Leftovers

• Robert Birming ☛ How to kill a blog

  The only thing that matters is that you feel free in your blogging. As soon as you start limiting yourself, trying to trend, you've got one foot in the grave.

• Ned Batchelder ☛ Franklin’s parents grave

  I love that neither the original inscription nor the re-dedication mentions Ben Franklin by name. He wanted the focus to be on his parents, and the citizens of 1827 understood and kept their words in his style. He writes lovingly about his parents and their lifestyle, and keeps us thinking about them, not him.

• CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: The tedious power of storytelling (02 Jun 2026) must-we-pretend

  For Eno, art is "everything you don't have to do." You have to wear clothes to protect yourself from the elements, but you don't need to adorn those clothes. You need to speak to make yourself understood by the people around you, but you don't have to sing or write poetry or make up stories.

  This is a really critical point, and I think it can be further refined by this: "Art is intended to make other people feel something." This distinguishes "art" from "beauty." A sunset can be beautiful, but no one intends anything by it. An artist who takes a photo or paints a picture of a sunset does so in the hopes that it will make you feel something, but the sun and the atmosphere and the Earth's curvature and rotation don't hope anything, because they are inanimate.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-05-29 [Older] My unsung hero of science: William Adams, the Bombay bureaucrat whose vision of a solar future was dashed by colonial conservatism

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-05-28 [Older] Psychopathy: some experts now say it doesn’t exist – here’s why we may be looking at it all wrong

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-05-27 [Older] Keep calm and carry on: lessons from wasps on how societies survive power struggles

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-05-26 [Older] Beyond Anglo-Saxons, Celts and Vikings: DNA uncovers a dynamic history of migration to Britain

  • The Conversation ☛ 2026-05-26 [Older] From gait analysis to fingerprint theft, how worried should we be about the latest advances in biometric technology?

  • Avi Loeb ☛ The Smartest Investments in Our Future Are in Space

    I started my presentation by reminding the audience that two days ago a meteor explosion released 2% of the Hiroshima atomic bomb energy over their head. The dinosaurs did not bother to look up and they are not around anymore. Long term survival requires investments in space exploration.

• Career/Education

  • Mississippi Journalism and Education Group ☛ Mississippi College Is Now ‘Mississippi Christian University’

    The Mississippi Legislature chartered Mississippi College on Jan. 24, 1826. While the Methodist and Presbyterian churches had early involvement with the school, Thompson said the Mississippi Baptist Convention gained governance over the college about 175 years ago. It became the second Baptist college in the country.

  • Protesilaos Stavrou ☛ Re: On learning something new

    Before even learning something new, I question whether I even need that skill or piece of knowledge. This is because I do not have enough time to commit to everything I would otherwise be keen on exploring.

    For me, it is essential to be mindful of one’s tendency to go down rabbit holes. If you do not control your propensity to indulge your curiosity then you run the risk of not focusing on your duties and thus never experiencing fulfilment. I basically have infinite curiosity as well as the basic skills to become competent at virtually anything, but my resources are finite, so I have to optimise accordingly.

  • James G ☛ Creative spaces

    It was in that classroom that I learned the word “ergonomics,” which was written on the wall alongside other words important to technical design. I also learned a lesson about accessibility. The aforementioned woodworking teacher was colour-blind and saw the world in greyscale. I had known them for at least a year before I learned this. Every coloured pencil was a different shade of grey, the shades being sufficiently differentiable to have meaning.

• Hardware

  • Hackaday ☛ From Scrappy Pallet Wood To Fancy Tea Tray

    In the video it’s shown how the wood is planed to make it smooth and straight, before the joints are created and it is married to the poplar or aspen base plate. Of note is that absolutely no power tools or bulky things like router tables are used here, just basic hand tools that should make this kind of woodworking accessible to people even without that kitted-out woodworking shop.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Vox ☛ Ebola outbreak: Why the US doesn’t want American Ebola patients to return home

    Between cuts to American foreign aid in the region, the sheer aggressiveness of this strain of the virus, and conspiracy theories that threaten public health workers, many public health workers fear that this Ebola outbreak has become a perfect storm.

    To understand what’s going on — and why the US is trying to involve Kenya — Today, Explained co-host Noel King spoke to Sabrina Siddiqui, a national politics reporter for the Wall Street Journal who helped to break the story. They discussed the reactions from Kenyans and public health experts and what would happen if Kenya continues to rebuff the administration.

    Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. [...]

  • Vox ☛ Looksmaxxing is killing men’s sperm

    Lowered sperm count, shrunken testicles, and impaired fertility are known side effects of some kinds of testosterone supplementation. Doctors can help people manage or avoid these effects with the right dosage, but the rise of direct-to-consumer medicine — and gray and black market sources — mean more men are taking testosterone without close medical monitoring.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ The Gin and Tonic Is a Cocktail With a Storied History. Don't Overlook Scotland's Connection to the Classic

    The true story of the gin and tonic is less about a singular invention and more about the convergence of science, medicine, commerce and empire over several centuries. Scotland is not necessarily where the drink was “invented,” but Scottish physicians, merchants and distillers all contributed to the world that eventually produced it.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • Digital Camera World ☛ Camera firmware has become a joke – and photographers are paying the price

    But in 2026, firmware no longer feels like an occasional fix. It feels like part of the ownership experience – and frankly, it is bloody exhausting. Buy a new camera today and you are not just buying the product in the box; you are buying into a promise. This feature is coming later.

