Leftovers

• Smithsonian Magazine ☛ A Rare 1897 Film Discovered in an Old Trunk in Michigan Features the First On-Screen Appearance of a Robot

  The slapstick short film, created around 1897, was famous for containing the very first on-screen appearance of a robot—preceding the term itself by more than two decades. But no watchable copies of the film were known to survive.

  Last fall, however, retired teacher Bill McFarland of Grand Rapids brought his great-grandfather’s collection to the Library of Congress’ National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

• Nick Heer ☛ A Hospitality Industry Without Hospitality

  The first one Cox mentions is HostBuddy AI, and I do not think his brief overview does justice to this thing. Their minute-long promo video is nauseating. “Running short-term rentals should be rewarding, not exhausting,” the voiceover begins, “but guest messages never stop”. As someone who has been in the service industry, though not in a hotel, I have sympathy for the exhaustion that comes with answering constant requests. But guess what? That is the job. That is the whole point of this industry.

• Marisa Kabas ☛ Ciao!

  Since I’ll be in Europe, I’m going to do as the Europeans do: close up shop and not work for the entire time. As a one-woman operation, that means there will be no new issues of The Handbasket from now through May 2nd. I understand that might be disappointing as a subscriber, but I hope you’ll understand that your incredible support (since 2022, and especially in the past year) have made it possible for me to feel comfortable taking a break. So thank you for this much-needed break.

• Joel Chrono ☛ What Interested Me Today 8

  They seem to be really focused on the IndieWeb, and even provide a widget that can be added to your website so the upvotes you get there can be seen on your posts. That’s kind of fun!

• Jan-Lukas Else ☛ Mental dump

  To get my mind free, I did some bike tours the last few days. Just a small round (with heavy headwind) last Thursday, a bigger round (with heavy side wind) on Saturday in a direction I never biked before, and another round today. On Saturday and today I also did a short Freeletics workout in addition to the bike ride. April is going strong so far in terms of fitness. 💪

• Dr Molly Tov ☛ molly's ever growing list of stuff she is way too excited to do

  To be sure this was what my mom was getting at, I casually mentioned they don't make you learn Morse Code anymore to pass that test. She seemed surprised to learn the test once required Morse Code. As if it never occurred to her that amateur radio hobbyists needed skills. Sure, Jan.

• Joe Crawford ☛ Another sketchy opportunity

  From a gmail address. Emphasis in original. I am pretty sure this would be violating the law and violating contractual agreements which might get made should an actual “job” get booked.

• Rachel ☛ Ingredients? Nutrition facts? Whatever you want to call it

  I don't even touch the mouse most of the time, because, well, the mouse is how you pick which terminal to type at if you can't get there sufficiently quickly with whatever keyboard alt-tab type stuff you have rigged up! In other words, I haven't moved away from the keyboard the whole time I've been typing this.

  The thing is ... none of this is new. This is exactly what I've been doing for almost fifteen years now. Yes, the first /w/ post is from May 2011, and I noticed it's about to come around again.

• Science

  • Futurism ☛ There's Something Extremely Shady About Trump's Disastrous New NASA Budget

    Earlier this month, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its proposed 2027 top-line request, which would eviscerate NASA’s science budget by a whopping 47 percent and slash the agency’s overall funding by 23 percent. The move highlighted the Trump administration’s persistent and staunchly anti-science agenda, once again drawing outraged reactions from space advocacy groups.

  • Harvard University ☛ ‘This is not about Harvard. It is about higher education.’

    “Other nations have looked at this, and they’re seeing opportunity, just as the U.S. did in the leadup to World War II,” he said. “And there are funds in Canada and in Europe to recruit American scientists, and China is doing everything it can to ensure that its most promising scholars who are in the United States go back to China.”

    With the conflict over research funding ongoing, Tucker asked whether Harvard should just go it alone and refuse to take federal money.

    Garber said that ending the university-government partnership would have wide-ranging implications not just for higher ed but for the nation.

  • Robert Smith ☛ Not all elementary functions can be expressed with exp-minus-log

    All Elementary Functions from a Single Operator is a paper by Andrzej Odrzywołek that has been making rounds on the internet lately, being called everything from a “breakthrough” to “groundbreaking”. Some are going as far as to suggest that the entire foundations of computer engineering and machine learning should be re-built as a result of this. The paper says that the function

    $$ E(x,y) := \exp x - \log y $$

  • Federal News Network ☛ National Research SLAM showcases science, research policy impact

    "We want to convey that science is so important to our nation and work we do across the national labs impacts the people in our country," Antonya Sanders said.

  • Science Alert ☛ Missing Ingredient Finally Reveals How Galaxies Formed at The Dawn of Time

    In the cold and dark.

  • Science Alert ☛ No Evidence Fluoride In Drinking Water Harms IQ, Finds Decades-Long Study

    Flim-flam busted.

  • Science Alert ☛ A Distinct New Type of Diabetes Is Now Officially Recognized

    Introducing type 5.

  • Science Alert ☛ What if Dark Matter Is Actually Black Holes From Another Universe?

    Quantum physics contains a powerful clue to how this is possible.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists May Now Know Why GLP-1s Don't Work For 10% of People

    A common genetic quirk could be to blame.

  • Science Alert ☛ Your Poop Schedule May Be Shaping Your Body From The Inside Out

    "Clear and lasting differences."

  • Science Alert ☛ Best Meaurement Yet of Cosmic Expansion Confirms The Universe Has a Very Big Problem

    The Hubble tension is real.

• Career/Education

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korean teachers struggle with malicious complaints from overprotective parents

    Protective measures for teachers remain elusive despite recent reinforcement through legislation.

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ The Journal Article Is Not the Job

    The journal article has never been the job. It has always been one mechanism through which a larger purpose is accomplished. That purpose is to ensure that knowledge becomes trusted, discoverable, understandable, connected, and capable of contributing to meaningful outcomes. This is not a new idea. The role of journals as systems for validating, connecting, and enabling the use of knowledge has long been understood. What is changing is not the function, but how that value is articulated, perceived, and increasingly tested.

    At the same time, the industry is facing a growing value challenge. There is increasing skepticism toward the role of publishers, a steady commoditization of publishing services, and fragmentation across the research ecosystem. Functions that once differentiated publishers are now treated as baseline expectations. The question is no longer what publishers do, but how that value is understood and extended.

  • The Drone Girl ☛ Part 107 test scores keep dropping. Are pilots getting dumber?

    The FAA has released its 2025 Airman Knowledge Test data, and if you’re looking for a feel-good story about the state of drone pilot preparedness in America, you won’t find it here. Not only are scores on the Small Unmanned Aircraft General (UAG) Knowledge Test — the exam required to fly commercially under Part 107 — still lagging behind every other major FAA test, they actually got worse last year.

  • Jim Nielsen ☛ Speed is Not Conducive to Wisdom

    Wisdom’s feedback loop is slow.

    Wise people I’ve met seem unhurried. I don’t think it’s because they’re slow thinkers or actors. I think it’s because they’ve learned that important things take the time they take, no amount of urgency changes that.

• Hardware

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ China has spent 3.6 times more than the US on chipmaking subsidies over the past decade — $142 billion and counting, easily outweighs CHIPS Act

    Semiconductor industrial policy spending in China totaled around $142 billion between 2014 and 2023, roughly 3.6 times higher than the $39 billion committed in the United States over the same period.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Iran reportedly bought an in-orbit Chinese satellite to target US military sites in the Middle East — purchase agreement included ongoing ground control services based in China

    Leaked documents allegedly show that the IRGC Aerospace Force is using a Chinese satellite to observe U.S. bases in the Middle East and use it for targeting American assets with drones and missiles.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ US Army tests armed Hunter Wolf robot for security, logistics drills

    New imagery released on April 13 shows the U.S. Defense Visual Information Distribution Service capturing a Hunter Wolf unmanned ground vehicle operating with the 101st Airborne Division during a combat simulation at Joint Readiness Training Center.

    This is not a controlled demo. It is a stress test in one of the Army’s toughest training environments, where new ideas either prove useful or fail fast.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ This clip of an astronaut chasing a memory card in space is hilarious… but it also makes me think seriously about storage

    During a livestream. Astronaut Christina Koch, floating inside NASA's Orion capsule during the Artemis II lunar flyby, ejects a memory card from her Nikon in the background. The camera's memory card eject feature proved to be a little too powerful for microgravity, and it shoots away from her in the weightless cabin. For a brief, slightly comic moment, she has to chase it down before it vanishes somewhere inside the spacecraft.

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ My Workspaces

    This post is inspired by Franck Sauer’s My Workspaces. I love Franck’s setup and background story behind each photo. I’ve been meaning to write this for months but postponed the search for old desktop setup photos because I wasn’t sure where to start. Back in the nineties, we didn’t brainlessly press that button: every shot was one less on the film roll and added to the cost. Hence my oldest setup—the 486 in my dad’s makeshift office that also served as the washing machine room—is lost forever.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ Thai authorities warn of spiked drinks in nightspots after nightclub case

    The substances most commonly misused include GHB, alprazolam, ketamine and flunitrazepam.

