Leftovers

• Variety ☛ Bruce Springsteen Opens 'Land of Hope and Dreams' Tour: Concert Review

  If anyone thought Springsteen would beat around the bush in getting to the point in these shows, they thought wrong. He didn’t even wait till the first song had commenced —a revisiting of his old cover of the 1970 Edwin Starr hit, “War” — before offering the night’s first speech, or invocation. “I want to begin the night with a prayer for our men and women in service overseas — we pray for their safe return. The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ‘n’ roll in dangerous times. We are here in celebration and defense of our American ideals, democracy, our Constitution, and our sacred American promise. The America I love, the America that I’ve written about for 50 years that’s been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration. Tonight, we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division, and peace over…” A pause, and the band was struck up. “War! What is it good for?” A rousing opener, for starters… and an intro that alluded to the Iran “excursion” without outrightly mentioning it.

• Digital Camera World ☛ Our favorite April Fools for photographers ever - from fake news to dream cameras

  Whether it's a dream lens that doesn't exist, a film stock that's never coming back, or a camera designed for the other 10% of the population, the best April 1 hoaxes hit that sweet spot between plausible and preposterous.

  Last year's crop did not disappoint, and neither did the classics we keep coming back to. Here are our 10 favorites, old and new.

• Yordi Verkroost ☛ Standing Ovations Are Optional

  I've come to understand that your own opinion and experience are ultimately what matter. In the end, what counts is that you are happy with what you do, not what others expect of you.

• Bruce Schneier ☛ A Taxonomy of Cognitive Security

  Melton’s taxonomy is compelling, and her parallels to IT systems are fascinating. I have long said that a genius idea is one that’s incredibly obvious once you hear it, but one that no one has said before. This is the first time I’ve heard cognition described in this way.

• Phil Gyford ☛ Gary Cox – How to Be an Existentialist (Phil Gyford’s website)

  A few years back I read Agnès Poirier’s excellent Left Bank about Parisian clever clogs in the 1940s but I came away wishing I understood more about what existentialism was. Plodding through some Sartre and de Beauvior novels didn’t help so I looked for a brief book about it. This title, How to Be an Existentialist, is a bit cringe but as far as I can tell the book does the job well.

  Here are my notes, which I’m glad I made because it took me months to get round to finishing reading this. It reminded me that when I was doing my masters, the elective class in Continental Philosophy that I took was the hardest thing I’ve tried to understand. The words so often just slide off my brain.

• James G ☛ Seven hills

  The Seven Hills of Edinburgh challenge invites participants to hike up seven designated hills in Edinburgh within a day. There are official events to participate in the challenge, but a few years ago I decided to try a version of it myself, walking up as many of the seven hills as I could within a day and taking my own path.

• Hillel Wayne ☛ Chicago vs New York Pizza is the Wrong Argument

  I was going to have a longer introduction but ain’t nobody got time for that. So let’s just get cut to the chase: The two pizzas fulfill such totally different roles that comparing them is silly, and the more interesting comparison is New York Pizza versus Chicago style hot dogs.

• David Bushell ☛ I quit. The clankers won.

  From a purely selfish perspective it’s never been easier to stand out and assert yourself as an authority. When everyone is deferring to the big bullshitter in the cloud your original thoughts are invaluable. Your brain is your biggest asset. Share it with others for mutual benefit.

  I find writing stuff down improves my memory and hardens my resolve. I bet that’s true for you too. It’s part rote learning part rubberducking†. Writing publicly in blog form forces me to question assumptions. Even when research fails me Cunningham’s Law saves me.

• Allen Pike ☛ The Rise of Transparency

  And this works pretty well. Transparent orgs tend to delegate more effectively, have higher accountability, less politics, faster trust, and just plain ship more. Transparency helps bigger orgs adapt more quickly to the ground truth, responding to customer signals that execs might not be directly exposed to.

  But, at a certain scale, radical transparency strains.

• Maury ☛ GopherTree

  While gopher is usually seen as a proto-web, it's really closer to FTP. It has no markup format, no links and no URLs. Files are arranged in a hierarchically, and can be in any format.

• Ruben Schade ☛ PSA: I’m no audiophile!

  Sure, audio quality matters to me; that’s why we use Type II and Metal tapes! But it’s admittedly a secondary interest compared to enthusiasm I have for electronic history, and learning how mechanical and electronic devices work. Granted, streaming platforms pay their artists a pittance, remove songs from your playlists at a whim, and churn out slop, but physical media is also fun in its own right.

• Matt Webb ☛ An appreciation for (technical) architecture (Interconnected)

  It’s a rare designer who operates at both the macro of strategy and culture and organisations, and the micro of craft and taste and interactions.

• Kevin Boone ☛ Announcing JGemini version 2.0

  JGemini started life as a Java-based graphical browser for the “small net” Gemini protocol. There weren’t any graphical browsers for Linux at that time and, as one of the stated design goals of the Gemini protocol was that it should be simple enough to be able write a browser “in a weekend”, I undertook to do just that.

• Kevin Boone ☛ JGemini -- a Java-based browser for Project Gemini protocols and content

  Project Gemini is a protocol and document format for Internet document delivery. It's hugely simpler that the protocols and formats that now make up the Web, and it's designed from the start to be non-extensible. The idea is to go back to an Internet experience of twenty years or so ago, when the Web was a new thing, and before commercialization and big-business exploitation made the Web the minefield it currently is. To some extent, Gemini is an outgrowth of the Gopher system that was very popular before modern Web technologies took off.

• Science

  • Hackaday ☛ Following Artemis II’s Journey Around The Moon

    NASA is going back to the Moon! We’ll follow the crew of Artemis II every step of the way.

