Leftovers

• Digital Camera World ☛ The saddest thing is that all photography is beginning to look the same, and this is why it's happening

  As disturbing as some of these photos are, their existence shows that all creativity is not lost. But, if we’re going to stem the tide, it’s worth taking a few minutes to think about why this trend is taking hold. I’ll posit two reasons and finish with what we can do about it.

• Yury Molodtsov ☛ We Need a New Product Hunt

  This is Product Hunt’s main page today. 4 out of 5 places are taken by extremely large companies that need little promotion: Anthropic, Google, Cloudflare and Vercel.

• Science

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ After Rounding the Moon, Artemis 2 Astronauts Reflect on the Enormity of the Experience: 'We as Countries and as Humans Did This'

    “It’s very hard to fully grasp what we just went through,” mission commander Reid Wiseman said at the conference, citing a week of medical tests that hasn’t given them much time to decompress or reflect since their return. But the eclipse, in particular, stood out to him: “It was otherworldly, and it was amazing.”

• Career/Education

  • Vox ☛ How to actually make a difference with your life

    He spent his 20s writing tax software, staying on track to hit all the life targets he’d set for himself: house, kids, financial security. And then, one day, he did the math and projected forward what the next 20 years of his life would look like. But instead of relief, “I had this weird feeling that I’d totally missed the target,” he told me recently.

  • Seth Godin ☛ The book of concern

    “Wait a second.”

    That’s difficult advice. In a world that moves faster with each cycle, where urgencies are prioritized and last-minute saves are celebrated, it’s not always welcome advice.

  • Orhun Parmaksız ☛ Break the loop, move to Berlin

    Okay but for real though, sometimes there are turning points in life that force you to change, adapt, and grow. Whether it's a change you chose, imposed on yourself, or simply came to accept, it eventually makes you realize it's time to break the pattern. That's how I have been feeling for a while: stuck in the same loop and looking for a way to change things.

  • Manuel Moreale ☛ JTR – Manu

    This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with JTR, whose blog can be found at taonaw.com.

• Hardware

  • El País ☛ Ground robots push Ukraine toward a robotized infantry

    They evacuate the wounded and dead, distribute food and medicine, plant mines, transport munitions, launch drones, fire projectiles, erect barricades, recover damaged vehicles, and conduct intelligence operations. Ground robots are playing an increasingly prominent role in the Ukrainian army, which has already made significant progress with its unmanned air and naval forces. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Monday that, for the first time, Ukraine had recaptured a position held by the Russians using only ground and air drones, forcing the enemy to surrender.

  • Hackaday ☛ Tool Embodiment And The Dead Trackball

    All I know is that today my trackball broke, and using a normal gaming mouse to edit the podcast was torture. It would be an exaggeration to say that I felt like I’d lost a hand, but I have so much motor memory apparently built up in my use of the trackball that switching over to another tool to undertake the exact same series of hundreds of small audio edits – mostly compensating for the audio delay across continents, but also silencing coughs and background noises – took an extra hour.

    Anyone who has switched from one keyboard to another, or heck even from emacs to vim, knows what I experienced. My body just knows how to flick my wrist to make the cursor on the screen move over to the beginning of that “umm”. It’s not like I don’t conceptually know how to use a mouse either, and it does exactly the same job. But the mouse wasn’t my tool for this application. And saying that out loud makes it almost sound like I’m bordering on embodying my trackball.

  • Tymscar ☛ The Things I Wanted to Know Before Buying Apple's Studio Display XDR

    But it is also a very different class of display. It is Fast IPS rather than mini-LED, and while Apple is doing 1000 nits SDR and 2000 nits peak HDR, the ROG is more in the 350 nit SDR and 600 nit HDR range. That is very dim in comparison. So yes, there are finally alternatives starting to appear, but for a long time this category was basically empty.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ I believe NASA sending Nikon’s D5 into space conclusively proves that DSLRs are not dead!

    But the most amazing shots I’ve seen from the trip – of the Moon’s crater-scarred surface and those showing its proximity to, and distance from, Earth – were taken on a DSLR, as widely reported.

    Does that now mean we can stop declaring mirrorless better in all respects, and that DSLRs should remain in the past? Even if that’s the stance most camera manufacturers have taken in their desire to get us all to replace and upgrade existing kit?

  • Ruben Verweij ☛ Much to my own disappointment, I'm not a journal-in-a-notebook-with-a-fountain-pen kind of guy

    There’s something aesthetically appealing about notebooks and fountain pens. I love the feeling of resting my hands on real paper, of my pen effortlessly gliding over it. The paper in my notebooks is great for the ink I’m using. My fountain pen fits my hand just right, never dries out prematurely, and was a gift from my partner for my birthday. I’d love to be the kind of guy who journals, has a small pen collection, and writes novels before breakfast, while sipping organic single-origin espresso in his favourite local coffee place. So, why is the last entry in my carefully picked physical journal from last year?

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • NL Times ☛ Dutch insurer Univé adds cyberbullying coverage to home insurance policies

    Roughly 620,000 people in the Netherlands aged 15 and older have faced online threats or intimidation at least once, while a growing wave of cyberbullying among young people has prompted insurer Univé to add new protections to its household contents policies.

  • Blinry ☛ DIY soft drinks

    We start by making a flavor emulsion from essential oils! These oils are extremely strong, and can cause skin irritations, so if you want to be safe, wear latex gloves for this step!

