Leftovers

• Digital Camera World ☛ The film simulation rabbit hole: Why digital photographers are obsessing over analog looks

  The Fujifilm crowd understands this best. Its film simulations are baked into the shooting experience, informing how you see the scene through the viewfinder. That's different from the Lightroom preset collectors cycling through dozens of looks hoping something clicks. One approach shapes your vision. The other substitutes for developing one.

• Kev Quirk ☛ AMA: Can One Setup Their Digital Life to Be Subscription Free? - Kev Quirk

  Unfortunately, some things on your list are either going to cost you money, privacy, or time somewhere along the line.

• Don Marti ☛ Suspicion and slop in the rugpull economy

  Where did it all go wrong? Michael Farmer, in Why Have Most Advertisers Suffered From Slow Brand Growth Rates Since 2009? Ten Major Reasons, points out "the problem of advertiser growth since 2009, when 2/3rds of major advertisers saw their sales growth rates fall to well below the nominal GDP growth rate of 4.7% (2.4% inflation plus 2.3% real growth)."

• Andrew Nesbitt ☛ Package Manager Easter Eggs

  It’s Easter, so here’s a tour of the easter eggs hiding inside package managers.

  The very first known easter egg in software dates back to 1967-68 on the PDP-6/PDP-10, where typing make love at the TOPS-10 operating system’s COMPIL program would pause and respond “not war?” before creating the file.

• [Old] Tom Hodson ☛ Sums of the choose function and the Binomial Formula

  I was thinking about how one might compute the optimum choice of subset to re-roll given a starting point. Let’s say you were going to just brute force it. How hard would that be?

• [Old] Dr Molly Tov ☛ mood: "toddler tablets presage our technofeudalist doom"

  This device is habituating kids to being interrupted as they try to work on a tablet. It's showing them that the tablet interrupting you to do its own crap is just what tablets do. No, you don't own or control the device, get used to it.

• [Old] Dr Molly Tov ☛ cyberpunk luddism

  I'd been struggling with how to articulate my love of cyberpunk alongside my commitment to ditching Big Tech, raising my own food, and generally eschewing cheap sources of dopamine. I couldn't figure out how to explain why those two things, which seem opposed at first glance, jibe so well for me.

  The answer takes a little bit of deconstruction. Fortunately, I loves me some deconstruction.

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ The White House Is Still Desperately Trying to Slash NASA's Budget

    Now, a mere two days following the launch of NASA’s historic Artemis 2 mission, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has released its proposed 2027 budget for the agency, showing the Trump administration isn’t giving up on gutting many of the agency’s operations. According to a newly-released outline for its proposed government budget, the OMB wants to slash NASA’s budget by 23 percent compared to its recently enacted 2026 budget.

    While that may not sound as steep as last year’s proposal, the agency’s science directorate would still be eviscerated, with its budget reduced by 47 percent, as SpaceNews points out.

  • Wired ☛ The Trajectory of the Artemis II Moon Mission Is a Feat of Engineering

    Reentry will take place via a passive trajectory: After flying over the moon, Orion will essentially be in free fall toward Earth, without needing to use its engines. If there are problems with the propulsion or other systems, the capsule will return safely to Earth.

  • Max Bernstein ☛ Value numbering

    Welcome back to compiler land. Today we’re going to talk about value numbering, which is like SSA, but more.

    Static single assignment (SSA) gives names to values: every expression has a name, and each name corresponds to exactly one expression. It transforms programs like this: [...]

• Career/Education

  • American Library Association ☛ White House FY27 budget proposal repeats threats to eliminate IMLS

    The proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 federal budget released today by the White House would cut funding for the only federal agency dedicated to supporting all types of libraries, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS); the school library program Innovative Approaches to Literacy (IAL); and several library-eligible programs. The American Library Association (ALA) released the following statement from ALA President Sam Helmick: [...]

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ Anthony Nelzin-Santos

    This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Anthony Nelzin-Santos, whose blog can be found at z1nz0l1n.com.

  • The Cyber Show ☛ Technology Plan B

    As commercial software becomes more enshitified and people figure out that it's hostile and useless, there's going to be a growing demand for simpler, functional software made by real humans, by a verifiable "hand-crafted" process that is trustworthy. Its relative simplicity, robustness and design by people who understand technology as a tool will ensure its triumph. It won't matter how much governments back failing corporations if their catastrophically over-complex and insecure stuff just doesn't work. No amount of pretending is going to fix it.