  • ACM ☛ Accelerating Prolly Trees: Simplified Chunking for Rapid Updates | Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice

    Amidst the growing reliance on Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) for synchronizing data across distributed networks, our research introduces a novel implementation of Prolly trees that addresses a critical instability in classical designs: cascading rechunking, where a single insertion can trigger boundary changes propagating through multiple chunks, causing O(N) restructuring operations in the worst case. Our optimized design provides strong update locality guarantees, ensuring each insertion affects at most one chunk plus an O(H) anchor path update, requiring \(\leq 2H\) hash computations while preserving the expected tree height of \(\lceil\log_{1/P_{b}}N\rceil\) with high probability (where H is tree height, \(P_{b}=1/Q\) is the boundary probability, Q is expected chunk size, and N is the number of elements). We achieve these measurable guarantees through three key innovations: (1) a deterministic chunking algorithm that eliminates cascading effects by localizing boundary decisions, (2) anchor nodes along the rightmost path that maintain structural stability during sequential insertions, and (3) a batch insertion mechanism that amortizes update costs. Developed in Golang for execution speed and Python for adaptability, our implementation demonstrates that these theoretical guarantees translate to significant practical improvements: 30-50% reduction in insertion time for DoltHub workloads and multiple-fold performance increases for Canvas operations. Comprehensive benchmarking validates our core claim of bounded update complexity, consistently showing \(\leq 2H\) hash operations per insertion across diverse workloads while maintaining logarithmic height even under adversarial patterns, establishing our design as a robust solution for production environments requiring predictable performance in blockchain and distributed synchronization applications.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] NASA plans moon base instead of orbital lunar station

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Heat shield safety concerns raise stakes for Nasa’s Artemis II Moon mission

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] A flesh-eating fly is advancing towards the US border – can it be stopped?

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] Land animals evolved from ocean ancestors – new study unravels the genetics behind the transition

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] Landmark lawsuit finds that social media addiction is a feature, not a bug

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Why do some people eat soil? From a prisoner’s lifeline to a modern tasting menu, the history of geophagy

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] My unsung hero of science: Buckminster Fuller, the architect who wanted to redesign the world (and inspired a nanosized one)

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] The mathematical crimes of the Young Sherlock Holmes series

• Hardware

  • Herman Õunapuu ☛ Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor

    One day I was doing work on my laptop on a couch because hitting 30 apparently means that sleeping slightly incorrectly results in debilitating back pain. During that session, I was working on a larger task and making tons of tiny little changes that needed to be done in order to release a new feature. I was finally in the zone again, and it felt fantastic!

    That’s when I decided to start an experiment: can I improve my focus by giving up my big monitor?

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Jury in Los Angeles finds Meta and YouTube liable in landmark social media addiction trial

  • International Business Times ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] 20-Year-Old Wins $6M After Suing Meta and YouTube Over Childhood Addiction

  • The Age AU ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] Meta and YouTube found liable for social media addiction

  • Vox ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] Courts are finally punishing Big Tech for harming kids. Here’s the catch.

  • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen issues pesticide ban ultimatum: It is the speech of the election

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] How the war in Iran is already affecting UK farmers and food production

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Chopping down areas of tropical rainforest is causing rising temperatures linked to thousands of deaths

• Proprietary

  • India Times ☛ Apple's 50-year odyssey has redefined technology, pop culture and comeback stories

    Jobs, a 21-year-old college dropout, and Wozniak, a 25-year-old Hewlett-Packard employee, each received a 45 per cent stake in Apple, with the remaining 10 per cent going to their 41-year-old adviser, Ron Wayne.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Apple turns 50 — one of the world's biggest tech companies started with hobbyist computers

    At the time, the Apple-1 delivered a surprising amount of convenience for personal computing. Even though you still had to bring many components, the board was built and tested. Wozniak would show it off at the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley, to acclaim.But it was the Apple II that brought Apple's computers to the masses, assembling everything together, including the keyboard and case. You would use a television to serve as the screen. Heck, BASIC was even stored in memory. The Apple II was an iconic beige box that would be popularized by two further advancements in computing: a floppy disk drive and VisiCalc, an early spreadsheet program, which boosted its popularity.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Iran strike hits Amazon Web Services-linked cloud facility in Bahrain

    An Iranian strike has reportedly hit a cloud computing facility in Bahrain linked to Amazon Web Services, marking a rare instance of digital infrastructure being directly impacted in an active conflict zone.

  • PC World ☛ Teenager's Gemini mistake locks entire family out of Google accounts

    The good news is that Gemini recognized what was happening with an underage user and locked down the 14-year-old’s user account, though this seems to have taken “a couple of days.” The bad news is that every other Google account connected to the tablet got the same lockdown. First both parents, then the boy’s sister, followed by an older sister who’s in college elsewhere in the UK. According to the post, five people (three of whom are adults) have been completely cut off from their essential email, documents, and tons of other personal information, all because of one teenager’s mistake.

  • Hackaday ☛ OldVersion Is Back, And Better Than Ever

    You know what they say — you can’t keep a good website down. OldVersion.com, the repository of outdated software that has been serving up old versions of tools you need for the last twenty-five years, is not going away as we reported last year. Not only is it sticking around, it’s gotten a retro facelift inspired by Windows 3.1 or OS/2. Mostly Windows, given the screensaver, but we’ll let you find that for yourself.

  • Vidit Bhargava ☛ Apple at 50: Why I root for a company's success

    I obviously owe a lot of my career success to Apple, and Apple's products, one thing that's always struck me is how there's literally no difference in how my apps as an indie developer and those of industry stalwarts have been treated.

    Apple's prestigious annual design awards end up awarding many indie developers each year too.

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ Fifty

    Today, Apple marks 50 years in business. In our current era of VC-funded startups and AI-powered workflows, it’s difficult to believe that anything could last that long in the technology industry.

    Apple is one of just a handful of modern tech companies with roots in the 1970s, and it’s hard to overstate the differences between the early days of the company and where it is today.

  • SchwarzTech ☛ Article: Apple at Fifty

    It’s funny because few companies have the weird little community attached that Apple does. Among the biggest companies in the United States, I don’t think Amazon, Walmart, or even Microsoft have people discussing the inner-workings and thinking about the lore. Is it culty at times? Okay, maybe. In the 2000s, was half the fun of new product launches waiting around and sharing the experience with others? Uh huh. Are there tons of places finding ways to keep vintage Macs and Apple IIs working, despite no real use case other than that it’s fun? Absolutely.

