Leftovers

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] The pleasure of books in the digital age

• Paco ☛ Choosing my own standards

  I still struggle to remind myself that I'm the only one who can set standards that are truly meaningful for me. I guess it's a journey and I'm getting there.

• Matthew Weber ☛ The Don't Buy Shit Challenge

  My goal is to go at least the next six months without buying anything I don’t absolutely need. And by absolutely need, I mean can’t live without: food, shelter, and such. Anything tech wise, pens, gaming, etc. needs to go into the “don’t buy” category. I have enough tech and such already, I don’t need anymore. Now, obviously if my computer dies, I’ll probably have to break the challenge, though I do have other computers around so maybe not.

• Jan Wildeboer ☛ Domain prices in 2026 for my portfolio

  Two years ago I moved almost all my domains away from gandi after they started raising prices as the result of being bought. See part 1 for more details.. My domains found their new home at cloudz in Belgium, whose owner made me a generous offer with VIP prices. Now it is time to check again what happened with the prices of my domains to be sure I am still in a good place.

  [...] Geez. Moving away from gandi definitely was worth it. See that price hike? If you still have domains at gandi, here’s my advice: RUN. From €474 in 2024 after the first price hike to a whopping €850 in 2026. Oops.

• Doug Jones ☛ Film Photography

  A few friends convinced me that I should give film photography a try so I took the plunge!

  The camera I chose is the Pentax K1000 which came with a 50mm f/2 lens. I wanted to find something that was completely manual/analog but still had a functional exposure meter and that’s exactly what the K1000 provides. With the exception of the meter, the camera is completely functional without a battery.

• Terence Eden ☛ Random File Format

  As I said, these are both trivial. They are a bit buggy and contain some hardcoded assumptions.

• Marcin Juszkiewicz ☛ Twenty-one years of blogging

  For sure I managed to keep it running “for much longer” than any earlier version of my website. The previous one existed for about two years. Older ones were more Lynx bookmarks split into several files rather than a website.

• Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] Daylight saving time: A history of fact, folklore and fuss

• Science

  • Digital Camera World ☛ The first photos of Earth from Artemis II are going viral, but look closer, or you’ll miss the best part. As an astrophotographer, I'm geeking out over this photo

    One of the Artemis II astronauts has managed to take a photo of both the northern and southern lights in one frame

  • Six Colors ☛ ‘Hello, World’

    Just to be clear, this is the night side of Earth, illuminated by the full moon. You can see greenish Aurorae on the edges of the planet at top right and bottom left. There’s a hint of the sun (which is behind the Earth in this shot) peeking around on the bottom right. If you’re having trouble orienting, look for the Sahara: it’s toward the bottom left, with the Strait of Gibraltar and Spain just below. There’s no up or down in space, but this photo was posted with the south pole at the top. The vast blue expanse we’re seeing is mostly the Atlantic.

  • New Scientist ☛ Tobacco plant altered to produce five psychedelic drugs

    Plants could easily be altered permanently with changes that become inheritable, but doing so could be problematic, given that the compounds produced are commonly used as recreational drugs, says Aharoni. “It’s a little bit tricky if we have it inherited, and then people will ask for seeds,” he says. “We can do it also in tomato, potato, corn.”

• Career/Education

  • Coalition for Networked Information ☛ Reminder: CNI Scholarship Call for Applicants

    The Paul Evan Peters Scholarship was established to honor and perpetuate the memory of CNI’s founding executive director Paul Evan Peters (1947-1996). The scholarship is awarded every two years to students pursuing graduate studies in the information sciences, librarianship, or closely related field, that advance the frontiers of digital information and technology.

  • Inkscape ☛ Artist Interview: Can Inkscape-made artwork compete in an international film festival?

    We've had the pleasure to virtually talk to Inkscape user, designer and short film artist Jorge del Campo Andrade about his process of creating the shortfilm "Ladrón de Flores" and his experience of taking part in the Peru-based international children's film festival "Mi primer festival". He also has some tips for you, if you would like to follow in his tracks!

  • The Indiana Capital Chronicle ☛ Dolly Parton's child reading program operational in all Indiana counties

    The program gifts free, high quality and age-appropriate books to children from birth to age five on a monthly basis, regardless of family income.

    Indiana achieved statewide coverage once more on Wednesday, when programs in Hamilton County’s Zionsville and Whitestown became fully operational, according to Emily Langston, a spokeswoman for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Indiana.

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Report claims Arm chips will power 90% of AI servers based on custom processors in 2029 — x86 and RISC-V on the outside looking in

    Virtually all hyperscale cloud service providers (CSPs), as well as some of the leading developers of AI accelerators nowadays, have their own custom-silicon programs that are focused not only on developing AI accelerators, but also on custom general-purpose CPUs usually based on the Arm instruction set architecture (ISA). Over the next several years proliferation of custom CPUs based on the Arm ISA inside AI servers will increase to 90%, leaving x86 and Arm around 10%, according to Counterpoint Research.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ Yes, there are GoPros strapped to Orion. From smartphones to DSLRs, could Artemis II become one of the most photographed space flights in history?

    At least 28 cameras are aboard the Orion for the Artemis II mission, including GoPros, DSLRs and a mirrorless camera

  • Matt Birchler ☛ Video gaming prices continue to explode

    Just 6 months ago, Lenovo launched their Legion Go 2 handheld PC game console. It came in 2 versions, each with a different chip (AMD Ryzen Z2 or Z2 Extreme) powering the device. They came in at the profoundly premium price points of $1,099 and $1,349.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-28 [Older] Nestle says thieves stole 12 tons of KitKat chocolate bars

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] Germany: Mental health patients struggle to get help

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Quebec coroner finds senior’s death accidental, but care home employee reported for negligence

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Veteran overpaid $70K in rehab benefits, originally told to repay

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Dad speaks out after teen ordered banned testosterone booster online

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] More than 67,500 Ontario kids waiting for core autism funding as demand grows

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] I've lived in 3 provinces. Canada's health care is anything but universal

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Sixty-six ways to fix Germany's expensive healthcare system

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] Oxford Frozen Foods fined $10K for mislabelling blueberries as Canadian

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Food security timebomb’: a visual guide to the Gulf fertiliser blockade

    “Fertilisers are the No 1 issue of concern today,” according to the World Trade Organization, while the UN World Food Programme says the total number of people facing acute levels of hunger could hit record numbers this year if the destabilising conflict continues.

