Leftovers

• Matthias Ott ☛ Own Your Web – Issue 18: Curators

  And it’s getting worse. By some estimates, more than half of the new content published to the web so far in 2026 was generated by machines. And not only do search results bloat with plausible, competent titles that lead nowhere. Search engines have also started summarising knowledge instead of linking to it. The link – the Web’s most fundamental building block, the thing that connects one human’s work to another’s – is quietly being erased from the experience of finding things online. The search engine no longer says “here, go read what this person wrote.” It now says “here, I’ve already read it for you.” The contract is broken.

  So what becomes valuable, in a world like this? Not more content. We are drowning in content. What becomes valuable is someone you trust, saying: This is worth your time. Here’s why.

  That’s curation. And it’s not new.

• DNA Lounge ☛ DNA Lounge: 25-Apr-2026 (Sat): Wherein we have a gallery of dick pix

  Of the drawings, I'd say that it's 90% dongs; the rest are a mixture of smilies, pentagrams and cats, in about that order.

• Doc Searls ☛ Frylings

  Who Will Monetize Truth? asks Francesco Marconi in a long, thoughtful paper. Pull quote: "Content is free. Intelligence is not. The entire media industry is being repriced around that distinction." HT to Rasmus Kleis Nielsen for linking to it here, and sharing this excerpt: [...]

• Ben Werdmuller ☛ Sustaining innovation has failed us. It's time to think more radically

  She introduces the Three Horizons framework for thinking about change and building towards a shared vision of the future. Here, Horizon 1 is the status quo, Horizon 2 represents improvements to that system, and Horizon 3 represents an improved system rather than an optimized present.

  There are four kinds of innovation: research, sustaining, breakthrough, and disruptive. The first two don’t lead us anywhere new on their own; they might provide extra capacity and create more headroom, but they aren’t systemic change. Any fundamental problems with the status quo probably won’t go away. In contrast, breakthrough innovation brings in fresh ideas to solve problems in a new way, and disruptive innovation creates new systemic models that serve people in new ways.

• Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-04-17 [Older] How we worked out a fossilised ‘pterosaur’ was actually a fish – new research

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-04-17 [Older] The truth about child IQ: research shows it fluctuates and may be an unreliable predictor of future success

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-04-16 [Older] From sunsets to the night sky: how technology can help you to notice nature in new ways

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-04-15 [Older] What secret report reveals about British nuclear weapons tests – veterans claimed they were harmed by the fallout

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-04-14 [Older] Could dark matter be made of black holes from a different universe?

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-04-13 [Older] How hidden soil fungi ‘steal’ bacterial DNA to control the rain

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-04-13 [Older] It’s right under your nose – why some people can’t find things in plain sight

  • International Business Times ☛ Trump Axes Entire National Science Board; Democrats Slam 'Stupid' Decision

    The National Science Foundation manages a nearly £6.7 billion ($9 billion) budget to support fundamental scientific research across the United States. Its funding has historically supported the development of essential technologies, including mobile phones, magnetic resonance imaging machines, and LASIK eye surgery.

    Sacked board members received a brief digital message thanking them for their service before announcing their immediate removal. Screenshots of the communication read: 'On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I'm writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately.'

  • John D Cook ☛ Closed-form solution nonlinear pendulum w/ Jacobi functions

    If the initial displacement is small enough, you can simply replace sin θ with θ. If the initial displacement is larger, you can improve the accuracy quite a bit by solving the linearized equation and then adjusting the period.

  • John D Cook ☛ nth derivative of a quotient

    There’s a nice formula for the nth derivative of a product. It looks a lot like the binomial theorem.

    (gh)^{(n)} = \sum_{k=0}^n \binom{n}{k} g^{(k)} h^{(n-k)}

    There is also a formula for the nth derivative of a quotient, but it’s more complicated and less known.

  • Bartosz Milewski ☛ Profunctor Equipment

    One immediate application is to enriched categories and enriched profunctors, which form a proarrow equipment \mathbb{V}\text{-Cat}. Or we can consider a simpler case of the double category of sets and relations. We can also add more structure to the categories in question, for instance by considering monoidal categories; or even go meta, and study the double category of (weak) double categories \mathbb{D}bl.

• Career/Education

  • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ National Library not to fully reopen for another year

    All of this has meant that during the years of moving and renovation, i.e. half a decade now, only a fraction of the National Library's valuable collection of about 150,000 books has been accessible to readers, while some youngsters may not even remember the library when it was functioning normally.