    If you just got fired from tech, take hope. Life is not over, it just began. You're part of the B-team now. Like it or not you're with the resistance. Keep practising your skills. Old skills. Develop yourself. Read the fundamentals; Knuth, Abelson, Sussman, Kernighan and Ritchie. Find out about Free Software. Find the others. Nobody else will tell you how. Understand technology and knowledge as a force for sustaining liberal democratic society. These skills will be needed. Find your place in the Free Open Source Software Movement. Beware of corporate money. Good luck.

  • Vanity Fair ☛ 23 Books in 23 Days: Everything Jeremy O. Harris Read While Imprisoned in Japan

    If you’re like me and the world has been overwhelming you with emails and countless deadlines, getting arrested in Japan for accidentally having MDMA in your toiletry bag, resulting in a 23-day confinement, will be your chance to turn off the world if you so choose. (Read more about all that here.) In the quiet of my cell, I read 23 books and turned in an outline for a movie at a major studio, all while realizing how loud my normal life had become.

    Here is a list of the books I read, in the order that I read them…

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ Exposing A Radiation-Hardened 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi Receiver To 500 Kilograys

    From outer space to down here on Earth, there are many places where ionizing radiation levels are high enough that they effectively bar access for humans, but also make life miserable for anything containing semiconductor technology. This is especially true for anything involving wireless communications, such as Wi-Fi. However, recently Japanese researchers have created a Wi-Fi chip that is claimed to be so radiation-hardened that it can be used even in gamma ray-rich environments, such as in the worst contaminated depths of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor.

  • Pascal Garber ☛ Easy 6502 by skilldrick

    In this tiny ebook I’m going to show you how to get started writing 6502 assembly language. The 6502 processor was massive in the seventies and eighties, powering famous computers like the BBC Micro, Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Apple II, and the Nintendo Entertainment System. Bender in Futurama has a 6502 processor for a brain. Even the Terminator was programmed in 6502.

    So, why would you want to learn 6502? It’s a dead language isn’t it? Well, so’s Latin. And they still teach that. Q.E.D.

    (Actually, I’ve been reliably informed that 6502 processors are still being produced by Western Design Center and sold to hobbyists, so clearly 6502 isn’t a dead language! Who knew?)

    Seriously though, I think it’s valuable to have an understanding of assembly language. Assembly language is the lowest level of abstraction in computers - the point at which the code is still readable. Assembly language translates directly to the bytes that are executed by your computer’s processor. If you understand how it works, you’ve basically become a computer magician.

    Then why 6502? Why not a useful assembly language, like x86? Well, I don’t think learning x86 is useful. I don’t think you’ll ever have to write assembly language in your day job - this is purely an academic exercise, something to expand your mind and your thinking. 6502 was originally written in a different age, a time when the majority of developers were writing assembly directly, rather than in these new-fangled high-level programming languages. So, it was designed to be written by humans. More modern assembly languages are meant to written by compilers, so let’s leave it to them. Plus, 6502 is fun. Nobody ever called x86 fun.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Alberta, Ottawa reach 'agreement-in-principle' on methane emissions

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] What's new in Ottawa-Alberta deal to cut methane emissions from oil and gas sector

  • Nico Cartron ☛ New Running Shorts and T-Shirt: inov8

    Running a lot means that of course those guys will wear out eventually, and that's exactly what's happening these days, so it was time for buying proper outfit.

• Proprietary

  • Scoop News Group ☛ FAA at higher risk of cyberattack given lagging security, transparency, watchdog finds

    The Department of Transportation’s inspector general office identified governance gaps during an audit of the high-impact systems powering the National Airspace System.

  • Roy Tang ☛ Paypal can charge you a 'Dispute Fee' even if you did nothing in a transaction

    And I was like WTH! And so I checked my Paypal account and sure enough, the amount originally sent to me in error was refunded and on top of that I was charged an $8 "Dispute Fee", which is ridiculous. I had nothing to do with this transaction, did not participate in it or whatever. If I wasn't the type of person who never misses an email I might have never known about it until logging in to my PayPal account!

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Gas is $10 a gallon at a Big Sur station. The owner explains why his prices can't go higher

    “The software only goes to $10,” said Leo Flores, owner of the gas station and mini-market. “I know, sometimes someone wants to make a good story because of it, but we have to tell you why.”

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ AI Is Killing Microsoft

      “Redmond is in a pickle,” Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes wrote in a note last week, referring to the Washington state city where Microsoft is headquartered.

      The tech giant has been swept up in a much broader market phenomenon dubbed the “SaaSpcalypse” this year, with software-as-a-service companies getting hammered by ongoing sell-offs. Panicked investors are afraid AI coding tools could make their often costly services redundant by allowing firms to develop their own in-house tools from scratch instead.

