Leftovers

• Rachel ☛ Going on about reliability numbers and percentages again

  It's strange because you'll see random pages talk about "the number of nines after the decimal point", but then will show it implicitly shifted-left to be "human-readable", i.e., if it's a value of .999, they'll show it as 99.9%.

  For reference purposes, 1% of a day (99% uptime) is 864 seconds down... and 10% of a day (90% uptime) is 8640 seconds, or 144 minutes down.

  But yeah, go on, crank out slop code. Burn that shit down.

• Bitdefender ☛ MyPillow listed on ransomware gang's leak site, but denies it has been breached

  Whether MyPillow was actually breached is, at the time of writing, unconfirmed. The company denies it has been hit, and the Play ransomware gang claims otherwise.

• David Revoy ☛ Dryad, a poster illustration for the Geek Faeries Festival.

  I painted this huge 3899×5476px format in Krita on Wayland and kept the brushstrokes visible. I also decided to use my old fantasy style, the one I had around 2010 when I was living of freelance fantasy book-cover and board game illustration among other things (before my involvement in the Blender Open Movies, and way before Pepper&Carrot).

• Chris Done ☛ System Colic

  I’m calling this system colic as a negative term for an undesirable state of affairs. We know we don’t have to accept the illegibility of a system, and can put work into exposing visibility into them, or choose better components that do better in this regard.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Eli Bendersky ☛ Notes on Fourier series

    The trigonometric Fourier series is a beautiful mathematical theory that shows how to decompose a periodic function into an infinite sum of sinusoids. These are my notes on the subject, with some examples and the connection to linear algebra in Hilbert space.

  • Daniel Estévez ☛ An update about Tianwen-2 telemetry

    Yesterday I posted about my decoding of some recordings of the X-band telemetry of Tianwen-2 done by the Dwingeloo radio telescope. Today I have some small updates.

  • Daniel Estévez ☛ Decoding Tianwen-2

    Tianwen-2 transmits X-band telemetry at 8428.19 MHz. The modulation is the same as Tianwen-1: PCM/PSK/PM with 16384 baud telemetry on a 65536 Hz subcarrier. The coding is slightly different from Tianwen-1. Whereas Tianwen-1 uses concatenated coding with an unusual frame size of 220 bytes instead of 223 bytes in order to have a frame duration of exactly 0.25 seconds, Tianwen-2 uses concatenated coding with a frame size of 892 bytes (four full interleaved Reed-Solomon codewords), which gives a frame duration of exactly 1 second.

• Career/Education

  • North Dakota Monitor ☛ Public asked to weigh in on technology use in North Dakota schools

    Superintendent Levi Bachmeier, who took over the state’s top education role in November, said he hopes the survey results will inform policymakers on potential reforms to school-issued device policies across the state. During his first student Cabinet meeting, he said a Mandan freshman told him the devices needed to be a “tool, not a toy.”

    “The world that these young people are inheriting requires them to use technology responsibly, but we know that these devices are just as addictive as substances,” Bachmeier said during a press conference Thursday. “And that can be just as true for the school-issued device in their hands as the cellphone they carry around in their pocket.”

  • Techdirt ☛ Violent Crime In The US Is At Record Lows, But The DOJ Is Eliminating The Funding That Helped Reduce Crime

    Homicides across 35 major American cities fell 21% in 2025, amounting to 922 fewer people killed. Robberies dropped 23%. Gun assaults declined 22%. Carjackings plummeted 43%.

    Yet the Trump administration has yanked hundreds of millions of dollars from the programs that helped make those numbers possible.

  • Coalition for Networked Information ☛ 2027 International Digital Curation Conference

    We are delighted to announce that the call for submissions for the 21st International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC27) is now open! The conference will take place in Lisbon, Portugal between 9-12 February 2027.

    Conference Theme
    The main theme of the conference is, FAIR DO’s: Centering People in the Stewardship and Curation of Digital Objects.

  • Buttondown LLC ☛ Knowing about things is cheaper than knowing things

    Last week a LinkedIn Influencer wrote about how math has nothing to do with programming, so I spite-wrote a rejoinder about how math is necessary to program (just try to write software without knowing arithmetic!) and man I forgot how much spite can fuel writing. Maybe I should go back to Twitter (absolutely not).

    But it got me thinking about the difference between "all programmers can benefit from learning math" and "all programmers need to learn math". I simultaneously believe three things: [...]