  • Kev Quirk ☛ I Wish I Could Talk to My Dad

    My best friend lost his Dad yesterday. Understandably he's extremely upset, and I feel awful for him. I never know what to do in these situations - "how are you doing?" just feels such a stupid thing to say. Like it's nowhere near enough. Of course he isn't doing well, you fucking idiot!

    His loss has brought about feelings of loss following the death of my own Dad. Who we lost back in 2008 to cancer, when he was 47. Watching him just wither away was heartbreaking. Especially at the age of 23.

    [...]

    Conversely, I'd love to know what kind of an old man he turned into. Would he still be as funny? Or would have turned into a grumpy old curmudgeon? Would we still go for a couple beers every Friday? Would he come here for barbecues in the summer? I'd have loved that.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Woman trapped in Tai Po blaze died after 999 call not passed to fire department, inquiry hears

    A woman trapped in the burning Wang Fuk Court estate in Tai Po died after police did not pass her 999 emergency call to the fire department, a public inquiry has heard.

  • NYPost ☛ Cases of drug-resistant diarrhea superbug are on the rise in the US

    What’s worse: There is no FDA-approved alternative for patients who catch the bug.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Indonesia’s narcotics agency seeks tighter vape control amid drug concerns

    Health experts support the ban while vape workers warn of economic fallout.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Mexico and Brazil forge health alliance ahead of 2027 universal care system launch

    Brazil’s Health Minister Alexandre Padilha celebrated the strategic nature of the bilateral collaboration and highlighted Brazil’s universal health system — known as the Unified Health System (SUS) — whose model, he said, can contribute to Mexico’s goals.

  • Futurism ☛ Clavicular Rushed to Hospital in Perfect Illustration of Why Looksmaxxing Is a Horrifying Death Cult

    It was only a matter of time.

  • Futurism ☛ Why Do ChatGPT Users Keep Committing Mass Shootings?

    The incident reignited a heated debate over the troubling relationship between the use of AI chatbots and deteriorating mental health, as well as the potential risk of violence.

  • Hackaday ☛ Hacking Fermentation For Infinite Pickles From Pass-thru Bioreactor

    The bioreactor gets loaded up with veggies on one end, plus lots of salt and spices to taste, plus some cultured brine from an old batch to kickstart everything. The starter isn’t necessary; it just gets things going faster. The initial packing is the hardest: after filling it the first time, one needs only press new veggies in at one end, while removing tasty treats at the other. A special packing tool [Cody]makes helps with that, but he plans on adding a larger feed side. Thanks to that kickstart, the pickles were ready to try after about a week– which means his tube is a bit long, for his desired dwell time. If you like more fermentation to your pickles, then you might like this size.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: In praise of (some) compartmentalization

    The first complication to understand is that I have lifelong, degenerating chronic pain that makes me hurt from the base of my skull to the soles of my feet – my whole posterior chain. On a good day, it hurts. On a bad day, it hurts so bad that it's all I can think about.

    Unless…I work. If I can find my way into a creative project, the rest of the world just kind of fades back, including my physical body. Sometimes I can get there through entertainment, too – a really good book or movie, say, but more often I find myself squirming and needing to get up and stretch or use a theragun after a couple hours in a movie theater seat, even the kind that reclines. A good conversation can do it, too, and is better than a movie or a book. The challenge and engagement of an intense conversation – preferably one with a chewy, productive and interesting disagreement – can take me out of things.

• Proprietary

  • Six Colors ☛ Solving the ‘problem’ of MacBook Neo’s popularity

    Now the bad news: Since the MacBook Neo is powered by the A18 Pro chip from 2024’s iPhone 16 Pro, a product that’s been discontinued, there is likely a finite number of chips available for MacBook Neo production. Which is why, as reported by Tim Culpan, Apple faces a dilemma, namely: What happens when it runs out of chips to use in the MacBook Neo?

  • Lee Peterson ☛ Leaving a technology ecosystem takes time and energy

    I’ve been using an iPhone since the 3G and a Mac since 2007, wow it’s coming on 20 years! By now you can tell I’m pretty locked in. I go through phases of trying to move out to something else then revert back to the simplicity of iCloud and Apple apps. I’m not particularly tied to Apple or iMessage, moving to Android or something else now RCS is being adopted would make it easy but I keep leaning back on what’s familiar. I look at folding Android phones and wonder what it would be like to try one again and I wonder how to export my photo library and put it somewhere else but it all takes work.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ ChatGPT's "Honest Reaction" to a "Song" Composed Entirely of Gas-Passing Noises Will Make You Question Whether It's Honestly Evaluating Your Other Brilliant Ideas

      Tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have long garnered a reputation for being ludicrously sycophantic. Despite AI companies publicly promising to address the problem, researchers recently found that the bots still have a strong tendency to flatter and affirm in response to virtually any kind of prompt.

      In the latest preposterous example of this impulse, philosophy YouTuber and writer Jonas Čeika “sent ChatGPT an audio file of a series of FART sound effects and asked what it thinks of ‘my music.'”

    • Futurism ☛ AI Is Turning Workplaces Into Hopeless Gridlock

      There’s a problem, though: the workers who remain often say they now have to fix a flood of error-ridden AI-generated “workslop” that’s burdening them, paradoxically, with more work than ever.

      All this pointless busywork to correct AI-generated output results in hidden costs for companies that embrace the tech, according to The Guardian. One recent survey of 1,150 desk jockeys found that the 40 percent had encountered workslop — defined as “AI-generated content that looks good, but lacks substance” — in the course of their duties, forcing them to waste 3.4 hours per month dealing with it. At scale, that’s significant: all those hours wasted tally up to an estimated $8.1 million of lost productivity for a workplace with 10,000 workers.

    • Futurism ☛ Usually, Young People Embrace New Technology. Gen Z's Attitude Toward AI Should Worry the Entire Tech Industry

      Most damning is Zoomers’ trajectory. Excitement about AI dropped 14 percent since last year and hopefulness fell by nine percent, while the proportion of young people feeling “outright anger” toward the tech spiked from 22 percent last year to 31 percent this year.

    • The Register UK ☛ Bad teacher bots can leave hidden marks on model students

      New research warns about the dangers of teaching LLMs on the output of other models, showing that undesirable traits can be transmitted "subliminally" from teacher to student, even when they are scrubbed from training data.

      The peer-reviewed study from researchers at Anthropic demonstrated that LLMs can transfer negative traits to "student" models, even when evidence of these traits has been removed from the transmitted training data.

    • International Business Times ☛ Innocent Man Sues City After AI Misidentification Leads to Arrest for Crime He Did Not Commit

      An American truck driver is taking legal action after an AI system's '100% match' led to his arrest for a crime he insists he never committed.

      Jason Killinger, a long-haul driver, has filed a lawsuit against the city of Reno, Nevada, after being wrongfully detained at a casino in September 2023, in a case that is now raising broader concerns about the use of facial recognition technology in policing. Court filings allege that the error resulted in hours of detention, physical restraint and lasting harm. The case has since expanded, with a federal judge allowing the city itself to be named as a defendant.

    • 404 Media ☛ Airbnb Hosts Don't Want to Talk to Guests Anymore, Are Outsourcing Messages to AI

      Airbnb then said these tools are only available through approved software partners. So I had a look around for some companies offering that service.

    • Wired ☛ AI Slop Is Making the Internet Fake-Happy

      A new preprint study published today from researchers at the Imperial College of London, Stanford University, and the Internet Archive found that approximately 35 percent of all new websites are either AI-generated or AI-assisted. The same study also found that online writing is “increasingly sanitized and artificially cheerful.” In other words, AI is making the internet fake-happy.

    • The Verge ☛ Trump’s posting even more AI-generated Trump-Jesus fan art

      But X user S2_Underground discovered a curious thing: The image Trump posted wasn’t exactly new. A version of the AI-generated image had been initially posted by a MAGA influencer named Nick Adams back in February, but by the time it made its way to Trump’s feed, several odd transformations had occurred. The most notable one, which went viral, was that a soldier floating in the clouds had turned into a faceless, spiky-headed winged being that social media users immediately viewed as a demon. But there are several more subtle changes, too: Trump’s flag has more stars than the Adams one, the fighter jets look slightly off, the buildings in the background look blurrier, and everyone’s faces, including Trump’s, look more fearful and less benevolent. Plus, one man’s “VETERAN” hat turned into what my coworker Owen Grove described as “a ‘የቹ፪ጮጎል’ hat.”

    • PC World ☛ Claude users are teaching it to talk like a caveman. Here's why

      PCWorld reports that Claude AI users are adopting “caveman” prompting techniques to reduce token consumption by stripping filler words and articles from responses.

      This method can dramatically cut output tokens, with one neural network explanation dropping from 460 to just 80 tokens using simplified language.

    • Hackaday ☛ AI For The Skeptics: Attempting To Do Something Useful With It

      There are some subjects as a writer in which you know they need to be written, but at the same time you feel it necessary to steel yourself for the inevitable barrage of criticism once your work reaches its audience. Of these the latest is AI, or more specifically the current enthusiasm for Large Language Models, or LLMs. On one side we have the people who’ve drunk a little too much of the Kool-Aid and are frankly a bit annoying on the subject, while on the other we have those who are infuriated by the technology. Given the tide of low quality AI slop to be found online, we can see the latter group’s point.