  • MacRumors ☛ Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac Will Soon Stop Letting You Edit Documents

    Microsoft has actually renewed the suite's certificate, but the fix can only be delivered through a software update. That means users of Microsoft 365 and Office 2021 are in the clear – they'll receive the update, so neither will be affected. However, Microsoft stopped offering support for Office 2019 on October 10, 2023, and the suite has received no updates since. As such, it won't be updated to version 16.83, which is the release that includes the renewed certificate.

    Microsoft says the problem can't be fixed by reinstalling Office 2019. Instead, it suggests affected users turn to the company's free Microsoft 365 web apps, take out a paid Microsoft 365 subscription, or make a one-time purchase of Office 2024.

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ Microsoft Killing Office 2019 for Mac

    This is gross and Microsoft should find a way to let these users continue to use the software they purchased.

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ It's Not Just About the Price

    Microsoft, Asus, Dell, HP, MSI, and Lenovo have all committed to building RTX Spark notebooks, but have been light on details. I think most of these will take on the likes of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. They’ll come with the same trade-offs as Apple silicon Macs: basically no upgradability, but great battery life, assuming Windows has its act together.

  • Howard Oakley ☛ BSD flags are incompatible with iCloud Drive

    Last week I reported that the Finder’s Locked file setting doesn’t work properly with iCloud Drive. As that’s one of a group of eight BSD flags supported in APFS, this article examines how iCloud Drive in macOS 26.5 handles those flags, and whether any of them are compatible. Its TL; DR is don’t let files with BSD flags near iCloud Drive, as they don’t work and will only upset it.

  • Medium ☛ I Found a Bug in Apple’s fsck_hfs — Here’s How I Tracked It Down

    TL;DR: fsck_hfs in macOS Sequoia (version hfs-683.x) has a cache exhaustion bug that reports false corruption on large HFS+ volumes. On machines with 8 GB RAM, volumes of 24 TB or larger trigger "Couldn't read node" errors during the extended attributes check. Your data is fine — the bug is in the tool, not the filesystem. Machines with 16 GB+ RAM are unaffected, as are older macOS versions

  • Michael Tsai ☛ Bricking Microsoft Office 2019

    But it’s actually worse than that because even subscribing to Office 365 doesn’t fix the problem. You need a newer version of Office, which necessitates a newer version of macOS, which may necessitate getting a new Mac—all to fix what seems like an artificial problem.

  • TidBITS ☛ Office 2019 for Mac Goes Read-Only on 13 July 2026 - TidBITS

    If you are still using Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac, it will stop working fully on 13 July 2026. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook will enter “reduced functionality mode”—a euphemism meaning you can view and print documents but cannot edit, save, or create new ones. Microsoft’s documentation doesn’t clarify what this means for Outlook users.

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

    • RTL ☛ Authorities raise alarm: '20 minutes of terror': AI boosts US voice impersonation scams

      US authorities and consumer advocates are increasingly warning of scams built around impersonating family members.

      The FBI said in April that Americans lost over $893 million last year to AI-enabled hoaxes, including voice cloning scams.

    • Futurism ☛ Meta's AI Support Bot Is Giving Hackers Access to Other People's Instagram Accounts Just by Asking

      The ruse is shockingly simple: after matching the account owner’s geographic region using a VPN, the hackers asked the support chatbot to change the email address associated with the profile, thereby allowing them to successfully complete two-factor authentication. Worse yet, the vulnerability has been around for several months already, according to Telegram group messages reviewed by 404 Media.

    • The Atlantic ☛ AI Has Ruined the Job Market

      People had once hoped that Silicon Valley might not only smooth out the logistics of getting a job but also make the process fairer. Unbiased tools would replace alma-mater networks. Digital portals would accept applications from anyone, anywhere. Workers would get free access to templates, practice exams, and advice. “Technology in general tends to improve the efficiency of job matching,” Mitchell Hoffman, a labor economist at UC Santa Barbara, told me. But AI in particular seems to destroy it. Employers and employees are locked in an “arms race, where it’s AI-on-AI crime,” Kathleen Creel, a philosopher and computer scientist at Northeastern University, told me.

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Bernie Sanders pushes for 50% public ownership of American AI companies — proposes AI sovereign wealth fund that would hold direct ownership stakes in largest AI firms

      U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has announced that he will introduce a bill that would force the largest American AI firms to hand over half of their stock to the public. The senator proposes a 50% tax on the stock of these firms, which, it seems, will be held by the public through a sovereign wealth fund. It would also mean that the government would have a direct ownership stake in these companies, allowing the people to have a say in how these companies would run.

    • 404 Media ☛ AI Grifters Are Making Anti-Data Center Slop With AI

      People hate data centers. Local and state communities around the country are passing moratoriums on their construction. Data centers are noisy and their neighbors have pressing concerns about water use, increased electricity bills, and the quality of the jobs developers are promising to create. Some areas, like Ypsilanti Township where the University of Michigan is planning a large data center, are even worried about becoming targets in future wars. These anxieties are now the focus of AI spam farms on Facebook.