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Unlocked Repost: Curing U.S. Health Care, Part II

    The ACA, which went into full effect in 2014, created a system of subsidies and regulations designed to make health insurance available to many Americans who had previously been left out. It worked: In 2010 there were 47 million uninsured people in America, but by 2016 this number had dropped to 27 million. This still fell short of the universal health insurance that every other advanced nation has, but it was real progress.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • Kyle Reddoch ☛ Passkeys Are Better Than Passwords, but Not a Silver Bullet

    The segment was about why passkeys are not enough by themselves, and I thought it was worth giving the episode some love because the point was practical, not anti-passkey. The takeaway was simple: passkeys are not the same thing as complete account security.

    That is where I think the conversation needs to mature.

    The problem is not that passkeys are weak. The problem is that attackers do not have to attack your strongest control. They only have to find the weakest path that still gets them into the account.

  • Homo Ludditus ☛ A cursory look at WPS Office

    Second, Linux is a second-class citizen for WPS Office, which focuses on Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. The provided .deb and .rpm files install an antiquated version that nobody would want to use: WPS Office 2019 version (or update) 11.1.0.11723.XA.

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

    • Vicki Boykis ☛ We should be more tired than the model

      It’s not surprising. Code generation, in its default mode, is antithetical to skill retention, particularly because its UX affordances are reminiscent of a slot machine’s: you pull the lever, you get a reward (a solution to your coding problem.) In some ways, we’ve replaced the social media feed with a stream of tokens, and I look forward to reading those papers in ten years.

    • Loris Cro ☛ About LLMs at Zig Days

      Additionally, I would also recommend limiting LLM usage during Zig Days. If you have a question, first see if there’s somebody in the room who can help you with it. Similarly, do the coding by hand. Don’t waste all the learning opportunities that you’re getting on an agent that will learn nothing at best, and that will become more effective at doing Amodei’s bidding at worst.

    • [Old] Cory Doctorow ☛ What kind of bubble is AI?. My latest column for Locus Magazine.

      But if those environments go away, those programming skills become a lot less useful. Live, large-scale Big Tech AI projects are shockingly expensive to run. Some of their costs are fixed — collecting, labeling and processing training data — but the running costs for each query are prodigious. There’s a massive primary energy bill for the servers, a nearly as large energy bill for the chillers, and a titanic wage bill for the specialized technical staff involved.

      Once investor subsidies dry up, will the real-world, non-hyperbolic applications for AI be enough to cover these running costs? AI applications can be plotted on a 2X2 grid whose axes are “value” (how much customers will pay for them) and “risk tolerance” (how perfect the product needs to be).

    • I Cringely ☛ The Permission Slip

      Look at where the money is going and you can see the permission slip being cashed. Stargate, half a trillion dollars. The hyperscalers, tens of billions each per year. The Anthropic–Akamai arrangement, nearly two billion more. The collective bet of the wealthiest companies in the world is that you fix intelligence — including its honesty — by buying more of it. The data center operators are happy. The chip vendors are ecstatic. The labs raising money at valuations with too many zeros are happy. Everyone in that chain has the same incentive, which is to believe that the answer is more.

      The customers who will eventually pay for all of it are the ones who should be asking whether any of this is true.

    • Alcides Fonseca ☛ LLM April Inflection Point by Alcides Fonseca

      What if AI is more expensive than junior developers? Everything stays the same, but AI companies go bankrupt and the AI bubble bursts much earlier than expected.

    • Chad Whitacre ☛ I Am Retiring from Tech to Live Offline

      AI took the last of the wind out of my Open Source sails. I wish you all the best!

  • Social Control Media

    • Zimbabwe ☛ Meta Wants Paid WhatsApp, Facebook & Instagram

      What makes this especially interesting locally is that many of us grew up thinking social media should cost almost nothing. For example, all you needed was your WhatsApp bundle; the app itself was free.

      Even now, many people still refuse to pay for services like YouTube Premium or X Premium because paying monthly for social apps still feels strange.

      So naturally, the idea of paying Meta every month will not sit well with everyone.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Checking in on Some Pro-Hate-Speech Social Networks

      The Agence France-Presse reporting on the U.S. president’s social-media-and-cryptocurrency-and-maybe-nuclear-fusion operation: [...]