      This is the second in what may become an occasional series looking at the subject from the perspective of wanting to find the useful stuff behind the hype; what is likely to fall by the wayside, and what as yet unheard of applications will turn this thing into something more useful than a slop machine or an agent that might occasionally automate some of your tasks correctly. In the previous article I examined the motivation of that annoying Guy In A Suit who many of us will have encountered who wants to use AI for everything because it’s shiny and new, while in this one I’ll try to do something useful with it myself.

    • Marco F ☛ Thoughts on AI and Privacy | marco's blog

      It still baffles me that so many people are willing to completely give up their privacy out of fascination with the possibilities of AI. [...]

    • Kyle Kingsbury ☛ The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs

      As we deploy ML more broadly, there will be new kinds of work. I think much of it will take place at the boundary between human and ML systems. Incanters could specialize in prompting models. Process and statistical engineers might control errors in the systems around ML outputs and in the models themselves. A surprising number of people are now employed as model trainers, feeding their human expertise to automated systems. Meat shields may be required to take accountability when ML systems fail, and haruspices could interpret model behavior.

    • Jérôme Marin ☛ OpenAI’s ambitious (and unrealistic?) advertising targets

      Barely launched in the advertising market, OpenAI is already setting its sights high. Buoyed by what it calls “encouraging early results,” the creator of ChatGPT is forecasting explosive, unprecedented growth, according to documents shown to investors and reviewed by U.S. outlets The Information and Axios. Within just five years, the company believes it can reach $100 billion in ad revenue — a level that would place it among the global top four, behind only Google, Meta and Amazon, but ahead of YouTube and TikTok.

    • The Independent Variable ☛ Can AI judge journalism? A Thiel-backed startup says yes, even if it risks chilling whistleblowers

      [...] The fact it costs $2,000 to file an objection means only people who have 2 grand laying around will ever have the opportunity to do so. This means the rich and corporations will be the only ones taking advantage of this “system” to sow doubt in pieces that are unfavorable to them. [...]

    • Dave Rupert ☛ I don't want a screenshot of your Claude conversation

      So, when a screenshot or copy-pasted block of “Here’s what Claude said…” comes across my screen… I don’t care about the screenshot. I don’t care about the screenshot because I want your thoughts, not Claude’s. I want your unfiltered and half-baked ideas, not Claude’s synthesized extrusions. Instead of a screenshot of a reply, I’d rather have the original prompt so I can just ask the machine myself. At least then I’d know the context you provided the machine and your understanding of the problem, because that matters immensely.

    • Jeff ☛ Nineteen Features, Zero Architecture

      I gave an AI full autonomy over a codebase. It made every decision - what to build, how to build it and even whether it was good enough to ship. Nineteen features later, the tests all passed, coverage looked healthy, and the code was a disaster.

      Let’s see why.

    • EDRI ☛ Open Letter: EU lawmakers must safeguard the AI Act

      With AI Omnibus trilogue negotiations imminent, experts and organisations committed to protecting fundamental rights and promoting consumer protection, are expressing deep concerns with both the substance of the Omnibus and the legislative procedure around it.

      The AI Omnibus is procedurally deeply flawed. The proposal by the European Commission goes far beyond the purported mandate of ‘technical changes’. This is particularly worrying as the AI Act is a novel law, and the European Commission has not followed basic democratic procedures and failed to follow its own Better Regulation commitments.

    • Kyrylo Silin ☛ AI will help you climb the wrong ladder faster | Kyrylo Silin

      One of my biggest disappointments with AI is this:

      It will confidently help you build a ladder… even if it’s leaning against the wrong wall.

    • Licensing / Legal

      • Los Angeles Times ☛ Attorneys used AI, cited fake legal decisions, State Bar alleges

        Three attorneys have been accused of submitting AI-generated court filings in California that cite nonexistent and irrelevant legal decisions.

      • Business Insider ☛ Microsoft Exec Suggests AI Agents Will Need to Buy Software Licenses

        At a recent conference, Microsoft executive Rajesh Jha floated a provocative idea. In a future where companies deploy fleets of AI agents, those agents may need their own identities — logins, inboxes, and even seats inside software systems. If so, AI wouldn't shrink software revenue. It could expand it.

  • Social Control Media

    • Digital Music News ☛ Roblox Launching ‘Roblox Kids’ Accounts After Widespread Grooming Allegations

      Roblox is launching restricted accounts for minors after being put on notice by the Australian government over reports of grooming on the platform. Popular social gaming platform Roblox will introduce two new account types in June, specifically for minors.

    • Variety ☛ Shannon Elizabeth Joins OnlyFans After 'American Pie' Fame

      Elizabeth stressed to her fans that she is still based in South Africa and focused on her charity work, which “remains incredibly close to my heart. But this feels like the perfect moment to open up my world to the fans who have been with me throughout this journey. I’m so excited for this.”

    • The Verge ☛ YouTube now lets you turn off Shorts | The Verge

      YouTube’s time management settings now have an option to put a zero-minute time limit on Shorts, effectively removing them from your app in Android and iOS. The option is an update to the Shorts timer YouTube originally announced in October; the lowest previous option was 15 minutes.

    • Jasper Tandy ☛ Jasper is blogging: And just like that...

      Today, I have been working on webmentions for this site. As a person, I oscillate between extremely sociable, and wildly introverted on an almost weekly basis. I haven't operated comments or reactions of any kind on this site for a very long time, because when a post gets no comments it's disheartening. But, I like the idea of webmentions. I like the idea of other blogger-islands like me, linking to each other, and webmentions serving as a bit of a hat-tip. That just feels like the right amount of sociable for me. Passively sociable.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ Cyberscammers are bypassing banks’ security with illicit tools sold on Telegram

      From inside a money-laundering center in Cambodia, an employee opens a popular Vietnamese banking app on his phone. The app asks him to upload a photo associated with the account, so he clicks on a picture of a 30-something Asian man. Next, the app requests to open the camera for a video “liveness” check.

    • Security Week ☛ 100 Chrome Extensions Steal User Data, Create Backdoor

      Socket identified 108 extensions performing various types of malicious activities. Half of them were designed to steal Google accounts via OAuth2, and 45 were injected with a universal backdoor that opens arbitrary URLs when the browser starts.

      The remaining extensions were designed to exfiltrate Telegram sessions, inject ads into YouTube and TikTok pages, inject content scripts into all visited pages, or to proxy translation requests through an attacker-controlled server.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EDRI ☛ How can the EU protect children while dismantling the rules to keep them safe?

      Children are especially exposed to data-driven harms, including profiling, behavioural targeting, and manipulative platform design. These practices rely on the intensive use of personal data and algorithmic systems designed to maximise attention and keep people connected for as long as possible. This is why data protection and platform regulation are part of the infrastructure that protects minors.

      The Digital Omnibus leaves this call unheard. Proposed changes to the definition of personal data could allow certain pseudonymised datasets to fall outside the scope of the GDPR. In practice, this would make it easier for companies to reuse large datasets for profiling or training AI systems without applying key protections.

    • Nick Heer ☛ WebXRay Audit Finds Opt-Out Tracking Requests Are Not Honoured – Pixel Envy

      A recent audit by the company of popular websites indicates most still track users even when they opt out: [...]

    • Michael Geist ☛ The Lawful Access Debate Begins: Canadians Should Pay Attention to What the Government Isn’t Saying

      The core concerns have been well documented (my posts on access to subscriber information, mandatory metadata retention, international production orders, and systemic vulnerabilities). Bill C-22’s metadata retention requirements would compel service providers to store data on all their users for up to a year, regardless of whether any user is suspected of anything. That is the architecture of a national surveillance database that would enable law enforcement to reach back in time and reconstruct the digital movements of virtually any Canadian with a connected device. Meanwhile, the bill would also require providers to permanently embed surveillance capabilities into Canadian networks through secret ministerial orders, an approach the international experience has shown doesn’t just threaten privacy, but actively makes communications infrastructure less secure for everyone. Both provisions raise serious constitutional questions, but neither received much attention on the floor of the House.

    • Ken Klippenstein ☛ You Do Not Hate The IRS Enough

      Documents I obtained show that the IRS already has a powerful set of tools to force compliance, from undercover agents to wiretaps and other forms of electronic surveillance. But now, thanks to AI, the IRS’s ultimate goal is for “minimal human contact,” as one document put it.

      The centerpiece is Palantir software that allows IRS investigators and auditors to conduct "near real-time data analysis" through a custom tool called the “Selection and Analytic Platform,” or SNAP.

    • Don Marti ☛ Attribution cartel Q and A

      How is the attribution cartel defined? Who’s in and who’s out?

      The cartel members are the companies that agree that they operate a tracking scheme that will not require consent or be subject to objections or opt-outs. To get a peek of how this would work, a recent version of Firefox shipped with both an attribution tracking preference (on by default) and Global Privacy Control. But turning on GPC did not turn off attribution tracking.

      A non-member is any company where consent, objections, and/or opt-outs apply to all of their personal data practices.

    • David Pogue ☛ Is Your Phone Eavesdropping?

      At this moment, we, the people, are using 8.3 billion phones.

