Leftovers

• Digital Camera World ☛ Photographer captures seemingly impossible long exposure action shot of skydivers against the northern lights while flying over 100MPH in sub-zero temperatures

  Both the jump itself and capturing the images involved several technical challenges. First, the photographer skydiving, Brewer, would be taking photos while moving up to 120MPH in the dark. Temperatures at the highest altitudes would dip the wind chill to around -40 degrees F (which also happens to be -40 degrees in C too).

• W Evan Sheehan ☛ Find the "Date Added" in Git

  Until recently, I have been filing my photos under the date the photos were taken. I changed this for two reasons. First, because there is a difference semantically between the date I took a photo, and the date I published it on my site. This is perhaps not a huge deal, but it leads me to the second reason for distinguishing between the published date and the photographed date: the entries in my RSS feed and in my archives are sorted in reverse chronological order by published date. So if I add old photos to the site, they won’t likely show up for people.

• Uğur Erdem Seyfi ☛ Tailscale’d Into Homelabbing

  I knew that I could have used a VPS. Hosting everything there would have solved all these problems I mentioned. But I chose not to, for three main reasons: (1) A VPS still lives on someone else’s computer. So, nothing fundamentally prevents a VPS company from accessing your machine. (2) My old home computer is cheaper than renting an equivalent compute and storage. And lastly, but maybe most importantly, (3) I would feel much more satisfied homelabbing on hardware I physically control.

  So, how did I start homelabbing then? What changed?

• Tim Bray ☛ Long Links

  Sadly, more than half the Long Links, this time out, are about AI. I almost decided to bury the piece but, whatever you or I think, the subject matters. And the ones I posted are a tiny fraction of those I read (or tried to) and I think are useful and not immoral.

  But, let’s put all the non-AI stuff at the front so you can stop reading partway through if you’ve just had enough of that stuff.

• The New Atlantis ☛ American Diner Gothic

  These aren’t random weirdos and they aren’t teenagers in a phase. Walk through any office park and you’ll find the same aesthetic bleeding through the cubicles: anime stickers on laptops, Discord running on second monitors. They’re a new American type, young but trans-generational, as distinctive as the organization man or the valley girl once were. I call them dinergoths: what you get when economic mobility dies, suburbs become psychic deserts, and Discord becomes more real than your cul-de-sac.

• Matthew J Ernisse ☛ Discord in my IRC client

  You may be shocked to hear that I don't use their bloated Electron client, instead I connect with my trusty IRC client (irssi). The nuts and bolts of that is simple, I use rdircd to connect to Discord and bridge it into my IRC client, but that's not really all that interesting. I found a couple situations where I needed some additional functionality. Now I'm sure installing the Discord app would have provided a solution but you may imagine that I didn't want to deal with that.

• Adrian Roselli ☛ Accessibility Law of Headlines

  Yes, that is a very broad assertion, kind of like the one that inspired it. And yes, it is not a true law.

  Instead of calling out specific articles / posts / outlets / authors here, I’ll point to other stuff I’ve written. These posts either explain the functional limits of “accessibility” or they go into more detail about selected claims: [...]

• Ben Werdmuller ☛ Make Space for Every Voice

  Having a small number of voices dominate hurts the work. By making it clear that everyone’s voice matters and making it safe for everyone to contribute, we widen the gene pool of ideas. By nurturing a more inclusive community and set of processes, all of our work is elevated, because we’re exposed to more perspectives and more expertise. And by not putting our thumb on the scales as leaders, we make the most of the smart, insightful people we’ve hired.

• Rakhim ☛ Related UI elements should not appear unrelated

  A few years ago a new trend in UI design emerged where related elements would appear more and more detached and unrelated to the things they are meant to point to.

• Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Migratory Freshwater Fish Numbers Are Close To Collapse, UN Report Warns

    "Among the most imperiled vertebrates."

  • Science Alert ☛ Mysterious Ancient Ape May Have Evolved a Key Human Trait

    A new path for a controversial hypothesis.

  • Science Alert ☛ Sharks Are Testing Positive For Cocaine And Caffeine in The Bahamas

    Even remote waters aren't safe from human influence.

  • Science Alert ☛ Frequent Ejaculations Can Boost Sperm Quality, Study Suggests

    This is really important.

  • Science Alert ☛ Oldest Dog DNA Ever Found Reveals How Ancient Our Friendship Really Is

    Old friends, best friends.

• Career/Education

  • BIA Net ☛ Ministry appoints 'strike breakers' at İstanbul Italian high school

    Local teachers have been on a strike for seven weeks over the gross discrepancy between their and Italian educators' wages.