    • CNBC ☛ Microsoft's stock closes worst quarter since 2008 financial crisis

      Microsoft has been trying to build a larger revenue base from productivity software with the Microsoft 365 Copilot AI add-on, but so far, just 3% of commercial Office customers have licenses for it. Luria said he has access to 365 Copilot, but that he's not a fan. More importantly, he said, Microsoft has pricing power with Office subscriptions. The company announced plans to raise prices in December.

    • TechRadar ☛ 'Copilot is for entertainment purposes only': Even Microsoft's official terms and conditions say you really shouldn't be using its AI at work

      Despite being for "entertainment purposes," it's still heavily marketed toward workers

    • The Verge ☛ Really, you made this without AI? Prove it

      This leads me to one conclusion: maybe we should start labeling human-made text, images, audio, and video with something akin to a universally recognized Fair Trade logo. The machines sure as hell aren’t motivated to label their work, but the creators at risk of being displaced most definitely are.

      Fortunately, I’m not alone in my thinking.

    • Jan-Lukas Else ☛ I’m currently on my third or fourth attempt to protect my Forgejo - Jan-Lukas Else

      I’m currently on my third or fourth attempt to protect my Forgejo (formerly a Gitea instance) from AI crawlers and other bots. Yesterday, I set up Anubis, that bot firewall you now see on some sites, and it actually seems to be helping. Let’s see how long that lasts…

    • Ankur Sethi ☛ I'm no longer using coding assistants on personal projects

      Some people see the need for writing code as an impediment to getting good use out of a computer. In fact, some of the most avid fans of generative AI believe that the act of actually doing the work is a punishment. They see work as unnecessary friction that must be optimized away. Truth is, the friction inherent in doing any kind of work—writing, programming, making music, painting, or any other creative activity generative AI purpots to replace—is the whole point.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Nobody wants OpenAI shares on the secondary market

      OpenAI equity is traded slightly on the secondary market. This lets existing OpenAI investors turn at least some of their equity into actual cash.

      But there’s a slight problem — nobody wants OpenAI on the secondary market: [...]

    • The New Stack ☛ "I started to lose my ability to code": Developers grapple with the real cost of AI programming tools

      But others continued expressing deeper concerns. Pia Torain, a software engineer for Point Health A.I., told Thompson that after four months of issuing hundreds of prompts a day, she’d “started to lose my ability to code.” Torain now makes a conscious effort to slow down and absorb the program’s entire architecture and flow, warning that this may be the ultimate danger of outsourcing too much of our programming to AI.

    • Tortoise Media ☛ Zoë Hitzig: ‘AI is gambling with people’s minds’

      The alarming bit was how out of touch the AI world was. “People would talk about how AI is going to bring all this wealth that will rain down – all we have to do is figure out how to distribute it. But the Industrial Revolution already [promised] this, and we did not distribute the wealth globally. Why would this be any different? That [attitude] was pervasive and hard to watch. If you take your eyes off your two smartphones and look around, San Francisco is a city that has enormous poverty.”

    • Peta Pixel ☛ Sony Shuts Down Nearly Its Entire Memory Card Business Due to Flash Shortage

      The aforementioned SSD shortage is due entirely to the seemingly endless hunger of AI datacenters for memory. The cost of memory components is going up because the supply for the actual dies that make up all types of SSDs is finite and being largely consumed by enterprise companies looking to expand AI data centers. But it isn’t stopping at price increases. Because supply is finite, that also means that at some point, there simply isn’t enough hardware to even make certain products anymore.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Microsoft says Copilot is for entertainment purposes only, not serious use — firm pushing AI hard to consumers and businesses tells users not to rely on it for important advice

      “Copilot is for entertainment purposes only. It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended,” the document said. “Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk.” This isn’t limited to Copilot, too. Other AI LLMs have similar disclaimers. For example, xAI says “Artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving and is probabilistic in nature; therefore, it may sometimes: a) result in Output that contains “hallucinations,” b) be offensive, c) not accurately reflect real people, places or facts, or d) be objectionable, inappropriate, or otherwise not suitable for your intended purpose.”

    • PC Mag ☛ Copilot Terms Claim Microsoft's AI Is for 'Entertainment Purposes Only'

      The update flew under the radar, but cropped up on social media this week, with some users noting that the disclosure is similar to what you might hear before a psychic reading.