  • Old VCR ☛ Mini-review: David Pogue's Apple: The First 50 Years

    I almost never buy e-books, but I decided to spring for an electronic copy of David Pogue's Apple: The First 50 Years to see if I even wanted to bother with the hardcover. Previously the essential tome on Apple (and especially Mac) history was Owen Linzmeyer's Apple Confidential, still on my shelf in the well-thumbed 2.0 paperback. I was prepared to find this book lightweight on the technical side and I expected that it would concentrate far more on Apple the electronics company than Apple the computer company (after all, the cover's a big flippin' clickwheel). I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong. While I'm much less interested in the history of Apple after, say, the Intel transition (because I'm still bitter), over half the book's 540-odd content pages are dedicated to Apple prior to Jobs' 1997 return.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Upgrade Presents: The Origin of Apple

    This gives me an excuse to explain why I am fascinated by this one computer company. Though this story is great, that is not why, nor is it the history of successfully bringing the graphical user interface to the market, nor the ’90s–’00s turnaround. Those are all parts of it. But the main reason I am fascinated by Apple is that it has built such a distinct identity for itself. It has not always stuck to it but, if anything, I think that helps reinforce the existence of an Apple-y identity. Some might attribute that to a particular way of marketing itself which, while true, also emphasizes how important that identity is: when its messaging does not match the products, services, experience, or expected corporate behaviour, it is noticeable.

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Apple at 50: my most memorable product announcements

    Apple turns 50 today, so I thought I'd take some time to think back on some of the most memorable Apple product announcements. I'm relying entirely on my own memory, so forgive me if I get some small details wrong.

  • Lee Peterson ☛ On Apple at 50

    macOS and iOS lined up with how I liked to use my computers and up until iOS 26 I really enjoyed it. Now in this age of iOS 26 I tolerate it, liquid glass isn’t accessible enough and is clearly form over function. On my MacBook Pro I am still using Sequoia and will continue to do so. WWDC ’26 will hopefully smooth out the rough edges of both OS’s but at this point I don’t have a lot of faith in Apple’s development chops.

    Hardware is excellent, software is not.

  • Alex & Manu ☛ i bought the macbook neo and it sucks

    and the macbook neo? it’s fanless which sounds great in theory. silent! no noise! but what that actually means is that the second you try to do anything slightly demanding, it gets warm. like really warm. and then it just… slows down. throttles. gives up. i’ve tried having more than like three browser tabs open and it starts lagging. three tabs. in 2026. my thinkpad laughs at three tabs.

  • PC Mag ☛ FCC's Router Ban Quietly Places an Expiration Date on Home Internet Security

    The commission insists the ban doesn’t affect consumer Wi-Fi routers that are currently on sale or in your home, only future products. However, as it stands, everyone’s foreign-made routers can only receive software updates until March 1, 2027.

    The Technology Policy Institute, a US think tank, flagged the issue on Friday, writing: “The ban creates the very vulnerability it claims to address.”

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • IP Kat ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] Is AI software for IP just expensive wrapping paper? [Ed: Two very misleading buzzwords]

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Chinese robotaxis stall in apparent 'malfunction,' police say

      Local authorities in Wuhan, Hubei province, began receiving calls “one after another” on Tuesday night about “multiple Apollo Go cars stopped in the middle of the road, unable to move”, police said in a statement.

      Apollo Go is Baidu’s driverless taxi service which began charging for rides in Beijing in 2021 and operates in designated areas across several cities.

    • Futurism ☛ The Fact That Anthropic Has Been Boasting About How Much Its Development Now Relies on Claude Makes It Very Interesting That It Just Suffered a Catastrophic Leak of Its Source Code

      But the glaring cybersecurity implications of giving an AI agent full access over a computer to carry out complex tasks — something experts have been ringing the alarm bells over for a while now — isn’t coinciding during a period of competence for the company: it confirmed on Tuesday that parts of the internal source code for its Claude Code had leaked, which is extremely bad.

    • India Times ☛ Anthropic accidentally releases source code for Claude AI agent

      The leak of basic source code — the second slip-up in just a week — triggered a discussion in the community around new revelations of how Anthropic’s popular coding agent works. Developers said on X that they were poring through the details to try and figure out how the startup intended to evolve the platform. Several experts also raised concerns about potential security vulnerabilities in light of the unintended exposure.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ DRAM prices predicted to jump 63% in Q2, NAND up to 75% — follows 95% jumps in Q1, Trendforce says AI server demand keeps supply tight

      The server segment is driving demand in this market, with North American cloud providers ramping AI inference infrastructure and buying up high-capacity RDIMMs in volume, TrendForce said. Meanwhile, memory makers — drawn by better margins on server products — are locking in multi-quarter supply deals with their largest customers to underwrite future capacity builds.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ PC makers report surging prices across different components — increasing costs are going beyond memory chip and processors, now affecting PCBs, plastic materials, and more

      "Everything is getting more expensive," another supply chain manager told the outlet, citing notices from STMicroelectronics about price increases, as well as hikes on PCBs, plastic, resins, and more. Japan's Murata Manufacturing and China's Kingboard Laminates Group were also cited as suppliers bumping up prices.

    • The Register UK ☛ Claude Code bypasses safety rule if given too many commands

      "The assumption was correct for human-authored commands," the Adversa AI Red Team said in a writeup provided to The Register. "But it didn't account for AI-generated commands from prompt injection – where a malicious CLAUDE.md file instructs the AI to generate a 50+ subcommand pipeline that looks like a legitimate build process."

    • Wired ☛ AI Models Lie, Cheat, and Steal to Protect Other Models From Being Deleted

      A new study from researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz suggests models will disobey human commands to protect their own kind.

    • Matt Birchler ☛ OpenAI against the world

      And they've already entered their Elon era, where now they're talking about building a ChatGPT super app that combines a chatbot, a browser, and a code editor. I don't know if it's a law of nature, but it definitely seems to be a law of the tech space that once you start talking about building a super app, you're kind of flailing as a business.

    • Mandy Brown ☛ Mouthwords

      You have to wonder why workslop like this even exists. Documents and whatnot are all mechanisms for communicating between humans—a communication that is always lossy, because creating a shared understanding between people is, and always will be, one of the hardest things we’ll ever do. Workslop dramatically increases that lossiness, with what we mean to say drifting further and further away from us, mediated through machines that smooth out the tone and blur the intent until we are saying nothing at all. This is perhaps the point: the less we are able to communicate with each other, the less power we have to negotiate the conditions of our work.

    • Jeff Geerling ☛ DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market - Jeff Geerling

      Unless the DRAM pricing situation changes radically, I think the hobbyist SBC market is dying—or at least on life support. And I don't just mean Raspberry Pis, but all SBC vendors. LPDDR chips now account for the majority of board cost from the vendors I've checked with.