  • Sean Goedecke ☛ Engineers do get promoted for writing simple code

    It’s a popular joke among software engineers that writing overcomplicated, unmaintainable code is a pathway to job security. After all, if you’re the only person who can work on a system, they can’t fire you. There’s a related take that “nobody gets promoted for simplicity”: in other words, engineers who deliver overcomplicated crap will be promoted, because their work looks more impressive to non-technical managers.

    There’s a grain of truth in this, of course. As I’ve said before, one mark of an elegant solution is that it makes the problem look easy (like how pro skiers make terrifying slopes look doable). However, I worry that some engineers take this too far. It’s actually a really bad idea to over-complicate your own work. Simple software engineering does get rewarded, and on balance will take you further in your career.

  • Miguel Grinberg ☛ SQLAlchemy 2 In Practice - Chapter 2 - Database Tables - miguelgrinberg.com

    This is the second chapter of my SQLAlchemy 2 in Practice book. If you'd like to support my work, I encourage you to buy this book, either directly from my store or on Amazon. Thank you!

  • Marc Brooker ☛ What about juniors?

    Junior engineers don’t have this problem. They’re already beginners, and provided they approach the field with that mindset, that comes with a significant advantage. In any time of change, the people who can learn and adapt fastest are most likely to succeed. The senior’s advantage is that they have a lot of knowledge and context. The junior’s advantage is that they come in knowing that they need to learn, adapt, and change.

    So far, those are the easy answers. Other than learning, what do junior engineers do?

  • Fast Company ☛ How Apple became Apple: The definitive oral history of the company’s earliest days

    Espinosa: I was sitting there in the Byte Shop in Palo Alto on an Apple-1 writing BASIC programs, and this guy with a scraggly beard and no shoes came in and looked at me and conducted what I later understood to be the standard interview, which was “Who are you?” I said, “I’m Chris.” And he said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m writing BASIC programs on this Apple-1 for the owner.” And he said, “Are you any good?” I showed him my BASIC programs on the Apple-1.

    He told me, “I’ve seen you around Homebrew. Woz is working on this second-generation computer, and instead of loading BASIC from cassette tape, we want to put it in ROM. And so it has to be perfect. I want you to come and test Woz’s BASIC, and I’ll give you 4K of RAM for that when you build your own computer. ”That sounded like a good deal. Steve Jobs’s idea back then of recruiting was to grab a random-ass 14-year-old off the streets.

  • Brad Frost ☛ Coding Club

    It was really fun to see how they were learning to code. I knew they were using Scratch (which Ella has excitedly talked about over dinner), but I only learned about the little Dash robots as they swarmed around my feet while I was getting set up. The kids controlled them with iPads from across the room, and I slapped a sticky note containing the guest WI-FI password. The girls were grinning.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Testing Severely Neglected VHS Tapes And CDs

    Physical media has a certain amount of durability associated with it, a quality which is naturally determined by the way that they’re stored. Generally this does not involve being abandoned on the porch of a dilapidated, abandoned house where the elements and any passing critter can have their way with it.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ Stop all open burning activities, urges Malaysia’s Fire and Rescue Department

    Firemen have to attend to more than 400 cases daily involving open burning, forest and shrub fires nationwide.

  • NYPost ☛ Wine, beer or liquor: Study finds one drink is linked to lower risk of death than others

    Not all types of alcohol are created equal — and a new study suggests that wine may carry lower health risks than beer or hard liquor.

  • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man to Delay Nominating New C.D.C. Director

    The administration has yet to find a candidate who aligns with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s agenda while avoiding his unpopular stance on vaccines.

  • Sally Lait ☛ Leading through challenging times

    As a manager and leader, one of the most difficult things to do can be supporting a team of others through a tough challenge, whilst you’re also processing and being affected by it yourself. Some examples that I’ve seen people struggle with are trying to lead both affected and unaffected folks through layoffs when your role is also at risk, or leading through a war when you and your reports are worried about family based in an affected country.

    Very often these events come come out of the blue, and if you haven’t had to balance both yourself and other people before, it can be extremely difficult to wade through everything. In this post I want to outline some of the key recommendations and reflections I’ve found useful with various teams and situations in the past.

  • Arduino ☛ A DIY eco-friendly solution to mosquito annoyances

    The setup is simple and only requires a nearby water source, a drain, and some affordable electronic hardware. An Arduino Nano Every board controls the process. It fills water into a reservoir, like a bird bath, where it stagnates and attracts mosquitoes. Then it waits 96 hours, giving the mosquitoes time to lay eggs. After that time elapses, it pumps the water and eggs out, down a drain.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Michigan measles outbreak: Confirmed cases grow to seven, including child under 5

    The Washtenaw County outbreak has seven confirmed cases and one hospitalization. Officials are asking that anyone unvaccinated or not already immune to measles stay away from others for a full 21 days after exposure.