    • Jürgen Geuter ☛ Dissolving the social

      “AI” exists to disenfranchise labor. That’s what it’s for. Regardless of how good these stochastic systems are or the flaws they have just being able to point at the non-unionized robot whenever the employees ask for raises or anything really is incredibly valuable for business. The existence of “AI” and the supporting narrative mean that you defending your value and therefore price on the market will have a way harder time.

      But that’s the impact for people on the top. That’s why the C-Suite wants those tools to exist and to be deployed. I think there is also a strong effect on the way “AI” affects the social relationships between peers and coworkers.

    • Nathaniel Fishel ☛ Your code is worthless - Nathaniel Fishel

      We are mistaking token burn for value creation. We are celebrating the expansion of our attack surface and the explosion of our maintenance burden as if it were progress. I’m writing this in the hope that those in leadership might step back from the dashboard and realize that vanity metrics like LOC will never tell you how much value was created only how much technical debt was financed.

      This leads into a natural question, if we can not use quantity as a metric how do we define the value of software, and those who are paid to create it? Based on my own personal experience combined with ideas borrowed from experts I have the following 3 suggestions.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • 2026-03-27 [Older] Ransomware Attack Totally Cripples Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in Indiana

    • 2026-03-28 [Older] Woodfords Family Services notifying patients and families about 2024 ransomware attack

• Security

  • 2026-03-25 [Older] Malware on Luxembourg public sector devices was active for almost a month

  • 2026-03-25 [Older] Handala Hackers Alleges Massive Data Breach of Tamir Pardo, Former Mossad Chief

  • Industry Dive ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Companies face difficult choices in blaming hackers for an attack

  • The Record ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Anime streaming giant Crunchyroll says hacker stole data related to customer service tickets

  • Security Affairs ☛ 2026-03-28 [Older] Iran-linked group Handala hacked FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email account

  • 2026-03-29 [Older] CareCloud notifies the SEC after attack on one of its EHR environments

  • South Africa ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] South African government agency and Spanish psychological software provider victims of cyberattacks by XP95

  • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ 2026-03-30 [Older] Estonian hospital sends patient home with other peoples’ health data

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] CBC warns of interview request scam asking for money

    • 2026-03-24 [Older] 243,000 French Public School Employees Victims of Hack

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] When a beloved pizza joint got bombarded with 1-star Google reviews, a London, Ont., neighbourhood fought back

    • R Tyler Croy ☛ Private Open Source

      Open source communities depend on a fundamental assumption that is no longer true: the presumption of good faith actors. The hosts serving free and open source code are scraped relentlessly, denying service to developers. Once that code has been assimilated into various models it is washed of all attribution and license information, denying rights of the developers. Some subset of users then feel empowered, emboldened, I’m not sure what exactly by these models and lob massive thousand line changes back at the developers. Nearly every technology has the possibility to be used for positive and negative effects, but free and open source communities are being harmed from multiple directions right now.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] U.S. lawmakers demand answers after Canadian man says border officers made him give DNA sample

    • Allbritton Journalism Institute ☛ The White House App Is Riddled With Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities

      Cybersecurity researchers warn that the White House’s new app regularly shares users’ IP addresses, time zones and other data to third-party services. But most of its users wouldn’t know that, because the app doesn’t disclose its data sharing the way most others do.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ LinkedIn is spying on you, according to a new 'BrowserGate' security report — scripts stealthily scan visitors' browsers for over 6,000 Chrome extensions and harvest hardware data

      The script, which BleepingComputer verified through its own testing, also harvests the CPU core count, available memory, screen resolution, time zone, language settings, and battery status. The findings were first published in Fairlinked’s “BrowserGate” report, which claims the script works by attempting to access file resources tied to specific extension IDs, a well-documented technique for detecting whether extensions are installed in Chromium-based browsers. A GitHub repo documented LinkedIn scanning for roughly 2,000 extensions in 2025, while a separate repo from February this year logged approximately 3,000. The current count stands at 6,236.

    • Thereallo ☛ I Decompiled the White House's New App

      The official White House Android app has a cookie/paywall bypass injector, tracks your GPS every 4.5 minutes, and loads JavaScript from some guy's GitHub Pages.

  • Confidentiality

    • Politico LLC ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Florida senator sues Booz Allen over his leaked tax returns

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] Settlement approved for Canadians affected by past 23andMe data breach

    • J D Supra LLC ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] Delaware Supreme Court Reverses, Holds Cyber Insurers Sufficiently Pled Collective Subrogation Claim Resulting from Blackbaud Data Breach

• Defence/Aggression

  • Israel National News ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] 50 Israeli companies ‘digitally erased’

  • The Record ☛ FCC proposes $4.5 million fine for voice service provider hosting ‘suspicious’ foreign call traffic

    The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday proposed fining the voice service provider Voxbeam Telecommunications $4.5 million for allegedly accepting “suspicious” call traffic from an unauthorized foreign provider.