    • Ben Werdmuller ☛ The Fediverse is not a product. It's time to get real about marketing

      A smart, accessible, nuanced piece from Saskia Welch about marketing the open social web, which translates easily to being a piece about marketing any transformative technology.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • LRT ☛ ‘Hostile states' behind massive data breach, Lithuanian president says

      ​The president emphasised that before anyone assumes political responsibility for the scandal, all circumstances must be assessed and the culprits identified.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Bhaskar English ☛ Wi-Fi Routers Tracking You?

      German researchers have developed a special hacking method called 'BFID' for this. It takes advantage of a common Wi-Fi feature called 'Beamforming Feedback Information' (BFI). This feature was provided in Wi-Fi 5 and later technologies so that routers could improve signal performance. But these signals keep floating in the air continuously without any encryption (security lock). When a person moves in a room, these waves get interrupted, which can be secretly captured by any nearby Wi-Fi device.

    • EFF ☛ Age Verification is a Privacy Nightmare

      We all want young people to be safe online, but we don’t need to trade everyone's digital rights to achieve it. These new restrictive mandates are used to justify government-led censorship and expanded surveillance. That's no accident.

    • Techdirt ☛ Enemies Are Exploiting Unregulated Data Broker Location Data To Target And Kill U.S. Troops

      I’ve warned about this for the last decade here at Techdirt, and the check is coming due. The Pentagon is steadily coming to realize that enemies are using location data purchased from unregulated data brokers to target and kill U.S. troops overseas:

      “In a letter shared with Reuters by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, U.S. Central Command said it had “received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater.”

      Poor Ron Wyden. The guy has been warning about this outcome for longer than Techdirt, and his reward is generally an apathetic congressional body too corrupted by greed to function.

    • The Record ☛ Cruise giant Carnival confirms data breach affecting nearly 6 million people

      The company said the threat actor gained access to a limited portion of its IT environment last month after compromising an employee account. By the end of April, Carnival determined that the attacker had copied personal information from its systems.

      The stolen data varies by individual but includes names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, driver's license numbers and passport numbers, according to the company.

    • Michael Geist ☛ More Misinformation on Bill C-22 as the Government Struggles to Defend Its Lawful Access Plan

      Two posts on Bill C-22 in a single day are not my typical approach, but the volume of misinformation coming from the government about the lawful access bill has made it hard to keep up. Earlier today, I posted about the repeated use by government ministers and MPs of the phony “it’s just phone book information” analogy to misleadingly describe the collection of subscriber data and metadata. But a press conference yesterday by Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree demands comment, as he accused U.S. tech companies of spreading misinformation, even though his own claims were plainly inaccurate and within hours required a walkback.

    • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Hold on for dear life (28 May 2026)

      Once you stipulate to the problem of wrench attacks and rubber-hose cryptanalysis, it becomes apparent that your cryptography is only as good as your physical defenses. What's more, the most effective physical defenses we have come from a strong rule of law, because even the thickest safe door benefits from the threat of prison for anyone who breaks into the safe, and the most effective tool for preventing a cop from hitting you with a rubber hose is the existence of a judge who can send that cop to prison for abusing your civil rights.

      But what do you do if you already live under tyranny? The rule of law is a great defense, but cryptography alone can't bring about the rule of law. What is the role of technology in this foundational struggle?

• Defence/Aggression

  • Defence Web ☛ Jihadist groups pose a growing and expanding threat in Africa

    Nowhere is the threat of global jihadism more severe today than in Africa, the organisation said in a new report. Along with a sprawling network of Islamic State (IS) affiliates stretching from western to central and eastern Africa, other groups such as al-Shabaab and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) operate under the al-Qaeda franchise. Their reach crosses national borders, threatening the stability of African governments and sustaining global militant and smuggling networks.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ War and civil society: what can Europe learn from Ukraine?

    War is never only a military question. The military question goes far beyond the logistics of warfare, or even geopolitics. In shades of grey, it reveals what our societies are, what they will be, and what they aspire to be. What does war mean in a democratic society? The war in Ukraine allows us to reflect on how a country is transformed by the fight for its very survival.

  • Reuters ☛ Ukraine to buy 20 new Gripen jets, Sweden to donate older jets sooner

    The transfer of older model C/D jets enables a stopgap solution for Ukraine's air ​defence in the meantime. Zelenskiy said Ukraine had earmarked 2.5 billion euros out of a 90 billion euro EU loan package for the planes. ‌Deliveries of ⁠the new model are expected to reach Ukraine from 2030.