    "In fact, we've now raised a whole generation of young people who don't even know what it means to go to the National Library to read and write papers, so I think it's very important that the library can reopen as quickly as possible," University of Tartu Professor Eneken Laanes said.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ Trump’s budget would gut local libraries and museums. Congress is not on board.

    In a statement, Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association, said Trump’s “continued attack” on the agency in the budget request and the March 2025 executive order to shutter it “shows the extent to which the administration is tone deaf to the needs of millions of Americans who rely on libraries every day: older adults and veterans who use library telehealth spaces; unemployed people who use library resources to find a new job or learn new skills; families who count on story time; and students and faculty who do research in school and academic libraries.”

    John Chrastka, founder and executive director of EveryLibrary, said Trump’s proposal is “a direct threat to the infrastructure that millions of Americans rely on every day,” in a statement.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Harvard’s newest challenge is a grad student workers strike

    On campus, the Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU) says that after 14 months of talks, it has seen little to no progress on its demands. Chief among those are more than doubling the lowest annual salary of about $26,000, an emergency legal fund for student workers who get caught up in immigration proceedings, and a reformed process for workplace harassment and discrimination claims.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ "Get the f*** outta here!": Wedding photographers outraged by amateur who offered to pay couples to shoot their big day

    We've all heard of photographers working for free to build up their portfolios, especially when trying to break into the competitive world of wedding photography. But actually offering to pay a bride and groom serious money for the opportunity of shooting their nuptials is something entirely different - and perhaps best avoided.

  • [Repeat] Ruben Schade ☛ What does a professional calligrapher do?

    A professional calligrapher is someone who writes for a commission or fee. Unlike a typist or scribe who writes to transcribe ideas into text, calligraphers also approach their craft as art. The style, or way in which the words are written, matter as much as the words themselves.

  • Ned Batchelder ☛ School is artificial

    The real world is not like school.

    One of the hard parts of moving from school to “the real world” is adjusting to all the ways that school is artificial. It’s different from the real world.

    I’ve been thinking about this because of questions I see young learners commonly asking. Too often the questions are meaningless in the real world, and even if you could get answers, the answers would use useless.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Ada Palmer’s “Inventing the Renaissance” (25 Apr 2026)

    Inventing the Renaissance isn't a work of history, it's a work of "historiography" – the study of how histories get written and rewritten. Palmer's point here isn't to make us merely understand the Renaissance – she wants us to understand how the idea of a Renaissance, a rebirth out of a "dark age" into a "golden age" – has been used, abused, created and demolished, for centuries and centuries, including during the centuries when the Renaissance was actually underway.

• Hardware

  • Tedium ☛ Tweezer Facts & Oddities: People Pay to Sharpen Them

    Today in Tedium: In a world full of big problems, I’m going to focus on the smallest possible problem I can think of right now. It’s not so much a first-world problem as a miniature one. About a week ago, I got a splinter in my finger. It really hurt at first. It was microscopic—I could barely see it, but there it was. I could not get it out, until I tried again earlier this week. Then, after much effort on my part, it was finally removed. It still kinda hurts, but at least it’s gone, no longer embedded in my skin. Helping in this endeavor was the tweezer, a device that remains unheralded for some reason, but deserves a big nod of approval. Today’s Tedium is a series of vignettes about tweezers, because we sweat the small stuff. — Ernie @ Tedium

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-13 [Older] Merck's Keytruda: A lifesaving drug, a global divide

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ State-Licensed Medical Marijuana Has Been Reclassified as a Less-Dangerous Drug. Here's What That Means

    The order does not legalize marijuana under federal law. It also doesn’t affect recreational marijuana. The new policy applies only to state-regulated medical marijuana and Food and Drug Administration-approved products containing marijuana.

    It’ll also allow scientists to study cannabis more easily.

  • Wired ☛ Designer Baby Companies Are in Turmoil

    Manhattan Genomics and Bootstrap Bio had ambitions to edit DNA in human embryos with the goal of preventing serious disease in babies. Known as germline editing, the idea is highly controversial because any changes made at the embryo level would be passed on to future generations. It’s different from gene-editing treatments currently being tested on patients, which only affect the treated individual.

  • Seth Godin ☛ Breathwork

    Breathing is an architectural challenge and a chemical necessity.