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ The First LSD Trip Was a Literal Bicycle Ride 83 Years Ago. Fans of the Psychedelic Celebrate the Occasion Every April 19

    Sandoz Laboratories shelved LSD-25, but Hofmann remained curious about the substance. In April 1943, he resynthesized it and inadvertently absorbed trace amounts into the skin of his hands. He recorded in his journal that “he had a remarkable experience, one he could only connect to the substance,” per Rolling Stone’s Trina Calderon in 2018.

    On April 19, Hofmann took his experiments with LSD-25 further. He intentionally ingested 0.25 milligrams.

• Proprietary

  • Cybernews ☛ Meta plans May 20th layoffs affecting about 10% of staff, more cuts to follow

    Meta is planning to lay off thousands of workers on May 20th as part of the first wave of layoffs.

    In the first wave of cuts, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, will slash about 10% of its global workforce, or close to 8,000 employees, according to Reuters, which cited three sources familiar with the matter.

    Further layoffs are reportedly planned for the second half of the year, although there are no details about their size or exact date.

  • The Register UK ☛ Users complain of UK Azure capacity problems

    The Open Sorcerer is not alone. A look at social media has shown plenty of users running into similar problems, with one commenting, "Pushing their datacenters to capacity with no real plan to build out or expand them is just piss poor planning." Another also claimed they'd been "pushed towards other regions such as Sweden."

  • Nick Heer ☛ Adobe Has Rid Itself of Its Allies

    This stuff gets in the way of professionals trying to do their job. Adobe was pressured into adding a “Quiet Mode” in Photoshop to hide most of these things, but not all of them, and only in Photoshop. It only underscores how much Adobe views its software as something it gives people permission to use, instead of tools it makes to help people get their work done.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Mother Reportedly Doesn't Know Her Son Died Because She's Been Talking to an AI Version of Him

      Regardless, netizens were appalled by the story, arguing that the woman’s family had gone too far.

    • Futurism ☛ Study Finds AI Use Eats Away at Users' Confidence in Their Own Brains

      The new peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior and flagged by TIME, found that those who showed a heavy reliance on AI were more likely to admit chatbots were “thinking” for them — and seem to show decreased confidence in their own ideas.

    • Dark Reading ☛ Every Old Vulnerability Is Now an AI Vulnerability

      AI agents have broken this model. When an AI agent operates inside the application, every traditional vulnerability gains a new capability: autonomous action. The XSS that previously stole a cookie can now instruct Copilot to read every cell in the workbook and post the contents to an external URL. The potential damage is no longer bounded by what the exploit code can do. It is bounded by the permissions granted to the AI agent.

    • The Verge ☛ The RAM shortage could last years

      The world’s largest memory makers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — are all working to add new fabrication capacity, but almost none of it will be online until at least 2027, if not 2028. SK opened a fab in Cheongju in February, but that is the only increase in production among the three for 2026.

      Nikkei says that production would need to increase by 12 percent a year in 2026 and 2027 to meet demand. But according to Counterpoint Research, an increase of only 7.5 percent is planned.

    • Wired ☛ AI Drafting My Stories? Over My Dead Body

      Ever since reading these reports—thankfully produced by the human hand—I have been having trouble sleeping. Until recently, the consensus had been that using large language models to actually create commercial prose was verboten. Many publications, including WIRED, have firm guidelines against AI-generated text. We don’t use it for editing, either, which is a less alarming, though still troublesome practice of several others cited in Zeff’s column. The book publishing world, trying to protect itself from an avalanche of self-published slop, is still policing its catalog; Hachette Book Group recently retracted a novel that had apparently relied too much on the output of an LLM. But as the models turn out prose that is becoming increasingly harder to distinguish from human outputs, the convenience and cost savings of using AI for the difficult job of writing are threatening to seep into the mainstream. The walls are starting to crumble.

    • Matt Webb ☛ Headless everything for personal AI

      It’s pretty clear that apps and services are all going to have to go headless: that is, they will have to provide access and tools for personal AI agents without any of the visual UI that us humans use today.

      By services I mean things like: getting a new passport; finding and booking a hotel or a flight; managing your bank account; shopping for t-shirts with a minimum cotton weight from brands similar to ones that you’ve bought from before.

    • Devansh ☛ Anthropic's Claude Mythos Launch Is Built on Misinformation

      The problem is everything around it. Almost every major outlet or commentator covering Mythos worked from Anthropic’s press materials and not the actual primary sources such as the CVE advisories, the exploit code, the 44-prompt transcript, the 244-page system card. When you read them and add the AISLE replication study, the red team writeups, the Glasswing partner agreements, Anthropic’s own decpetive framings, and a very different picture emerges: one of misinformation and hype.

      In this article, we will cover: [...]

    • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China sex toy makers cautiously embrace AI wave

      Multiple businesses offered AI agents for marketing and operating offline adult stores, while others touted tech solutions for brands trying to make their own “smart” toys.

      A poster for Hong Kong-based metaXsire, which did not have a booth at the expo, boasted an “adult image and video generator” and dirty talk in more than 80 languages.

    • [Repeat] Futurism ☛ Millions of Americans Are Talking to AI Instead of Going to the Doctor, and It's Giving Them Horrendously Flawed Medical Advice

      Translated into the real world, an AI that leaps to conclusions when not represented with the full picture could have devastating consequences. Say, if a person were to ask a chatbot about a rash or a sudden onset cough, they may be presented with misleading information and potentially dangerous advice.