  • Kyiv Post ☛ Sweden Hands Ukraine 16 Gripen Jets Armed With 200-km Missiles, Opens Deal for 22 More

    Designed for operations against the Soviet and later Russian Federation by Sweden’s air forces, the Saab JAS 39 Gripen is designed to operate from short runways, be serviced by a small ground crew and fly missions at costs lower than comparable NATO aircraft.

  • Sweden ☛ Sweden to sell Gripen E/F fighter aircraft to Ukraine

    Today, on Thursday 28 May, Ukraine announced its intention to purchase 20 Gripen E/F aircraft as a first step following the Letter of Intent signed by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 22 October 2025. In conjunction with the sale, Sweden will donate up to 16 JAS 39 Gripen C/D aircraft from the Swedish Armed Forces’ current fleet, together with advanced ammunition. To replace these donated aircraft, new modern Gripen E/F aircraft will be procured for the Swedish Air Force, in addition to those previously ordered.

  • RFA ☛ Military buildup triggers housing crisis in Guam, outpricing residents

    The couple is not alone. Housing costs are skyrocketing in Guam due to military buildup and a surge in military personnel in the U.S. territory. According to the U.S. Navy, the active duty population is expected to surge from 17,000 in 2024 to 24,000 in 2033, due to the relocation of marine units from Okinawa, Japan.

  • NDTV ☛ Austrian Man Jailed 15 Years For Plotting Attack On Taylor Swift Concert

    An Austrian court on Thursday sentenced a 21-year-old who admitted planning a foiled Islamist attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in 2024 to 15 years in prison.

  • New York Times ☛ Austrian [sic] Man Convicted of Planning Attack at Taylor Swift Concert in Vienna

    A 21-year-old man was convicted on Thursday by an Austrian jury of planning an attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna two years ago. He was also found guilty of several terrorism charges in a separate case for planning to participate in coordinated attacks in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in the name of the Islamic State.

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Trump order limiting voting by mail will stand for now, federal judge rules

    The executive order directs the postmaster general, who leads the Postal Service, to propose a rule that would block states from sending ballots through the mail except to voters on lists provided by the state to the Postal Service. Under the order, the proposed rule is due this week.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ US Army turns resupply drone into rocket launcher in new test

    During an experiment at Fort Rucker, Alabama, defense industry partners successfully attached a three-shot weapon system on a Tactical Resupply Vehicle, or TRV 150 drone, in an attempt to fire 70 millimeter rockets, according to an Tuesday Army release. The move is aimed at bringing more capabilities to lower echelons of command.

  • Greece ☛ Migrant smugglers caught driving horrendously overloaded cars

    A police statement Wednesday said one of the suspects was caught Tuesday behind the wheel of a car stuffed with 12 migrants – well over twice the normal passenger load – believed to have surreptitiously crossed the Turkish border. The second suspect was arrested with five migrants in his car in the Evros region.

  • RFERL ☛ In Sign Of Deepening Ties, Russia And Afghan Taliban Sign Military Deal

    Russian analyst Ruslan Suleymanov told The Insider, a Russia-focused, independent media outlet based in Latvia, that the deal is a political signal rather than a sign of imminent military support.

• Environment

  • Interesting Engineering ☛ More than 33,000 objects now crowd Earth’s orbit in debris crisis

    Engineers warn Earth’s orbit is becoming dangerously crowded with debris moving at 28,000 km/h.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Yle ☛ E-scooter rules vary widely across Finnish cities, report finds

      Parking remains one of the biggest challenges, according to Traficom, with cities increasingly introducing designated parking zones and stricter permit conditions.

      The survey covered 58 municipalities, with additional data gathered from public sources.

    • Medievalists.net ☛ The Viking Sea: Ships, Storms, and Adventure in Old Norse Poetry

      Ships stood at the centre of Viking society. The famous longships allowed Scandinavian warriors to strike quickly along the coasts and rivers of Europe, while broader merchant vessels carried goods such as furs, walrus ivory, timber, iron, and slaves across medieval trade networks.

      The technology behind these vessels impressed even the Vikings’ enemies. Longships were light, flexible, and fast, able to cross open seas while also navigating shallow rivers. Their clinker-built hulls, made with overlapping wooden planks, helped them withstand rough northern waters.

    • India Times ☛ [Cryptocurrency] companies without EU licences face prosecution, French regulator warns

      [Cryptocurrency] companies ​which have not secured licences by the EU's ​deadline will be put on blacklists and will face enforcement action, including prosecution, if they continue to seek EU customers without authorisation, Barbat-Layani said.

