Leftovers

• Can Brave Origin Nightly on Linux Shift Enterprise Browser Strategy?

  Brave Origin Nightly now supports installation on Linux for both AMD/Intel and ARM architectures [1]. This expands enterprise browser choices at a time when AI, privacy, and cross-platform consistency are top priorities. The move challenges the status quo of browser standardization in enterprise environments.

• Deseret Media ☛ Why this Swede is bringing delicious Scandinavian pastries to Utah

  That's why he quit his full-time job in finance to open up a Scandinavian food truck called Svea in Eagle Mountain that serves up delicious pastries and refreshing drinks.

  The food truck is open Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so the rest of the week, Kilis spends prepping for the weekend.

  Everything he serves, he bakes himself from scratch.

• Career/Education

  • Annie Mueller ☛ GOOSE IT UP - annie's blog

    I’m in school again.

    I’m going back to school because my work, my entire career, for my entire adult life, has been writing things for the Internet. That’s going away, at least as a livable career option. By livable, I mean an option I can live with.

• Hardware

  • India Times ☛ Google in talks with Marvell to build new AI chips: The Information

    One of the chips is a memory processing unit designed to work with Google's tensor processing unit (TPU) and the other chip is a new TPU built specifically for ⁠running AI ‌models, the report said.

    Google has been pushing to make its ⁠TPUs a viable alternative to Nvidia's dominant GPUs. TPU sales have become a key driver of growth in Google's cloud revenue as it aims to show investors that its AI investments are generating ‌returns.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ 40 years ago we entered the megabit memory era with IBM’s DRAM breakthrough — a major leap beyond the 64 kilobit chips common at the time

    The NYT’s take contrasted with IBM’s triumphant tone. “This is a signal of our semiconductor technology leadership,” said IBM SVP, Jack D. Kuehler, at the time. He went on to emphasize how these DRAM chips were built in the USA. Some of the newspaper’s cynicism came from the fact that it already knew the likes of Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, NEC, and Toshiba were busy sampling their own 1-megabit DRAM chips. Once they were satisfied and moved them to mass production, it was expected the Far East tiger economy would roar back to pole position.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] International development aid suffers unprecedented 2025 dip, led by Cheeto Mussolini gutting USAID

  • CBC ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] $20K worth of alleged stolen booze in a single home: We tracked how N.S. liquor store theft is on the rise

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] Zambia: Is the US trading HIV treatment for resources?

  • Deseret Media ☛ Tomatoes are having a moment. You might not like the reason

    Meanwhile, prices have notably increased. Tomato prices were up 15.3% in March alone and are up 22.6% compared to the same time last year, according to Consumer Price Index data. The 17% tariff on tomatoes from Mexico and higher diesel costs because of the war with Iran have created a recipe for wildly expensive tomatoes.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Curing U.S. Health Care, Part I

    Impressive as the raw numbers are, they don’t tell the whole story. Before the ACA, even upper-middle-class Americans often found it impossible to get health insurance if they had pre-existing medical conditions. Many Americans were trapped in jobs they wanted to leave but couldn’t for fear of losing their employment-based coverage. Meanwhile, dire predictions from the usual suspects about runaway costs proved wrong. In fact, overall U.S. medical spending has grown much more slowly since the ACA was enacted than before.

• Proprietary

  • Screen Rant ☛ Xbox Exclusives Problem Is About To Get Worse

    Xbox's exclusivity problem is about to go from bad to worse. In recent years, the former console line has made overtures to turn from its longstanding policy of console exclusivity: it's brought a plethora of first-party games to alternate platforms, like mobile phones, PC, and TVs through Xbox cloud streaming, and bringing classic Xbox exclusive franchises like Halo to PS5.

    Now, though, Xbox may be walking back its move away from exclusivity. While nothing's confirmed just yet, if the rumors are true, Xbox exclusives could be on their way back, and that's a bad thing for the company and the consumer both.