      At a voice-quality bitrate (64 Kbps), audio recordings consume about 700 MB per phone per day. Those 8.3 billion phones would generate two trillion terabytes of data a year. If our phones were continuously transmitting audio—or even only when it hears people speaking—that much data would bring the cellular network to its knees and trigger a global storage crisis. “The idea of listening to every conversation around the world, and interpreting them and looking for certain words, and then matching them to the ads, is impossible,” Paparo says. “It’s just not feasible.”

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Stop Flock

      There’s little evidence that they do anything meaningful to prevent crime. But they do certainly create a surveillance layer, and help establish a culture of surveillance across law enforcement. 404 Media reported last year that ICE has been tapping into these cameras, although they weren’t established for that purpose; local police have been proxy users for immigration enforcement.

      Not only does the platform read license plates and track individual cars, but it tracks associations between vehicles — cars that are often seen together, for example. Which, of course, reveals associations between people.

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database

      What happens is that if the text of a Signal message shows up on a lock screen, it’s stored in iOS itself, in a place where forensic investigators can gain access to it. That’s a really good reason to turn off lock-screen notifications for Signal, and to remove the text of Signal messages from its notifications entirely.

      Here’s how to mitigate: [...]

    • EDRI ☛ The Digital Omnibus reopens the EU data acquis

      Much of the debate around the Digital Omnibus has focused on proposed changes to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ePrivacy and artificial intelligence rules. However, the proposal also significantly reshapes the EU’s broader data governance framework. This ‘data acquis’ part of the Omnibus merges elements of the Data Governance Act, which establishes a legal framework to facilitate data sharing and reuse across the European Union, the Open Data Directive, which governs the re-use of public sector information, and related instruments into the legislation that ensures fair access to and use of data, the EU Data Act.

      This is not a minor technical update. The proposal turns the Data Act into a central hub for data access, reuse, and governance. In doing so, it rewrites the institutional balance of the EU data framework. The changes affect how public authorities access privately held data, how data intermediaries operate, and how protected public-sector data can be reused.

    • EFF ☛ EFF to State AGs: Investigate Google's Broken Promise to Users Targeted by the Government

      For nearly a decade, Google has promised billions of users that it will notify them before disclosing their personal data to law enforcement. Many times, the company has done just that. But through a hidden and systematic practice, Google has likely violated that promise numerous times over the years. This was the case for Thomas-Johnson, a Ph.D. candidate who was targeted by ICE after briefly attending a protest, effectively preventing him from contesting an invalid subpoena for his data.

  • Confidentiality

    • Latvia ☛ Public official and IT company head found guilty of information disclosure

      On April 14, the Criminal Division of the Supreme Court (the Senate) decided to refuse to initiate cassation proceedings in a criminal case involving the disclosure of confidential information, thereby finalising the court’s judgment, which found National Health Service (NVD) employee Edgars Goba and Renārs Kadžulis, head of the information technology company SOAAR, guilty.

    • Federal News Network ☛ Government use of personal data is changing. How to ensure responsibility?

      "Privacy is about your ability to control what information you are making available to whom for what reason," Bethanne Barnes said.

    • Hackaday ☛ Don’t Trust Password Managers? HIPPO May Be The Answer!

      The modern web is a major pain to use without a password manager app. However, using such a service requires you to entrust your precious secrets to a third party. They could also be compromised, then you really are in trouble. You could manage passwords with local software or even a notebook, but that adds cognitive load. You could use the same password across multiple sites to reduce the load, but that would be unwise. Now, however, with the HIPPO system, there is another way.

      HIPPO is implemented as a browser extension paired with a central server. The idea is not to store any password anywhere, but to compute them on the fly from a set of secrets. One secret at the server end, and one the user supplies as a passphrase. This works via an oblivious pseudorandom function (OPRF) protocol. Details from the linked site are sparse, but we think we’ve figured it out from other sources.

    • Teleport ☛ From Plaintext, to BLESS, to Identity: The Evolution of Secure Remote

      With the release of the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol in the 1990s, we finally had a secure method of connecting to a UNIX host that encrypted the password and the entire remote access session, which defeated the vulnerability to network sniffers.

      Additionally, instead of using a password, you could use ssh-keygen to generate a private/public key pair and by loading the public key to the remote host as a trusted key, this allowed you to login to your UNIX host by providing the private key instead of a password. However, if your password or your SSH private key is compromised, it would leave your UNIX hosts vulnerable to malicious actors.

      What made this risk worse was an operational reality that took years to fully appreciate: SSH keys don't expire.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Strategist ☛ War at the speed of light: the emerging role of directed-energy weapons

    For decades, notions of laser weapons have been the stuff of science fiction.

  • The Straits Times ☛ UN watchdog says North Korea is boosting nuclear weapons capability

    Pyongyang’s nuclear programme was estimated at a few dozen warheads.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China moves to block entrance to disputed South China Sea shoal, images show

    China appears to be employing ships and a barrier to tighten control of the entrance to the shoal.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Taiwan jails 6 ex-soldiers for spying for China

    Five of them were recruited by a Hong Kong resident from China surnamed Ding, the court said in a statement.

  • New Yorker ☛ How Much Has the War in Iran Depleted the U.S. Missile Supply?

    Defense officials inside the Convicted Felon Administration were already concerned that American stockpiles were insufficient for a potential standoff with China. A war of choice in the Middle East has only made matters worse.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ China tests deep-sea electro-hydrostatic actuator that can cut undersea cables at a depth of 3,500 meters — state hails successful trial and hints at deployment readiness

    China has successfully tested a "deep-sea electro-hydrostatic actuator" that can cut undersea cables at a depth of 3,500 meters.

    [...]

    According to the report, the 'Haiyang Dizhi 2' completed the first deep-sea mission of the year on April 11. The electro-hydrostatic actuator (EHA), uses hydraulics, an electric motor, and a control unit combined into a single device, jettisoning the requirement for lengthy and cumbersome external oil piping. The device was reportedly further strengthened against deep-sea pressure and corrosion, enabling "precise mechanical tasks" at very low depths. A September report cited by the article notes that this technology has previously been touted "for cutting subsea cables and operating deep-sea grabs."

  • WSWS ☛ Trump DOJ seeks to erase January 6 convictions of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers ringleaders ahead of 2026 elections

    While Trump’s pardons and commutations last year shortened or ended the sentences of the convicted, they did not erase the actual felonies from their records. If these motions are granted and the charges dismissed, they will effectively wipe away the criminal judgments in the most serious January 6 cases.

    Tuesday’s motion claims that dismissal of the convictions is “just under the circumstances” because the “United States has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.” In other words, it is in the interests of the Trump administration, and the financial oligarchy it represents, that fascist militia leaders face no consequences for their criminal actions.

  • Salon ☛ DOJ pushes to vacate Proud Boys' and Oath Keepers' Jan. 6 convictions

    President Donald Trump commuted the sentences of the 12 [insurrectionists] on the first day of his second term. However, they did not receive unconditional pardons like the nearly 1500 others convicted in connection with the Capitol attacks.

    Trump did not explicitly explain why these rioters’ were not granted a full pardon, but the gravity of their convictions was a likely consideration. As the leaders of their far-right respective extremist groups, these defendants received much heftier sentences. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was originally sentenced to 18 years in prison.

  • The Canary ☛ Trump is promising to pardon his loyal stooges

    In December 2024, the BBC reported that the US President had granted “237 acts of clemency” in his first term (143 pardons and 94 commutations). In that same article, they noted that Trump was kicking off his second term by pardoning/commuting 1,600 individuals who were linked to the botched insurrection of 2021. Trump has continued to grant clemency since then, and there’s little reason to suspect he’ll stop.

    Oh, and talking of the botched insurrectionists who got pardoned; it’s notable that several have been re-arrested since. As CREW reported in December 2025: [...]

  • The Washington Post ☛ DOJ moves to undo Jan. 6 [insurrectionists]’ convictions for seditious conspiracy

    Federal prosecutors are seeking to wipe out the seditious conspiracy convictions of 12 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who helped plan the Jan. 6, 2021, riots and led the charge into the U.S. Capitol, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Trump promised mass pardons for his top aides before he leaves office: report

    According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump has repeatedly promised pardons to administration officials on multiple occasions, including during one recent meeting at which he reportedly said he’d “pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval” before he leaves office in January 2029.

  • The Kyiv Independent ☛ Trump and Vance may have abandoned Ukraine — but polls show the American people remain deeply committed

    Despite the political noise in Washington, the American public has not abandoned Ukraine.

  • Court House News ☛ California bill would ban cellphones in schools

    “California should be leading on this issue,” he said at a press conference.

    The bill would require school districts to have a policy by July 1, 2027, that prohibited smartphone use by students while at school or under school supervision — called a bell-to-bell ban. Those policies would derive from public participation, ensuring they meet specific community needs.

    And school districts would have to update the policy every five years.

  • Votebeat ☛ Why Trump can’t cancel the 2026 midterm elections

    The election system is under real strain, and bad-faith efforts to undermine it are serious. But after talking with local election officials, lawyers, and administrators across the country, I don’t see evidence that upcoming elections are at realistic risk of not happening at all. Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local law that mandates them — and history shows they’ve done so before, even under immense pressure. The greater danger isn’t no election, but one that’s chaotic, unfairly challenged, or deliberately cast as illegitimate after the fact.