      This is the same algorithmically boosted “shrimp Jesus” style AI spam scheme we’ve reported on before. There are people, some of them in foreign countries, who churn out hundreds of AI-generated images across multiple pages to engage users and turn a profit on ads and links. It’s impossible to know who, exactly, is putting up all these state-themed anti-AI pages. I reached out to several of the pages through Facebook Messenger but got no response. Many of the pages provide the same contact email but I didn’t receive a response when I contacted it.

    • 404 Media ☛ Microsoft Wants to 'Make People Addicted' to its New AI Assistant, Internal Documents Reveal

      Planning documents for "Scout" say the plan is to "make people addicted" to the tool before adding new features.

    • PC World ☛ DuckDuckGo's booming anti-AI search just got a Chrome extension

      DuckDuckGo is continuing to build on its AI-free search experience by launching new extensions for Chrome and Firefox. These extensions make it easier to set the company’s AI-free search page to be the default search option in both browsers, reports TechCrunch.

    • Robert Reich ☛ Office Hours: How Do We Deal With the Inevitable Loss of Good Jobs to AI?

      Not only will AI destroy jobs, but it will further reduce the bargaining leverage workers now have — which means that to stay employed (or land a job) they’ll have to settle for lower wages.

      Put this together with (as I pointed out Sunday) languishing returns to labor and soaring returns to capital even before the AI tsunami hits, and AI is sure to shift the balance of economic power further from labor to capital — making wages an even less reliable mechanism for distributing prosperity. We’re heading for a major shakeup of our entire political economic system — and it’s coming soon.

      So what should be done?

    • Raymond Camden ☛ AI versus a Grue

      Before I could even begin trying to test AI's ability to play a 50 year old game (almost 50, Zork 1 launched in 1977), I first needed to find a JavaScript implementation. This turned out to be a bit tricky.

    • David ☛ the solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

      Except for the SaaS, almost none of this is useful and I don't want to maintain any of it. I accidentally run a news outlet which is surely a liability. Sure, it has helped me "learn AI tooling" and I use many of these tools, but I didn't need them. I can't afford to maintain any of them, not in terms of time, commitment, belief, attention or willingness to spend on tokens.

      I didn't mean to build most of these things. Usually the Claude session started with something like "write a quick script for X", and one hour later the result is not a quick script for X, nor in the usual case is my problem solved, whatever the original itch happened to be.

    • David Rosenthal ☛ AI's PR Problem

      On average, for more than the students' entire lives, stock-owners like Schmidt and (to a much lesser extent) I have stolen every last drop of the productivity increase of US workers at every age and education level. (See the actual numbers in the appendix)

      Now, the perpetrators of this theft are telling their victims, the students and the public at large, that whether they like it or not they will be subjected to AI because that will make the perpetrators even richer. The victims have been informed that this new technology will: [...]

    • Ava ☛ be a good cook when you use AI to edit your writing

      Whenever someone talks about how they let AI improve their writing, I realize we are still taking the wrong things away from what good writing supposedly is.

    • Ed Zitron ☛ AI Doesn't Have ROI

      That’s because, as I’ve said before, nobody can actually measure the ROI of AI, or even create a standard measurement of the cost of a task thanks to the inevitable hallucination-prone nature of LLMs and the ever-growing list of different harnesses and “agentic” (sigh) interfaces. Every different prompt and project and interaction can go wrong in a way that is hard to predict or plan for other than having an eternal vigilance that the supposed “intelligence” doesn’t do something catastrophically stupid, because LLMs have no thoughts, consciousness or ability to learn outside of pre and post-training.

      If you can’t measure how good something is, how much it might cost, or what your return on investment might be, it’s fair to ask why you’re even paying for it in the first place.

    • Canion dot Blog ☛ The AI Hype Bubble

      When the AI hype bubble bursts, a lot of people (myself included via my superannuation fund) are going to get burnt.

      I find using an LLM useful at the margins; I’m glad I’m not working in a company or industry that has a belief it is the great messiah - only to find out the costs are blowing out…

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Log into any Instagram by asking Meta’s AI nicely

      It’s like Hollywood got [cracking] right the first time: (mash keyboard) “I’m in!”

      This hole came to public attention a few days ago, when a group who claimed to be [crackers] from Iran posted how-to videos on Telegram. But it looks like it’s been open for weeks, maybe months.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Prompt-inject ChatGPT with any web page

      You can make ChatGPT display a link, you can make it show a QR code, or even just make it hit a tracking pixel that’ll show you the user’s IP address, the time, and that they’re using ChatGPT.

    • BoingBoing ☛ Harvard students cheer graduation speaker encouraging them to mercilessly destroy AI

      The speech wasn't mere invective: he talked of how dependence on LLMs leads to deskilling and cognitive surrender.

      "I know someone sitting out here right now who is saying, 'What about the use of AI to pioneer breakthroughs in medicine and physics?'… If you're using it for that purpose, you're not the problem. "I'm talking about the accumulation of cognitive debt due to excessive use of large language models… This is why you should be scared of AI.