      The results highlight the considerable risks of relying on AI for live-or-die health advice, a worrying trend that’s already playing out across the country. As a recent survey by the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America found, one in four American adults — the equivalent of 66 million people — are already asking ChatGPT and other chatbots like it for medical advice.

    • Sean Goedecke ☛ Many anti-AI arguments are conservative arguments

      Most anti-AI rhetoric is left-wing coded. Popular criticisms of AI describe it as a tool of techno-fascism, or appeal to predominantly left-wing concerns like carbon emissions, democracy, or police brutality. Anti-AI sentiment is surprisingly bipartisan, but the big anti-AI institutions are labor unions and the progressive wing of the Democrats.

    • Andrew Hutchings ☛ When the Docs Fall Short: Investigating Claude Code’s Budget Cap

      Whether or not it is controversial, I do use Claude Code quite heavily for testing in my day job. In fact, I designed an internal tool which is an AI-powered static analysis tool. There are pros and cons of Claude Code. I’m not going to cover them today. But I am going to cover something that is not well documented and I had to test myself to figure it out.

    • Daniël de Kok ☛ AI policy

      All content on this website was written by a human (me). I am not interested in generating articles with LLMs. Writing helps ordering and sharpening my thoughts.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • SANS ☛ Lumma Stealer infection with Sectop RAT (ArechClient2)

      In this case, the initial malware for Lumma Stealer was delivered as a password-protected 7-zip archive. The extracted malware is an inflated Windows executable (EXE) file at 806 MB. The EXE is padded with null-bytes (0x00), a technical which increases the EXE size while allowing the compressed archive file to be much smaller. The password-protected archive and inflated EXE file are designed to avoid detection.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ 75K DDoS-for-Hire Users Reprimanded As Authorities Seize Domains

      Law enforcement agencies across Europe, the United States, and other partner nations cracked down on the commercial DDoS-for-hire ecosystem, targeting both operators and customers of services used to knock websites offline.

      The coordinated effort led to the seizure of 53 domains, four arrests, 25 search warrants, and warning notices sent to more than 75,000 people suspected of using so-called “booter” or “stresser” platforms.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Bhaskar English ☛ India Scraps Aadhaar App Mandate | Apple & Samsung Pushback

      Earlier this year, UIDAI had asked the IT Ministry to talk with smartphone companies, including Apple and Google, about pre-installing the Aadhaar app on all new phones sold in India.

    • EFF ☛ Keep Pushing: We Get 10 More Days to Reform Section 702

      In a dramatic middle-of-the-night stand off, a bipartisan set of lawmakers pushing for true reform and privacy protections for Americans bought us some more time to fight! They are holding out for, at a minimum, the requirement of an actual probable cause warrant for FBI access to information collected under the mass spying program known as 702.

      A reauthorization with virtually no changes was defeated because a core group of lawmakers held strong; they know that people are hungry for real reform that protects the privacy of our communications. We now have a 10-day extension to continue to push Congress to pass a real reform bill.

    • Wired ☛ Gazing Into Scam Altman’s Orb Now Proves You’re Human on Tinder

      Tiago Sada, Tools for Humanity’s chief product officer, tells WIRED the company sees major platform partnerships as key to helping World become a mainstream identity-verification technology. Sada said he’s especially interested in working with social media companies in the future, and was encouraged to see that Reddit has started testing World as a solution to help users distinguish bots from real people.

    • Michael Geist ☛ A Standard That Doesn't Exist: Parliamentary Secretary for Justice Offers Misleading Defence of Bill C-22's Lower Threshold for Subscriber Information

      A defence of the proposed threshold as “higher than mere suspicion” therefore says almost nothing. The government’s position, as articulated by one of its lead spokespersons on Bill C-22, amounts to an assurance that the bill does not authorize anything plainly unconstitutional. That is not an argument for the threshold chosen but rather a restatement of what the Charter already requires.

    • Michael Geist ☛ More Surveillance Demands to Come?: Government Admits Bill C-22’s Lawful Access Provisions Could Be Expanded

      Debate on Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, continued this week with Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree and Secretary of State for Combatting Crime Ruby Sahota leading the government’s case on Wednesday. I posted earlier on the first day of debate, which was notable for what the government chose not to say, as Justice Minister Fraser devoted just a single paragraph to the bill’s expansive metadata retention provisions and offered only process answers to questions about systemic vulnerability risks. The government continues to do its best to ignore the metadata issue, but the most alarming outcome of the debate was the admission that the current bill may only be the starting point, with support for an even broader scope in follow-up regulations or legislation.

    • Cryptography Engineering ☛ Anonymous credentials: an illustrated primer (Part 2)

      In the previous post, we introduced the notion of anonymous credentials as a technique that allows users to authenticate to a website without sacrificing their privacy.

      As a quick reminder, an anonymous credential system consists of a few parties: an Issuer that hands out credentials, one or more Resources, such as websites (these can be the same person as the Issuer in some cases), and many Users. The User obtains its credential(s) from the Issuer, who will typically verify the user’s identity in a non-anonymous way. Once a user holds this credential, it can “show” the credential anytime it wants to access a Resource, such as a website. This “show” procedure is where the anonymity comes in: implemented correctly, it should not allow any party (either Resource or Issuer, or the two working together) to link this “show” back to the specific credential given to the User.

