developers request age range information about users, to help.

    • The Verge ☛ Discord is delaying its global age verification rollout

      Discord says that before it rolls out age verification globally, it will add more options for users to verify their age (including with a credit card), include documentation of every verification vendor used, add an option for “spoiler channels” in Discord as an alternative to age-gated channels for walling off certain topics, and publish a technical blog post explaining how its age estimation systems work.

    • New York Times ☛ Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses

      Now it wants to bring facial recognition back.

      Meta, Facebook’s parent company, plans to add the feature to its smart glasses, which it makes with the owner of Ray-Ban and Oakley, as soon as this year, according to four people involved with the plans who were not authorized to speak publicly about confidential discussions. The feature, internally called “Name Tag,” would let wearers of smart glasses identify people and get information about them via Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant.

    • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ This app alerts you when it detects Meta camera glasses nearby

      With the success of Meta's camera glasses, there is now a risk of being recorded without consent or knowledge and ending up exposed in a crude video on TikTok or Instagram.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Spectator AU ☛ Pauline’s ‘good Muslims’ comment

    Senator Hanson: Sharri, we’re in a situation where you can either go down one path and we will reap the rewards of our tough stance against Islam and the radicalisation that we will be facing.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ US Air Force awards contract for drone wingman engines

    The U.S. Air Force has awarded a prototype contract to Honeywell for a small engine to be used on the service’s autonomous drone wingmen, the company announced in a Feb. 23 release.

  • Air Force Times ☛ US Air Force awards contract for drone wingman engines

    The SkyShot is a compact engine designed for use in autonomous aircraft. It delivers powerful thrust capability with either turbofan or turbojet propulsion. Turbofan distributes airflow more evenly and quietly, while turbojet is typically used for supersonic military jet engines and missiles.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ ‘We don’t have infantry’: Ukraine’s war machine evolves into machine war

    Outmanned and outgunned by a nuclear power in the largest land war in Europe since 1945, Ukraine’s front line is increasingly held not by soldiers, but by machines and the skeleton crews that control them.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ NATO is not ready for drone warfare in the Arctic

    Drones help fill this gap. They can offer unmatched persistence, scalability, and flexibility at lower operational cost and risk to personnel, conducting a wide array of tasks, from reconnaissance and surveillance to logistic and resupply, casualty evacuation, mine and countermine operations, strike and more. In short, uncrewed systems are no longer niche enablers but indispensable elements for strengthening deterrence and defense in the Arctic.

  • Vox ☛ Brazil vs. US: Two insurrections, different results

    If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Brazil’s January 8 looked a lot like the January 6 attack on the US capital, just two years earlier: mob violence, an insurrection, and a defeated leader who refused to concede.

    But the aftermath could not be more different. Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year prison sentence, while Donald Trump is president, again.

    So how did two democracies, facing similar threats, end up with such different outcomes? This video explains how Brazil’s democratic system worked to hold “the Trump of the Tropics” accountable and what the United States could learn from the aftermath.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Boycott the State of the Union

    There are plenty of other reasons for not watching.

    First, he doesn’t deserve our attention. He’s abused and defiled the American presidency, even worse than he did in his first term.

    He’s openly taken bribes. He’s blatantly usurped the powers of Congress. He has overtly used the Justice Department to punish people he considers his enemies and pardon people loyal to him. He has willfully rejected the rule of law, broken treaties, literally destroyed part of the White House, thumbed his nose at our allies (including our closest and heretofore loyal neighbors), and utterly failed his constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. He lies like most people breathe. He’s a fraud and a traitor.

    Second, we already know what he’s going to say because he’s already stated and restated his lies every chance he gets. He says the economy is in wonderful shape, that he’s settled six wars, that he’s brought peace to the Middle East, that he’s made America safer and more secure, that the 2020 election was stolen from him, ad nauseam.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Office Hours: The Democrats’ Midterm Message?

    Forget tonight’s State of the Union. You know exactly what Trump is going to say. The far more interesting question is what Democrats and progressives will say in coming weeks and months. What’s the Democratic midterm message?