  • Michael Tsai ☛ John Deere Right-to-Repair Settlement

  • The Drive ☛ John Deere to Pay $99 Million in Monumental Right-to-Repair Settlement

    While the agricultural manufacturing giant pointed out in a statement that this is no admission of wrongdoing, it agreed to pay $99 million into a fund for farms and individuals who participated in a class action lawsuit. Specifically, that money is available to those involved who paid John Deere’s authorized dealers for large equipment repairs from January 2018. This means that plaintiffs will recover somewhere between 26% and 53% of overcharge damages, according to one of the court documents—far beyond the typical amount, which lands between 5% and 15%.

  • Kevin Boone ☛ Why I de-Googled

    In this article, I want to explain why I’m a staunch de-Googler, that is, why I carefully avoid all Google products and services. It isn’t easy to do this in the modern world, because Google has become so entrenched in our lives. Dumping Google has far-reaching consequences, so there really has to be a good reason to do it.

    I usually write about how to de-Google, not why. I’ve generally assumed that my motivation was obvious. At least, I assumed that anybody who landed on my website already wanted to de-Google, and was interested in ways to go about it.

    But clearly it isn’t entirely obvious, because people keep asking me why on Earth I would take this traumatic, hugely disruptive action. So what, exactly, is wrong with Google?

    Where do I even begin?

  • Darren Goossens ☛ Microsoft account sign in issue — wrong username [solved]

    In the resulting dialog, search for ‘office’ and delete all office.com cookies. Search for ‘microsoft’ and do the same. I also did live.com. There might be others, but anyway.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • John D Cook ☛ Gaussian distributed weights for LLMs | QLoRA NF4

      LLM parameters have a roughly Gaussian distribution, and so evenly spaced numeric values are not ideal for parameters. Instead, you’d like numbers that are closer together near 0.

      The FP4 floating point numbers, described in the previous post, are spaced 0.5 apart for small values, and the larger values are spaced 1 or 2 apart. That’s hardly a Gaussian distribution, but it’s closer to Gaussian than a uniform distribution would be. NF4 deliberately follows more of a Gaussian distribution.

    • Jim Nielsen ☛ Hook It Up to the Machine

      You can tell when a mechanical switch has failed with your eyes, but not a digital one. You need a computer to help you understand the computer.

      Will this be my future?

      If a codebase was made with the assistance of an LLM, will its complexity and bugs only be inspectable, understandable, diagnosable, and fixable with an LLM?

    • The New Stack ☛ Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft agree that the harness is the product. They disagree on the price.

      A harness is the control layer around an agent that helps it operate reliably [sic] in production. It typically covers model invocation and context management, tool orchestration, sandboxed execution, persistent session and execution state, scoped permissions, error recovery, observability, and tracing. In that sense, it is analogous to the production infrastructure around containers: not the model itself, but the surrounding system that makes long-running agents safe, debuggable, and dependable.

  • Social Control Media

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] Facts vs. influencers: Is the 'Dubai dream' really over?

    • The Zambian Observer ☛ Anthropologist Urges Opposition to Intensify Use of Social Media to Counter Rally Restrictions

      Social and Political Anthropologist Dr. James Musonda has urged opposition political parties to intensify the use of social media as a key campaign tool amid what he describes as increasing restrictions on traditional political mobilization.

    • MJ Fransen ☛ Explore the smol web with Bubbles

      Bubbles monitors thousands of independent, personal blogs via RSS. Every post starts equal. Peoples votes decide what rises.

      Everybody can vote, but you need some Fediverse account for that.