      Under MiCA, [cryptocurrency] companies have to apply for licences from regulators in individual EU countries, which they can use ‌as a "passport" to operate throughout the 27-nation bloc.

    • Hackaday ☛ Camping On Unconventional Watercraft

      Normally a jet ski wouldn’t be the ideal platform for a multi-day on-boat adventure because of their size, but [Matt] found perhaps the largest jet ski ever made and he got a deal on it since it had previously been wrecked. Once he repaired the hull damage, he cut a sheet of plywood in half and put a hinge in the middle so it can unfold over the top of the jet ski but fold it away when he’s traveling. With the basic concept in place he took it right out on the water to a campsite before finalizing the construction of the rest of the tent, including the installation of a door, a window, and some interior lighting.

    • Jim Grey ☛ Concrete wings on old Indiana highways

      Not long ago I shared this image of a bypassed section of US 41 near Schneider, Indiana. I pointed out the concrete “wings” on both edges of the former highway. I wondered aloud whether these were added at some time after the central portion of the concrete as a way of widening the highway. I also wondered why they were so narrow — at first glance, only about a foot wide. One foot isn’t much of a widening.

    • Maury ☛ Notes on optimizing battery life:

      Ok, so you have something with a battery, and you want it to run for a long time.

      I'll be using the classic CR2023 non-rechargeable lithium "coin cell" as an example, but everything here applies to other types of battery. (except the exact voltage and capacity numbers)

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Europe's energy problem isn't green power — it's storage

      But part of the problem lies with Europe's existing electricity grid. Many are more than 40 years old, and most are not designed to take up large amounts of green electricity and transport it to where it's needed. Grids in Germany, and across Europe, need to be modernized and connected to wind parks, solar farms and storage facilities.

      The European Commission has previously said the EU would need to invest around €580 billion ($675 billion) to improve its grids by 2030. But progress has so far been mixed, even in Germany. The federal government has been planning to build some 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) of power lines for years; today, just 20% is operational. However, the permitting process has recently been streamlined to speed up the process.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • Digital Camera World ☛ 4 years after building a pool in his garden, photographer captures award-winning image of frog embryo inside an egg using special probe lens

      Armed with a Canon camera and 2x macro probe lens, Terreros-Martin was able to partially submerge the lens into the water to capure the embyro with extreme close-up detail. Built-in lighting at the top of the pool helped olluminate the underwater scene, revealing intricate biological structures not visible to the naked eye.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • The Conversation ☛ The story of Pope Leo’s ‘landmark’ text on AI technology – by a member of its launch panel

    The Vatican has addressed technological questions before. My research includes the social teaching of popes since 1891, starting with Pope Leo XIII’s influential text Rerum Novarum (Of New Things), which addressed the impact of the industrial revolution on working people (and which this new text commemorates). A range of previous letters have addressed both the opportunities and dangers of technology.

  • Connected Places ☛ FR#164 – The Pope on Defederation

    Power should not pool at the top, not mainly because the people up there might abuse it (although the Pope certainly warns about that as well), but because pooling it strips everyone below of the responsibility they exist to exercise.

    What this current encyclical adds, is that it expands its concerns from the State to Digital platforms. About the digital world, Leo XIV writes:

    “Here, the highest level is not the State, but rather major economic and technological actors that exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life. This level, which monopolizes expertise, data and decision-making authority, involves companies and platforms that define conditions for access, rules of visibility, forms of interaction, and even economic opportunities.”

  • Dr Molly Tov ☛ in which i get dangerously close to Discourse Blogging re: "land acknowledgements"

    I got interested after finding an 1847 plat map that included my parents' farm, the one I grew up on. And then remembering that my mother has always claimed their farm originated as payment to some soldier for his service in the War of 1812. But the area wasn't even PLSS-surveyed until the 1820s. And then I remembered the first Treaty of Chicago wasn't signed until 1821. And then I was like "so when exactly did this poor bastard (FN1) get handed this land, and who was *actually* there before, if anyone?"

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ To reach your big goal, you need to sell where you're heading next

    "You need to sell Point C: the concrete, vivid destination you will take yourself, your team, and your company to over the next twelve to twenty-four months."

  • Allen Downey ☛ Sexual morality

    As we’ll see, answers to these questions have diverged in the last 50 years. A large majority answer that extramarital and teen sex are wrong, and that has barely changed (although opposition). At the same time, opposition to premarital sex and same-sex relations has declined substantially.