  • TruthOut ☛ 52 Senators Vote Against Reining In Trump’s War on Iran Despite Genocidal Threat | Truthout

    Senators failed to advance the resolution, introduced by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), in a 47 to 52 vote. The legislation failed largely on party lines, with staunchly pro-Israel Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) voting against and Sen. Ron Paul (R-Kentucky) voting to advance. Sen. Jim Justice (R-West Virginia), who is frequently absent, did not vote.

  • MIT Technology Review ☛ No one's sure if synthetic mirror life will kill us all

    By five years later, in 2024, many researchers involved in that NSF meeting had reversed course. They’d become convinced that in the worst of all possible futures, mirror organisms could trigger a catastrophic event threatening every form of life on Earth; they’d proliferate without predators and evade the immune defenses of people, plants, and animals.

  • TruthOut ☛ Democrats Submit Articles of Impeachment Against Pete Hegseth | Truthout

    The articles of impeachment are set to be introduced by Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Arizona), the first Iranian American Democrat elected to Congress. The articles accuse Hegseth of: [...]

  • International Business Times ☛ Pete Hegseth's 'No Mercy' Order Cited in Six-Article Impeachment Filing Over Iran Strikes

    The political fallout from the ongoing conflict in Iran has finally reached the Pentagon's top office. Representative Yassamin Ansari formally introduced articles of impeachment against Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth today, accusing him of constitutional violations and enabling unlawful military actions.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Autocracy = Corruption

    A full analysis of why Hungarians repudiated Orbán will surely contain many details unique to Hungary. However, it’s also clear that there were three main factors that led to Orbán’s overthrow. And understanding these factors is important if Americans are to defeat Trump’s MAGA regime.

  • International Business Times ☛ Pope Leo's Response to Trump Intensifies After Viral Jesus-Like Photo, Stresses Moral Foundations of Democracy

    The controversy centres on Pope Leo's recent warning that democracies risk sliding into 'majoritarian tyranny' or becoming dominated by economic and technological elites if they lack moral foundations. The statement was issued in a Vatican letter addressed to participants of a governance-focused meeting and released while the Pope was undertaking a multi-nation tour in Africa, a trip focused on interfaith dialogue and discussions on global inequality.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ ISS: Estonian Christian Orthodox Church still run from Moscow

      Although the church adopted a new name last year, only cosmetic amendments were made to its statutes to create the appearance of independence from the Moscow Patriarch who continues to use Christian rhetoric to justify Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine. In addition, EKÕK continues to be led by Metropolitan Yevgeny from Russia, whose Estonian residence permit was not extended on security grounds, forcing him to leave the country, according to the agency's annual report.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ Found: The exact spot where Shakespeare lived his secret London life

    But a dusty floor plan from 1668 has just torn up that script.

    Professor Lucy Munro of King’s College London has uncovered evidence in the archives that pinpoints the exact location and scale of Shakespeare’s only London property.

  • 404 Media ☛ Thomson Reuters Shareholders Demand Investigation into ICE Contracts

    The BCGEU proposal laid out the legal risks Thomson Reuters may face by providing ICE with such data. “ICE’s immigration enforcement activities are the subject of multiple lawsuits in response to credible reports of unlawful and improper detentions, due process violations, surveillance of citizens, and deaths,” it said. “TRI faces compounding legal, reputational, and governance risks. TRI’s employees have spoken out publicly, which could impact TRI’s ability to deliver on its goals.”

    It also points to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which Thomson Reuters says it endorses. The proposal says companies must conduct due diligence on “actual and potential impacts including where data may be accessed, used or repurposed beyond original intent,” and “direct and indirect impacts, including from business relationships.”

  • Techdirt ☛ The CDC Doesn’t Want You To See A CDC Report On How Effective COVID Vaccines Are

    But these are ideological people, with some of the stupidest possible ideologies governing their actions. That’s how you get a situation where the CDC produces a report on the efficacy of recent COVID vaccines, following commonly used methodology, only to have the acting CDC director bury the report because he doesn’t like what it finds.

• Environment

  • Michigan Advance ☛ Many states don’t report losses from data center tax breaks, study says • Michigan Advance

    Good Jobs First said in most cases, states are failing to disclose incentives in violation of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, a private organization that sets financial reporting standards for state and local governments.

    “No form of state spending is more out of control today than data center tax abatements,” Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First and primary author of the study, said in a news release. “Hyperscale data centers are not only extractive of electricity, water, and land; they are also undermining public budgets.”

  • Good Jobs First ☛ Despite Soaring Costs, 14 States Fail to Disclose How Much Revenue They Lose to Data Center Tax Abatements - Good Jobs First

    Most of these failures to disclose violate Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), as set forth by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). Since FY 2017, those principles require most governments to disclose lost revenue when they themselves grant tax abatements. They also require other governments which routinely lose revenue passively — such as local governments that lose a share of the sales and use tax when a state exempts a data center — to also disclose.

    Those are the key findings of “Data Center Tax Abatements: Why States and Localities Must Disclose These Soaring Revenue Losses,” a study just released by Good Jobs First, the national watchdog group on economic development subsidies.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Landmark data center moratorium passes Maine Legislature

    “What we’re talking about here is an ability for us to absorb and understand the impact of data centers potentially on the State of Maine,” Sen. Mark Lawrence (D-York) said Wednesday ahead of the Senate vote. “The states that have had data centers come in have had tremendous impacts.”

    The bill, LD 307, bans data centers larger than 20 megawatts until November, 2027. It also creates the Maine Data Center Coordination Council, and instructs the council to provide strategic input, facilitate planning considerations and evaluate policy tools to address data center opportunities.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Maine bans new data centres until November 2027

    Moratorium bills are in progress in 12 other states.

    The reasons are the obvious. The electricity grids can’t handle the sudden new load. Nobody wants to live near the noise. The data centres use all the fresh water — and then go to court to keep their water use secret.

  • Tuscon Sentinel ☛ Water conservation works, but climate change is outpacing it: Desert cities offer a glimpse of the future | Analysis

    We looked at three cities in the Colorado River Basin – Phoenix, Las Vegas and Denver – to understand what each could do to increase demand management amid water shortages and how far those methods could go as temperatures rise and the Colorado River’s flow weakens.

    The results suggest the region needs to be thinking about bigger solutions.

  • The Straits Times ☛ El Nino climate pattern threatens water quality in Malaysia, experts warn

    Experts say this is because lower river levels reduce the ­natural ability of waterways to dilute waste.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Vintage Everyday ☛ Beautiful Photos of the 1938 Peugeot 402 Darl’mat Special Coupe

      Only six coupes were constructed on the 1938 402-series platform, representing a tiny fraction of the 105 total Darl’mat Specials produced across all body styles. This rarity places it among the most exclusive French automobiles of the interwar period, combining innovative aerodynamic design with proven racing engineering. Below is a beautiful photo collection of the 1938 Peugeot 402 Darl’mat Special Coupe.

    • Wired ☛ The US Government Will Ask Data Centers How Much Power They Use

      The letter was sent to senators Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley on April 9 by the head of the Energy Information Administration, Tristan Abbey, and comes in response to a previous inquiry from the senators about the EIA’s plans to get more information about data centers. WIRED reported on Hawley and Warren’s letter last month.

    • Luigi Mozzillo ☛ When I travel for work

      Instead, what I like about the train is how comfortable it is, and having time to watch a TV series in the evening on the way home, sprawled out. I like the stretch between Rome and Naples on the return train, when there are usually only a few of us. I like it when he’s punctual. At the airport, on the other hand, I love that even at 4 a.m., at the airport there’s always a festive atmosphere, full of joy and hope. Dreams come true, at the airport. And I love the world inside the airport, and the languages, and that liminal space between life and travel, between everything and nothing – like Schrödinger’s.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Can cheaper latte and starting the day early solve KL’s perpetual traffic jams?

      Many commuters say they are already starting their day before sunrise.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia’s biggest solar firm sees jump in demand amid Iran war

      The conflict has driven up the cost of fossil fuels.

    • New York Times ☛ China Offers Veiled Criticism of U.S. as Iran War Threatens Oil Imports

      China’s leader, Pooh-tin Jinping, said that the world cannot risk reverting “to the law of the jungle.” Beijing has taken a more active role diplomatically as the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz persists.

    • New York Times ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man’s Blockade Risks Upending an Emerging Détente With China

      In a thinly veiled critique of the war in Iran, China’s leader said the world could not risk reverting “to the law of the jungle.”

    • The Straits Times ☛ Government services in Malaysia operating as usual as civil servants start WFH policy

      Most government buildings are now in a low-power state, with dimmer lights and just half the lifts in operation.

    • The Straits Times ☛ Duo arrested at Malaysia petrol station after filling modified tank with subsidised diesel

      The total value of diesel confiscated from them was worth about RM22,745 (S$7,320).

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • France24 ☛ Critically endangered Borneo orangutan born at Madrid zoo

      A Borneo orangutan in the Madrid Zoo Aquarium gave birth in early April to a healthy baby, the zoo said. Habitat loss and the illegal wildlife trade have severely curtailed the number of these gentle primates living in the wild.

    • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Found Human Speech-Like Patterns in Sperm Whale Clicks

      What are they saying?

    • Science Alert ☛ A Child-Sized Echidna Once Roamed Australia, Century-Old Fossil Reveals

      An eerie cave preserved a clue to one of Australia’s strangest extinct mammals.

    • Science Alert ☛ X-Rays Reveal First Evidence That Mammal Ancestors Laid Eggs

      This could help explain how they survived Earth's worst extinction.

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ See the Most Adorable Photos of Baby Elephant Linh Mai, the National Zoo’s Newest Star

      The young female—the first Asian elephant calf born at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in nearly 25 years—is playful, vocal and smart, keepers say. She recognizes her name when she’s called, splashes at bath time, screams for her bottle and runs around the Zoo’s Elephant Community Center, ears flapping.

    • Chuck Grimmett ☛ Spotted Salamander

      They are slow on land, but pretty quick to swim away and hide in water. I had to be patient and wait about 30 minutes for this one to come back out after I initially spooked it.

    • [Old] The Natural History Museum, London ☛ First carnivorous plant to grow underground pitfall traps discovered

      While Nepenthes pudica is currently the only pitcher plant that feeds on subterranean prey, more may be living undescribed on the island of Borneo.

      A pioneering pitcher plant is changing what we know about carnivorous species.

      With a name meaning 'shy', the pitcher plant Nepenthes pudica hides its traps under moss or soil to capture a range of prey including ants, mites and beetles. While other plants that eat subterranean life have previously been discovered, N. pudica's pitfall traps are currently unique in the botanical world and allow it to catch much larger prey.

  • Overpopulation

    • El País ☛ Trump’s border wall on the Rio Grande threatens the water supply of millions: ‘It’s not a question of if, but when’

      In Webb and Zapata counties alone, the federal government’s plans include over 107 miles of wall and 152 miles of buoys, all funded by the $46.5 billion that Congress approved last year in the president’s “big beautiful” tax reform. This infrastructure, according to experts, threatens to turn the only source of drinking water for some 15 million people into an area of ​​irreversible risk, in addition to affecting the property and daily lives of people like Hull.

• Finance

  • Green Party UK ☛ Greens announce measures to end the affordability crisis and  ‘normalisation’ of foodbank use

    The Green Party has warned that the use of foodbanks in the UK has become ‘normalised’, pointing to the fact that around 6.5 million people a year turn to charitable food providers and that one in five people doing so are from a working household [1]. 

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Default payment methods, part B

    Why couldn’t they do that with the original card? Was my record in their database borked? The card issuer, bank, payment processor, name, and number on the card are exactly the same.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Raspberry Pi ☛ Experience AI: Reaching millions of young people with AI literacy - Raspberry Pi Foundation

    AI is shaping the world young people are growing up in, and understanding how it works, as well as its benefits and risks, is now essential.

  • The Verge ☛ Ford’s EV and software chief Doug Field is leaving the company

    Ford is shaking things up as it relates to its EV and software teams. Doug Field, who left Apple five years ago to helm Ford’s multibillion-dollar bet on electric vehicles and software, is stepping down next month. Getting a promotion will be Alan Clarke, the ex-Tesla engineer who now leads Ford’s California-based skunkworks lab. Clarke’s new title will be vice president of advanced development projects, and he will continue to helm the effort to develop Ford’s Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) Platform.

  • Robert Bryce ☛ As Fermi Falters, Insiders Are Dumping Millions Of Shares

    On October 1, Fermi went public in a transaction that allowed the company to raise nearly $746 million. A day later, one analyst told Reuters that Fermi’s IPO “speaks to the gold rush happening in AI infrastructure right now. It’s a cash geyser.” It certainly looked like a geyser. At the time of the IPO, Rick Perry’s shares in Fermi were worth $540 million, and his son, Griffin Perry, had a stake valued at $2.3 billion.

    But Fermi’s sizzle has turned to fizzle.

  • Rich Trouton ☛ DUNS number no longer required to sign up for Apple Business in the United States

    Previously, Apple Business Manager had required a Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number, which are issued to businesses by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), to be used to verify that the organization looking to set up an ABM instance was in fact a recognized business. Now the verification requirement has changed from using a DUNS number to using a variety of business identification methods on a per-country basis. For the United States, the following business identifier is listed: [...]

  • University of Toronto ☛ Universities, email, and the issues of running things in house

    I don't disagree with these people, but at the same time I'm a realist about what's being asking for and what is involved. Universities did not wake up one day and decide to give large amounts of money to vendors for dubious reasons. Universities (such as mine) carefully studied what it would cost to continue their existing in house systems (in both hardware and staffing) and what they would get from it, and compared that to what it would cost and what they would get from the big vendors. Then they decided that one of the big vendors was a better option, and this decision is not wrong. As I wrote a long time ago, the big providers are simply better at this than a university can be, and it's not just email, it's also things like web CMSes and identity providers.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Rights for robots

    These nonhuman "persons" have been a feature of our legal system since the late 19th century, when the Supreme Court found that the 14th Amendment's "Equal Protection" clause could be applied to a railroad. In the 150-some years since, corporate personhood has monotonically expanded, most notoriously through cases like Hobby Lobby, which gave a corporation the right to discriminate against women on the grounds that it shared its founders' religious opposition to abortion; and, of course, in Citizens United, which found that corporate personhood meant that corporations had a constitutional right to divert their profits to bribe politicians.

    Theoretically, "corporate personhood" extends to all kinds of organizations, including trade unions – but in practice, corporate personhood primarily allows the ruling class to manufacture new "people" to serve as a botnet on their behalf. A union has free speech rights just like an employer, but the employer's property rights mea that it can exclude union organizers from its premises, and employer rights mean that corporations can force workers to sit through "captive audience" meetings where expensive consultants lie to them about how awful a union would be (the corporation's speech rights also mean that it's free to lie).

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFERL ☛ Iran Sentences Four More To Death Over Mass Protests, Rights Groups Say

    Iran has sentenced four more protesters, including a woman, to death over mass demonstrations in January that posed one of the biggest threats to the country’s clerical rulers in years, according to two human rights groups.

  • Meduza ☛ Report: only a rise in rival party support could push Putin to ease Russia’s [Internet] restrictions

    Everyone opposes the [Internet] shutdowns and restrictions “except one agency” — meaning the FSB, a senior Faridaily source said. Another source, close to the government, said his teenage children were complaining about the restrictions, telling him: “Come to your senses — what are you doing?”

  • Meduza ☛ Russian programmer gets 13-year prison sentence for treason after FSB held him in isolation and assets disappeared from his crypto wallet

    During this period, when only FSB officers had access to his devices, roughly 150,000 rubles’ worth of assets were stolen from his cryptocurrency wallet. Nekrashchuk learned of the theft after being transferred to a pretrial detention center — where he was sent regardless — and signed a confession there.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Bill that would have allowed firings of library board members fails in Alabama Legislature

    SB 26, sponsored by Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, would have allowed either county commissions or city councils to remove members of their respective library boards at any time and for any reason by a two-thirds vote.

  • Court House News ☛ Penis costume protester prevails in court

    Fairhope Municipal Judge Haymes Snedeker acquitted Renea Gamble Wednesday of all remaining misdemeanor charges stemming from her decision to wear a inflatable 7-foot penis costume at an anti-Trump “No Kings” protest in October 2025.

    Gamble walked out of the courtroom after three hours of testimony cleared of any wrongdoing, but her attorney said her arrest was traumatizing and she may consider legal recourse.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Ridiculous Object

    What followed is the part I find myself unable to stop examining.

    The most powerful people on earth decided she was the enemy.

    Not the fossil fuel companies that suppressed their own climate research for decades. Not the governments that received that research and chose inaction. Not the executives who knew — who specifically and documentably knew — and decided that the quarterly returns were more pressing than the trajectory. Not the political operatives who built the infrastructure of climate denial, who funded the think tanks, who produced the talking points, who turned a scientific consensus into a culture war.

    The fifteen-year-old girl with the sign.

    She was mocked by world leaders. She was the target of coordinated social media harassment campaigns. She was diagnosed, by people who had never met her, with every pathology available. She was accused of being a puppet, a plant, a pawn, a tool of globalist elites — by, among others, the actual globalist elites who found her inconvenient.

  • Dev Ukraine ☛ German hosting company deleted Ukrainian media site due to €173 debt. 7-year archive lost

    Zaborona Media stated that they have repeatedly explained to the provider that they are Ukrainian media and do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation, and that they regard such demands as pressure.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ HK man jailed for 1 year over seditious remarks on Facebook

    Raymond Chong, a retiree, ran a public Facebook page called “Holy Raymond,” which features the Chinese phrase “Heaven will destroy the Chinese Communist Party, God bless Hong Kong” as its profile picture.

  • Stanford University ☛ Russia designates Stanford an 'undesirable' organization

    The Russian Justice Ministry and the Prosecutor General’s Office did not elaborate on what specifically triggered the designation. However, Stanford scholars say the move is a retaliatory response to criticism of the Russian state by academics and former U.S. government officials affiliated with the University.

    The designation places Stanford among more than 200 foreign organizations banned from operating in the country. Under Russian law, individuals who cooperate with “undesirable” organizations can face fines or criminal prosecution — a policy that tightens restrictions on international academic exchange.