• Security

  • The Register UK ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] NL: Dutch healthcare software vendor goes dark after ransomware attack

  • Becker's Hospital Review ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] Iowa AG files lawsuit against Change Healthcare over 2024 data breach

  • 2026-04-08 [Older] HK: Man arrested over stolen patient personal data

  • TechCrunch ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] Hackers steal and leak sensitive LAPD police documents

  • 2026-04-08 [Older] A string of radio hijacks exposes a deeper broadcast weakness

  • The Wall Street Journal ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] Act-of-War Clauses Cloud Cyber Insurance Coverage

  • 2026-04-09 [Older] Lotte Card given notice of $3M penalty, business suspension over massive data breach

  • 2026-04-09 [Older] 86% of businesses refused to pay cyber ransoms in 2025 — Coalition Insurance

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Kevin Boone ☛ Age verification and privacy: let’s try to be objective

      This article is about mandatory age verification for online services, and its effect on personal privacy and other fundamental freedoms. I’ll be asking whether it’s possible, even in theory, to verify the age of the user of a website in a privacy-respecting way and, if it is, whether it’s likely to be done sensitively in practice. I’ll try to be objective because, frankly, I don’t have the answers.

    • Barry Hess ☛ The HomePod Can Hear Alarms

      We discovered this a few weeks ago while we were vacationing in Phoenix. While relaxing in the sun, every member of our household received an alert on their phones. I cannot remember exactly what it said, but it was in notification center and said something to the effect of, “An alarm is sounding in your home.”

  • Confidentiality

    • KFF Health News ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini’s Personnel Agency Is Asking for Federal Workers’ Medical Records

    • 2026-04-10 [Older] Silent Ransom Group leaked another big law firm: Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe

    • 2026-04-11 [Older] Brockton Hospital still dealing with aftermath of ransomware attack

    • BBC ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] Ex-Meta worker investigated for downloading 30,000 private Facebook photos

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] Capita under investigation after workers hit by pensions data breach

    • CNN ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] A hacker has allegedly breached one of China’s supercomputers and is attempting to sell a trove of stolen data

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-11 [Older] Is this Syrian doctor one of the 80% Germany wants to remove?

  • NL Times ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] Syrian on trial for torture as Assad-regime soldier says case is "fabricated"

  • CBC ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] As drones upend tank warfare, Canada's army races to rethink its armour

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-12 [Older] Haiti: More than 30 killed in stampede at historical fort

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-12 [Older] What could come after a rules-based world order?

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-11 [Older] Nigeria terror trial: Nearly 400 terror suspects convicted

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-11 [Older] UK freezes deal to return Chagos Islands to Mauritius

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-11 [Older] UK: Sudanese man held over migrant drownings in Channel

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] German Bundeswehr says military-aged men can travel freely

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] Germany news: Protesters block Rheinmetall arms plant

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] Germany: Police suspect antisemitism in Israeli restaurant attack in Munich

  • The Zambian Observer ☛ FBI Officials say drunk Kash Patel is a national security risk

    More than two dozen current and former officials are raising serious alarms about Kash Patel’s conduct since taking over as FBI director, describing a pattern of heavy drinking, erratic behavior, and unexplained absences that has rattled both the bureau and the Justice Department.

  • Spectator AU ☛ Why attacks on British synagogues no longer surprise me

    But this is not only about Jews. In the same period, churches have also been targeted. Across Europe, 94 church arson attacks were reported in 2024, nearly double the previous year. That amounts to almost two churches every week. And yes, there have been some attacks on mosques as well, though far, far fewer. None of these arson attacks should be tolerable or acceptable.

  • SBS ☛ Twenty protesters arrested for violating Queensland's ban on pro-Palestinian phrases

    About 300 gathered in central Brisbane on Saturday afternoon to protest the state government's decision to ban two phrases associated with the pro-Palestinian movement: "globalise the intifada" and "from the river to the sea".

    Those who recite or display those terms could face up to two years in jail, but that didn't stop the crowd from chanting them in front of police.