    Every seat in Congress is up for election. Democrats need a net gain of only three seats to win control of the House. Although they enjoy a strong tailwind from Trump’s high disapproval ratings — just 32 percent of Americans now say Trump has had the right priorities, while 68 percent say he hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems — Democrats are facing an unusually large number of Republicans barricaded inside ruby-red House districts.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • The Kyiv Independent ☛ 'Our sacrifices are worth freedom' — Ukrainian troops who have fought since 2014 look back

      Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago today — Feb. 24, 2022. For many Ukrainians, particularly those from Donbas and Crimea, the war began in 2014.

    • RTL ☛ 'Hybrid warfare': Economy not Russia is big fear on Finland's closed frontier

      At its peak, there were almost two million border crossings a year at Niirala, which is part of the Tohmajarvi municipality, said local authority chief Mikko Lopponen.

    • The Age AU ☛ 2026-02-24 [Older] Australia’s diamond back door: Blood jewels slipping past borders to fund Russia’s war

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] Ukraine updates: Russia hits Odesa ahead of war anniversary

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] EU Fails to Pass New Sanctions Targeting Russia After Hungary Objects

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] EU Adds Eight Russian Officials to Human Rights Sanctions List

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] Hungary Blocks Russia Sanctions, EU Cash for Kyiv on Eve of Ukraine War Anniversary

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] Ukrainian Drones Hit Facility for Druzhba Oil Pipeline in Russia, Kyiv Says

    • NL Times ☛ 2026-02-22 [Older] Hundreds gather in Amsterdam to mark fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-22 [Older] Russia, Ukraine report overnight strikes on energy infrastructure

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-22 [Older] Hungary Threatens to Block Fresh EU Sanctions Against Russia Over Oil Deliveries

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-22 [Older] After 4 Years of War by Russia in Ukraine, Peace Is Still Elusive Despite a US Push for a Settlement

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-22 [Older] Russia Hits Ukraine Energy Infrastructure With Major Missile, Drone Strikes, Kyiv Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-22 [Older] Russian Missile and Drone Barrage Hits Kyiv Suburbs, Killing 1

    • 2026-02-21 [Older] Ukrainian hackers uncover how Russian drone operators are using Belarus

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-21 [Older] Russia to convert Gulag museum into Nazi crimes memorial

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-21 [Older] Ukraine strikes missile plant deep inside Russia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-21 [Older] Hungary Says It Will Block a Key EU Loan to Ukraine Until Russian Oil Shipments Resume

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-21 [Older] NORAD Intercepts 5 Russian Aircraft Near Alaska, Though Military Says There Was No Threat

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-21 [Older] Russian Missile Strikes Oreo Factory in Ukraine, Foreign Minister Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-21 [Older] Ukraine Hits Russian Ballistic Missiles Producer in Udmurtia, Kyiv Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-21 [Older] Ukraine Strikes a Key Industrial Site Deep Inside Russia

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-02-20 [Older] Greenlandic websites attacked by Russian hacker group during King Frederik’s visit

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-20 [Older] Ukraine to boycott Paralympics opening over Russian flag decision

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-20 [Older] Seven Bodies Found After Chinese Tour Bus Plunges Into Frozen Lake in Russia's Siberia

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-20 [Older] Russia Says No Peace Dialogue Ongoing With Japan Over Territorial Dispute

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-20 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Ally Ties up With Russia's Novatek on Natural Gas in Alaska, NYT Reports

    • NL Times ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Dutch intelligence agencies warn of escalating Russian hybrid attacks

    • CBC ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Russia warns U.S. military buildup heightening Iran tensions

    • HRW ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Russia: Attacks on Abortion Undermine Women’s Rights

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Intelligence Report Says 1,000 Kenyans Were Recruited to Fight for Russia in Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Over 1,000 Kenyans Recruited to Fight for Russia in Ukraine, Report Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Russia Urges Restraint as US Builds up Military Assets Near Iran

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini Presses Iran to Make 'Meaningful' Deal, Appears to Set 10-Day Deadline

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Ukraine's Grain, Iron Ore Exports Hit by Russian Strikes on Ports This Winter

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Wave of Russian cyberattacks hits Danish websites

    • The Local DK ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Danish websites hit by wave of Russian cyber attacks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Four South Africans Lured Into Fighting for Russia in Ukraine Return Home, SABC Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Kremlin Says Neither China Nor Russia Have Carried Out Secret Nuclear Tests