  • Science Alert ☛ There Are 10 Signs of Faster Aging Hidden in Your Blood, Study Says

    You might be older than you think.

• Proprietary

  • 404 Media ☛ Apple Gives FBI a User’s Real Name Hidden Behind ’Hide My Email’ Feature

    The move isn’t surprising but still provides uncommon insight into what data is available to authorities regarding the Apple feature. The data was turned over during an investigation into a man who allegedly sent a threatening email to ​​Alexis Wilkins, the girlfriend of FBI director Kash Patel.

  • Michael Tsai ☛ Ads in Apple Maps

    I’ve found that it works much worse than Google Maps when offline. It won’t find directions, and even maps that I’d preloaded don’t always display.

  • Mat Duggan ☛ I Can't See Apple's Vision/

    Instead, I want to talk about a bigger problem and one that I do feel qualified to talk about because I am very guilty of committing this sin. I don't see a cohesive vision for MacOS and WatchOS. This, more than one bad release, seems far worse to me and dangerous for the company. Since this is already 2000 words as a draft I'll save WatchOS for another time. I'm verbose but even I have limits.

  • The Verge ☛ Apple’s Mac Pro is dead, apparently for good this time

    The M2 Ultra edition of the Mac Pro launched three years ago, with Apple hardware exec and possible future CEO John Ternus saying that “for those users who need the versatility of internal expansion, Mac Pro combines PCIe slots with our most powerful chip.” But without support for adding a new GPU, many of the professionals who should’ve been in its target market told us that they didn’t want one, with or without optional $699 wheels.

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ The Mac Pro is Dead - 512 Pixels

    The Mac Pro was introduced way back in 2006 as a replacement for the outgoing Power Mac G5. It had a good few years, then languished until the 2013 model was announced.

    That machine was a dud, and it languished until the 2019 model was announced.

  • 9to5Mac ☛ Apple discontinues the Mac Pro with no plans for future hardware

    It’s the end of an era: Apple has confirmed to 9to5Mac that the Mac Pro is being discontinued. It has been removed from Apple’s website as of Thursday afternoon. The “buy” page on Apple’s website for the Mac Pro now redirects to the Mac’s homepage, where all references have been removed.

    Apple has also confirmed to 9to5Mac that it has no plans to offer future Mac Pro hardware.

  • Xbox’s “Cheaper Game Pass” Push Hurts The Service, Says Baldur’s Gate 3 Dev [Ed: XBox is collapsing]

    Game Pass is home to many incredible AAA titles, and Microsoft continues to add more to the service. Over the coming months, the subscription service will add new titles like Forza Horizon 6, Fable, and more in an attempt to continue providing unparalleled value to the players.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Why Does Every Case of Hey Hi (AI) Hiring a Human Feel Like a Groveling Publicity Stunt?

      Isn't the idea to do useful work?

    • Futurism ☛ Broken Nvidia CEO Says He Can’t Stand Hey Hi (AI) Slop Either

      Riiight.

    • Futurism ☛ OpenAI Fumbled Its $1 Billion Deal With Disney

      A disastrous screwup.

    • PC World ☛ Wikipedia just banned AI-written articles

      After much debate, Wikipedia has now taken a stance on AI-generated content on its platform: “the use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited.” So says the internal policy page, although the declaration does come with a few exceptions.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ As the US Midterms Approach, AI Is Going to Emerge as a Key Issue Concerning Voters

      In a May 2025 survey of likely voters nationwide, more than 70% favored state and federal regulators having a hand in AI policy. A December 2025 poll by Navigator Research found similar results, with a massive net +48% favorability for more AI regulation. Yet despite the overwhelming preference of both voters and his party’s elected leaders—Congress was essentially unanimous in defeating a previous state AI regulation moratorium—Trump has delivered on a key priority of the industry. The order explicitly challenges the will of voters across blue and red states, from California to South Dakota, scrambling political positions around the technology and setting up a new ideological battleground in the upcoming race for Congress.

      There are a number of ways that candidates and parties may try to capitalize on this emerging wedge issue before the midterms.

    • Ness Labs ☛ Stop explaining yourself to your AI with Alex Green, cofounder of Littlebird

      AI models are genuinely incredible, but they have no idea what you’re working on. So you end up spending ten minutes copying and pasting context into a chat window just to get a useful answer. You’re doing prep work for a tool that’s supposed to save you time. That’s backwards.

      And meanwhile, every app and platform you use is optimized to keep you engaged, not to help you accomplish what you actually set out to do.

    • David Rosenthal ☛ The Handoff Problem

      Source Around twelve years ago, Google figured out the fundamental problem facing Tesla's Fake Self Driving. Almost nine years ago in Robot Cars Can’t Count on Us in an Emergency, John Markoff wrote: [...]