    • C4ISRNET ☛ Dutch broadcaster tracks carrier-group frigate with Bluetooth gadget

      The tracker was discovered while sorting mail on board, though only after Omroep Gelderland had been tracking the Evertsen for 24 hours, the broadcaster wrote on its website on Thursday. The Dutch Ministry of Defence said it’s taking measures in response, according to the broadcaster.

    • The Register UK ☛ Dutch navy frigate tracked by mailing it a Bluetooth tracker

      Militaries around the world spend countless hours training, developing policies, and implementing best operational security practices, so imagine the size of the egg on the face of the Dutch navy when journalists managed to track one of its warships for less than the cost of some hagelslag and a coffee.

    • Politico ☛ Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers say it takes 2 minutes to break it.

      The saga is turning into a PR disaster for Brussels. But underneath the controversy over the code lie deeper divisions between privacy campaigners, child rights groups, tech firms and politicians over how to protect minors online — as leaders promise to shield kids from social media and porn sites.

      Within hours of the EU’s app release, security consultant Paul Moore found it would store sensitive data on a user’s phone and leave it unprotected, he wrote in a widely shared post on X. Moore claimed to have hacked the app in under 2 minutes.

    • Wired ☛ Republican Mutiny Sinks Trump's Push to Extend Warrantless Surveillance

      A post-midnight revolt in the House sank the White House's efforts to extend Section 702—a spy program the FBI has used to look into members of Congress, protesters, and political donors.

    • Bobby Hiltz ☛ Keep It To Yourself

      It is time for you, your family, and your friends to come to terms with this.

      This is not doomerism.

      It is not normal for a country to demand proof of age to access social media when they should be holding the social media companies accountable (looking at you Australia, Denmark, France, Canada, and co.).

      That the European Union is rolling out some sort of age verification solution that only works with Google- or Apple-connected devices is not normal, or safe.

    • The Lawfare Institute ☛ It Is Time to Ban the Sale of Precise Geolocation

      A recent deep dive into the American adtech surveillance system Webloc highlights the national security and privacy risks of pervasive and easily obtainable geolocation data. It brings home, once again, that the U.S. needs to clamp down on the collection and sale of geolocation data.

      The report, from Citizen Lab, documents what Webloc says it can do, who uses the product, and its relationship with other commercial intelligence products.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ The surveillance law Congress can't quit — and can't explain

      The 2024 law reauthorized so-called Section 702 powers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which authorizes warrantless surveillance of electronic communications of foreign targets. Most controversially, the law allows U.S. officials to search (“query”) those communications databases using Americans’ personal information, as long as the American is in contact with someone overseas, which raises significant privacy concerns.

    • Security Week ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Urges Extending Foreign Surveillance Program as Some Lawmakers Push for US Privacy Protections

      Congress is set to take up the reauthorization of a divisive program that lets U.S. spy agencies pore over foreigners’ calls, texts and emails.

    • EDRI ☛ The Court of Justice of the European Union condemns France’s police profiling practices

      On 19 March 2026, the EU court ruled that France's law allowing law enforcement data collection is disproportionate and in violation of EU rules, as raised by public interest groups like La Quadrature du Net. This is another illegal feature in the French police databases, which must be urgently dismantled.

    • Privacy International ☛ Moving Goalposts: Football, Facial Recognition and the Expansion of Surveillance

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Strategist ☛ Long before the war, ASPI’s Critical Tech Tracker showed Iran’s military research efforts

    Iranian research years ago pointed to development of the strike drones that have been lighting up air defences across the Gulf and, by threatening shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, holding the world economy hostage.

  • New York Times ☛ U.S. Applies Little Pressure to Israel to Stop the Fighting in Lebanon

    Despite hailing negotiations between the two sides as a “historic milestone,” Washington did not call for a halt to Israeli strikes or for a withdrawal from Lebanese territory.

  • JURIST ☛ HRW warns strikes on Iran oil depots may cause long-term environmental harm

    Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday reported that Israeli strikes on four Iranian oil depots put the health of civilians and the environment at risk and may constitute war crimes under international humanitarian law. The group warned that the release of toxic pollutants may impose long-term effects on man-made and natural environments.

  • BIA Net ☛ Mega-mosque project on Kadıköy shoreline met with local concerns over necessity

    There are nine mosques within walking distance of the proposed mosque site, which is located on a seaside recreation spot.

  • LRT ☛ US delays weapon deliveries to Baltic states due to war in Iran – media

    Reuters did not disclose the exact countries affected, but its sources said some bordering Russia and the weaponry included “various kinds of ammunition” without disclosing the exact type of weapons.

  • The Record ☛ Ukraine confirms suspected APT28 campaign targeting prosecutors, anti-corruption agencies

    Taras Dzyuba, head of the information communications department at Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection (SSSCIP), told Recorded Future News that authorities are aware of the attacks, which Western researchers say compromised email accounts belonging to Ukrainian prosecutors and investigators.

  • RFERL ☛ What Is HAYI, The Shadowy Islamist Group Claiming Attacks Across Europe?

    Calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI) -- Arabic for the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Righteous -- the group is believed to have links to Iran.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘Packaging evil into something funny’: is making fun of Trump now just ‘clownwashing’?

    It’s not a new concern, of course. Weak mockery of Nazi leaders may have allowed Germans to “let off steam” while the regime solidified its power. Decades later, as The Daily Show was taking off, some pundits feared it encouraged apathy by rolling its eyes at the political sphere. As the US inches closer to autocracy, how can comedy work against repression, rather than sanitizing its targets – call it “clownwashing”?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Can the 25th Amendment remove Donald Trump from office?