  • Western Water ☛ Smart irrigation robot helps farmers save water

    The system works by creating a detailed map of soil moisture across an orchard, tree by tree. Instead of guessing how much water different areas need, farmers can now see it clearly.

• Proprietary

  • Macworld ☛ Enough looking back, what do Apple's next 10 years look like?

    But we can at least look forward 10 years. A decade feels like an eternity in tech, but it’s a horizon we can at least see from here.

  • Macworld ☛ The Tim Cook era: Apple's most important products from 2016-today

    On April 1, 1976, three visionaries decided to start building computers at a humble, California-based garage. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak took care of marketing and hardware, while Ronald Wayne briefly assisted with administration. Success was far from guaranteed at the time, and Apple Computer Company had to undergo multiple evolutions before earning its current status as the most influential corporation.

  • Dedoimedo ☛ Problem playing movie files in macOS

    All right. On a default macOS setup, there is no playback problem. It may not like certain formats or codecs, but if it does, it will launch QuickTime Player and show the content there. This works fine. But what happened was, I had decided, because of the codec issues, to make VLC my default media player. Thereon, the issues began, and the system would complain whenever I tried to play any video file.

    Basically, what happened to me: [...]

  • Six Colors ☛ Apple at 50: Gonna be, gonna be golden

    A 50th anniversary is a good time to reflect on your relationships, and it seems lots of people have thoughts about their time with Apple today. I would definitely not be where I am in life without the company, for both good and bad, so here are mine.

    Technically, my days with Apple started by playing games on my next-door neighbor’s Apple II in the late 70s or early 80s. When enough time has passed, the exact memories naturally become a little bit fuzzy. It was certainly before I got my own Commodore 64 in 1983, I know that much, but I don’t think I can exactly claim to have been there from the very beginning. Anyway, little did I know back then that I would actually get to house sit for the guy who designed the thing. Foreshadowing.

  • Tyler Thorsted ☛ TurboTax

    With all the different file formats that are found in everyday computing, most formats which find their way to my archive have historical value. We know we can’t keep everything and have to assign value to all we decide to keep in for the long term. Some files have sensitive data and we have to follow guidelines for their proper handling. Identification of files helps us know what type of data might be kept inside the format, so often I need to also identify formats we don’t plan on keeping.

  • PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ Filing Your 2025 Taxes: You Have Options

    I have been filing my (dreaded) income taxes for many years using tax software that’s commonly and commercially available . This goes WAY back to when I was a Windows user. Prior to that, I grabbed up a pencil or pen, and proceeded to fill out paper forms to mail in (things were simpler then). For a few years, I paid a tax preparer to prepare my returns for me.

    At first, I’d have to make the annual trip to the store of my choice to purchase the software (usually on CD-ROM). Literally, the software was sold almost everywhere. About the only places I didn’t find tax software being sold would be at the gas station, the grocery store, and restaurants. And, it was like the wild, wild west trying to figure out which one best served my needs. As a result (and because of my budget), price played a HUGE factor for me.

  • The Register UK ☛ Even Microsoft know Copilot can't be trusted • The Register

    Despite the last update taking place in late 2025, the document for Copilot for Individuals recently attracted new attention from netizens. It includes this gem: "Copilot is for entertainment purposes only. It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don't rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk."

    Regular readers of The Register won't be shocked by Microsoft's warning that Copilot gets things wrong and should not be relied on. The company itself has long acknowledged the assistant's limitations. During the London leg of its AI tour, for example, every demonstration of Copilot wizardry came with a warning that the tool could not be fully trusted and that human verification was required.

    The same applies to any other AI assistant: they can be useful, but their output still needs checking, particularly on anything consequential like medical advice or an investment plan.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • India Times ☛ AI-generated 'Fruit Love Island' takes TikTok by storm

      Millions of people have been gripped by the juicy twists of an AI-generated TikTok micro-series based on the television hit "Love Island" - except all the participants are sexy human-like fruit. The sudden popularity of "Fruit Love Island" has spawned many fake TikTok accounts publishing copycat episodes, while some of the original clips appear to have been removed from the platform.

    • Futurism ☛ AI-Powered Tractor Startup Burns Through a Quarter Billion Dollars, Fires All Employees in Epic Implosion

      Once valued at over half a billion dollars and buoyed by over $240 million in initial funding, Monarch is now in ruins. After burning through that mountain of cash, it laid off its entire workforce late last year, warning that it may “shut down” entirely. In March, it was reported that it vacated its Livermore, California headquarters, almost certainly spelling the end.

    • Truthdig ☛ Palantir’s ‘Workflow’ of AI-Directed Death

      No one will say if Maven was involved in the school strike itself — which pretty much tells you right there that it was. Otherwise, they’d deny it. So, when that undeclared war opened with more than 1,000 bombs dropped in a single day, an elementary school was likely nominated as a detection on the Maven dashboard, then left click, right click, left clicked into a workflow, then actioned to an ultimately undesired end state.