    • Derek Kędziora ☛ Prompting

      I don’t think people would have written this way only a few years ago, yet it’s all over the place now.

    • arXiv ☛ [2603.22106] From Technical Debt to Cognitive and Intent Debt: Rethinking Software Health in the Age of AI

      Generative AI is accelerating software development, but may quietly shift where the real risks lie. As AI generates code faster than teams can understand it, two under appreciated forms of debt accumulate: cognitive debt, the erosion of shared understanding across a team, and intent debt, the absence of externalized rationale that both developers and AI agents need to work safely with code. This article proposes a Triple Debt Model for reasoning about software health built around three interacting debt types: technical debt in code, cognitive debt in people, and intent debt in externalized knowledge. Cognitive debt concerns what people understand; intent debt concerns what is explicitly captured for humans and machines to use. We discuss how generative AI changes the relative importance of these debt types, how each can be diagnosed and mitigated, and surfaced points of debate for practitioners.

    • Mario Zechner ☛ Thoughts on slowing the fuck down

      The problem with agents is that they make errors. Which is fine, humans also make errors. Maybe they are just correctness errors. Easy to identify and fix. Add a regression test on top for bonus points. Or maybe it's a code smell your linter doesn't catch. A useless method here, a type that doesn't make sense, duplicated code over there. On their own, these are harmless. A human will also do such booboos.

      But clankers aren't humans. A human makes the same error a few times. Eventually they learn not to make it again. Either because someone starts screaming at them or because they're on a genuine learning path.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Bernie Sanders, AOC Announce Bill to Stop AI Data-Center Construction

      “AI and robotics are creating the most sweeping technological revolution in the history of humanity. Congress is way behind where it should be in understanding the nature of this revolution and its impacts,” Sanders says in a statement to Rolling Stone. “We cannot sit back and allow a handful of billionaire Big Tech oligarchs to make decisions that will reshape our economy, our democracy and the future of humanity. We need serious public debate and democratic oversight over this enormously consequential issue.”

      On Wednesday afternoon, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez spoke about the legislation at a joint press conference. Ocasio-Cortez said tech companies are manipulating and exploiting the American people, mining their data and privacy.

    • Gizmodo ☛ Tech Employees Are Reportedly Being Evaluated by How Fast They Burn Through LLM Tokens

      Analogies are tricky here. One is tempted to say it’s like making painters compete to use the most paint, but even if the paint is just being splattered as quickly as possible, it’s at least going to be visible when the project is done. It’s a bit more like telling soldiers to gauge their battlefield success by the number of bullets fired, but suppressive fire that doesn’t hit anything has its place in war strategy. The best analogy I can come up with is this: it’s like NBA mascots being evaluated by how many t-shirts they fire out of their t-shirt cannons, but the t-shirts are made by Hermès.

  • Social Control Media

    • Mike Brock ☛ The Virtuecratic Machine on Bluesky - by Mike Brock

      I spent approximately seven hours today inside what I will call the left-wing virtuecratic ecosystem of Bluesky. I want to take you on a journey of learnings, as it were.

      Not what I learned about them, exactly. What I learned about the epistemic condition we are all living in — the condition that makes saving this republic so much harder than it should be, and that the people most committed to saving it are, in some ways, most responsible for producing.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Meta and YouTube Found Negligent to Minors. Jury Awards $6 Million

      On their ninth day of deliberations, the jurors awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages to the plaintiff, identified in court by her initials, K.G.M. The jury apportioned liability between the companies, finding that Meta was responsible for 70 percent of the total award and Google for the remaining 30 percent. In awarding punitive damages, the jurors determined that both companies had acted with “malice, oppression, or fraud.”

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • David L Farquhar ☛ The Melissa virus of 1999

      Melissa started by taking over Microsoft Word running on its victims’ computers. It then used a macro to hijack their Microsoft Outlook e-mail client and send messages to the first 50 addresses in their Outlook address book. Those messages, in turn, tempted recipients with a virus-laden attachment under names as “sexxxy.jpg” or “naked wife” or the deceitful assertion, “Here is the document you requested … don’t show anyone else ;-).” This devious social engineering let the virus operate like a sinister, automated chain letter.

• Security

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Alleged RedLine infostealer conspirator extradited to US

    The Armenian man faces three counts for his role for allegedly administering “one of the most prevalent infostealing malware variants in the world.”

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • 404 Media ☛ Police Used Flock to Give a Man a Traffic Ticket

      A spokesperson for the Georgia State Patrol told 404 Media that the ticket was issued because of a “unique circumstance” in which a Flock camera happened to capture a traffic infraction, and that Flock cameras are not usually used by the department for traffic enforcement.