  • Social Control Media

    • The Independent UK ☛ Girls with additional needs at ‘significant risk’ from social media algorithms, report shows

      Research from online safety charity Internet Matters, seen exclusively by The Independent, shows 84 per cent of girls have encountered harm online, compared to 75 per cent of their male counterparts. Children with AN are overall significantly more likely to have experienced harm online (79 per cent) than those without (63 per cent), the report found.

    • BIA Net ☛ Court bans X account of Turkey's oldest newspaper

      The Elazığ 2nd Penal Judgeship of Peace issued the ruling based on Article 8/A of the Internet Law. This article allows for content blocks on grounds of national security, public order, crime prevention, protection of public health, or protecting the right to life and property.

      İFÖD did not provide details about the exact reason for the blocking order.

    • Michael Foster ☛ Connected community spaces

      The social web isn't growing. The people building it mostly aren’t working together. And almost no one outside the space is paying attention.

      In trying to build a better Twitter and replicate other social media formats, we've ended up stuck with a nerdy, hard-to-use decentralised network, Mastodon and the Fediverse, and a left-leaning, centralised-decentralised ecosystem, Bluesky and the Atmosphere. Populated by two camps of solo developers, who regularly snipe at one another. Neither is growing, and both have governance problems. As Laurens Hof puts it: [...]

    • Terence Eden ☛ Using FourSquare’s API to post location checkins to social media

      Of course, Swarm doesn't cross-post to social media because walled-gardens are the most profitable. This is my attempt to open it back up again.

    • Jacky Alciné ☛ A realignment of things

      Last night, I deleted my Mastodon account of at least ~5 years from https://todon.eu. It was where I went after PlayVicious, run by https://roiskinda.cool shut down. Normally, I feel things - a decoupling, a sense of loss - when deleting accounts like this. But I felt more deleting my Microsoft account than deleting this one. I have a backup and plan on selectively adding folks into https://fed.brid.gy/ so I can still see posts from my account with https://blackskyweb.xyz/ but it's going to be a small number.

      There's a bunch of reasons why I pulled the plug: [...]

    • Rolling Stone ☛ Trump's Social Media Meltdowns Are Getting Worse

      The president is retreating into Truth Social — and his D.C. building projects — as the cost-of-living crisis worsens amid the Iran war

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • Federal News Network ☛ The new cyber deterrent isn’t a weapon. It’s cyber recovery.

      AI-enabled attacks launched through space-based systems or software-driven vectors defy traditional attribution and outpace conventional response. The United States cannot fight its way out of this threat. Victory in modern agentic warfare will not be defined by how hard we strike back, but by how quickly and reliably the mission recovers. Immutable backups and data recovery are now the new frontline.

      Most kinetic attacks are preceded by operations in the cyber domain. Winning, or denying adversarial success, in that domain will provide a decisive advantage in future military campaigns. When adversaries are forced to question whether they can succeed in the cyber domain, it deters them from pursuing any follow-on kinetic strike. For this reason, cyber recovery must be a core component of the Cyber Golden Dome effort.

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Threat Actors Reportedly [Exploit] CVE-2026-41089 Flaw

      The Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB) issued a warning on Friday, stating that threat actors have begun exploiting the critical Windows Netlogon vulnerability in real-world attacks. The agency urged organizations to deploy available security updates immediately to reduce the risk of compromise.

• Privatisation/Privateering

  • Stephen Hackett ☛ Extensive Damage at LC-36

    How long it will take to rebuild is anyone’s guess, but even with a billionaire owner, Blue Origin is going to need some time. The before and after photos are pretty rough.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • The Record ☛ Red Hat removes tainted packages after software pipeline compromise

    Red Hat pulled dozens of packages from its software distribution pipeline on Monday after attackers used a compromised GitHub account to distribute credential-stealing malware to developers.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EFF ☛ We're Fighting Mass Surveillance Tech—and Winning

      But when the police spy-tech company Flock Safety went after Will's website with legal threats citing trademark law, he saw it for what it was: an attempt to silence critics and dim the light on mass surveillance.

    • Techdirt ☛ One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: CA’s AB 1856 Exempts Open Source But Expands Age-Gating

      Last year, California passed AB 1043, which requires all operating systems and app stores to create age-bracketing systems that segment users based on their ages. As we’ve written, that regime is a recipe for censorship: it creates unnecessary and unconstitutional barriers to accessing lawful online speech, threatens our right to anonymity, and pressures online services to collect troves of valuable and sensitive user data. On top of that, A.B. 1043’s wide-sweeping compliance burdens impose disproportionate harms on the open-source ecosystem that underpins much of the modern web.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ IRS data platform has problems with access controls, watchdog says

      According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the IRS hasn’t adequately monitored privileged accounts to the cloud-based system. Launched in April 2022, the platform — which the IRS spent roughly $178.4 million on from fiscal 2023 through fiscal 2025 — securely stores taxpayer account, case and operational data.

      TIGTA discovered problems with how the tax agency employs the Privileged User Management Access System. IRS requires the use of PUMAS, which provides audit trails intended to ensure that top levels of security are followed for “all administrative actions that require elevated privileges.”