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Russia Hosts Cuban Foreign Minister and Urges US Not to Blockade Cuba

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Russia Jails Four Jehovah's Witnesses on Basis of Secret Recordings

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Russia Says Ukraine Peace Talks in Geneva Were Difficult, but Business-Like

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Russia Tells European Nations Who Accuse It of Poisoning Navalny With Dart Frog Toxin to Provide Proof

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Ukraine Imposes Sanctions Against Belarus' Lukashenko for Aiding Russia's War

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Ukrainian Drone Attack on Russian Village Killed a Female Civilian, Local Governor Says

    • ADF ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Russian Activities in Equatorial Guinea Raise Concern

    • CPJ ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Russia’s repression record

    • CBC ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Cucumber costs are skyrocketing in Russia, and so is anger over wartime prices

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Russian and Belarussian flags to return at 2026 Paralympics

    • The Local SE ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Russia increasing hybrid threats around Sweden, say military intelligence

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] New Subpoenas Issued in Inquiry on Response to 2016 Russian Election Interference, AP Sources Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] In Russia, the Humble Cucumber Becomes Latest Symbol of Rising Wartime Prices

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Kremlin Aide Warns West Over Seizure of Russian Vessels

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Russia Downs 151 Ukrainian Drones Overnight, TASS Says, Citing Defence Ministry

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Russia Sentences US Citizen to 4 Years in Jail for Trying to Take Kalashnikov Stocks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Russian and Ukrainian Officials Meet in Geneva for US-Brokered Talks After Almost 4 Years of War

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Russia Pummels Ukraine's Power Grid Before Talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Suspected Russian Shadow Fleet Tanker GRINCH Allowed to Leave France After Paying Fine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Three Dead After Building Collapses at Military Facility in Russia's Leningrad Region, Governor Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Ukraine Hits Oil Terminal in Russia's Krasnodar, Chemicals Plant in Perm, SBU Says

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] More than 2.5 million Ukrainian children remain displaced

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] She Woke up to 'We’re at War' in Ukraine. Now Mariia Vainshtein Is a New York City Tennis Champion

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] Analysis-Power Drought Tips Ukraine's Economy Into Worst Crisis Since War's First Year

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] EU's Costa Urges Hungary's Orban to Respect 90 Billion Euro Loan Deal for Ukraine, Letter Shows

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] Explosion in Mykolaiv Injures Seven Ukrainian Police Officers, Police Chief Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] Next Round of Ukraine Peace Talks Could Be This Week, Kyiv Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] Ukraine's Zaluzhnyi Says He Won't Discuss Political Future Until Martial Law Ends

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-23 [Older] Ukraine Touts Recapture of Eight Settlements in Rare Battlefield Success

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-22 [Older] A Ukrainian soldier's story: Fading hope on the front line after four years of fighting

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-22 [Older] Ukraine war: Exhausted troops not holding out hope for peace

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-22 [Older] Ukrainian resilience remains strong as war enters fifth year

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-22 [Older] Police Officer Killed, 24 People Wounded in Bomb Explosions in Ukraine's Lviv

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-22 [Older] Pope Says Peace in Ukraine 'Cannot Be Postponed'

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-21 [Older] Hungary threatens veto of €90 billion EU loan to Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-21 [Older] Ex-UK Prime Minister Johnson Calls on Allies to Send Noncombat Troops to Ukraine Ahead of Ceasefire

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-21 [Older] In War-Weary Kyiv, Wounded Ukrainian Veterans Turn Epic Poetry Into Living Testimony

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-21 [Older] Ukrainians, Scattered Across Europe, Trapped in Limbo by War

    • The Local SE ☛ 2026-02-20 [Older] Sweden pledges 12.9 billion kronor for Ukraine air defence

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-20 [Older] 5 European Nations Pledge Millions to Use Ukrainian Know-How to Make Cheap Drone Defenses

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-20 [Older] Exclusive-Ukraine's 2026 Defence Exports Could Hit 'Several Billion Dollars', Official Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-20 [Older] Over 5,000 Women, Girls Killed in Ukraine Since 2022, Says UN