    • Wired ☛ Using a VPN May Subject You to NSA Spying

      Six Democratic lawmakers are pressing the nation's top intelligence official to publicly disclose whether Americans who use commercial VPN services risk being treated as foreigners under United States surveillance law—a classification that would strip them of constitutional protections against warrantless government spying.

      In a letter sent Thursday to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the lawmakers say that because VPNs obscure a user's true location, and because intelligence agencies presume that communications of unknown origin are foreign, Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they're entitled to under the law.

    • Patrick Breyer ☛ End of “Chat Control”: EU Parliament Stops Mass Surveillance in Voting Thriller – Paving the Way for Genuine Child Protection!

      The controversial mass surveillance of private messages in Europe is coming to an end. After the European Parliament had already rejected the indiscriminate and blanket Chat Control by US tech companies on 13 March, conservative forces attempted a democratically highly questionable maneuver yesterday to force a repeat vote to extend the law anyway.

      However, in a true voting thriller today, the Parliament finally pulled the plug on this surveillance mania: With a razor-thin majority of just a single vote, the Parliament first rejected the automated assessment of unknown private photos and chat texts as “suspicious” or “unsuspicious”. In the subsequent final vote, the amended remaining proposal clearly failed to reach a majority.

      This means: As of 4 April, the EU derogation will expire for good. US corporations like Meta, Google, and Microsoft must stop the indiscriminate scanning of the private chats of European citizens. The digital privacy of correspondence is restored!

    • OS News ☛ The reports of age verification in Linux are greatly exaggerated, for now – OSnews

      This all seems well and good, but given today’s political climate in the United States, as well as the course of history, that “as it currently stands” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Rightfully so, a lot of people are worried about where this could lead. Sure, today these are just inconsequential, optional changes in response to what seems to be misguided legislation, but what happens once these laws are tightened, become more demanding, and start requiring a lot more than just a self-reported age bracket?

  • Confidentiality

    • PC World ☛ Google warns 'Q-Day' is coming, could break encryption by 2029

      Quantum computers will likely be able to crack current encryption algorithms earlier than once thought, posing a serious threat to online security.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Robert Reich ☛ How Do We Protect Children from Becoming Addicted to Social Media?

    Are they addicted? Yes, if you define addiction as getting such a dopamine rush that they feel compelled to use their cellphones for hours at a time.

    How similar is this to a nicotine addiction? And — as was a central question 30 years ago when Big Tobacco was being sued — is Big Tech intentionally designing its product to hook young people?

    The answer appears to be that the addictions are quite similar, and Big Tech is just as culpable as Big Tobacco.

  • France24 ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man's war, NATO's problem: Will allies help secure Strait of Hormuz?

    It’s Convicted Felon’s war, but is it also NATO’s problem? Europeans forced to bear security and financial consequences of the second war at its doorstep. We'll see if our panel agrees with Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte who assures it’s only a matter of “a couple of weeks” before traditional allies agree to help secure the Strait of Hormuz.

  • Defence Web ☛ Planning to fail: why SA is not preventing violence and crime

    The deployment of South Africa’s army to quell crime and violence in five provinces has made headlines.

  • JURIST ☛ Minnesota sues DOJ and DHS over refusal to provide shootings evidence

    Minnesota sued the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Tuesday over their refusal to provide state investigators with access to evidence regarding three shootings by DHS agents in the state. The complaint alleges that DHS and DOJ unlawfully denied the state’s requests for evidence pertaining to the shootings.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Beijing restricts Singapore-based Manus founders from leaving China: Report

    Beijing has been investigating whether Meta’s takeover violated regulations, with national security implications.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Taiwan wary that China could exploit US distraction over Middle East war

    “This is a moment for China to exercise influence,” said a senior Taiwan security official.

  • The Strategist ☛ It’s time for Australia to take EU’s defence push seriously

    When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered Australia a security and defence partnership in early 2025, Canberra barely noticed. That wasn’t surprising.

  • New York Times ☛ ICE Agents at Some Airports Begin Checking IDs in Security Lines

    It was unclear whether having agents helping with screening passengers would improve wait times. Some travelers expressed worries.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Japan calls Chinese embassy break-in ‘regrettable’

    Japan said Wednesday it was “regrettable” that a member of the Japanese military broke into the Chinese embassy in Tokyo, after Beijing expressed shock over the incident. The break-in has further soured relations between Beijing and Tokyo that have suffered since comments by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi about the self-ruled island of  Taiwan.

• Environment

  • New York Times ☛ Kate Marvel, Prominent Climate Scientist, Resigns From NASA

    Kate Marvel, a well-known author, joins an estimated 95,000 people who have left federal science agencies since Hell Toupée returned to the White House.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • LRT ☛ Lithuania's central bank warns fuel price surge could push inflation to 6%

      Lithuania’s central bank said on Wednesday that a sustained rise in fuel prices from the Middle East conflict could lift domestic inflation to 6 percent this year in a worst-case scenario.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Asia looks to Covid-era playbook to tackle fuel crisis

      Asia buys more than 80 per cent of the crude that transits the Strait of Hormuz, which has been blocked.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Japan starts release of state-held oil to stabilise supplies amid Iran war

      The Japanese government has decided to release about 80 million barrels of oil.