• Proprietary

  • Nicolas Magand ☛ Sidelining Safari

    It was bound to happen. For months, I’ve done my best to prevent this, but eventually, my patience and tolerance weren’t enough. Here I am, writing a post about how I finally decided to ditch Safari as my main browser, and replace it with third-party options. This change was a slow process somehow — spanning a couple of weeks or so — but the gravitational forces of better options were very difficult to escape once I upgraded my work computer to Tahoe, and got to witness Liquid Glass, the mess of it all, and how right most critics were.

  • Don Marti ☛ Updates to our partner ads setting control

    Yes, do it. It can’t hurt. If you look at the research, people who are getting personalized ads are probably worse off. After turning personalized ads off, you’re probably going to be less likely to get targeted for gambling ads or scams.

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ The Horrible Economics of AI Are Starting to Come Crashing Down

      An eyebrow-raising trend has emerged this year: tech leaders rating their employees’ productivity based on the number of AI tokens they use.

      The trend, ribbingly dubbed “tokenmaxxing,” has sparked discourse for symbolizing the Silicon Valley’s unbridled infatuation with using AI as much as possible — and, quite literally, at all costs.

    • [Repeat] Press Gazette ☛ AI journalism mistakes: Live tracker of major mishaps

      AI is being widely used in journalism and can lead to reputation-killing scandals and mistakes if not monitored closely. Here Press Gazette rounds up some of the main examples of where AI has gone wrong.

    • Mark Nottingham ☛ What's Missing in the ‘Agentic’ Story

      For much of the history of computing, it was reasonably safe to assume that a machine was doing what you told it to do (and what its creators promised it would do), because its operations were local.

      You bought a laptop or desktop with an operating system, and it did what it said on the tin: it ran programs and stored files. You bought a spreadsheet and a word processor, and those programs performed those tasks and didn’t do anything else. Software that didn’t do this was in a separate bucket called ‘malware’ and we had ways of dealing with it.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Ghost In The Machine has launched!

      Summary: the field of AI is not just coincidentally loaded with race scientists and eugenicists, its entire history is olde timey colonial race science all the way down and has been since the start.

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ AI is not a magic wand and it won’t fix your problems

      It isn’t a magic wand. There are important lessons here for news and other declining industries: adding software doesn’t absolve you of figuring out your underlying problems, and it will not solve them for you. It might even paper over them and make them worse.

      It’s just another tool. Invest in your people.

    • The Verge ☛ BEWARE SOFTWARE BRAIN

      In fact, the polling on this is so strong, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people hate AI, and that Gen Z in particular seems to hate AI more and more as they encounter it. There’s that NBC News poll showing AI with worse favorability than ICE and only a little bit above the war in Iran and the Democrats generally. That’s with nearly two thirds of respondents saying they used ChatGPT or Copilot in the last month. Quinnipiac just found that over half of Americans think AI will do more harm than good, while more than 80 percent of people were either very concerned or somewhat concerned about the technology. Only 35 percent of people were excited about it.

      Poll after poll shows that Gen Z uses AI the most and has the most negative feelings about it. A recent Gallup poll found that only 18 percent of Gen Z was hopeful about AI, down from an already-bad 27 percent last year. At the same time, anger is growing: 31 percent of those Gen Z respondents said they feel angry about AI, up from 22 percent last year.

    • Ky Decker ☛ Do I belong in tech anymore?

      And yet, work was rendering me increasingly miserable. I questioned myself. Why am I here? Does any of this work actually matter? And if I stop caring about the quality of my work… will anyone notice? (An uncomfortable thought.)

      I knew I was tired, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to quit. I took a week off to consider it, and told myself: if you still want to leave at the end of this week, hand in your resignation.

      The following Monday, I handed in my resignation. I felt immediate relief. I had nothing else lined up, but I knew I needed to go. I’m unsure when (or if) I’ll return to full-time tech work.

      What happened?

  • Social Control Media

    • Norway ☛ What to do … My child on social media – what you need to know [PDF]

      What should you consider, know and talk about with your children before they start using social media?

      This guide will provide you with some advice along the way.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • Medium ☛ Ubuntu 26.04 can install APT packages from GitHub Container Registry

    This means third-party package maintainers no longer need to maintain their own web servers for hosting apt packages. They still have to maintain their container image registry, but it is already offered by GitHub for free.