  • International Business Times ☛ UAE Blames Trump for Escalating Iran Conflict, Threatens Switch to Chinese Yuan Amid Potential Dollar Shortages

    Emirati officials have warned their US counterparts that if the UAE faces a dollar shortage, it may have to use the Chinese yuan or other currencies for oil sales and related transactions, according to The Wall Street Journal. Such a shift would pose a direct challenge to the US dollar's global dominance, reinforced for decades by its widespread use in oil trading.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • The Barents Observer ☛ Shadow tanker sailed outside 200-mile zone to avoid Norwegian scrutiny

      Ship traffic data show that the Apple sailed outside Norway’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), from the North Sea to the Barents Sea. On April 16, it passed south of Bear Island with just a 30 km margin, before entering the Russian part of the Barents Sea on April 17. It is expected to make a port call in Murmansk on April 18.

      The chosen route suggests the vessel may be concealing irregularities.

    • RFERL ☛ Zelenskyy Warns Russian Oil Revenues Are Funding War

      His statement on April 19 comes after the United States prolonged its Russian oil waiver earlier in the week with figures showing that Moscow nearly doubled its oil revenue in March amid soaring energy prices as Iran continues to disrupt shipping on the crucial Strait of Hormuz.

      Zelenskyy claimed that more than 110 tankers from Russia’s shadow fleet are currently at sea, carrying over 12 million tons of Russian oil worth $10 billion.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Russian-made Shahed drones are ‘disintegrating in the air before reaching their targets’ due to shoddy manufacturing, video shows — commentators call Russian clones of Iran's drones 'flying garbage'

      The analysts at Defense-Blog provide some further context for what we can see in the video. This source paints a picture of Russian-made Shahed drones “literally disintegrating in the air before reaching their targets.” Indeed, pausing the video shows the seconds-before-their-doom drones have all sorts of build defects. Various body panels seem to be missing, stray wiring is visible, wingtips are deformed, and one of the drones featured already has “a completely detached nose fairing,” says the independent defense news outlet.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] NATO's eastern members brace for US disengagement

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • El País ☛ Satoshi Nakamoto, the reclusive billionaire behind Bitcoin: ‘The best outcome is that no one ever finds out’

    Nakamoto mined the first bitcoin on January 3, 2009, and then vanished two years later. Since then, uncovering who they might be has become an obsession for some. Over the years, multiple media outlets have tried and failed to unmask the person behind the pseudonym. The latest attempt came last week, when The New York Times pointed to British cryptographer Adam Back as the likely creator. If Nakamoto were a single individual, he would be among the richest people in the world: he controls roughly 5% of all existing bitcoins — about 1.1 million coins, valued at more than $81 billion.

  • Politico LLC ☛ Trump admin’s challenge of Watergate-era records law alarms historians

    The Wednesday memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which challenges the Presidential Records Act, appears intended to give President Donald Trump the legal leeway to destroy White House records from his current term. It also gives him legal backing to refuse to hand over any remaining records to the National Archives and Records Administration when he leaves office in 2029.

  • Arkansas Advocate ☛ Trump threatens to make a mockery of presidential libraries and records law

    Unilaterally declaring the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional undermines one of the most valuable aspects of Clinton’s library, not to mention other libraries around the country.

    The records that Clinton’s library has released over the years have been invaluable not just to historians and journalists, but to students and other members of the public. They help the public understand parts of presidential history that resonate today.

• Environment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] El Nino forecast as ocean temperatures approach record highs

  • CBC ☛ 2026-04-11 [Older] Bottle deposit machines are being phased out from Quebec grocery stores. Here's why

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] Recycling's next big thing — or big bluff?

  • Omicron Limited ☛ A cheaper way to fight 'forever chemicals': How pH-controlled traps could clean drinking water

    The system offers a sustainable way to address the growing challenge of PFAS contamination—one of the most persistent environmental and health threats today. By harnessing the power of pH, this method makes it possible to remove PFAS from waterways, while allowing the system to be reused. The work is published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances.

  • TruthOut ☛ Want to Resist a Data Center? These Organizers Share How They Did It.