    The foreign provider, Czechia-based Axfone, was not allowed to transmit calls over American networks, the FCC said in a press release. The agency said it has found Voxbeam “apparently liable.”

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: EU ready to cave to Trump on tech

    If Trump wants to steal Greenland, he doesn't need tanks or missiles. He can just tell Microsoft and Oracle to brick the entire Danish state and all of its key firms, blocking their access to their email archives, files, databases, and other key administrative tools. If Denmark still holds out, Trump can brick all their tractors, smart speakers, and phones. If Denmark still won't give up Greenland, Trump could blackhole all Danish IP addresses for the world's majority of transoceanic fiber. At the click of a mouse, Trump could shut down the world's supply of Lego, Ozempic, and delicious, lethally strong black licorice.

    Now, these latent offensive capabilities were obvious long before Trump, but the presidents who weaponized them in the pre-Trump era did so in subtle and deniable ways, or under a state of exception (e.g. in response to spectacular terrorist attacks or in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine) that let bystanders assure themselves that this wouldn't become a routine policy.

  • Vox ☛ Sen. Chris Murphy on Trump’s corruption, democracy, and the economy

    President Donald Trump’s blatant, sometimes open corruption can feel disorienting. While other White Houses have made a point to show their administration is not for sale, this one has seemingly done the opposite — making a big show of their transactional relationship with corporations, Silicon Valley, and other governments, given the right price.

    This kind of pay-to-play politics was the focus of a recent forum in Washington, DC, hosted by the American Economic Liberties Project, a think tank focused on corporate consolidation, breaking up monopolies, and accountability for rogue businesses. It’s also the focus of Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who has made this anti-corruption a focus of his message and policy proposals since the 2024 election.

  • JURIST ☛ HRW reports mass killings in Burkina Faso conflict, urging government action

    The rising violence by Islamist armed groups in Burkina Faso and the broader Sahel, noting increasing civilian casualties and instability linked to armed group activity, was also highlighted in recent reporting. Comparable concerns have also been raised in Mali, where rights groups have documented apparent war crimes by Al Qaeda-linked groups.

  • Tuscon Sentinel ☛ Arizona joins coalition of states suing to block Trump’s mail ballot executive order

    More than 20 states — led by California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington — and the District of Columbia sued in federal court in Massachusetts. They argue the order violates the Constitution, which gives states the responsibility to run elections and allows Congress, not the president unilaterally, the power to override state regulations.

  • Atlantic Council ☛ By alienating its intelligence partners, the US risks losing more than trust

    Without trust and reciprocity, the United States will lack a full intelligence picture as it works to counter Russian, Chinese, North Korean, Iranian, and transnational threats.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ Whistleblowing To Stop A War

    The world needs national security whistleblowers to follow in Daniel Ellsberg’s footsteps, but the tentacles of the warfare state have an immense grip over Washington, D.C.

  • International Business Times ☛ Fact-Check: Donald Trump Health Scare Video Trends on X — White House Responds, 2024 Footage Revealed

    Rumours began circulating rapidly on X, where users shared a clip of a presidential motorcade and claimed the convoy was heading to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The claims gained traction quickly across Facebook and Instagram until the White House stepped in with an official response, and open-source verification subsequently identified the footage as dating from 2024.

  • BoingBoing ☛ How hackers faked a zombie apocalypse alert on live TV

    The hack worked because the stations had never changed the factory default passwords on their Emergency Alert equipment — passwords listed in publicly available user manuals. The audio itself came from a zombie apocalypse soundbite uploaded to YouTube in 2008. The attackers assembled the whole thing from off-the-shelf components: manufacturer documentation plus a five-year-old internet video.

• Environment

  • The New Lede ☛ EPA flags microplastics as "priority" contaminants in drinking water

    The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced April 2 a set of coordinated actions to protect public health from harms associated with microplastics, which have been found to accumulate in human tissues as they build up in the environment.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-23 [Older] Investigators focused on final minutes of audio from Air Canada cockpit before LaGuardia collision: NTSB

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-23 [Older] Carney 'very disappointed' in Air Canada CEO's English-only condolence video, says it lacked compassion

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] Air Canada Flight Attendant Who Survived LaGuardia Crash Shared Eerie 'I Will Get Up After I Fall' Post Years Before Disaster

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ [Cryptocurrency] Is Flailing

      But four months later, despite having thrown everything but the kitchen sink to power a [cryptocurrency] boom, the market shrunk back to just over $2 trillion. Bitcoin fell to half its peak and is now fighting to clear the $70,000 mark. Despite no-holds-barred boosting from the world’s most powerful and brazen politician, [cryptocurrency] is flailing. What happened?