• Security

  • 2026-04-17 [Older] State to audit Ohio school districts’ cybersecurity plans

  • CISA

    • CISA ☛ 2026-04-16 [Older] CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-04-16 [Older] Delta Electronics ASDA-Soft

    • CISA ☛ 2026-04-16 [Older] Horner Automation Cscape and XL4, XL7 PLC

    • CISA ☛ 2026-04-16 [Older] Anviz Multiple Products

    • CISA ☛ 2026-04-16 [Older] AVEVA Pipeline Simulation

    • CISA ☛ 2026-04-14 [Older] CISA Adds Two Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2026-04-13 [Older] CISA Adds Seven Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Wired ☛ The Latest Push to Extend Key US Spy Powers Is Still a Mess

      The bill aims to extend the embattled program—Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—for an additional three years and is the product of a deal cut with House Republican leadership after House speaker Mike Johnson failed to secure a clean 18-month extension last week.

      The 702 program has become increasingly controversial due to revelations that federal agents have used it to spy on racial justice protesters, political donors, journalists, and sitting members of Congress. Oversight mechanisms credited with curbing the FBI's prior abuses have also been dismantled under the current administration, even as the bureau has raided the homes of journalists and the FBI director has publicly threatened to investigate the president's perceived enemies.

    • Privacy Guides ☛ In Praise of Tor: Why You Should Support and Use Tor - Privacy Guides

      You might have heard of Tor in the news a few times, yet never dared to try it yourself. Despite being around for decades, Tor is still a tool too few people know about.

      Today, Tor is easy to use for anyone. It helps not only journalists and activists, but anybody who seeks greater privacy online or access to information regardless of location. But what is Tor exactly? How can Tor help you? And why is it such an important tool?

    • Ava ☛ why i don't write the usual privacy stuff

      The reason why I am not really interested in writing about privacy or data protection in the product-focused way isn't only because I am a law student and therefore more interested in law; it's because I prefer to talk more about why something is a problem (or a bad service), and I want to give people the tools to spot it, a legal justification for the bad gut feeling they have, and I don't want to end up just advertising products.

    • Future US Inc ☛ Maryland Set to Ban Surveillance Pricing at Grocery Stores: Are Other States Next?

      Maryland is set to become the first state to ban surveillance pricing as the legislature passed the Protection From Predatory Pricing Act this month. Introduced by Gov. Wes Moore in January, the act aims to prevent grocers and third-party apps like delivery services from using surveillance data and dynamic pricing in Maryland grocery stores. It also imposes steep penalties for businesses caught engaging in these practices, including a first-time fine of up to $10,000.

    • Sinclair Inc ☛ Maryland moves to ban 'dynamic pricing' statewide

      The General Assembly has passed the measure, known as the "Protection from Predatory Pricing Act," and Gov. Wes Moore (D) is expected to sign it into law, setting up a major shift in how some grocery stores, delivery services, and retailers operate.

    • The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union ☛ UFCW Launches National Campaign to Ban Surveillance Pricing on Groceries - The United Food & Commercial Workers International Union | The United Food & Commercial Workers International Union

      “Americans are hurting under the affordability crisis, and UFCW members see the pain in their faces every time they enter the grocery store,” said UFCW International President Milton Jones. “Our members also feel it themselves when they shop for their families. We are starting this national campaign to stop corporations from being able to change prices in front of their eyes just because they live in the wrong zipcode or are a new parent. We are proud to work with elected officials in every part of the country to lead the fight for affordable groceries and good jobs because that is what our members want.”

      Today, Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) introduced the Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act in the U.S. Senate. This legislation would prohibit price gouging by retail food stores and prohibit surveillance pricing in those stores, with exceptions for promotions like senior or student discounts. It would also require the disclosure of the use of facial recognition technology and ban electronic shelf labels (ESLs) in large grocery stores, enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The House companion is led by Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-12) and Representative Val Hoyle (D-OR-4) with 50 co-sponsors.

  • Confidentiality

    • RTL ☛ Encrypted messaging app: What is Signal and is it secure?

      Signal's end-to-end encryption means that any sent message travels in a scrambled form and can only be deciphered by the end user.

      Nobody in between -- not the company providing the service, not the internet provider, nor hackers intercepting the message -- can read the content because they don't have the keys to unlock it.