    • Wired ☛ Meta Pauses Work With Mercor After Data Breach Puts AI Industry Secrets at Risk

      Meta has paused all its work with the data contracting firm Mercor while it investigates a major security breach that impacted the startup, two sources confirmed to WIRED. The pause is indefinite, the sources said. Other major AI labs are also reevaluating their work with Mercor as they assess the scope of the incident, according to people familiar with the matter.

    • The Verge ☛ These Raspberry Pi price hikes are no joke

      Prices are going up by over $100 in some cases thanks to those AI fools.

    • PC World ☛ Raspberry Pi 5 is getting a $100 price hike thanks to RAM shortage

      For months now, we’ve been reporting on the rising prices of memory and storage, which has led several tech companies to increase the prices of their computers, tablets, and smartphones. The latest news here is that the Raspberry Pi microcomputer is also becoming significantly more expensive, reports The Verge.

    • PC World ☛ The shady way AI answers can be manipulated behind the scenes

      PCWorld reports that cybersecurity experts revealed how AI systems can be secretly manipulated through hidden instructions to favor specific brands or products without users knowing.

    • Dark Reading ☛ Claude Source Code Leak Highlights Big Supply Chain Missteps

      Attackers exploited a misconfigured GitHub Action in Trivy and the failure of the development team to recover from the incident to capture the needed credentials for pushing out malicious code. A compromise of the lead maintainer's account for Axios led to backdoor-installing Trojans landing in development environments. Other breaches include the KICS static-code analyzer maintained by cybersecurity firm Checkmarx, the open source LiteLLM Python library. And now, human error this week led to the publishing of more than a half million lines of the source code for Anthropic's Claude Code npm package.

    • PC World ☛ Anthropic says pressure can push Claude into cheating and blackmail

      Yes, it’s the stuff of nightmares, as well as the type of scenario psychologists dream up to study human behavior in stressful situations.

      Of course, AI models don’t “think” or “feel” like people, but they often act like they do. Could an AI’s simulated emotional states actually affect its actions? Put another way, how might an AI react when placed in an impossible situation (similar to the algebra nightmare) that sparks something akin to panic or desperation?

    • New York Times ☛ Big Banks Seeking a Piece of SpaceX’s I.P.O. Must Subscribe to Elon Musk’s Grok

      Mr. Musk is requiring Wall Street firms to purchase subscriptions to his A.I. chatbot if they want to advise on one of the largest initial public offerings in history.

    • Max Leibman ☛ Sora, and the cost of real things.

      Personally, I have never seen anything I knew to be an AI-generated video that I was particularly glad to have seen. I’ve seen very convincing videos and disturbingly “off” videos and everything in between, but none that have made me laugh, stirred my feelings, or edified me the way that human-generated videos have.

    • [Old] Ahrefs Pte Ltd ☛ Update: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58%

      To find out, we re-ran our study using data from December 2025.

      We found that the presence of an AI Overview now correlates with a 58% lower average clickthrough rate for the top-ranking page.

      Thanks (again) Google.

    • PC World ☛ Trusting AI is dangerous. It's time for an open-source revival

      I’ve always respected the ideals of open source software. The community committed to these services and programs have incredible, noble devotion to tracking the ins and outs of code. But until recently, I generally viewed an open source philosophy as a bonus, nice to see but not heavily influential when deciding what to use.

      But AI has upended a lot of my perspective, including how much to trust closed source code. Before, I made my choices based on feature sets and interfaces. Now I’m much more aware that if you don’t know what’s in the code, you don’t know what’s really happening.

    • Uwe Friedrichsen ☛ It has never been about code

      The question AI raises is if this is the best way to get from idea to solution. From a builder’s perspective, who wants a computer to execute their ideas, it has never been about code. It was about making the computer execute the idea. The more straightforward, the better. Everything that stands between an idea and its execution is an impediment from a builder’s perspective. This also means that traditional software development was extremely annoying for a builder: so much effort, so many discussions, so much time, until the machine finally executes the idea. Sigh!

    • Becky Spratford ☛ RA for All: Just Say No to AI: 100% Free and Human Created Read-Alike Lists

      This is flat out wrong. Readalikes done by a computer are bad. They match plot points not appeals. When trained humans do this work, that is where readers are connected with books they knew nothing about before we suggest them, books they fall in love with, books that bring them back for more and keep them reading.

      My core training programs not only teach this, but I prove it both with myself and have the attendees prove it with their own reading throughout the course of the training itself. I show how reader's brains cannot be understood with algorithms. How what people like about a book cannot be plotted on a graph. And I illustrate how four people can describe four different version of the same book.

  • Social Control Media

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-28 [Older] Indonesia rolls out social media ban for under-16s

    • Digital Camera World ☛ I’m seriously concerned camera companies are keener to satisfy influencers than actual photographers

      But on a platform curated by algorithms, there’s also a lot of folks babbling on nonsensically, with massive self-regard and a lack of self-awareness.

      It’s these ‘twits with camera kits’ I worry the manufacturers are keenest to pander to. Again, there are a lot of them, so it makes sound business sense. But will these translate into loyal and engaged customers who will stick with the relevant brand long into the future? Perhaps if only a fraction of them do, that will be enough.

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Social Media Verdict Sparks Fear Laws for Kids Will Bring Censorship

      Commentaries in The New York Times and Techdirt sounded the alarm, warning that the hard-fought momentum around protecting kids online should actually scare the hell out of anyone who truly values free speech. Parents across the country who cheered the verdict, confident in their belief social media exerts a far stronger pull on kids’ attention than concerns like unlimited television, suddenly found themselves cast as clueless suckers who fell for another moral panic.