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] Some U.S. car buyers envy what they cannot have — affordable Chinese EVs

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-24 [Older] St. John's airport has a seagull problem. But critics say more than a decade of culls hasn't made things safer

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Case Western Reserve University ☛ Animals live alongside us, not for us

      I think it is fair to say that we as a species need to re-evaluate how we see ourselves on a planet that is not meant for a hierarchical emphasis of one species over another. Our impact on this planet, whether it be on wildlife or plants, has been nothing short of destruction and damage. If we wish to continue calling this planet our home, we must treat it and the lives on it as such.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Glendale homeowner swapped his lawn for California native plants

      The $20,000 transformation cut his water usage so dramatically that he now waters just once monthly in the summer.

      The experience inspired Smee to volunteer at a local preserve, helping plant hundreds of native species across the Verdugo Mountains area.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Where to find wildflowers near and around Los Angeles

      Remember to be a courteous visitor when viewing wildflowers. Don’t trample or pick the flowers and stay on the paths because even barren ground could have seeds germinating beneath. Flowers are things of beauty to humans, but don’t forget they are food, breeding and mating sources for smaller creatures. Also, those with insect phobias should consider this when planning a visit.

  • Overpopulation

    • The Hindu ☛ Drinking water scarcity in 324 villages across 60 taluks in 20 districts in Karnataka: Priyank Kharge

      The State has 26,676 villages across 31 districts, with 57,883 habitation areas covering over 1.01 crore households. During summer, many water sources dry up and borewell yield reduces. To address this, daily monitoring systems have been put in place, and emergency drinking water works are being undertaken to ensure supply during drought-like conditions, the release said.

    • Western Water ☛ Congressional Report: Colorado River at a breaking point

      The March 31, 2026, reportOpens in a new tab. outlines long-standing legal agreements, current water shortages, and the approaching expiration of key operating rules in 2026. It also signals that Congress may soon face important decisions about funding, authority, and long-term management of one of the West’s most critical water systems.

    • US Congress ☛ Management of the Colorado River: Water Allocations, Drought, and the Federal Role | Congress.gov | Library of Congress

      The Colorado River Basin covers more than 246,000 square miles in seven U.S. states (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California) and Mexico. Pursuant to federal law, the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation, part of the Department of the Interior) manages much of the basin's water supplies. Colorado River water is used primarily for agricultural irrigation and municipal and industrial (M&I) purposes; it is also important for tribal uses, hydropower production, fish and wildlife, and recreational uses. Since the onset of dry conditions in the early 2000s, storage levels at the basin's federal reservoirs have fallen. Pursuant to existing authorities, the Secretary of the Interior, through Reclamation, is currently leading a process analyzing potential "long-term" (post-2026) operational changes to the Colorado River system.

• Finance

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-26 [Older] Ontario's 2026 budget sees deficit hit $13.8B amid looming global instability

  • CBC ☛ 2026-03-27 [Older] Liberal MP's Chinese forced labour comments come as U.S. probes Canada's imports

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Register UK ☛ Ex-Microsoft engineer blames Azure problems on talent exodus

    In 2024, federal cybersecurity evaluators reportedly dismissed Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud High (GCC High) as garbage, although they used a more colorful term. To understand why, it helps to consider the history of the underlying Azure infrastructure.

  • Inside Towers ☛ FCC Seeks Your Thoughts to Build Up U.S. Drone Industry - Inside Towers

    The FCC is looking for input on a variety of regulatory changes to support domestic drone production and use. The Commission is working with American drone companies and taking action to implement President Trump’s national strategy of “American drone dominance.”

    To that end, the FCC is asking for the public’s suggestions the Commission might take to achieve what it calls “U.S. supremacy” in drone technology, manufacturing, and operations. The agency seeks comments on a range of actions, including modernizing experimental licensing, creating new drone innovation zones, and ensuring more spectrum for drone operators.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Who's the Biggest Money Behind the Throne?

    It’s at least as important to follow the money — and learn the identities of America’s billionaire royalty who crowned Trump in the first place. They’re now spending another regal fortune to keep Congress under his control.