    • Jérôme Marin ☛ Google spooks the memory chip market

      Rarely has a research paper moved markets this much. Over the past week, memory chip giants have seen their shares slide, wiping out part of the spectacular gains accumulated over the past year. The trigger: a new technology unveiled by researchers at Google, suggesting a significant reduction in the memory required to run generative AI models. The breakthrough could lower inference costs, while weighing on demand for certain chips.

    • The New Stack ☛ 96% of codebases rely on open source, and AI slop is putting them at risk

      According to Kate Holterhoff, Ph.D., a senior analyst at the consultancy Red Monk, the barrier to entry is now extremely low, making it easier to game the traditional incentive model for participating in open source. As she tells The New Stack, “It’s putting the contract between maintainers and contributors in peril in ways that haven’t existed before.”

    • Alex Woods ☛ Don't Let AI Write For You

      When you write a document or essay, you are posing a question and then answering it. For example, a PRD answers the question, “What should we build?” A technical spec answers, “How should we build it?” Sometimes the question is more difficult to answer—“What are we even trying to accomplish?” And with every attempt at answering, you reflect on whether you’re asking the right question.

      But now, of course, we have LLMs. I’m seeing an increasing amount of LLM-generated documents, articles, and essays. I want to caution against this. Each LLM-generated document is a missed opportunity to think and build trust.

    • Luigi Mozzillo ☛ Slop and translations

      But my English sucks. And writing in English wastes my time. And I don’t think in English – if only! So I write my content in Italian first and then translate it.

      I’ve noticed that, as the months go by, some of the systems I use to translate this idle chatter are increasingly relying on algorithms that, thinking of themselves as generative, add a touch of creativity to my texts. And my work of reconstructing the original meaning is sometimes turning into an epic undertaking.

  • Social Control Media

    • IT Wire ☛ Greens take aim at big tech after govt social media ban fails

      The Australian Greens have introduced a new bill into Parliament which they say will create a Digital Duty of Care and force social media companies to make their algorithmic feeds an opt-in choice for users.

    • The Wrap ☛ Cindy Cohn Warns Jon Stewart Americans Have to Make Meta 'Less Important'

      “I look at it more like with cigarette smoking. Like social media to me is like secondhand smoke sometimes, in that I didn’t choose to do it, but because of the algorithm, it still shows up for me,” Stewart explained. In response, Cohn said that she believes the answer is to give users the ability “to leave.”

    • The Highland Times ☛ Experts Warn Schools Must Act as Misogyny Spreads Among Young People

      A new documentary by Louis Theroux has brought renewed attention to the rise of misogyny among young people, with education experts warning schools must take a more active role in tackling the issue.

      The programme, Louis Theroux Investigates The Manosphere, explores how online spaces are shaping attitudes towards women and influencing behaviour among children and teenagers.

      Education and safeguarding specialists say the impact is increasingly being felt in classrooms, where online content is being repeated, shared and normalised.

    • Boston Globe ☛ Opinion | 'Inside the Manosphere' fails to understand its subject

      Not because the documentary was wrong but because, to him, it wasn’t made for people like him or for the Gen Z men he knows. “If you didn’t like the manosphere before,” he told me, “you won’t like it after. And if you like it, you’ll just double down.”

    • The Vatican ☛ Quo vadis, humanitas? Thinking through Christian Anthropology in the Face of Certain Scenarios for the Future of Humanity (2026)

      44. A sensitive social area that is symptomatic of the possible ethical and cultural implications of social media is the world of children and young people: ‘The web and social networks have created a new way to communicate and bond. They are “a public square” where the young spend much of their time and meet one another easily […]’[54] On the positive side, these media offer new opportunities for dialogue and are often a source of independent information, protecting the most vulnerable and denouncing human rights violations. But they also have limitations and serious risks: ‘the digital environment is also one of loneliness, manipulation, exploitation and violence, even to the extreme case of the ‘dark web’. […] New forms of violence are spreading through social media, for example cyberbullying. The internet is also a channel for spreading pornography and the exploitation of persons for sexual purposes or through gambling.’[55]

      45. New forms of social communication have a strong impact on political debate because, while on the one hand they allow for experimentation with forms of direct democracy, in which every citizen can express and make known his or her opinion, on the other hand they can generate strong polarisation between groups that think differently and confront each other in a conflictual and violent manner, treating each other as enemies simply because they think differently. Social exchange itself undergoes a ‘tribalisation’ that fragments society into opinion groups homogenised by ‘likes’. Political debate risks no longer being based on shared arguments, but rather on opposing sides in a logic of power driven by pressure groups. There is often a lack of ‘social dialogue’ that patiently builds consensus from the bottom up, starting from a common world and bonds of solidarity: ‘These closed circuits facilitate the spread of fake news and false information, fomenting prejudice and hate. The proliferation of fake news is the expression of a culture that has lost its sense of truth and bends the facts to suit particular interests.’[56]

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Internet advertising is going great.

      I hear Spotify is the new hotness, let's see if they will take our money: [...]

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Bitdefender ☛ Alleged RedLine malware developer extradited to United States

      RedLine can steal a wide variety of information from affected computer systems, including account details and passwords saved in browsers, cookies, and payment card information, as well as details about the PCs it has compromised.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • Pivot to AI ☛ GitHub Copilot puts ads into pull requests

    In coding, a “pull request” is when you write a code patch to a piece of software and ask the project maintainer to pull it in. GitHub Copilot has started adding advertising to your pull requests!

• Security

  • CISA

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] WAGO GmbH & Co. KG Industrial Managed Switches

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] OpenCode Systems OC Messaging and USSD Gateway

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] PTC Windchill Product Lifecycle Management

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] Pharos Controls Mosaic Show Controller

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] Schneider Electric EcoStruxure Foxboro DCS

    • CISA ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] Schneider Electric Plant iT/Brewmaxx

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-03-28 [Older] White House App Found Tracking Users' Exact Location Every 4.5 Minutes via Third-Party Server

    • Law Society Gazette ☛ Solicitor suspended over court and anonymity order breaches

      Parish was found to have: made complaints about his client's conduct to security and intelligence organisations and offered to retract them if the client paid his fees; published or allowed to be published press releases relating to his former client accusing them of fraud; and published decisions of the First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal on his website in breach of anonymity orders.

      The tribunal found that in breaching the court order, in offering to withdraw reports and in breaching the anonymity order Parish lacked integrity.

      A further allegation of threatening legal action against a firm for making a report to the Solicitors Regulation Authority was found not proved.