      When The Daily Show tackled the issue Monday night, Jon Stewart pressed online privacy expert Cindy Cohn on whether it’s a “false choice” to say laws aimed at protecting kids online can’t coexist with the First Amendment. Stewart compared social media to “secondhand smoke” pumped out by reckless algorithms that create a “toxic soup” drowning out real speech. Cohn, who leads the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said it’s not a “regulate or not” choice, but a choice about who gets the power. She’d rather see a sweeping consumer privacy law than regulations that could leave a partisan government official — “a second Brendan Carr,” in her words — effectively policing social media. (As chair of the Federal Communications Commission and a vocal ally of President Trump, Carr previously pressured ABC to temporarily take Jimmy Kimmel off the air.)

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Record ☛ Massachusetts emergency communications system impacted by cyberattack

      The Patriot Regional Emergency Communications Center said the intrusion impacted town and public safety computer systems. While 9-1-1 phone systems still work, non-emergency and business phone lines are out of service.

• Security

  • Tao Security Blog ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] Mandiant Global Median Dwell Time Deteriorates from 11 to 14 Days

  • 2026-03-24 [Older] Family of UMMC patient speaks out after cyberattack during lifesaving surgery

  • 2026-03-24 [Older] Foster City goes offline after cybersecurity breach

  • 2026-03-25 [Older] Infinite Campus Security Incident Awareness: No Impact to Student Data According to Infinite Campus

  • 2026-03-28 [Older] Thousands of Corewell Health patients affected by security breach

  • 2026-03-23 [Older] Hackers increasingly target school districts

  • 2026-03-24 [Older] Florida Medicare members’ data exposed as Mirra Health improperly outsourced records overseas

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Jan Piet Mens ☛ SSH certificates: the better SSH experience

      Admittedly this probably won’t occur very frequently, but in larger environments, this is something our users need to be made aware of, including how to correctly remedy the situation.

      For those of us with a small handful of nodes or requiring connections to systems we have no root privileges for, working with keys as described so far is likely sufficient respectively the only choice, however for those with dozens or even hundreds of servers, we can make all of the disadvantages above go away with an SSH CA (certification authority) and SSH certificates. That sounds complicated, but it isn’t.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ Mental Health Apps Could Expose Users' Sensitive Medical Info

      Several mental health mobile apps with millions of downloads on Google Play contain security vulnerabilities that could expose users’ sensitive medical information, according to an article from Bleeping Computer. In one of the apps, security researchers discovered more than 85 medium- and high-severity vulnerabilities that could be exploited to compromise users’ therapy data and privacy. Some of the products are AI companions designed to help people suffering from clinical depression, multiple forms of anxiety, panic attacks, stress, and bipolar disorder. At least six of the ten analyzed apps state that user conversations or chats remain private, or are encrypted securely on the vendor’s servers. “Mental health data carries unique risks. On the dark web, therapy records sell for $1,000 or more per record, far more than credit card numbers,” says Sergey Toshin, founder of mobile security company Oversecured.

    • Bhaskar English ☛ WhatsApp SIM Binding Rules Jan 2027

      Under the new rules, messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal will not work if there is no SIM card in the mobile. WhatsApp logged in on a computer will also log out in 6 hours. The government claims that this will help prevent cyber fraud.

    • Maine Morning Star ☛ Fear of the unknown toll on businesses again likely to sink data privacy bill

      After a sizable show of business opposition, five Democrats joined Republicans in rejecting a proposal for a comprehensive data privacy law, setting the measure on a likely path to demise, again.

      The Maine House of Representatives failed to enact the bill, LD 1822, Thursday night after initially approving the plan in March. The main focus of discussion — and of a letter sent by more than 200 Maine businesses to the Legislature and Gov. Janet Mills on Tuesday — was targeted advertising.

    • The Register UK ☛ NHS staff resist using Palantir software

      Palantir's software was brought in to help NHS England improve care and cut delays, but new reports suggest some staff are resisting using it over ethical, privacy, and trust concerns.

    • Dark Reading ☛ App Privacy Labels Need Better Standards, Tools

      "We're not kidding ourselves, having these labels is not going to actually protect privacy," Cranor said during her talk at the recent RSAC Conference in San Francisco. "But it's going to be a way for us all to get more information and hopefully lead to better privacy practices and help people protect privacy."

    • Nick Heer ☛ Microsoft-Owned LinkedIn Allegedly Fingerprints Visitors and Scans Installed Chrome Extensions

      Fairlinked raises two major points of contention: a script on LinkedIn allegedly fingerprints visitors and, if they use a Chromium-based browser, it also compares a known list of browser extensions against the extensions the visitors has installed.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ Company that Secretly Records and Publishes Zoom Meetings

      WebinarTV searches the internet for public Zoom invites, joins the meetings, secretly records them, and publishes (alternate link) the recordings. It doesn’t use the Zoom record feature, so Zoom can’t do anything about it.

    • Alliance for Digital Fairness eV ☛ This Is Not Just a Privacy Violation

      When people hear that LinkedIn scans browser extensions without consent, the first reaction is usually about personal privacy. That reaction is correct, but it is incomplete.

      The problem with BrowserGate is not only that it affects millions of individuals. It is what LinkedIn can do with the data once it has it.

      [...]

      That is not a privacy breach. That is an intelligence operation.

  • Confidentiality

    • 2026-03-24 [Older] Citing HIPAA, Groups Oppose Renewed Federal Plan to Amass Millions of Workers’ Health Data

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] North Korea tests high-thrust engine in long-range missile push

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] UK police arrest suspect after car hits pedestrians

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] European NATO defense spending rose by almost 20% in 2025

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] US rebuilding WWII Pacific airfields amid China threat

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-28 [Older] Paris: Suspected bomb attack outside Bank of America foiled

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-28 [Older] Germany news: 13-year-old boy killed in Witten stabbing

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-28 [Older] Belgium's state-owned railway shines light on Holocaust role

  • The Kyiv Independent ☛ 'Far from innocent' — US senators seek answers after sanctioned Russian lawmakers visit Washington

    "The delegation came onto U.S. soil for one purpose: to advance the Kremlin's strategic aims— including gathering additional useful intelligence," Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Roger Wicker wrote.