    • US Treasury Inspector General ☛ The IRS Needs to Address Access Control Deficiencies for the Enterprise Data Platform [PDF]

      As of December 2025, there are 46 datasets ingested onto the platform. The team ingested 37 (63 percent) of the 59 datasets from the roadmap onto the platform and 9 additional datasets that were not documented in the roadmap. The platform team expects to ingest the remaining 22 (37 percent) datasets by the end of FY 2026. While the revisions to the platform roadmap were necessary to meet business needs, they could have unintended consequences that could delay project completion.

      Integration issues impact the IRS’s ability to manage user access. For example, the IRS is unable to use the Privileged User Management Access System to manage the platform’s privileged accounts. A privileged account means that users have elevated access and can perform actions beyond those of a standard user, e.g., modify system settings, install software, etc. The platform has 14 approved privileged user accounts, but none are managed by the Privileged User Management Access System as required by the IRS’s policy.

      In addition, the IRS was unable to provide us with any evidence that these monitoring activities occurred for privileged user accounts. We identified one privileged user account without approved access that logged into the platform. This unauthorized login occurred because of an administrative error in the manual approval process.

    • Scoop News Group ☛ FBI looks to beef up its biometric matching capabilities

      The FBI is asking providers of biometric matching algorithms to participate in market research as the bureau looks to expand the range and quality of its identification and investigative processes, per documents published Friday.

      Prospective partners on the project will need to be able to handle an average monthly search volume of 3,500 iris scans, 4,800 facial images and millions of fingerprint records to meet the FBI’s requirements.

    • 404 Media ☛ Here is the Contract for Palantir’s Super API for the IRS

      The API would make IRS data available to any app the agency wishes. The Criminal Investigation arm of the IRS is also modernizing its own systems.

    • Wired ☛ Palantir Contracts Have Become ‘An Unacceptable Point of Weakness,’ UK Politicians Warn

      In a report published Tuesday, the 11 members of Parliament’s Science, Innovation, and Technology Committee warned that the country’s ballooning reliance on Palantir’s technology “represents an unacceptable point of weakness” that could hand the company overwhelming bargaining power in future negotiations.

    • Don Marti ☛ The advertising cartel coming to your web browser

      When Meta, Google and Apple agree on a “privacy” feature, watch out.

      The three companies (along with Mozilla, which is on one of their “ad features in the browser” kicks again) are drawing up a built-in advertising measurement system, called Attribution Level 1, as a standard feature of web browsers. The system is intended to measure the effectiveness of advertising by enabling advertisers to correlate “impressions,” the occasions on which someone saw an ad, with “conversions,” when people bought something.

    • Kevin Wammer ☛ Do I want a smartwatch/fitness tracker?

      But as I described above, my usage is quite particular. I won't wear the watch or tracker 24/7 like most are meant to be worn. Instead, I will only wear it during my gym or cardio sessions (which are currently runs, but I still hate running; might be football in the future).

      Here, I mostly care about timers, music control, notifications in case someone calls me while I'm at the gym, and, if possible, some stats like rep counting (is that even possible?) and your typical cardio stats, like how many kilometers I ran. I might potentially also wear it for walks to track my location, because I think I may like the idea of having maps of all my hikes. Not that I go hiking often. Or at all. But in theory, I like the idea!2

  • Confidentiality

    • PC World ☛ WhatsApp lied about encryption? It matters less than you think

      But here’s my hot take: No one should ever treat encrypted apps as foolproof. And so by extension, this claim doesn’t really matter.

    • Bruce Schneier ☛ The Intersection of Encryption and AI

      “Recently, I talked to a former NSA employee at a conference. He told me that back in the 1990s, he had a copy of my book Applied Cryptography by his desk, as did many other cryptographers working at Ft. Meade. People were allowed to refer to it, but they were not allowed to cite it.

      “The 1990s were an important decade for cryptography. This was before the internet went mass market, when cryptography was just emerging from a niche academic discipline to a mainstream engineering one. There wasn’t much that programmers could read. The NSA used my book for the same reason it became a bestseller: because it collected all the academic cryptography of the time in one place and made it understandable to people who weren’t mathematicians. They feared it for exactly the same reason.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Local SE ☛ Public Health Agency of Sweden tells parents to put away their phones

    Sweden's government tasked the public health agency last autumn to compile research on how parental screen use affects children. Now the results are in and the recommendations are clear: parents should stay off their phones around their kids.

  • Eesti Rahvusringhääling ☛ Expert: Russia attacking civilians, major cities to project success

    At the same time, since civilians are the target, these strikes constitute a war crime, Saks told ERR.

  • Mint Press News ☛ NDAA: New U.S. Bill Will Fuse Israel and U.S. Militaries Into One

    Section 224 of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) proposes to join the two forces together at the hip, laying the groundwork for extensive cooperation into “seemingly every manner of U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation,” according to the Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

    [...]