      Signal is not the only messaging service to do this, but unlike WhatsApp and Apple's iMessage, the app is controlled by an independent non-profit -- not a big tech behemoth motivated by revenue. That has won it more trust with those concerned about privacy.

      Signal also goes further than WhatsApp on data privacy, making metadata such as when the message was delivered and its recipient invisible even to the company itself.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-13 [Older] UK finds attack on Taylor Swift-themed class 'preventable'

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-13 [Older] Pope Leo: I am not afraid of Cheeto Mussolini administration

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-13 [Older] Germany's Buchenwald: Remembering Nazi atrocities

  • CBC ☛ Manitoba to ban social media, AI chatbots for youth, premier says

    The proposed law protecting youth from the harmful effects of social media will be the first of its kind in Canada.

    The premier said the platforms are intentionally designed to get people "addicted to the infinite scroll," contributing to mental health issues like anxiety and depression.

  • Futurism ☛ The US Military Just Arrested One of Its Soldiers for Making Ghoulish Polymarket Bets, and It Shows How Deep the Moral Rot of Prediction Markets Really Goes

    It turns out that critics were right to be suspicious. According to the US Department of Justice, one of the special ops soldiers involved in the attack, named Gannon Ken Van Dyke, is alleged to have placed over $33,000 in Polymarket wagers related to Venezuela in the days leading up to the operation. Per a DoJ statement, Van Dyke was indicted on charges including unlawful use of confidential information for person gain, commodities and wire fraud, and theft of nonpublic government information.

  • Medium ☛ Norway just banned social media for children under 16. India has 250 million children online with zero protection.

    The law doesn’t just restrict children — it puts the burden on tech companies. Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube will be legally required to verify that users are 16 or older before allowing access. If they fail, the government can fine them. This is a fundamental shift — moving the responsibility from parents, who have been failing at this for a decade, to platforms, which have been profiting from child engagement for just as long.

  • The Record ☛ Pentagon grapples with securing AI as it moves toward autonomous warfare

    Autonomous weapons are no longer a distant prospect, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told an audience at Vanderbilt University’s Asness Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats. They are going to be a “key and essential part of everything we do,” he added.

    His remarks made clear that the shift is not simply about deploying smarter drones or faster systems. It is also about building a digital infrastructure — from command-and-control networks to machine-learning models — that can be trusted under adversarial conditions. “We are doing a lot of thinking about this in the joint force right now,” he said, pointing to the growing role of autonomy in areas like targeting, logistics and battlefield coordination.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Trump Is Not Ignorant of Iran Risks; He Is Attempting a Con to Cope with His Failure

    Please read this story, published February 23, describing how, on or about February 17, Dan Caine gave Trump several warnings about an attack on Iran: it would deplete an already depleted munitions stockpile, risk US casualties, and be complicated because the US had no allied support.

  • Ipswich News ☛ From Nizamuddin to Barham: The 100,000-person Islamic congregation Suffolk's authorities know nothing about

    The directors of Shrubland Hall, a large estate just outside Ipswich, say they have planned a 100,000-person religious gathering this July with careful attention to every local authority requirement. Every local authority we have spoken to tells Ipswich.co.uk a different story.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Age AU ☛ Epstein fallout: Virginia Giuffre remembered at Washington vigil on first anniversary of her death

    Her younger brother, Sky Roberts, who with his wife, Amanda, has become a key voice demanding reform of sex-trafficking laws and the release of all the so-called Epstein files, read a letter to his sister from the stage.

  • Maine Morning Star ☛ At Virginia Giuffre memorial, friends and family urge justice for Epstein victims

    They remembered the woman they say changed the world by sharing her story of abuse by the disgraced multi-millionaire who victimized roughly 1,000 women and girls, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

  • CBC ☛ Dutch YouTube creators behind Alberta separatist videos getting millions of views

    CBC News identified three individuals in the Netherlands whose digital trail links them to accounts that hired actors to appear on the YouTube channels. Two of them attended the same online course that teaches customers how to create "faceless" YouTube channels that generate passive income for the creators, who remain in the shadows.

    Many of the videos contain sensationalized and misleading views of Canadian politics, and are promoted through thumbnails featuring images of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney with headlines that are blatantly false.

  • Nick Heer ☛ FOIA Documents ‘Scrubbed’ From Intelligence Agency Website

    A strange thing happened last May: the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s FOIA page, which had previously contained a generous list of released documents, was censored. When I asked the agency what was up with that, they told me the site was “currently under construction in order to enhance and streamline the user experience”, with “temporary downtime of certain pages and content”. It turns out that was nonsense, hence my use of “censored” above.