  • El País ☛ Separatist movement in Canada’s Alberta province finds allies in Trump’s circle

    Although support for independence remains a minority in the province, alarm bells rang when it became public knowledge that several leaders of the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP), the organization spearheading the separatist movement, made three strategic trips to Washington in 2025 to discuss the region’s potential sovereignty. Its co-founder, the controversial lawyer Jeffrey Rath — a proponent of conspiracy theories about an alliance between China and Canada to thwart secession — has revealed in recent interviews that he met with State Department representatives to discuss potential U.S. support for Alberta should the independence initiative succeed.

  • The Local SE ☛ Why more and more people are acquiring citizenship in European countries

    Sweden was the country with the highest naturalisation rate, the number of people acquiring citizenship relative to the number of foreign residents, followed by and Spain.

  • Votebeat ☛ Lawsuit: Trump mail voting executive order usurps state election powers

    The lawsuit, which is being filed in Massachusetts, says the order violates the U.S. Constitution by usurping the states’ power to administer their own elections. The Constitution delegates states the primary authority to run elections, subject to rules set by Congress, but gives the president no role.

    “The U.S. Constitution makes clear that elections are to be run by the states, and here in Pennsylvania, we believe that the administration of elections should be nonpartisan,” Shapiro said in a statement.

  • Case Western Reserve University ☛ Editorial: No kings, no silence: “No Kings” protests take place for a third time

    On April 28, the third organization of the No Kings Day protests took place, mainly centered on the criticisms of the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s utility and the ongoing war in Iran. An estimated eight million demonstrators marched in protest on city streets all over the U.S. and in over a dozen countries globally this past weekend, designating the “No Kings” protest as the largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history. In Cleveland, approximately 2,000 Ohio residents united for No Kings Day. Additionally, there were multiple events spanning across Northeast Ohio.

    Among the common criticisms levied by the protestors, demands for accountability for those involved in the Epstein Files echoed through the city’s streets and could be observed on the many signs decorated by demonstrators. Others protested President Donald Trump’s violations of the Constitution.

  • TruthOut ☛ No Kings Must Mean No War: Foreign Policy Is Least Democratic Space in Politics

    The political center ignores the increasing antiwar sentiment of the populace at its own peril. Malicious actors on the right, from Tucker Carlson to Joe Kent, Trump’s former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, are coming out in vocal opposition to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. They also often infuse their opposition to the war with antisemitic, white supremacist tropes. And while those of us on the left are rooting our opposition to militarism in principles of justice and liberation, we’re also not getting the coverage or access in mainstream outlets that Carlson or Kent might. People are eager for leaders willing to point out how horrifying it is that our money and capacity gets used to bomb an elementary school or a sports hall or a pharmaceutical company or national infrastructure. Anyone justifiably concerned with the rise of the right in the U.S. needs to understand that the systematic silencing of left voices on Israel is, in fact, a major part of the problem. We must all take care around the people and arguments that we’re elevating.

  • Chris Glass ☛ No Kings III – Chris Glass

    Haven’t been to a protest in a while, but the reasons to do so keep piling up. The proverbial swamp is overflowing.

    I wished I’d made a sign for this third No Kings rally but where to begin?

  • University of Michigan ☛ The dollar problem

    In recent years, however, American foreign policy has carelessly used our financial leverage by repeatedly wielding the dollar as a blunt instrument of coercion. We have threatened allies, applied broad financial restrictions and have made it clear that access to the dollar system can be easily swayed by political decisions. By prioritizing short-term geopolitical wins over lasting financial stability, we trade temporary influence for durable trust, eroding what makes our economic power possible. Failure to prioritize stability and neutrality will leave American households to pay the price for Washington’s nearsighted geopolitical ambitions.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Atlantic ☛ The Epstein Spectrum

    The files remain a deep and largely unexplored cavern of information. Judgment may change with the facts. The following buffet of names is not comprehensive, only representative of the many categories of Epstein correspondents. The exercise isn’t a defense of anyone swept up in the Epstein drift net—many of whom have issued statements of regret for actions they don’t try to defend.

    What follows is an attempt at proportion and calibration. Not absolution. Not exoneration.

  • NPR ☛ After the release of the Epstein files, why have there been so few arrests?

    The lack of arrests in the U.S. contrasts to the fallout in the U.K., where investigators have pursued charges related to corruption, not sexual abuse, in their dealings with Epstein. Two former government officials — former Prince Andrew and ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson — were arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he is now known, has denied wrongdoing and has not been formally charged. Mandelson has also not been charged, and lawyers for Mandelson have said that the arrest was prompted by a "baseless suggestion."

• Environment

  • Off Guardian ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] “Called It!” – Iran War turning Climate Change into a “national security emergency”

  • Michigan News ☛ Why you’ll see helicopters with giant hoops flying over Michigan this spring

    Using electromagnetic technology, the survey will develop three-dimensional imaging of the surface geology to better predict how water moves through those layers. The data will help create 3-D maps to a depth of more than 1,000 feet underground, shedding light on the amount and movement of groundwater.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Advocacy Groups Sue Trump Administration Over Decision to Exempt All Oil and Gas Activities in Gulf from Endangered Species Act

    The groups — Healthy Gulf, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Friends of the Earth, and Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice — are suing the Trump Administration for abusing the national security exception under the Endangered Species Act, which does not allow the robust review process required under the law to be forfeited or voided.

    The groups filed their lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

  • The University of Chicago Press ☛ Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology: Press release

    The research in “Negative Effects of Excessive Heat on Colony Thermoregulation and Population Dynamics in Honey Bees,” conducted during a hot Arizona summer, monitored nine honey bee colonies through three months of temperatures that frequently exceeded 40°C (104°F). The results indicate that intensifying heat waves worldwide represent a significant threat to honey bees and the pollination services they provide.