    It would also make the relationship far less transparent, as aid to Israel currently requires an annual public debate and vote. However, by moving it away from the political realm into that of defense acquisition, oversight and accountability mechanisms will be removed, and the public will have little right to know the details going forward.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Marine Harriers will make a final public flight before retirement

    Marine Attack Squadron 223 will deliver its remaining Harriers to aircraft museums and storage facilities over the next several months, and that may involve further flights, Corps officials said. The squadron is scheduled to officially deactivate in September.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • The Age AU ☛ 2026-06-01 [Older] Svitolina beams as Ukraine locks in semi-final appearance

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-31 [Older] Ukraine: IAEA seeks access to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after reported drone strike

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-05-28 [Older] Ukraine’s parliament greenlights 90 billion Euro EU loan

    • The Local SE ☛ 2026-05-28 [Older] 'Historic decision': Sweden to send Jas Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-05-26 [Older] Denmark wants Ukraine in EU despite Merz’s proposal

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-26 [Older] Putin offers debt relief to new recruits for Ukraine war

    • The Local SE ☛ 2026-05-26 [Older] Sweden opens new residence permit paths for Ukrainians

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-06-01 [Older] France intercepts Russian-linked oil tanker in Atlantic

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2026-05-31 [Older] Russia’s War Machine Is Creaking

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-30 [Older] Russia recalls Armenia ambassador over EU ties

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-05-29 [Older] NATO condemns Russian recklessness after Romania drone

    • Copenhagen Post ☛ 2026-05-29 [Older] Mette Frederiksen wants to increase pressure on Russia after drone in Romania

    • Counter Punch ☛ 2026-05-29 [Older] Gen. Strangelove or: How I Learned that DC Never Changes and Almost No One Understands Russia’s War in Ukraine

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-29 [Older] Romania: Russian drone strikes Galati apartment building

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-28 [Older] Ukraine: EU's Kallas warns against Russian mediator 'trap'

    • HRW ☛ 2026-05-28 [Older] Russia: LGBT Rights Groups Further Criminalized

    • Truthdig ☛ 2026-05-28 [Older] US, Russia Test ICBMs as Nuclear Talks End in Deadlock

    • NL Times ☛ 2026-05-26 [Older] Netherlands summons Russian ambassador after renewed strikes on Kyiv

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2026-05-26 [Older] Ukraine: EU, Germany summon Russian envoys after Moscow tells diplomats to leave Kyiv

    • HRW ☛ 2026-05-26 [Older] Ukraine: Russia Illegally Seizing Property in Occupied Areas

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Washington Spectator ☛ Government by Slush Fund

    Blanche has not published a final commission charter. He has not identified the commissioners. He has not issued binding eligibility rules, only rough guidelines that the commission is free to “weigh” under the “totality of the circumstances.” He has not released procedures for filing claims, reviewing applications, calculating awards, approving disbursements, or reporting recipients. But the deeper problem is not simply lack of procedure. There is also no meaningful accountability mechanism for awards once made: no requirement for public reporting of recipients, no independent review of decisions, and no clear process for Congress or the public to audit how the money is ultimately distributed.

  • The Daily Beast ☛ Melania Named in Bombshell New Epstein Claims

    A former associate of Melania Trump has sensationally claimed the first lady was an “escort” for Jeffrey Epstein and met the president through the notorious sex offender.

• Environment

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Climate Change Is Driving a Tick Boom

    The theories are right about one thing: Ticks are getting worse. Some of the same ecological changes fueling Maine’s winter tick boom are also making tick encounters more common in broad swaths of the U.S. The arachnids are showing up earlier in the year, expanding into new terrain, and biting people more often than they used to. But the force driving those shifts is not a clandestine bioweapons program, a vaccine plot, or Bill Gates—it’s climate change.

    Richard Ostfeld, an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, said a warming world is “bringing ticks out earlier in the year” in states like New York, where he lives. “It used to be we were pretty safe in the month of May,” he said. “Now, not so much.”

  • Western Water ☛ Arizona expands fish advisories for “forever chemicals”

    The change follows recent testing that found elevated levels of PFOS in fish tissue at certain locations around the state. State officials said the updated advisories will provide anglers with clearer guidance about how often fish from specific waters should be eaten.

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ The infinite tax

    Here’s the situation. I’ll use Sweden as the example just to get numbers but similar applies to all lands and realms.

    Our plan was to go from 21 Mt CO2e in 2010, through 6.3 Mt CO2e in 2030, down to zero, and then into net negative.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • International Business Times ☛ 'Brace for New Shocks in June' as World Oil Supplies Near a Point of No Return, Analysts Warn

      Pape noted that March estimates of the oil inventory countdown are now materialising, and warned that as more market participants simultaneously recognise the scale of the crisis, it will 'only add to Iran's growing leverage.' His warning did not emerge from a vacuum. It is backed by a convergence of data from the world's largest investment banks, all of which point to the same conclusion: the global oil buffer is disappearing faster than at any point in recorded history.

• Finance

  • TruthOut ☛ 2026-05-28 [Older] Oregon Employers With Most SNAP Recipients Included Safeway, Walmart, and Amazon

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Semafor Inc ☛ Norway, citing ‘crazy’ world, to consider joining EU

    Tariff wars with Washington and NATO’s growing divisions are making membership attractive, Espen Barth Eide told the Financial Times.

  • The Register UK ☛ 'Dumbass' criminal breaks the 'first rule of ransomware club'

    While cybercrime is technically illegal in Russia and other CIS countries, their governments often provide safe harbor for extortionists and other financially motivated crims - especially if they also happen to work day jobs as state-sponsored hackers - and local police look the other way unless the gangs infect any in-country organizations.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Stop Your Chirping!

    We used to be a serious country. Not anymore.