  • New York Times ☛ American Streamer Johnny Somali Is Sentenced to Prison in South Korea

    Known for desecrating a monument to victims of sexual slavery, the former YouTuber was convicted on multiple charges and given a six-month sentence.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea jails US streamer Johnny Somali over ‘comfort women’ statue outrage

    Attitudes towards him remained unforgiving despite his apology and removal of a controversial clip.

  • NBC ☛ American YouTuber is jailed for 6 months in South Korea on public nuisance charge

    An American livestreamer who enraged South Korea by kissing a statue honoring women forced into wartime sexual slavery was jailed for six months on public nuisance and other charges.

  • New York Times ☛ They Were YouTube’s First Stars. Here’s What They Wish They’d Known.

    MatPat, Miranda Sings, Grace Helbig and WheezyWaiter hit it big on YouTube long before it became a behemoth. They have thoughts about what it takes to succeed there.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Truthdig ☛ Chasing Amy Goodman, the Pied Piper of Progressive Media

    As the host and co-founder of Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now!” program, Amy Goodman is among the U.S. left’s leading journalists. Aired by 1,500 public radio and TV stations and currently celebrating 30 years of broadcasting, “Democracy Now!” is arguably independent media’s flagship program, and the new documentary “Steal This Story, Please!” chronicles the daily, hourlong news show. It’s also a portrait of Goodman, a George Polk Award winner, who began her journalistic career as a little girl contributing to her family’s DIY “newspaper.”

    The film covers many of Goodman’s and “Democracy Now’s!” greatest accomplishments, important stories often overlooked by the corporate press. Before “Democracy Now!” even began broadcasting, Goodman flew to East Timor as news director for Pacifica’s New York station WBAI and covered the 1991 massacre by the Indonesian military of at least 271 unarmed civilians at Dili, wherein Goodman and another American journalist, Allan Nairn, were severely beaten. After going on the air in 1996, “Democracy Now!” covered the struggle against Chevron and its role in Nigeria and the work of Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wia. After NPR was pressured not to air political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s jailhouse commentaries,“ Democracy Now!” started broadcasting them.

  • CPJ ☛ China moves journalist Dong Yuyu further from family with prison transfer

    “Moving Dong Yuyu to a more distant prison makes it significantly harder for his loved ones to visit him and effectively punishes his family,” said CPJ Asia-Pacific Director Beh Lih Yi. “Dong’s seven-year sentence on a bogus espionage charge is already an injustice — now authorities are intensifying the punishment. Chinese officials must stop persecuting Dong and let him be reunited with his family immediately.”

  • Daniel Pocock ☛ Terrorism or accident? Geelong Corio refinery fire, drone attack rumours in news vacuum

    At 11pm local time in eastern Australia, a huge fire broke out at the Viva Energy refinery in Corio, Geelong.

    There has been a near-total news vacuum. This may be deliberate or it may be a consequence of cost-cutting that has replaced many journalists with artificial intelligence. The few human journalists who remain in the profession may have already gone to bed when the fire started.

  • BoingBoing ☛ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette bought by nonprofit

    The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette dates to 1786, was the first newspaper to open west of the Allegheny mountains, and was set to close in two weeks, leaving the city as America's largest without a city-based paper. The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, a nonprofit that publishes the digital Baltimore Banner, has agreed to buy it, saving all that would be lost.

  • CPJ ☛ Tanzania suspends Jambo TV for querying inquiry into post-election killings

    Hundreds or more Tanzanians, including two journalists, were killed as authorities suppressed protests, which escalated with President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s declared win with 98% of the vote.

    “The suspension of Jambo TV’s online content broadcasting license is a disproportionate and heavy-handed measure that serves only to stifle public debate on matters of critical national importance,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo. “Tanzanian authorities should stop using regulations to intimidate the press and instead foster an environment where journalists can report on election-related issues without fear of reprisal.”

  • Press Gazette ☛ Journalism job cuts in 2026 tracked: BillBC to cut up to 2,000 jobs

  • Press Gazette ☛ Mark Allen Group posts pre-tax loss and writes off £5m from Bonhill purchase

    Company doesn't expect profit growth to return until 2027.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Axel Springer given UK government approval for Telegraph takeover [Ed: UK media controlled by German oligarchy is a recipe for disaster]

    Deal expected to complete in Q2 after three years of "damaging uncertainty".

  • Press Gazette ☛ Ex-Times environment editor launches legal claim against Government

    Ben Webster is crowdfunding his legal fees.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Politico says merger of energy teams has boosted Iran war coverage

    Politico now has 73 reporters covering energy and environment.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Suit: Michigan home for troubled girls a ‘house of horrors,’ rife with abuse

    Six former residents of Vista Maria in metro Detroit say they suffered sexual, physical and psychological abuse there as girls.

  • NPR ☛ French government seeking release of 86-year-old French widow detained by ICE

    Ross is among the thousands of people targeted by the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda that has detained the spouses of U.S. soldiers and military veterans who previously received greater leniency under scrapped policies.

  • The Independent UK ☛ Teen whose eye was surgically removed after DHS shot him files civil rights complaint: ‘I’m in no way an agitator. I just had my camera’

    An 18-year-old college student was filming protests outside an immigration detention center in Los Angeles last month when an officer fired a projectile into his face, destroying his right eye and fracturing the bones in the socket.

    Tucker Collins, whose damaged eye had to be surgically removed, has filed a federal civil rights complaint against Donald Trump’s administration, which faces an avalanche of lawsuits accusing federal agents of unconstitutional use of force after violent clashes with demonstrators across the country.

  • Tennessee Lookout ☛ Just 2% of immigration arrests by Memphis Safe Task Force were for violent crime, records show

    And despite casting violent criminals as the task force’s primary target, the operation has swept up more than 800 immigrants whom law enforcement deemed to be unlawfully present in the United States. Of those, just 2% — or 17 — were also arrested for violent crimes, our analysis found. Being unlawfully present on its own is a civil, not a criminal, offense.

  • The Independent UK ☛ South Carolina Senate protects nearly all monuments and bans adding QR codes to statues

    The bill approved 31-7 would also ban QR code stickers that could be scanned by a cellphone to get additional information about a historic figure, something supporters of the codes said could be used to put the actions of Confederate or segregationist figures enshrined in glowing language decades ago into a more modern perspective.

  • Memphis Flyer ☛ "Tackled, Beat, Maced:" Council Calls MPD Chief for Answers on No Kings Day "Chaos" - Memphis Flyer

    Organizers said MPD officers “escalated to violence” and said they “tackled, beat, maced, and arrested peaceful participants.” A statement from MPD said officers deployed pepper spray, and detained six people, with three being charged.

    After the incident a coalition of community groups sent a letter to city officials demanding the release of body-worn camera footage, public identification of every officer present, and more.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Stephen Miller's Strait of Hormuz

    Consider that before Miller ordered the Internal Revenue Service to give ICE officials the addresses of people subject to deportation, undocumented immigrants had been paying roughly $60 billion annually in federal taxes, much of it going into Social Security and Medicare — programs from which they don’t benefit.

    Now, tax experts fear many immigrants won’t file returns, and those who formerly had their taxes withheld in every paycheck will shift into under-the-table jobs. The Yale Budget Lab, a nonpartisan research center, projected lost tax revenue of about $300 billion over a decade.

  • Robert Reich ☛ How To Celebrate Tax Day

    Today — Tax Day — it’s important to remind ourselves that a record share of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of the nation’s billionaires, who are also paying a lower tax rate than the average American.

    How do the ultra-wealthy justify their wealth and their low tax rates? By using three myths — all of which are utter rubbish.

    [...]

    In 1910, former president Theodore Roosevelt warned that “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power” could destroy American democracy.

  • Site36 ☛ Germany imprisons Kurdish grandmother with multiple health conditions as alleged PKK member | Matthias Monroy

    The Kurdish woman Zübeyde Akmese is being held in German custody on suspicion of supporting terrorism due to risk of absconding – even though the ailing 71-year-old has lived in Munich with her children and grandchildren for 40 years and is strongly socially connected there.

  • Manuel Matuzović ☛ box-shadow is no alternative to outline

    This post is part of a series called #WebAccessibilityFails, where I collect common issues I find in accessibility audits so that you can avoid them in the future.

  • The Next Move ☛ A ‘Mensch’ for Human Rights

    For a stretch of years, there was a group of US congressmen who could be depended on to speak up for human rights—human rights anywhere in the world.

    There are always people who will speak up for human rights in this country or that. And who will oppose this dictator or that. But human rights for everyone, and opposition to dictators everywhere?

    That’s another story.

  • NPR ☛ 'No peace': Nearly a year after her son's death, she learned that ICE was responsible

    That only came to light following a public records request by American Oversight, a watchdog group, that sought documents related to ICE's use of force. Among the records was an ICE incident report that said Martinez accelerated his car and struck a federal agent, prompting another officer to fire defensive shots.

    But videos released separately last month suggest a different version of events: Footage from police body cameras appear to show federal agents standing in front of Martinez's car as it slowly moves. It's unclear from the videos reviewed by NPR whether the vehicle hit an agent.