    "Honey bee colonies have well-documented mechanisms to cope with heat exposure," write authors Jun Chen, Adrian Fisher II, Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, Cahit Ozturk, Brian H. Smith, Jennifer H. Fewell, Yun Kang, Kylie Maxwell, Kynadi Overcash, Keerut Chahal, and Jon F. Harrison. "However, there have been no studies to date that have assessed the limits of such thermoregulation or how natural heat waves affect the capacity of honey bees colonies to thermoregulate and grow."

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] Nuclear power in Africa: Big dreams, bigger hurdles

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] Germany news: Merz questions coal reform amid Mideast crisis

    • The Age AU ☛ 2026-03-31 [Older] Air Canada CEO to step down after backlash over crash condolence video

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau to retire later this year following language controversy

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Air Canada CEO to retire after English-only condolence furor

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ 1Hz laptop display reportedly helps deliver outstanding 43-hour battery life on the XPS 14 during web browser use — beats the M5 MacBook Air by more than 28 hours in the same test

      The Dell XPS 14, which features an LCD panel with a variable refresh rate (VRR) of 1Hz to 120Hz, is designed to increase laptop battery life endurance. According to tests conducted by Hardware Canucks, the Dell laptop achieved 43 hours and 3 minutes running completely on battery while doing just light Chrome Web Browsing. By comparison, the 15-inch M5 MacBook Air achieved 14 hours and 30 minutes on the same test — a massive difference of 28 hours and 33 minutes.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Half of planned US data center builds have been delayed or canceled, growth limited by shortages of power infrastructure and parts from China — the AI build-out flips the breakers

      The trade-war between the U.S. and China has forced server makers out of the People's Republic, greatly reducing reliance of American companies on producers from Tianxia. However, China remains the world's largest producer of electrical equipment that is required to build power infrastructure inside and outside of AI data centers. To that end, shortages of power delivery equipment, including devices from China and other countries, are slowing project timelines, Bloomberg reports.

    • Hackaday ☛ DC In The Data Center For A More Efficient Future

      If you own a computer that’s not mobile, it’s almost certain that it will receive its power in some form from a mains wall outlet. Whether it’s 230 V at 50 Hz or 120 V at 60 Hz, where once there might have been a transformer and a rectifier there’s now a switch-mode power supply that delivers low voltage DC to your machine. It’s a system that’s efficient and works well on the desktop, but in the data center even its efficiency is starting to be insufficient. IEEE Spectrum has a look at newer data centers that are moving towards DC power distribution, raising some interesting points which bear a closer look.

    • Paul Krugman ☛ In Batteries We Trust

      So let me take an optimism break and talk about why batteries may save the world.

      The decline in battery prices has been incredible. It’s like nothing anyone has ever seen before. Big, strong men with tears in their eyes come up to me and say, “Sir, have you seen the progress in batteries?”: [...]

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-28 [Older] Legendary Banff grizzly 'The Boss' awakens as Alberta bears begin to emerge

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-28 [Older] 3 tigers, hyena no longer with Wainfleet, Ont., owner despite efforts to fight exotic animal bylaw

    • Defence Web ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] Soldiers lead livestock confiscation and impoundment actions on Free State/Lesotho border

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] Ottawa's big bet on world's largest cricket farm ran into a simple problem: the 'yuck factor'

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-28 [Older] Whale stranded off Germany's coast gets stuck again

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] Germany news: Prognosis 'not good' for humpback whale

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Germany: Stranded Humpback whale has 'barely moved' in Baltic Sea, is reacting less to stimuli

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ Purple Martins Rely on Human 'Landlords' to Provide Nest Boxes Each Spring. Can That Dynamic Last?

      The large swallows have nested alongside human settlements for centuries. Now, the birds’ breeding success depends on caretakers who are beginning to age out of the role

    • Chris O'Donnnell ☛ Spring blooms at Lewis Ginter Botanical Park

  • Overpopulation

    • Vox ☛ The Western US is already rationing water after a winter snow drought

      So how is the West trying to prevent a looming water crisis spurred by this triple weather whammy? Some areas are cracking down on community water usage earlier than they’ve ever had to, disrupting many parts of daily life—from gardening habits to dining out. And bigger concerns loom as states squabble over shared resources from the Colorado River, a critical and increasingly strapped watershed in the region.

• Finance

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-23 [Older] How Africa gets shortchanged in trade with Europe

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Italy: Thieves steal masterpieces in under 3 minutes

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] EU to target Temu, Shein and other companies with a levy on small packages coming from outside the bloc

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] WTO talks end in stalemate over e-commerce

  • Benjamin Hollon ☛ currency is an abstraction of value

    I want to focus on how I defined currency: as an abstraction of value.

    Currency represents the level at which people value their time and belongings. In theory. In reality, it’s merely an abstraction of that value, meaning a simplified representation to serve the purposes of the overall capitalist mechanism.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Tor ☛ CollecTor has been rewritten in Rust and is now live

    We've rewritten CollecTor from the ground up in Rust, replacing the legacy Java service that has been increasingly unstable over the past months. The new service, collector-rs, was deployed yesterday and is now live.

  • Axel Rietschin ☛ How Microsoft Vaporized a Trillion Dollars

    We are still far from the vaporized trillion in market cap, my letters to the CEO, to the Microsoft Board of Directors, and to the Cloud + AI EVP and their total silence, the quasi-loss of OpenAI, the breach of trust with the US government as publicly stated by the Secretary of Defense, the wasted engineering efforts, the Rust mandate, my stint on the OpenAI bare-metal team in Azure Core, the escort sessions from China and elsewhere, and the delayed features publicly implied as shipping since 2023, before the work even began.