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-20 [Older] Ukrainians Mourn Missing Homes and Loved Ones After Four Years of War

    • CPJ ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] CPJ calls for accountability in Ukrainian journalist surveillance allegations

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Lukas Prize Finalists Spotlight Baldwin Biography and a Searing Look at Ukraine’s War

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Sweden Pledges Another $1.4 Billion in Military Aid to Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] North Korean POWs stuck in Ukraine as Seoul hesitates

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Ukraine updates: Geneva peace talks end abruptly

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2026-02-18 [Older] Canada to Boost Investments in Ukraine's Energy Sector

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Parliament marks 4 years of Ukraine war with service

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Can Europe Reassert Itself After Ukraine?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Ukraine: In Kyiv, exhausted emergency repair crews work around the clock

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Ukraine updates: Peace talks in Geneva 'very tense'

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Meduza ☛ Western analysts say Russia is losing 50,000 soldiers a month. A Meduza investigation suggests those estimates are based on manipulated data.

    Given the battlefield stalemate in Ukraine, Kyiv’s best remaining hope is attrition — inflicting losses on the Russian army heavy enough to persuade the Kremlin that continuing the war is pointless. In recent weeks, Ukrainian politicians and military commanders have been explicit about this goal. President Zelensky has even put a number on it: 50,000 Russian soldiers killed per month. At first glance, the data seem to suggest that Ukraine is closing in on that target: obituary databases and other open sources show Russian casualties rising sharply through 2025, and many Western analysts have accepted those casualty counts at face value. A new investigation by Meduza reveals that these estimates are almost certainly wrong.

  • American Oversight ☛ American Oversight Condemns Judge Cannon’s Order Permanently Blocking Release of Volume II of Jack Smith Report - American Oversight

    Monday, in an extension of her unprecedented deference to President Donald Trump, Judge Aileen Cannon granted motions filed by the president and his co-conspirators to permanently block the release of Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report on the investigation into the president’s alleged mishandling of national security documents, preventing the public from accessing the full account of the evidence and the report’s findings. In a separate order, Judge Cannon also denied a joint motion by the Knight First Amendment Institute and us, seeking a stay of proceedings while our appeal of her decision preventing us from participating in the criminal proceedings to seek the report’s release is pending with the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. In response, we released the following statement: [...]

  • FAIR ☛ Media Focus on Epstein’s Powerful Friends Erases Their Victims — FAIR

    According to the US Justice Department, Epstein sexually abused more than 1,200 women and girls. According to court and police records and reports, he lured minor girls to his Palm Beach mansion for nude massages, oral sex and intercourse. According to survivors, he pressured them into having unwanted sexual encounters with his friends.

  • New York Times ☛ How Jeffrey Epstein Ingratiated Himself With Top Microsoft Executives

    Mr. Epstein received updates on the hunt for Microsoft’s new chief executive from company insiders and offered them play-by-play advice, according to the latest release of documents from the Justice Department detailing the financier’s life before he was jailed in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges.

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Conversation ☛ 2026-02-19 [Older] Nancy Guthrie kidnapping: can Bitcoin ransom demand be used to track down the criminals?

    • The Conversation ☛ 2026-02-17 [Older] Self-driving cars are poorly prepared for high-risk road situations – here’s how [slop] can improve them

    • Renewable Energy World ☛ Data centers done right? Xcel and Form Energy team up to power Google operation in Minnesota

      Under the agreement, Google will pay all costs for its new service in line with its now-typical practices and Minnesota’s regulatory and legislative requirements for large loads (see below). Xcel and Google will partner to bring 1,900 megawatts (MW) of new clean energy online, and Google will cover any new grid infrastructure costs associated with the project. The hyperscaler says it has planned carefully with Xcel to ensure electricity in the area remains reliable and affordable for all of the utility’s customers.

    • David Rosenthal ☛ Tesla's Not-A-Robotaxi Service

      I have now seen the fabled CyberCab three times in real life. It has two seats, one of them fully equipped with human driver interface equipment. In each case a human was using them to drive the car, which is necessary in California because Fake Self-Driving is a Level 2 driver assistance system that requires a human behind the wheel at all times. A Robotaxi that requires a human driver and can carry at most one passenger isn't going to be a economic success.