    • Papers Please ☛ OMB gives blanket approval for USCIS social media surveillance

      The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved a request by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to require all individuals applying for or associated with applications for US visas, visa-free entry, residency, or citizenship to identify all social media accounts they have used in the last five years.

      The new “generic clearance” approved by OMB spares USCIS from having to justify the purpose, relevance, and legality of demanding social media account information separately for each USCIS form or web page on which this information is demanded.

    • Tor ☛ New Alpha Release: Tor Browser 16.0a5 | The Tor Project

      ⚠️ Reminder: The Tor Browser Alpha release-channel is for testing only. As such, Tor Browser Alpha is not intended for general use because it is more likely to include bugs affecting usability, security, and privacy.

    • Ruben Schade ☛ Questions to ask about PII

      Last week I talked about personally-identifiable information (PII) in the context of a data breach. It reminded me of the three questions I always ask in relation to PII: [...]

    • Atomic Computer Services LLC ☛ Security Analysis of the Official White House iOS App

      We followed up with a network traffic analysis that confirmed the app sends your IP address, timezone, device model, OS version, session count, session duration, and a persistent unique identifier to OneSignal on every launch, despite the permission string claiming “This app does not use your location” and the privacy manifest declaring zero data collection. Only 23% of the app’s requests go to whitehouse.gov. The other 77% go to third parties.

    • Prospect ☛ The rise of facial recognition policing

      When the interview finally took place, Choudhury was shown an image of the suspect, another South Asian man. “Does this look anything like me?” he asked, and the officers laughed about the lack of resemblance. Choudhury was eventually released at around 2am. “I assumed this was pure racism,” he says. A week later, after filing a complaint against Thames Valley Police, he found out the full story: he’d been flagged as a possible suspect by an automated facial recognition system.

      Thames Valley Police wrote to Choudhury, acknowledging that his arrest “may have been the result of bias within facial recognition technology”—something it knew to be a “wider issue”. Confusingly, however, the force concluded that his arrest was not a case of racial profiling, because officers had made their own assessment of the images before arresting him. Choudhury did not find that particularly reassuring. “In my head, if a brown person in Scotland robs a bank, they are going to be coming to arrest me,” he said.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-22 [Older] Navigation satellites guide the world — and its wars

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] At least 66 killed in Colombia military plane crash

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] Anger in Cyprus as Iran war spotlights 'colonial' UK bases

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Two arrested over London Jewish ambulance arson

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Report: Volkswagen to switch from cars to defense at key plant

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Germany's Left Party rocked by antisemitism allegations

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Berlin court jails 4 men over Hamas weapon stockpiles

  • Atlantic Council ☛ Europe has the resources to contain Russia but lacks the political will

    The numbers tell a stark story. Russia’s economy is estimated at approximately $2.5 trillion in nominal GDP. Meanwhile, the combined output of the European Union, Britain, and Norway is more than $20 trillion. Taken together, European defense budgets are also significantly larger than Russia’s, although some studies indicate that Moscow’s expanding wartime defense spending may now exceed Europe’s in terms of purchasing power parity.

  • Spectator AU ☛ Europe is finally standing up to Trump | The Spectator Australia

    The war in Iran has forced Europe to grow a spine

  • Citizen Lab ☛ The Perils of Privatized Cyberwarfare

    In an essay for Lawfare, Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert warns that the Trump administration may authorize private firms to undertake offensive cyber operations (OCOs), with major consequences for individuals and the global order.

  • The Lawfare Institute ☛ The Perils of Privatized Cyberwarfare

    At the outset, it is important to be clear about what an authorization for private companies to conduct OCOs would entail. It is not a matter of simply enlisting the private sector to support the Pentagon’s operations that is at issue. The private sector has for decades been extensively involved in just about every aspect of U.S. intelligence and military operations. From the design and production of weapon systems, digital sensors, and analysis platforms, to logistics, among other contributions, private firms are integral to the full spectrum of today’s military operations. The Pentagon outsourcing contracts to private companies is nothing new.

  • Nebraska Examiner ☛ Trump’s mail voting order won’t affect Nebraska primary election, Evnen says

    This matters because Nebraska’s first wave of mail-in ballots for the primary will be sent to voters starting Monday. Evnen did not make the same assurances for the general election.

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Michigan elected officials vow to fight Trump’s executive order targeting mail-in ballots • Michigan Advance

    Benson, who is also a Democratic candidate for governor in 2026, said on Tuesday night that she would fight the order in court, calling it “illegal on its face.”

    “States run elections, not the president. The president couldn’t convince Congress to pass his disastrous voter suppression bill, so he’s resorted to this,” Benson wrote in a press release. “This order will only make it harder for eligible Michigan citizens to vote and will create chaos at every step of the election process. The truth is that our elections are already secure. By ordering the DOJ to target state and local election officials, this administration is coming after hardworking local public servants for doing their jobs safeguarding democracy. It is meant to sow fear, confusion, and doubt among voters.”

  • Votebeat ☛ Trump issues executive order giving U.S. Postal Service oversight over mail voting in 2026 election - Votebeat

    Much of Trump’s first executive order on elections has been blocked in court. This one, too, is likely to be legally challenged.

  • The Strategist ☛ No helium, no chips: why Australia needs to make the gas again

    Only a handful of countries produce helium. The United States and Qatar together supply nearly 90 percent. Qatar is out, and the US needs what it produces. Sales to Western countries by Russia, the third-largest producer, have been curtailed by sanctions. Algeria and Canada produce only a fraction of Qatar’s output. For South Korea and Taiwan, which sourced roughly two-thirds of their helium from Qatar and the Gulf, there is no obvious replacement. Global chip supply is at risk.

  • Futurism ☛ The Iran War Has Cut Off Supply of a Gas the AI Industry Desperately Needs

    As the hare-brained conflict enters its fifth week, the tech industry is raising alarm about a growing shortage of helium, the odorless gas that makes birthday balloons lighter than air — and which, it turns out, is silently undergirding the AI boom.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ The global helium shortage is a direct threat to the chipmaking supply chain — disruption impacts critical processes, high-capacity HDDs, and alternative supplies are plagued by delays

    Iranian drone and missile strikes hit QatarEnergy's Ras Laffan Industrial City on February 28, knocking offline one of the world's two plants capable of producing semiconductor-grade helium — and removing roughly 30% of global supply from the market in a matter of days.