    Today I’m going to name names.

  • Neritam ☛ Is criticizing tech on political grounds valid?

    In my opinion and experience, it’s fantasy to judge a technology on its technical merit alone, isolated from political and economical influence!

  • Joshua P Steele ☛ You're Reading Revelation Wrong

    It took me years to realize that this confident framework for reading Revelation was, in the long sweep of church history, remarkably new. And it has had consequences far beyond theology classrooms. It has shaped how millions of American Christians think about war, peace, the environment, the Middle East, and whether it’s even worth trying to make the world better before Jesus comes back.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • CBC ☛ 2026-03-25 [Older] N.B.'s new AI chatbot gives tourists wrong info, like suggesting they leave province to find seafood

    • Futurism ☛ William Shatner Says AI Is Spreading Horrific Rumors About Him

      “All their stories are monetized,” Shatner wrote. “Most of the stories use an AI image of me. Facebook Support will not remove the page.”

      “None of these stories are true but they apparently seem genuine enough for fans to repost them across social media and send messages of support to me and my family all while the culprits behind the account make money,” he added.

    • The Nation ☛ The AI Boom Is a Climate Bust

      As if to confirm Altman’s dystopian prediction, recent scientific research has documented that AI chatbots increasingly lie, cheat, and disregard direct instructions from humans. That’s bad enough when the issue is whether e-mails should be deleted; it’s another thing entirely when the future of humanity is at stake. In simulated war games, AI ordered nuclear strikes in 95 cases out of 100, researchers at Kings College London found.

      Bill Gates has said that AI “will make it easier to fight climate change,” but more and more evidence suggests that AI actually makes it harder. “Our investigations have documented that Big Tech is now increasingly embracing the climate crisis denial rhetoric of Big Oil,” Geoff Dembicki, the global managing editor of DeSmog told Covering Climate Now. Scientific American has reported that Elon Musk’s AI chatbot has been spreading climate denial.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Nation ☛ Fact-Checkers Anonymous

    The “misconduct” in question may have occurred earlier that day. On November 5, 2025, I joined a dozen other shop members to ask an executive about the shuttering of Teen Vogue and about the many layoffs that had ensued as a result. When we encountered the head of HR, we asked if the company had closed the magazine to preemptively comply with the Trump administration’s campaign of dismantling American journalism. One of the participants of the march recorded the exchange, and the video made its way to social media, with the caption, “brutally awkward.” It registered over 1.4 million views. In response to our question, the executive told us to go back to work in a convoluted, lawyer-trained way. Three of my colleagues at other Condé Nast publications, Alma Avalle, Jake Lahut, and Ben Dewey were also fired, two of them former leaders of their union. (There are two unions in the NewsGuild, The New Yorker Union and Condé Nast United.)

  • BoingBoing ☛ Grandma in “No Dick Tator” costume still being prosecuted because satire apparently terrifies Alabama

    A 62-year-old Alabama grandmother is headed to trial after police tackled and arrested her at a No Kings protest for wearing an inflatable penis costume and carrying a "No Dick Tator" sign. Apparently, the authorities in Fairhope have decided the real threat to public order is a joke everyone understood.

  • BoingBoing ☛ The White House may be hiding how many Americans have died in Iran

    CentCom (Central Command) has been slowing the release of casualty numbers to the American people. According to their latest count, about 303 troops have been injured since Operation Epic Fury started. The data was already three days old when they released it. And it didn't even include the 15 troops wounded at Prince Sultan Airbase last Friday. How many are dead? Only Trump, the Secretary of War, and CentCom know. And they're not telling. You're explicitly not allowed to see those numbers.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Zimbabwean journalists harassed at hearings to extend president’s term

    “Blocking journalists, harassing them, and forcing them to delete their footage is a blatant attempt to censor their news coverage and control what the public can hear, read and see,” said CPJ Africa Director Angela Quintal. “Zimbabwean authorities must ensure those responsible are held accountable and that journalists are free to report on matters of public interest, including this bill, which, if it becomes law, could keep President Emmerson Mnangagwa in power until 2030.”

  • Marisa Kabas ☛ Refusing to accept an AI-poisoned future of journalism

    In a November conversation at the Urban Consulate in Detroit, the great writer and thinker Tressie McMillan Cottom was asked by host Orlando P. Bailey, “Do you have a daring idea for us to ponder and sit with for our collective future?” McMillan Cottom replied with this: “When people try to sell you on the idea that the future is already settled, it’s because it is deeply unsettled. I think that this promise of an artificial intelligent future is really just a collective anxiety that very wealthy, powerful people have about how well they’re gonna be able to control us in the future. If they can get us to accept that the future is already settled—AI is already here, the end is already here—then we will create that for them. My most daring idea is to refuse.”