• Environment

  • RFERL ☛ 'Chernobyl Will Always Be With Us,' Says Nobel Prize–Winning Author Alexievich

    Forty years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Nobel Prize–winning author Svetlana Alexievich says Belarus is still a "laboratory" in which the long-term effects of the massive radiation leak continue to play out.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Don't just plant trees, plant forests to restore biodiversity for the future

    Forests are more than just timber factories. They regulate water, store carbon, provide habitat for wildlife, cool the landscapes around them and even provide human health benefits.

    Rather than gambling on a single species and hoping for the best, science now points to a smarter path that captures both ecological and economic benefits while minimizing risk: mixed-species plantings that mirror the biodiversity of a natural forest, ultimately creating forests that grow faster and are more resilient in the face of constant threats.

  • Bangor Daily News ☛ Janet Mills vetoes Maine data center ban

    Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a bill Friday that would have made Maine the first state to impose a moratorium on large new data centers, even as local ‌opposition to the electricity-hungry facilities grows.

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ US data centers to get power from Hyundai's 684MW energy system deal

    The contract involves delivering equipment capable of producing a total of 684 megawatts of electricity.

    With a value exceeding $400 million, this agreement stands as the largest engine supply deal ever achieved by the company. It also marks a key step in Hyundai’s efforts to expand its presence in global energy infrastructure, particularly within the rapidly growing data center sector.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-13 [Older] Lufthansa pilots launch 2-day strike, cabin crew say they will strike right after

    • Daniel Miller ☛ Sigh

      Only that word because of post length limits, but anyone following along the last few months would hopefully pick up that it was in reference to: [...]

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-13 [Older] World's oldest gorilla celebrates 69th birthday at Berlin Zoo

    • Omicron Limited ☛ The platypus is even weirder than thought, scientists discover

      Platypus melanosomes were mostly spherical—which should give it reddish-orange fur. But the animal is merely dark brown.

      Then the scientists discovered that some of its melanosomes are hollow—like those of birds.

      They checked their database for other mammals, including marsupials, rodents and primates.

    • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal ☛ Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Forbidden

  • Overpopulation

    • Futurism ☛ Climate Scientists Shake Their Heads as First US City Running Completely Out of Water

      According to Inside Climate News, the city of Corpus Christi, Texas could soon completely out of water in the next year. It’s the eighth largest city in Texas, and a major industrial node in the Gulf Coast. Its water infrastructure provides access to over 500,000 Texans, as well as the major chemical plants, oil facilities, and plastics factories which call the Gulf region home.

    • Inside Climate News ☛ Corpus Christi Plans to Declare a ‘Water Emergency.’ What Does That Mean?

      No modern American city has ever run out of water. But chances are rising that Corpus Christi, Texas, could be the first. Absent a biblical rainfall event, its reservoirs are on track to completely dry up by next year.

      That raises baffling questions for the future of Texas’ eighth-largest city and one of the nation’s major petrochemical hubs.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-04-12 [Older] Germany: Betting on elections is illegal — but possible

  • Nick Heer ☛ Oracle Laid Off (Tens of?) Thousands of People in March

    This is possibly tens of thousands of people whose lives have been upended after getting an email. They had plans. Since those layoffs, Larry Ellison’s net worth has grown by about $45 billion.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Most Articulate Apologist

    The costume is well-made. The accessories are convincing. The vocabulary is real, the citations are real, the rhetorical posture of intellectual humility is performed with the practiced ease of a man who has been performing it for fifteen years. None of that changes what is underneath. A tribal commitment that has eaten the philosophy it was supposed to be in service of. An apologetic apparatus trained to produce permission structures rather than judgments. A man who agreed, on a podcast, with three million people listening, that the president of the United States is a wannabe dictator, and who will vote for the wannabe dictator’s chosen successor in 2028 because the alternative will be a Democrat.

    Shapiro is an intellectual imposter of the grandest sense. What a waste of mind and life.