    In this article, we’ll look at these trends and decompose them into cohort and period effects. In the next article, we’ll look at the relationship between these responses and religion, both affiliation and attendance.

  • The Walrus ☛ Cory Doctorow on Why the Internet Feels So Broken

    Doctorow has become one of the sharpest critics of what he calls the “enshittification” of digital platforms—the process by which tech companies systematically degrade their products in pursuit of profit and control. But the discussion ranged far beyond Silicon Valley. Together, Hollett and Doctorow explored the failures of regulation and the growing sense that citizens are trapped inside systems designed to extract from them rather than serve them.

    Read Cory Doctorow’s keynote lecture here.

    The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    How did you come to the word enshittification?

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ FM: Russia makes 'false claims' about Baltics to distract from war crimes

      On Tuesday, Tsahkna reiterated in a statement that Russia's actions are "nothing new" and part of the country's "long-standing pattern of behavior," which includes "systematic disinformation and political pressure."

      "The purpose of such false claims is to divert attention away from Russia's own grave violations of international law, including its ongoing attacks against Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure. This is a deliberate attempt to obscure the real consequences of its war of aggression and shift the focus elsewhere," he continued.

    • Meduza ☛ Former RT France editor-in-chief joins French right-wing channel CNews. There, she repeats Russian propaganda talking points.

      Ksenia Fedorova, the former editor-in-chief of RT France, has joined the French right-wing conservative channel CNews, according to Politico and the Russian Service of RFI.

      RT France ceased broadcasting in January 2023. Fedorova said at the time that the closure resulted from the channel’s accounts being frozen. A press release on the RT France website said the channel could not continue operating after European sanctions were imposed on its “shareholder and parent company” — the Russian non-profit organization TV-Novosti, which encompasses RT.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Iran turns [Internet] back on, but old restrictions remain

    Rashidi is the director of the Miaan Group, a US-based organization that advocates for human rights, digital freedom, and social justice in Iran and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

    He points out that the [Internet] in Iran has been severely disrupted since the deadly crackdown on nationwide demonstrations in January. During the unrest, authorities significantly throttled [Internet] access to disrupt communication both within the country and with the outside world..

  • Kansas Reflector ☛ Kansas opinion writers penned a free speech legacy. Lawmakers have trashed their priceless example.

    You can understand the First Amendment in legal terms, justifying each nibble at the delicious constitutional cookie of justice. Lawmakers might try to justify their votes under such a framework. But the lawns and actions listed above conflict with the spirit and intent of free speech.

    They conflict with the spirit and intent of amazing Kansas opinion writers who paved the way for folks like myself.

  • Variety ☛ ABC Submits Broadcast Renewal Application to FCC 'Under Protest'

    The network argues in its license-renewal applications that the FCC order’s “true purpose and inescapable effect are to suppress speech — to ramp up toward possible license revocation and cause the Station and others to think twice before they say something the government might dislike.” As such, ABC says, the order violates the First Amendment.

  • Variety ☛ Cecilia Vega, Ousted From '60 Minutes,' Fears For Show's Future

    She also suggested she may have lost her job because she pushed back on directives from CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss and her team. CBS News personnel have said Weiss has strong opinions about Israel and other topics that are paramount in the current and recent news cycle.

  • Meduza ☛ Russian blogger hit with 300,000-ruble fine for slamming pro-censorship group as ‘shit on a stick’

    Moscow’s Lefortovsky Court partially ruled in Mizulina’s favor in May 2025 — in a suit she had filed over an interview Lebedev gave to journalist Yury Dud. The court found that their statements damaged Mizulina’s honor. The court also ordered Lebedev to pay 300,000 rubles in damages and Dud to pay 200,000 rubles. The Moscow City Court upheld the ruling in October.

    Lebedev’s interview with Dud was released on August 1, 2024. In it, Lebedev said he thought “very poorly” of Mizulina and that her work is “harmful to Russia.” He called the League of Safe Internet “a piece of shit on a stick.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Richard J Tofel ☛ Seven Valuable Lessons as an Online News Entrepreneur Reflects

    It’s rare that you encounter a serious inside account of the fate of an online news business, so I read Nate Silver’s recent post on the demise of FiveThirtyEight with great interest—and you should too. (If you do, you can skip the rant on Disney’s petty, indefensible destruction of the site’s archive, and start with the subhed on the site’s origins.) But whether you read Silver’s account or not, this week I want to draw from it seven significant lessons about our business.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • US FBI ☛ Cryptocurrency and AI Scams Bilk Americans of Billions — FBI

    The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report shows cyber-enabled crimes defrauded Americans of nearly $21 billion, with cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence-related complaints among the costliest.