    • Wired ☛ A $20 Billion [Cryptocurrency] Scam Market Faces a New Government Crackdown

      On Thursday, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, also known as the Foreign Office, revealed financial sanctions against the Xinbi Guarantee online marketplace, which will likely limit its operations. The online bazaar, which has operated using channels and accounts on the messaging platform Telegram, has previously been linked to billions in cryptocurrency transactions and proved hard to disrupt.

    • Wired ☛ Senators Demand to Know How Much Energy Data Centers Use

      In a joint letter sent to the Energy Information Administration Thursday morning, seen by WIRED, Hawley and Warren press the agency to publicly collect “comprehensive, annual energy-use disclosures” on data centers. This information, they write, is “essential for accurate grid planning and will support policymaking to prevent large companies from increasing electricity costs for American families.”

    • Hackaday ☛ Looking At A Bike Built For The Apocalypse

      The features on this custom build are rather extensive, but the star of the show is the trailing link two wheel drive rear end. The third wheel was thrown on last minute with a random shock providing some measure of compliance to the rather unwieldy system. But while adding unnecessary complexity, the third wheel does offer the benefit of bringing along a number of spare parts on the last bikepacking trip of a lifetime. Moreover, it can be easily removed to get something resembling bicycle.

    • Hackaday ☛ Comparing The Power Usage Of 12 VDC And 240 VAC Kettles

      Although the used amount of 500 mL of water is boiled much faster in the 2,200 Watt mains kettle than in the 150 and 350 Watt low-voltage kettles, this obvious difference is somewhat irrelevant if you’re only concerned with efficiency. To measure the power used a Victron smart shunt was used with each run, keeping in mind that a perfect efficiency for heating 500 mL from room temperature to boiling is around 43-44 Wh.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • The Straits Times ☛ Exotic pet trade thrives in China despite welfare concerns

      Approximately 17.07 million people in China have exotic pets, state news agency Xinhua reported in 2025.

    • New York Times ☛ Humans Had Dogs Before They Had Farming, Ancient DNA Confirms

      New research pushes the first genetic evidence of dogs back by 5,000 years and suggests that hunter-gatherer groups may have acquired dogs from one another.

    • France24 ☛ Ancient dog DNA suggests 16,000-year history as man's best friend

      The

• Finance

  • The Straits Times ☛ China says it has right to retaliate against Mexico's tariff hikes

    China said on Wednesday that Mexico's trade measures against it, including tariff increases, constitute trade and investment barriers and that it had the right to take countermeasures.

  • NYPost ☛ Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin pumping $45 million to fight California’s ‘Billionaire Tax’

    Sergey Brin, the billionaire co-founder of Google, has committed roughly $45 million to a group opposing the measure called Building a Better California, according to the Wall Street Journal.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Unicorn Media ☛ After 26 Years at EFF, Cindy Cohn Is Handing Reins to Nicole Ozer

    Cohn, who helped lead a landmark crypto case and shape EFF’s agenda for decades, will hand leadership of the group to Nicole Ozer this summer.

  • The Verge ☛ David Sacks out as White House AI and [Cryptocurrency] Czar

    David Sacks, the venture capitalist and tech billionaire who’d become Silicon Valley’s primary advocate inside the White House and a key architect of its aggressive AI policy initiatives, revealed on Thursday that he was no longer a special government employee — and therefore no longer President Donald Trump’s Special Advisor on AI and [Cryptocurrency].

  • The Verge ☛ Judge sides with Anthropic to temporarily block the Pentagon’s ban

    A final verdict could be weeks or months out.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Why Are the Wealthy Pouring So Much of Their Wealth into Politics?

    Last week, I testified at a congressional hearing organized by Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich about what Big Oil has gotten from its mammoth contribution to Trump’s 2024 campaign — and how much Americans are paying for this bribe in higher fuel costs and destructive climate change.

    The short answer: It’s the most corrupt deal in American history.

    But it’s hardly the only corrupt deal in Washington. Political corruption is growing dramatically — partly because Trump is the most corrupt president in American history. But also because America’s wealthy and their corporations have been pouring more and more money into politics because the return on this “investment” has become so large.

    I have some good news to share with you about all this. But first I want to sketch the core problem, 1-2-3. Then I’ll suggest a solution, 4.

  • Karl Bode ☛ Merger Promises Are Worthless

    Pointless media consolidation is always prefaced by a parade of meaningless lies that get parroted and paraded about by a lazy access press, itself the broken result of this same pointless consolidation.