    The prolific construction of massive data centers that house the physical computing power for artificial intelligence (AI) is galvanizing resistance in localities across the United States. Communities are fighting back against the billionaire tech and financial power behind these projects and their numerous harms, from their noise and pollution to their hyperconsumption of water and electricity.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ 1-ton sharks could face overheating risk in waters exceeding 62.6°F

    This rare group of mesothermic fishes, which comprises fewer than 0.1% of all species, retains metabolic heat. This ability allows them to keep parts of their bodies warmer than the surrounding seawater, enabling higher swimming speeds, long-distance migrations, and enhanced predatory performance, according to a press release.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • NL Times ☛ Police took a teenager’s fatbike after repeat offenses; His mom demanded it back

      A court in Amsterdam has ordered police to return a seized modified fatbike to the mother of a teenage boy after multiple enforcement actions in 2023, 2024, and 2025, including a November 2025 stop in which police recorded a speed of 51 km/h.

      The boy, born in 2010, was repeatedly stopped by police for riding a modified fatbike, an electric bicycle that is legally limited to 25 km/h, RTL reports.

    • Hackaday ☛ 2026 Green Powered Challenge: The Eternal Headphones

      This impressive feat is achieved using a LTC3588-1 power harvesting IC and a pair of supercapacitors, while an STM32L011K4T6 microcontroller processes the input from a MEMS microphone and feeds a low-power class D amplifier. This circuit consumes an astounding 1.7 nW, a power that a noisy city is amply able to supply. Audio meanwhile comes via a traditional 3.5 mm connector, which we are told is the cool kids’ choice nowadays anyway.

    • Hackaday ☛ DIY UPS Keeps Home Assistant Running

      If you put a bunch of computers in charge of your house, it’s generally desirable to ensure their up-time is as close to 100% as possible. An uninterruptible power supply can help in this regard. To that end, that’s why [Bill Collis] whipped one up for his Home Assistant setup.

    • Hackaday ☛ Modded Server PSU Provides Plenty Of Current

      Most makers find themselves in need of a benchtop power supply at some point or another. Basic models can be had relatively cheaply, but as your current demands go higher, so does the price. [Danilo Larizza] has figured out an alternative solution—repurposing old server hardware to do the job instead.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] Lufthansa cabin crew begin strike

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-11 [Older] Germany: Lufthansa pilots' union call for two-day strike

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-12 [Older] Ireland clears refinery blockade as fuel protests trigger nationwide shortages

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-11 [Older] Germany news: Coalition split widens over fuel price relief

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-11 [Older] India news: Delhi looks to ban fossil fuel two-wheelers from 2028

    • CBC ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] Oil and fuel prices to remain high throughout the year: Deloitte report

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] Germany news: Gas price hike higher than other EU countries

    • CBC ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] Air Canada is testing a new program to resolve customer complaints. Will it work?

    • CBC ☛ 2026-04-11 [Older] Residents of mobile home park in Vernon, B.C., without power indefinitely

    • CBC ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] Alberta government faces another legal fight to keep supervised consumption sites open

    • CBC ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] Gas flaring at LNG Canada far exceeds permitted volume, documents show

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] Here’s how Denmark compares to other countries as fuel prices rise and what role green energy plays

    • NL Times ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] Fuel, energy prices expected to remain despite Hormuz Strait reopening

    • CBC ☛ 2026-04-07 [Older] LG Energy Solution flags 1st quarter operating loss on weak EV demand

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-07 [Older] Can small nuclear reactors solve Europe's energy woes?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-07 [Older] US citizens beat rising energy bills with homegrown power

    • International Business Times ☛ 2026-04-07 [Older] Keir Starmer Energy Bill Pledge Slammed as 'Complete Scam' Amid New Tax Hikes

    • Bridge Michigan ☛ 2026-04-06 [Older] Consumers Energy’s sale plan would turn unprofitable dams into $270M payday