  • D Griffin Jones ☛ How We’ll Remember Tim Cook’s Apple

    Apple has played through Cook’s leadership style as far as it can go. A decisive, opinionated engineer leading the ship is what Apple needs again.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • RTE ☛ Norway plans social media ban for children under 16

    Norway's government said it will propose a ban on the use of social media for children under the age of 16 and will make technology companies responsible for age verification of young users.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian e-book platforms attach drug-harm labels to works by Pushkin, Gogol, and Bulgakov

    Labels have appeared on Gogol’s stories Nos (“The Nose”) and Viy, with both text and audio versions flagged on the digital library platforms Litres and KION Stroki, as well as on individual product listings on the Russian e-commerce platform Ozon.

  • Norway ☛ Norwegian Social Media age restrictions Law on Track to Be Introduced This Year – This Is How the Age Limit for Social Media Will Work

    The Government will present a new bill proposing an age limit for children using social media to Parliament (Stortinget) this year and has decided that the age limit will apply from January 1st the year a child turns 16. Under the new law, technology companies will be responsible for age verification of young users at login.

  • ABC ☛ Norway and Türkiye follow Australia with youth social media bans - ABC News

    Norway says it will present a bill in parliament by the end of the year to ban children from using social media until they turn 16.

    It comes as Türkiye's parliament passes legislation banning the use of social media by people under the age of 15.

  • RTL ☛ Wikipedia owner: Under blackout threat, Wikimedia reaches compromise with Indonesia

    Under a 2020 regulation, all electronic system providers (PSEs) must register in Indonesia for what the government calls legal and user protection purposes before making their services available.

    Critics have pointed to a provision that requires registered PSEs to take down content deemed as "causing public unrest and disturbing public order" as a free speech restriction.

  • LRT ☛ 'We are the first university to be branded extremist' – interview with EHU Vilnius rector

    Belarusian authorities have designated the European Humanities University (EHU) in Vilnius as an “extremist organisation”, raising concerns over the safety of its students and staff as well as its future. “Every border crossing becomes a potential risk – people could face sanctions or political persecution because of their links to the university,” the university’s rector, Vilius Šadauskas, told LRT.lt in an exclusive interview.

    The university was founded in Minsk in 1992, but in 2004, the Belarusian authorities revoked its licence. Since 2005, it has operated in Vilnius.

  • ANF News ☛ Iran executes another protester

    Human rights organizations have strongly criticized this practice for years. Organizations such as Amnesty International and Iran Human Rights (IHR) accuse the Iranian regime of deliberately using death sentences as a deterrent. They view the current wave of executions as an attempt to intimidate the population following the protests and suppress further resistance.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Why You Can't Watch the Michael Jackson Doc 'Leaving Neverland'

    Seven years later, though, Jackson is arguably as popular as he’s ever been. The recently released biopic Michael is projected to be a blockbuster smash. And Leaving Neverland — a genuinely consequential work of documentary filmmaking that won an Emmy and was nominated for a Peabody — is no longer available to watch on any official streaming platform in the United States.

    Ahead of its arrival on HBO, the Jackson estate sued the cable network, claiming the film violated a non-disparagement clause in a 1992 contract between Jackson and HBO over the Michael Jackson in Concert in Bucharest: The Dangerous Tour. The estate wasn’t able to stop the film from premiering, but their case did gain traction in the courts as they tried to compel HBO into arbitration.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin safe following detention in Kuwait

    “We are delighted that Ahmed Shihab-Eldin has been released from detention and is back with his family,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “We hope he and his family are given the space to come to terms with his release and look forward to commenting further soon.”

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • RTL ☛ Exiled Tibetans to elect government in vote condemned by China

    Tibetans outside Chinese control vote on Sunday for a government-in-exile, an election of heightened significance as they brace for an inevitable, eventual, future without their revered spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

    The India-based Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) -- condemned by China as "nothing but a separatist political group" -- is a key institution for the exiles, especially after the Dalai Lama handed over political power in 2011.

  • Futurism ☛ Unions Attack AI for Menacing Human Jobs

    “We are here to sound the alarms on AI,” president of stories AFL-CIO Liz Shuler said at the press conference. “This race that everybody seems to think we’re in to advance AI at all costs — with no guardrails or protections for people — is reckless and dangerous.”

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Voter ID initiative will be on the ballot in California in November

    California voters will have the opportunity in November to weigh in on a contentious ballot measure pushed by Republicans that would require all voters in future elections to show identification every time they vote in person or provide a special PIN when submitting mail-in ballots.