    The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 1,008,597 total complaints, an increase from 859,532 in 2024. Phishing/spoofing, extortion, and investment schemes were the most frequently reported complaints. Americans over 60 reported approximately $7.7 billion in losses, up 37% from 2024.

  • Federal Bureau of Investigation ☛ Federal Bureau of Investigation Internet Crime Report 2025 [PDF]

    In 2025, the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) celebrated its 25th anniversary as the central hub for reporting cyber-enabled crime. This milestone signifies the FBI's enduring commitment to fighting the ever-evolving cyber threat. Our success in protecting individuals and organizations is driven by public participation and robust data analysis

    . For the past quarter-century, IC3 has been the primary connection between the FBI and the public for information related to cyber-enabled criminal activity. Since our founding, reporting to IC3 has surged. We received a few thousand complaints per month in our early days. We now average almost 3,000 complaints per day. IC3 produces annual reports (like the one you are reading) based on the information we receive, publishes public awareness campaigns, and provides industry alerts to the private sector. IC3 remains an essential resource for our law enforcement colleagues in combating cyber-enabled crime.

    In 2025, losses reported to IC3 continued to climb, surpassing the $20 billion mark. Investment-related fraud was once again the largest component of these losses, followed by business email compromises and tech support scams. The FBI continues to disrupt and deter malicious cyber actors -- and shift the cost from victims to our adversaries. One example was Operation Level Up, which countered crypto investment scams. This FBI-led initiative has reduced potential losses by more than $500 million since 2024.

  • [Old] Steve Krug ☛ Don’t Make Me Think | Steve Krug

    After years as a usability consultant helping my clients make their products easier to use, I knew that what I did was valuable.

    But I also knew that some of it wasn’t really very hard to do.

    I figured that if I could explain how I did it more people could do it, and the products we all use would become less frustrating.

    Much to my surprise, it’s ended up selling more than 700,000 copies in 15 languages, and has become most people’s introduction to User Experience (UX).

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • APNIC ☛ Centrality in the Internet's names

    The Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS) undertakes a vitally important role in today’s Internet. Originally conceived as a human-friendly way of specifying the location of the other end of an Internet transaction, it became the name of a service point during the Internet’s transition to a client/server architecture. A domain name still pointed to an IP address, but the strict one-to-one relationship began to weaken as changes were introduced to address IPv4 address pool depletion. The address space is now highly fragmented and chaotic, and the namespace provides the essential common referential framework that defines the Internet itself.

  • T-Mobile quietly makes significant store changes after layoffs

    Over the past few months, T-Mobile has been handing out pink slips to employees as it focuses on becoming a digital-first company, a change aimed at enhancing the customer experience. Amid this shift, the carrier has quietly made major store changes that impact customers and employees.

    T-Mobile first began shrinking its workforce in December when it laid off an unknown number of account executives and sales managers. It later conducted several rounds of layoffs in January, affecting employees in consumer and retail, end-user support, resource planning, product, sales, and business.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • The Walrus ☛ The Internet Has Become Too American to Trust

    You gotta hand it to him. That was a good offer. So, we flocked to Facebook. In doing so, we also fulfilled the second half of stage one: getting locked into the platform. There are lots of ways a platform can lock you in. Amazon sells us Prime and gets us to pay for a year’s worth of shipping in advance, so we’d be a fool to use some other service. Uber pissed away $31 billion worth of Saudi royal family money, losing $0.41 on every dollar for thirteen years, creating a lost decade for transit investment while cratering competing cabs, so it’s the only game in town. Google pays Apple over $20 billion a year not to make a competing search engine.

    But Facebook and other social media get to play lock-in on the easiest setting. Because we lock ourselves into social media. That’s thanks to something called the collective action problem. Which is how economists describe the fact that, even though you and your besties all hate Facebook, you can’t agree on when to leave or where to go next, and because you love your friends, leaving Facebook is a costly proposition. It has a high switching cost—another economist’s term, meaning “everything you have to give up when you switch from one service to another.” So long as you love your friends more than you hate Zuckerberg, you will stick around.