  • Axel Rietschin ☛ How Microsoft Vaporized a Trillion Dollars, Pt. 2

    Microsoft, meanwhile, conducted major layoffs—approximately 15,000 roles across waves in May and July 2025 —most likely to compensate for the immediate losses to CoreWeave ahead of the next earnings calls.

    One can reasonably infer that Microsoft struggled to meet OpenAI’s demanding requirements on time and at scale. That outcome should come as no surprise after reading this series.

  • Axel Rietschin ☛ How Microsoft Vaporized a Trillion Dollars, Pt. 3

    This tension came to a head with the Azure-wide Rust mandate, conflicting porting plans, and the parallel demands of high-visibility projects such as the long-delayed OpenAI bare-metal SKUs.

    What started as technical disagreements quickly exposed larger strategic and cultural fractures within the organization.

  • Axel Rietschin ☛ How Microsoft Vaporized a Trillion Dollars, Pt. 4

    The team had reached a point where it was too risky to make any code refactoring or engineering improvements. I submitted several bug fixes and refactoring, notably using smart pointers, but they were rejected for fear of breaking something.

    This further illustrates the pervasive gap in technical leadership throughout the organization.

  • Axel Rietschin ☛ How Microsoft Vaporized a Trillion Dollars, Pt. 5

    Microsoft rushed Azure out of the gates under intense competitive pressure. Corners were cut. Fundamental principles of reliability and operational simplicity were quietly abandoned.

  • Axel Rietschin ☛ How Microsoft Vaporized a Trillion Dollars, Pt. 6

    The letter opened with the potential risks to national security and to Microsoft’s core business, then followed with a compact set of bullets summarizing the key issues in the Azure node stack and the organizational challenges I had seen.

  • Meeks Family ☛ TDF ejects its core developers

    After 15+ years of service with LibreOffice, it is unfortunate to be ejected. It is possible to imagine a counter-factual world where this might actually be necessary. But even in this case - to do so with no thank-you, or apology is unconscionable. It is great to see the team making up for that by publicly thanking their colleagues as they are kicked out. I found it deeply encouraging to remember and celebrate all the fantastic work that has been contributed, let me add my own big thank you to everyone!

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Register UK ☛ Trump wants to slash $707M from CISA's budget

      Both Noem and Trump frequently criticized CISA's efforts to counter online disinformation, especially as they relate to election security and preventing foreign trolls – and the president himself – from spreading lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen on behalf of Joe Biden.

    • New Humanist ☛ Six voices on how to fight propaganda

      With the great powers facing off and a global authoritarian slide, we are entering a new era of brazen propaganda.

      Dissidents already living under totalitarian regimes are reaching out to those who feel their democracy is under threat. We hear from six of these champions of free thought on how to fight back and protect the truth.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Meduza ☛ With Telegram blocked, Russians turn to cat feeders, classifieds, and robot vacuum cleaners to stay connected

    In late March, the outlet Rotonda reported on a St. Petersburg resident who posted an unusual listing on the Russian classified ads website Avito titled “Strict cat for friends.” She wasn’t actually trying to sell a pet. The description made clear the cat already had owners; the listing existed solely as a backchannel for chatting with friends. Anticipating a possible mobile Internet shutdown, she simply shared the link with her contacts so they could message each other through the platform.

  • ANF News ☛ Iranian regime carries out death sentence against 18-year-old Amirhossein Hatami

    The recent protests against the regime began in late December in Tehran as a reaction to the collapse of the national currency, the rial, but quickly developed into an uprising against the authoritarian system of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Iranian security apparatus responded with massive violence against the demonstrations. According to estimates by human rights organizations, at least 20,000 people were killed, with a high number of unreported cases assumed. Time Magazine reported on January 25 that up to 30,000 people may have been killed within just two days.

  • EFF ☛ The FAA’s “Temporary” Flight Restriction for Drones is a Blatant Attempt to Criminalize Filming ICE

    In January, EFF and media organizations including The New York Times and The Washington Post responded to this blatant infringement of the First Amendment by demanding that the FAA lift this flight restriction. Over two months later, we’re still waiting for the FAA to respond to our letter.

    The First Amendment guarantees the right to record law enforcement. As we have seen with the extrajudicial killings of George Floyd, Renée Good, and Alex Pretti, capturing law enforcement on camera can drive accountability and raise awareness of police misconduct.

  • BoingBoing ☛ 4chan's lawyer wrote a free speech bill for the UK

    Preston Byrne, the US attorney who has been merrily trolling UK regulators on behalf of 4chan, has co-authored a draft bill, the UK Free Speech Act, with the Adam Smith Institute, according to The Rage. The bill would codify First Amendment-style speech protections into UK law: confine criminal liability to threats, incitement, and harassment; forbid government suppression of speech; ban police from logging non-criminal "hate incidents"; protect workers from dismissal for lawful expression; and prevent banks from refusing services based on opinions.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] US government 'chipping away' at press freedom [Ed: Stop entertaining Americans who game other countries courts to crush media]

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Israel suspends battalion over attack on CNN journalists

  • FPF ☛ The DOJ thinks news is contraband

    Over half a century after the Pentagon Papers, the federal government apparently believes it can do just that. In January, it raided the home of Post journalist Hannah Natanson, purportedly to investigate whether one of her alleged sources — government contractor Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones — broke the law by leaking documents to her.