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CBC ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] Canada is coming off 3 consecutive severe fire years. There are concerning signs for 2026

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] To Prevent the Extinction of Canada Lynx, the Forest Service Must Stop Clearcutting Lynx Habitat

    • CBC ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] The ostrich con: Arguments to save birds from cull in B.C. were based on falsehoods, evidence shows

    • CBC ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] ‘It's really dry’: Wildfire sparks in Líl̓wat Nation hay field near Pemberton, B.C., airport

    • CBC ☛ 2026-04-11 [Older] Other countries are looking to end animal testing. In Canada, there's a holdup

    • CBC ☛ 2026-04-11 [Older] 'Breaks my heart': Investigation launched after black bear found dead on Sunshine Coast road

• Finance

  • CBC ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] U.S. appears to lower Canadian softwood lumber tariffs — but uncertainty remains

  • CBC ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] Calgary woman who stole $70K in grandparent scam should get house arrest, lawyers argue

  • CBC ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] Albertans who declared banned guns under Ottawa’s buyback still can’t get compensation

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Futurism ☛ Democrats Warned Not to Upset Multi-Million Dollar AI Lobbyists, Even Though It'd Be a Slam Dunk With Voters

    During the 2024 presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the Democratic party establishment made the strange decision to swing right, in an apparent attempt to capture the mythical conservative-centrist vote. Republican stalwart Liz Cheney was trotted out before Democratic voters while policy proposals became more conservative, even as millions of young voters clamored for a more progressive ticket.

  • Tedium ☛ Income Taxes: Where Did The Form 1040 Come From?

    Taxes are annoying and confusing, aren’t they? Turns out they were also confusing way back when they were first introduced, too. Let’s talk about the 1040.

  • Robert Bryce ☛ Fermi Isn’t Faltering, It’s Imploding

    Back in 2000, Pets.com raised $82.5 million in its IPO. Nine months later, the company declared bankruptcy, and in doing so, became a symbol of the dot-com bubble.

    Fermi Inc. might have a longer lifespan than Pets.com, but it may not be by much.

  • Rebecca Solnit ☛ Everything Is Changing Fast: A Brisk Tour Through Shifting Views

    As I mentioned here recently, one way you can see the new attitude in action is as local campaigns, often successful, to prevent tech corporations from building data centers in their area and ICE from buying warehouses to convert to prisons. There's a quite exhilarating wave of opposition to AI right now. Elites, including a lot of mainstream media as well as the creators and profiteers of the technology, often insist that it's inevitable, all-powerful, and we should just lie down and let the tanks of big tech run us over. Again. The public is not having it, and whether they're seeing the slop and sludge AI spreads, the threats to jobs, the corrosive effect of chatbots on vulnerable users, the potentials for profound dangers, or the reckless amorality of those in charge of the technology, they are skeptical about the promises. There were three attacks recently, including two targeting the home of OpenAI CEO Scam Altman and one the home of an Indianapolis city councilman who voted for a data center there.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Real Honest Conversation

    I published The Positive Case for Liberalism earlier today. Hours later, Triggernometry released an episode titled “An Honest Conversation with a Christian Nationalist,” featuring Andrew Wilson. I watched it, and I want to write about it immediately, because the episode is a nearly two-hour specimen of the exact failure mode that essay was arguing against — not the failure of liberal intellectuals to make the positive case, but the failure of the broader discourse ecosystem to recognize faux intellectualism when it walks into the room wearing borrowed philosophical vocabulary and a friendly podcast smile.