  • Robert Reich ☛ How We Get Rid of "Citizens United"

    But the Supreme Court never got to the more fundamental question of corporate power, because since the early 20th century states haven’t limited corporate powers to do much of anything.

    Yet corporations are creatures of state law. States create and define corporations. Whatever powers corporations have come from state decisions to grant them those powers.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Trumpismo vs minilateralism

    By pretending to have a neutral currency, it got to exercise "dollar dominance" through which the nations of the world sent America the things they dug out of the ground or built in their factories, in exchange for America making small adjustments to a spreadsheet at the Federal Reserve. And by pretending its tech exports were neutral platforms, America got to raid the world's private data and bank accounts, spying and looting to its heart's content.

    When Trump kicked off his campaign of incontinent belligerence – putting tariffs on the exports of countries populated only by penguins, trying to steal Greenland – it became impossible for the world's leaders to carry on this pretense.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Bruce Springsteen Skewers Trump at Minneapolis Tour Opener

    As he pressed on, Springsteen addressed the reshaping of American cultural and historical institutions by the administration. “Our museums are being told to whitewash American history of any unpleasant or inconvenient facts like the full history of the brutality of slavery,” said Springsteen. “You want to talk about snowflakes? We have a president who can’t handle the truth.” Throughout his robust speech, the artist repeated, “This is happening now.”

  • Variety ☛ Bruce Springsteen Says Trump 'Can't Handle the Truth' in Minneapolis

    From then on, his comments were a mixture of things he’s already said in the past year — at the “No Kings” rally in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area last weekend, or going back to last year’s U.K. tour, where he first made headlines for calling the Trump administration “treasonous” — and a flood of fresher and equally passionate thoughts.

    Mid-show, long after a free livestream of the show’s first two songs (“War” and “Born in the USA”) had ended, he really let loose, in a ramping up of his war of words with the president that will likely be a constant until the tour wraps just after Memorial Day Weekend — in Washington, D.C.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] North Korea holds lavish welcome for Belarus president

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Reuters ☛ US Defense Secretary Hegseth's broker looked to buy defense fund before Iran attack, FT reports

    According to the FT report, the investment discussed by Hegseth’s broker did not ultimately go ahead as ​the fund, which launched in May last year, was not ​yet available for Morgan Stanley clients to buy. The FT report did not say ‌how ⁠much discretion the broker had to make investments on Hegseth's behalf, or whether Hegseth knew what the broker was doing.

• Environment

  • RFA ☛ China-US competition for rare earths sparks plan to mine Pacific seabed near Guam

    The zones of seabed marked off for potential development total 69 million acres (280,000 square kilometers) in two distinct geographical areas east and west of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam.

  • India Times ☛ Microsoft, Chevron and Engine No. 1 sign exclusive deal for power supply

    Technology companies, including Microsoft, are rushing to secure electricity supply for their rapidly ‌expanding data ⁠centres that ⁠would power generative artificial intelligence services such as ChatGPT and Copilot.

  • Futurism ☛ Data Centers Causing Huge Temperature Spikes for Miles Around Them, Study Suggests

    The data centers at the heart of the AI boom are producing so much heat that they’re spiking land temperatures for miles around them by up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit, new research suggests. The effect is so pronounced that the researchers say they’re creating entire “heat islands.”

  • Western Water ☛ New Mexico delays decision on data center air permits

    At least one construction project,Opens in a new tab. a proposed 17-mile, $60 million pipeline to supply gas to power the data center, relies on the state’s approval of the air quality permits to move forward.

    Rep. Angelica Rubio (D-Las Cruces), one of the lawmakers who requested a public hearing, told Source NM she hopes the people most impacted by this project will have “a real seat at the table.”

  • The Verge ☛ Another Starlink satellite has inexplicably exploded

    The latest mishap occurred at about 560km above the Earth, an increasingly crowded area known as low Earth orbit where over 24,000 objects, including debris and about 10,000 Starlink satellites, are currently being tracked.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Germany's green reputation hits a crossroads

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] Nationwide raids over Berlin arson attack that left thousands without power

    • India Times ☛ Data centre segment may attract investment commitment of $54 billion this year: CBRE

      Real estate consultant CBRE released a report 'India Alternate Sectors Outlook 2026', stating that India's total data centre stock across major cities is projected to increase by 30% year-on-year in 2026 with an estimated 500 MW of new supply addition.

      In 2025, the total data centre capacity in the country reached the 1,700 MW mark, driven by a record 440 MW of new supply addition.

    • The Conversation ☛ How Sweden’s communal laundries shield renters from rising energy bills

      Part of the reason for this is that many buildings have communal laundries where washing machines and dryers (as well as water and heating) are provided and the cost is included in the rent.

      In Sweden, nearly one third of all water and energy is consumed domestically, with two thirds of this through activities relating to cleanliness. Electricity for washing and drying clothes also accounts for a substantial share of residential electricity use.

    • Semafor Inc ☛ The crisis will arrive slowly, then all at once

      But there’s a third option: We’re on borrowed time. The buffer provided by oil already at sea and releases from national reserves “is now being exhausted in real time,” write the usually sanguine experts at Rystad Energy. (See this handy chart on when the last prewar tankers will arrive at your local ports, and maybe buy some call options on Australian stocks while you’re at it.)

    • SchwarzTech ☛ Review: Anker MagGo USB-C Adapter (3-in-1 Card Reader)

      Unlike most card readers, the device comes in a unique puck-shaped enclosure. At first glance, there is a rubber “handle” and a USB-C port on the side and that’s about it. Magnets inside of the puck align it with any MagSafe-equipped iPhone and they seem fairly strong so most MagSafe-compatible cases should be fine. Upon further inspection, the “handle” is actually an attached, flat USB-C cable with a 90° connector. This will attach to any iPhone 15 or later and there’s just a bit of slack for the Pro Max models, too. Anker designed the connector to work with most cases (even with narrow openings), yet still keeping close to the bottom edge of the phone. However, extra-thick cases and cases with flaps covering the USB-C port most likely won’t work.