    The 25th Amendment was added to the US Constitution in 1967 to clarify procedures when a president or vice president is unable to continue in office due to death, resignation or ill health.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Ukraine Has Finally Given Up on Trump

    But now Kyiv appears to have given up on the United States. It is aggressively seeking new diplomatic and military partners—for instance, by sharing its hard-won expertise in drone warfare with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates and forging arms-production agreements with Germany. Ukraine has sent drones to attack oil-export facilities near St. Petersburg, deep inside enemy territory, in defiance of what Zelensky called “signals” from unspecified “partners” to avoid striking Russian energy infrastructure.

  • Techdirt ☛ Inside Trump’s Effort To “Take Over” The Midterm Elections

    ProPublica’s description of the previously unreported meeting comes from several people who were in the room or were briefed on the gathering. Everyone understood that the meeting represented an important moment for the nation, they said. Barr, who did not respond to requests for comment, had walked a delicate line with Trump, instructing the FBI to investigate allegations of election irregularities while declaring publicly there had been no evidence “to date” of widespread fraud.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ Army veteran tasked with prosecuting Nazi death squads awarded Congressional Gold Medal

    Ferencz, who died in 2023 at the age of 103, was just 27 with no previous trial experience when he became chief prosecutor in one of the most significant murder trials in history.

  • C4ISRNET ☛ Air Force unit executes test of Anduril’s semiautonomous combat drone

    Shushnar highlighted how the YFQ-44A is designed to be easy to maintain with a small crew compared to traditional unmanned aerial vehicles. The exercise demonstrated that, he said. With only a couple days of training, a handful of EOU maintainers were able to turn the aircraft between sorties.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ What Viktor Orbán’s Downfall Hasn’t Settled

    In Hungary’s election, Péter Magyar rallied urban white-collar workers, business figures excluded from state patronage networks, intellectuals, and youth. It’s much less clear that his new government can satisfy all these groups’ expectations.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Kim Lane Scheppele on Hungary

    More than a year ago I interviewed my old friend and colleague Kim Lane Scheppele, a constitutional scholar who speaks Hungarian and knows Hungary, about the march of autocracy. Now, suddenly, a much happier occasion. I found her account of how this happened startling — a lot I didn’t know, even though I’ve been following the news obsessively. And some of it is wild. Here’s a transcript: [...]

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • El País ☛ Inside Epstein’s web: The 137 men and women who reveal how his international network of power and influence operated

    EL PAÍS has analyzed Epstein’s relationship with 137 people — 109 men and 28 women — whose links to the sex offender have been proven in legal proceedings or who have appeared in the many journalistic investigations of the case, including those carried out by this publication. We have sought to understand how Epstein wielded influence in this circle, who he trusted, and how long these relationships lasted. The selection of individuals is reflected in the following graphic, and is based on their notoriety and closeness to Epstein. The volume of information and its formats (censored documents and photos, duplicated and unrelated files) prevented the creation of an exhaustive list of everyone who was in contact with him.

  • JURIST ☛ UN demands justice for Epstein trafficking victims

    UN experts Siobhán Mullally, Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, as well as Claudia Flores, Ivana Krstić, Dorothy Estrada Tanck, Haina Lu and Laura Nyirinkindi from the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, issued a joint statement expressing concern over continuing sexual exploitation of young woman and girls and pushed for a “full and transparent” investigation. The experts stated: [...]

• Environment

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ HK's data centre boom: Powering innovation or jeopardising climate goals?

    Hong Kong’s data centres consumed 7,131 terajoules of electricity in 2023 – up by more than 75 per cent in just five years.

    If we take the Environment and Ecology Bureau’s data as a reference, greenhouse gas emissions from data centres through electricity use rose by 35.6 per cent, from 680,164 tonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2018 to 922,392 tonnes in 2023. That is equivalent to the annual emissions of roughly 200,000 Hong Kong residents.

  • University of Michigan ☛ Ann Arbor to purchase land support Greenbelt and Bluebelt

    21 years later, in 2024, the city approved a second preservation boundary — the Bluebelt. While the Greenbelt is limited to areas within four to five miles of city limits, the Bluebelt stretches across multiple townships within Washtenaw County to preserve the Huron River upstream watershed — the source of approximately 85% of Ann Arbor’s drinking water — and improve drinking water quality.

  • Western Water ☛ Rio Grande faces early drying risk in 2026

    The early melt means runoff has already peaked, leaving little additional water expected from snow this season.

  • TruthOut ☛ US Mining Plan Will Sacrifice Mexico’s Environment for Weapons and Tech

    According to NATO, manganese is one of 12 minerals critical for the weapons industry; it is used in submarines, fighter aircraft, tanks, and torpedoes. For Mexico, however, manganese is a source of distress before it is even processed. In the lush Sierra Norte cordillera, stark black mountains of manganese ore and slag piles are set off by smoking chimneys from a plant run by Autlán, a major Mexican mining company. Homes nearby are drenched in black stains. Residents describe mornings of black clouds along the ground and black dust covering their windows.

  • Scientific American ☛ Colombia will euthanize Pablo Escobar’s invasive ‘cocaine hippos’

    Escobar illegally introduced four hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) to one of his estates in the Antioquia region of Colombia in 1981. After his capture and death in 1993, the animals escaped and began reproducing in the wild, where they became a highly threatening invasive predator to native species. The animals’ large size also alters river systems and pollutes the water with waste, depleting its oxygen and overloading it with nutrients. This can kill fish and plants and affect communities that depend on these waterways. Hippos have also caused traffic accidents and attacked people and boats in recent years.