  • MacRumors ☛ Apple and Amazon Ink Satellite Deal Amid Globalstar Takeover

    Amazon and Globalstar have announced a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire the satellite operator. News of the deal puts to bed questions about the fate of Apple's exclusive satellite connectivity partner, and reveals how Apple will still benefit.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ The Technological Republic, in brief

    Palantir CEO Alex Karp wrote a book last year called the Technological Republic, but perhaps because it didn’t have the impact he hoped, the company posted a tweet thread (and LinkedIn post, etc) that summarizes its core points. Which are, to be clear, an argument for hard-right nationalism — complete with remilitarization and implied cultural hierarchy — and fusing Silicon Valley with the national security state.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Futurism ☛ Madison Square Garden Reportedly Used Facial Recognition to Stalk Trans Woman For Two Years

    In a sprawling investigation into the surveillance panopticon at New York’s Madison Square Garden, Wired found that venue owner James Dolan regularly abused his facility’s facial recognition equipment to stalk and harass critics, naysayers, and anyone he could start a petty beef with.

  • TruthOut ☛ Palestinians Battle the Algorithms of Israeli Censorship and Surveillance

    After Oslo, ICT was the fastest growing portion of the economy, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) privatized the telecom sector. In January 1996, the sector was transferred to PalTel (short for Palestinian Telecommunications Company), a private company, and the penetration of the internet in Palestine increased, while evolutions in computer technology resulted in computers becoming more affordable, which ensured increasing social diffusion of the internet in addition to geographical spread. Prior to PalTel’s coordination of the network infrastructure, private investors had already set up ISPs offering internet services. The ostensible distinction was that preceding linkages had to go through Israeli territory, while PalTel provided a “data-communications network blanket.” Yet it soon became clear that [...]

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] Turkey: DW correspondent Alican Uludag still in custody

  • Project Censored ☛ 2026-04-06 [Older] Networks of Resistance: From Lebanon to College Newsrooms

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] Guinea-Bissau on edge after activist's killing

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] Hungarian election: How football has helped Orban keep power

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] Germany: Fare evasion is a crime that can send you to prison

  • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-04-09 [Older] Omissions on a Cruel Trade: The Neglected Role of African Slavers

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-10 [Older] Scotland: Abusive man gets 8 years prison for wife's suicide

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Ordered free, still locked up: Judges fume over ICE detentions

    Many of the cases involve longtime U.S. residents unexpectedly hauled off to jail after routine immigration check-ins.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-12 [Older] Germany news: Most Germans see decline in public manners

  • CBC ☛ 2026-04-08 [Older] 'The justice system has been allowed to disintegrate': lawyer says N.L. courts are in crisis

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • CBC ☛ 2026-04-11 [Older] Is Canada's 'Netflix tax' worth the hassle it's getting from the U.S.?

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Life, before the titans

    There’s one thing I wish you all could understand.

    The way Apple, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon owns the world? It doesn’t have to be that way. It used to not be that way. Their ascendancy should’ve been illegal.

  • Patents

    • Greenwich Mercantile ☛ USMCA vs NAFTA: 75% Auto RVC + July 2026 Sunset Review

      The following table summarizes the most significant changes between NAFTA and USMCA across the provisions that directly affect importers and manufacturers. Each change has practical compliance implications that companies must address in their trade operations.

  • Copyrights

    • Torrent Freak ☛ GitHub Reports DMCA Takedown Record and Surging Anti-Circumvention Claims

      GitHub has published its 2025 transparency report, revealing record levels of DMCA takedown activity across two separate metrics. The total number of removed projects increased to 47,228, while the number of circumvention claims jumped by more than 40% to 645. GitHub also highlights the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Cox v. Sony, which gives platforms more room to side with developers over rightsholders.

    • Seth Godin ☛ The Petrillo complications

      He called two union strikes. During the first, the record labels had no musicians to cut records–but vocalists weren’t part of the union. This opened the door for singers like Frank Sinatra to build careers, and it was the beginning of the end of the big band era.

      The strikes ended with a royalty stream designed to compensate session musicians–but it was paid to the union, not to the musicians. Petrillo used the money as patronage, spending money to organize live concerts outside of the major cities, meaning that the musicians who played on the records didn’t get the money… part-time performers in smaller towns did. And so did the bureaucracy.