  • EDRI ☛ Europe shouldn’t “move fast and break things” with fundamental rights

    The Digital Omnibus proposals, presented as “simplification,” risk weakening essential safeguards in the GDPR, the ePrivacy Directive, and the AI Act. By reducing protections and delaying obligations for high-risk systems, they introduce a logic reminiscent of the tech industry’s “move fast and break things” approach. In digital infrastructures built on large-scale data processing and automated decision-making, however, mistakes do not simply disappear. They become part of the system. This is why regulation is essential to protect people’s rights.

  • Stanford University ☛ Malala opens up about challenges as an activist

    “I think the 11-year-old Malala would be upset that it’s been such a long time and there are millions of girls out of school,” she said. “But I would tell her that I still try to dream as big as her, and this is a long journey, but we’re not giving up.”

  • Vox ☛ The Supreme Court could legalize moonshine, and ruin everything else, in McNutt v. DOJ

    Although the justices normally get to choose which cases they wish to hear, the Court almost always agrees to hear a case “when a lower court has invalidated a federal statute.”

    McNutt potentially raises a question that the Supreme Court resolved in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, but that many right-leaning lawyers and legal scholars have wanted to reopen for many decades. These Roosevelt-era decisions permit Congress to regulate the American workplace, such as by banning child labor or establishing a minimum wage. They also allow many federal regulations of private businesses to exist, including nationwide bans on whites-only lunch counters and other forms of discrimination.

  • Law Society Gazette ☛ Politicians condemn 'sham' lawyers as SRA probes asylum firms

    The Solicitors Regulation Authority has today contacted firms named in a BBC investigation into alleged abuses of the immigration service, amid mounting condemnation from politicians.

    The BBC claimed that law firms and advisers charge thousands of pounds to help migrants pretend to be gay to support their asylum claims to stay in the UK.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The Verge ☛ FTC pushes ad agencies into dropping brand safety rules

    The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and a group of eight states have announced a proposed settlement with big ad agencies that will prevent them from working together to avoid certain platforms like X based on their political viewpoints.

    In a complaint, the FTC argues that ad agencies violated antitrust rules by agreeing to a common set of brand safety rules, which would disfavor sites and services deemed to contain content like misinformation. That includes establishing groups like the World Federation of Advertisers’ now-defunct Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) to coordinate collective brand safety efforts.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ China trials hydrostatic actuator at 3,500m for cutting subsea cables

    The device can slice through subsea structures, including cables and pipelines, under high pressure.

    The trial signals progress in subsea engineering and industrial autonomy.

    According to a SCMP report, the system was validated during a recent expedition in 2026.

  • Dev Ukraine ☛ China has tested deep-sea electrohydrostatic equipment capable of cutting submarine cables at a depth of 3,500 m. | dev.ua

    The project is not exclusively destructive in nature, as it has obvious applications in the field of repair and construction of underwater oil and gas pipelines. However, given the global context and current realities, the potential for military or malicious use is obvious. It is reported that several projects of the Chinese underwater initiative have already significantly increased the effectiveness of such tasks.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Mark Kapo-berg reportedly working on Hey Hi (AI) clone of himself — Meta insiders claim 3D photoreal animated Zuck will be able to engage with employees on his behalf

    The very top job at Meta may periodically be delegated to an Hey Hi (AI) replica of Mark Kapo-berg. Will anyone notice?

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Live Nation Operated as Monopoly, Jury Finds

    The more than 30 states suing Live Nation and Ticketmaster were ultimately able to persuade the jury that the company constituted a monopoly with their dominant positions in ticketing, concert promotions, and venues. The states argued that Live Nation used threats and retaliation to cajole artists and venues into using their services. These included allegations that Live Nation would withhold its lucrative concert tours from venues that didn’t sign exclusive deals with Ticketmaster, or that artists would only be allowed to play Live Nation-owned amphitheaters if they also used the company’s concert promotion services.

    An exact punishment has yet to be meted out, and Judge Arun Subramanian will decide the extent of the penalties at a second hearing. But the consequences could range from heavy monetary damages to possibly breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

  • RTL ☛ Jury finds Ticketmaster owner ran illegal monopoly

    The jury found Live Nation and Ticketmaster liable for anticompetitive conduct that harmed the music industry and included overcharging consumers, according to California attorney general Rob Bonta.

  • India Times ☛ EU rejects Meta's pay-for-access remedy in WhatsApp AI chatbots probe

    The EU told Meta Wednesday that charging rival AI chatbots for access to its WhatsApp platform runs against the bloc's antitrust rules, rebuffing the measure taken by the US giant in response to a probe.

    Meta started charging a fee as redress in March after an EU probe found it had "effectively" barred third-party artificial intelligence assistants from the messaging platform -- in breach of competition rules.

  • The Verge ☛ Ticketmaster is an illegal monopoly, jury finds

    The trial spanned about six weeks, including a week-long break where the states went back to the negotiation table after the DOJ settled its claims with the company. Ultimately, 34 of the 40 attorneys general who went to trial decided to continue on with the litigation, seeking a broader outcome than the feds achieved, which included agreements that Live Nation would offload exclusive booking arrangements at 13 amphitheaters, and cap certain Ticketmaster fees.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Live Nation Is an Illegal Monopoly, Jury Finds

    The U.S. Department of Justice debased itself with last month’s settlement, personally requested by the expert dealmaker himself, and this verdict seals how embarrassing it was. It was bananas that governments worldwide permitted the acquisition of Ticketmaster by Live Nation in the first place, let alone all the other parts of the entertainment and event industry controlled by this single company. Break it into little pieces.

  • Patents

    • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Mind the Gap: The Middle Layer of Obviousness Doctrine

      Graham's four factors organize the evidence but don't resolve obviousness. The doctrines built atop them do the real analytical work.

    • Unified Patents ☛ $2,000 for Hey Hi (AI) 3D imaging patent monopoly prior art

      Unified Patents added a new PATROLL contest, with a $2,000 cash prize, seeking prior art on at least claim 17 of U.S. Patent 10,979,693, owned by the Artificial Intelligence Imaging Association Inc., an NPE and entity of R. Hewen & Co., LLC. The '693 patent monopoly relates to a stereoscopic imaging device for capturing 3D images and video with a wide field of view. The disclosed system is designed to support virtual reality use by immersing a user in a simulated environment created from the captured 3D content. The patent monopoly has been in a complaint seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement, invalidity, and unenforceability filed by Plus One Robotics.

    • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ Extraordinary by Design: How the USPTO Is Bypassing Its Own Reexamination Rules

      USPTO's new pre-order procedure lets patent monopoly owners oppose ex parte reexamination before the SNQ determination, but the legal basis is shaky.

    • Unified Patents ☛ Patent Dispute Report: Q1 2026

      PTAB petitions dropped 64.2% year-over-year to a historic low of 131 in Q1 2026, driven by a surge in discretionary denials that began in 2025 and continued into the new year. Inter partes review (IPR) petitions, in particular, plummeted 66.3%. Potential petitioners are clearly deterred by the stricter procedural changes initiated by Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart and Director John Squires, as highlighted in previous Unified Patents reports. This caution was likely compounded by the Federal Circuit’s November 2025 decision in In re Motorola Solutions, Inc., which suggests that the USPTO Director’s discretionary authority to institute or de-institute inter partes review (IPR) can be shielded from judicial oversight, even when Sotera stipulations are filed.

    • JUVE ☛ Fisher & Paykel and WBH successful in revoking Flexicare’s patent monopoly in Milan

      At the centre of the revocation claim filed by Fisher & Paykel is Flexicare’s EP 4 185 356 relating to a nasal cannula designed to improve patient comfort and usability during high-flow oxygen therapy. The nasal cannula comprises a manifold, non-sealing nasal prongs and a connector for a gas tube.

    • JUVE ☛ Regional Court Munich puts decision in ZTE vs Samsung on hold

      The current case is one of eight actions — four at the UPC and four at the Regional Court Munich — in which ZTE and Samsung are going head to head over SEPs for 4G and 5G technology. Each party has sued the other over four of their own patents.

    • Software Patents

      • Unified Patents ☛ Congruent Media app security patent monopoly challenged

        On April 3, 2026, Unified filed an ex parte reexamination proceeding against U.S. Patent 9,135,418, owned and asserted by Congruent Media Resourcing LLC, an NPE. The ‘418 patent monopoly generally relates to a method of operating secure applications on an enterprise mobile device.

  • Trademarks

    • Right of Publicity

      • Wired ☛ The Deepfake Nudes Crisis in Schools Is Much Worse Than You Thought

        Around the world, teenage boys are saving Instagram and Snapchat images of girls they know from school and using harmful “nudify” apps to create fake nude photos or videos of them. These deepfakes can quickly be shared across whole schools, leaving victims feeling humiliated, violated, hopeless, and scared the images will haunt them forever.

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Anna's Archive Loses $322 Million Spotify Piracy Case Without a Fight

      Spotify and several major record labels, including UMG, Sony, and Warner, secured a $322 million default judgment against the unknown operators of Anna's Archive. The shadow library failed to appear in court and briefly released millions of tracks that were scraped from Spotify via BitTorrent. In addition to the monetary penalty, a permanent injunction required domain registrars and other parties to suspend the site's domain names.