    • Positech Games ☛ Unexpected Solar-Powered Borehole Update!

      I did not expect to be typing this so soon, but pretty soon after we agreed to fund a solar-powered borehole for fresh clean water in Cameroon… I got an update on construction with pictures today! Very welcome as I expected this to take many more months. Here is what I received today: [...]

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Utah News Dispatch ☛ Utah could make vandalizing its ‘priceless’ rock formations a crime

      The bill would impose a criminal penalty for damaging natural rock features on Utah’s public lands with graffiti or other vandalism, including fines and community service. HB536, sponsored by Rep. Stuart Barlow, R-Fruit Heights, would also protect “archeological features” — historical sites like Indigenous petroglyphs, carvings, or historic rock shelters.

  • Overpopulation

    • Overpopulation ☛ Is Legal Abortion Required for Sustainable Fertility?

      Our planet can’t sustain an ever-growing number of humans, but many countries have already reached below-replacement birth rates enabling a future rebalancing of humans with nature. While modern contraceptive technologies deservedly take most of the credit, how important has abortion access been?

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Apple Inc ☛ Apple accelerates U.S. manufacturing with Mac mini production - Apple

    Apple opened its Apple Manufacturing Academy in Detroit, which is already supporting more than 130 small- and medium-sized American manufacturers with hands-on training in AI, automation, and smart manufacturing. The academy recently expanded with new virtual programming, giving businesses across the country on-demand access to the curriculum developed by Apple experts and Michigan State University faculty.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Deplatform yourself

    Broderick argues that this is the source of far-right influencers' influence: the fact that manosphere weirdos and trolls are hanging out in "shadowy corners" like Kick makes them feel authentic and outside of the norm and thus intrinsically interesting. And (Broderick continues) the fact that these manosphere types are now totally reliant on Discord clip-farmers has made them feel more mainstream and thus potentially less interesting.

    This is where it gets cool. Broderick argues that there's nothing intrinsically reactionary about this kind of self-deplatforming as a parallel evolution taking place in progressive media. When Stephen Colbert's Trump-colonized network bans him from airing an interview with a Democratic politician, he puts it on Youtube instead, where it gets far more attention than it would have if the network had just left him alone.

  • Rust Blog ☛ Rust debugging survey 2026

    Various issues with debugging Rust code are often mentioned as one of the biggest challenges that annoy Rust developers. While it is definitely possible to debug Rust code today, there are situations where it does not work well enough, and the quality of debugging support also varies a lot across different debuggers and operating systems.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Telex (Hungary) ☛ Telex: Russian-backed smear campaign launched against Orbán critic Methodist pastor

      The Gnida Project, an organization researching Russian hybrid warfare linked this disinformation operation to a group called Storm-1516. The code name comes from Microsoft's cyber warfare department, which has been tracking the group's activities for years. According to a Washington Post investigation and sanctions documents from the US Department of the Treasury, Storm-1516 has close ties to Russian military intelligence, known as the GRU.

    • MacRumors ☛ Tim Cook Faces FTC Warning Over Apple News Curation

      Apple has not commented. The letter amounts to a sharp rebuke of Cook and marks an escalation in public tensions between Apple and members of the Trump administration.

    • Politico LLC ☛ Nicki Minaj’s social media propped up by thousands of bots, analysis finds

      But quietly, humming in the background of her varied social media blitzes, a sophisticated army of bots was unconditionally praising and amplifying Minaj’s content, according to a new report shared exclusively with POLITICO.

      The report, compiled by the disinformation detection company Cyabra, identifies a coordinated network of bots — more than 18,000 of them — that drove algorithms to spread Minaj’s posts on X.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • American Oversight ☛ The Trump Administration Is Using a Rare Legal Trick to Avoid Damaging Facts

    The Trump administration has recently filed motions to strike, or requests that a judge delete sections of lawsuits, in four of American Oversight’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits. This is an unusual tactic, and seems to be part of an effort to delay cases and avoid admitting damaging facts in court.

  • RFERL ☛ Iran Arrests Japan Public Broadcaster's Bureau Chief In Tehran

    Kawashima is being held in Ward 7 of Evin Prison, where political prisoners are usually incarcerated, one of the sources said.