  • Court House News ☛ A sudden shift: ICE arrests drop nearly 12% after Minneapolis killings and immigration shake-up

    In December, arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents peaked at nearly 40,000 nationwide and were nearly as high the next month, according to data provided to UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project and analyzed by The Associated Press.

    In late January, the killings in Minneapolis of two American citizens by immigration officers and growing concerns over the government’s heavy-handed tactics led to a shake-up of top immigration officials. In the weeks that followed, ICE arrests across the country dropped on average by nearly 12%.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Low wages, poor training put security guards—and the public—at risk, study finds

    The study, released yesterday (Thursday, April 23), found that nearly half of security guards statewide are low-wage workers—and that rises to more than two-thirds of security guards in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some 80% of them don't earn enough to meet basic living needs, and little more than half have health insurance provided by their employers or unions.

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • [Old] ASUSTeK Computer Inc ☛ Windows Secure Boot certificate expiration and certificates updates

    Since Windows began supporting Secure Boot, most Windows devices have used a series of Microsoft certificates in the UEFI Secure Boot database. These earlier certificates will start expiring gradually from 2026. To maintain boot security and trust chain integrity, systems need to be updated to the 2023 version of Microsoft certificates.

    If your system currently has Secure Boot enabled, please ensure these certificates are updated before they expire in mid-2026.

  • [Old] XDA ☛ Microsoft's Secure Boot certificates expire in June 2026, but older PCs may never get the fix

    On June 24, 2026, the first of these certificates expires, and if your PC isn't updated in time, it won't suddenly stop booting, and it'll even still receive regular updates, but it will lose the ability to receive future security updates for some of the most sensitive parts of the Windows startup process. Microsoft has started rolling out replacements through Windows Update, but this isn't a simple patch. It requires coordination between Microsoft, your PC's manufacturer, and in some cases, you. Microsoft itself has called this one of the largest coordinated security maintenance efforts across the Windows ecosystem, and having dealt with Secure Boot issues in the past, I can tell you that's not an exaggeration.

  • [Old] Richard M Hicks ☛ Windows Secure Boot UEFI Certificates Expiring June 2026

    For IT administrators responsible for managing Windows devices, a crucial certificate update milestone is coming in June 2026 that could result in degraded security for systems that are not updated. Specifically, the Microsoft certificates that manage UEFI Secure Boot trust will expire, potentially allowing untrusted or malicious software to load on affected machines during system boot.

  • [Old] Ars Technica ☛ Windows' original Secure Boot certificates expire in June—here's what you need to do

    “However, the device will enter a degraded security state that limits its ability to receive future boot-level protections. As new boot‐level vulnerabilities are discovered, affected systems become increasingly exposed because they can no longer install new mitigations. Over time, this may also lead to compatibility issues, as newer operating systems, firmware, hardware, or Secure Boot–dependent software may fail to load.”

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-04-13 [Older] [Guest post] Oh my influencer! Italian rules on influencer marketing

  • IP Kat ☛ 2026-04-14 [Older] Sequence identities and functional definitions - where is the limit? (T 0137/24)

  • Vox ☛ Live Nation lost. Will anything change for ticket prices?

    On April 15, a federal jury found that Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster operated as an illegal monopoly, overcharging fans and shutting out competition. After years of complaints and lawsuits, as well as the fallout from the 2022 Taylor Swift Eras Tour ticket sale controversy, the states took the case to trial and won.

  • Patents

    • USMC ☛ A century of the ‘Ma Deuce’: How the M2 Browning became America’s workhorse machine gun

      Browning eschewed blueprints in favor of trial-and-error cutting, chiseling, drilling and filing. By 1879 the 24-year-old had filed his first of 128 firearm patents for what would become the Model 1885 single-shot rifle.

      The prodigious inventor went on to design seminal military guns such as the Colt M1911 semiautomatic pistol, history’s most enduring semiautomatic pistol design; the Winchester Model 1897 pump-action shotgun, the devastating American “trench gun” of World War I that was so effective that it drew diplomatic protests from Germany; the M1895 gas-operated machine gun; the .50-caliber M2 machine gun; and the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle — the BAR of World War II fame.

      Author Nathan Gorenstein estimates that roughly 35–40 million firearms have subsequently been patterned after the inventor’s designs, and he even conceded that number is likely low.

  • Copyrights

    • IP Kat ☛ 2026-04-13 [Older] Cox v Sony: Infringers gonna infringe – unless service providers encourage them