  • Common Dreams ☛ Federal Bill Would Put Big Oil Above the Law

    The oil and gas industry and its allies have been lobbying Congress and the Trump administration for more than a year to escape accountability. Last year, 16 Republican attorneys general proposed creating a “liability shield” for fossil fuel companies modeled on a 2005 law protecting gun manufacturers from lawsuits. In January, the American Petroleum Institute announced that killing state climate lawsuits is a top 2026 priority for the oil lobby. And a growing number of states have passed state-level laws that aim to shield fossil fuel companies from legal accountability. Recent reporting from ProPublica found those bills are "part of a coordinated effort by groups linked to right-wing activist Leonard Leo."

  • Foo Tom's Hardware ☛ Local political revolts threaten to derail US data center projects — mounting delays are already costing AI hyperscalers billions

    Just this week, a small town in Missouri ousted half of its city council for not doing their due diligence in protecting local communities from the harms of AI data center construction, and they're pushing to remove the rest of them, the mayor included. A resident of Claremore, Oklahoma, was arrested in February for speaking too long during a town hall meeting to discuss a data center project. In Virginia, voter support for data centers has collapsed to just 35% from 69% in 2023, halting efforts to build what would have been one of the largest data centers in the country.

    Suffice to say, while major data center projects are the darling of tech CEOs and many politicians, the general populace is making its voice heard; through collective action, they are putting the brakes on $10's of billions of dollars of investment and derailing the plans of major corporations. As of the time of writing, half of all planned U.S. data center builds have been delayed.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • LRT ☛ Lufthansa strikes cancel more Vilnius–Frankfurt flights, bringing weekly total to 23

      Thirteen additional flights between Vilnius and Frankfurt have been cancelled midweek as strike action at Lufthansa continues, bringing the total number of disrupted services on the route to 23 this week, Lithuanian Airports said Tuesday.

    • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Google Maps rolls out cycle route feature in Estonia

      Estonian cyclists had long called for the feature, already common worldwide, to be added, and then-Tallinn deputy mayor Madle Lippus (SDE) noted the mayors of all three Baltic capitals last year sent a joint appeal to Google, calling for the change.

    • Hackaday ☛ Electric Wind-Up Plane Uses Supercapacitors For Free Flight Fun

      There’s something to be said for a simple wind-up, free flight model airplane. With no controls, it must be built very well to fly well, and with only the limited power of a rubber band, it needs a good, high-lift design without much superfluous drag to maximize flight time. There’s also something to be said for modernity though, and prolific hacker [Tom Stanton] puts them together with this supercapacitor plane.

    • Yle ☛ Helsinki officially opens Finland's longest bridge

      "Tram connections will become a central part of everyday life, especially for the residents of Laajasalo and Kruunuvuori," the mayor said.

      Cyclists were scheduled to be welcomed on the bridge at 5pm marked with a bicycle parade organised by the Helsinki Region Cyclists association.

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ US' all-solid-state EV battery retains over 80% capacity at 450 cycles

      By mixing battery materials at 2,000 revolutions per minute for five hours, the team triggered a process called halide segregation.

      “The batteries maintained full performance even after 100 charge-discharge cycles. After 450 cycles, performance stayed above 80%,” said ANL in a press release.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Tracy Durnell ☛ Tidepooling in La Jolla (photos)

      Low tide was conveniently at 1pm for some midday tidepooling. We’d been planning to walk to another beach farther away, but realized that the beach across from our hotel looked like it would have plenty of tidepools. Just as we got down to the beach, there was enough breeze and a bit of a drizzle that a couple of the party turned back for coats, but the rain cleared up quickly. I hadn’t bothered to bring sandals on the trip and happily managed to keep my tennies dry — and was pleasantly surprised by their grippiness.

  • Overpopulation

    • Freedom From Religion Foundation ☛ ‘We Dissent’ guest star explains pro-natalism movement — Freedom From Religion Foundation

      On Episode 52, FFRF Deputy Legal Director Liz Cavell, Americans United Legal Director Rebecca Markert and National Women’s Law Center Director of Nominations & Democracy Alison Gill welcome the center’s Chief Program Officer Emily Martin. Together, they take on the far-right pro-natalism movement. They explain the movement’s history of racism, sexism and eugenics — and the alarming support it has in the Trump administration. Finally, they discuss what truly pro-family policy would and should look like.

• Finance

  • GNU Taler ☛ 2026-07: Taler lecture at Cedarcrypt 2026

    Özgür Kesim from the GNU Taler team will give a lecture about Taler, the protocol suite, at Cedarcrypt 2026, a new applied cryptography summer school and conference, July 13-16 in Paphos, Cyprus.

    The lecture is titled The Taler Protocol Suite for Digital Payments, and has the following abstract: [...]

  • Don Marti ☛ Have you filed your compliance taxes?

    Got Google Analytics or Google ads on your web site? Don’t forget to check some important compliance instructions, in a LinkedIn post from Jennifer L. Vercellone, Esq. And remember, “Each Google platform (GA4, Ads, GMP) must be configured to honor those signals.”

    Read the whole thing. As far as I can tell, here’s the list of things to check.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • CBC ☛ Stellantis, Microsoft sign 5-year partnership for AI push

    The Stellantis-Microsoft tie-up builds on an existing relationship between the two groups, which have previously worked together on connected vehicle platforms and in-car digital services.