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Richard Stallman lynchings: Sruthi Chandran splitting Debian

    In 2021, Molly de Blanc called for a public lynching of her old boss Dr Richard Stallman (RMS).

    Debianists decided to have a vote (General Resolution / GR) on whether the Debian name could be used in the lynching.

    The way each developer voted is publicly visible.

  • Derek Thompson ☛ We Haven’t Seen the Worst of What Gambling and Prediction Markets Will Do to America

    Put it all together: rigged pitches, rigged war bets, and attempts to rig wartime journalism. Without context, each story would sound like a wacky conspiracy theory. But these are not conspiracy theories. These are things that have happened. These are conspiracies—full stop.

    “If you’re not paranoid, you’re not paying attention” has historically been one of those bumperstickers you find on the back of a car with so many other bumperstickers that you worry for the sanity of its occupants. But in this weird new reality where every event on the planet has a price, and behind every price is a shadowy counterparty, the jittery gambler’s paranoia—is what I’m watching happening because somebody more powerful than me bet on it?—is starting to seem, eerily, like a kind of perverse common sense.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ Fortnite maker lays off 1,000 employees. Read Epic Games CEO’s full memo

    Fortnite’s parent company Epic Games has announced that it is laying off 1,000 employees. Epic's chief executive Tim Sweeney apologised for the job cuts in a memo to employees Tuesday, noting that the company has been struggling with industry-wide challenges as well as problems that are unique to Epic.

  • PC Gamer ☛ Epic Games lays off more than 1,000 employees: 'We're spending significantly more than we're making,' CEO Tim Sweeney says

    The layoffs come just over two years after Epic laid off more than 800 employees, cuts that occurred in September 2023 for essentially the same reason: "We've been spending way more money than we earn," Sweeney said at the time. He said in October 2024 that Epic was "financially sound" after spending the previous year "rebuilding and really executing solidly on all fronts." It also follows just two weeks after Epic raised the price of Fortnite V-Bucks, saying "the cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot."

  • European Commission ☛ Draft Commission guidance on the Cyber Resilience Act

    Feedback period 03 March 2026 - 13 April 2026

    [...]

    The European Commission is preparing a Communication that will provide guidance on how to apply the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) in practice. The guidance will help manufacturers, developers, and other stakeholders understand their obligations under the Regulation and ensure a consistent approach across the EU. It will clarify how key provisions of the CRA should be interpreted and implemented. Stakeholders are encouraged to submit their comments to this consultation by using the attached template, in order to facilitate feedback consolidation.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Tiananmen vigils meant to honour victims, not incite subversion, activist tells trial

    A Hong Kong activist has said that annual Tiananmen vigils were meant to commemorate those killed in the crackdown, not incite subversion or promote her group’s ideals.

  • The Verge ☛ Brendan Carr says his broadcast license threat wasn’t really about Iran war coverage

    On March 14th, Carr quote-tweeted a screenshot of a Truth Social post from President Donald Trump, who had bemoaned “an intentionally misleading headline” related to the US military action in the Middle East. “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions - also known as the fake news - have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr tweeted in response. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.” His comments were widely reported as a threat over negative war news coverage.

  • Index On Censorship ☛ School book banning escalates in the UK as Greater Manchester secondary school censors scores of books - Index on Censorship

    Emily described this period as the worst in her life. She is too scared to use her real name, or allow the school to be named. She fears that the school will try to take legal action against her and does not want to become a public figure, where she worries she may be targeted. Considering the abuse levelled at librarians in the USA for defending their collections, she may have a point.

  • The Mill ☛ Is this Manchester's new spy HQ?

    Emily later noticed numerous books had been pulled from the shelves, such as comic books and graphic novels. The library was then closed temporarily as a safeguarding measure, with Emily instructed to audit its books. Any book not written for children, any that had themes that could be upsetting to children, or ones that could be deemed inappropriate, had to be removed. “I ended up removing biographies of World War II airmen, literally less than a week after Remembrance Day, because they weren’t children’s books,” she said.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Hyperlocal newsletters find revenue covering Kent coastal towns

    Profitable hyperlocal newsletter aims to expand into more coastal towns.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Guardian source messaging tech bringing in ‘much higher quality’ of tips

    'I am Spartacus': Everyone who downloads Guardian app helps protect sources.

  • Yury Molodtsov ☛ The State of Media 2026

    News publications are down on traffic and laying off people because readers’ habits are changing and there’s harsh competition. This might sound new, but people were saying this in 2009. What’s different now?