  • CPJ ☛ Deutsche Welle reporter Alican Uludağ arrested in Turkey for ‘insulting’ president

    “There are no insults, only harsh criticism, in the social media posts that led to the arrest of journalist Alican Uludağ,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Arresting a journalist for critical comments alone is a message meant to intimidate the news media, attempting to scare them from reporting on and offering commentary about politics. Uludağ must be freed immediately.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Zimbabwe journalist in detention for a week for alleged defamatory report on corruption

    “Zimbabwean authorities should not use licensing regulations or cybercrime provisions to censor or criminalize legitimate journalism,” said CPJ Africa Director Angela Quintal. “Keeping a journalist in detention for more than a week over their reporting is a totally disproportionate response. Authorities should free Gideon Madzikatidze, drop all charges against him, and allow journalists to work without fear of arrest.”

  • Daily Mail ☛ Shock as popular TV station lays off NINE anchors and reporters amid deep cuts to save cash

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • ANF News ☛ Yazidis face the risk of losing their collective will

    The issue of disarming the population has once again come to the fore. Following threats by Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, the Iraqi state has stepped up activity on this front. Reports indicate that checkpoints have been increased across the region and that decisions have been taken to carry out house-to-house searches in villages and sub-districts, with the stated aim of collecting individual self-defense weapons from the population.

  • Techdirt ☛ ICE Promised A MN Supreme Court Justice It Would Stop Raiding Courthouses. It Immediately Broke That Promise.

    It’s just not working anymore. The legislative branch — under a GOP majority — has basically decided to relinquish all of its power to the executive branch. The judicial branch has made its feelings known about the administration’s refusal to act in good faith, but really hasn’t done anything to prevent it from continuing to behave like an extended middle finger to the rule of law.

    This government cannot be trusted. That would mean something if it actually seemed to care about being trusted. It doesn’t. It is a law unto itself, almost completely devoid of oversight.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Wired ☛ Say Goodbye to the Undersea Cable That Made the Global Internet Possible

    Sometimes people ask about satellites or, especially in Sweden (where I live), about alleged sabotage in the Baltic Sea. But historically, shark bites have commanded the most attention. The myth began nearly 40 years ago, with the development of a subsea fiber-optic cable known as TAT-8. TAT-8 practically invented the concept of an internet cable, and now that it’s ready for retirement, I spent time with the offshore workers, crew members, and engineers who are in the process of pulling it off the seabed. That’s the real story of subsea cables—not sabotage or sharks, but the humans who take care of the physical stuff that keeps all of our digital communication flowing.

  • RIPE ☛ Ukraine as a Laboratory of Internet Resilience

    Ukraine’s Internet has not collapsed under invasion - it has adapted. This article examines what that reveals about the concept of resilience in the context of Internet infrastructure and the people who keep the networks running.

  • So-called 'FSFE'

    • FSFE ☛ Digital Networks Act: the FSFE calls for strong and consistent protection of Router Freedom - FSFE

      For more than a decade, the Free Software Foundation Europe has worked to protect Router Freedom in Europe.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Techdirt ☛ James Cameron Complains About Netflix/Warner Bros Merger, Doesn’t Acknowledge A Paramount Deal Would Be Much Worse

  We’ve explained in detail how Larry Ellison is trying to scuttle Netflix’s planned merger with Warner Brothers because he wants to buy CNN and HBO, and, as he’s doing with CBS (and now TikTok) turn them into a safe space for right wing zealots, autocrats, and oligarchs. He’s unsubtly trying to build the kind of autocrat-friendly state television we’ve seen arise in places like Orban’s Hungary.

• Copyrights

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Meta Employee Deleted 9TB of Torrented Files, Adult Film Producers Claim

    The high-stakes lawsuit between adult content producers and tech giant Meta over the alleged downloads of copyright-infringing videos is heating up. In a new filing, Strike 3 claims that a Meta employee allegedly deleted over 9 terabytes of torrented files. Meta notes that this claim, which originates from an unrelated case, is mischaracterized and irrelevant. Regardless of the outcome of these and other ongoing discovery disputes, both parties aim for a trial in 2028.