    Today, I refuse.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Techdirt ☛ Minnesota Kicks Off Legal Battle With Trump Administration To Hold ICE Shooters Accountable

    After an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who’d recently moved to Minneapolis, local law enforcement officials requested a partnership with the federal government to investigate the case, as they’d done in past shootings involving federal agents.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ 'The Spiritual Advisor' From Rolling Stone Films Premieres

    The doc was shot in black and white for that reason. “What you’re seeing is mostly different shades of gray,” says Sanchez. “Beacause the subject isn’t as black and white as what the state wants you to believe.”

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ WhatsApp is eating South African operators' revenue

    Icasa attributed the divergence directly to OTT substitution as consumers moved to platforms like WhatsApp. “Declines in SMS and voice revenue are consistent with long-term substitution towards OTT messaging and calling applications,” the report said. “While these platforms reduce monetisable usage of traditional services, they contribute to rising broadband demand as consumers rely increasingly on data-driven communication.”

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Unmitigated Risk ☛ What Is Confidential Computing, What It Isn’t, and How to Think About It

    It is also a technology whose security properties are routinely overstated by the vendors selling it and the cloud providers deploying it. Marketing language like “even the infrastructure provider cannot access your data” appears in product pages from every major hyperscaler. The engineering reality is more constrained than that, and the gap between the marketing and the engineering is where organizations get hurt. None of that means you shouldn’t use it. I use it extensively. It means you need to understand what it actually gives you so you can build architectures that account for what it doesn’t.

  • Unmitigated Risk ☛ Why Nobody Can Verify What Booted Your Server

    There is no public database of known-good TPM measurements. There never has been.

    The Trusted Platform Module, a security chip that measures and attests to system integrity, has been a standard for twenty years. TPMs ship in virtually every enterprise laptop and server. Software-emulated versions are provisioned for every cloud VM on Azure, GCP, and AWS. Measured boot is a checkbox in every compliance framework that touches system integrity. The hardware that produces platform measurements is everywhere. The infrastructure to verify those measurements is not.

    If you have deployed measured boot at scale, you have hit this wall. I have, more than once. If you haven’t yet, you will.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Alex Russell ☛ The Web Is An Antitrust Wedge - Infrequently Noted

  TL;DR: Armed with new powers to rein in the worst excesses of mobile's duopolists, antitrust bodies around the world are struggling to find their footing, and an incurious tech press is letting it pass with nary a nod. Browsers are app stores, but that perspective is almost entirely absent from the antitrust conversation.

  Instead of prioritising the one, narrow intervention to unlock the most competition, regulators are gripped with alt store fever dreams; driving down cul-de-sacs that will leave the duopolists' power in tact even if alt stores of native apps materialise. Enforcers of new regulations are choking in the face of blatant non-compliance. Laws designed to kickstart competition and unchain web apps are being flouted, but regulators seem unfazed.

  The web as an engine of interoperability; this was understood by the drafters of these laws, but enforcers seem not to have internalised the lesson, with the UK's CMA being only the latest to pose capitulation as success. Instead of unlocking growth and dynamism, overcautious regulators are ratifying non-compliance through inaction. Timidity today reduces room for manoeuvre tomorrow while hampering home-grown competitors to big tech in the mean time.

  The web unleashed can deliver the change with the lowest risk, but regulators are falling down on the job, and tech reporters are not informing readers of the options or the stakes. It's time we spoke plainly about these overlapping institutional failures.

• Copyrights

  • The Verge ☛ Folk musician Murphy Campbell targeted by AI fakes and copyright trolls

    She quickly surmised that someone had pulled performances of the songs she posted to YouTube, created AI covers, and uploaded them to streaming platforms under her name. I ran one of the songs, “Four Marys”, through two different AI detectors, and it seemed to support her suspicions with both saying it was probably AI-generated.

    Campbell was shocked, “I was kind of under the impression that we had a little bit more checks in place before someone could just do that. But, you know, a lesson learned there,” she told The Verge. It took some time before Campbell managed to get the fake songs removed, “I became a pest,” she said. And even then, it wasn’t a complete victory. While the offending tracks don’t appear to be available on YouTube Music or Apple Music anymore, at least one can still be found on Spotify, just under a different artist profile, but with the same name. There are now multiple Murphy Campbells — “Obviously, I was thrilled by that,” the real Murphy Campbell said.