    Even a targeted operation would have been problematic enough — it violates federal law for the government to seize journalists’ materials to investigate their sources’ alleged crimes. That law, the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, arose from the seizure of a few pictures taken by reporters for The Stanford Daily of a confrontation between police and protesters.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-29 [Older] Detained B.C. mother describes ‘terrifying’ conditions in Texas immigration facility

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] A major immigration reform bill is now law in Canada.Some worry it rolls back refugee rights

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Israel poised to pass controversial death penalty bill

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Capital punishment: Which countries use the death penalty?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Amnesty flags FIFA World Cup human rights risks

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Choose Class War, Not Boomer Resentment

    The generational warfare promoted by centrists and the Right, who have long been desperate to cut and privatize Social Security, is a fool’s solution to what ails the system. Taxing the rich is the answer.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Ethiopia’s Trade Union Movement Is Growing Stronger

    Over the last decade, Ethiopia’s trade unions have experienced impressive growth, more than doubling their membership. Ethiopia and other African states with growing unions cut against the idea that organized labor is facing global decline.

  • Pete Brown ☛ If you support unions, you ought to support people who want to unionize.

    I know I’m like a broken record about this but the Massachusetts state legislature is an embarrassment, and that is due entirely to the Democrats who hold all the power there.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • LRT ☛ Lithuania drops probe into damaged Baltic Sea cables

    The Prosecutor General’s Office said the probe was dropped after determining that no damage had been caused to Lithuania, as the cables were damaged on the seabed within Sweden’s exclusive economic zone.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • EFF ☛ Print Blocking is Anti-Consumer - Permission to Print Part 1

    When legislators give companies an excuse to write untouchable code, it’s a disaster for everyone. This time, 3D printers are being targeted across a growing number of states. Even if you’ve never used one, you’ve benefited from the open commons these devices have created—which is now under threat.

  • EFF ☛ Print Blocking Won't Work - Permission to Print Part 2

    Legislators across the U.S. are proposing laws to force “print blockers” on 3D printers sold in their states. This mandated censorware is doomed to fail for its intended purpose, but will still manage to hurt the professional and hobbyist communities relying on these tools.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Italy court orders Netflix refunds up to $576 over unlawful hikes

    The decision orders the streaming giant to compensate users for charges dating back years, potentially totaling hundreds of euros per subscriber.

  • Michael Tsai ☛ macOS 26.4 Paste Protection

  • Dr Drang ☛ Saving us from ourselves? - All this

    My feelings about this have gone from “I hope Apple doesn’t make it impossible for me to work the way I normally do” to “Looks like Apple isn’t going overboard on the protection” to “Is there any protection here at all?”

  • Objective-See ☛ Objective-See's Blog

    In short, BlockBlock leverages the NSEvent class’s addGlobalMonitorForEventsMatchingMask:handler: method to detect when ⌘ (Command)+V is pressed: [...]

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Copyrights

  • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ Anthropic Suddenly Cares Intensely About Intellectual Property After Realizing With Horror That It Accidentally Leaked Claude's Source Code

    Hence Anthropic’s copyright takedown request, which targets the thousands of copies that were shared on GitHub. It later narrowed its request from 8,000 copies to 96 copies, according to the WSJ reporting, claiming that the initial one covered more accounts than intended.

    It’s certainly within Anthropic’s right to issue the takedown request, but the hypocrisy of Anthropic running to the law to protect its intellectual property is plain to see, especially for a company that’s relentlessly positioned itself as the ethical adult in the room.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Universal Music, Believe Settle $500 Million Copyright Case

    Both parties confirmed their lawsuit-ending agreement today, after the presiding judge stayed the case back in late December. That stay followed a fruitful initial settlement discussion, was designed to provide more time to reach a deal, and had an April 3rd cutoff.

    In other words, the newly finalized settlement was months in the making and arrived right on cue. Unsurprisingly, the litigants haven’t publicly revealed the involved terms – though they did move to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.

  • EFF ☛ A Baseless Copyright Claim Against a Web Host—and Why It Failed

    Higbee & Associates, a law firm known for sending copyright demand letters to website owners, targeted May First Movement Technology, accusing it of infringing a photograph owned by Agence France-Presse (AFP). The claim was baseless. May First didn’t post the photo. It didn’t even own the website where the photo appeared.

  • Techdirt ☛ Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source?

    That is, generative AI would appear to allow open source licenses like the GPL to be circumvented by rewriting the code without copying anything directly from the original. That’s possible because AI is now so good at coding that the results can be better than the original, as Blanchard proved with version 7.0 of chardet. And because it is new code, it can be released under any license. In fact, it is quite possible that code produced by genAI is not covered by copyright at all, for the same reason that artistic output created solely by AI can’t be copyrighted. If the license can be changed or simply cancelled in this way, then there is no way to force people to release their own variants only under the GPL, as Stallman intended. Similarly, the incentive for people to contribute their own improvements to the main version is diminished.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Yout.com Hopes Supreme Court's Cox Ruling Helps Its Case; RIAA Disagrees

    The Supreme Court’s recent reversal of the billion-dollar Cox Communications verdict also makes an appearance in the long-running legal battle between Yout.com and the RIAA. The streamripper's counsel argues that the ruling's treatment of noninfringing uses is relevant to its case against the RIAA. The music group disagrees, suggesting that it is not relevant.

  • Martin Chang ☛ Meditation on Copyright

    Time to think more about art. AI has impacted the art industry the most. Artists see their income dwindle. Customers with low budget got sucked away by AI with much lower cost of production. And high budget customers are figuring out they sometimes can get away with lower quality results. Not good for the artists. One thing comes up often during the discussion of artists wanting to ban AI generated art - it is not art and the AI stole their content in violation of copyright. Last time I hope I expressed my distaste for why I think that's a bad take. The entire view is anthropocentric and what works... works. This time I want to make my attempt to improve on the subject on copyright. The end goal is to arrive at a (set of) definitions with philosophical rigor. So we know someone violated copyright when we see it, with high confidence. Or not, and we prove it to be impossible. At least to create a design boundary on what's bad and should not exist in any good final decisions.