  • Ken Klippenstein ☛ Let Them Drive Less

    “Security guards have become an integral part of America, and the butt of every joke,” a retired military officer working in corporate security tells me. “But this new era of ‘executive protection’? It’s completely different. From bodyguards to intelligence agents, corporate America is acting as if they are preventing a future storming of the Bastille.”

    Energy companies have not traditionally been the biggest spenders on corporate security. That’s until the soaring gas prices caused by the Iran war reshuffled the threat picture. Now, “high net worth individual” bodyguards are in high demand — former special operators and SEALs — for the C-suite types fearing public backlash.

    In April, Chevron executive Andy Walz told CBS that ordinary people worried about gas prices “should try to drive less; they should try to conserve energy.”

    A commenter under a clip of the interview on YouTube put it well: “Drive halfway to work. Walk the rest of the way. Brilliant!”

  • David Oks ☛ Why China got rich, and India didn't - David Oks

    But India never underwent that transformation. Its traditional social order survived independence more or less intact; and the Indian state never managed to develop its people’s human capital as China had. When India finally opened its economy to the world in 1991, its people were simply not prepared for industrial modernity in the way that China’s were. China invested in its people; India did not.

  • Nick Heer ☛ Bill Gates’s Carefully Manicured Image Is Cracking

    Gates pays people to obsess over his public perception for him — to choose his clothes, to work with Netflix on documentary-style vehicles for him, and to massage his blog and social media accounts. There is something truly bizarre about having a team edit together a video of a rich businessman going for pizza in an attempt to make him relatable and likeable, and then — presumably — tracking the performance of that Instagram post.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • BIA Net ☛ Turkey's internet authority censors reports exposing visa outsourcing monopoly

    The investigation, coordinated by Lighthouse Reports with the participation of 14 media organizations from 12 countries, revealed that VFS Global, a leading mediation company, often offers applicants non-compulsory additional services, but these services are effectively operated as an integral part of the application.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Military Court Jails Altai Activist 5 Years for ‘Inciting Terrorism’

    The following month, Arna told reporters in court that authorities pressed charges against her for sharing videos set to the songs “Varshavyanka” and “The Internationale” on her Telegram channel. Neither song is banned in Russia.

  • Meduza ☛ Belarus searches homes of students at ‘extremist’-branded university, threatens reprisals if they refuse to drop out

    Viasna said that while authorities would formally need to prove a connection to the EHU to bring charges, confessions obtained under torture could still be sufficient under current conditions. The group urged teachers, students, and anyone else with ties to the EHU not to return to Belarus and not to engage with university’s social media accounts.

  • RFA ☛ Exclusive: Tiananmen victims’ families banned from visiting graves on anniversary

    Days before the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, several relatives of victims of the crackdown learned they would be forbidden this year from visiting their graves, they told Radio Free Asia.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Scott Pelley fired from '60 Minutes' after blasting CBS News bosses

    Scott Pelley, long a face of “60 Minutes,” was abruptly fired after accusing CBS News chief Bari Weiss of “murdering” the program and challenging leadership over recent high-profile firings.

    His ouster caps a week of upheaval that saw executive producer Tanya Simon and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega dismissed, leaving “60 Minutes” scrambling to rebuild its correspondent ranks.

  • Citizen Lab ☛ Chilling Effects of Trump’s War on Free Speech Extend Far Beyond Campus Walls - And That’s the Point

    Citizen Lab senior research fellow Jon Penney and co-author Bruce Schneier wrote an op-ed in The Conversation arguing that despite younger Americans’ overwhelmingly soured view of Donald Trump’s second presidency, they are not protesting for a simple reason: They are afraid.

  • The Conversation ☛ Chilling effects of Trump’s war on free speech extend far beyond campus walls – and that’s the point

    Reports cite a range of complicated factors for the restraint, from apathy to technology-induced incapacity. But as public policy and law and social science experts, we believe students aren’t protesting for a very simple reason: They are afraid. They are self-censoring and disengaging from campaign activism to avoid punitive measures.

    In law and social science, we call this impact a chilling effect – the behavioral tendency for people in face of a threat to self-censor and restrain their activities for self-protection.

    It’s increasingly clear to us that these impacts are not incidental or ancillary to Trump administration policy. Rather, the chilling effects are the point. This is the closest thing to a consistent governing strategy in Trump’s second term.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ In Turkey, Criticizing a Corporation Can Land You in Jail

    Turkish labor leader Mehmet Türkmen was jailed for spreading “disinformation” after he criticized a business where a worker lost both arms in an accident. It’s part of a wider crackdown designed to suppress trade unions that speak up for workers.

  • Robert Reich ☛ Who Murdered "60 Minutes"?

    I mean, it’s the most successful television news broadcast in U.S. history. It has remained the #1 news program for 50 straight years and consistently ranks among the top 10 of all Nielsen-rated television programs.

    And it pulls in a fortune for CBS. “60 Minutes” is one of the most profitable programs in all of television, generating tens of millions in annual profit for CBS. In one recent year, its advertising revenues were $67.5 million. The network wholly owns the franchise, which makes it a gold mine. It’s the most lucrative and prestigious journalism operation on the network.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • [Old] RFA ☛ INTERVIEW: Photographer covered Tiananmen protests just weeks into new job

    RFA: What drew you to Tiananmen Square during the student democracy demonstrations in 1989? What was your initial impression of the atmosphere and the people involved?