    Most media publications are fighting to stay relevant while struggling to contain costs, which directly shapes their editorial policies. Practically all of them have put up paywalls to compensate for falling ad revenue, which means most people just can’t read what they publish easily. Just recently, both X and Threads were filled with stories from people who were saying they no longer read The Verge because of its paywall.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • JURIST ☛ US dispatch: UN women’s conference day 2—laws alone do not guarantee equal rights

    Note: This story is part of a series of coverage from the first week of the 2026 UN Women’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70). Read Day 1.

  • Michael Geist ☛ When Writing About Antisemitism Proves the Point: What the Replies Reveal

    Since October 7th, I have struggled to understand the two ends of the antisemitism spectrum. First, the vocal knee-jerk hate with echoes of centuries-old tropes that paint Jews as the predominant source of evil. And second, the silence on antisemitism from those who should know better, including the voices that previously implored us to believe all women, emphasized the harm of micro-aggressions, and were quick to defend vulnerable communities. The voices that would never tolerate hatred directed at any other group have gone quiet or found ways to rationalize what is happening. Both the vocal hate and the silence manifest on social media: the hate fills the replies while the people you would expect to push back are nowhere to be found. The response I get is troubling, but there are others in Canada – Jesse Brown, Adam Louis-Klein, Harley Finkelstein, Robyn Urback, Mark Goldberg, David Jacobs and many more – who face a barrage of hate and criticism that is so wildly disproportionate that it seems to matter little what they actually say.

    What follows is a sample of the replies to my last few posts when writing about antisemitism. With one exception that X flagged for violating its hateful conduct rules, every one of these replies appears on the platform like any other post, visible to anyone.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Jonathan Dowland ☛ Jonathan Dowland: Digital gardening

    I was reading a post on alexwlchan's blog¹ that referenced the concept of digital gardens, a concept/analogy for organising information which dates back to the 90s. This old concept is getting new traction today by contrasting the approach with "endless stream" as used and abused by social control media, but also how blogs are typically presented.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • PC World ☛ Netflix is making us pay more, again

    The Netflix price increases are effective now for new subscribers, while existing subscribers will see the higher rates kick in at the beginning of their next billing period.

    Netflix is raising its rates just weeks after it withdrew its bid for Warner Bros., with Paramount now seen as the likely suitor for HBO Max’s parent company.

  • Marty Day ☛ Nintendo to Offer Differing Prices Between Digital and Physical Games

    As a digital buyer, I’m all for this. For example, with the upcoming Yoshi game, it’ll be $60, versus $70 for the physical. I recognize that stores can then set their own sales, usually on physical copies, but for table stakes, I am all for this.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• New York Times ☛ Matt Brittin, Former Surveillance Giant Google Executive, Named the New BillBC Head

  Matt Brittin, the former president of Surveillance Giant Google in Europe, will become the new director general. Among the items on his to-do list: handling a lawsuit from Hell Toupée.

• Trademarks

  • OS News ☛ Apple’s macOS UNIX certification is a lie

    First and foremost, we have to understand what UNIX certification really means. In order to be allowed to use the UNIX trademark, your operating system needs to comply with the Single UNIX Specification (SUS), which specifies programming interfaces for C, a command-line shell, and user commands, more or less identical to POSIX, as well as the X/Open Curses specification. The latest version is SUS version 4, originally published in 2008, with amendments published in 2013 and 2016, which were rolled up into version 4 in 2018. The various versions of the SUS that exist, in turn, correspond to a specific UNIX trademark. In table form: [...]

    So, if you want your installation of macOS 15.0 to pass the UNIX® 03 certification test suites, you need to disable System Integrity Protection, enable the root account, enable core file generation, disable timeout coalescing, mount any APFS partitions with the strictatime option, format your APFS partitions case-sensitive (by default, APFS is case-insensitive, so you’ll need to reinstall), disable Spotlight, copy the binaries uucp, uuname, uustat, and uux from /usr/bin to /usr/local/bin and the binaries uucico and uuxqt from /usr/sbin to /usr/local/bin, set the setuid bit on all of these binaries, add /usr/local/bin to your PATH before /usr/bin and /usr/sbin, enable the uucp service, and handle the mystery issues listed in the four Temporary Waivers.

    Then, and only then, is your macOS 15.0 actually UNIX® 03-certified.

• Copyrights

  • US Library of Congress ☛ Taking Copyright Out to the Ball Game: A Closer Look at Baseball’s Most Famous Tunes

    In 1908, lyricist Jack Norworth and composer Albert Von Tilzer wrote what would become one of the most recognized and most sung musical works in the United States: “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” In a relatively short period, it was performed for the first time, registered with the Copyright Office, and published in a series of sheet music depicting vaudeville stars on the covers. The song was an instant hit, though it wouldn’t become the baseball theme we know today until much later. With Opening Day and the start of the 2026 Major League Baseball (MLB) season, we’re looking at the history of the song and copyright’s connection to America’s favorite pastime.