    Under the agreement, joint teams will ​co-develop more than 100 AI initiatives covering areas including product development and validation, predictive maintenance and testing, and the faster rollout of digital features and services, the two groups said.

  • India Times ☛ Anthropic talks to EU, including on its cyber security models, Commission says

    US-based ​artificial ​intelligence company Anthropic is ​currently in discussion with the European Commission on ‌its ⁠different ⁠models, including its ​cyber security ones, which are not ​yet available in the EU, the ​Commission said ⁠on Friday.

    Anthropic ‌has already ​committed ​to respect ⁠the European Union's general purpose ​artificial intelligence code of ​practice, spokesman Thomas Regnier told reporters in Brussels.

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

    “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 ☛ Data Center Tax Abatements: Why States and Localities Must Disclose These Soaring Revenue Losses [PDF]

    Hyperscale data centers are by far the most controversial issue in U.S. economic development today — for their noise, voracious electricity and water consumption, air pollution, and massive footprints. They have also emerged as the nation’s biggest new budget headache for states and localities: Tax-abatement laws written for much smaller data centers, predating massive artificial intelligence (AI) facilities, are now unexpectedly costing governments billions of dollars in lost tax revenue.

    However, Good Jobs First finds that in violation of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), as set forth by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), at least 14 states and scores of localities are failing to disclose tax abatement revenue losses they are suffering to data centers.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Observability as the backbone of compliance in a new federal cyber era

    As AI adoption accelerates in federal government and a new national cybersecurity strategy takes shape this year, agencies are being asked to move faster while demonstrating stronger governance, clearer accountability and measurable resilience. Key to achieving these objectives is the essential need for agencies to better understand their own IT environments in real time.

    This requirement for enhanced observability goes beyond just whether systems are operational, but also how data flows, where dependencies intersect, and how changes affect compliance, performance and mission delivery.

  • Robert Reich ☛ The Worst Justice Ever

    Clarence Thomas is 77 years old. He has now served on the Supreme Court for over 34 years, making him the longest-serving member of the Court. He is a bitter, angry, severe hard-right, intellectually dishonest, ideologue. After reading his latest thoughts on America, I’ve concluded Thomas is even worse than Alito.

    Last Wednesday, Thomas gave a rare public address at the University of Texas in Austin that began as a banal tribute to the Declaration of Independence before degenerating into a misleading screed against progressivism.

  • The Verge ☛ OpenAI’s former Sora boss is leaving

    Kevin Weil, who was the company’s VP of AI for Science and was formerly its chief product officer, is also departing, saying that Friday is his last day. He said in a post on X that the group is “being decentralized into other research teams.” OpenAI’s Prism, a recently-announced research-focused “workspace for scientists” that Weil was heading up, is being sunsetted, and OpenAI’s plan is to fold its capabilities into the Codex desktop app, according to Wired.

  • Wired ☛ OpenAI Executive Kevin Weil Is Leaving the Company

    The former Instagram VP is departing the ChatGPT-maker, which is folding the AI science application he led into Codex.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RFERL ☛ Life Of Jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Winner Narges Mohammadi 'In Serious Danger'

    "After her arrest in Mashhad, because of blows she received to the head, she was already in bad condition," her brother said.

  • Meduza ☛ Pro-Kremlin blogger leaves psychiatric hospital after criticizing Putin, says conditions were ‘pretty rough’

    “Harsh criticism of senior government officials has its price — remember that. […] I don’t regret the substance of what I said, but if I were doing it now, I would use more measured and balanced language, without making it personal. That shortcoming I intend to correct going forward,” Remeslo wrote.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian TV host and blogger deletes Instagram post criticizing corruption in Russia

    Aiza had not commented on the deletion at the time of publication. Over the past three days, her Instagram has featured content typical for her: posts about family and life in Bali.

    In the now-deleted video, Aiza expressed support for an address by Victoria Bonya that had generated widespread attention. Speaking to Russia’s president, Bonya raised problems in Russia “that not a single governor would mention” and called on Vladimir Putin to establish a direct channel of communication with the public in order to “see what the people are thinking.”

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Iran: Internet blackout highlights real toll of censorship

    It is a familiar tool deployed by the clerical regime in Iran, which has a history of shutting down the [Internet] to suppress protests and silence dissent: in 2019, during demonstrations against rising fuel prices; in 2022, during the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement after the death in custody of Jina Mahsa Amini; and again in January this year, as anti-government protests spread from Tehran to towns and cities across the country.

    Iran also shut down communications during the 12-day war with Israel in the summer of 2025, citing national security as a justification.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • The Verge ☛ Betting on the news raises ethical questions for journalists

    Because prediction markets allow users to monetize news, journalists are caught in the crosshairs: what they report (and the information that goes into reporting) suddenly has a dollar amount attached to it. It also means that the information they encounter on the job is potentially very valuable. Earlier this week ProPublica announced it was updating its code of ethics to explicitly mention restrictions on how staff use prediction markets. ProPublica’s code of ethics already has restrictions on how staff can invest in outside companies they cover. But the policy now states that “no employee should wager on the outcome of news events on the prediction markets — regardless of whether or not they are involved in coverage of said event.”

  • RFA ☛ Award-winning Burmese journalist Shin Daewe released from prison

    Known for her work highlighting the challenges facing Myanmar’s environment and the impact of conflict on civilians following the military’s 2021 coup, Shin Daewe was arrested in October 2023 in Yangon while picking up a video drone she had ordered online to use in filming a documentary.