    Henriette: I was a photographer for Agence France-Presse at the time, so it was just my job that brought me to Tiananmen Square. My first impression was disbelief at what was happening before my eyes.

  • Washingon-Baltimore News Guild ☛ The Washington-Baltimore News Guild to arbitrate wrongful termination of Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah - Washington-Baltimore News Guild

    “I spent eleven years at The Washington Post doing exactly what a columnist is supposed to do: speaking truth, sparking debate, and giving voice to perspectives that too often go unheard,” said Attiah. “I was fired not for misconduct, but for doing my job. I am grateful to the Guild for standing with me, and I look forward to having the truth prevail in arbitration.”

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • teleSUR ☛ Kenyan Women Demand National Emergency Over Femicide Crisis

    Organized by the End Femicide movement alongside prominent Human Rights defenders and child protection groups, the mobilization sought to address the severe crisis of gender-based violence and pay tribute to victims of extreme violence.

  • Techdirt ☛ Administration ‘Aliens’ Website Proudly Announces ICE Has Arrested Over 700 US Citizens

    If you choose to visit the site, you’ll be greeted by a mid-budget, somewhat-glitchy, factually-fluid, one-sided take on humanity that reduces anyone this administration wants gone to less than human. The metaphors make it literal: this administration doesn’t think (most) immigrants are human beings. At this site, they’re portrayed as invaders from another world. It’s horrific, gross, and stupid in equal measures.

  • JURIST ☛ Democrats appeal decision to leave Trump's mail-in voting order in place

    The decision not to block the EO, delivered last week by Trump-appointed US District Judge Carl Nichols, declined to grant the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction, a form of relief that would have temporarily paused the effects of the EO while the case continued. As neither USPS, DHS, nor SSA had taken steps to implement the EO yet, Nichols denied the request for relief on the grounds of ripeness and standing, leaving the effects of the order in place.

  • Sightline Media Group ☛ National Guard’s DC deployment has had no ‘measurable effect’ on violent crime: Report

    The researchers described the deployment as “an expensive tool” used in “the wrong places for the wrong types of crime.” They cited the $607 average daily cost per Guard member in the nation’s capital, compared with $384 in pay for Metropolitan Police Department officers.

  • Robert Birming ☛ The luxury of normal

    Back home, I never have to think about those things. But I really should. Fresh water from a tap, electricity 24/7, and stable Wi-Fi almost anywhere. All of this is far from standard in many parts of the world.

    Not only that, we also have free speech, good healthcare, and decent working conditions. And then there are the things we have the privilege of not having, like war and starvation.

  • The Guardian UK ☛ ‘My 15-year-old relative was killed for refusing to marry her cousin. My family celebrated by dancing in the street’

    The men of my tribe [extended family] threw my relative Kawthar Bashar al-Husayjawi, 15, into a pit and put a little dirt over her body. They had killed her hours earlier with 10 bullets, and split her small head with an axe. My family then joined others in coming on to the streets to dance and celebrate her death.

    Kawthar lived in al-Nahrawan, a district in the south-east of Baghdad. She had been taken out of school and at age 13 forced to marry an alcoholic years older than her.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • India Times ☛ Google, Telstra partner on fibre and subsea networks in Australia

    Google and Australia's Telstra announced a network-sharing deal on Tuesday under which Google will lease capacity on Telstra's new fibre network ‌while ⁠gaining access ⁠to Google-backed undersea cables linking Australia with the United States, Japan and Pacific islands.

    Here are some details: [...]

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Trademarks

    • IP Kat ☛ 2026-05-25 [Older] 'Touch your boobs' not contrary to accepted principles of morality

    • IP Kat ☛ 2026-05-31 [Older] When a strap is not enough: General Court upholds invalidity of Crocs' iconic clog design

  • Copyrights

    • Digital Music News ☛ Copyright Office Top Brass to Address AIMP Publishing Summit

      Last year, she was fired by the Trump administration after her office issued a lengthy report that was critical of arguments that copyrighted material used to train artificial intelligence could be considered fair use under the U.S. Copyright Act. Perlmutter sued to dispute the legality of the dismissal, which resulted in a divided three-judge panel ruling in September that she was entitled to continue to serve in her role as register of copyrights.

      Chapuis, who was appointed General Counsel and Associate Register of Copyrights in late 2025, oversees a wide range of regulatory, litigation, and policy matters for the Office. She has played a leading role in the Office’s artificial intelligence initiative, including the development of the Office’s multi-part report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, while also overseeing major litigation matters and the Copyright Claims Board.

      Together Perlmutter and Chapuis will offer insight into the Copyright Office’s ongoing work and perspective at a time of significant change across the music, technology, and copyright sectors. They will also reflect on some of the broader questions and challenges currently shaping the future of rights management.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Can the Reintroduced Protect Working Musicians Act Pass?

      ARA is proud to have worked closely with A2IM and music community peers to help launch this landmark legislation that would grant independent musicians and labels the ability to collectively negotiate fair licensing deals with large digital streaming platforms and artificial intelligence companies. The PWMA sends a clear message to artists that their voices should be heard and they have the power to change an untenable business model.