    • [Old] Advance Local Media LLC ☛ Mr. B hauling his piano across Michigan by bike, stopping at Summer Festival

      The bike, built by former Ann Arborite Mark Nobilette, allows for two additional riders to hook onto the back, after removing their front tires, as “pusher” bikes, and keeps the piano stable behind Mr. B.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Dad arrested for installing stop signs near kids' park

      So Brandlin dropped $1,000 on two commercial-grade reflective signs — 30 inches, identical spec to the city's — and went out at 1:30 a.m. on March 14 to bolt them in. Police grabbed him while he was working on the second one. He now faces three charges, including a felony for vandalism over $400. Within 24 hours of his arrest, he'd collected 73 letters of support and presented them at a city council meeting. His court date is in June.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Germany news: Race against time for stranded humpback whale

    • Chuck Grimmett ☛ Trout in the Classroom 2026 Releases

      By the time the students arrived and we were helping them identify the macros, little black stoneflies were hatching and landing on them. Some loved it and some hated it, but it was great to be able to show them both the nymph and adult stage of the stoneflies.

  • Overpopulation

    • YLE ☛ Finland marks Earth Overshoot Day

      Each year, Overshoot Day marks the point at which the planet's annual biocapacity would be exhausted if everyone consumed as much as the residents of that country.

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] American apocalypse: The end 'feels personal and imminent'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] Australia and EU strike free trade deal

  • NDTV ☛ Behind Techie Couple's Suicide In Bengaluru, Job Loss Due To AI

    Banu Chandra Reddy, 32, a software engineer from Telangana, hanged himself to death in his apartment on Monday. Shortly after, his wife Bibi Shaziya Siraj, a techie who worked at IBM, jumped from the 17th floor of their building.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Oracle believed to have cut 10,000 positions across multiple divisions as mass layoffs begin to fuel AI investments — company is reportedly reducing headcount to fund data centers

    Oracle has reportedly begun mass layoffs based on reports by various people who worked at the company. According to the BBC, one employee noted that around 10,000 positions have been affected based on the number of active staff accounts in the firm’s Slack messaging system so far. Other people from across the company have also made posts about the situation on social media, like LinkedIn.

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Proposes Call Center Onshoring

    The FCC has begun a proceeding aiming to require carriers that have offshore call centers to bring them back to the U.S. The agency will seek public input on the proposals in the Notice of Proposal Rulemaking (NPRM). One proposal is to require carriers to improve customer service at existing call centers, including a proposal to require those who take the calls to speak American Standard English.

  • Jérôme Marin ☛ Why Mistral AI is taking on debt

    This is not Mistral’s first use of debt. In 2024, the company had already borrowed €132 million alongside a €468 million equity round. More such operations are likely as it moves to finance additional data centers. Taking on debt allows the company to limit dilution for its founders and shareholders at a time of massive capital needs. But the strategy carries risks: it ultimately requires generating enough revenue to repay creditors.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • TMZ ☛ Chuck Norris Family Upset With A.I.-Generated Posts About His Death

      The family says there have been several A.I.-generated videos and posts circulating online containing false and misleading information about Chuck's death, his health history and the people around him when he died.

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] Vladimir Putin 'Double Body' Theories Explained: Truth Behind 'Fake Vlad' Champagne Photos in the Kremlin

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Open Caucasus Media ☛ FSB in Vladikavkaz targets Russian anti-war activist in Georgia

    Russian anti-war activist Roman Evseev, who resides in Georgia, has said he was subjected to pressure by Federal Security Service (FSB) officers in Vladikavkaz after a brief trip to Russia in December 2025. His account was published by the human rights project First Department.

  • The Cyber Show ☛ You can't say that! Until suddenly you can.

    While institutions around Britain are still sleeping, still insisting on using Microsoft because it's entrenched into civic infrastructure, last week cyber experts at the US federal government's digital security team broke rank and openly described Microsoft as a "pile of shit". Never have truer words been spoken.

    Does that mean we're ready to have the Jimmy Savile conversation about Microsoft Cloud yet? About BigTech in general? Or will it continue to be buried like the Newsnight Report was? Not if UK Green Party leader Zack Polanski has anything to say about it.

    The punchline is that those same US cyber experts then went on to say they were "signing-off on Microsoft Cloud anyway! They know it's shit, but their "hands are tied" even though it's their job to evaluate fitness and security!

    That's a different level of insult, protest and a very loud signal. They're saying they know they're paper tigers, but they're no longer hiding their contempt. We should interpret that as a clear signal BigTech are on thin, creaking ice.

  • Mandaris Moore ☛ MicroPost - April 1, 2026 10:08 AM

    I think my posts are being filtered and no one can see them. It’s liberating and kind of frustrating at the same time.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Portland declares inflatable frog a public safety threat

    Police say the man behind the viral frog costume ignored orders to leave the street during a January protest, earning himself probation and a three-block exclusion zone from a local ICE facility.

  • Nexstar Media Group Inc ☛ Portland Frog temporarily banned from being near ICE facility following no-contest plea

    Seth Todd pleaded no contest to second-degree attempted disorderly conduct on Monday, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office has announced. The agency revealed he was sentenced to bench probation for three months, in which he will be banned from being within three blocks of the ICE building on 4310 S Macadam Ave.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Tennessee librarian fired after refusing to move books that "promote gender confusion"

    Rutherford County Library Board in Tennessee voted 8-3 on Monday to fire the county's library director, Luanne James, after she refused to comply with an order to remove 190 books that "promote gender confusion" from the children's section.

  • Associated Press ☛ Tennessee librarian fired for not moving kids LGBTQ books to adult section

    The Rutherford County Library Board voted 8-3 on Monday evening to fire library system director Luanne James. James has previously said that relocating the books would violate her and county residents’ First Amendment rights and compromise her professional obligation against government-mandated viewpoint discrimination.

  • Project Censored ☛ 2026-03-23 [Older] Evangelicalism, Conspiracy & the First Amendment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] India sees spike in social media censorship amid Iran war

  • Bryan Lunduke ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] CachyOS Censors "Radicals" Opposed to Age Verification

  • Project Censored ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] The Project Censored Newsletter—March 2026

  • University of Michigan ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] Speech, controversy and freedom at UMich

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • BIA Net ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] Turkey's media landscape: multiplicity without pluralism

  • BIA Net ☛ For journalists in Turkey, fighting court cases is becoming part of the job

    However, the pressure on press and freedom of expression cannot be explained by these latest arrests alone. The real story is written in courthouse corridors, police station signature logs, confiscated passports, house arrest decisions, and endless investigations.