  • RFA ☛ RFA welcomes release of Myanmar RFA contributor Shin Daewe

    “The news of Shin Daewe’s release from detention comes as a welcome relief. Shin Daewe suffered enormously and unfairly for her work to bring uncensored journalism to people in Myanmar. This development is a testament to efforts by many, including RSF and PEN America, to secure her release. I am heartened to learn Shin is back at her home, reunited with her family and loved ones.”

  • Foo Digital Music News ☛ NPR Receives $113M in Donations After Federal Funding Cuts

    Public broadcasting organization NPR has announced a pair of charitable donations that totaled $113 million, which will enable it to continue operations after federal funding cuts earlier this year. Former NPR Foundation board member Connie Ballmer donated $80 million, while an anonymous donor contributed $33 million.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • EDRI ☛ Safeguarding democratic lawmaking: EDRi’s contribution to Commission consultation on Better Regulations

    The European Commission has opened a consultation on its Better Regulation framework. In its response, EDRi raises concerns about the lack of proper impact assessment and the false sense of urgency. Instead of strengthening democratic processes, the current reform risks practices that reduce transparency and limit participation.

  • EDRI ☛ EDRi-gram, 15 April 2026

    What has the EDRi network been up to over the past few weeks? Find out the latest digital rights news in our bi-weekly newsletter. In this edition: Cracking the egg shells: what's inside the latest in EU digital rights?

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Positive Case For Liberalsm

    This is what I mean by rust. The positive case requires a specific set of capacities: the capacity to articulate what a life under liberty actually looks like and why that life is beautiful, the capacity to make the civic inheritance feel like a civic inheritance rather than a procedural arrangement, the capacity to draw on the mythopoetic resources of the tradition rather than ceding them to the reactionaries, the capacity to ground the tradition in a picture of reality that the consequentialist defenses of it do not reach. These capacities are not alien to liberalism. They are constitutive of the tradition at its highest moments. Lincoln had them. Jefferson had them. Frederick Douglass had them. James Baldwin had them. The liberal tradition produced some of the most compelling mythopoetic civic writing in human history. The tradition has not lost the capacity. The current ecosystem has merely stopped exercising it.

  • Dan Sinker ☛ A Well-Aimed Potato: The Klan, Notre Dame, and Today

    They came in waves. The Interurbans—electric trains that crisscrossed the Midwest back then—came from Michigan and Ohio and from across Indiana. Hundreds arrived on a train hired special from Chicago. And on the roads there was car after car after car, hulking and black, and overloaded with Klansmen.

    It was not the first time, not by a lot. The Ku Klux Klan had been doing this for years now, showing up in huge numbers in a town, usually invited, always with a permit. Klan gatherings in the first half of the 1920s were a rally and a party and a threat all in one. Sometimes there were carnival rides, other times there were fireworks shows, almost always there were parades complete with marching bands. At night there would be barbeque and speakers spitting hate and patriotism in equal measure. And then there were crosses. Always crosses. Crosses ringed with electric lights. Pyrotechnic crosses launched into the air. And of course cross burnings, the culmination of an evening's festivities, towns all over competed to host the largest cross burnings.

  • WSWS ☛ Wall Street Journal announces the era of the “mega layoff”

    “Instead of laying off people in more incremental—and less disruptive—waves, employers are seizing on the potential financial upsides of severing swaths of their workforces at once,” the paper notes. “That is a departure from not long ago, when mass layoffs registered as a sign of trouble or mismanagement and that a company needed to take drastic measures to right its performance. Now, such a company is more likely to get a big stock bump and praise from investors for acting boldly.”

  • Federal News Network ☛ Unions sue FLRA over plans to ‘politicize’ labor representation decisions

    A coalition of federal unions is suing the Federal Labor Relations Authority over plans to involve politically appointed board members in all labor representation decisions — a change the unions warn will politicize a process that has been working effectively for decades.

  • Foo Salon ☛ Trump’s DoorDash Grandma isn’t a plant — the truth is much darker

    As Waldman noted, Simmons is just the latest in a long line of would-be Republican folk heroes — like “Joe the Plumber” — meant to illustrate the party’s supposed connection to working people. The reality is a story involving the exploitation of working-class Americans by parasitic elites like Trump and the people in DoorDash’s C-suites. The country’s limited social safety net causes people — especially women like Simmons — to face impossible choices. By her own account, Simmons can’t take on steady, stable employment to make sure her husband is cared for. Instead, she has to take a shadowy job as an “independent contractor.” This allows the executives at DoorDash to extract often-excruciating hours of work from people like Simmons, without having to pay benefits or salaries that direct employees would receive.

    Simmons revealed she made $22,000 in 2025. The CEO of DoorDash made $313 million in the same year.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • The North Lines IN ☛ Signals Without Access: The Reality of J&K’s Internet Boom

    Jammu & Kashmir is becoming an example of how India’s digital revolution can be considered a success story. The increasing number of [Internet] users, the development of telecommunication facilities, and the ubiquity of mobile phones serve as indicators of this fact. At face value, the statistics are impressive. India’s [Internet] users exceed one billion in 2025, broadband subscribers reach the number of almost 100 crore, and nearly 97% of villages have access to mobile phones.However, statistics only paint half a picture. In the case of Jammu & Kashmir, it may even paint a misleading picture.