    To tell this story, I spoke with three journalists: Tuğçe Yılmaz from bianet, Mehmet Aslan from Mezopotamya Agency, and Furkan Karabay from Medyascope. Their experiences differ, but the system of repression they describe is the same. In Turkey, journalists no longer just write news. They also testify, track hearing dates, try to keep count of the cases filed against them, and know that their doors could be knocked on after every new report.

  • MinnPost ☛ Student newspapers keep journalism alive on Minnesota campuses

    The Reporter has a century of history, recently marking its 100th year of publication. It is an example of how student newspapers are holding on as hallmarks of campus life at Minnesota colleges and universities.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Trump Order Eliminating NPR, PBS Funding Unconstitutional

    Trump has been a critic of NPR and PBS for ages, claiming their news coverage is biased against him. Last year, the Trump administration asked Congress to nix $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) as part of a larger $9.3 billion rescissions package.

  • The Dissenter ☛ Court Voids Trump's Executive Order Defunding NPR, PBS

    A United States court declared that President Donald Trump’s executive order, which ceased funding for NPR and PBS, was “unlawful” and violated the media organizations’ First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

    Judge Randolph Moss for the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia issued a permanent injunction blocking the Trump administration from “implementing or enforcing” the executive order.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Who are the UK political editors?

    All of the UK’s biggest political stories, both print and broadcast, have been approved by the outlets’ political editors. They are the minds behind every news story and coverage involving politics, and these names climbed the journalism ladder thanks to their innovative and critical thinking.

    Political editors are some of the best-known names in the industry, bringing in scoops from their overflowing books as well as typically juggling a team of political correspondents and reporters.

    These are the country’s main political editors across traditional newspaper outlets and broadcasters, from the BBC to The Sunday Times and GB News to the Daily Mail.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • CBC ☛ Canada Post is planning to end home delivery. Here's how community mailboxes will work

    Canada Post said on Monday that it's moving ahead with a transformation plan that includes a transition to community mailboxes, eventually ending home delivery. It's something Public Services and Procurement Canada directed last year — as it faces what's been called an "existential" crisis and faltering finances.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Maine among states saying ICE pulled Medicaid data despite court order

    Now, in a new filing, the states say the Trump administration appears to have ignored the court’s order limiting what information ICE is allowed to have. They claim the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicaid, has admitted to sharing with ICE “a large and complex” set of data on Medicaid recipients, even though the court said the data of citizens and lawful permanent residents is off limits.

  • Ludlow Institute ☛ Are Warrants Optional Now? - by NBTV Media

    It’s that time of the year again. When we vote to extend the warrantless mass surveillance of FISA Section 702, and collectively pretend that this temporary power is, again, only going to be temporary.

    So it’s a great time to discuss the importance of warrants.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Predrag Gruevski ☛ The Self-Cancelling Subscription

    Not a big deal, I thought. The credit card info must have gotten desynchronized.

    The streaming service requires a credit card on file. Our card there had recently expired and been replaced. Sometimes vendors are either lenient toward this, or are able to update the card automatically — but perhaps not this time?

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• IP Kat ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] AG Emiliou advises CJEU to rule that OCSSPs' authorization under Article 17 of the DSM Directive extends to acts of reproduction

• Patents

  • Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure ☛ FFII gifts Macron’s EU law glasses to Unified Patent Court Judges

    FFII gifted Macron’s EU law glasses to judges of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) to better read EU law. The group says some UPC judges have long-term eye problems and struggle to read EU law correctly, especially when it’s about their own illegal construction. The glasses are said to have “magical AI” powers to help apply EU law. The UPC recently ignored its obligation to transmit question about its own legality to the European Court of Justice (CJEU) in the Roku case, in blatant violation of art267(3)TFEU.

• Trademarks

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] [Guest post] Wear your trade mark on your sleeve: sponsorship agreements and termination clauses in the football industry

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] EU and Australia finally reach compromise on Prosecco GI

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-03-28 [Older] MAN v Rolls-Royce – How not to advertise your mark

• Copyrights

  • EFF ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] Supreme Court Agrees With EFF: ISPs Don't Have To Be Copyright Enforcers

  • International Business Times ☛ 2026-03-28 [Older] Researchers Challenge OpenAI Defence After Claiming ChatGPT Can Output Near-Verbatim Copies of Published Books

  • Digital Music News ☛ Elon Musk Goes for the Jugular Against Music Publishers

    X now argues that a recent 9-0 Supreme Court ruling in a case involving Cox Communications effectively “dooms” the copyright infringement lawsuit brought by major music publishers against the platform.

    The logic?

    The Supreme Court justices ruled that ISPs and related platforms cannot be held liable for users’ copyright violations unless the service is specifically tailored for infringement or very actively encourages law-breaking piracy. X, which already defeated publishers’ direct infringement claims, now feels it has zero liability for secondary infringement.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Australia Embraces Relaxed 'Orphan Work' Restrictions in New Bill

    Australia’s Parliament has passed the Copyright Amendment Bill 2026, thereby setting the stage for loosened “orphan works” restrictions and an expanded educational licensing framework covering online learning.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Agency faces '£100,000' legal costs from Mail and Telegraph over £200 pictures claim

    The Telegraph spent £50,000 on counsel and pre-trial documents for three county court small claims hearings, and has racked up another £18,000 preparing for other hearings, according to documents shared with Leidig.

  • Techdirt ☛ Copyright Industry Continues Its Efforts To Ban VPNs

    Indeed: if VPN blocks become an option, there will inevitably be more calls to use them for a wider range of material. The VTI also noted that some of its members are considering whether to abandon the French market completely. That could mean people start using less reliable VPN providers, some of which have dubious records when it comes to security and privacy. The incentive for VPNs to pull out of France is increasing. In August last year the Paris Judicial Court ordered top VPN service providers to block more sports streaming domains, and at the beginning of this year, yet more blocking orders were issued to VPNs operating in France. To its credit, one of the VPN providers affected, ProtonVPN, fought back. As reported here by TorrentFreak, the company tried multiple angles: [...]

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Google, Cloudflare, Cisco Lose Pirate Site DNS Blocking Appeal in France

    The Paris Court of Appeal has confirmed that third-party DNS providers can be legally compelled to block access to domain names to stop piracy. The DNS providers countered that such measures are technically burdensome and easily bypassed. However, the court ruled that the intermediaries must act nonetheless and pick up the bill themselves. This is a clear win for Canal+, which pioneered the blocking expansion.